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OPINION: Idiocracy, Senators And Children Of Food

Published

1 week ago

December 1, 2025

By Lasisi Olagunju

For ten clean years (November 2015 to 7 October, 2025), Mahmud Yakubu was the chairman of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). On 29 November, 2025, fifty three days after he left that impartial office, he became a beneficiary of the election he refereed; he was made an ambassador by the president.

Yakubu is not a stand-alone actor. From July 2017 to December 2021, Nentawe Goshwe Yilwatda was the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Benue State. On 24 October, 2024 he became a minister of the Federal Republic. The man’s blessing blossomed on 24 July, 2025 when he was appointed the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress.

Yakubu and Yilwatda are teachers. They are getting their rewards here and now on earth; not in heaven. There should be many more like them inside and outside INEC. The electoral commission is now well and properly fixed inside the chambers of power.

We wait to see who will match their regiment: INEC and politicians of all hues, gunners and guns and the court mass into a mega-camp. Has this happened? Has it not? You still wonder why every governor, every senator, their mistresses and concubines and paramours take their tent into the IDP camp named APC? Samuel Butler was right: Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” It is no longer necessary for the ruling caste to scheme, manoeuvre and listen to the above counsel of Sun Tzu and his ‘The Art of War.’ Resistance is dead, opposition is buried, so why should the president’s battle plans be made again under the cover of darkness?

President Bola Tinubu does not pretend. Piss into the stream if you can; defecate into the pond. It is the lily-livered who asks toad and frog and their cousins to close their eyes before doing so. This is where we are.

But, this piece is not about those defecators. This is about the hollow men in Nigeria’s hallowed chambers. This is on our senatorial children of food; large, privileged boars in our Animal Farm.

Child of food is omo oúnje in Yoruba. When you take your seat at every dining table; when you become uncontrollable or overly excited at the sight of food, you are omo oúnje, and you get the label. And, you do not have to be a child to be so called. Adults who forget themselves when food appears are children.

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Senate president, Godswill Akpabio, read a letter to his colleagues last week, a dinner invitation from the First Lady to the Senate. The ‘overly excited’ Senate President concluded the reading on a note of self-revelation. He said: “This is like an invitation by a mother to her children. I wish you sumptuous meal and fruitful discussion…We all meet there on Friday.”

Our senators are children. Now we know.

I did not hear any of the other 108 senators say their president was wrong; that an arm of government paid and pampered to vet and check the acts and actions of the executive should not be found snoring in the kitchen of the Villa. They all love their status as nurslings; they flaunt it. Shame on the enemy who are jealous of the chummy, yummy relationship between Nigeria’s lawmakers and the president’s kitchen.

It is most likely that the First Lady rejoices at having almighty senators, big men and women of power, as her children. The Villa is a shrine; it exists to be worshipped by big men, small men; sycophantic sucklings. The air that keeps the bees there humming is flattery; its synonym is unctuous praise.

Flattery, my dictionary says, is “excessive and insincere praise, given especially to further one’s own interests.” That is the ‘gold’ coin which Akpabio offered the First Lady.

The author of ‘Maximes’ and ‘Memoirs’, François de la Rochefoucauld (1613 –1680) has a deprecating line: “Flattery is a counterfeit money which, but for vanity, would have no circulation.” No one should tell anyone that accepting and spending fake, adulatory notes have consequences. “He that loves to be flattered is worthy of the flatterer” (Timon in Shakespeare’s ‘Timon of Athens’, Act I, Scene 1).

Those who enjoy flattery deserve the consequences of sycophancy. That is what Timon says in the above quote, in bitterness and in regret.

Why would adults we invested with legislative powers look at themselves and say they are children of the president’s wife? And what are the implications for the recipient of the (un)solicited sycophancy?

One morning, a fox was walking through the woods looking for something to eat. He looked up and saw a crow sitting on a tree branch. He had seen many crows before, but this one caught his eye because she was holding a piece of cheese in her beak.

The fox immediately thought, “Perfect! That cheese will make a great breakfast.”

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He walked to the base of the tree and looked up at the crow. “Good morning, beautiful bird!” he called out.

The crow looked down at him with suspicion. She didn’t trust him, so she kept her beak tightly closed around the cheese and said nothing.

The fox continued, pretending to admire her. “What a lovely bird you are! Your feathers shine, your body is perfect, and your wings are wonderful. A bird as perfect as you must also have a beautiful voice. If you would just sing one song, I would gladly call you the Queen of all Birds.”

Hearing all these sweet compliments, the crow forgot her doubts, and even forgot the cheese she was holding. Wanting to prove she deserved the praise, she opened her beak to let out her loudest caw.

Of course, the cheese fell straight down—right into the waiting mouth of the fox.

“Thank you,” said the fox, smiling as he walked away. “Your voice is great; if only you added brains and caution to all your other qualifications, you would make a great queen.”

Aesop, ancestral teller of the original of the story above, did not forget to add that its moral is that people who listen to flattery often pay the price for it.

That story and the caution it conveys are for the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, because of whose food Senator Godswill Akpabio pronounced her “mother” and all senators her “children” last week.

English philosopher and statesman, Francis Bacon, in ‘The Advancement of Learning’, wrote of a senator who once stood up in a full Roman debate and proposed that Tiberius, their emperor, be declared a god. The philosopher used this incident to illustrate what he called the lowest form of sycophancy. Even in that world of excessive praise, Roman senators never thought of calling themselves the children of the emperor. For a modern democratic legislature to refer to the spouse of the head of the executive as “mother” is worse than the flattery Bacon mocked.

What Akpabio blithely said is casual but deep. It collapses the constitutional separation of powers into a family drama where elected lawmakers become puny dependents seeking favour. If ancient Rome saw such gestures as the death of democracy and republican dignity, then the Nigerian Senate’s metaphor is an even clearer sign of institutional self-infantilisation.

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Akpabio and his Senate’s excessive fawing inadvertently situate their chamber in Jean Piaget’s immature stage of infantile thinking, one ruled by deference and emotional dependence.

Yet, an independent legislature is the reason we say democracy is better than all other forms of government, including military rule.

‘The American Mercury’ was an American magazine which was on the newsstand from 1924 to 1981. Its July 1937 edition contains an article with the headline: ‘Crooks in the Legislature.’ The magazine withheld the name of the author of the article “for obvious reasons” but said it published his story “as a factual record, believing it typical of most state legislatures.” From the eight-page article I picked this paragraph in celebration of the legislative content of our democracy: “Putting summary ahead of detail, I may say that ten percent of legislators come perilously close to being racketeers; twenty-five percent are primarily venal in their attitude toward such legislation as is capable of being turned to advantage; another twenty-five percent will accept money for their votes on bills which do not vitally affect the general public and in which they have no personal interest; another twenty-five percent, who do not accept money, are moved often by personal and group relationships, including retainers, business arrangements, political advantage, patronage demands, etc.; and about fifteen percent are, or think they are, above suspicion of judging legislation other than on its merits –although I never have met one who could take an utterly detached viewpoint even when unconscious of personal interest. Unadulterated altruism has yet to come within my purview. Paradoxically, some of the crookedest legislators in my state are among the ablest in their consideration of measures.” That was democracy and the parliament in the United States of 88 years ago. Take a look at what we have in 2025 Nigeria, you may add the US.

Senator Akpabio and other children of food are not alone in the kitchen with the one who holds the yam and the knife of this lavish feast. The press is the fourth estate of the realm; it routinely gets compelled (or it compels itself) to do what Akpabio did. The judiciary is the third leg of the dining table; it stands up for power and privileges and, for their songs of praise.

In ‘How Democracies Die’, Harvard political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, want to know if the American democracy is in danger. And, in every word, every sentence and every paragraph of that 2018 book are hints that suggest an affirmative answer to that question. They say: “This is how we tend to think of democracies dying: at the hands of men with guns…But (now) there is another way to break a democracy. It is less dramatic but equally destructive. Democracies may die at the hands, not of generals, but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power.”

Lagbaja, the masked musician, sang at the beginning of this democracy that it must not die (democracy yi ko gbodo ku). But, if this democracy was a child, it would qualify as a foolish child. And a foolish child is as useless, lifeless as a dead child. There is a Yoruba proverb that explains it deeply: A child lacks wisdom, and they say the child must not die; what else kills faster than lack of wisdom? Dying is not the absence of life; it is the lack of useful existence.

Senators are children of the president. “Are we living in the age of stupid? The era of the idiot? The answer of course is yes, with examples of monstrous moronicism everywhere.” That is the verdict of film critic and Guardian Australia writer, Luke Buckmaster, four years ago. He thinks democracy has become a government of idiots, by idiots for idiots. “If this is already the era of the idiot, what comes next?” He asks, and the answer, according to him, is: “An Idiocracy.” Idiocracy is a pick on the title of Mike Judge’s 2006 dystopian comedy.

Do not hesitate to apply the above to my lot and to your lot. The ways and strays of this democracy remind me of the famous ending of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Hollow Men’, a 1925 poem about a state in paralysis: “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Democracy dies where the legislature celebrates its becoming the executive’s puny child, mother hen’s brood. That is what the “children” in our Red Chamber do. The rot is complete when you add to that tragedy the press paying to play with the Villa, and the judiciary upstanding in deference to the president’s personal anthem: ‘On Your Mandate We Shall Stand’.

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Out-of-school: Group To Enroll Adolescent Mothers In Bauchi

Published

13 hours ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

Women Child Youth Health and Education Initiative (WCY) with support from Malala Education Champion Network, have charted a way to enroll adolescent mothers to access education in Bauchi schools.

Rashida Mukaddas, the Executive Director, WCY stated this in Bauchi on Wednesday during a one-day planning and inception meeting with education stakeholders on Adolescent Mothers Education Access (AMEA) project of the organisation.

According to her, the project targeted three Local Government Areas of Bauchi, Misau and Katagum for implementation in the three years project.

She explained that all stakeholders in advancing education in the state would be engaged by the organisation to advocate for Girl-Child education.

The target, she added, was to ensure that as many as married adolescent mothers and girls were enrolled back in school in the state.

“Today marks an important step in our collective commitment to ensuring that every girl in Bauchi state, especially adolescent who are married, pregnant, or young mothers has the right, opportunity, and support to continue and complete her education.

“This project has been designed to address the real and persistent barriers that prevent too many adolescent mothers from returning to school or staying enrolled.

“It is to address the barriers preventing adolescent mothers from continuing and completing their education and adopting strategies that will create an enabling environment that safeguard girls’ rights to education while removing socio-cultural and economic obstacles,” said Mukaddas.

She further explained to the stakeholders that the success of the project depended on the strength of their collaboration, the alignment of their actions, and the commitments they forge toward the implementation of the project.

Also speaking, Mr Kamal Bello, the Project Officer of WCY, said that the collaboration of all the education stakeholders in the state with the organisation could ensure stronger enforcement of the Child Rights Law.

This, he said, could further ensure effective re-entry and retention policies for adolescent girls, increased community support for girls’ education and a Bauchi state where no girl was left behind because of marriage, pregnancy, or motherhood.

“It is observed that early marriage is one of the problems hindering girls’ access to education.

“This organisation is working toward ensuring that girls that have dropped out of school due to early marriage are re-enrolled back in school,” he said.

Education stakeholders present at the event included representatives from the state Ministry of Education, Justice, Budget and Economic Planning and Multilateral Coordination.

Others were representatives from International Federation of Women Lawyers, Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE), Bauchi state Agency for Mass Education, Civil Society Organization, Religious and Traditional institutions, among others.

They all welcomed and promised to support the project so as to ensure its effective implementation and achieve its set objectives in the state.

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OPINION: Fubara, Adeleke And The Survival Dance

Published

13 hours ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

By Israel Adebiyi

You should be aware by now that the dancing governor, Ademola Adeleke has danced his last dance in the colours of the Peoples Democratic Party. His counterpart in Rivers, Siminalayi Fubara has elected to follow some of his persecutors to the All Progressive Congress, after all “if you can’t beat them, you can join them.”
Politics in Nigeria has always been dramatic, but every now and then a pattern emerges that forces us to pause and think again about where our democracy is heading. This week on The Nation’s Pulse, that pattern is what I call the politics of survival. Two events in two different states have brought this into sharp focus. In both cases, sitting governors elected on the platform of the same party have found new homes elsewhere. Their decisions may look sudden, but they reveal deeper issues that have been growing under the surface for years.

In Rivers, Governor Siminalayi Fubara has crossed into the All Progressives Congress. In Osun, Governor Ademola Adeleke has moved to the Accord Party. These are not small shifts. These are moves by people at the top of their political careers, people who ordinarily should be the ones holding their parties together. When those at the highest levels start fleeing, it means the ground beneath them has become too shaky to stand on. It means something has broken.

A Yoruba proverb captures it perfectly: Iku to n pa oju gba eni, owe lo n pa fun ni. The death that visits your neighbour is sending you a message. The crisis that has engulfed the Peoples Democratic Party did not start today. It has been building like an untreated infection. Adeleke saw the signs early. He watched senior figures fight openly. He watched the party fail to resolve its zoning battles. He watched leaders undermine their own candidates. At some point, you begin to ask yourself a simple question: if this house collapses today, what happens to me? In Osun, where the competition between the two major parties has always been fierce, Adeleke was not going to sit back and become another casualty of a party that refused to heal itself. Survival became the most reasonable option.

His case makes sense when you consider the political temperature in Osun. This is a state where the opposition does not sleep. Every misstep is amplified. Every weakness is exploited. Adeleke has spent his time in office under constant scrutiny. Add that to the fact that the national structure of his party is wobbly, divided and uncertain about its future, and the move begins to look less like betrayal and more like self-preservation.

Rivers, however, tells a slightly different story. Fubara’s journey has been a long lesson in endurance. From the moment he emerged as governor, it became clear he was stepping into an environment loaded with expectations that had nothing to do with governance. His political godfather was not content with being a supporter. He wanted control. He wanted influence. He wanted obedience. Every decision was interpreted through the lens of loyalty. From the assembly crisis to the endless reconciliation meetings, to the barely hidden power struggles, Fubara spent more time fighting shadows than building the state he was elected to lead.

It soon became clear that he was governing through a maze of minefields. Those who should have been allies began to treat him like an accidental visitor in the Government House. The same legislators who were meant to be partners in governance suddenly became instruments of pressure. Orders came from places outside the official structure. Courtrooms turned into battlegrounds. At some point, even the national leadership of his party seemed unsure how to tame the situation. These storms did not come in seasons, they came in waves. One misunderstanding today. Another in two weeks. Another by the end of the month. Anyone watching closely could see that the governor was in a permanent state of emergency.

So when the winds started shifting again and lawmakers began to realign, those who understood the undercurrents knew exactly what was coming. Fubara knew too. A man can only take so much. After months of attacks, humiliations and attempts to cage his authority, the move to another party was not just political. It was personal. He had given the reconciliation process more chances than most would. He had swallowed more insults than any governor should. He had watched institutions bend and twist under the weight of private interests. In many ways, his defection is a declaration that he has finally chosen to protect himself.

But the bigger question is how we got here. How did two governors in two different parts of the country end up taking the same decision for different but related reasons? The answer goes back to the state of internal democracy in our parties. No party in Nigeria today fully practices the constitution it claims to follow. They have elaborate rules on paper but very loose habits in reality. They talk about fairness, but their primaries are often messy. They preach unity, but their caucuses are usually divided into rival camps. They call themselves democratic institutions, yet dissent is treated as disloyalty.

Political parties are supposed to be the engine rooms of democracy. They are the homes where ideas are debated, leaders are groomed, and future candidates are shaped. In Nigeria, they increasingly look like fighting arenas where the loudest voices drown out everyone else. When leaders ignore their own constitutions, the structure begins to crack. When factions begin to run parallel meetings, the foundation gets weaker. When decisions are forced down the throats of members, people begin making private plans for their future.

No governor wants to govern in chaos. No politician wants to be the last one standing in a sinking ship. This is why defections are becoming more common. A party that cannot manage itself cannot manage its members. And members who feel exposed will always look for safer ground.

But while these moves make sense for Adeleke and Fubara personally, the people they govern often become the ones left in confusion. Voters choose candidates partly because of party ideology, even if our ideologies are weak. They expect stability. They expect continuity. They expect that the mandate they gave will remain intact. So when a governor shifts political camp without prior consultation, the people feel blindsided. They begin to wonder whether their votes carry weight in a system where elected officials can switch platforms in the blink of an eye.

This is where the politics of survival becomes dangerous for democracy. If leaders keep prioritizing their personal safety over party stability, the system begins to lose coherence. Parties lose their identity. Elections lose their meaning. Governance becomes a game of musical chairs. Today you are here. Tomorrow you are there. Next week you may be somewhere else. The people become bystanders in a democracy that is supposed to revolve around them.

Rivers and Osun should serve as reminders that political parties need urgent restructuring. They need to rebuild trust internally. They need to enforce their constitutions consistently. They need to treat members as stakeholders, not spectators. When members feel protected, they stay. When they feel targeted, they run. This pattern will continue until parties learn the simple truth that power is not built by intimidation, but by inclusion.

There is also the question of what these defections mean for governance. When governors are dragged into endless party drama, service delivery suffers. Time that should be spent on roads, schools, hospitals, water projects and job creation ends up being spent in meetings, reconciliations and press briefings. Resources that should strengthen the state end up funding political battles. The public loses twice. First as witnesses to the drama. Then as victims of delayed or abandoned development.

In Rivers, the months of tension slowed down the government. Initiatives were stalled because the governor was busy trying to survive political ambush. In Osun, Adeleke had to juggle governance with internal fights in a crumbling party structure. Imagine what they could have achieved if they were not constantly looking over their shoulders.

Now, as both men settle into new political homes, the final question is whether these new homes will provide stability or merely temporary shelter. Nigeria’s politics teaches one consistent lesson. New alliances often come with new expectations. New platforms often come with new demands. And new godfathers often come with new conditions. Whether Adeleke and Fubara have truly found peace or simply bought time is something only time will tell.

But as citizens, what we must insist on is simple. The politics of survival should not become the politics of abandonment. Our leaders can fight for their political life, but they must not forget that they hold the people’s mandate. The hunger, poverty, insecurity and infrastructural decay that Nigerians face will not be solved by defection. It will be solved by steady leadership and functional governance.

The bigger lesson from Rivers and Osun is clear. If political parties in Nigeria continue on this path of disunity and internal sabotage, they will keep losing their brightest and most strategic figures. And if leaders keep running instead of reforming the system, then we will wake up one day to a democracy where the people are treated as an afterthought.

Governors may survive the storms. Parties may adjust to new alignments. But the people cannot keep paying the price. Nigeria deserves a democracy that works for the many, not the few. That is the real pulse of the nation.

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Human Rights Day: Stakeholders Call For More Campaigns Against GBV

Published

15 hours ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

Panel of discussants at an event to commemorate the International Human Rights Day, 2025 on Wednesday called for more campaigns against Gender-Based Violence, adding that it must start from the family.

The panel of discussants drawn from religious and community leaders, security agents, members of the civil society community, chiefs, etc, made the call in Benin in an event organised by Justice Development & Peace Centre (JDPC), Benin, in collaboration with Women Aid Collective (WACOL) with the theme: Multilevel Dialogue for Men, Women, Youth and Critical Take holders on the Prevention and Response to Gender-Based Violence (GBV).

The stakeholders, who said causes of GBV are enormous, called for more enlightenment and education in the family, community and the religious circle.

Security agents in the panel charged members of the public to report GBV cases to security agents regardless of the sex Involved, adding: “When GBV happens, it should be reported to the appropriate quarters. It doesn’t matter if the woman or the man is the victim. GBV perpetrators should not be covered up, they must be exposed. We are there to carry out the prosecution after carrying out the necessary investigation.”

Earlier in his opening remarks, Executive Director, JDPC, Rev. Fr. Benedicta Onwugbenu, lamented that (GBV) remains the most prevalent in the society yet hidden because of silence from victims.

According to him, GBV knows no age, gender or race, adding that “It affects people of all ages, whether man or woman, boy or girl.”

“It affects people from different backgrounds and communities, yet it remains hidden because of silence, stigma, and fear. Victims of GBV are suffering in silence.”

On her part, Programme Director, WACOL, Mrs. Francisca Nweke, who said “women are more affected, and that is why we are emphasising on them,” stressed “we are empowering Christian women and women leaders of culture for prevention and response to Gender-Based Violence in Nigeria through the strengthening of grassroots organisations.”