News
OPINION: Jonathan’s Betrayal And Askaris In Nigerian Politics

By Festus Adedayo
Poor Goodluck Ebele Jonathan! Last Thursday, at the 70th birthday of his ex-Chief of Staff, Chief Mike Aiyegbeni Oghiadomhe, in Benin, Edo State, the former Nigerian president revealed the underbelly of Nigerian politics. At that event, Jonathan opened up a wound he had nursed since he lost the 2015 presidential election. It was his ordeals in the hands of political Askaris. “Politics in the Nigerian standard is about betrayals. I have witnessed a lot of betrayal during 2015 election,” he said.
Apart from politics, in liberation struggles, betrayers and betrayals are rife. During South Africa’s apartheid era, a number of former activists, or “comrades” who formed a bulwark of resistance against white minority rule, turned coat. A sedimentation of betrayals could be found in the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) and the African National Congress (ANC’s) military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). Either bought or forced through torture, “Comrades” of the struggle morphed into operatives for the Apartheid regime, squealing on their ex-comrades and acting as police agents. Many even participated in death squads against their former allies. They were then given the derogatory label of Askari. Initially a moniker for police in Swahili, ‘Askari’ stuck on Apartheid era turncoats.
My first opportunity of meeting Jonathan, the man who would be president of Nigeria, was in 2005 at Idah, (I guess) Kogi State. Ostensibly seeking ties to the apron strings of then PDP National Chairman, Dr. Ahmadu Ali, Jonathan had come to Idah for Ali’s child’s wedding ceremony. It was at the thick of the crisis of Diepreye Solomon Alamieyeseigha who was subsequently removed by the Bayelsa State House of Assembly.
The Jonathan I saw at Idah was as harmless and peaceful as the white pigeon, a mythical bird Yoruba call Adaba. The people even deified Adaba with an ancient tag which holds that if she perches on your rooftop, peace had made it its hibernation.
In Idah that day, Jonathan appeared to me as wearing the innocence of a child. He cut the visor of a man alien to the scorched-earth hearts of Nigerian politicians. Over the years however, I presumed Jonathan’s participation at the highest echelon of Nigerian politics had sufficiently scarred his heart. My assumption was predicated on an ancient saying of my people, to wit that, until you acquire the status of the elderly, you will constantly frolic with children who then stomp on you like one desecrating a sacred shrine, (B’á ò nínkàn àgbà, bí èwe l’àárí).
MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: A ‘Corruption-free’ Nigeria And Brazil As Hyena
Last week however, Jonathan seemed to have come of age. He wore the full plumage of Nigerian politics. The truth is that, in Nigerian politics today, at least since the First Republic, there has been a confetti of betrayals. It has got to an epidemic level, so much that trust, tired of abuse, developed wings and flew out of Nigerian politics. Politicians laugh at anyone who expresses surprise at serial betrayals among them. The situation today is that men and women of honour take a flight from it.
In the Yoruba society and in the people’s everyday life, trust and betrayal are very fundamental as well. Virtually all of their relationships are woven round trust, for cohesion, peace and societal stability. Because experience showed them that deviants exist who break the cord of trust, covenants called Ìmùlè, literally meaning ‘drinking (from) the water of the earth’ and Májèmú, whose literal translation is, ‘drinking from a calabash bowl’, are used to suborn agreements. In both agreements of Ìmùlè and Májèmú made between parties, the earth – which Yoruba Apala bard, Ayinla Omowura, in a deployment of a Hausa epithet, called, ‘gidan kowa’ – home of all – is invoked to witness and ensure abidance.
When either of the parties reneges from these covenants, the Yoruba say, Ó dalè. The one who wrongs the other is then the Òdàlè, or in translation, “betrayer of the earth”. The consequence of betrayal in Yorubaland isn’t benign. Either said during the agreement process or not, the phrase, “whosoever betrays the earth will disappear with the earth” (enit’óbá dalè, á báilè lo” is a poignant reminder that silent as the earth, the witness, may be during agreements (verbal or non-communicated) the earth is a dangerous mystical personality which reserves punishment for violation of agreements made while standing on it – “ilè ògéré af’okó ye’rí, alápò ìkà”.
In social or political relations, some deviants have however had a history of undermining the concept of trust by attempting to put a lie to land’s mystical personality. On many occasions when they did that, they have been recipients of catastrophic comeuppances. While there are so many examples in individual social relations, political examples will aptly illustrate the trust deficit which Goodluck Jonathan said was as rare as the teeth of a hen in Nigerian politics.
MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Is Èmil’ókàn Audacity Or Incantation Ritual?
Take for instance the experience of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. While the political successes of this Yoruba people’s recent ancestor have remained legendary till today, seldom is a dig done into the betrayals that dogged his political career. When he chose to vacate Western Nigeria to contest to be Nigeria’s Prime Minister, unable to secure the needed votes, one of his associates said this of him, as recorded by Awolowo himself: “I warned him when he was going to contest the Federal Elections – ‘Do not go to the Federal House, sit down like the Sardauna of Sokoto in the Northern Region, sit down like Dr. Azikiwe in the East.’ He would not listen, he wanted to become the Prime Minister. Now he has failed and since his failure the man has become insane. Since his failure, the man has become sick. So I appeal to the Prime Minister to put him in an asylum.” The man was one Chief E. O. Okunowo, representing Ijebu Central of the Western Region, at the First Republic Federal House of Representatives. You will find it on page 167 in Awolowo’s The travails of democracy and the rule of law (1987).
Awo’s closest political allies plotted his political ruin and death. They sent him to jail and gloated about the loss of his first son. Their plan was for him not to return from the Calabar prison. During the second republic, the stench of betrayal did not abate. Some of his closest allies had even begun angling to run for presidency in the proposed 1987 election.
Chief Ayo Rosiji, Awolowo’s main lieutenant and one of the founders of the Action Group, also gave him the Julius Caesar’s Brutus stab. This brilliant engineer and lawyer resigned his position as Publicity Secretary of the Action Group and ported to the opposition party. Rosijiit was who told his biographer, Australia-born historian, Dr. Nina Mba, in the biography, Man With Vision, of another betrayal that could have assumed Nigeria-wide shock. According to Mba, Rosiji told her that sometime in late 1958, Nigeria’s Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa, was about to betray his political godfather, Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto. Writes Mba, “According to Rosiji,… Balewa confided in him that he was fed up with being prime minister and of being harassed by the Sardauna, and that he was thinking of resigning.” Rosiji said he then attempted to convince Balewa to, rather than dump Bello and return to his teaching job as he threatened, join Awolowo’s Action Group. While Balewa thought that was an outlandish suggestion, Rosiji asked him to “think about it.”
S. L.Akintola is another. Till today, the reason for the schism between him and Awolowo remains mythic. While Chief Bola Ige, in his People, politics and politicians of Nigeria (1995) said the reason was trust deficit as Awolowo “(left) in charge of his base a deputy and Premier whom he did not quite trust and who was not his choice,” some scholars like Bill Dudley and EghosaOsaghae said it was ideological differences.
In Jonathan’s lamentation of betrayal in Nigerian politics, there is however the need to draw a line between the wickedness of godfatherism and self-liberation of godsons cloaked as betrayals. As I wrote in the piece, “His Excellency the godfather” (June 24, 2018) what is termed political betrayal in 4th Republic Nigerian politics is actually godfatherism gone sour. In 2003 Anambra State for instance, Chris Uba, the barely literate but stupendously wealthy businessman, exposed the destructive phenomenon. He had financed the election of Chris Ngige to be governor, pulling him by the nape of his trousers to the Okija shrine to swear by an oath of abidance. When it was time to start drawing from his “investment,” Ngige reneged, details of which became a global embarrassment to Nigerian politics.
MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: You Be Terrorist, I No Be Terrorist!
After the 2007 handover to lackeys by the 1999 governors set, the cookies began to crumble. Some of the cookies were immediate while many took longer time. In Lagos’ Bola Tinubu and the trio of Raji Fashola, AkinwumiAmbode and JideSanwo-Olu, what many earlier saw was a matrimony worthy of an example. Tinubu continued to reap the dividends of his ‘investments’ in his handpicked successors. He determines the political barometer of Lagos politics and holds the lids of its finance. Not until the re-election campaign of Fashola and Ambode and Sanwo-Olu’s alleged cash gift to Tinubu’s political enemies did the cracks begin to be noticeable. Tinubu himself is said to parade a graveyard of those who betrayed him.
In many other states subsequently, the matrimony became a bedlam almost immediately. In Enugu, for instance, Sullivan Chime was still a governor-elect when he started to undo all that his mentor and godfather did. Orji Kalu suffered same fate in Abia, where his erstwhile Chief of Staff, T. A. Orji eventually emerged governor. Orji spent his years in government firing ballistic missiles at Kalu who had spent billions of state funds to skew the process in his favour. This ‘betrayal’ has since then been replicated in virtually all the states, with anointed godsons, having mutated to become godfathers themselves, attempting to foist their own godsons too as successors. In Anambra, Peter Obi, while shopping for a godson, walked into the supposedly sane banking hall as he searched for an urbane, corporate world executive. He got Willie Obiano, a mirthless character. Less than a year after, the strange, somber-looking Obiano transmuted from the gentleman who couldn’t hurt a fly into a stone-hearted political pall-bearer who strenuously attempted to preside over Obi’s political funeral. It was same story in Kano State where Umar Ganduje, erstwhile Rabiu Kwankwaso’s lickspittle, became a hydra who sought to swallow his ex-boss.
The list is endless. The most recent is the stench of the Nyesom Wike-SiminalayiFubara ‘betrayal’ claim in Rivers State. In all these however, a few have remained true to their predecessors, like the Kogi State governor. This is regardless of the predecessor’s betrayal of the people of his state.
The chestnut I’m pulling out of the fire today is that, from the Goodluck Jonathan betrayal story of last Thursday, you cannot get a morality tale in which the lines between heroes and villains are clearly drawn. Jonathan himself betrayed some political appendages when he went into bed with Tinubu in the 2015 elections. Tinubu the godfather also betrayed his party’s presidential candidate, Nuhu Ribadu, for Jonathan. Ribadu, as a result, won only Osun state for his ACN party. The morality of judging who is the betrayer between a godfather and godson becomes even dud when you ask whether the money used to finance those elections that birthed “the betrayers” were not stolen wealth of the people. In which case, the people’s prayer is that, like the “eni” – the dew that hangs on leaves by bush-part sidewalks in the morning – the amity of the godfather and godson must never last beyond sunrise.
The dilemma of this surfeit of betrayals is however that, unless Nigerian politics becomes an engagement of honesty, trust, truth and fidelity, decent people will continue to flee from it. In all the betrayals, the grand betrayal I see is the one against the Nigerian people whose lives have backtracked in 26 years of the 4th Republic.
News
Edo To Immortalise Late IGP Solomon Arase

The Edo State Government is set to immortalise the late Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, who is an indigene of the state.
Governor of the state, Monday Okpebhole, disclosed this on Saturday while receiving the body of the late Arase at the Benin Airport.
Represented by his Chief of Staff, Gani Audu, Okpebholo described late Arase as “one of the finesse police officers and lawyers we have in Edo State,’ adding that “losing him at this time that the Nigeria Police Force and the country in general need him is not good for us”.
“As a State Government, we will work with the family to see how we can Immortalize him. He was a great son of Edo State.
READ ALSO:Security Destroys Suspected Kidnappers’ Camps In Edo
“It is very painful to the government and people of Edo State but we are consoled with the good life he lived”.
Okpebholo described Arase as a team player and a man that was always willing to help.
“It is painful that we lost somebody who always listens to every complaint and tries as much as possible to solve them”.
He, however, prayed to God to give the family the fortitude to bear the loss, assuring that the government will do all that it can to support his family.
News
Edo Activist In Police Net Over Alleged Assault On Abure

Edo-based activist, Precious Oruche, popularly known as “Mama Pee”, has been detained following a heated confrontation with the factional National Chairman of the Labour Party (LP), Julius Abure, at the Abuja Airport.
The incident, which had since gone viral, had sparked controversy and conflicting accounts from both parties.
According to reports, the saga began at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, where Mama Pee allegedly confronted Abure as he prepared to board a Max Air flight to Benin.
Eyewitness accounts said the activist approached Abure and accused him of being responsible for the hardships Nigerians are currently facing.
“Is this not Julius Abure? You’re the one frustrating Nigerians,” she reportedly told Abure in a confrontational manner.
READ ALSO:JUST IN: Supreme Court Nullifies Judgment Recognising Abure As LP National Chair
Abure was responding by saying ‘how can…’ when Mama Pee interjected, saying, “In case nobody has told you, you’re the one frustrating Nigerians. Are you not Julius Abure? What are you now doing with Labour Party? Police are looking for you. You’ve destroyed the Labour Party, and you’re entering an aeroplane? May God punish all of you.”
Arriving at the Benin Airport, things took a more violent dimension as Mama Pee was allegedly attacked by a group of young men believed to be thugs loyal to Abure.
A video circulating online shows a scuffle at the airport’s exit, with several individuals attempting to drag the activist, before security and immigration officials stepped in.
Speaking in one of the video recordings, Mama Pee claimed she was assaulted by the group.
“Look at them oh!!! See them oh!!! They want to beat me after I told Julius Abure that he is the one frustrating the lives of Nigerians, and then he brought thugs. He brought thugs to harass me. Look at them, can you see them,” she exclaimed.
READ ALSO:Why LP Zoned 2027 Presidential Ticket To S’East – Abure
She further alleged, “I saw Julius Abure of Labour Party inside the Max Air, and I told him that you are the one frustrating the lives of Nigerians. You sold Labour Party, and then he called his thugs to wait for me at the airport in Benin.”
Another activist, Peter Akah—widely known as ‘Peter for Nigeria’—released a video calling for Mama Pee’s immediate release.
He appealed to Edo State governor, Monday Okpebholo, and the Edo State Commissioner of Police, Monday Agbonika to intervene.
Akah argued that the activist, who he described as a victim of political violence, had been wrongly turned into a suspect by the police.
Meanwhile, the Abure-led faction of the Labour Party has issued its own version of events, condemning what it termed an “unwarranted attack” on their chairman.
READ ALSO:Obi: Concerns as factional LP Chair, Abure, Visits Wike
In a statement released by the National Publicity Secretary, Obiora Ifoh, the party claimed Mama Pee accosted Abure at the Abuja airport in an unprovoked manner while he was boarding his flight to Benin.
“The assault, which attracted a large population of onlookers, continued unabated on disembarkment at the Benin Airport while she continued recording the scene,” Ifoh stated.
He added that Abure had to be quickly escorted to safety by security agents, while the activist was handed over to police for questioning.
The statement further alleged that Mama Pee, who is described as a known figure in the ‘Obidient’ Movement, bragged in one of her videos about her connections to top police officers.
“She vowed that she will not stop attacking Abure or any member of the Labour Party executive because according to her, ‘you have killed Labour Party and you are the reason why Obi is no longer in the Labour Party,’” Ifoh said.
He called for a thorough probe, just as he urged the Inspector General of Police to look into what they termed cyberbullying and political provocation.
As of the time of filing this report, attempts to get a comment from the Edo State Police Public Relations Officer, SP Moses Yamu, were unsuccessful as calls were neither answered nor returned.
News
Educationist Gets Guinness World Record For Largest Teachers’ Gathering

Nigerian teacher and education advocate, Mr Seyi Anifowose, has officially entered the Guinness World Records for convening the largest gathering of teachers in history, a feat achieved at the “Let There Be Teachers Conference 2025” held on September 20 at Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos.
A statement by 1 Million Teachers on Friday said the confirmation was announced via a Zoom call on Wednesday, September 23, by Rishi Nath, a representative of Guinness World Records.
Nath commended Anifowose and his team for drawing global attention to an issue that, according to him, “should be on the front burner of policy and dialogue nationally.”
The record-setting event, powered by 1 Million Teachers, drew an unprecedented number of educators from across Nigeria.
READ ALSO:VIDEO: ‘New Record’, Guinness World Record Confirms Hilda Baci’s Largest-serving Of Jollof Rice
Organisers had projected attendance of 60,000 teachers, underscoring both the scale of the mobilisation and the urgency of the message: that Nigerian teachers deserve greater recognition, welfare, and policy support.
“This is more than a number. It is proof that teachers matter. It is a victory for education, and it is a victory for Nigeria,” said Anifowose.
He explained that the choice of Tafawa Balewa Square carried symbolic weight. He said, “It was the same ground where Nigeria declared independence in 1960, and its use for the conference marks another proud national moment—this time celebrating those who build nations in classrooms.”
Anifowose admitted that achieving the milestone was not without challenges.
READ ALSO:Canada-based Nigerian Sets Guinness World Record For Longest Leadership Lesson
“This is not just about breaking a record. It is about resilience. Teachers stood in the rain, braved the sun, and endured long verification lines but refused to back down just to achieve this record,” he noted.
He expressed gratitude to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State for hosting the event and to his home-state governor, Abiodun Oyebanji of Ekiti State, for his encouragement.
He also thanked teacher unions and education agencies at both state and federal levels for their support in ensuring the conference’s success.
Beyond the record, Anifowose emphasised that the next phase would focus on policy advocacy. He revealed plans to engage the National Assembly on reforms aimed at improving Nigeria’s education system and boosting teachers’ welfare.
READ ALSO:Customs Seize N905m Rolls Royce, Other Contrabands In Ogun
Nigeria’s education sector has long grappled with underfunding, poor infrastructure, and low teacher morale.
According to UNESCO, the country faces one of the world’s most severe teacher shortages, with many classrooms overcrowded and educators underpaid.
Stakeholders have repeatedly called for reforms to strengthen the sector, improve teacher training, and make the profession attractive to younger generations.
By securing this world record, Anifowose hopes to transform symbolic recognition into tangible change for teachers nationwide.
(PUNCH)
- Entertainment4 days ago
Davido Gifts Wife Chioma 2025 Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon
- Politics5 days ago
Why I Visited Tinubu —Gov Fubara
- Business4 days ago
Okonjo-Iweala Reveals How Nigeria Can Dominate AfCFTA
- News4 days ago
Lagos Govt Gives Computer Village Traders Ultimatum To Relocate To Katangowa
- News4 days ago
[OPINION] Rivers: The Futility Of Power And The Illusion Of Victory
- News5 days ago
Court Bars CCETC From Entering Ossiomo Land, Using Its Property
- Entertainment4 days ago
Why I Leaked, Circulated My 2021 Sex Tape —Tiwa Savage
- Headline4 days ago
Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Is Dead
- News4 days ago
Court Remands Man Who Beat Wife In Viral Video
- Politics4 days ago
Natasha Resumes At Senate, Calls Akpabio Dictator