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OPINION: Yoruba’s Spirit Of Resistance [Monday Lines (1)]

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By Lasisi Olagunju

The king in pre-colonial Oyo had power over everything. He determined who lived and who died. At a point in time, there was this street drummer in Oyo metropolis who moved from one point of the town to the other plying his trade. And, he was a master of his art, great skill, vigorous activity. He would praise those he considered praiseworthy; he would deprecate the deplorable. The people enjoyed what he did as long as he did not make them the object of his pillory.
One day, the drummer got up early and woke up the town with a strange beat and a strange message:

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Kòtò kan nbe n’íta oba,
Olórun ó mu
Kò ì yá ni

(Meaning: There is a pit in front of the king’s palace; God will catch him (the king) but it is not yet time).

What is he saying? Alarm bells rang in homes and across Oyo that a drummer was spreading a strange message against the king. Is it not said that a dog is allowed to run mad but its insanity notwithstanding, it is expected to know and avoid fire? B’ájá bá nsínwín sebí ó ye k’ó m’ojú iná. This particular dog had a madness that obviously knew no limits. He had added the king to his list of objects of scorn.

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The message soon got to the King, the Alaafin. He sent for the drummer.
“Ngbó, what are you saying about me?” Kabiyesi asked him.
The drummer responded before Ikú Bàbá Yèyé with his drumbeat:

Kòtò kan nbe n’íta oba,
Olórun ó mu
Kò ì yá ni.

You would not be a Yoruba in those days if you did not understand the language of drums.
Everyone heard him loud and clear and gasped. This one should die! Ar’óbafín l’oba á pa. Palace guards moved to assault him; the king stopped them. Kabiyesi took a long look at the drummer, took a deep breath and told the man to go home. He even gave him money for his trouble. The drummer was equally stunned by the king’s verdict. He left.
The king looked round his chiefs, then turned to his people. “We must not touch him. Oba kìí mú akorin (The king does not arrest the bard).” He said and added, in very low tones that apart from the fact of a bard having immunity, touching him because of that particular message would set the town ablaze.
What is Kabiyesi saying? He and a few of his trusted aides understood clearly what the drummer was saying. There was truly a deep pit in front of the king’s palace. In that pit were the king’s deepest secrets. It was into that pit he threw the unfortunate heads of his enemies.

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So, what happened thereafter? A contrite Aláàfin ordered the pit closed. He also stopped the serial murders he was committing.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Protesters Of The North [Monday Lines]

Where did the above story come from? I got it from the late Aláàfin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III. It was in his palace he told me a few months before he joined his ancestors in 2022. I was not there alone; my friend, Festus Adedayo, was also there.

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With the oba, we had many deep discussions on the notions of rights and privileges in the context of Yoruba identity and cultural nuances. This was one of them. The Aláàfin stressed that the story was real. Kabiyesi said he also heard it from his fathers. He pointed at the probable site of the pit. We agreed that the drummer of that era would be today’s press.

I am writing on the spirit of protest and resistance – my focus is the Yoruba. My dictionary says the opposite of acquiescence is resistance. Anywhere you find the Yoruba and there is injustice or simple insult, do not think of acquiescence; think of the opposite. They value their girl’s idí bèbèrè but they don’t deck the voluptuous waist of a bad daughter with beads of stupid accommodation. They also do not make their hips available for dislocation by bumbling relations. To them, pimples find seats only on foolish faces. It makes very little difference whether the actors are men or they are women.

What we heard about the ancient time is what we read of more recent eras. Professor Ulli Beier lived in Yorubaland and patiently studied the Yoruba of the 1950s and the 1960s. He was in Ede, Osogbo, Ilobu, Okuku, Ibadan, etc. Ulli Beier witnessed resistant women bringing grasping men to their knees in Ede in 1955. He recollects this in his piece, ‘The Position of Yoruba Women’. Ulli Beier writes: “The women who sell ògì, a food prepared from ground maize, must bring their maize to the mill owners for grinding. These mill owners are men. Now the women began to complain that the charge of the men was too high to allow them sufficient profit on the sale of ògì. The Iyalode then made representations to the mill owners, demanding a lower price for the grinding. The men refused at first, then tried to bargain. The Iyalode, however, called out all ògì sellers on strike. The women then began to grind the corn by hand and after a week, the mill owners surrendered unconditionally” (Beier, 1955:40).

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Women in any Yoruba society would do exactly what those who have long departed did in Ede in 1955.

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Ilorin Dadakuada musician, Odolaye Aremu, in his album, Olówe Mòwe, characterised the immediate past Iyalode of Ibadan, Alhaja Aminatu Abiodun, as a man: “Wón pè é l’óbìnrin ní/ohun t’ólókó nse ló nse (They call her a woman but she does what those who have penises do).” Long before Abiodun, there was Madam Efunroye Tinubu whose activism straddled business and politics in Lagos, Badagry and Abeokuta. In Lagos of the early mid-1880s, she was with Oba Adele I whom she married and lived with. Then Adele died, there was a problem in Lagos, she went on exile to Badagry. From exile in Badagry, she led the push that ousted Oba Kosoko and re-installed Adele’s younger brother, Akintoye, and reigned with him. She shared the throne with Oba Dosumu, Akintoye’s first son, and with it ruled the business world of Lagos.

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While doing all these, Madam Tinubu ensured that her activism broth had a large dose of nationalist condiments. Oladipo Yemitan wrote Efunroye’s biography and gave it the title: ‘Madam Tinubu: Merchant and Kingmaker’. In that book, the biographer notes that though Tinubu was overbearing in her dealings with Dosumu, one of the obas she dealt with in Lagos, “her pre-emptory orders had a nationalistic undertone: She did not want the oba to be dominated by foreigners” (Yemitan, 1987:38). Madam Tinubu organised resistant actions against Europeans in Lagos seeking their expulsion from the land. On one occasion, a major uprising against foreign ‘rule’ ensued under her instigation. “Several meetings were held in her house by the dissidents. So efficient was her organizing machinery that this uprising nearly succeeded…”, Yemitan wrote. At a point, the white man felt her cup was full. She was deported back to her hometown, Abeokuta.

The zenith of Madam Tinubu’s activism was her becoming the Iyalode of Egba, the number one woman in Abeokuta. In Abeokuta, she remained a major force in politics and business. Marjorie Mclntosh in her ‘Yoruba Women, Work and Social Change’ (2009: 137) wrote that when the Dahomeys attacked Abeokuta in 1864, Efunroye Tinubu “was a key figure in organizing the defence of Egbaland and securing the enemies’ defeat.” Her biographer, Yemitan (page 47) wrote: “The women’s war-cry – ‘Elele-múlele’ – meaning: let everyone reach for his machete – was a slogan coined by Madam Tinubu on that occasion. She moved from quarter to quarter in Abeokuta rousing up women for concerted action.”

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: LGs And Tinubu’s Supreme Cut [Monday Lines (2)]

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On that incident, Saburi Biobaku, in his ‘Egba and Their Neighbours’ (1957: 38) wrote about Tinubu: “Her compound was converted into a veritable arsenal from which arms and ammunition were issued to the Egba forces on their way to the front: Then she took up a position at Aro gate, nearer the front, at which the wounded were nursed by her and her female associates, where soldiers whose powder had exhausted in battle replenished their store and from which any would-be deserters were sent back with a renewed determination to fight the Dahomey and save the Egba metropolis from destruction.”

At about the time Madam Tinubu reigned in Lagos, in Badagry and, later, in Abeokuta, another Egba woman activist was in charge in Ibadan putting the men there in their proper place. She was Madam Efunsetan Aniwura (c. 1790-1874). Like Tinubu, Madam Aniwura was the Iyalode of Ibadan. Historians credit her with uncommon entrepreneurial ability, enormous wealth and man-like bravery. Efunsetan’s activism saw her challenging the power structure of Ibadan which was effectively in the firm grips of her male counterparts. She was assertive and daring, and would be called, in today’s parlance, a feminist who queried lords and troops and the incessant disruptive wars they fought, hurtful to women and their trade, injurious to children and their growth.

Akinwumi Ishola, who wrote ‘Efunsetan Aniwura: Iyalode Ibadan’ (1981), a very negative play on this woman, would later describe her as a positive force in the evolution of Ibadan as a metropolis. In an interview in The Punch of 16 November, 2013, Akinwumi Isola said: “I was very young with little education when I wrote the book. If I were to write it today, it would be different. Efunsetan can be described as a woman fighting for the rights of womenfolk. She could be described as a woman rights activist. She is not as tough as I portrayed her.”

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In ‘Iyalode Efunsetan Aniwura (Owner of Gold)’, Bolanle Awe describes Efunsetan as a very ‘independent-minded’ and outspoken woman who was not afraid to criticise Aare Latoosa and his other chiefs. Very importantly, Awe says she was a woman who was strong enough to openly oppose Ibadan war chiefs’ constant wars. “She realized that the condition of almost continuous warfare disrupted her own and other people’s trading. She therefore became the spokesperson for a group of chiefs who were opposed to the aggressive policy of the leading war captain. For the expedition launched in 1874, she refused to field any soldiers, give ammunition on credit, or demonstrate her solidarity by meeting with the chiefs at the town gate” (McIntosh, 2009: 139).

If we want more on contemporary activism of the Yoruba woman, I think we should read about the Nigerian General Strike of 1945. We should read how Yoruba market women took the lead in giving moral and logistic support to the striking workers: “The workers found support among the women community especially market women headed by Madam Alimotu Pelewura… The women traders deliberately lowered their prices to enable workers purchase available foodstuffs apart from contributing generously to the workers Relief Fund. Madam Adunni Oluwole in particular donated 100 pounds to assist the workers”. That quote is from Wale Oyemakinde’s ‘The Nigerian General Strike of 1945’, published in 1975. Check page 704.

Rebellion or resistance; strifes and wars are usually preceded by songs (of abuse). Among the Yoruba, songs or even drama can be channels of resistance – and of change. Akinwumi Isola in his ‘The African Writer’s Tongue’ (1992) tells a story: “An aggrieved king tried in vain to punish an oral artist who had caricatured his lawless messengers. The masquerade was Agborako at Oyo, and the king was Alaafin Ladigbolu (1911-1944). When the king’s messengers, usually identified by the single tuft of hair in the center of their heads, became intolerably cruel in the execution of their duties, Agborako (the masquerade) organized a performance that criticized the king’s lack of control over his messengers. Members of Agborako imitated the customary hair style of the king’s messengers and dramatized examples of their lawless behavior. The king was furious! He immediately ordered the arrest of Agborako! But the arrest stirred up considerable anger among the people, who participated in a huge demonstration demanding the immediate release of the masquerade singers. At this point, the king was reminded of the rule: ‘Oba ki i p’okorin’ (The king never kills an artiste). Agborako was released.”

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The story of Hubert Ogunde is well known to members of my generation. The generation before ours experienced his trail-blazing exploits in the decade before independence. In 1945, Ogunde came out smoking with an opera titled ‘Strike and Hunger.’ Oliver Coates (2017) wrote a descriptive piece on that play. He says the play “provides a unique opportunity to examine the ways in which late colonial politics were reimagined in drama.” The play was inspired by the 1945 General Strike in Lagos and “offers an allegorical dramatization of the events”. Recalcitrant Ogunde and his theatre company had considerable problems with the government over that product. The company was banned in Jos in 1946 and fined 125 pounds for staging ‘Strike and Hunger’. The Ogunde Theatre was again banned in Kano in May 1950 for staging another of his plays, ‘Bread and Bullet’. In addition to the ban, he was arrested and charged with sedition. He was discharged of that count but fined six pounds “for posting posters of the play without permission.” Ebun Clark’s ‘Hurbert Ogunde: The Making of Nigerian Theatre’ (1979) which contains accounts of those incidents also has other details of the activities of this activist artiste. Tunde Kelani’s ‘Saworoide’ (1999) and its sequel, ‘Agogo Eewo’ (2002), continue the Ogunde tradition of using drama as a vehicle for social commentary and activism.

I started this piece with the story of an oba and an activist drummer. I have also quoted Professor Akinwumi Isola’s recollection of a communal resistance to an oba who ordered the arrest of a masquerade. Both incidents tell us that the oba is in reality not above the law – although he is greeted Kabiyesi, a salutation which mocks the invincibility of the unwary.

An oba’s behaviour must not endanger the community. If it does, he will pay. In a proverb, the Yoruba found an oba involved in money ritual. His exasperated people rose against him and asked why! Is there any other position bigger than the throne in a kingdom? They queried and chastised the oba: “Do you want to become God?” Won fi o j’oba, o tun nw’awure, se o fe d’Olodumare ni? Deeper into history, no oba who misbehaved escaped justice at the hands of their subjects. Samuel Johnson, author of ‘The History of the Yorubas’ (1921), has a long list of such obas. He calls them the wicked kings. He also remembers to tell what became of them:

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Alaafin Ojigi reigned a long time ago. Some accounts say he was the eighth Alaafin of Oyo. He was a good, effective king but he lost his throne and his everything to the excesses of his crown prince. This is how Johnson (1921: 206-207) tells the story: “Ojigi, who was elected to the vacant throne, was a powerful and warlike king…Personally, he was a very good man, but a too indulgent father. The Aremo (crown prince) by his cruelties and excesses brought about the father’s rejection and death. He ordered Oluke, the Basorun’s son, to be unlawfully beaten. As this wrong could not be avenged without serious consequences, and as the king did not punish the wrong doer, it was thought more expeditious to effect the king’s death, for about this time the custom began to prevail for the Aremos to die with the father, as they enjoy unrestrained liberty with the father. A pretext was soon found for rejecting the king and fond father, and consequently he died, and his eldest son with him.” That Alaafin did well running the empire but did not do well running his home.

That king’s immediate predecessor, Osinyago, suffered a similar fate. He had an Aremo who died young because, according to Johnson, “he was of a grasping propensity…like his father, an avaricious man who by exactions, massacre and confiscations amassed wealth which he did not live long to enjoy.” This king lost all when his second child, a lady “of masculine character” out of envy and “wounded pride”, slew the son of a commoner. The king had to die, his family with him (Johnson, 1921: 205).

One more example from the same Oyo. It is said that one of the early kings, Oba Jayin, killed himself before he was publicly disgraced by an Egungun for murdering his own son whose sin was that he was a better person in character. And, so, the people sang: “O ku dede k’a ko’wi w’Akesan, Oba Jayin te’ri gb’aso.” (Johnson, 1921 [2017]: 202-203).

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There is also Yoruba praise names or praise chants, oriki. Karin Barber, an authority says an individual’s oríki is the standard unit that “refers to qualities of character or physical appearance” of someone. She says sometimes the oriki refers “to incidents in the subject’s life – often apparently trivial or even scandalous.” In Adeboye Babalola’s ‘Awon Oriki Orile Metadinlogbon’ I find these verses in ‘Oriki Iran Olofa’:

“Won l’Omo òtòsi Ộfa, wáá lo sódò lo rèé ponmi wa,
K’ómo olówó o ri mu…

Omo òtosi Ộfa

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Ò lóun ò ní i lọ sódò lo rèé pọnmi wa, k’ómo olówó ó ri mu.

A fọn ộn kò dún.

A tè é ko ya’nu.

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Ộrò d’ilé Abiódún Oba Aláafin…”
(They told the child of the poor to go to the stream and fetch water for the child of the rich to drink. The child of the poor said no, he would not go to the stream to fetch water for the child of the rich to drink. There was trouble. The matter was taken to the palace of Abiodun, Alaafin of Oyo. Alaafin asked the child of the poor to go and enjoy his life in peace).

The above explains the Yoruba ideal of equality and justice: “Ibi ko ju’bi; bi a ti bi eru ni a bi omo (birth pangs are the same; a slave has the same privilege of birth as the freeborn).”

I was the lead paper presenter at a major conference on ‘Yoruba Activisms’ which was held at the Lead City University, Ibadan, between Monday and Wednesday last week. There were 247 presentations; participants were drawn from across this ccountry and from countries abroad. What you have read so far here is a reworked excerpt from the paper I presented at that conference. The drummer story was my opening glee.

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Parrot is bird of the sea; cardinal is bird of the Lagoon. I wrote the above and have read it all over again. My conclusion is that if you have a Yoruba as your president, do not seek to overwhelm him without good planning. He will fight back and will not take prisoners. Also, if a president has the Yoruba as his subjects, he should not take them for granted. If he is a leader who shoots his arrow towards the sky and covers his own head with a mortar, the Yoruba will gasp at his wickedness; the resistance in their gene will come to the fore. They will light their torch of fire and beam it into the face of that masquerade. And if he is of their house, it won’t gel to suggest bastardy as reason for their telling ‘their brother’ that his regime is painful. If they can’t hit the streets in open confrontation, they will migrate away from the unfeeling without the drama of a noisy rejection.

Àbò mi rèé o. I have said my own.

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OPINION: For Tinubu And Sanwo-Olu [Monday Lines 1]

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By Lasisi Olagunju

“When lions battle, jackals flee.” Isaac Newton wrote that to his bitter rival, Gottfried Leibniz. It was a barbed remark on their feud over who between them invented calculus. The more you read of the mutual respect those two had for each other, the more you wonder why they ended their respective careers in very bitter, reckless animosity; the more you also ponder over the cost of that fight and whether it was worth the troubles.

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President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos are two big men who are not equals. One is the boss, the other the boss’s boy. They are not equals, so, there cannot be a rivalry between them over feats and achievements. But they fight; and it is right here in the open. I’ve heard people demanding to know what they are fighting over. We do not know. Let no one talk about Lagos speakership. The sack of Mudasiru Obasa, which was as abortive as Dimka’s coup of 1976, was just what it was – a symptom; it was a reaction to something; there was an underline cause. What was it?
Sanwo-Olu and his boss are no Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz and so their fight couldn’t be over who takes the priority on a matter designed to help humanity. If there is a delectable Queen Cleopatria somewhere, I would have drawn a parallel between what is unfolding in Lagos and what unfolded between Rome’s Octavian (Augustus Caesar) and Mark Anthony. But there is no seductress in the mix, I will, therefore, not deliver to age what it is no longer capable of tweaking.

So, what did Sanwo-Olu do? Or what did he not do? Both sides are not talking. All we’ve seen was an ungracious rejection of a friendly gesture; the snub of a handshake by the more powerful potentate. We’ve also seen a convenient skip of the junior power where he ought to speak.

Politics is a fast-paced game. You slept yesterday at the war camp and woke up today to news of a ceasefire. But the wise knows that political feuds inflict invisible wounds. They use that to explain why political wounds never heal and wars never end even when you read texts of forgiveness consequent upon atonement for unknown sins and apologies for unstated crimes.

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MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Ijebu And Their Six Tubers Of Yam [Monday Lines 2]

Some people are happy, clinking glasses over the power buffetings in Lagos. They drink to the health of the feud; they wish it greater vigour; they wish its fire is unquenchable. These are people who do not like Lagos and its politics at all and who have been their victims. They see the fight as the elixir that would cleanse the land of all its sins and cure it of its sicknesses. They talk of power and its excesses. They point at Akinwumi Ambode, the man who was brought low so that Sanwo-Olu could ride high. They remember Babatunde Fashola who escaped breathlessly simply because he was like Coca-Cola, more popular and successful than the parent company. They point at a Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos who serially used three deputy governors in a tenure of eight years. If I were the president, I would also look at this unedifying statistics and repack my big and small intestines.

A leader should be very careful on the way he treats his people, particularly, the companions who look up to him. There was an Orangun of Ila who bulldozed his way to power with charms, and then elevated the humiliation of his principal chiefs to an art. An Ila historian wrote that the king’s “humiliating treatment (of the chiefs) reached intolerable proportions when he frowned at seeing the Iwarefa (the kingmakers) in decent attires. When a chief made a new garment, he was obliged to excise the breast and patch it with a rag.” But every reign, no matter how glorious or inglorious, must come to an end. How did it end for that oba? He didn’t die on the throne. His character gave him a fate which made him farmer outside power. Ó fi’gbá ìtóòrò mu’mi nínú oko (he drank water with ìtóòrò melon calabash on the farm). I suggest you read ‘The Orangun Dynasty’, a very rich 1996 book on the history of the Igbomina stock of the Yoruba, authored by Ila Orangun’s very first university graduate, Prince Isaac Adebayo; check pages 40 and 41.

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A leader is a masquerade; he must not tear his own veil. When a leader makes and unmakes subordinates, he rends his own cover. “Ènìyàn l’aso mi” is a Yoruba expression which, in English means “people are my clothes; they are my covering.” As a Yoruba proverb, it emphasizes the importance of people in people’s lives. Whatever cloth the masquerade wears is that ‘thing’ that makes the wearer an Egungun. He must protect it because it is his store of power. But my people say power is like medicine; it intoxicates. A researcher adds that “ultimately, the accumulation of power becomes dangerous even to its owners.” Is that why someone saw “a link between mask and menace”?

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So, when we interrogate the use of power by the one we have come to call Lagos, we should always remind him that the costume is the sacred adornment which people see, respect and venerate in the masquerade. For a leader, his principal boys and girls are his costume, they are his cover. He needs them when harmattan comes with its fury. And harmattan will come whenever the masquerade repairs back to the grove when the festival is over, and it will be over.

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Even lions, kings of the jungle, place great value on strong bonds within their prides for survival and well-being. There is an old Irving King song on this: “The more we get together/The merrier we’ll be.” That song emphasizes human interconnectedness; the support embedded in community.

Jackals are opportunists, and they are many in this Lagos fight. Newton’s feuding-lion imagery is an evocation of the themes of strength, of hierarchy, and of consequence. It defines the strained relationship of one big expert with the other big man. The other part of his proverb ‘bombs’ the miserable jackals, minions who lurk around the battlefield, who thrive in chaos and on scraps from the feuding powers.

American novelist, Herman Melville, says a thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men. We should not live our lives as if we exist only for ourselves. Public ‘spanking’ of a governor for unknown and unsaid sins is petty. A president should have snubbed rebuff as his option of engagement. If I were him, If a ‘boy’ offended me, I would just ‘face front’ and concentrate on delivering the Chinaware I carry unbroken. If your load is a pot of palm oil, avoid stone throwers.

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But the president is not pacifist me. He enjoys fighting wars after wars. He is like Sango who desperately desired a fight but found no one to fight. Sango looked round and pounced on the wall and wrestled with it. There was also an Aare Ona Kakanfo who itched for a battle and could get none. He stoked a rebellion at home against himself and by himself violently put it down. Because of this and many more like it, the man was nicknamed Aburúmáku (the wicked one who refuses to die).

Are there no elders again where the feuding feudal lords come from? I read texts calling for propitiation. Why not? Appeasement without reason may look stupid but Napoleon Bonaparte settled it long ago when he said that “in politics stupidity is not a handicap.” Borrowing lines from Ulli Beier, I would say that now that men appear to have failed to stop this war with reason, women should be called upon to come and kill the fire. Our mothers are like Osun, “the wisdom of the forest; the wisdom of the river. Where the doctor failed, she cures with fresh water. Where medicine is impotent, she cures with cool water.”

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The first lady should therefore step out, open her Bible (KJV) to Mark 4:39 and read to her husband: “And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.”

If she does that, I will be encouraged to give the president two lines from William Shakespeare: “Come, wife, let’s in, and learn to govern better;/ For yet may England curse my wretched reign” (2 Henry VI, IV, ix, 4).

If our president’s reign won’t be cursed for wretchedness, he should prioritise the people’s welfare over serial petty fights with his boys. Nigerians are panting at home and reeling in pains at work; on the road, they groan. They are not entertained at all by presidential beer parlour brawls like Musician Ayinla Omowura’s last fight. You don’t become king and still keep trysts with crickets. No.

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OPINION: Ijebu And Their Six Tubers Of Yam [Monday Lines 2]

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By Lasisi Olagunju

One of the first jokes I picked when I moved to Ibadan 30 years ago is that failure of patronage is the only reason a drummer would go to Oke Ado. The Ibadan surmised that the Ijebu who lived almost exclusively at Oke Ado part of Ibadan never ever got moved to spend a dime on bards.

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Those who minted that joke should come back from the dead and see what we see now with the Ijebu. When the day breaks tomorrow, I will go to Oja’ba in Ibadan and ask folks there why their ancestors with relish said that the Ijebu did not appreciate good music and would not put their money on it. The Ijebu I see today do what the Ibadan said they would not do. In a magnificent way, they mass in their capital annually and stage a spectacular festival of culture and splendour. They call it Ojude Oba (the King’s Forecourt). It is an annual festival of sumptuous songs and dance, a parade of success and cultural opulence. They held another edition yesterday, and it is already contagious. Other Yoruba towns appear to be getting bitten by the Ijebu bug. We watch as they evolve.

The Ijebu are a very scrupulous people. It is in their oríkì that their fathers had six tubers of yam: they ate two, sold two and offered two to their gods. You can ponder that again: with moderate six survival items, they did justice to their present; justice to their future through trade and investment; justice to the divine who held the rope of life. Anyone who approaches life methodically like this is not likely to fail in any enterprise. In nuanced ways, the oríkì suggests that those who managed the six tubers did not eat with ten fingers. Their descendants still do not do it today: they party hard but they also work hard and trade intelligently; they worship God with utmost devotion.

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I watched a short video clip of the Ojude Oba event at 8am Sunday (yesterday). I grinned seeing everywhere in immaculate lush green, meticulous. Sponsors of the event, Mike Adenuga’s Globacom, has done it for a record twenty years. And both company and owner say they won’t stop doing so forever. Patriotism is love of country. So, what is love of home? “In love of home”, says Charles Dickens, “the love of country has its rise.” That is what Adenuga and his Globacom commit themselves to with Ojude Oba till eternity. With Globacom’s heavy lifting, Ojude Oba has become the biggest cultural festival in Nigeria today. They say they are taking it even further than where it is. Something there to copy by every big, rich man and woman from other towns. The ones who feel too big to lift their homestead to glow will likely live ‘homeless.’ We all should know, as William J. Bennett did, that “home is a shelter from storms – all sorts of storms.”

I did not read history, but I am a lover of history and a believer in what it teaches. I keep seeing in the past the road that led to today, and a possible pathway to the future. T. O. Ogunkoya, author of ‘The Early History of Ijebu’ published in December 1956 offers some glimpses into the elements that make up the Ijebu gene:
“Nobody knows the date of the first migration to Ijebu or the course that it took. Tradition states that it was led by a man named Olu-Iwa accompanied by two warrior companions, Ajebu and Olode. Olu-Iwa settled at Iwade, for Ijebu-Ode itself did not, as yet, exist. Ajebu was instructed to mark out with fire the boundary of the new land. He went westward to the lagoon and marked out the boundaries to the North, South and East as well. To Olode was given the task of marking out and planning the future city, a task which took him more than three years. So well did Ajebu and Olode do their work that the new town was named after them as ‘Ajebu-Olode’, now corrupted and called Ijebu-Ode.”

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The writer of that history said “there was ample evidence in favour of this tradition. He wrote that “In Ijebu-Ode today there stands in a prominent place in Olode Street a tomb dedicated to him and bearing the inscription ‘The resting place of Olode.’ In Imepe Street there can be seen a tomb dedicated to the memory of Ajebu. It may be taken for granted that these two men are historical figures whose names have been perpetuated in the name of the city.

Ogunkoya wrote that there is another theory of the origin of the name. He said “Portuguese maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries showed cuidade de Jabu or ‘the city of Ijebu.’ Now it is argued that the Ijebu, in common with people of similar ancestry, used the word Ode as a generic name for a town. So the Itschekri people had Ode Itschekri (Warri). The Ondo had Ode Ondo and the Ilaje Ode Ilaje. In Wadai (Sudan) there was an Ode Ijebu, suggesting the transference of the name of the ancient home to the new. In support of this view it is to be noted that until very recently all the village people in the province referred to the city simply as Ode. As they themselves are Ijebus they merely point to their capital town without associating their name with it.”

Note the meticulous mapping of the boundary and the planning of the city. Note that the exercise reportedly took whole three years! Note the communal appreciation of the pioneers who got the job done. Put all those side by side what other chapters of their history say of their survival as a people. They pay attention to details. They valourize themselves as masters of money. They say they’d been spending shillings before the white man arrived (Omo a n’áwó silè k’Óyìnbó tó dé/ Òyìnbó dé tán owó òún pò si). I plan to ask my Ijebu friends what that means. I will tell you whatever they tell me.

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Fourteen Years Of FOI: CTA Holds S’south Roundtable As Edo AG Seeks Open Governance

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By Joseph Ebi Kanjo, Benin

Edo State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Dr. Samson Osagie, on Monday said that any state government that desires to achieve true accountability and citizen engagement
must throw open the windows of its public institutions.

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Osagie spoke at a South South Regional Roundtable on 14 years of Freedom of Information Act in Nigeria organized by the Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA) in collaboration with the Edo State Ministry of Justice.

Represented by Mr. Festus Usiobaifo, Principal Counsel, Edo State Ministry of Justice, the Attorney General, while noting that his ministry, has, over time, “supported disclosures through inter-agency cooperation, training of public officers on compliance, and advisory opinions that promote openness in governance,” stressed that there is room for improvement.

He added: “Our ministries, departments, and agencies must not wait to be asked before releasing public information.

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“Data on budgets, contracts, procurements, and public health, for instance, should be available by default.”

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Earlier, in her welcome address, Executive Director, CTA, Faith Nwadishi, noted that the regional roundtable was part of a broader effort under the “Strengthening Accountability and Governance in Nigeria Initiative (SAGNI)—a 12-month project we are implementing with support from the Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Programme (RoLAC) and funding from the European Union through International IDEA.”

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The ED, representated by Mr. MacDonald Ekemezie, Programme/Communication Manager of CTA, added that the regional roundtable became necessary “because the challenges around access to public information in Nigeria have reached a critical stage,”

She further noted: “Even with efforts made by CSOs, some ministries and agencies, it is still difficult to obtain clear, timely, and complete information from most government agencies especially at the sub-national level and Local Government Areas.”

The ED lamented that fourteen years after the signing of the FOI, its implementation remains weak, and that many citizens are not aware of it or does not know its usage.

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“Fourteen years later, we must ask ourselves, ‘How far have we really come? Yes, there has been progress. But implementation remains weak. Many public institutions still operate in a culture of secrecy, while some are yet to establish the FOI unit.

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“Some websites are inactive even when the laws require proactive disclosures of information by MDAs. Some agencies both at the federal and sub-national levels outrightly refuse to respond to FOI requests,” she said

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On the level of usage amongst citizens, the ED said “from our work and recent baseline study in Anambra, Edo, and the FCT, we have seen the same patterns over and over again:
Over 70% of respondents have never used the FOI Act.

“Only 45.8% know how to apply for information.
Among those who have tried, over 75% received no response.
Youth, women, and persons with disabilities—some of our most critical voices—remain largely unaware or unsure of how to use this tool.”

In his goodwill message, Chairman, Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Edo State Council, Comrade Festus Alenkhe, lamented that despite ascension by President of Nigeria and recent judgement by the Supreme Court of Nigeria, many states are yet to fully implement or respond to FOI request.

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On his part, Dr. Jude Obasanmi, Chief Responsibility Officer, Jose Maria Escriva Foundation (JOSEF)., said based on the review at the roundtable, there was a need for continuous and sustained engagement because “people should not define the benefit of the law based on their comfort zone”.

Today, there is a governor and tomorrow another person will be governor. So, let us put a mechanism in place, such that if tomorrow that person is not there, such law they enacted would also be beneficial to them after leaving office.”

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He said though they have achieved a level of success, there is room for more engagement to carry more people along in FOI implementation.

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