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OPINION: Is Èmil’ókàn Audacity Or Incantation Ritual?

Published

3 months ago

August 24, 2025

By Festus Adedayo

A few weeks ago, an outburst of then aspirant for Nigeria’s presidential office, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, marked his third anniversary. On June 2, 2022, in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, Tinubu bit the bullet in what has now become an epochal ad-lib commentary. In a retort to attempts to deny him the Nigerian presidency, he had said, “Èmil’ókàn, e gbékinníyìíwá” – It is my turn, bring this thing. At a meeting with Ogun State governor, Dapo Abiodun, as well as leaders and delegates of the APC at the presidential lodge, Ibara, Abeokuta on that same day, Tinubu rained subtle invective on Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s then sitting president. He had come to meet the party’s delegates in Abeokuta ahead of its presidential primaries slated for about a week to that day.

Like Sango, the Yoruba god of thunder, lightning and fire or an enraged cobra, Tinubu spat out the magical words. “If not for me who stood behind Buhari, he wouldn’t have become the president,” he began, in an audacity many believe was sterner than Barack Obama’s. “He tried the first time, he fell; the second time, he fell; the third, he fell… He even wept on national television and vowed never to contest again but I went to meet him in Kaduna and told him he will run again. I will stand by you and you will win, but you must not joke with Yorubas and he agreed. Since he became the president, I have never got ministerial slots, I didn’t collect any contract, I have never begged for anything from him. Èmil’ókàn, e gbékinníyìíwá”; it is the turn of Yoruba, it is my turn.”

Anyone in alignment with the Nigerian political barometer of this period in time would know that, as at the morning of June 2, 2022, Tinubu was not in the reckoning of the powers-that-be for a Buhari successor. For his presidential dream, in the words of immortal Nigerian nationalist, K. O. Mbadiwe, the come has come to become. Or better put, from the tone and timbre of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s saxophonist, “réré (ti) run” – a political calamity was afoot. Shortly after the outburst, however, what was thought to be a speech fiasco morphed into a catapult that shot Tinubu up. In spite of his visible opposition to his candidacy, Buhari almost instantly got sucked into it, inexplicably. You could feel the grudge and reluctance in Buhari thereafter. The gang-ups against Tinubu thereafter melted like ice in the sun. Not long after, a major stumbling block, Godwin Emefiele’s Naira re-denomination, fell face flat on the floor. Before you could say Jack, what was thought to be Tinubu’s baggage became his greatest wattage.

What actually transpired in Abeokuta that day? Scholars have since then subjected that audacious and epochal Tinubu statement to different analytical studies. Was it a pure biting of the bullet? A daring Tinubu owns its patent since he hopped into third republic politics? Or, was it an omnivorous appetite for things magical that many claim cannot be divorced from Tinubu’s politics? After all, Yoruba say a child’s behavioural manifestation propels him to seek anti-machete protection charm (Ìwàomol’óńmúomo se òkígbé). In other words, was that Abeokuta statement a product of unscience and metaphysics (òògùnab’enugòngò), a flavour that has been known to be part and parcel of African politics?

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In April 2024, during the beginning of the travails of former Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello, a similar pronouncement, thought to have spiritual implication, went viral in a video. It had an enchanter recite an incantation with utmost fury. It went thus: “River Niger and River Benue, the confluence is in Kogi State. Except say River Niger and River Benue no come meet for Kogi; if River Niger and River Benue come meet for Kogi, dem no go fit arrest Bello… Dem dey use EFCC pursue am, dem no go succeed o. Dem go lay siege for im house for Abuja… Except say I no be born of Igala kingdom… EFCC dey front, you dey back; you dey back, dem dey front; you dey left, dem dey right; you dey right, dem dey left; you dey centre, dem come there, you jump dem pass!…a lion cannot give birth to a goat…”

Those in the know claim it would be ludicrous to claim that, since 2007 when he left the governorship of Lagos, Tinubu has welded his leadership of Lagos together only with political sagacity and tons of cash. Extra-terrestial intelligence in the form of occult practices, membership of a cult of leadership where allegiances are suborned in blood oaths, are alleged to be interwoven into the much-touted Lagos hold of power. In Africa as a whole, empirical evidence given by practitioners often interviewed to give participant observations of the phenomenon has shown that, while the electorate sees the formal practices of voting, primaries and elections, unseen, chilling, blood-curdling informal recourse to black magic is an unwritten but potent credential of African political practices. So, the question is, does metaphysics influence outcomes of electoral practices? Or put more succinctly, do politicians’ occult and traditional magical practices have any bearing on voter behaviour or electoral outcomes?

Of a truth, science has denounced the validity of the above reasoning. Austro-British philosopher of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein, was one of those who rubbished it. In his Tractatus which contained criticisms of traditional metaphysical investigation like the Èmil’ókàn outburst, Ludwig considered such as “abstract speculations” and meaningless linguistic confusion. He even said that such engagements were “metaphysical chatter(s)”. It must be said that three centuries before Wittgenstein, that is the seventeenth century, were a period in which philosophy and science could not be sharply demarcated from the occult. There, occult and reason existed side by side.

To thus think that Nigeria’s electoral politics is solely what transpires in the physical will be naivety of the highest order. In my little interface with politicians in southern Nigeria, I can confirm that there is a spiritual dimension to political leadership. Indeed, there exists a seeming incestuous relationship between politics and spirituality, especially rituals. It exists in northern Nigeria as well, solely cobbled together by the marabout system brought into Nigeria by hermitic and itinerant North African Islamic Malams. Because elections and electioneering are seen as war, Nigerian politicians visit spiritualists to fortify themselves with Òkígbé, a charm perceived to insulate them from piercing machetes, guns and machinations of political adversaries. With Òkígbé, it is said that someone thus fortified, if inflicted with machete, the metal breaks into two.

In southwest Nigeria, guests visiting homes of politicians where a mass of people throng will not fail to notice grains of millet and corns splashed on roads. They are rituals which are believed to attract a motley crowd to the sides of the politicians. Those in the know also say that, as we gravitate towards the 2027 elections, there will be a spate of ritual murders known to be handiwork of politicians in need of human parts to aid their political ambitions. Non-politicians also engage in it. When you go to road junctions where three footpaths meet (orítaméta) in the southwest, you cannot fail to see ritual offerings in calabashes which are many times spiritual electoral interventions. Election times are periods rituals, libations and incantations reign. Effigies of political opponents are sometimes also made, on which are poured frightening incantations. The belief is that such political opponents are caged and their political destinies padlocked. Nigerian politicians also visit spiritualists, either the Christian variant, the Islamic-flavoured ones or traditionalists.

In earlier pieces I did, both on September 26, 2021 and April 28, 2024, with the headlines, “Nigeria’s huge market of blood and human sacrifice” and “The marabouts of Yahaya Bello”, respectively, I explored the themes of magical and ritual practices as a pervasive phenomenon in power relations in Nigeria. I stated that this affirms that when complicated issues and challenges of life confront Nigerian politicians, they quickly run to their traditions and origins. These syncretic practices do not affect their worship in church on Sunday nor mosque on Friday. This equally demonstrates the ease with which politicians momentarily throw away their Christian and Islamic cloaks to hold on to the utilitarian purpose that magic and sorcery serve them.

Cannibalism of ritual practice isn’t strictly African as empirical documentation confirmed that during the trans-Atlantic trade, European cannibals were also on the prowl seeking the succulent fleshes of Africans to make delicacies. Andre Donelha, a Cape Verdean, who travelled in Upper Guinea from 1574 to 1585, recalled how the Mane, invaders who operated during the first half of the sixteenth century, attacked the Western coast of Africa from the eastern flank and “(ate) human flesh at any time and while at war, even that which belongs to one of their own nation. When they make war, the conquerors eat the conquered.” In fact, the Manes were reputed to bear the grisly and cruel name of Sumbas which, translated, means “eaters of human flesh,” a practice which Walter Rodney explained was “for courage and ferocity.”

Christianity and Islam have sought to wipe out blood oath, human sacrifice and cannibalism to no avail. The Ogboni itself was a recipient of this rout in 1948 in Oyo by Alaafin Raji Adeniran Adeyemi II, a pious Muslim monarch, who sought to de-link the palace from ancient voodoo practices. Hitherto, the palace held a great link to and derived its existence from the immense powers of the Ogboni fraternity.

Though a great attempt is made by the present cyber age to delink secret cults from the operations of society, they flower greatly among African elite, especially among political power cabals who run to them for metaphysical shields at moments of existential turmoil. Indeed, judges, politicians, lawyers and many leaders of societies are said to belong to these fraternal secret cults, all in the stampede for power and protection against inclement weathers of life. Pastors, Imams and many society leaders are said to be card-carrying members of the cult.

The question to ask is, how then do political leaders who take this syncretic path of rituals to power bear any allegiance to the electorate? It is believed that many of them, rather than to the electorate, show gratitude to leaders of cult groups, Babalawo, Pastors and Imams after their victory. So, what is the scale of harm of this practice on Nigerians?

Students of philosophy and traditional African religion would need to help us situate Tinubu’s June 2, 2022 outburst which culminated in the world-renowned phrase, “Èmil’ókàn, e gbékinníyìíwá”. To be where he is, did Tinubu have a dalliance with the elderly who are known to be spiritual leaders of his domain? Having hailed from a core Yoruba area of Iragbiji in Osun State, nobody needs to teach Tinubu the potent powers of autochthonous Yoruba people’s spiritual powers. For anyone who understands the lingo of the coven, the phrase “Èmil’ókàn, e gbékinníyìíwá” sounds more like an incantation ritual than the outburst of an enraged politician. It is almost synonymous with the chant, “Agbe, bring goodies to me,” Agbe, being a bird known in English as the Great Blue Turaco, a vibrant, culturally significant bird among the Yoruba which has blue plumage.

I have heard a sprinkle of scholars and practitioners say that the talismanic effect of that Tinubu outburst removes it from the ordinary. So, was it science, unscience, Realpolitik or spiritual politics that brought Tinubu to power? Did he, in 2023, realizing the eternal wisdom in the native Yoruba wisdom which says, if you do not have what elders fortify themselves with, you would remain a suckling, (B’á ò nínnkanàgbà, bíèwelàárí) decide to use what he had to get what he needed.

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OPINION: Aso Rock And Kitoye Ajasa’s Lickspittle Press

Published

6 hours ago

November 16, 2025

Editor

By Festus Adedayo

President Bola Tinubu did the unexpected last Wednesday. He attended the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) Conference 2025. It was the very first for any Nigerian president. Quite absurdly, the watchdog, the Nigerian press, willingly moved into the tiger’s buba – the lair – for deliberation on its welfare. Ayinla Ade-Gaitor, the Iganna, Ìwájòwà LGA of Oyo State-born Apala musician of the 1970s/80s fame, equally wondered at this quixotic equation. My compatriots, can a tiger and a dog cohabitate in the same lair? – “K’ájá ó dúró, k’ékùn ó dúró, ńjé yíó seé se, èyin alárá wa?” Ade-Gaitor asked in his melodious Iganna-flavoured voice.

But at the 21st NGE Annual Conference (ANEC) 2025 held in its lair – the Aso Rock State House Conference Centre in Abuja – the tiger and the dog became so giddy after clinking wine glasses, so much that they both shared titivating embraces. They had both been soused to their eyeballs. When it was time for the tiger to speak, clanking its incisors menacingly and magisterially, with recent blood dripping from its lips and caked blood stuck round its nose, this strange incest reminded me of Sir Kitoye Ajasa.

Ajasa (1866 – 1937) was a Nigerian lawyer from the Saro family migrants of Dahomey, present-day Benin Republic. He was however conservative, pacifist and a lackey of the colonial authorities. While the likes of Herbert Macaulay fell out with the British rulers over their insistence that British rule was self-serving and a little in the interest of the natives, Ajasa thought otherwise. He believed that national progress could only be made if Africans were subservient to and cloned European ideas and institutions. He was an apologist of the British government, believing that criticising it was counter-productive. His reasoning was that, grovelling before white-haired, long-nosed, pink-skinned men who called themselves salvationists, was the guarantee for development.

To achieve this persuasion, Ajasa became a newspaper founder. Of course, his Nigerian Pioneer newspaper, founded in 1914, the year of Nigeria’s birth, invited so much reproach. He deliberately founded it as counterpoise to the radical Lagos Weekly Record newspaper of John Payne Jackson that was a thorn in the flesh of the colonialists. Ajasa’s brand of journalism frowned upon anti-government polemics as other papers of the time did. In return, the people of Lagos extremely distrusted it. In 1923, Ajasa wrote that his newspaper “existed in order to interpret thoroughly and accurately the Government to the people and the people to the Government”. In fact, he was a known confidant of Sir Frederick Lugard, the colonial Governor-General, and the general belief was that the Lugard government funded his Nigerian Pioneer newspaper. In its stories and editorial comments, the newspaper provided staunch support for the colonial government’s measures and cynically attacked people and organizations that were thorns in the flesh of government.

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To demonstrate their opprobrium for Ajasa’s leaflet, the Nigerian Pioneer newspaper, the people scoffed at it on the newsstand. To Ajasa’s contemporaries, his lickspittling was bothersome. They could not fathom his boot-licking attitude and openly disdained his Nigerian Pioneer as “the guardian angel of an oligarchy of reactionaries”.

Ajasa’s newspaper itself became more or less the unofficial bulletin of the colonial government. It publicly mocked nationalists who fought for development and in a particular case, in the 1916 Lagos water rate protest against the colonial government, Ajasa labeled agitators like Macaulay ‘radicals.’ In 1921, with the help of Alimotu Pelewura, leader of Lagos Women’s Association, the powerful market women’s group, who at her death in 1951, was succeeded by Abibatu Mogaji, Macaulay again led a major protest on this agitation. To Ajasa, the colonized natives must fully adopt European ideas and institutions as expressway to national progress. He was in the Nigerian parliament till 1933 and shortly after 1937 when he died, the Nigerian Pioneer died.

So, when on Wednesday, President Tinubu urged the Nigerian media to “report boldly, but do so truthfully; critique government policy but do so with knowledge and fairness. Your aim must never be to tear down, but to help build a better society,” my mind told me that that fluid and racy speech was for the klieg. In actual fact, the president wanted Kitoye Ajasa-reincarnates for journalists, an Ajitóoba-phlegm-eater – media conscripts who would blind their eyes to government’s wobbly feet at national parade. Just as Kitoye Ajasa did for Frederick Lugard and the British colonial lords.

Since Lugard, the Kitoye Adisa-kind press had always been the preference of governments thereafter. Ever since the establishment of the Nigerian Daily Times on June 1, 1926 and even prior, the Nigerian press and Nigerians themselves had always been thirsty for adversarial journalism as a weapon of combating the colonial government. Since then, the Nigerian media’s treatment of news became binary: it was either they were for the people against government, or against the people, but in romance with government, like Kitoye Ajasa’s.

Since the Muhammadu Buhari government, the Nigerian media has operated under a very precarious situation. Its first blow was economic. As Eze Anaba, the editors’ president said, the Nigerian democracy, resilient through the ages, is currently under the bayonet of “insecurity, economic hardship, misinformation, and declining public trust in institutions, (as well as) government officials’ intolerance, sometimes, to freedom of the press.” The gravamen of Anaba’s speech can be found in his quip that “editors must therefore defend the sanctity of truth, insist on transparency, and hold power to account — not as adversaries of government, but as constructive partners in the pursuit of national progress.”

In what would look like a systematic but gradual decimation of the Nigerian press, governments have since 1999 corroded its powers. The ostensible aim is to ensure that the Nigerian press barks but bites seldom. For those who can recall, the battle to wean Nigeria of military rule was largely fought on the pages of its newspapers. The press literally yielded its space for democracy activists to make use of it for their campaign for democracy. In the process, many journalists were sacrificed. Many were jailed and maimed. Bagauda Kaltho of The News signposted the clan of journalists who paid the ultimate price, in anticipation of liberty for Nigerians today. The newspaper press was so formidable that both Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha had to roll out tanks to extinguish its irritating flame. At the end of the day, the Nigerian press was largely responsible for the rout of military rule in Nigeria and its replacement with civil rule.

By 1999 when Nigeria returned power to civilians, the Nigerian newspaper press was still blistering. Its armaments were still potent and practitioners retained their energy which seemed to be bursting at its seams. Not long after the commencement of the Fourth Republic, the newspaper press made public examples of the carried-over rots of Nigeria’s governmental dysfunctionality. One after the other, even at a time when its tools were analogue, the press made mincemeat of public officers who, as it was later revealed, were evil doppelgängers of what they claimed to be in public. Salisu Buhari, the young Kano State legislator, who became Speaker of the House of Representatives, had his bubble burst. So also did Evan Enwerem. But for his street craftiness, the man who is the Nigerian president today would have been drowned by that hyper-ventilating press energy of the early 4th Republic.

The press of this period’s investigative acumen was top-notch and it could compete with any newspaper press anywhere in the world. My haunch is that, alarmed by the enormous power at its disposal and the system-purifying but dirty people-destroying powers within its grips, governments since 1999, either deliberately or otherwise, perfected plans to castrate the deadly watchdog of the Nigerian press. Today, they have made a huge success of this engagement. The success is such that, the wily politicians in agbada, babariga and Ishiagu can thump their individual chests that the battle to rid the Nigerian governance space of the irritancy of the Nigerian press, which the military, with their tanks and artillery, couldn’t achieve in decades, were effortlessly executed by them.

Today, the Nigerian newspaper press has been so mercilessly drubbed that it is barely existing. Gradually, an underground and sustained shellacking was waged on it and what is left is its decimated carcass. Many of Nigeria’s erstwhile matador press houses, where the warriors who fought military rule to a standstill operated from, are desecrated and abandoned. Their print-runs are caricatures of those noble eras when they proudly bore the tag “mass” in their media operations. Governments after governments since 1999 would seem to have deliberately jerked up costs of running newspapers to the league of what you needed to procure nukes. The newsroom has emaciated so terribly that you would imagine it was afflicted by a weight-pining cancer.

Last Wednesday, I reckon that the tiger was happy that the watchdog had been finally castrated, can bark and cannot bite. It lay prostrate by its feet with a begging bowl. All those ills that plague the Nigerian media today, itemized by Anaba, the League’s president, are physical manifestations of a conquered press whose conquest is a product of gradual decimation. The graveyard of the print media is luxuriant with lofty memories.

Thanks to the broadcast and social media which have both taken over the “mass” in print journalism’s erstwhile “mass media” pedigree. But for them, the Nigerian press would have today been a totally conquered battlefield. The watchdog must have entered the tiger’s lair last Wednesday, believing that the tiger’s smiles approximated its love for it. Truth be told, in the eyes of its newly acquired tiger friend, the press is a gourmet meal it has prepared for the dining table. Odolaye Aremu, Ilorin’s talented bard, once explained the danger in that emergency dalliance. “Adìye òpìpí” is the Yoruba name for a featherless hen which, in stature and outlook, bears striking resemblance to a hawk. The bard warned this hawk-lookalike hen to be wary of its newfound friendship with this carnivore, lest its entrails end in the belly of the raptor. Perhaps deceived that, being a media owner himself, like Odolaye’s òpìpí hen, the president is one of them, the Nigerian press, like this mistaken hen, would realize its folly too late when its flesh ends inside the hawk’s belly.

Any country of the world where the press and government are cosseted in such an amorous and adulterous relationship as we saw in Aso Rock last Wednesday has unilaterally tossed good governance out of its window. It reminds me of a paraphrase of a famous quote by US Supreme Court Justice, Hugo Black. Black wrote: “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people.” But, when the press deliberately hands itself over to government, what then happens?

The Nigerian press today lives in The Wailers’ archetypal concrete jungle. In this jungle, though there are no physical chains around its feet, it is not free. Three young Jamaican boys, which included Bob Marley, had in 1973, in their ‘Catch A Fire’ album, sang about the melancholic life of a wanderer which the Nigerian press found itself living today. Glory lost, barely living and now captive in the hands of the state, those young Jamaican boys’ melancholy is a fitting description of today›s press.

The only way the Nigerian media can play its rightful role in the success of democracy, especially the success of the Tinubu government, isn’t by sucking up to people in power or being their lapdog. A century after Kitoye Ajasa played his groveling role to Lugard and British colonialists, history hasn’t forgotten him. It reserves a place for him till today. What will it say about us tomorrow?

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Edo Dep. Gov. Idahosa Inducted, Bestowed With Rotary Premium Award

Published

17 hours ago

November 15, 2025

Editor

The Edo State deputy governor, Hon. Dennis Idahosa, has been bestowed with the Rotary Premium Award by the Benin Metropolitan Rotary Club, District 9141 in recognition of his humanitarian disposition.

In a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr Friday Aghedo, the deputy governor was accorded this recognition when the humanitarian organization visited his office to induct him into the club

Idahosa expressed appreciation for the recognition and promised to continue to contribute his best for the betterment of the society and humanity.

“When I was growing up, my prayer to God, was Bless me so that I will be a blessing to the world,” he stated.

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He noted that the recognition was in no doubt, a call for higher responsibilities.

Rotary President, Hon. Elizabeth Ativie who gave reasons for the award and investiture, maintained that the induction was based on Idahosa’s humanitarian disposition which is in line with Rotary Club’s doctrine of service above self, humanitarian and community.

“This is a reflection of where your heart is,” she told Idahosa.

The Assistant District Governor of the Club, (AG) Samson Olayiwola of Zone 20, D 9141, later decorated Idahosa with the “Rotarian pin,” the recognized logo of the Rotary Club worldwide.

This was in addition to the presentation of a certificate of membership and embroidered with a sash that uniquely identifies Idahosa as a member of the “RC Benin Metropolitan District.”

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Doctors’ Strike Continues As NARD Demands Fair Deal, Better Pay

Published

19 hours ago

November 15, 2025

Editor

The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has called on the Federal Government to immediately conclude a long-delayed Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), as their indefinite strike entered its 15th day on Saturday.

It also demanded a review of the outdated Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS).

In a statement posted on X on Saturday, the union said: “Dear Nigerians, Doctors Deserve a Fair Deal! For long we’ve waited for a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), a simple, written promise that ensures fairness, clear work terms, and proper pay. But the government keeps delaying, while doctors face rising costs and crumbling morale.

“We demand the immediate conclusion of the CBA and review of the outdated CONMESS salary structure.”

The strike, which began earlier this month, has affected 91 hospitals nationwide, including federal teaching hospitals, specialist institutions, and federal medical centres, disrupting medical services across the country.

NARD said the union’s 19-point demand list is reasonable and necessary for the welfare of doctors and patients.

The list includes the payment of arrears under the CONMESS salary structure, disbursement of the 2025 Medical Residency Training Fund, prompt payment of specialist allowances, recognition of postgraduate qualifications, and improved working conditions.

The union stressed that these measures are essential to sustain doctors and maintain a functional healthcare system.

President Bola Tinubu has also directed the Ministry of Health to immediately resolve the strike, noting that the government is addressing the doctors’ demands.

Despite the directive, NARD said delays in finalising the CBA and reviewing salaries have continued to demoralise doctors, many of whom face rising living costs while providing critical medical services.