By Suyi Ayodele

The yuletide is a season of merriment. Traditionally, a season of merriment and joy. It is a period of hope because it is the month that the Saviour was born. In Old English, Yuletide, as depicted by Norsemen, celebrates warmth, merriment and fellowship. Why is it now a period of blood and tears in Nigeria? What is our sin? We will employ a folktale to explain our present predicament.

Ikú (Death) once challenged Òrúnmìlà to a duel. Whoever won would eliminate the other alongside his household. Orunmila, the wise one, knew that no one could kill Ikú . Baba Àgbonnìrègún knew he had a big problem to solve. But there is always a solution to every problem.

Òrúnmìlà devised a means. He asked one of his wives, Òsúnlèyò, to befriend Àrùn (Disease), the wife of Iku. At that time, Àrùn had a contagious disease that made everyone avoid her. Therefore, it was a welcoming development that Òsúnlèyò, would want to be her friend.

After many days of interaction, Òsúnlèyò, broached the idea of the contest between Ikú and Òrúnmìlà, and Arun asked her to relax. “I know my husband, Ikú. He is a trickster. He will bring three strange objects concealed in three different pots. If your husband cannot name the objects, Iku will kill your husband and his entire household. But I will help you”, Àrùn assured Òsúnlèyò, She further instructed Òrúnmìlà’s wife that on the day of the contest, Òrúnmìlà should nominate his wife, Osunleyo, to solve the riddle of the mystery pots.

On the D-day, Ikú came with his pots. Òrúnmìlà and other deities gathered with bated breath. When the time was due, Ikú with his club raised, asked Òrúnmìlà to name the items in the pots. Majestically, Òrúnmìlà adjusted his divination bag and boasted that he, being an Òmòràn tíí mo aboyún ìgbín (the one who knows all things including a pregnant snail), would not condescend to name objects that an apprentice initiate could easily decipher. Rather, Òrúnmìlà said he would ask his wife, Osunleyo, to name the objects.

Pronto, Òsúnlèyò, stepped forward and named the objects in the three pots of Ikú to be the legs of a lame man, the head of a madman and the corpse of a hunchback. Ikú was dazed. He accepted defeat. But he added a caveat. Since his assignment from the Creator is to cut short people’s lives, he would not deviate from that. But rather than being brazen about it, he would ensure that humanity would, through their follies, look for death.

Like Ikú (death), President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came on May 29, 2023, with three mysterious pots. Each pot contains a strange item that Nigerians must decipher correctly if they are to live to tell the story of the untold hardship the new government will unleash on them.

In one of the pots, Tinubu deposited the legs of a lame man. Inside the second, he had the head of a madman and the third pot was the corpse of a hunchback. These three strange items have grave significance: spiritually and otherwise.

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This is not an esoteric exercise; so, we will not categorically say what each item represents. But we will adopt the Yoruba philosophy Ààbò òrò (half word). During our discourse, the Ààbò òrò will turn to “Odindi” (full word). This, however, will be on the understanding that those who will rise to defend President Tinubu in the present calamities that have befallen the entire country will imbibe the ethos of Omolúàbí and have the wisdom to turn Ààbò òròto Odindi.

This is exactly what happened to Nigerians in 2023 Ikú was standing by the wayside. Nigerians willingly invited him to their abodes. It began in 2015. Through the error of judgments, Nigerians voluntarily invited Ikú (Death) to their closets. Not even the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has records of how many Nigerians have died sheepishly and cheaply since the current locust of leaders took over the administration of this country in 2015.

For the eight ruinous years General Muhammadu Buhari spent picking his teeth while the nation drifted to the bottomless pit, Nigerians died in their thousands in the hands of killer herdsmen, Boko Haram insurgents, kidnappers and other felons who visited “sorrow, tears and blood” upon the people.

In the current administration of Tinubu, the contents of the strange pots the Jagaban Borgu came along with at his inauguration have continued to hunt and hurt us. The wicked and rudderless economic policies of the administration, which like the legs of a lame and the head of a madman, have led many Nigerians to their untimely death. The pain of directionless economic permutations is like the one associated with hunchback; there is no folding it, there is no bending it! The NBS released damning statistics, which the Bureau was forced to recant as a product of a hacked platform, last week. But are we all deceived? If the government pretends not to know its own lies, don’t we, as a people know the truth?

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The Yuletide brings good tidings in sane climes. In the Nigeria of the locust leaders, as we have now, the Yuletide is a bloody season! We are different from others in many ways. Nothing works for us; nothing works in our favour, and we question nothing. We are too unfortunate not to have Àrùn, who could tell us about the secrets in Tinubu’s strange pots. This is why when one ugly event occurs, all we do is mourn. The next minute, we behave like nothing had happened. We resign to fate and ‘faith’ so easily. Nigerians are a pummelled people, always at the mercy of callous leadership!

Here, life is cheap. But death is much cheaper in our clime. For a measure of rice, a pack of noodles and fingertips-counted seeds of beans, Nigerians die in their scores because an unfeeling leadership has imposed on the nation a strangulating economic policy that leads to nowhere but the shallow graves of the victims!

From Ibadan, Oyo State, to Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, and Okija in Ihiala Local Government Area of Anambra State, and to the next unknown destination, death hovers over us like the proverbial sword of Damocles. We can only count the number of known victims. Many more are there unaccounted for, just as many are lurking in the corners, waiting to take their spots in the shallow graves where we bury our victims.

And we are all victims, though we are not all dead yet. We don’t even have to have relations among the dead. As long as we read about their news and feel sorrowful about it, we are all victims. Victims of inept leadership; victims of wickedness that those we entrust our future daily dish out from their cosy offices and homes.

It started in Ibadan on Wednesday, December 18. A ‘philanthropist’, that is the narrative they want us to project, and former queen of Oba Enitan Ogunwusi, the Ooni of Ife, Prophetess Naomi Silekunola, in conjunction with a popular radio presenter, Oriyomi Hamzat, promoted a freebies programme that would give N5,000 to 5,000 children from the age of 18 downwards. That was what Ikú in the Tinubu administration needed to strike. A freebie that targeted children in the cast has its spiritual implications. But we shall not dwell on that here.

For a programme slated for 10 am, Nigerians in their thousands thronged the Islamic High School, Bashorun, Ibadan, playfield, the venue of the proposed programme as early as 5 am. Many were said to have slept overnight at the venue to be among the “first 5,000″. Parents threw toddlers over the fence while they scaled the high fence to get a common N5,000. Ikú waited. Like it promised Òrúnmìlà, he would not strike brazenly again but would allow human beings to seek him through their follies.

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The ensuing stampede led to the death of 35 children. Many of the children were not up to two years old. Hamzat, in one of the reactions to the incident, said while the rescue operation was ongoing, he encountered women who came with their babies for gifts. A woman was said to be looking for her four-month-old baby among the over 10,000 people who had gathered for the freebies. Pray, why would a nursing mother venture out of her house with a four-month-old baby strapped to her back? Poverty!

Poverty is what this government sells in abundance. The tragedy spares no one. Everything that gives hope has disappeared. When there is hunger, wisdom is always in short supply. That is what Ibadan experienced last Wednesday, the flight of wisdom in the face of acute hunger! What will N5,000 buy in the Nigeria of Tinubu? But it would not matter. Nigerians have gotten to that level that if another freebies programme is organised at Bashorun High School, people would travel all the way from Alakia to partake. That is what deliberate poverty does. The government knows this; those in power know that it is a veritable instrument to keep the masses subjugated.

I have read comments about the faults of Prophetess Silekunola and the Agidigbo FM, organisers of the Ibadan programme of death. I agree that the organisers should have been more thorough and put measures in place to avoid the disaster. Their failure to do that makes them liable.

But beyond that, can we ask why Nigerians would sleep in an open field overnight just to collect N5,000 at daybreak? This is where those exonerating President Tinubu and his economic policies of death are getting it wrong. If there is any culprit for this disaster, it is President Tinubu! It is not enough that the President cancelled the Lagos boat regatta to honour the dead. The greatest honour President Tinubu can give to the dead and those who will still be victims is for him to begin to think outside the box.

President Tinubu must know or must be told that none of his economic policies has worked, is working or likely going to work. The President must be told that his government, like the immediate past Buhari government, has eliminated the middle class. He must be told in clear terms that Nigerians are hungry. When a man experiences the pang of hunger the way Nigerians are now, wisdom and discretion become irrelevant. There is no deity like hunger; it kills faster than death itself.

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Olóbòbòtiribò in Yoruba cosmology, is the god of the throat and stomach. It is a deity that requires daily sacrifice. The sacrificial items are the same edibles that this administration has taken away from the people. Before these present gangs took over in 2015, Nigerians could get a bag of rice for as cheap as N3,500. That was why nobody had time to organise rice palliative distribution in Abuja or Okija. Nigerians had no reason to die while scrambling for bags of rice at an unorganised distribution centre because a bag of 50kg of foreign rice was sold at N7,500 in 2015.

Just 19 months ago when President Tinubu came into the saddle, a bag of rice was still sold for N35,000. Today, that same quantity and less quality of rice goes for N120,000. This is why despite the much publicity the Ibadan tragedy attracted, Nigerians still gathered in Abuja and Okija to receive their slots of death! This is sad! But more sadly, it will happen again!

The people in Orunmila’s time were lucky. They had Àrùn, the compassionate wife of Ikú, to save them by leaking the secrets of the mystery pots to them. Who is that compassionate Àrùn in the Tinubu government, in Tinubu’s household, and among his kitchen cabinet? Who is that man or woman with the milk of kindness?

Hours after the Ibadan tragedy, the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, was all over Abuja, canvassing for how the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) would help him ‘capture’ Oyo State in 2027! That is how unfeeling our leaders are. Ikú said he would not kill unless the people, through their follies, invited him. This is a lesson for us all. We are at liberty to invite Ikú again in 2027!

Most of the calamities of the last 19 months are self-inflicted because we refused to scrutinise the gifts of the legs of a lame, the head of a madman and the corpse of hunchback Tinubu gave to us at his inauguration. President Tinubu must know that the ancient greeting for the Yuletide is: “Compliments of the Season.” History will not be kind to him if he should turn it into “Bloodiness of the Season! This is sad enough!