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OPINION: KWAM 1, Eccentricity And Big Man Syndrome

Published

2 months ago

August 10, 2025

By Festus Adedayo

At the risk of being labeled thanatophobic – a preoccupation with death or its anxiety – the grim reality is that, last Tuesday, Nigeria’s music world would have lost veteran Yoruba Fuji musician, Wasiu Ayinde. Being Muslim, it is in order to say the man popularly known as KWAM 1 would have been buried same Tuesday or early Wednesday. He would have been killed over a mere tiff with an airline official over allegation of carrying liquour on board an aircraft. There is no grimmer way of putting the potential calamity than this. It is a signpost of the paper-thin divide between life and death.

A footage of the musician hurriedly ducking the wing blade of a taxing ValueJet aircraft on the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, with a potentially disastrous consequence, left everyone gasping for breath. KWAM 1, in his usual haughty display, had engaged the airline’s personnel in a needless altercation over his obvious breach of airline protocol. So, how do you label what the musician demonstrated that Tuesday; eccentricity, Big Manism, suicidal inclination or substance intoxication?

Looking for a musician or artist who is not eccentric may be akin to searching for the teeth of a hen. Name them: Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, Oscar Wilde, David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Captain Beefheart and in Nigeria, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Wole Soyinka, Davido, Wizkid, Portable and many others. They all have one thing in common: they are eccentric. They are weird, unconventional, against-method and display rare traits, mostly for attention and in support of their trade. For them, acting unconventionally is a private code, a badge of identity. Lady Gaga’s is in her flamboyant fashion and performances. The truth is that, eccentricity, what Americans call ‘wacky’, is the lifeblood of music, musicians and the art in entirety. For most of them, it is intentional eccentricity, a bold effort to wow the audience through appearance or presentation. The media also feeds off their wacky lifestyles, raking millions from their unconventional public images.

Michael Jackson is an example. Michael lived a bizarre life with a unique public persona, unusual lifestyle choices, as well as weird dressing and dancing styles. He deliberately cultivated a mysterious and flamboyant image with rumours and speculation enveloping his entire life. He took eccentricity to a new high as one who was not only eccentric but who was gloriously audacious. He decorated himself with clothes that charmed his vanity and was just like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, the character in his The Picture of Dorian Gray, who didn’t want to lose the purity of his youth to age, who then admonished that, “when your youth goes, your beaty will go with it…time is jealous of you and wars against your lilies and your roses”.

Michael Jackson abhorred decaying flesh and wanted longevity. To achieve this, he lived in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, conducting extensive plastic surgeries on himself which included cosmetic procedures of rhinoplasty (nose jobs), cheekbone, forehead lifts and lip-thinning. After this, he was afflicted by vitiligo, a skin condition whose feature is pigment loss, prompting his fans to accuse him of skin bleaching. He also lived like a recluse in his Neverland Ranch home designed with amusement park rides. In the zoo, he collected exotic animals. Michael’s invitation to children to stay with him in the Ranch fueled speculations and accusation of his being a pedophile. This landed him multiple accusations of child sexual abuse, leading to prolonged legal battles which significantly impacted his mental health and public image.

In the odd life they live, odd ways they dress, queer acts they display and their unusual performative actions on stage, artists and musicians demonstrate how eccentricity can be used as a powerful tool to shape musical identity.

Musicians’ lyrics also bring out the eccentricity in them. In 1986, New Jersey-born American singer-songwriter and pianist, Gwen Guthrey, burst the bubble of a prude world when she sang her very controversial and materialistic track, “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ on But the Rent”. It was raw talent combined with artistic bravura. For a world that was not used to such realistic outburst from the female to the male gender, that track, especially its matter-of-factly pronouncement, “You’ve got to have a j-o-b if you want to be with me/No romance without finance” shocked the world. Guthrie was to die of uterine cancer on February 3, 1999, thirteen years after the song. Same audaciousness went for reggae musician, Winston Hubert MclnTosh, one of the now deceased trio of Jamaican reggae group, the Wailers. Popularly known as Peter Tosh, against the grain of global public morality, Tosh’s first major hit after the separation of the band was an iconoclastic album he called Legalize It, released in 1976 with CBS Records. In it, Tosh uncompromisingly beatified the banned narcotic drug, Indian hemp, lauding its health benefits and the widespreadness of its abuse. The album sleeve had him smoking the marijuana chalice pipe in a countryside hemp plantation.

It is same for Marvin Gaye. Described as shy, fearful and ambitious, yet also capable of great passion and charisma, his eccentricity is in a complex interplay and conflict between his artistic vision, personal struggles and unconventional approach to music and life. He was a non-conformist who pushed boundaries, both musically and personally, and which sometimes manifested in his erratic behaviour of a troubled personal life, childhood abuse and his struggle with insecurity. He struggled to balance social commentary with eroticism in his songs, especially in his world classic track, ‘Sexual Healing.’ This unwittingly revealed his multifaceted personality. He also struggled to balance his feeling for his father, a strict and reputedly abusive religious figure and his love for his mother. He was eventually shot twice by his father after he intervened in an argument between his parents. He was pronounced dead upon being rushed to the California Hospital Medical Center on April 1, 1984. His father later pleaded no-contest to a charge of voluntary manslaughter in an Arlington Heights, Los Angeles, California, USA court.

Like Wasiu Ayinde, Tosh, the 6.4-footer dreadlocked singer was arrogant and self assertive. For instance, immediately his colleague, Bob Marley died, Tosh shocked the world in an interview where he made the allegorical claim that Bob peaked in his musical career while he (Peter) was decorating the stage. The truth is, Tosh was too assertive, too hot to handle and never hid his disdain for what he called “Babylonian” lifestyle of hedonism. Tosh also believed in marrying words with action. Towards the latter part of his life, he cut a queer image of a revolutionary ready to carry arms. With his imposing height as he adorned a black beret, with a guitar that had the shape of an M16 assault rifle, Tosh didn’t mince words in projecting the narrative that he was a musical militant. He told those who underrated him that he was “like you are steppin’ razor” and asked, “don’t you watch my size” as “I am dangerous!” In comparison to others, Tosh said “I’m the Toughest,” an apparent reference to the trained karate belt holder that he was. He was once asked by an interviewer why he never smiled. His reply was, since he sang revolutionary songs, not love song, nor a tea party, there was no reason to smile.

While putting up eccentric shows, however, many of the musicians and artists have met their waterloo. One of KWAM 1’s Yoruba musical ancestors, Ayinla Omowura, was not as lucky as he was on the Nnamdi Azikiwe airport tarmac. As KWAM 1 woke up that Tuesday morning in Abuja, on May 6, 1980, the Apala songster also rose at cockcrow in his Itoko, Abeokuta, Ogun State home. By midday, he was history. For the Egba-born musician, a trivia, a needless beefing over possession of a motorcycle in a barroom brawl, extinguished his hugely billowing musical career fire.

Eccentricism comes in various forms. To some, it is in a violent lifestyle. For some others, it is acting like a child, what is called infantilization. Its victims deny their maturity and treat themselves as helpless and dependent. Many of them express their bohemianism through consumption of drugs. Apala music Lord, Omowura, Awurebe’s Dauda Epo Akara and Fuji’s Ayinde Barrister – the latter, up until a point when he left the craze before his death, consumed marijuana heavily. Omowura once walked into an Abeokuta High Court smoking the banned substance. For yet some others, it is arousing sexual desire or excitement in others through their looks, while to some others, it is blasphemy.

Take for example, The Beatles, a famous American Rock music band, widely regarded as the most influential Western popular music ever. It was formed in Liverpool in 1960 with a core lineup of artists like John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Lennon had sparked controversy in a 1966 interview with British reporter, Maureen Cleave, when he said The Beatles were even “more popular than Jesus”. He further said, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right … Jesus was alright but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

The Lennon comment resulted in a huge backlash and created an uproar which led to wide protests against the band. US religious and social conservatives were outraged. Even the Ku Klux Klan joined the fray. The controversy it sparked was such that The Vatican issued a protest letter. The Beatles’ records were also banned by Spanish and Dutch radio stations and on South Africa’s National Broadcasting Service. When the backlash became too severe, a press conference was organized for Lennon to make a clarification and he said, “If I’d said television was more popular than Jesus, I might have got away with it.,” but at further promptings from reporters, he grudgingly said, “If you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then okay, I’m sorry.”

The bohemian nature of The Beatles was to come out more later. They provoked a great furore in June 1966 with the cover of their Capitol LP with the title ‘Yesterday and Today.’ The album sleeve had them dressed in a butcher’s overall with raw meat and mutilated plastic baby dolls splattered on it. They grinned from ear to ear. On a tour of the Philippines the month after this furore, they unintentionally snubbed Imelda Marcos, the nation’s First Lady, who had arranged a breakfast reception for them at the Presidential Palace. Angered, the Marcos organized a nationwide riots against them. Seeing that their lives were hanging precariously in a balance, the Beatles fled the Philippines. In 1970, a legal row ensued in the band leading to its dissolution on December 29, 1974. In 1980, Lennon was murdered and in 2001, George Harrison died of cancer.

The eccentricity of Oscar Wilde, Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright, poet and critic came in a different form. He was, to date, one of Ireland’s most dramatic and eccentric writers. As brilliant and ecumenical-minded as Wilde was, he was a homosexual, a heinous crime of the world of the 19th century. Extremely talented, having been educated at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford, Wilde, son of a successful surgeon father and writer, literary hostess mother, wrote a popular string of comedies like The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) and Salome (1896). His real life was marred by drama and tragedy as well. While married to Constance Lloyd and with two sons, in 1891, his gay affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed ‘Bosie’, was revealed by Bosie’s father, the Marquis of Queensberry.

Wilde’s eccentricity is said to be a deliberate self-creation of his public persona. Famous for his flamboyant clothing, unmatchable wits, and unconventional lifestyle, he cultivated all these to carve an image of an aesthete and a dandy. Dandyism is characterized by the philosophy of placing great emphasis on appearance, fashion, and sophisticated style. This creation of an eccentric persona ultimately helped Oscar to express his artistic ideals, as well as becoming a tool to critique the rigid social norms and conventions of the Victorian society of the 19th century.

In April 1895, Oscar sued the Marquis for libel. During trial, however, evidence adduced revealed details of his private life as a homosexual. Imprisoned for two years at the Reading jail after being convicted for gross indecency, in prison, he wrote a long letter to his gay partner, Douglas which was posthumously entitled De Profundis or Letter to Sir Alfred Douglas. In the letter, he wrote, “I, once a lord of language, have no words in which to describe my anguish and shame… I disgraced (my parents’ name) eternally. I had made it a low byword among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into synonyms for folly…the two turning points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford and when society sent me to prison.” Upon his release, Oscar lived the rest of his life in Europe, writing his last known work in 1892 with the title ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’. He died in Paris on November 30, 1900.

Nigeria has its huge supply of such bohemian characters. Fela smoked marijuana everywhere with abandon, wore underwear in public and married 27 wives in a day. Davido, Wizkid and their clan frighteningly scarify their arms, necks; wear dreadlocks and hang on their necks dangling, hefty ornamented laces like prisoners’ chains. Burna Boy, a jailbird once held in a UK slammer for gang-related stabbing. wears violence on him like a necklace while Portable is brash, crude, violent and in love with disorder. But, in which of these atypical behaviour can we locate Wasiu Ayinde and his disorderly portrayal last Tuesday?

I once met KWAM 1 some two decades ago in a friend’s home. Like many of those bohemian musicians, he was brash, haughty, nutty, naughty and crude. From my examination of artists and musicians, society’s kitschy acceptance and love of their display of unnatural, artificial, even fake lifestyles fuels their eccentric behaviour. Consumer culture is in their favour. Marketing of contemporary popular music draws from this tradition that requires artists to be eccentric. It is a culture that began as Dandyism back in the 19th century. Its theme was to exalt bohemian artists, and in the words of Susan Lee Sontag, an American writer and critic, to lift up “glorified otherness/the queer, being distinguishable as an important part of artistic expression.”

On stage, wowed and giddy female audiences have reportedly removed their undies and flung them at musicians.

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OPINION: Ofala: Glo And An Invite From Agbogidi

Published

2 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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OPINION: ‘Federal Highways of Horror’

Published

3 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.

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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.

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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

5 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.