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OPINION: The Madman Sermon On Mapo Hill

Published

2 months ago

September 28, 2025

By Festus Adedayo

Ibadan, Oyo State, the city of warriors, quaked last Friday. The rumbling vibrations of the historic coronation of Ex-Governor Rashidi Ladoja as Olubadan sent valleys into a seismic shake. Ibadan’s ancient event center, Mapo Hall, was nearly submerged with excited feet. Children of Oluyole were at the zenith of their excitement. Expensive automobiles, resplendent attires and infectious joy lit the faces of a people who christened self as cunning. That Friday, however, Ibadan wasn’t ready to listen to the rhythm of its famous Láyípo christening. It was rather ready to receive the world.

Suddenly, a huge blot appeared on the landscape. In the eyes of the world, àjàò, the animal called sloth, suddenly crept up the hill of Mapo. When àjàò creeps up an event like this, it is a moment of anomaly, anomie or dystopia. Yoruba then speak in dispraise of this unusually created amoebic-shaped animal. They say, Kinní kan ba àjàò jé̩, apá rẹ gùn ju itan lọ – the only blot in àjàò’s creation is that its arms are disproportionately longer than the legs.

Many have questioned àjàò’s mis-taxonomy, especially one that equated it with the sloth. To them, àjàò is not a sloth but a flying squirrel. In terms of features, both sloth and flying squirrel strike a resemblance with the Yoruba àjàò, in that they possess disproportionate arms and legs. Apart from these features, the sloth is also the world’s slowest mammal. Flying squirrel, however, is a gliding mammal which is more of a squirrel than any other mammal. Unless àjàò is today extinct, both equivalents it shares features with – sloth and flying squirrel – do not belong to the African habitat. While the sloth’s habitat is the tropical rainforest of Central and South America, the flying squirrel lives in North America, Northern Eurasia, and the temperate, tropical forests of India and Asia. Features-wise, àjàò however slants more towards the sloth.

Sorry, I digressed. On Friday, àjàò appeared in Mapo. It came in the form of the official musician of the coronation event, Taiye Akande Adebisi, famously known as Taiye Currency. Many felt that, even if the need was to Ibadan-ise the Olubadan coronation, for a city which parades A-list musical wizards like Saheed Osupa, Currency was not apropos for an event of that high-octane magnitude. They felt justified when, perhaps seized by an unknown muse of Apollo, Greek mythology’s central deity and embodiment of the spirit of music, Taiye Currency suddenly and seemingly veered off-theme and sang, “Wèrè l’a fi ńwo wèrè…” – madness is the curative medicine for insanity.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Fubara And The Witches

Instantly, the musician courted huge flak of his audience for this perceived off-key musical line. The crowd felt nostalgia for Awurebe exponent, Alhaji Dauda Akanni Adeeyo, popularly known as Epo Akara. Epo’s evergreen tributes to Oba Daniel Adebiyi and Gbadamosi Akanbi Adebimpe, the latter being the 35th Olubadan of Ibadan, who reigned briefly from February 1976 until his death in July 1977, are still considered classics. A typical song sang at political rallies where call for the Mosaic an-eye-for-an-eye is often rife, “Wèrè l’a fi ńwo wèrè…” was seen as an anti-climax among Ibadan people who, for once, forgot political schisms and were united in celebrating their new king.

Unbeknown to the crowd, Taiye Currency was indeed right and deserves our praises. While madness is of a truth cure for madness, on the converse, on that Friday, could the musician have been lost in the mire of the literary device of dramatic irony? In dramatic irony, though the character in the story is oblivious of the situation he plays a vital role in, the audience is aware of it. It then leads to a gap or contrast between what the audience knows and what the character understands. While all of us as audience saw contradictory meanings in Currency’s “Wèrè l’a fi ńwo wèrè…” and the theme of the coronation event, the musician might be communicating a deeper sense of humour and existential tragedy.

Talking specifics now, could Taiye Currency, by that song at Mapo, be espousing the Madman Theory?

Indigenous psychiatrists who specialise in treatment of lunatics and allied mental ailments pioneered this “Wèrè l’a fi ńwo wèrè…” phrase. The earliest theories on madness believed it was a spiritual affliction. The assumption was that its victims had their minds possessed by an alien deity. While many also believed madness was hereditary, others believed it was a punishment from the gods, resulting from a gross disregard of the gods’ warning. Then came Hippocrates (460–377 B.C.) and the theories of madness shifted to the belief that most bodily illnesses were as a result of various imbalances in the body. Even with this, madness, abnormalities of behaviour and epilepsy were still generally believed to be the workings of the gods.

It is generally believed that, since insanity is a hardcore ailment, its treatment is also hardcore. I witnessed this in the early 1980s when I followed my late father to hire farmhands from the indigenous sanatorium of Baba Aladokun of Ikirun, now Osun State. I saw mentally challenged men and women wickedly shellacked with whips.

In Yoruba’s main translation of the word, “madness” or “madman” is synonymous with wèrè. The logic of the Madman theory in national leadership was first articulated by Daniel Ellsberg in 1959, followed by Thomas Schelling, in 1960. It is a political theory usually attributed to American President Richard Nixon’s foreign policy. It is derived from Niccolo Machiavelli’s 1517 book, Discourses on Livy and its argument that sometimes, it is “a very wise thing to simulate madness”. Similarly, in his 1962 book, Thinking About the Unthinkable, Herman Kahn, the futurist, argued that to “look a little crazy” could be an effective way of making an adversary stand down from their attack plans.

It worked for Nixon because leaders of hostile communist bloc countries, having assimilated this tendency of the American president as irrational and volatile, avoided provoking the U.S., their fear being of an unpredictable response from Nixon. Another believer in the Madman Theory is President Donald Trump, whose irrationality has attracted renewed interest in the Madman Theory among scholars, lay scholars and the public. Other leaders in recent history associated with the madman theory reputation included Kim Jong-un, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Vladimir Putin, Muammar Ghadaffi and Saddam Hussein.

Last Friday in Ibadan, Oba Ladoja received one of the greatest honour of his coronation as President Bola Tinubu graced the historic occasion. When it was time to address the audience, the president gave an inkling of what would be his address to Nigerians on Wednesday, the anniversary of Nigeria’s 65th. In an admixture of felicitations to the new monarch and a message of hope to the Nigerian populace, Tinubu declared that the country’s economic suffering was now back-flung, just the same way a masquerade flings his loose regalia. “Today, I am honoured and feel very proud to give you the cheering news that the economy has turned a corner. There is a bright light at the end of the tunnel. Your suffering has been as painful to us as a painful surgery. But the economy has now returned to a moment of growth and prosperity. Thank you for your perseverance, and thank you for your endurance,” he sermonized.

Here we go again. My first reading of the above claim of the president is that he has been so extensively hypnotised by his voodoo economists that he has crossed the Rubicon of reality. Or, that he has mouthed this economic recovery shibboleth for too long that the phrase sounds more like an ad-lib motivational speech that must be repeated like a musical refrain. Other than in the Utopia minds of his minders and in the renteer perception of regime fawners, there is no economic recovery in Nigeria, nor has the economy of the average Nigerian turned any corner. It is still in a long sprint.

When this government came in 2023, its demeanour was equal to the biblical “My father (Buhari) scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions”. At that time, some Nigerians thought, queerly, that though the Madman theory was a concept in international relations, the Nigerian government wanted to suborn obedience by creating economic fear in the minds of the people. With this ad-lib mouthing of the refrain of economic recovery on paper by the president and his team, when in actual fact, reality counters this claim, it seems to occur to Nigerians that government is simply telling them to go jump inside Kudeti River if they do not believe it. Or that a pure Madman theory is at work.

I just finished reading late Nigeria’s foremost professor of history, Festus Ade-Ajayi’s keynote at the first convocation of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (1999). It was aptly titled, “Development is about the people”. The problem with Nigerian leaders, this current ensemble not excluded, Ade-Ajayi said, is that they are selfish in their prescriptions. While building all their economic and social models, seldom do they enquire what the wishes of the people are. Wherever there is the mouthing of the word ‘development’ and there is no ample recourse to improved quality of people’s life, what we have is regression.

The statistical indicators which the Tinubu team claimed show it that Nigerians are enjoying better times are meaningless if the woman in Oyingbo market cannot agree with them. Same thing with the collapsing inflation rates which they hoist like a scientist who just discovered a fallen object from mass. Those statistics are meaningless if we go to the pharmacy and drugs are still sold at cut-throat prices as they are and our purchasing power is still this lean. Only the Madman theory can explain why leaders would taunt their people with the existence of a surplus when indeed, there is what looks like a famine.

What the president obviously confuses for the general well-being of the people is the flamboyance and the personal economies of his ministers. Indeed, these have “turned a corner”. The talk out there is that his ministers are literally buying up Uranus and Mars with illicit, ill-gotten wealth that will shame Sambo Dasuki’s arms money-gate and Diezani Allison-Madueke’s alleged petrol-dollar sleaze. Yet, there is calm on the home-front. Rather than live by personal example of belt-tightening as he urged his people, the president himself lives the lush life of an Oil Sheik, literally breakfasting in Lisbon, lunch in Paris and dinner in Alaska, at the people’s patrimony’s expense. The Tinubu pain-before-prosperity mantra is appearing as a huge scam. At the UNGA, it was said that 60 presidential aides were ship-loaded to the US, with their big fat estacode (Establishment Code). These are the ones whose economies are turning the corner. The endure-now-to-enjoy-later mantra reminds one of a father who tells his children to endure hard times but lives in unimaginable splendour.

So, the president knew that Nigerians’ suffering “has been…as a painful surgery”? Interesting. This analogy even makes the situation worse. Surgical procedures are preceded by anaesthesia and followed with analgesics to reduce pain. They are then accompanied with a post-procedure process of recovery and care. None of these did the government administer before yanking us open with its wicked scalpel in May 2023. Nor even thereafter. Many of our compatriots have died needless deaths and many are still dying.

So, when Taiye Currency sang about “Wèrè l’a fi ńwo wèrè…”, flesh and blood obviously didn’t reveal it to him. Either intended or a dramatic irony, what the musician was communicating was that there is no sanity anywhere in this country. We are in one huge sanatorium. The musician thus deserves commendation and not scorn. This government is curing the madness of hunger and lack with the madness of propaganda of a better life, “growth and prosperity”. And a dark cunning of “a bright light at the end of the tunnel”. Shikena!

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FULL LIST: FG Lists Nigerian Veterans For Honours To Celebrate 100 Years Of Aviation Industry

Published

35 minutes ago

November 30, 2025

Editor

The Federal Government of Nigeria has unveiled Nigerian veterans and distinguished aviators to be honoured for pioneering contributions that have shaped Nigeria’s aviation industry over the past century.

The Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, announced the event in an X post on Saturday, describing the awardees as “icons whose vision and dedication laid the groundwork for Nigeria’s aviation success.”

He also shared photos of some of the honourees ahead of the event slated for Monday, December 1, 2025 at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre in Abuja.

According to him, the recognition is part of activities marking 100 years of aviation in Nigeria, tracing the sector’s evolution from colonial era to its present status as a critical contributor to the country’s economy.

“The first ever aircraft to land in Nigeria was in Kano in 1925. As a result, we are celebrating 100 years of aviation in Nigeria this year. On Monday, December 1, 2025, at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Center, Abuja, we shall celebrate this milestone with a number of performances and events, including honouring veterans of the aviation industry in the last 100 years. We are inviting all aviation stakeholders to the event,” he wrote.

Below are the list of some of the Nigerian veterans who have shaped the aviation industry, as shared by the Aviation Minister:

Chief Gabriel Igbinedion, founder of Okada Air.

Late Alhaji Ahmadu Dan kabo, founder of Kabo Air.

Capt Robert Hayes, Nigeria’s first certified pilot.

Chief Mbazulike Amechi, former Minister of Aviation and instrumental in establishing Nigerian Airways.

Chief Allen Ifechukwu Onyeama, Air Peace founder, promoted local content and invested in Nigerian youths’ training.

Dr Emmanuel Enekwechi, contributed to the aviation industry’s growth.

Capt. August Okpe, founder and CEO of Okpe Aviation Services, Nigeria’s first indigenous aviation engineering company.

Sen. Hadi Sirika, former Minister of Aviation, initiated policies like the national carrier launch.

Capt Rabiu Hamisu Yadudu, pioneered Nigeria’s aviation industry and transformed airports into world-class facilities.

Capt Ado Sanusi

Chief Wale Babalakin

Sir Joseph Arumemi

Olumuyiwa Bernard Aliu

Capt Dele Ore

Capt Wale Makinde

Capt Ibrahim Mshella

Capt Dapo Olumide

Ms Bimbo Sosina

Capt Benoni Briggs

Mrs Deola Olukunle

Dr Thomas Ogunbangbe

Capt Edward Boyo

Dr Gbenga Olowo

Elder Dr Soji Amusan

Engr Awogbemi Clement

Sen Musa Adede

Georg Eder MBA

Capt Prex Porbeni

Mrs Folashade Odutola

Dr Taiwo Afolabi OON

Capt Fola Adeola

Dr Seindemi Fadeni

Capt Chinyere Kali

Harold Demure

Akin Olateru

Mr George Urensi

Mrs Deola Yesufu

Engr Babatunde Obadofin

Dr Ayo Obilana

Capt Felix Iheanacho

Capt Peter Adenihun

Capt Jonathan Ibrahim

Pa Odeleye AC

Capt Toju Ogidi

Pa Abel Kalu Ukonu

News

Bishop Kukah Insists No Christian Genocide In Nigeria, Gives Reasons

Published

52 minutes ago

November 30, 2025

Editor

The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese and Convener of the National Peace Committee (NPC), Most Rev. Matthew Kukah, has insisted that there’s no Christian genocide in Nigeria, explaining that number of people killed doesn’t amount to genocide.

Bishop Kukah stated this while presenting a paper at the 46th Supreme Convention of the Knights of St. Mulumba (KSM) in Kaduna.

His comments follow criticism that trailed reports quoting him as advising the international community against designating Nigeria as a “country of particular concern.”

The bishop explained that such labels could heighten tensions, fuel suspicion, and give room for criminal groups to exploit the situation, which would disrupt interfaith dialogue and cooperation with government.

Addressing figures circulated about alleged Christian killings in Nigeria, Kukah said he aligns with the Vatican Secretary of State, the President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, and all Catholic bishops in the country.

He said, “They are saying that 1,200 churches are burnt in Nigeria every year, and I ask myself, in which Nigeria? Interestingly, nobody approached the Catholic Church to get accurate data. We do not know where these figures came from. All those talking about persecution, has anyone ever called to ask, ‘Bishop Kukah, what is the situation?’ The data being circulated cleverly avoids the Catholic Church because they know Catholics do not indulge in hearsay.”

On the use of the term genocide, he noted, “Genocide is not based on the number of people killed. You can kill 10 million people and it still won’t amount to genocide. The critical determinant is intent, whether the aim is to eliminate a group of people. So, you don’t determine genocide by numbers; you determine it by intention. We need to be more clinical in the issues we discuss.”

Kukah also challenged claims that Christians in Nigeria are being targeted. He said, “If you are a Christian in Nigeria and you say you are persecuted, my question is: how? At least 80% of educated Nigerians are Christians, and up to 85% of the Nigerian economy is controlled by Christians. With such figures, how can anyone say Christians are being persecuted?”

He linked many of the challenges faced by Christians to a lack of unity, stating, “The main problem is that Christians succumb to bullies. The day we decide to stand together, believing that an injury to one is an injury to all, these things will stop.”

He further warned against loosely labeling victims as martyrs. “Because someone is killed in a church, does that automatically make them a martyr? Whether you are killed while stealing someone’s yam or attacked by bandits, does that qualify as martyrdom? I am worried because we must think more deeply.”

Clarifying his earlier remarks, he added, “People say there is genocide in Nigeria. What I presented at the Vatican was a 1,270-page study on genocide in Nigeria and elsewhere. My argument is that it is not accurate to claim there is genocide or martyrdom in Nigeria.”

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OPINION] MOWAA: Unpleasant meal cooked for Benin from the outside (Two)

Published

2 hours ago

November 30, 2025

Editor

By Tony Erha

“Agha tot’ ikolo, t’ amen mie ede”; A Benin idiom holds sway that; “When the earthworm dominates a discussion, the rainfall would be all day long”. For the Museum of West Africa Art (MOWAA), whose skewed establishment had resurfaced about 2018, dominated global discourse and has reached a peak. Day in, day out, there is intense global indignation, bothering on an alleged swindling of the museum’s artefacts and huge accrued monies, which were under the care of the immediate-past governor of Edo State, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, alongside some of his political and business associates, which many commentators presented to be a f monumental fraud. As already claimed, it could as well have been called MOWAA-gate!

This article, being the second and last stanza of the first, published two weeks ago, was predicated on the decimating crisis of MOWAA. A condensed recap of the said article was partly anchored on a lavish reportage by swamps of Nigerian and foreign press, which largely implicated the Obaseki’s government, as inept in the due processes of MOWAA’s setup. MOWAA is a charitable entity, which sprang up on global funding and other resources of the state government, whereupon a case of undue diligence was allegedly stressed on Obaseki and his government.

There is a threesome public inquiry, thus raising a gummy accusation of indecency, especially when the ex-governor Obaseki’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had been voted out by the All Progressives Congress (APC), with Senator Monday Okpebholo as the present governor. And the MOWAA-gate is getting messier as Governor Okpebholo and the state’s House of Assembly, the lawmaking arm, had each set up a probe panel. Disturbed that the MOWAA-gate is earning the nation a bad name, the National Assembly, from a far-away Abuja, the nation’s capital, also instituted another probe.

”The returned looted Benin artifacts, like other sacred art work of Benin provenance, are not just superficial or ornamental, but infused with the mystical command and supernatural energy of the Benin kingdom of great antique. The key to correctly identify, classify, and position the authentic totems, in time and space, lies in the Royal Benin Palace, under the power of the Oba of Benin”. Sampson Ebome, a lawyer and perceptive cultural activist, uttered, postulating further;

“In every other society as Japan, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Britain, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia and Morocco etc., royalty holds a choice-place in preserving the unique cultural and corporate identity of the society and its governance. It is no co-incidence, therefore, that even in today’s Europe, there are about twelve statutory monarchs in its advanced democracies. Perhaps, the grave error of Godwin Obaseki’s administration was to proceed on the false logic that a concrete divergence existed between the government and the Benin kingdom, the very source and origin of the history, dialects, cultural identity and heritage of all the people of Edo State. To have persisted in this gargantuan ruse, an original artifice of the colonising powers of Europe, was always bound to be destabilising to the spiritual and socio-political equilibrium of the state”

In the state’s legislative’s probe, cans of worms are being revealed on MOWAA and the Reddisson Hotel construction, said to have been Obaseki’s conduit pipes. And there is intense firework by the contending parties. Chief Osaro Idah and some of the Oba’s palace chiefs have dragged MOWAA to the law court, a development which Oyiwola Afolabi SAN, MOWAA’s lawyer said had jeopardised the appearances of Godwin Obaseki, Osarodion Ogie (former Secretary to State Government) and other MOWAA’s executive at the House of Assembly summon.

“Even khiri-khiri keke udemwen idan ere ogbakhian”. “Fierce wrestling is a companion to violent thuds”. And the fight is now more forceful as no man will leave his leg for an opponent to grab. “Emwin na ma ru ese, to si itale emwen”, a Benin parlance for; “That which had been tardily or slyly done is bound to cause disaffection”. And so, the fight ranges whilst the onlookers are left to mock he that is already falling!

“Ovbi ekpen ere otolo ekpen ehae”. “Osayomore Joseph, the late music crooner and a soulmate, had often reminded me about the age-long Benin axiom; “It takes only the Cub – heir, to tickle the forehead of a Leopard. Instructively, HRM, Ewuare II, the revered Oba of Benin, with the Methuselah of wisdom at play, narrated the seizure of the artefactual ownership and benefaction, as he stoically alleged the undue conscription of his heir into the corporate board of Edo Museum of West Africa Art (EMOWAA) by ex-governor Obaseki. His son had also attested to that. The claim was also buttressed that EMOWAA was an inordinate scheme evolved by Obaseki and his associates to wrestle the returned looted artefacts and supplement payment from their foreign sources.

The Esans of Edo would say; “Ehun no ho obhiaha emoen, avava uwendin, ole odia”. “The sharp fart that disgraces the bride perches in-between her buttocks”. Once upon a time, Governor Okpebholo, on the heels of his final governorship declaration by the Supreme Court, which Obaseki and his protégé, Dr. Asue Ighodalo, the PDP candidate had dragged him through, was swayed by the of Senator Adams Oshiomhole insistence on the probe of Obaseki and his government. But Nyesom Wike, the flammable minister of Abuja, had dissuaded a pliable Okpebholo. But, Obaseki wasn’t mindful that he had escaped the expected probes, until he caused it with his usual foibles.

“Asua gha sua egile, oya danmwen ekpatu; eighi ye ebe gue egbe”. In a Benin folktale, it’s about the adventurous snail that crawls up the tree and soon crash to the ground, failing to cover itself from its hunters. The headstrong former governor, with the braggadocio of a ‘diaspora governor’, has taken the fight from ‘iya’ (valley) to ‘oke’ (mountain top). All we now see is the continuation of a “filaga filogo” (a street brawn with broken bottles and cudgels), now that ‘slappers and bone breakers’ fight wherever they meet in Europe and America. It is a bitter reminder of Obaseki’s heydays of masterminding the ‘Torgbas’ fighters’ gang that fought the APC’s ‘Tokpas’, which had earned him aliases like ‘Emanton’ (Iron Rod) and ‘Isakpana’ (the god of anger).

Whilst Nigerians and humankind watch the ‘filaga filogo’ and shame emanating from the Nigeria’s ‘heartbeat’ state, the very man who was called the ‘Wake and see Governor, may be laying down in the foreign climes the same landlines, that he laid on his home’s pathway that makes him to go into self-exile’.