News

OPINION: Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, The North And Our Votes

Published

6 months ago

April 22, 2025

By Suyi Ayodele

“We have released Northern Nigeria from the leading strings of the treasury. The promising and well conducted youth is now on allowance on his own and is about to effect an alliance with a southern lady of means. I have issued the special licence, and Sir Frederick Lugard will perform the ceremony. May the union be fruitful and the couple constant.” That was Lord Lewis Harcourt, British Secretary of State for the Colonies on the decision to amalgamate Northern and Southern Nigeria on January 1, 1914.

Those who created Nigeria clearly made the North the husband and the South, the wife. In Africa, the husband is the head and driver of the home. We see and feel this each time the North has to deal with the South on matters of power and resources.

The latest is the movement towards the 2027 election. Northern leaders are no longer hiding their opposition to the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu government. They say he has not been fair to them. The poor husband is threatening the resourceful wife with sanctions.

A former Tinubu aide, Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, spoke very loud at the weekend. He said nobody would be president in 2027 without the support of the North. He was right. But I will also be right if I say that no one outside the South will be president tomorrow or next year and forever without the support of the South. The poor husband and the rich wife need each other to have a functional home.

What all these means is that the Gídígbo gídígbó!/Hey! (battle cry) for the 2027 presidential election has started. The war drums up North have been rolled out with a full folk ensemble.

The percussion for President Tinubu up North is not melodious! The 2027 election is two long years away, yet there is cause for alarm for Tinubu and his political dynasty. Nobody should feign ignorance; nobody should ignore the pulsating sounds!

There is a counter battle cry that Tinubu needs at this moment. It has smooth, melodious, danceable and assuring lyrics. Tinubu mi má mikàn, a p’agbo yí o ká(2ice)/Gbogbo ènìyàn ún be léhìn re/Tinubu mi má mikàn, a p’agbo yí o ká/ – Tinubu don’t be troubled, we have formed a ring of protection around you/All the people are behind you/Tinubu don’t be troubled, we have formed a ring of protection around you.

But can any man of good conscience join the Tinubu orchestra to sing this song? The unfortunate answer is a resounding NO! When one’s masquerade dances very well at the village square, one is usually proud. But are Tinubu, our masquerade’s steps in accord with the beats from our musical instruments? How I wish the absentee President Tinubu gives one the confidence to approach the village square with our band in support of the man, the North of Baba-Ahmed is preparing for supper in 2027. Pity!

The lead drummer for the North in the impending battle for the soul of Nigeria in 2027 is a known figure, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, an ex-this and ex-that and a ‘familiar spirit’ in the political configuration of Nigeria and the North in particular. He is a man who thinks his North is the oxygen Nigeria breathes! Who is Hakeem Baba-Ahmed to arrogate to himself the position of the mouthpiece of the North?

When the wrapping leave stays too long with the soap, it becomes soap itself. Those are the words of our elders. They utter the eternal wisdom whenever our sages see a butterfly which thinks itself a bird.

Baba-Ahmed, the son of a cattle merchant migrant from Mauritania is more northerner than an aboriginal northerner. He thinks more for the North than the North thinks for itself. Whenever the levers of power are not in the hands of his supposed kith and kin across the River Niger, the only thing Hakeem sees is the ‘marginalisation’ of the North! He is at it again, singing his song of discord over the weekend.

Speaking in a video interview that went viral over the weekend, Baba-Ahmed intoned that no part of the country could win the 2027 election without the North. “One thing is clear: nobody can become president of Nigeria without northern support”, is the way he put it. He went ahead to announce that “In the next six months, the North will decide where it stands.” Then he warned: “If the rest of the country wants to join us, fine. If not, we will go our own way.”

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Abdulkareem, The Deaf And His Son

Hakeem will not hang it there. He must threaten us: “If they plan to rig the election, they should be careful. It won’t be good for Nigeria. The North is watching. Elders, masses, and interest groups will soon say ‘enough is enough.’ The injustice and sidelining must stop.” What are his grouses with the present arrangement? Baba-Ahmed said that the North needed “a government that understands our problems and can address them. After Buhari’s eight years, we became wiser. Now, we are in another government, and we are still crying. Is crying all we know how to do?”

Let us do the arithmetic. Nigeria gained independence in 1960. That was 65 years ago. Of the number, Baba-Ahmed’s North has ruled the country for 48 years. The entire South has just 17 years. By the time Tinubu completes his first term in 2027, the South would have been in the saddle for 19 years out of 67 years of the Nigerian nationhood.

Now tell me, what did the North do with its 48 years in power such that the region is ‘marginalised’ to warrant the colic from Baba-Ahmed? Who should have ‘marginalised’ who between those who have ruled for 48 years and those who have been in power for 19 years? If, in 2027, Baba-Ahmed’s craving is, “We just want a right leader; let him fall from heaven, we just want someone who will solve our problems,”, can we ask him what the leaders from the North did in 48 years to “solve” the North’s “problems”?

We would not argue with the North that every part of the nation needs it to win the presidency. Baba-Ahmed is absolutely correct with that assertion. But it should also not be lost on the northern irredentist that no one from the North can be president of Nigeria without the votes of the people down South. The electoral law says to be elected president, a candidate needs 25 percent of the votes cast in two-third of the states of the Federation (Section 134 (2), 1999 constitution as amended).

There are 36 states in Nigeria. The entire North has 19 states, and the South, 17. Two-third of 36, my Mathematics teachers say is 24. Good! If the entire northern states voted for a northern candidate in 2027, Baba-Ahmed’s candidate would still need five states from the South to win the presidency! If his candidate fails to get that, assuming the South followed Hakeem’s analogy of the North taking its destiny in its hands, what happens? This brings us back to Baba-Ahmed’s threat of “It won’t be good for Nigeria.” Should that happen, what gives?

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Uromi Killings And Sandalili Nursery Rhyme

There are messages for the Hakeem Baba-Ahmeds of this epoch who think the North can end Nigeria in 2027. Nigeria belongs to all of us. That should sink in, deeply too! Nobody is afraid of what happens to Nigeria again. We have gone beyond that era when the refrain: ‘To keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done’, was our unofficial anthem.

Àgunlá, àguntètè means who cares! That is the stage where all the ethnic nationalities that make up the country are now. No ethnic group is happy with our present configuration. Nigeria, to many, is an ‘expired’ entity; a nation that has long passed its nationhood! We are only enduring because our elders counsel that if the hands refuse swinging, we fold them on our heads. So be it with the Nigeria of Baba-Ahmed and his the-country-will-break-up slogan!

In fact, those of us down South will celebrate should the North re-enact its Araba (secession) cry of 1953, when the late nationalist, Chief Anthony Eromosele Enahoro, moved the motion for independence. Baba-Ahmed should be told that a deer with an inguinal hernia is a gain to the hunter (Àgbòrín tó so ìpá, ìfà olóde). Nobody needs the marriage of inconvenience that Nigeria has turned into. Someone should help us tell Baba-Ahmed that whenever the town experiences turmoil, the diviner gains something. We no dey fear again!

Baba-Ahmed said that the North would do it alone in 2027 if the rest of us down South were not ready. Really? So, we should shiver at that? Let us register this, here, again: We (Southerners) shall surely clap for Baba-Ahmed and his ilk if the North can walk the talk and “do it alone in 2027. Like they say in the street: we asked the slave for acrobatic displays, he says the ground is too hard; who wishes him to land and survive in the first instance? Let Hakeem and those he represents give us from the pockets of their sòkòtò (trousers) what we are going to Sokoto to look for. The jollification down South will drown him!

I hate to sound this way. But we need to tell ourselves some painful truths! Who does Baba-Ahmed think is afraid of 2027? Who needs a united Nigeria more, between the North and the South? What gives him this irritating sense of arrogance that the North is the soul of Nigeria? Has Baba-Ahmed ever released the dog and the red monkey to the boxing ring to discover who is covered with blood? If 2027 breaks up Nigeria as he threatened, to whose disadvantage(s) will the polarisation be?

It is okay for Baba-Ahmed’s woodpecker to boast that it would carve stone as a coffin for his father-in-law. The only caution here is that the woodpecker should also not forget the possibility of developing a boil on its beak before its father-in-law’s funeral! 2027 is still far away. Who told Baba-Ahmed what would have been the fate of the nation before then? When a man buys a calabash and identifies it with marks, and the calabash gets lost, our elders say that it is when the owner sees the calabash that he can identify his marks on it? Does Baba-Ahmed understand that?

It is rather unfortunate that Baba-Ahmed is becoming a bad recurrent decimal anytime the issue of the North and South dichotomy is discussed. At his age and clout, he should not be the signpost of everything that is bad from the North. Ordinarily, with all the positions he has occupied in governments at different levels, the old folk should be concerned that he has not been able to change the fortune of the North and its large number of Almajiris on the streets. His blame game is no longer working; nobody fancies that anymore.

Whatever happens to Nigeria either now, before or in 2027, we all shall have our fair share of it. Nobody should threaten anyone! While on the character of Baba-Ahmed on this page on September 28, 2021, in a piece titled: “Between Shehu Sani and Hakeem Baba-Ahmed”, I submitted that Nigeria is like a calabash that is turned face downward. If we have difficulties in opening it, we have the capacity to break it! Baba-Ahmed and his gang don’t have the monopoly of threat. If they throw pebbles at us, we will hurl stones at them!

Thomas Abiodun Friday: A Lord’s General @ 60

There are a few pastors I closely identify with. Pastor Thomas Abiodun Friday is one of them. On Wednesday, April 16, 2022, the man we all call Daddy PICP (Pastor in Charge of Province), turned 60 years old.

Pastor Friday was posted to Edo Province 4 of The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Benin City, as the PICP in 2019. His arrival changed a lot of things in the province.

His predecessor, Pastor Tunde Okunlola, did a wonderful job as the pioneer PICP for the province. So, it can be said that the new PICP, Pastor Friday, had a solid foundation laid by his predecessor. Taking off was never a problem and he went straight for the job, throwing his being at propagating the Gospel of the Lord. He introduced some innovations to the administration of the church and allowed every department to flourish while he provided leadership and ensured that all stayed focused on the doctrine of RCCG.

Without any fear of contradiction, I say boldly here that Pastor Friday is a Man of God (MoG) in deeds and indeed! His consummate leadership acumen, friendly dispositions, charming smiles and his listening ears are too obvious to be ignored. Having worked closely with him for over four years, I conclude here that he is a good manager of men and resources, a thorough administrator and one who allows subordinates to expand their horizons!

That Pastor Friday is a wonderful soul, loving brother, dependable ally and top-notch mentor, is not in doubt. He left Edo Province 4, indelible prints in the minds of people. He remained very unassuming, but always on top of his calling as a Shepherd! His transfer to Niger State by the Church authority was something one could not resist.

image.pngGetting to the Diamond age of 60 is a gift and grace from the Almighty, especially in this clime. Today, I join my voice with thousands of others to wish this impactful personality the very best God can offer! Happy birthday SIR!

News

OPINION: Ofala: Glo And An Invite From Agbogidi

Published

11 hours ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

‘Teacher of Light’ is the title of a biography of Chinua Achebe written by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Tijan Sallah. What does it mean to teach light? Or, rather, what is light? If you know what darkness does, you would know what light means and the value it holds.

“When the moon is shining, the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.” With that proverb and its moon metaphor, Chinua Achebe established himself as a true teacher of light. My muse pushed the proverb to my presence as I read through an invitation to me from the Obi of Onitsha asking that I be part of this year’s Ofala Festival. It occurred to me that moment that it is not only the moon that gives light; culture is an illuminator, it also gives light, especially to people like me who routinely forget how to dance to ancestral summons.

I had the very rare privilege of being honoured by the Nigerian Academy of Letters with its Honorary Fellowship in August this year. From the North to the South, only three Nigerians were so honoured: I was one; my brother, culture scholar and media icon, Jahman Anikulapo, was one; the deeply intellectual Obi of Onitsha, His Majesty Igwe Nnaemeka Alfred Ugochukwu Achebe (Agbogidi), was the third, the biggest of us. At that ceremony, the Obi, who said he had looked forward to meeting me, met me, held me and has kept me close as a son.

So, his invite to the Ofala Festival came. The festival holds this week. I wish I could be there as the king’s guest; but wishes are not horses. Because the mountain here is blocking the view of the mountain over there, I cannot honour the invitation. So I prayed for the success of the festival. The Obi answered with a thunderous ‘Amen’.

Ofala? I checked and found that the word “Ofala” is an enduring offspring of the Igbo words ọfọ (authority) and ala (land). Ofala is history retold in performance; it is also culture renewed. It relives the Obi’s authority over the land and its people.

Ofala is Obi’s return from sacred silence. The festival celebrates royalty’s reborn, and the Ndichie’s renewal of loyalty to the king. In Iru Ofala and Azu Ofala, the king returns from ancestral presence to repossess his warriors with their red caps.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: ‘Federal Highways of Horror’

Etymologists say the word ‘festival’ derives from the Latin ‘festum’. Anthropologists have followed the word through centuries and civilisations as its meaning evolved across cultures and disciplines. Émile Durkheim and James George Frazer were influential figures in early anthropology. Scholars, in summaries, say that to Durkheim and Frazer, festivals are communal expressions of belief and solidarity. They say that with festivals, people renew their social and spiritual bonds. In Ofala, we see that they are right.

Leo Frobenius, German ethnologist and archaeologist, was in Africa on multiple occasions between 1904 and 1935. In the 1910s, Frobenius observed festivals in diverse places; he documented them and saw in them vital celebrations of familial, tribal, and religious life deeply rooted in ancestral history and beliefs.

The German observed right. Ofala and similar festivals bind communities; they celebrate social cohesion and keep sacred traditions alive. They fuse communal history with spiritual renewal and survival. In them, the rhythm of everyday life comes alive.

Ofala has grown to attract great brands. Its major sponsor is telecoms giant, Globacom, which has been there since 2011. I have very solid people in Globacom, which makes me an envoy of its greenery and deepens my interest in everything, particularly, festivals in which the company is involved.

The Yoruba tell their children: When you behold greatness, honour it with reverence. Tí o bá ri olá, pón olá lé. That is what I am doing here. It is what Globacom’s long partnership with the Obi and Ofala does; an act of reverence to the greatness of the culture that birthed them.

From Lisabi in Abeokuta to Ojude Oba in Ijebu-Ode, and from Ofala in Onitsha to other vibrant festivals across the land, Globacom’s partnerships reflect a philosophy rooted in understanding that just as a zebra is defined by its stripes, a people are defined by their culture. In other words, a person without culture is like a zebra without stripes. Sustaining culture is sustaining the people.

That is what corporate sponsorship does to cultural events. Obi’s people say in a proverb, “Nku di na mba na-eghere mba nri (The firewood of a community cooks for that community).” Globacom’s firewood has kept the flame of the festivals it supports alive, warming the hearts of millions who gather yearly to honour tradition.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION Generals, Marabouts And Boko Haram

To sponsor a festival is one thing; but to nurture its essence and future is another. Through resources and resourcefulness, community engagement, and cultural reverence, Globacom has redefined what corporate responsibility can mean. That is what I gleened from the firm. I agree with those words. Shakespeare writes in Hamlet that “The purpose of playing… is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.” The playwright suggests that the aim of acting and theater is to reflect reality, showing “virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”.

By supporting these festivals, the company, Glo, holds up a mirror to our shared identity, allowing us to see ourselves, our beauty, our resilience, our history.

Globacom became a major sponsor of the Ofala Festival in 2011 and has sustained the sponsorship yearly since then. Fourteen years on, like the Ekwe and the Udu, two Igbo drums beating the same rhythm, the company’s unwavering support has demonstrated that corporate success and cultural preservation can walk (and work) together. I read this out and my friend, the Igbo man, chipped in: “Egbe bere, ugo bere” (let the kite perch and let the eagle perch). When business and tradition walk together, culture gains.

The Yoruba routinely remind us that it is when we walk in the rain that we know who truly walks with us. Companies get involved in arts and culture for various reasons. Some, like leeches, place their names beside great traditions so as to benefit from the greatness. But what I see with Glo here is much more than profit in cash and kind. I see a telecoms giant, wholly indigenous, that has chosen to walk tall with the ancestors, deploying its enormous muscle to connect the past and their history to the world of the modern. One word defines this; it is renewal.

The rich who spend on their people’s historical and cultural essence are not frivolous; neither are they stupid. It is patriotism; if you like, call it cultural nationalism. The wealth of culture, like all wealth, grows when shared.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Every democracy ‘Murders Itself’

Cultural promotion yields dividends that confound account books. It stitches the torn fabric of community; it keeps the hearth of local enterprise burning, and rekindles pride in who we are and where we come from. It renews pride in our shared heritage. It makes us all richer.

If you do well the society notes and records all you do for posterity. The Alake and paramount ruler of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo said in 2017 that “Glo is number one in culture and support for the people. The company pioneered per second billing and others followed.” The Alake wrote that admirable testimonial eight years ago. The flag of patriotism is still there on the mountain top, flying.

In Ofala, the king dances the dance of joy of a fresh start. In the drumbeats and dance steps, the king delights that yam is harvested as proof of life, not of death. The beats retell a people’s story as told by the ancestors. A people are as strong as the stories they tell of themselves.

This weekend (Friday and Saturday), Onitsha will be draped in Globacom’s green, the colour of growth and renewal. Colour green in French is vert, the Italian call it verde, the Spanish, in Castilian voice, say it is verde. They all draw their source from the Latin word for green which is viridis, a word that denotes freshness and vitality. History is an endless rope. English words, verdant and viridian, have this same Roman ancestry. To viridis again belongs “a large family of other words that evoke vigor, growth, and life: virere (to be green, to be vigorous), vis (strength), vir (man, masculine singular), ver (spring), virga (stem, rod), perhaps even virtus (courage, virtue).” For those insights, check French professor of medieval history, Michel Pastoureau’s ‘Green: The History of a Color’ as translated by Jody Gladding.

Whenever I meet Globacom chairman, Dr Mike Adenuga Jr, I intend to ask him the specific reason he chose colour green for his giant.

I congratulate the Obi and Glo as the moon glows on Ofala. In the dance of that festival, drums speak, colours sing, and heritage dances. In perfect rhythm, the people breathe, act and rejoice as tradition bathes in innovation. With the moon shining brighter, Obi’s land is renewed this weekend. Congratulations, Agbogidi.

News

OPINION: ‘Federal Highways of Horror’

Published

12 hours ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

You know where the latest anti-government journalists are in Lagos? Kirikiri. On a day that Nigerians were celebrating an additional spur of 100 kilometres to the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road, the killjoys of Kirikiri struck. They took a happy, joyous people of 200 million on a gruelling, bumpy ride across the country. They ran painful stories of craters and potholes and headlined them: ‘Federal Highways of Horror.’

It is a miracle that our Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, has not pummeled the Lagos newspaper called Vanguard. It ran the bad stories. It is still unclear why the minister has not rebuked its owner and spanked its journalists for publishing what they were not supposed to publish. Not once, but twice, last week they allowed the devil to use them to tell stories of collapsed federal roads from the north to the south. Their stories portrayed hardworking Umahi as a failure in monumental proportions.

Those journalists, injected with an overdose of impudence, said they did an investigation. They painted a grim picture of federal highways across multiple Nigerian states suffering severe neglect. They said the neglect has made travel dangerous, expensive, and time-consuming. They wrote as if they were sent to pull down a house built by God.

In the South, they came up with a long list of bad roads. They said northern states shared the same story of pain. They described some roads as crater-filled horror scenes; some as barely passable, others as sites long abandoned by contractors. On the few ones harbouring contractors, the signs they displayed showed slow men at work.

It does not rain; it pours. Amid narratives of millions of bad federal roads, Umahi made himself professor last week. “I am a professor of Engineering,” he announced on national television. Professor Umahi? I pray he is not asked to name the king who blessed him with that chieftaincy title. Some Arise News television journalists, whose eyes lack lashes, forced him to make himself professor. They habitually tug at the hem of Umahi’s professorial gown. They pelt him with questions that should never be asked. They remind our working Minister of Works that a river that is not dirty does not hide its depth. Last week, they demanded the cost of federal roads per kilometre. Who does that? And, I am happy, Minister Umahi gave it back to them. He said they are illiterates. Yeah. Don’t they know that for our federal government, spirits decide the total costs of projects? If they were truly not illiterates, they would know that this government is a wholesale seller and buyer; it is too rich to do retail business measured with short tape rules and elementary school rulers.

Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde, thought because he was governor and engineer he could join the talk and say that calculating the average cost per kilometre was possible in road construction. He was similarly told by our minister to shut up or he would be summoned to a debate on the very difficult mathematics of road construction. Umahi said he is Makinde’s senior in engineering. Senior Prefect Umahi described electrical electronics engineers as ‘technicians’ who must not speak on project costs.

Now, what we are told to hold as knowledge from Professor Umahi is that it is impossible to know how much a kilometre of road costs in Nigeria until such projects are completed. God is great. The World Bank must have missed that wisdom back in 1999 when it created the Road Costs Knowledge System (ROCKS), a database that calmly lists what it costs to build or fix a kilometre of road from Umahi’s village in Ebonyi to Makinde’s Ajia in Ibadan. A key feature of the World Bank’s ROCKS is its record of actual and estimated road work costs, clearly defined per kilometre and per square metre. Apparently, only in Nigeria do roads and their costs defy mathematics and logic.

In utter helplessness, we watch the roads and their costs stretch and shrink like chewing gum depending on whose fingers are working the calculator. While other countries classify their roads by type and cost per kilometre, we prefer a more spiritual approach – if you are an enemy, call it faith-based budgeting.

Clarity is the father of all openness. Why is it missing here? Again, that is not a question or a proverb that we must hear again from anyone, especially professional troublemakers called journalists. What is the problem of Nigerian journalists? Because their eyes have no skin, they query power. Where a cup is half-full, what our journalists see all their lives is a half-empty cup. They didn’t start today. They are historically insolent. What they do to this government, they did to even our ancestor, Lord Lugard, in 1913, one full year before Amalgamation. On 8 March, 1913, one rude journalist working with a newspaper called Lagos Weekly Record wrote that Lugard was a wicked, ruthless character, “a man whose walking stick is a pistol and whose thoughts by day and dreams at night are punitive expeditions and military patrols.”

And what was Lugard’s reaction to such attacks? He fought them with laws and knocks. At a point, he documented their impudence with a letter to his wife, Flora. In the letter, he bunched the journalist with all the other “educated native” who deserved no sympathy. He wrote about the native enemy of the state: “His loud and arrogant conceit are distasteful to me, his lack of natural dignity and of courtesy antagonise me.” Lugard’s biographer, Margery Perham, graciously remembered to put this in the book: ‘Lugard: The Years of Authority’ on page 585. If you can’t get Perham but are fortunate to get Jonathan Derrick’s ‘Africa, Empire and Fleet Street’, check the details there. They are on page 115.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Hobbes, Nigeria, And Sarkozy

So, as Lugard, the creator of Nigeria rightly wrote, the Nigerian journalist is arrogant and lacks courtesy. Such are called alárífín in Yoruba. In the days of old, the crime of àrífín carried capital punishment. Aróbafín l’oba npa. But today’s journalists are lucky that they are in a republican democracy. Even then, someone should pay for their bad behaviour. The slap they get from ministers like Umahi is the first tranche of the cost of their bad manners.

What should the state do to the conceited who won’t let expressway contracts be awarded expressly in peace? I have a solution to their problem: Like the Vanguard, they should all be relocated to Kirikiri; all of them, from Lagos to Ibadan; from Ibadan to Lagos. And, if I had my way, I would tip off Umahi and all his harangued hardworking colleagues to award contracts this week for more cells for enemies of the president’s coastal elephant and other projects of renewal. Their new accommodation should enjoy maximum security. They deserve Kirikiri, Kirikiri deserves them.

What comes fast cannot be delayed again. It happened to cricket. Cricket set his wedding day and simultaneously asked his doctor to start preparing for child delivery. The contracts for a safe house for Nigerian journalists can be awarded today, or, latest tomorrow. There is no need for formalities. Exactly like the Coastal Road contract, this is another no for competitive bidding. We already know contractors with proven track records of expertise in casting beams and building cells. We select and hit the site digging. We can fix the contract cost after the job is done.

From this point, we see long shadows over the country; there is no clarity about important things government do. But, one day soon, like sun rays, clarity will force its way in; it is the father of openness.

Now, beyond the scaffold of satire, I wish I could just tear the mask and tell Minister Umahi that what we have today under his watch is road transportation without roads. And he is Minister of Works in charge of roads. It is a shame.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Every democracy ‘Murders Itself’

In May this year (2025), I wrote ‘The shame of Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road.’ The first two paragraphs of the piece read:

“Mr Dele Alake represents Ekiti State in the Federal Executive Council. Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola represents Osun State in the Federal Executive Council. Mr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo represents Ondo State in the Federal Executive Council. All three of them are the president’s core men. Each time the council sits and approves federal roads for reconstruction in states other than theirs, what goes on in their minds? They are very powerful ministers but all federal roads that lead to their states are decrepit and abandoned. And they know. So, what is the problem?

“The Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road that links these ministers’ states to Lagos and to the North is the worst in Nigeria. Senate leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, is from Ekiti State. He belongs to the president’s inner caucus. Tough-talking PDP Senator Francis Fadahunsi represents Ife-Ijesa senatorial district. There are seven other senators and several Reps of APC and PDP from those three states. Has anyone heard them say or do anything to make that road well again? Do these people go home and how do they get home whenever they go home? Nigerians of all states lose lives and limbs on that road daily. Death by installments on the road is harrowing and it is a daily experience. It is a fitting tribute to the attention we pay to our people’s welfare.”

That was on May 12, 2025 (five months ago). If the road was “going, going” when I wrote that piece, it is gone now. Gone. An ex-senator told a columnist in May this year that N20 billion had been “released for repairs” of that road. In August 2025, Umahi announced the release of 30 percent of the contract sum. How much is the contract sum? Don’t even go there. If you go there, the minister will be angry. He will remind you that you are not a road professor. If you must ask any question at all, ask what has happened to what Umahi said was released, his 30 percent. Ask, because, nothing that is worth one kobo has happened on that road this year.

But the total collapse of the road did not come to me as a surprise. By the noon of May 12, 2025 when I published the article, one of the senators I called out in the piece called me.

“They have just read to me what you wrote.” He told me. Big men don’t read newspapers; newspapers are read to big men. Senator said he laughed at my naivety. He wondered why I was disturbing myself writing rubbish about a contract that may never be executed.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: A Minister’s Message To Me

“Do you think Nigeria can ever be better than it is? (Sé ìwo rò wípé Nigeria lè dára jù báyìí lo ni?)” He asked and proceeded to shame me with names, facts and figures all of which answered his question with a no. He said I should record and publish all he said. I laughed at the audacity of his directive. An orphan like me will never dare court a wound on the back.

Besides, I was taught early in life to make my eyes flexible enough for them to see the nose. That was the wisdom that eluded Partridge who claimed to know it all, and because he made that claim, he blocked his own opportunity to learn Ifá from the pigeon. ‘Mo m’Obàrà, mo m’Ofún,’ tí kò j e kí ẹyẹlé k’ àparò n’Ífá (I know Obàrà, I know Ofún’ made the pigeon not to teach Ifá to the partridge).

So, my pigeon listened attentively to the incantation from the hawk. This senator ended his long, windy speech with a submission that the Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road, and other federal roads in the South-West were decrepit and abandoned because the Works Minister “does not like hearing South-West at all.” I heard him and sighed.

When the outspoken gentleman spoke with me five months ago, he was a PDP senator. He has since moved to Dave Umahi’s party. Now, I wonder if he will still say what he said now that he is in APC.

Author and literary critic, Robert M. Wren (1928-1989), in 1982 wrote “The Last Bridge on ‘The Road’: Soyinka’s Rage and Compassion.” He tells us that in 1962, Wole Soyinka, in a Lagos Daily Express essay entitled ‘Bad Roads, Bad Users, Bad Deaths’ captured Nigeria’s enduring road crisis. Writing with outrage and in satire, Soyinka lamented the deadly state of the highways. He agonised over the state of the Lagos–Ibadan road (Mile 34); there was what he called “the death-trap at Ife”, and “the last bridge on Ikorodu Road.” Soyinka recalled and deplored a senator’s refusal to carry a crash victim with a spinal cord injury to Ibadan. More than six decades later, the roads are still bad, very bad; they still kill; senators are still cold-blooded; they still wonder why anyone bothers to care that the roads are bad.

News

Edo GIS Denies Report Of 17-year-old Purchasing 14 Hectares Of Land

Published

13 hours ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

The Edo Geographic Information Systems (Edo GIS) has debunked reports circulating on social media that a 17-year-old boy purchased 14 hectares of land in Edo State and was subsequently denied a Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) by Governor Monday Okpebholo.

In a statement released by the Director of Press, Tunde Egbiremonlen, the agency clarified that no such transaction exists in its records.

According to the statement, a 17-year-old is legally considered a minor and, as such, is not eligible to register land ownership under Edo State law.

“The Edo GIS system will automatically reject such applications due to age restrictions,” the statement read

“In the first place, a 17-year-old cannot apply for registration of land in Edo state because that age bracket is assumed to be a minor; the Edo GIS system will automatically reject the application.

“To compound the objective of the rumour-mongers, the peddlers of the story did not explain where in Edo state, such 14,000 hectares were purchased by the minor.

Egbiremonlen also pointed out inconsistencies in the viral report, noting that it failed to mention the specific location of the alleged 14 hectares and described the story as “deliberately mischievous and fabricated.”

He accused the originators of the false information of attempting to cause disaffection and blackmail the government, saying significant funds were spent to circulate the fake news.

Edo GIS urged the public to disregard the claims and remain vigilant against disinformation aimed at undermining the government’s credibility.