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[OPINION] Pa Adebanjo: A Celebration Of Death

Published

10 months ago

February 17, 2025

By Lasisi Olagunju

Afenifere leader, Chief Ayo Adebanjo, died on Friday. He would have been 100 years old if death had not been too fast; if it had waited three more years plus two months. An age of almost a century is a huge haul, a boon anywhere. Yet, when the 96/97-year-old’s death was announced four days ago, the world gasped and agonized over his departure. In courage and in principle, he was vintage wine, the older the better. He lived well and strong; he ended very well and very strong. He never lost his voice – literally and as a metaphor. In a season when his mates followed the scent of soup, he followed his conscience. He comported himself so well that at his exit, it has not been difficult to say of him that he delivered what he carried successfully with the chinaware unbroken.

In the days of our ancestors, when a mainframe cracked, got broken and fell, the cry was “ayé ti bàjé” (the world is spoilt). As he was ebbing away, Adebanjo was utterly shocked at how our world found it very easy to accommodate and excuse evil. He raised his voice, he shouted and cried himself hoarse; regime hailers raised their noses against him and his warnings. He didn’t keep quiet; no one could shut up or shout down the voice of his gong. But before our very eyes, ayé ti bàjé. Just as the genius of George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ warned, there is no more curiosity about anything ennobling, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures are progressively destroyed; a flood of intoxication of power increases and is constantly growing, not subtler now but bolder. Boots stamping on the human face enjoy the thrill of victory; they savour the sensation of trampling on the helpless till eternity. What Orwell wrote as the picture of the future is here. The earth has lost what made it see.

Two years ago when he turned 95, the newspaper I edit asked Chief Adebanjo if he was going to take a break when he turned 100. He was quick to answer with a resounding No. He said “That is not possible. Until I am buried in the grave, I won’t stop and I took that from Chief Awolowo. When we asked him: ‘are you going to retire?’, he would say ‘no, when I’m in the grave I will still be tall fighting’. We didn’t know what he meant at that time. He is dead now but is there any day people don’t mention the name ‘Awolowo’? Oh, Awolowo did this! Oh, Awolowo did that! That is what I’m doing. I’m a lone ranger now. ‘He doesn’t like Tinubu’; ‘He is against a Yoruba man’; ‘He is against Igbo man.’ I don’t go the popular way that is not good.” That was his answer and he was not done; it was not his last answer.

He said he was “a lone ranger now.” When a man declares that he is not afraid to walk alone, watch him. You remember Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’? The traveller is confronted with two roads diverged in a yellow wood. He examines the two roads carefully, then takes “the one less travelled by.” The traveller says that decision “has made all the difference.” Standing alone can be very lonely, but it always makes a difference. The pain of Adebanjo’s death is palliated by the courageous way the dead lived his life.

The Yoruba, in elaborate ways, celebrate the death of the aged who lived and died well; we call it ‘òkú síse.’ And that is what I am doing here. As we celebrate life, it becomes necessary to celebrate the death of death also. In ‘The Great Refusal’, Maurice Blanchot is ecstatic that “we have lost death” I read Blanchot and the defeat of death. I read Michael Purcell’s ‘Celebrating Death’, a piece on death, its management and its overcoming. I skimmed Adebanjo’s ‘Telling It As It Is.’ I took a long look at the life the departed lived, the grassy road he took and the global applause he got at his full time. I agreed with those who described death as life maker.

Whether its victim be young or old, death’s pang is painful. Man loves and celebrates birth; he rejects and outlaws death. Yet, birth and death are two experiences that unite all that live. Like the skies and the ocean, life feeds death; death feeds life. My Christian friend donates a verse: “Unless a wheat grain falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.” And, to this, I add a verse from the Qur’an: “A sign for them is the dead land which we bring to life and from which we bring forth grain of which they eat.”

Death is so final and I wonder why. Nothing we do reboots the game after the final whistle. Ancient Egyptians thought they could defeat death with denial. To achieve immortality, they invented the science of keeping their dead intact forever. In museums of the west today are bodies of Egyptians who died thousands of years ago. They called the process mummification. Read Herodotus, father of history; read Diodorus of Sicily, universal historian. Move further west, in the southern desert of the science and tech capital called California in the United States is an aboriginal tribe of Indians who harnessed death to serve life: Zuni Indians made masks and carved images. Their motive was to ‘save’ the life of their dead in perpetuity. Our ancestors did that too. They called theirs Egúngún, a masked construct for social immortality. But mummies and masks are what they are – lifeless fillers of life.

Egyptians and North American Indians were not alone in the search for life without death. Ancient Mesopotamia was celebrated as the land between two rivers (Tigris and Euphrates). The Arabs call it Al Jazirah (The Island). In Mesopotamia and Babylonia, its southern neighbour, were people who worked round the clock in search of magic to overcome death. The magical formulas were carefully encased in capsules of words called poems. Some of the arts survived the ravages of age, fires and flood; many went with the ruins of wars and the eccentricity of monks, kings and clerics. Among the survivors is the Epic of Gilgamesh where we read of the king of Uruk who risked his all to crack the code of immortality, the secret of eternal life. This king moved from one end of the world to the other end; he was in search of what would end death. And, in the end, the royal who was seeking eternal life got the eternal truth: “Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands.”

The MAMSER man, Professor Jerry Gana, famously said in the mid to late -1980s that “if you are a director, direct well…” For several decades, Chief Adebanjo was a director of the Nigerian Tribune. I observed his excellence displayed on that board; he protected that legacy institution with the attentive eyes of a mother hen. At his departure last Friday, the board of directors of the Tribune was more than grateful to a man who was a guardian angel. A fitting tribute, effusive in thanks and appreciation, was competently penned by the chairman of the newspaper house, Ambassador Olatokunbo Awolowo Dosumu. The piece says it all on how well the nonagenarian discharged his duties to the 75-year-old newspaper of his leader. I quote from the board’s message of appreciation:

“A man of remarkable dedication, Chief Adebanjo never treated any board meeting with levity. Even in his advanced years, he was always prompt and consistent, undeterred by long journeys, considering absence from meetings a personal failing. His resoluteness, passion, and absolute concern for issues affecting ANN Plc were both admirable and infectious. To him, the Tribune was more than a newspaper—it was a sacred legacy. He often declared: ‘I want to be able to give my Leader, when I see him, a good report about our newspaper, the Nigerian Tribune.’ His love for the Tribune was unconditional and absolute. He would accept nothing less than excellence in preserving the ideals and values upon which the paper was founded.” No testimonial can be better than that from a board chairman to a departed board member.

Some people don’t read newspapers; they study them – for various reasons. Chief Adebanjo studied the Tribune and had appropriate words for whatever he observed on its pages. On more than one occasion, he sent nice words to the editors – or he complained if something displeased him. Our last encounter was at the secretariat of the Awolowo Foundation in Lagos. Frail in body, strong in spirit and resolve, he looked round and asked “Olagunju dà?” (Where is Olagunju?). My colleagues pointed me out. I greeted him; he looked deeply into my eyes, then smiled broadly. That was all, and it was last year.

I have spent the last couple of years meticulously studying him and his mates. He stood out in courage and forthrightness. He was a very reliable and effective Yoruba leader who was not blinded to truth and justice by his Yorubaness. He spoke just and did just no matter whose ox was gored. He was an akekaka who demanded what the concerned would do if they heard his hash words. He gave his autobiography an unusual, audacious title: ‘Telling It As It Is’. He called rose rose and bullshit bullshit. Even his enemies know that he was not afraid to be unpopular. He never hesitated to take a stand in support of anyone or any cause or group that deserved justice. That is the meaning of godliness. “It is joy to the just to do judgment.” That is a verse in the Bible. “Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin”. Another from the Bible. And he was a Christian who read his scriptures, believed, lived and acted according to the teachings of his religion. I wish all who claim Christianity read and act those verses. And, if you are a Muslim, like me, it is in our Qur’an too that all believers should “be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives.”

It is significant that those Adebanjo worked against agreed at his death that he was a champion of justice and democracy. I read that in President Bola Tinubu’s tribute on Friday. There is power in being positively different. In the Tribune interview I quoted earlier, Chief Adebanjo declared that the progressives’ political family he belonged to always charted a path for the future. He reminisced that “by the time Chief Awolowo founded the Action Group, how many people followed him in the Western Region, including the obas? Some of them are talking now; how many of them followed Chief Awolowo? It was when we won election in 1951 and we began to do the wonders of development and education and everything, everybody now started saying ‘all of us are Afenifere’…Those were the days of politics of principle. It was the principles and manifesto that we used to defeat the NCNC in the Western Region. We never killed ourselves; we never did murder.” He lamented today’s erosion of values, declaring that “that was why I could not celebrate my 95th birthday.”

He will also not participate in the celebration of his centenary in 2028. Death has said no to that. Victorian public schoolmaster and Anglican hymnographer, Reverend Gerald Moultrie (1829-1885), wrote “Brother, now thy toils are o’er.” John Ellerton (1826-1893), another reverend gentleman of genius, took it further from that verse with his version: “Now, the labourer’s task is over…” All tasks were over for Chief Adebanjo on Friday in Lagos; and all his battle days past. The voyager has landed on the farther shore, and, now, in God’s glorious keeping we leave the labourer to rest, to sleep. May his great soul enjoy the Lord’s repose.

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

Published

2 days ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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OPINION: Fubara, Adeleke And The Survival Dance

Published

2 days ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

By Israel Adebiyi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Human Rights Day: Stakeholders Call For More Campaigns Against GBV

Published

3 days ago

December 10, 2025

Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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