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OPINION: Obasa, His Mouth And Wild Pigeon

Published

9 months ago

January 21, 2025

By Suyi Ayodele

Mudashiru Obasa was until January 13, 2025, the Speaker, Lagos State House of Assembly. He was first elected to the House in 2007. He was re-elected in 2011, 2014, 2019 and 2023! If his mouth allowed him to complete his current term, he would have been a member of the Lagos legislative arm for 25 years.

Like the proverbial squirrel whose palm kernel was cracked for him by a benevolent spirit, Obasa began his political career as a councillor in 1999 at his Agege Local Government Area of the state under the banner of Alliance for Democracy (AD). He has God to thank and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to worship for his rise to political stardom.

But like the biblical Jeshurun, who in Deuteronomy 32: 15 is recorded thus: “ But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked; thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation:, Obasa thought that having been Speaker for a period of 10 years less four months, he is now bigger and stronger than those who made him. He was made to pay for that indiscretion on January 13, when he was impeached by the House.

The pigeon is a lovely bird. It is equally a spiritual bird. It is not the type of avian that one will slaughter occasionally for consumption. Yeah, people do eat the pigeon. It is a delicacy one will crave after the first taste. But the bird is revered and, in some cases, worshipped as a deity. Its most appealing characteristic is its loyalty to its owner. The pigeon can be trusted to stand by you no matter the vicissitudes of life.

Pigeons are sold in pairs, male and female. Its reproduction is also in pairs. It lays two eggs, hatches the two and they come out male and female. Why it is so, only the Creator knows. A domesticated avian, the pigeon has its sibling in the wild. It is called òrófó in my place. The English translation of òrófó is wild pigeon.

Òrófó shares the same reproductive system with the pigeon. The two have so many things in common. The only difference is that while the pigeon is a peaceful bird, òrófó on its part is boastful. There are so many folktales about òrófó. One of them tells why one can hardly find a flight of òrófó as one finds a colony of pigeons. Òrófó, according to the tale, tells the sharpshooter that it remains out of the reach of the hunter’s bullets. To prove it, the hunter often fires at the bird of pride. In some cases, the hunter uses a catapult. The pigeon does not suffer such fate.

The most interesting tale about òrófó is the one the elders of my place use in cautioning men to be circumspect about what comes out of their mouths. The saying, the mouth of a bird is its undoing; the wild pigeon lays two eggs, hatches two chicks and brags about that its nest is filled up with chicks (Ẹnu ẹyẹ níí p’ẹyẹ; ẹnu òrófó níí pa òrófó; òrófó yé eyin méjì, ó bímọ mẹ́jì, ó ní ilé òun kún ṣọ́ṣọ́ṣọ́), tells the story.

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According to the tale, while in the comity of other birds, òrófó boasted that its nest was filled up with so many chicks. Other birds that were familiar with the reproductive capacity of òrófó wondered where it got the other chicks. But the hawk had a different idea. Since òrófó said its house was filled up with chicks, it would not be a bad idea that anytime the hawk was hungry, òrófó’s nest was where to go look for food. And on each occasion, the hawk would end up eating the two hatched chicks in òrófó’s nest, leaving the mother to wail about the calamity. That is why it is difficult to find a flight of òrófó; its offspring are in the belly of the hawk due to the indiscretion of the mother bird.

As it is with òrófó, so it is with any man who cannot control his mouth. The Holy Book, the Bible, in Proverbs 18:21, talks about the power of the tongue. It says in the tongue lies death and life. The Scripture, again, in James 3:5-6, describes the tongue as a fire in spite of its small size. African Indigenous Religion (AIR) – I got the new nomenclature from Professor Wande Abimbola who cautioned that we should not denigrate our religion by calling it African Traditional Religion (ATR) – talks about the talkative pawn of Àlàbá (Ìwòfà Àlàbá), who says everything he sees.

Ìwòfà Àlàbá, however, met his waterloo the day he told the king that he saw a dried-up corpse on a tree, which talked like it was still alive. The king and his chiefs followed Ìwòfà Àlàbá to the spot and though there was a corpse on the tree, it refused to talk. It was after the execution of Ìwòfà Àlàbá for deceiving the throne that the corpse spoke! Discretion is the master of all wisdom.

Nigerian politics is a one-way traffic. There are owners of each state of the Federation. Governors are the most powerful in the political calculation of this era. It is even more dangerous if the governor enjoys the backing of the godfather. There is no point denying that President Tinubu is the godfather of all political godfathers in Nigeria today. He is what my people call Òòsà àkúnlèbo (the deity one worships on his knee). Many said that the president earned that stature through the deployment of his deadly political strategies. Those who contested that in the past have terrible tales to tell.

It was that formidable man that Obasa confronted frontally while receiving Governor Babajide Sawo-Olu to the Lagos State House of Assembly to present the year 2025 Appropriation Bill to the House on November 21, 2024. It is foolish to call the servant on an errand for the master, stupid. The insult goes back to the master.

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To start with, Obasa was said to have kept the governor and members of the Governor’s Advisory Council waiting for close to two hours. Why did he do that? Did he not have the information that the governor would be coming? What point was the Speaker trying to prove? And when he elected to receive the party, the Speaker spent 11 and half minutes, lecturing, threatening and disparaging the August visitor.

I watched the video of the encounter, and I wondered who prepared pounded yam for Obasa and assured him that getting the soup would not be a problem. I equally got a full text of the Speaker’s speech, and each sentence points at a man who voluntarily sought death in its corner! From the beginning to the end, Obasa spoke like someone who has Lagos in his pocket.

In paragraph four, for instance, Obasa warned that the conviviality between the House and the governor notwithstanding, “… it is necessary to harp on the fact that under democracy, this arm of government remains independent.” He told the governor that the Assembly “is a sanctuary and temple, just like every other temple anywhere where we all worship. No one will violate any temple and expect the gods to accept his or her sacrifice. And if such happens, there must be an appease to the gods to accept such atonement. No amount of intimidation or coercion will disintegrate or change the belief of all the members of this institution!”

Obasa was bold, and he did not hide it. Governor Sanwo-Olu, he warned, should perish the idea of getting a wishy-washy budget as “this honourable House will look at the budget and do the necessary scrutiny as usual”, adding that the assembly “will never be disgraced, abused or ridiculed in the name of creating a seamless working ambience.” Good talk. But not here; not in this nation!

The governor maintained his cool. That probably emboldened the Speaker to further warn “that those who live in glass houses must not throw stones as the saying goes…. In other words, those who are facilitating or planning to interfere in this House or destroy the cohesion of this institution should also be prepared for the same fate.”

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Like someone under a spell, Obasa went ahead to talk about the touchy issue of Lagos governorship in 2027 and declared that if he made up his mind, he would contest, pointing out that he was not “too young or lack experience to run; whereas those who have been before me are not better off.”

Then he boasted, like a poor student of the concept of Avoidance Strategy in Stylistics, about his enviable ancestry which he claimed had never been in doubt and declared that he had “never claimed to be related to Onikoyi, Oniru, or any of the other popular Lagos families as the case may be.” Háà! ‘Lénu e (for your mouth), Mudashiru!

My people say that every man knows which proverb points in his direction; only the coward feigns ignorance. Who was Obasa’s target when he talked about not claiming any relationship with “any of the other popular Lagos families as the case may be?” Who were the past governors of Lagos State that “are not better off?” How did the Agege boy forget that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was once a governor of the state; that Tinubu is believed to have ‘built’ Lagos? Did he also have the inimitable Alhaji Lateef Jakande in mind as one those past governors?

If it were to be true that Obasa is better than all the other past governors of Lagos State, what does the first law of Robert Greene’s “The 48 Laws of Power” say about subordinates not outshining their masters? Where was Obasa when the late Senator Bayo Osinowo addressed the Assembly and told them how God reminded Satan that He, God “will never create, and I have never created, and I will never create what I can never destroy”?

Why did the ex-speaker decide to throw overboard the fine words of advice from the late senator to wit: “So, the leaders will not promote anybody they can never destroy. The leaders will not promote anybody they can never tear to pieces. They have codes, as they are promoting you, they are keeping your…, what do you call it, your file. So, if you continue doing good, they keep on giving you good things… But when you step on the toes of those who created you, you are in trouble. My new colleagues, I am begging your listen to your leaders…?”

Obasa grew up in Lagos. His knowledge of native wisdom may not be as sound as those of us the Lagosians call “ará ìlú òkè (those from the hinterlands). But he spoke about “eni bá yára l’ògún ńgbè. Meaning, the god of iron favours the swift”. If he knows that, why did he forget the wisdom in the saying that the okro can never be taller than the one that planted it; that to harvest the seeds, all the farmer needs to do is to bend the stem?

If native intelligence is lost on him, what about the injunction in the Qur’an, which in Surat 6, (2) Al-An’am, Allah “He is Who has created you from clay, and then has decreed a stated term (for you to die). And there is with Him another determined term (for you to be resurrected), yet you doubt (in the Resurrection)?”

Why did he not ask his Christian friends in the House to interpret Jeremiah 18:1-6, where God instructed Prophet Jeremiah to proceed to the potter’s house to learn the wisdom of what the creator can do to his creatures? Why did he not read verse 6 which says: “O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? Saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.”

If it were to be a sane clime, Obasa would have been applauded for establishing the independence of the Assembly. But here, the godfather is like God. He creates and destroys that which he created! That is exactly what happened to Obasa on January 13. At a time, he was hearing the footsteps of his fellow members behind him, he never realised that those ones had gone back to take instruction from the godfather. That was why when his time came, nobody stood up to defend him! The creator holds the “codes!”

Power is like the venison of hoopoe (Àgbìgbò). It is the sweetest of all meats. No hunter likes to share it with anybody. If the godfather’s son is interested in Lagos in 2027, wisdom demands that all clay political creatures of the godfather should steer clear. Every wrestler should know that whenever he is confronted by his personal god, the end to all bouts has come. When a pigeon turns to òrófó, the hawk is always available to eat its chick.

How Obasa allowed himself to be drawn to fight his own Ori (head/destiny) is a research topic for students of Political Science. Now the godfather has scored yet another goal. 2027 will be an interesting year in Lagos. But more importantly, the dramas and razzmatazz that will herald the year are going to be more interesting. May we all be alive and have enough money to buy popcorn and ice cream as we watch the soap opera.

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OPINION: Ofala: Glo And An Invite From Agbogidi

Published

11 hours ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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

12 hours ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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“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

14 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.