News

Tribune At 75: A Bouquet Of Stories [Monday Lines]

Published

11 months ago

November 11, 2024

By Lasisi Olagunju

It happened that the NCNC-controlled Ibadan District Council (IDC) under the chairmanship of Alhaji Adegoke Adelabu chose a Saturday, 7 January, 1956, to sit. The council took a decision at that meeting to suspend the salaries of the Olubadan, Oba I. B. Akinyele; Otun Olubadan, Chief Yesufu Kobiowu and the Balogun, Chief Salawu Aminu. Councillor Yinusa Ladoja who moved the motion for the suspension said the offence of the three was that they had not been attending the council’s meeting regularly.

The council passed another motion declaring that Chief E.A. Adeyemo, its treasurer, “should henceforth be known as Mr. Adeyemo” and that if the Chief was against being called a Mr, he should resign his position as the IDC treasurer. The same IDC had earlier appointed and installed an ‘Olubadan’ without recourse to the regional government. The audacity of power in that action could not prevail, it failed. The war of salary suspension was a continuation of that botched putsch.

Some persons and institutions exist to fight other people’s wars. The archives are full of Nigerian Tribune’s wars against powers and principalities. The Olubadan vs IDC war above is one of such. From that point till victory came the way of the harassed, Tribune did not sheathe its sword. As the victims of power scrambled to ward off the impudence of local politics, the battle became that of the newspaper and its operatives. And, it needs not be said that the palm trees of Ijaye till today bear scars of Ogunmola’s war. Olubadan Isaac Akinyele and his chiefs prevailed on that occasion and on other matters. Indeed, each of those chiefs, at God’s appointed time, later rose to become the Olubadan.

What do you give an old man who has everything? Ralph Waldo Emerson asks the poet to bring his poem, the painter his picture, the shepherd his lamb. But how about presenting the old poet his own poem, the singer his song, and the painter his painting exploits as proof of their worthy existence? A newspaper lives by telling stories of events as they break – and commenting on them. The reports may be pleasant – they are seldom pleasant. They may be gory and bad – bad news are good news. How well they sing and how long they have stood against the elements tell of a bard’s success. I retold the story above in celebration of Tribune’s 75 years of consequential existence.

A good newspaper is a recorder of history and a predictor of the future. Let us go to another Tribune exclusive; the report of a crime that was committed 63 years ago:

‘The Head on A Bike’ was the lead story of the Nigerian Tribune of Tuesday, 7 November, 1961. It was the report of the murder of a 38-year-old Muslim priest who was killed on Saturday, 4 November, 1961 in Iperu, Remo Division of the old Western Region. The man met his death while he was going to the mosque for his early morning prayer. Who did it? One Kehinde, aged 27, did it and owned the crime. I reproduce, verbatim, the story as published by the Nigerian Tribune 63 years ago:

“A first-hand account of the development which followed the beheading of the priest was given the Tribune yesterday by Mr. Subomi Balogun, crown counsel in the Western Nigeria Ministry of Justice. He ran into the assassin while he (the assassin) was still conveying the preacher’s head on a bicycle. ‘It was a terrible situation,’ the counsel exclaimed.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: In Defence Of Nepotism [Monday Lines]

“Mr. Balogun said he was returning from Lagos when he found a man on a bicycle with a human head dripping blood. A crowd of people were trailing after him as he progressed towards the police station with a cutlass shining in his hand. The crown counsel then drove straight to the station, announced himself, and requested that the Nigeria Police be contacted immediately to take up the matter.

“‘Soon, the man came in, placed the head down and put his foot on it,’ the crown counsel added. The constables broke up in commotion and not until the assassin threw down his cutlass that the constable reentered the station. But there were no Nigeria Police around.

“On his way to Ibadan, however, the counsel saw some traffic policemen and instructed them to proceed to Iperu to take up the matter.

“’I asked them to report to my ministry as soon as investigations are completed but we are yet to receive a report,’ Mr. Subomi Balogun added.” End of story.

Now, you may be wondering why I picked that gory news report for this piece? The interest went beyond the oddity of a murderer holding aloft the head of his victim. The victim was neither a celebrity nor a public figure and the event happened in a small rural community where newspapers might not sell. Yet, the Tribune used the news as its lead story. Did you also notice the name of the crown counsel in the story? Subomi Balogun. I noted the lawyer’s impressive sense of duty – he didn’t have to do all he did there in pursuit of justice for the victim and the villain. The lawyer’s initiatives at that scene and his success going forward taught lessons in how diligence in youth could lead to greatness later in life.

When it turned 20 in 1969, the Nigerian Tribune ran an editorial in which it reminded itself of its founding promise and pledged itself to it: “When this newspaper was founded in November 1949, its founder chose for it an appropriate title. In Roman history the tribune of the people was one of two or ten officers chosen by the people to protect their liberties against senate and consuls. And this is the role which the Nigerian Tribune has been playing…The greatest tragedy that could befall a newspaper is for that newspaper to change its basic character and become mealy-mouthed in response to oppression and pressures. For that would be a gross and unforgivable betrayal of the trust of its readers and advertisers. That tragedy will NEVER befall this newspaper.”

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Petrol Price As Slow Poison [Monday Lines]

I was not there when the story of the Nigerian Tribune started 75 years ago. But if a child did not meet an event, he would meet its account. And I am here now. What birthday gift can be better for a 75-year-old than a recap of the good they have done? Here, today, I reproduce stories which even Tribune itself may not remember it ever told. Events may be local in setting but history teaches us that no event that has made it into a newspaper of value is, with the benefit of hindsight, local. That is why I started this tribute with the Ibadan story.

In politics, if the northern Nigerian woman voted yesterday and will vote tomorrow, she has the Nigerian Tribune to thank. You will find it difficult to believe that years after independence, the northern establishment still foot-dragged on granting women of that region the right to vote. And, you know, the northern region was not just today’s North East and North West. It started from Offa and Erin Ile, pure, secular Yoruba towns, stretching northwards through Benue, Plateau, to the borders with Niger Republic and Chad. Women in all those places were banned from voting in general elections. And they were in an independent country. The Nigerian Tribune went all out shouting from the rooftops: “Give them the votes.”

I quote from its editorial of Thursday, 25 March, 1965: “It has become a habit whenever we talk of the desirability of giving votes to the women in the North, the temporary rulers of that region will tell us that this inalienable right of the women would be conceded only when the Northern potentates want it. This is a wrong approach… After all, voting is not obligatory either in our constitution or statute. If the Sardauna and his co-travellers do not want their wives in purdah to go out for voting at election time, they can so order as husbands and wives. On the other hand those whose hands are not tied down by religious susceptibility MUST be given the right to vote. It is as simple as that.”

For making that noise, and championing that cause, the paper, its owners and its journalists were abused and accused of ‘goading’ the north into a precipitate action on a matter that was for the region to decide. But the Tribune said no, a citizen’s right to vote would never be a regional issue, it was constitutional and national. The newspaper fought and won that war. The results are in the millions of votes which today give the north bragging swags of numerical advantage. So, when we write and we are abused by today’s temporary rulers and their minions, we shrug them off because we have the past to reassure and console us that we are right, they are wrong.

When elections became very costly and increasingly scandalous as we have them now, the Nigerian Tribune did not keep quiet. I read a 1965 editorial carrying a brutal title: ‘White Elephant Elections.’ Sometime in the early 1960s, the northern regional government barred civil servants from acquiring more than one plot of land to build petrol stations. The Nigerian Tribune praised that action but declared, in another editorial, that politicians who made the law needed it more than the hapless civil servants.

Courage and diligence and abundance of grace are ingredients of success in life. Decades of loyalty to its goals, fidelity to truth garnished with the right dose of intransigence, gave the Nigerian Tribune reasons for its existence. It will be 75 years old on Saturday this week. The paper’s story is a story of struggle and survival in the midst of thorns and thistles of politics, of business and, even of life.

The Chicago Tribune was founded in 1847 – a century plus two years before the birth of its Nigerian namesake. It came clutching a statement of principles which emphasized a newspaper’s reason for existence: “…to present the news of the day, to foster commerce and industry, to inform and lead public opinion, and to furnish that vital check upon government which no constitution has ever been able to provide.” When it celebrated its 175th anniversary, it proudly announced that it had spent all its years “carrying out the mission of delivering the truth every day.” The Nigerian Tribune, since its birth in 1949, has been doing exactly that. It is a citizen of Nigeria domiciled in Ibadan, Western Nigeria. It has come a long way reporting local and national, fighting big and small wars that test the will of courage. Where and when it faltered, it admitted its errors, made amends and moved on. In all its battles, the integrity of its founder – and of all its owners, plus the incredibly fierce loyalty of generations of its workforce and readers have been the bulwark of its defence. It is the reason why it is alive to celebrate its 75th anniversary this week Saturday.

When I sauntered into Ibadan in May 1995 to pick up this job at the Tribune House, there were other options in that city. There was a newspaper called Third Eye which paid double what Tribune offered. There was the Daily Sketch nestled comfortably between Cocoa House and Kingsway building, and not far from a high-rise glass building called Broking House. Today, those other papers exist as mere memories. What killed them?

Leo Bogart’s ‘Newspapers in Transition’ published in The Wilson Quarterly in 1982 reads like it was written for the Lagos-Ibadan press of today. “The fallen giants in the business have been stricken by the sickness of their home cities…,” he wrote. When an American evening newspaper, the Minneapolis Star, was rested in April 1982, its editor, Stephen Isaacs, was asked by American monthly news trade magazine, Editor & Publisher (E&P), what he thought the future of the newspaper press looked like. Isaacs looked deep into space and said: “What do I see ahead? I talked to many publishers recently and was startled by the number who have in effect told me that the newspaper business is a dying industry. A dinosaur. Some will survive – the very big and the very small – but the in-betweens are going to face rough going in the electronic era…” His inner eye was sharp. Between that time – 42 years ago – and now, a lot of water has escaped the media dam down into nothingness.

Against all odds, the Nigerian Tribune has survived these past 75 years. What are the secrets? Lawrence Pinkham, professor of history and journalism, suggests that a newspaper won’t have problems safeguarding its existence if it manages to find ways to balance “the double necessity of staying in business and staying in journalism.” That is one dilemma that wracks the present as it wrecked the past and threatens the future.

By age and reputation, the Tribune is firmly established as Nigeria’s authentic newspaper of record. The sheer volume and the integrity of its archives qualify it as a national asset. The authenticity of its past and position, the wisdom in its age, the independence of its opinion and the audacity of its truth have combined to hoist it on a pedestal of importance. Go to the archives and check the names that have written for it: Bisi Onabanjo, Lateef Jakande, Gani Fawehinmi, Tai Solarin, Justice Adewale Thompson, Wumi Adegbonmire, Tola Adeniyi, Banji Ogundele, Banji Kuroloja, Biodun Oduwole, Folu Olamiti, Garba Shehu, Shehu Sani, Yinka Odumakin, Pius Adesanmi. What I have taken here is a risk. The list I wrote is incomplete. I beg for the forgiveness of the unlisted. I had to name names as a sample of the goodly heritage we carry.

At the DAME awards event in Lagos last year, Mr Eluem Emeka Izeze, many years Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian walked up to me, congratulated me on winning the Informed Commentary category of the awards the fourth time consecutively. He said the Tribune historically was famed as the king of uncompromising commentary and column writing in Nigeria. He particularly congratulated the newspaper and its columnists on their keeping alive the Ibadan content of the Lagos-Ibadan press axis. It is a privilege we have. We also owe it as a debt to the past and a duty to the future.

It is sweet to celebrate with Tribune at 75. But it is also a challenge, daunting in its demands. After it survived its darkest moment, its founder, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, christened the Nigerian Tribune Apamaku (survivor). What does it mean to refuse to die? Celebrating Tribune’s 50 years of existence in his Uncle Bola’s Column in the Sunday Tribune of 7 November, 1999, Chief Bola Ige wrote that the heritage we have defies fear. More importantly, our bequest
exalts excellence and promotes industry. Uncle Bola wrote: “Obafemi Awolowo and his Tribune have no place for lazy writers or those who could not research whatever they wrote. Every one of us who writes for or in the Tribune must never forget this, especially in today’s Nigeria which is befuddled with mediocrity and lack of seriousness.” This explains why we write what we write. Why we publish what we publish. It should also explain why the Tribune refused to die yesterday and won’t die tomorrow. Happy 75th birthday.

News

OPINION: Ofala: Glo And An Invite From Agbogidi

Published

8 hours ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

‘Teacher of Light’ is the title of a biography of Chinua Achebe written by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Tijan Sallah. What does it mean to teach light? Or, rather, what is light? If you know what darkness does, you would know what light means and the value it holds.

“When the moon is shining, the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.” With that proverb and its moon metaphor, Chinua Achebe established himself as a true teacher of light. My muse pushed the proverb to my presence as I read through an invitation to me from the Obi of Onitsha asking that I be part of this year’s Ofala Festival. It occurred to me that moment that it is not only the moon that gives light; culture is an illuminator, it also gives light, especially to people like me who routinely forget how to dance to ancestral summons.

I had the very rare privilege of being honoured by the Nigerian Academy of Letters with its Honorary Fellowship in August this year. From the North to the South, only three Nigerians were so honoured: I was one; my brother, culture scholar and media icon, Jahman Anikulapo, was one; the deeply intellectual Obi of Onitsha, His Majesty Igwe Nnaemeka Alfred Ugochukwu Achebe (Agbogidi), was the third, the biggest of us. At that ceremony, the Obi, who said he had looked forward to meeting me, met me, held me and has kept me close as a son.

So, his invite to the Ofala Festival came. The festival holds this week. I wish I could be there as the king’s guest; but wishes are not horses. Because the mountain here is blocking the view of the mountain over there, I cannot honour the invitation. So I prayed for the success of the festival. The Obi answered with a thunderous ‘Amen’.

Ofala? I checked and found that the word “Ofala” is an enduring offspring of the Igbo words ọfọ (authority) and ala (land). Ofala is history retold in performance; it is also culture renewed. It relives the Obi’s authority over the land and its people.

Ofala is Obi’s return from sacred silence. The festival celebrates royalty’s reborn, and the Ndichie’s renewal of loyalty to the king. In Iru Ofala and Azu Ofala, the king returns from ancestral presence to repossess his warriors with their red caps.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: ‘Federal Highways of Horror’

Etymologists say the word ‘festival’ derives from the Latin ‘festum’. Anthropologists have followed the word through centuries and civilisations as its meaning evolved across cultures and disciplines. Émile Durkheim and James George Frazer were influential figures in early anthropology. Scholars, in summaries, say that to Durkheim and Frazer, festivals are communal expressions of belief and solidarity. They say that with festivals, people renew their social and spiritual bonds. In Ofala, we see that they are right.

Leo Frobenius, German ethnologist and archaeologist, was in Africa on multiple occasions between 1904 and 1935. In the 1910s, Frobenius observed festivals in diverse places; he documented them and saw in them vital celebrations of familial, tribal, and religious life deeply rooted in ancestral history and beliefs.

The German observed right. Ofala and similar festivals bind communities; they celebrate social cohesion and keep sacred traditions alive. They fuse communal history with spiritual renewal and survival. In them, the rhythm of everyday life comes alive.

Ofala has grown to attract great brands. Its major sponsor is telecoms giant, Globacom, which has been there since 2011. I have very solid people in Globacom, which makes me an envoy of its greenery and deepens my interest in everything, particularly, festivals in which the company is involved.

The Yoruba tell their children: When you behold greatness, honour it with reverence. Tí o bá ri olá, pón olá lé. That is what I am doing here. It is what Globacom’s long partnership with the Obi and Ofala does; an act of reverence to the greatness of the culture that birthed them.

From Lisabi in Abeokuta to Ojude Oba in Ijebu-Ode, and from Ofala in Onitsha to other vibrant festivals across the land, Globacom’s partnerships reflect a philosophy rooted in understanding that just as a zebra is defined by its stripes, a people are defined by their culture. In other words, a person without culture is like a zebra without stripes. Sustaining culture is sustaining the people.

That is what corporate sponsorship does to cultural events. Obi’s people say in a proverb, “Nku di na mba na-eghere mba nri (The firewood of a community cooks for that community).” Globacom’s firewood has kept the flame of the festivals it supports alive, warming the hearts of millions who gather yearly to honour tradition.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION Generals, Marabouts And Boko Haram

To sponsor a festival is one thing; but to nurture its essence and future is another. Through resources and resourcefulness, community engagement, and cultural reverence, Globacom has redefined what corporate responsibility can mean. That is what I gleened from the firm. I agree with those words. Shakespeare writes in Hamlet that “The purpose of playing… is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.” The playwright suggests that the aim of acting and theater is to reflect reality, showing “virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”.

By supporting these festivals, the company, Glo, holds up a mirror to our shared identity, allowing us to see ourselves, our beauty, our resilience, our history.

Globacom became a major sponsor of the Ofala Festival in 2011 and has sustained the sponsorship yearly since then. Fourteen years on, like the Ekwe and the Udu, two Igbo drums beating the same rhythm, the company’s unwavering support has demonstrated that corporate success and cultural preservation can walk (and work) together. I read this out and my friend, the Igbo man, chipped in: “Egbe bere, ugo bere” (let the kite perch and let the eagle perch). When business and tradition walk together, culture gains.

The Yoruba routinely remind us that it is when we walk in the rain that we know who truly walks with us. Companies get involved in arts and culture for various reasons. Some, like leeches, place their names beside great traditions so as to benefit from the greatness. But what I see with Glo here is much more than profit in cash and kind. I see a telecoms giant, wholly indigenous, that has chosen to walk tall with the ancestors, deploying its enormous muscle to connect the past and their history to the world of the modern. One word defines this; it is renewal.

The rich who spend on their people’s historical and cultural essence are not frivolous; neither are they stupid. It is patriotism; if you like, call it cultural nationalism. The wealth of culture, like all wealth, grows when shared.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Every democracy ‘Murders Itself’

Cultural promotion yields dividends that confound account books. It stitches the torn fabric of community; it keeps the hearth of local enterprise burning, and rekindles pride in who we are and where we come from. It renews pride in our shared heritage. It makes us all richer.

If you do well the society notes and records all you do for posterity. The Alake and paramount ruler of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo said in 2017 that “Glo is number one in culture and support for the people. The company pioneered per second billing and others followed.” The Alake wrote that admirable testimonial eight years ago. The flag of patriotism is still there on the mountain top, flying.

In Ofala, the king dances the dance of joy of a fresh start. In the drumbeats and dance steps, the king delights that yam is harvested as proof of life, not of death. The beats retell a people’s story as told by the ancestors. A people are as strong as the stories they tell of themselves.

This weekend (Friday and Saturday), Onitsha will be draped in Globacom’s green, the colour of growth and renewal. Colour green in French is vert, the Italian call it verde, the Spanish, in Castilian voice, say it is verde. They all draw their source from the Latin word for green which is viridis, a word that denotes freshness and vitality. History is an endless rope. English words, verdant and viridian, have this same Roman ancestry. To viridis again belongs “a large family of other words that evoke vigor, growth, and life: virere (to be green, to be vigorous), vis (strength), vir (man, masculine singular), ver (spring), virga (stem, rod), perhaps even virtus (courage, virtue).” For those insights, check French professor of medieval history, Michel Pastoureau’s ‘Green: The History of a Color’ as translated by Jody Gladding.

Whenever I meet Globacom chairman, Dr Mike Adenuga Jr, I intend to ask him the specific reason he chose colour green for his giant.

I congratulate the Obi and Glo as the moon glows on Ofala. In the dance of that festival, drums speak, colours sing, and heritage dances. In perfect rhythm, the people breathe, act and rejoice as tradition bathes in innovation. With the moon shining brighter, Obi’s land is renewed this weekend. Congratulations, Agbogidi.

News

OPINION: ‘Federal Highways of Horror’

Published

9 hours ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

You know where the latest anti-government journalists are in Lagos? Kirikiri. On a day that Nigerians were celebrating an additional spur of 100 kilometres to the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road, the killjoys of Kirikiri struck. They took a happy, joyous people of 200 million on a gruelling, bumpy ride across the country. They ran painful stories of craters and potholes and headlined them: ‘Federal Highways of Horror.’

It is a miracle that our Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, has not pummeled the Lagos newspaper called Vanguard. It ran the bad stories. It is still unclear why the minister has not rebuked its owner and spanked its journalists for publishing what they were not supposed to publish. Not once, but twice, last week they allowed the devil to use them to tell stories of collapsed federal roads from the north to the south. Their stories portrayed hardworking Umahi as a failure in monumental proportions.

Those journalists, injected with an overdose of impudence, said they did an investigation. They painted a grim picture of federal highways across multiple Nigerian states suffering severe neglect. They said the neglect has made travel dangerous, expensive, and time-consuming. They wrote as if they were sent to pull down a house built by God.

In the South, they came up with a long list of bad roads. They said northern states shared the same story of pain. They described some roads as crater-filled horror scenes; some as barely passable, others as sites long abandoned by contractors. On the few ones harbouring contractors, the signs they displayed showed slow men at work.

It does not rain; it pours. Amid narratives of millions of bad federal roads, Umahi made himself professor last week. “I am a professor of Engineering,” he announced on national television. Professor Umahi? I pray he is not asked to name the king who blessed him with that chieftaincy title. Some Arise News television journalists, whose eyes lack lashes, forced him to make himself professor. They habitually tug at the hem of Umahi’s professorial gown. They pelt him with questions that should never be asked. They remind our working Minister of Works that a river that is not dirty does not hide its depth. Last week, they demanded the cost of federal roads per kilometre. Who does that? And, I am happy, Minister Umahi gave it back to them. He said they are illiterates. Yeah. Don’t they know that for our federal government, spirits decide the total costs of projects? If they were truly not illiterates, they would know that this government is a wholesale seller and buyer; it is too rich to do retail business measured with short tape rules and elementary school rulers.

Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde, thought because he was governor and engineer he could join the talk and say that calculating the average cost per kilometre was possible in road construction. He was similarly told by our minister to shut up or he would be summoned to a debate on the very difficult mathematics of road construction. Umahi said he is Makinde’s senior in engineering. Senior Prefect Umahi described electrical electronics engineers as ‘technicians’ who must not speak on project costs.

Now, what we are told to hold as knowledge from Professor Umahi is that it is impossible to know how much a kilometre of road costs in Nigeria until such projects are completed. God is great. The World Bank must have missed that wisdom back in 1999 when it created the Road Costs Knowledge System (ROCKS), a database that calmly lists what it costs to build or fix a kilometre of road from Umahi’s village in Ebonyi to Makinde’s Ajia in Ibadan. A key feature of the World Bank’s ROCKS is its record of actual and estimated road work costs, clearly defined per kilometre and per square metre. Apparently, only in Nigeria do roads and their costs defy mathematics and logic.

In utter helplessness, we watch the roads and their costs stretch and shrink like chewing gum depending on whose fingers are working the calculator. While other countries classify their roads by type and cost per kilometre, we prefer a more spiritual approach – if you are an enemy, call it faith-based budgeting.

Clarity is the father of all openness. Why is it missing here? Again, that is not a question or a proverb that we must hear again from anyone, especially professional troublemakers called journalists. What is the problem of Nigerian journalists? Because their eyes have no skin, they query power. Where a cup is half-full, what our journalists see all their lives is a half-empty cup. They didn’t start today. They are historically insolent. What they do to this government, they did to even our ancestor, Lord Lugard, in 1913, one full year before Amalgamation. On 8 March, 1913, one rude journalist working with a newspaper called Lagos Weekly Record wrote that Lugard was a wicked, ruthless character, “a man whose walking stick is a pistol and whose thoughts by day and dreams at night are punitive expeditions and military patrols.”

And what was Lugard’s reaction to such attacks? He fought them with laws and knocks. At a point, he documented their impudence with a letter to his wife, Flora. In the letter, he bunched the journalist with all the other “educated native” who deserved no sympathy. He wrote about the native enemy of the state: “His loud and arrogant conceit are distasteful to me, his lack of natural dignity and of courtesy antagonise me.” Lugard’s biographer, Margery Perham, graciously remembered to put this in the book: ‘Lugard: The Years of Authority’ on page 585. If you can’t get Perham but are fortunate to get Jonathan Derrick’s ‘Africa, Empire and Fleet Street’, check the details there. They are on page 115.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Hobbes, Nigeria, And Sarkozy

So, as Lugard, the creator of Nigeria rightly wrote, the Nigerian journalist is arrogant and lacks courtesy. Such are called alárífín in Yoruba. In the days of old, the crime of àrífín carried capital punishment. Aróbafín l’oba npa. But today’s journalists are lucky that they are in a republican democracy. Even then, someone should pay for their bad behaviour. The slap they get from ministers like Umahi is the first tranche of the cost of their bad manners.

What should the state do to the conceited who won’t let expressway contracts be awarded expressly in peace? I have a solution to their problem: Like the Vanguard, they should all be relocated to Kirikiri; all of them, from Lagos to Ibadan; from Ibadan to Lagos. And, if I had my way, I would tip off Umahi and all his harangued hardworking colleagues to award contracts this week for more cells for enemies of the president’s coastal elephant and other projects of renewal. Their new accommodation should enjoy maximum security. They deserve Kirikiri, Kirikiri deserves them.

What comes fast cannot be delayed again. It happened to cricket. Cricket set his wedding day and simultaneously asked his doctor to start preparing for child delivery. The contracts for a safe house for Nigerian journalists can be awarded today, or, latest tomorrow. There is no need for formalities. Exactly like the Coastal Road contract, this is another no for competitive bidding. We already know contractors with proven track records of expertise in casting beams and building cells. We select and hit the site digging. We can fix the contract cost after the job is done.

From this point, we see long shadows over the country; there is no clarity about important things government do. But, one day soon, like sun rays, clarity will force its way in; it is the father of openness.

Now, beyond the scaffold of satire, I wish I could just tear the mask and tell Minister Umahi that what we have today under his watch is road transportation without roads. And he is Minister of Works in charge of roads. It is a shame.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Every democracy ‘Murders Itself’

In May this year (2025), I wrote ‘The shame of Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road.’ The first two paragraphs of the piece read:

“Mr Dele Alake represents Ekiti State in the Federal Executive Council. Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola represents Osun State in the Federal Executive Council. Mr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo represents Ondo State in the Federal Executive Council. All three of them are the president’s core men. Each time the council sits and approves federal roads for reconstruction in states other than theirs, what goes on in their minds? They are very powerful ministers but all federal roads that lead to their states are decrepit and abandoned. And they know. So, what is the problem?

“The Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road that links these ministers’ states to Lagos and to the North is the worst in Nigeria. Senate leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, is from Ekiti State. He belongs to the president’s inner caucus. Tough-talking PDP Senator Francis Fadahunsi represents Ife-Ijesa senatorial district. There are seven other senators and several Reps of APC and PDP from those three states. Has anyone heard them say or do anything to make that road well again? Do these people go home and how do they get home whenever they go home? Nigerians of all states lose lives and limbs on that road daily. Death by installments on the road is harrowing and it is a daily experience. It is a fitting tribute to the attention we pay to our people’s welfare.”

That was on May 12, 2025 (five months ago). If the road was “going, going” when I wrote that piece, it is gone now. Gone. An ex-senator told a columnist in May this year that N20 billion had been “released for repairs” of that road. In August 2025, Umahi announced the release of 30 percent of the contract sum. How much is the contract sum? Don’t even go there. If you go there, the minister will be angry. He will remind you that you are not a road professor. If you must ask any question at all, ask what has happened to what Umahi said was released, his 30 percent. Ask, because, nothing that is worth one kobo has happened on that road this year.

But the total collapse of the road did not come to me as a surprise. By the noon of May 12, 2025 when I published the article, one of the senators I called out in the piece called me.

“They have just read to me what you wrote.” He told me. Big men don’t read newspapers; newspapers are read to big men. Senator said he laughed at my naivety. He wondered why I was disturbing myself writing rubbish about a contract that may never be executed.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: A Minister’s Message To Me

“Do you think Nigeria can ever be better than it is? (Sé ìwo rò wípé Nigeria lè dára jù báyìí lo ni?)” He asked and proceeded to shame me with names, facts and figures all of which answered his question with a no. He said I should record and publish all he said. I laughed at the audacity of his directive. An orphan like me will never dare court a wound on the back.

Besides, I was taught early in life to make my eyes flexible enough for them to see the nose. That was the wisdom that eluded Partridge who claimed to know it all, and because he made that claim, he blocked his own opportunity to learn Ifá from the pigeon. ‘Mo m’Obàrà, mo m’Ofún,’ tí kò j e kí ẹyẹlé k’ àparò n’Ífá (I know Obàrà, I know Ofún’ made the pigeon not to teach Ifá to the partridge).

So, my pigeon listened attentively to the incantation from the hawk. This senator ended his long, windy speech with a submission that the Ibadan-Ife-Ilesa road, and other federal roads in the South-West were decrepit and abandoned because the Works Minister “does not like hearing South-West at all.” I heard him and sighed.

When the outspoken gentleman spoke with me five months ago, he was a PDP senator. He has since moved to Dave Umahi’s party. Now, I wonder if he will still say what he said now that he is in APC.

Author and literary critic, Robert M. Wren (1928-1989), in 1982 wrote “The Last Bridge on ‘The Road’: Soyinka’s Rage and Compassion.” He tells us that in 1962, Wole Soyinka, in a Lagos Daily Express essay entitled ‘Bad Roads, Bad Users, Bad Deaths’ captured Nigeria’s enduring road crisis. Writing with outrage and in satire, Soyinka lamented the deadly state of the highways. He agonised over the state of the Lagos–Ibadan road (Mile 34); there was what he called “the death-trap at Ife”, and “the last bridge on Ikorodu Road.” Soyinka recalled and deplored a senator’s refusal to carry a crash victim with a spinal cord injury to Ibadan. More than six decades later, the roads are still bad, very bad; they still kill; senators are still cold-blooded; they still wonder why anyone bothers to care that the roads are bad.

News

Edo GIS Denies Report Of 17-year-old Purchasing 14 Hectares Of Land

Published

10 hours ago

October 13, 2025

Editor

The Edo Geographic Information Systems (Edo GIS) has debunked reports circulating on social media that a 17-year-old boy purchased 14 hectares of land in Edo State and was subsequently denied a Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) by Governor Monday Okpebholo.

In a statement released by the Director of Press, Tunde Egbiremonlen, the agency clarified that no such transaction exists in its records.

According to the statement, a 17-year-old is legally considered a minor and, as such, is not eligible to register land ownership under Edo State law.

“The Edo GIS system will automatically reject such applications due to age restrictions,” the statement read

“In the first place, a 17-year-old cannot apply for registration of land in Edo state because that age bracket is assumed to be a minor; the Edo GIS system will automatically reject the application.

“To compound the objective of the rumour-mongers, the peddlers of the story did not explain where in Edo state, such 14,000 hectares were purchased by the minor.

Egbiremonlen also pointed out inconsistencies in the viral report, noting that it failed to mention the specific location of the alleged 14 hectares and described the story as “deliberately mischievous and fabricated.”

He accused the originators of the false information of attempting to cause disaffection and blackmail the government, saying significant funds were spent to circulate the fake news.

Edo GIS urged the public to disregard the claims and remain vigilant against disinformation aimed at undermining the government’s credibility.