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OPINION: Tinubu Is The Law!

Published

5 months ago

March 23, 2025

Editor

By Festus Adedayo

“Everything is my business. Everything. Anything I say is law…literally law.” Barbara Geddes, et al in their How dictatorship works (2018) quoted Malawian dictator, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, as having once said the above.

In Nigeria of a little more than a week ago, they all came in quick successions: A National Assembly where libido ran riot; a son who said his father was Nigeria’s best president; a corps member who condemned that same father as terrible and that president, when he wakes up and looks at the mirror, sees himself as “the law”. In the hands of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria appears to have become one complex, complicated web of mess and intrigues. When a people suffer such plague of multiple, endless afflictions, my people deploy a phrasal description to denote it. So, they compare such situation to an “egbinrin òtè ”. Egbinrin òtè is a situation that defies solution. It scorns the biblical exhortation that affliction would not rise a second time. Under Tinubu’s egbinrin òtè Nigeria, afflictions come in multiple folds. Literally, egbinrin ote is leaves of conspiracy. In usage, however, it is a scary, endless tale of repetitive sorrow. The affliction is sustained by a coldblooded-ness or bloodlessness. When you cut a leaf out of the branch of this tree, another sprouts immediately. In manifestation, you can compare an egbinrin òtè situation to the biblical cursed fig tree, doomed to bring out a sap of sorrow.

Son of Nigerian president, Seyi Tinubu, was in Adamawa State last week. As he spoke, arrogance dripped out of him like foul-smelling bead of sweats. Except for the bombastic claim that his father was “the greatest president in the history of Nigeria,” which empirical facts do not support, every other claim in that address lacks collocation, context or even logic. Who are the “they” who keep coming “for your father” and for “me”? Whose father is “Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu”? Did Seyi mean that fatherhood in the sense of Tinubu being the Nigerian president?

Fatherhood requires responsibility. It is not by a seminal fluid accident. Not every person who occupies Aso Rock is the Nigerian’s father. Children must see themselves in their father and vice versa. Nigerians will indeed desire that Tinubu ‘fatherlizes’ them, in which case, he will act like a father in all material particular. To the millions of Nigerians who go to bed hungry every night, and the democratic tenets that Tinubu stomps upon like a matador, he is better described as a dictator next door.

If you attempt to overstretch blood ties but fail in family responsibility, my people will stop you in your strides. They then will tell you that, when issues get to the brass-tack, a “mother-of-all” can identify her biological children (Ìyá ẹgbẹ mọ iye ọmọ e). If Seyi needs to hear the truth, what Nigerians see in Tinubu isn’t a father and that is why his other claim that the Tinubu economy has “benefited all” must have rankled suffering Nigerians. When he now said his father was “the only president that is not trying to enrich his own pocket,” many Nigerians must have fainted.

In Nigeria of close to two years now under Tinubu, we are faced with what, in grammar, is called irregular comparative and superlative adjectives. They are adjectives that don’t follow methods. When you conclude that a thinking coming out of Aso Rock is bad, wait for the next minute, worse one will follow. When you begin to lament the worse situation, then the worst happens. And this trajectory happens endlessly, like Sisyphus’. When Nigeria’s senate president was accused of a riotous libido some weeks ago, Nigerians thought their Sisyphus ruling elite had rolled the boulder up hill. Then we watched as the tail began to wag the dog and the antelope pursued the hunter. We thought wonders had ended. Wonders came out a while later to announce that it was yet to begin.

As Seyi was waxing illogical in his mis-canonization of his father in Adamawa as “one who gave the youth the wing to fly”, another egbinrin ote was billowing. Ushie Rita Ugamaye, a serving corps member, was literally told that in Tinubu’s Nigeria, the youth can only fly if they grovel by the president’s feet. In a social media post she made, Ugamaye lamented the excruciating existence Nigerians live under Seyi’s father’s government. Speaking directly to him, she said: “I don’t know if there is any other president that is as terrible as you… you are such a terrible president.” Thereafter, NYSC authority subjected Ugamaye to threats and eventually got her to apologize for her views on the gruelling economic life Nigerians live under Tinubu.

Ugamaye’s tortuous week in the hands of Tinubu’s hirelings is a mirror of the kind of life citizens live under repressive governments. A major example of this kind of rule was under the Malawian and Zimbabwean presidents, Hastings Kamuzu Banda and Robert Mugabe. The people of these countries lived in palpable fear of their presidents. Not only was dissent criminalized, condemnation of the Fuhrers was treasonable. Both men began with negligible cases like Ugamaye’s and gradually harvested a captive citizenry from whom they wrung cult-like devotion under an atmosphere of fear. In Malawi, national grovelling and beatification of Banda were the norm. It was so bad that in June, 1967, Banda was awarded a honourary doctorate by a university with the epithet that he was a “… pediatrician to his infant nation”! Rather than a “terrible president,” the clowns at the NYSC would rather Ugamaye thumbed up Tinubu as the “ngwazi” – “saviour” or “conqueror” with which Malawians addressed Banda.

Then, another billow of a smouldering egbinrin ote oozed out. On March 18, Tinubu wielded the big stick. He imposed a state of emergency on Rivers State, suspending the governor, Siminalayi Fubara, deputy and the House of Assembly for six months. In my last week instalment, I referred to Tinubu as a partial judge. With the proclamation of emergency rule, he earned another infamous medallion. In his nationwide address which read like a coup speech, without any remorse or pretence, Tinubu unapologetically removed the veil of his partiality in the Rivers imbroglio. A few hours after, allegedly under heavy disbursement of grafts, the two national parliaments gave his coup against democracy legislative imprimatur.

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I think, judging by his almost two years in office, there is an urgent need by Nigerians to begin to assess the psychology that underpins Tinubu’s actions in power. We can do this by conducting a post-mortem on his words and actions in private. This will enable us to know how tortuous the road with Tinubu as Nigerian leader would be in the years to come. In a bid to forewarn that the character in a duel is a principality of humongous evil, Juju maestro, King Sunny Ade, once warned, using the Ijesa dialect as a kicker, that, “Wé m’ẹni o kó, Paddy…” I think, in Tinubu, Nigerians do not realize what principality in power they are entangled with.

So, it brought me to critical questions about Tinubu’s persona. The first is, when God’s-creation-Bola-Ahmed-Tinubu wakes up every morning, does he think there is God? Or, put differently, doesn’t he think he is God? Or, more explicitly, that he is the Nigerian God? Simulating the craft of anthropologists who gather information through fieldwork and participant observation, I have spoken with those who sat around Tinubu before he became president. They believe Tinubu has a God mentality. For instance, they cited him telling fawners who gathered round him in his Lagos Bourdillon court at wee hours of the night, when he was ready to go and sleep, that, “Èkó fẹ lọ sún – Lagos wants to go and sleep. Forget the arrogance in that word, it explains the God that Tinubu thinks he is.

Again, those who witnessed the Nigerian president’s youth period in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, told me he went through a challenging time. He had to cobble together bric-a-brac for existence and learnt rough tackle tactics of the street. He emerged therefrom a street folk to the hilt, with his unorthodox survival methods. Decades after, the man who would be Nigeria’s president had had mastery of the colour of roughness and the language of manipulation. These have proven to be handy and essential tools in the Nigerian gangbanger political underworld.

The street has taught Tinubu to become so versatile in persona code-switching. It is such that, at one time, he is at home in the rough world of the MC Oluomos and musician, Wasiu Ayindes and at another, he blends perfectly with the varnished world of international leaders. He has faced life tribulations that drowned Goliaths, walked through landmines that made mincemeat of the brave and emerged therefrom unscathed. These experiences can get a man to do either of two things: become the staunchest atheist who is persuaded of his own ability and scoffs at the God factor in human affair. Or, become the most supine God worshipper. I think these harsh life experiences and his conquest of battles through street shenanigans must have scarred the president’s soul irreparably. The scar must have made fellow human beings appear as tiny as gnats in his estimation.

Tinubu is one of the boldest leaders in the history of Nigeria. He possesses a chest wide enough to damn consequences. I seem to think that he has swallowed the Devil. With his raw hand, he can pull chestnut from red-hot furnace. He is not afraid to bite any bullet. The world may be on the verge of being incinerated but the street folk looks at the end game. It is a trait you get on the street. Street people are Machiavellian. To them, the end justifies the means. Unlike him, virtually all Nigerian military rulers, who were equally bold, got theirs consummated in fiery military traditions, especially grueling military training. Tinubu’s was weaned from the furnace of a heartless street.

The proclamation of a state of emergency in Rivers State by Tinubu should tell Nigerians that what we have today is personal rule disguised as civil rule. In such rule, the people are forced to swallow dosages of authoritarianism. As consequence, gradually, national public politics wither. Tinubu’s palace politics makes the future of democratic government look bleak in Nigeria. Barbara Geddes, et al also said that a major feature of personal rule is that the ruler conscripts the judiciary, castrates the political system and gets a pliant legislature. An icing on the cake of this infamy is a captive populace. Tinubu has all these by his palm. In the voice vote of the two parliaments last week, a somber Nigeria should not just see a grim democratic future but a gradual incubation of a Kamuzu Banda in Nigeria in the shortest possible time.

In his oxymoronic authoritarian-democrat posture, Tinubu is gradually morphing into the Banda model. He is the law. He is the legislature. He is the Fuhrer. So when Lateef Fagbemi, his Attorney General, came out to read an address which reified Tinubu’s earlier rough stomp on the Nigerian constitution, all seems set on this road to Tinubu’s personal rule. Banda also had executioners who helped him dig the grave of Malawian democracy. Fagbemi had threatened Nigerian states that the cudgel with which Tinubu lashed the buttocks of democratic government in Rivers State is on the rafters waiting for any other governor who fails to grovel before Banda. Soon, this same legislature, with Fagbemi’s cavalier lending of self to autocracy, would land us in Malawi of 1970. That year, a congress of Banda’s political party, the MCP, declared him president for life. In 1971, Malawi’s Godswill Akpabio and Tajudeen Abass as heads of the legislature did this. I guess a Fagbemi was there for Banda, too. For the next quarter of a century, it was criminal not to address Banda with his full title, “His Excellency the Life President of the Republic of Malawi, Ngwazi Dr. H. Kamuzu Banda.”

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OPINION: Is Èmil’ókàn Audacity Or Incantation Ritual?

Published

2 minutes ago

August 24, 2025

Editor

By Festus Adedayo

A few weeks ago, an outburst of then aspirant for Nigeria’s presidential office, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, marked his third anniversary. On June 2, 2022, in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, Tinubu bit the bullet in what has now become an epochal ad-lib commentary. In a retort to attempts to deny him the Nigerian presidency, he had said, “Èmil’ókàn, e gbékinníyìíwá” – It is my turn, bring this thing. At a meeting with Ogun State governor, Dapo Abiodun, as well as leaders and delegates of the APC at the presidential lodge, Ibara, Abeokuta on that same day, Tinubu rained subtle invective on Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s then sitting president. He had come to meet the party’s delegates in Abeokuta ahead of its presidential primaries slated for about a week to that day.

Like Sango, the Yoruba god of thunder, lightning and fire or an enraged cobra, Tinubu spat out the magical words. “If not for me who stood behind Buhari, he wouldn’t have become the president,” he began, in an audacity many believe was sterner than Barack Obama’s. “He tried the first time, he fell; the second time, he fell; the third, he fell… He even wept on national television and vowed never to contest again but I went to meet him in Kaduna and told him he will run again. I will stand by you and you will win, but you must not joke with Yorubas and he agreed. Since he became the president, I have never got ministerial slots, I didn’t collect any contract, I have never begged for anything from him. Èmil’ókàn, e gbékinníyìíwá”; it is the turn of Yoruba, it is my turn.”

Anyone in alignment with the Nigerian political barometer of this period in time would know that, as at the morning of June 2, 2022, Tinubu was not in the reckoning of the powers-that-be for a Buhari successor. For his presidential dream, in the words of immortal Nigerian nationalist, K. O. Mbadiwe, the come has come to become. Or better put, from the tone and timbre of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s saxophonist, “réré (ti) run” – a political calamity was afoot. Shortly after the outburst, however, what was thought to be a speech fiasco morphed into a catapult that shot Tinubu up. In spite of his visible opposition to his candidacy, Buhari almost instantly got sucked into it, inexplicably. You could feel the grudge and reluctance in Buhari thereafter. The gang-ups against Tinubu thereafter melted like ice in the sun. Not long after, a major stumbling block, Godwin Emefiele’s Naira re-denomination, fell face flat on the floor. Before you could say Jack, what was thought to be Tinubu’s baggage became his greatest wattage.

What actually transpired in Abeokuta that day? Scholars have since then subjected that audacious and epochal Tinubu statement to different analytical studies. Was it a pure biting of the bullet? A daring Tinubu owns its patent since he hopped into third republic politics? Or, was it an omnivorous appetite for things magical that many claim cannot be divorced from Tinubu’s politics? After all, Yoruba say a child’s behavioural manifestation propels him to seek anti-machete protection charm (Ìwàomol’óńmúomo se òkígbé). In other words, was that Abeokuta statement a product of unscience and metaphysics (òògùnab’enugòngò), a flavour that has been known to be part and parcel of African politics?

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In April 2024, during the beginning of the travails of former Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello, a similar pronouncement, thought to have spiritual implication, went viral in a video. It had an enchanter recite an incantation with utmost fury. It went thus: “River Niger and River Benue, the confluence is in Kogi State. Except say River Niger and River Benue no come meet for Kogi; if River Niger and River Benue come meet for Kogi, dem no go fit arrest Bello… Dem dey use EFCC pursue am, dem no go succeed o. Dem go lay siege for im house for Abuja… Except say I no be born of Igala kingdom… EFCC dey front, you dey back; you dey back, dem dey front; you dey left, dem dey right; you dey right, dem dey left; you dey centre, dem come there, you jump dem pass!…a lion cannot give birth to a goat…”

Those in the know claim it would be ludicrous to claim that, since 2007 when he left the governorship of Lagos, Tinubu has welded his leadership of Lagos together only with political sagacity and tons of cash. Extra-terrestial intelligence in the form of occult practices, membership of a cult of leadership where allegiances are suborned in blood oaths, are alleged to be interwoven into the much-touted Lagos hold of power. In Africa as a whole, empirical evidence given by practitioners often interviewed to give participant observations of the phenomenon has shown that, while the electorate sees the formal practices of voting, primaries and elections, unseen, chilling, blood-curdling informal recourse to black magic is an unwritten but potent credential of African political practices. So, the question is, does metaphysics influence outcomes of electoral practices? Or put more succinctly, do politicians’ occult and traditional magical practices have any bearing on voter behaviour or electoral outcomes?

Of a truth, science has denounced the validity of the above reasoning. Austro-British philosopher of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein, was one of those who rubbished it. In his Tractatus which contained criticisms of traditional metaphysical investigation like the Èmil’ókàn outburst, Ludwig considered such as “abstract speculations” and meaningless linguistic confusion. He even said that such engagements were “metaphysical chatter(s)”. It must be said that three centuries before Wittgenstein, that is the seventeenth century, were a period in which philosophy and science could not be sharply demarcated from the occult. There, occult and reason existed side by side.

To thus think that Nigeria’s electoral politics is solely what transpires in the physical will be naivety of the highest order. In my little interface with politicians in southern Nigeria, I can confirm that there is a spiritual dimension to political leadership. Indeed, there exists a seeming incestuous relationship between politics and spirituality, especially rituals. It exists in northern Nigeria as well, solely cobbled together by the marabout system brought into Nigeria by hermitic and itinerant North African Islamic Malams. Because elections and electioneering are seen as war, Nigerian politicians visit spiritualists to fortify themselves with Òkígbé, a charm perceived to insulate them from piercing machetes, guns and machinations of political adversaries. With Òkígbé, it is said that someone thus fortified, if inflicted with machete, the metal breaks into two.

In southwest Nigeria, guests visiting homes of politicians where a mass of people throng will not fail to notice grains of millet and corns splashed on roads. They are rituals which are believed to attract a motley crowd to the sides of the politicians. Those in the know also say that, as we gravitate towards the 2027 elections, there will be a spate of ritual murders known to be handiwork of politicians in need of human parts to aid their political ambitions. Non-politicians also engage in it. When you go to road junctions where three footpaths meet (orítaméta) in the southwest, you cannot fail to see ritual offerings in calabashes which are many times spiritual electoral interventions. Election times are periods rituals, libations and incantations reign. Effigies of political opponents are sometimes also made, on which are poured frightening incantations. The belief is that such political opponents are caged and their political destinies padlocked. Nigerian politicians also visit spiritualists, either the Christian variant, the Islamic-flavoured ones or traditionalists.

In earlier pieces I did, both on September 26, 2021 and April 28, 2024, with the headlines, “Nigeria’s huge market of blood and human sacrifice” and “The marabouts of Yahaya Bello”, respectively, I explored the themes of magical and ritual practices as a pervasive phenomenon in power relations in Nigeria. I stated that this affirms that when complicated issues and challenges of life confront Nigerian politicians, they quickly run to their traditions and origins. These syncretic practices do not affect their worship in church on Sunday nor mosque on Friday. This equally demonstrates the ease with which politicians momentarily throw away their Christian and Islamic cloaks to hold on to the utilitarian purpose that magic and sorcery serve them.

Cannibalism of ritual practice isn’t strictly African as empirical documentation confirmed that during the trans-Atlantic trade, European cannibals were also on the prowl seeking the succulent fleshes of Africans to make delicacies. Andre Donelha, a Cape Verdean, who travelled in Upper Guinea from 1574 to 1585, recalled how the Mane, invaders who operated during the first half of the sixteenth century, attacked the Western coast of Africa from the eastern flank and “(ate) human flesh at any time and while at war, even that which belongs to one of their own nation. When they make war, the conquerors eat the conquered.” In fact, the Manes were reputed to bear the grisly and cruel name of Sumbas which, translated, means “eaters of human flesh,” a practice which Walter Rodney explained was “for courage and ferocity.”

Christianity and Islam have sought to wipe out blood oath, human sacrifice and cannibalism to no avail. The Ogboni itself was a recipient of this rout in 1948 in Oyo by Alaafin Raji Adeniran Adeyemi II, a pious Muslim monarch, who sought to de-link the palace from ancient voodoo practices. Hitherto, the palace held a great link to and derived its existence from the immense powers of the Ogboni fraternity.

Though a great attempt is made by the present cyber age to delink secret cults from the operations of society, they flower greatly among African elite, especially among political power cabals who run to them for metaphysical shields at moments of existential turmoil. Indeed, judges, politicians, lawyers and many leaders of societies are said to belong to these fraternal secret cults, all in the stampede for power and protection against inclement weathers of life. Pastors, Imams and many society leaders are said to be card-carrying members of the cult.

The question to ask is, how then do political leaders who take this syncretic path of rituals to power bear any allegiance to the electorate? It is believed that many of them, rather than to the electorate, show gratitude to leaders of cult groups, Babalawo, Pastors and Imams after their victory. So, what is the scale of harm of this practice on Nigerians?

Students of philosophy and traditional African religion would need to help us situate Tinubu’s June 2, 2022 outburst which culminated in the world-renowned phrase, “Èmil’ókàn, e gbékinníyìíwá”. To be where he is, did Tinubu have a dalliance with the elderly who are known to be spiritual leaders of his domain? Having hailed from a core Yoruba area of Iragbiji in Osun State, nobody needs to teach Tinubu the potent powers of autochthonous Yoruba people’s spiritual powers. For anyone who understands the lingo of the coven, the phrase “Èmil’ókàn, e gbékinníyìíwá” sounds more like an incantation ritual than the outburst of an enraged politician. It is almost synonymous with the chant, “Agbe, bring goodies to me,” Agbe, being a bird known in English as the Great Blue Turaco, a vibrant, culturally significant bird among the Yoruba which has blue plumage.

I have heard a sprinkle of scholars and practitioners say that the talismanic effect of that Tinubu outburst removes it from the ordinary. So, was it science, unscience, Realpolitik or spiritual politics that brought Tinubu to power? Did he, in 2023, realizing the eternal wisdom in the native Yoruba wisdom which says, if you do not have what elders fortify themselves with, you would remain a suckling, (B’á ò nínnkanàgbà, bíèwelàárí) decide to use what he had to get what he needed.

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FG Predicts Heavy Rainfall, Flood In Seven States

Published

13 hours ago

August 23, 2025

Editor

The Federal Ministry of Environment on Saturday predicted possible flooding in seven states and 25 locations across Nigeria.

The ministry, in its flood alert warned that heavy rainfall expected between August 23 and 24 could lead to flooding in the listed areas.

The alert was signed by the Director of the Erosion, Flood and Coastal Zone Management Department, Usman Bokani.

He further directed residents of communities along the flood plain from Jebba to Lokoja to evacuate immediately as the River Niger’s water level continues to rise.

“Due to the rise in the water level of River Niger, communities on the flood plain from Jebba to Lokoja are advised to evacuate,” he said.

The states and communities expected to be affected include Benue State (Abinsi, Agyo, Gbajimba, Gogo, Makurdi, Mbapa, Otobi, Otukpo, Udoma, Ukpiam); Borno State (Briyel, Dikwa, MaiduKamba; Gombe State (Bajoga, Dogon Ruwa, Gombe, Nafada); Kebbi State (Gwandu, Jega, Kamba); Nasarawa State (Agima, Keana, Keffi, Odogbo, Rukubi); Niger State (Lapai); and Yobe State (Gashua, Gasma, Potiskum).

On Friday, the National Emergency Management Agency urged residents in high-risk flood plains to evacuate to safer and higher grounds.

The states at high risk according to the agency are Kebbi, Niger, Kwara states that share borders with Benin Republic.

This was disclosed in a press statement signed by the agency’s Head of Press Unit, Manzo Ezekiel.

The Director General of NEMA, Mrs. Zubaida Umar, also directed all NEMA offices covering communities along the River Niger to intensify advocacy and mobilization for flood preparedness following alerts of rising water levels in the upstream of the river in the Republic of Benin.

“In an urgent directive conveyed to the operations offices, Mrs. Zubaida Umar instructed them to sensitize communities to remain vigilant and advise residents in high-risk flood plains to evacuate to safer, higher grounds, especially those in Kebbi, Niger and Kwara states that share borders with Benin Republic.

“She further urged the State Governments of the identified high-risk areas to support their Emergency Management Agencies (SEMAs) and Local Emergency Management Committees (LEMCs) in activating contingency plans and preparedness measures to mitigate the potential impact of this year’s flooding.

“The Director General reaffirmed NEMA’s commitment to ensuring coordinated actions to safeguard lives and livelihoods along the River Niger,” the statement noted.

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‘Court Of Corruption’ — Obasanjo Knocks INEC Chairman, Judiciary In New Book

Published

14 hours ago

August 23, 2025

Editor

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has criticised the Nigerian judiciary, saying it has been “deeply compromised” and that corruption among judges has turned courts into “a court of corruption rather than a court of justice.”

In his new book, Nigeria: Past and Future, Obasanjo laments the steady decline of the Nigerian judiciary’s integrity, warning that justice has become commodified in Nigeria.

“The reputation of the Nigerian judiciary has steadily gone down from the four eras up till today. The rapidity of the precipitous fall, particularly in the Fourth Republic, is lamentable,” Obasanjo wrote.

He expressed concern that the judiciary’s decline poses a significant threat to the nation’s stability.

Obasanjo recounted an incident where a governor showed him six duplex buildings belonging to a judge who allegedly acquired them from money made as chairman of election tribunals. This anecdote, he said, illustrates the depth of corruption in the judiciary.

The former president also accused Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman, of undermining the electoral process since 2015.

“No wonder politicians do not put much confidence in an election which the INEC of Professor Mahmood Yakubu polluted and grossly undermined to make a charade,” he said.

Obasanjo further alleged that politicians believe the outcome of election disputes depends on the will of tribunal judges, court of appeal judges, and supreme court judges.

“No matter what the will of the people may be, the Chairman of INEC since after the 2015 election had made his will greater and more important than the will of the people,” he added.

Moreover, Obasanjo directly accused the late former President Muhammadu Buhari of colluding with the judiciary during his election cases.

“Buhari threw caution to the wind, no matter what had transpired between him and the judges who did his bidding. In his election cases, financially, he topped it up with appointments for them no matter their age and their ranks,” Obasanjo alleged.

The former president concluded that the current state of the judiciary and electoral system in Nigeria is alarming, saying, “After a false declaration of results, making losers winners and winners losers, the victim of the cheating is advised to go to court, which is a court of corruption rather than a court of justice.“