By Tony Erha

Again, civil unrest has resumed in South Africa in April and May, 2026, as the country’s black youth population, kill and maim their African brothers, who are from countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Sudan and others. Property and businesses have been ruined through looting, physical damage and arson.

Another strange dimension to the deadly attacks is where South African women married to Nigerians and other immigrant Africans, have been attacked. The women had taken to the street protests in semi-nudity

This is not the first time the rampaging South African predominant black youth population had taken to the street, chanting dangerous slogans and armed with machetes, bottles, daggers, clubs, whips and other dangerous cudgels.

Since the beginning of the millennium, the violent protests, deaths and destructions had become a recurring decimal in the Nelson Mandela’s country.

In 2008, a major wave of violence resulted in at least 62 deaths and over 100,000 people displaced. In 2015, more attacks led to added deaths, bodily injuries and widespread looting of foreigner-owned shops. The incidents were said to have been sparked by economic hardship, unemployment and the impoverishment if the South African black majority that constitute about 85 of its headcount and the minority whites of a negligable population.

Apart from full-blown cases, there had been such isolated cases of attacks, deaths and destructions that are not recorded.For instance, in April 2004, following the death of Brenda Fassie, a 39 year old South African musical diva, some Nigerians were killed and others hunted in the country, as a result of the rumours that the cocaine overdose doctor said was the cause of her death, was supplied by some Nigerian hard drug agents.

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Similarly in 2007, when Lucky Dube, a South African Reggae music sensation, was shot dead, Nigerian immigrants were hiding from pillagers, who avenged it on Nigerians, as his killers. His actual attackers, who were after all South Africans, later confessed to killing him because they taught he was a Nigeria, and they did not know who he was until after seeing the news reports. The trio of Sifiso Mhlanga, Mbuti Mabe, and Julius Gxowa, were later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

South Africa’s recurring waves of xenophobic violence is often codenamed “Operation Dudula”. They are restless mobs that carry out mass deportation of undocumented migrants, stopping their access to healthcare, and raiding their businesses.

But,cl the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, reluctantly condemned the atrocious acts, as he was also accused by Julius Malema, the fiery South African opposition politician, who further accused him of double standard. Malema added that President Ramaphosa with his ruling party, has no genuine interest in stopping the attacks and serve deterrence to the offenders, because they didn’t want to lose the mass votes from the teeming youth in the South Africa general elections, holding soon.

But, the word ‘Xenophobia’ got its origin from ancient Greece, the south European nation, like many notions and words now globally used. Xenophobia is a societal misnomer, which has plagued many countries of the world. Although it is a Greek originating coinage, Xenophobic practices didn’t originate in ancient Greece, but is a timeless blight associated with human origins. Its origin is hardly traced to a country.

Instructibly, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, explicitly describes Xenophobia as a compound word of Greek origin, that emanated from ‘xenos’ (race) and ‘phobia’ (fear). It is the fear or dislike of people who are perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression that is based on the perception that a conflict exists between a group-within and an out-group.

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Wild xenophobic protests had been usual exchange in the past four decades, between Nigeria and Ghana, two rivalry West African countries, just as Ghanaians are currently carrying out such street protests against “surges of Nigerian migrants in their country”, with further accusation of “criminalities and economic domination by Nigerians”.

When each time, both countries carry out the xenophobic agitations, there are stereotype makeshift or handmade bags, with which expelled migrants cart away their belongings. To these days, the bags have become a derisive remark by both countries. In Nigeria, it is called “Ghana Must Go” and in Ghana “Nigeria Must Go”. No one seems to know the real origin of the bag.

Currently, Togo, a Francophone neighbour of Nigeria, is similarly protesting against the flood of Nigerian immigrants in their country.

In response to the South African violent attacks, Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, ordered his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, for emergency response unit in South Africa. The Guardian of 7th May, 2026 quoted the minister as thus;

“I maintained that our government cannot stand by and watch the systematic harassment and humiliation of our nationals resident in SA as well as the extra-judicial killings of our people, and that the evacuation of our citizens who want to return home remains our government’s priority at this time.”

She furthered that the South African government expressed reservations for the recommended evacuation of Nigerians from the country, at their defence of exaggerated reportage of the same attacks, factually reported by some notable foreign media.

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This was not the first time Nigeria was taking diplomatic option to the continuous attacks on Nigerians. In September 2019, violence also swept through parts of Johannesburg and Pretoria again. The South African police figures cited by Reuters, said 12 people were killed, and hundreds of businesses looted and destroyed. Nigeria evacuated more than 500 of its citizens from South Africa. There were diplomatic crisis across Africa, with Nigeria temporarily boycotting the World Economic Forum on Africa hosted in Cape Town.

In all, the xenophobic or anti-immigrant deaths, attacks and protests, whether in South Africa, Ghana, Togo etc., have derogatory slogans and wakeup messages passed to Nigerians and their government, that they go back and rebuild their country and stay there, not scramble to go and spoil other countries that were built through hard labour and honesty. They are also mocked to have attitude change, where they will no longer get involved in crimes and lawlessness, in foreign lands.

When we were growing up, our parents would warn us to keep long distance from the children of parents, who were known as bad neighbours. And do we treated them as lepers from whom one can’t share food, drinks or nearness.

It’s interesting having the Nigeria’s Senate and House of Reps, the lower and upper chambers of the country’s legislative bodies, condemning South Africa over the untold deaths and persecutions of their countrymen and women, in their sittings. As if they were truly concerned. Some notable of the members even called for the take-over of South African companies and other economic assets in the country.

In another instance, a clergy of a new-generation church, based in South Africa, wailed that his church’s efifices were razed down. All counted their losses, regretting how Nigeria was supportive of the same South African blacks, when Nigeria helped them fight Apartheid and gave them independence. Their regrets had been that there were a Pharoah and Egyptians who did not know Joseph and the Israelites, just as a Ramaphosa and black South Africa youth who don’t know Olusegun Obasanjo and Nigerians.

To our lawmakers who feign love for Nigerians in South Africa, how many of such cheap deaths of Nigerian have they cared to save in the hundreds of thousands of deaths being lost to terrorist, jihadist and criminal attacks going on in the country? What reliefs have they given to the victims of unbridled corruption they concreted and their milking of poor Nigerians, through ostentatious indulgence as lawmakers, who supposedly make life meaningful to their electors?

Can they be absolved from the executive recklessness, blackmarket Judicial practices and the criminalities that arrest the soul of the country? Are South African blacks to be entirely blamed, when the children of our bad parents besiege foreign lands to manifest the filial responsibility?
Have we forgotten so soon how a gun dwell and killing festival shifted from South Africa to somewhere in Nigeria, when families members were gruesomely murdered in their homes and churches, over sour cocaine deals, and gun battles which started in South Africa and concluded in Nigeria?

Edo State deputy governor, Hon. Dennis Idahosa, has paid tribute to his late mother, has paid tribute to his late mother, madam Esther Imaguomwanruo Idahosa (Nee Enabulele), describing her as one who stood firm in the face of challenges.

Idahosa paid tribute to his late mother at the lying-in-state for his late mother which drew dignitaries in the political scene.

Her carnival-like funeral caused heavy vehicular traffic in Benin City as mourners accompanied her casket in a road walk through the streets of the ancient city to her residence for lying in-state.

Speaking, Idahosa said his late mother understood that six children looked up to her when his father died in 1986 and he was just six years old.

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He said his mother did not break neither did she run but stood and became father and mother in one body.

“You toiled day and night with six children waiting at home. You walked through pains and expectations with me never forgetting your melodious voice as you sang all the time, your song became my shelter. Your prayers at dawn became the roof over our heads. You were my pillar, Iye.

“When the world said “impossible,” you whispered, trust in God my son. These few days you are gone has been really hurting, you taught me dignity without saying a word. I watched you refuse to beg, refuse to bow, refuse to let poverty define us. 

“You told us: work hard, fear God, help people and wonderful things will happen. Iye, wonderful things did happen, because you happened to us first.

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“Now that you are gone at the remarkable age of 95, my heart is heavy, but it is also full. Full of gratitude that God lent you to us. Full of pride that I called you Mother. Full of memories of your laughter, your scolding, your endless intercessions for me and my siblings, you were a pillar of unity and love.

“Your word still resonates clearly, Denco, you will say, remember where you came from. Mother, you were an inspiration to us, we all miss your morning prayers.”

Among the array of personalities that paid the late Idahosa their last respect were representatives of the Forum of Deputy Governors of Nigeria.

Three deputy governors namely Sam Ude of Benue State, Senator Akon Eyakenyi of Akwa-Ibom, and Dr. Peter Akpe of Bayelsa State, were among dignitaries that graced the occasion.

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Speaking on behalf of the deputy governors, Senator Eyakenyi said, “We came here to celebrate with our own, our brother. We have a large family of Deputy Governors across Nigeria. We are one family, we acknowledge each other.

“A woman that gave birth to her children, trained them very well and one of them is standing tall today as the deputy governor of this state, that shows how great such a woman was.

“We stand to salute you specially for putting this great send forth for your mother.” She said.

Governor Monday Okpehbolo of Edo State, former governor Adams Oshiomhole and his former deputy, Dr Pius Odubu; Sen. Matthew Uroghide, Chairman of the APC in the state, Jarret Tenebe, and other members of the State Working Committee of the party were among dignitaries that paid their last respect. Okpebholo was represented by Blessing Agbebaku, Speaker of the House of Assembly.

By Festus Adedayo

William Shakespeare, in Othello, warned of the destructive power of envy and manipulation when he wrote: “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” Across history, enemies have often thrived by sowing discord among friends, destroying noble causes and wrecking enduring relationships. The tragic crisis between Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola remains one of the most painful examples in Yoruba political history.

A very deep political analyst told me on Friday that he believed both Awo and Akintola were victims of their individual and regional enemies. “If their team had governed the West long enough, the region would have become a first world society,” the analyst told me, and I agreed with him. Read history for the firsts they scored while leaving the other regions panting and taking catch-up measures.

Thirty-nine and sixty years respectively after their passing, the two friends-turned-foes have not ceased being subjects of discourse. With Chief Awolowo as leader and Akintola as his deputy, their team cooked the huge pot of soup the Yoruba still eat their pounded yam with today. They earn an epitaph in the heart of Irish poet, Oscar Wilde, who said, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

Yesterday marked the 39th anniversary of the transition of Chief Awolowo, yet the world still rose to salute him and the stellar leadership he gave his people. Politicians still invoke his name to win votes and get positions. Chief Akintola took his own exit in the military putsch of January 15, 1966.

I thought of those two great men as we marked Awo’s transition yesterday. I reflected on their lives together and their lives apart, while laughing at children of ignorance who attempt to denigrate Awolowo’s legacies simply because they cannot measure up to a fraction of the standard he set as a leader. They think they can exhume the skeleton of the Awolowo-Akintola rift and turn it into a ritual of power: those who oppose today›s small gods are branded betrayers, while those who worship them are canonized as patriots. They misbehave and demand applause. Again, William Shakespeare has words for them in Julius Caesar: “The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.”

The trickster god in Yoruba cosmology is called Esu. Dauda Epo Akara, Ibadan Awurebe music lord, sang of how the Trickster tricked two friends almost to their deaths using a cap that had both black and white colours. This messenger of discord rarely fights a man directly; he sows quarrels between friends. That is why the Yoruba say that where two friends become enemies, the hand of Esu is never far away. Esu existed and wielded power in the Yoruba past; he remains super-powerful today.

Why did Awo and Akintola, two friends and associates, unexampled leaders and committed nationalists, suddenly become sworn enemies, splintering like the bull›s-eye seeds, (ajatuka àgbáàrín), their fight eventually fatally halting the supersonic speed of Western Region’s development? Was their destructive fight really an ideological battle or an instigated destruction? That is a posthumous food for thought in the memory of the two avatars of the Yoruba nation that is worthy of discussion today.

Awolowo and Akintola had almost similar trajectories of personal development. While Awo was born in 1909, SLA was born a year later, in 1910. They were both journalists and lawyers who worked in the Daily Times and Daily Service, respectively. Indeed, SLA, supported by a major shareholder in the Daily Service and Awo’s bosom friend, Chief Akinola Maja, replaced Ernest Sese Okoli as editor of Daily Service in 1943.

Following the 1959 federal elections, a governmental transplant occurred. Awolowo left the West as Premier to contest the federal election and Akintola returned home from being AG’s Parliamentary Leader/Leader of Opposition in the Federal House of Representatives. He became Minister for Health and later Minister for Communications and Aviation before becoming Premier of the Western Region. Since our elders say it is only the outset of a war that is cognizable and not its end, that swap became the beginning of a fratricidal crisis in the West which eventually incubated the collapse of that republic.

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Why then did these two friends and associates fight such an acrimonious war? Why did Awolowo pick Akintola as his successor? On Page 167 of his book, The Travails of Democracy and the Rule of Law (1987), Awolowo confirmed his reluctance in picking Akintola as Premier. Political scientist, Prof Bill Dudley, in his An Introduction to Nigerian Government and Politics (1982), however, put the schism down to ideological disagreement. While Awolowo was a democratic socialist, Akintola was a conservative.

Another political scientist, Prof Eghosa Osaghae, in his book, Crippled Giant: Nigeria Since Independence (1998), attributed the leadership crisis to the anti-Northern stance of Awolowo as Leader of Opposition in Parliament, which incensed Akintola. Chief Bola Ige, one of Awo’s lieutenants, on the other hand, writing in his 1998 book, People, Politics and Politicians of Nigeria (1940 – 1979), said the disagreement was caused by the decision by Akintola to act independently of the Action Group. According to him, immediately he became Premier, Akintola began building his own political base and structure, abhorring the idea of basking under the political sunshine of Awolowo who made him Premier.

Awolowo seems to have confirmed the above in his book when he recounted moments of Akintola’s anger at being welcomed to functions by shouts of “Awo!”, hitherto the sloganeering of the AG. It was on April 3, 1960, at the installation of Oba Sikiru Adetona as the Awujale in Ijebu Ode.

Dare Babarinsa’s House of War (2003) quoted an interview Akintola granted the famous Drum magazine of May 1965, wherein he reportedly said: “The basic disagreement was just that I favoured a national government and co-operation with the Northern Peoples Congress while he (Awolowo) opposed both.” Awo ostensibly agreed with Akintola on this reason.

In one of his books, Awo laid the path of the disagreement as follows: “Ever since he became AG leader of Opposition in the House of Representatives in 1954, some unhealthy associations between SLA and the NPC leaders had been suspected. He spoke Hausa fluently and had Hausa blood in his veins. Almost ad nauseam, he never tired in private conversation of condemning the Ibo in the most derisive language, extolling the Hausa/Fulani in the most eulogistic terms, and emphasising the age-old intercourse which existed between the Hausa/Fulani and the Yoruba, as well as the strong similarity observable in their cultures.”

Akintola, while further explaining where he stood, according to Babarinsa, citing the Drum interview, said his romance with the North was borne out of fear of the economic, educational and commercial aggressiveness of the Igbo, which he saw as being of greater danger to the Yoruba than the political hegemony of the Hausa/Fulani. He said further that most of the topmost positions in the civil service, police and other sectors of the economy were held by the Igbo and that an alliance with the NPC could rescue the Yoruba from political annihilation.

Bola Ige, agreeing with both Dudley and Osaghae, said that Awo and SLA’s ideological fissures gave rise to the crisis. In late 1961, the AG constituted a group of young men tasked with formulating a cogent ideology to guide the party, and it agreed to adopt democratic socialism.

Lateef Jakande, an Awo disciple, also had this to say in his book, The Trial of Obafemi Awolowo (1996): “Akintola was a contrast to Chief Awolowo in many ways. Smooth, witty, politically slippery and cunning, he made virtue of ambiguity… The new Premier, while proclaiming his acceptance of the supremacy of the party ‘on policy matters,’ was in fact taking decisions clearly at variance with party policy.” While Awo believed in life abundant for the people, Akintola took some people-denigrating policy decisions like reducing cocoa prices, increasing school fees, abolishing women’s taxation, distributing or withdrawing party patronage without reference to his leader and, according to Jakande, “demanding personal loyalty to himself from his ministers.”

Awo held a meeting with Premier Akintola on January 12, 1961 and advised him against the reduction of the prices of cocoa. It was then the main export commodity in the Western Region. Awo believed if Akintola reduced the price mid-season, it would amount to a breach of faith with poor farmers who toiled in rain and sunshine to produce for the economy. In Awolowo’s spirited efforts at bringing out the Janus-faced disposition of Akintola to the fore, as well as his untrustworthy tendency, he said in his book that while he thought he had successfully convinced him, Akintola went ahead to address a press conference on January 13, 1961, to announce new lower prices of cocoa for the rest of the season. Even the Minister of Finance in the NCNC/NPC coalition, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, denounced Akintola as “not justified in reducing the price of cocoa paid to the producers…”

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Adekunle Ajasin, another leader of the AG, located the disagreement between Awo and SLA in what he called, in his book, Memoirs and Memories (2003), variations in “ideology and strategy” which manifested in a mutual suspicion between the duo and Akintola conducting himself as “Premier to whom the party and its leadership were irrelevant to the running of his government.”

While the AG leadership saw him as a traitor, external forces, scions of the North like Maitama Sule, sided with Akintola and saw him as an “independently minded person.” Akintola, on his own, believed that, having been vested with the Premiership, he ought to be left alone and bequeathed with all the full paraphernalia of his office.

Olarinmoye O. O., in “The Politics of Ethnic Mobilisation among the Yoruba of South Western Nigeria” (2008), quoted SLA to have said in Yoruba that, “ti a ba fi agbo fun eegun, a jowo okun e”, translated to mean, if a ram is bequeathed to a masquerade, it is consequent upon the giver to let go of its leash.

At an intangible level, some commentators claimed that the 1962 crisis had a lot to do with the spouses of the two leaders. Mackintosh J. P. (1966), in his book, Nigerian Government and Politics, subtly said this when he averred that a minor source of the conflict could be located in the “acute rivalry” between Mrs Awolowo, “a most astute and successful business woman,” and Mrs Faderera Akintola.

However, in February 1962, at the AG’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting held in Jos, the crisis tipped over. Akintola not only walked out of the meeting, he immediately took a train back to Ibadan to receive the Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, AG’s arch-enemy. Bello had ostensibly come for the commissioning of a student hostel named after him at the University of Ibadan, but it was believed to be a covert plan to strike a political deal with the Sardauna. This irked AG members who could not countenance Akintola’s insolence, especially his riding in an open car with the Sardauna and, according to Ige, “instead of the usual shouts of ‘Awo’ with which he used to be cheered, it was ‘SLA’.”

Chief Ayo Rosiji, former AG Secretary, also tendered his letter of resignation from the party at the Jos meeting. The February 5, 1962 report of the event by the Daily Express newspaper, of which Bisi Onabanjo was its editor and editorial director in the 1950s and early 1960s, reported Rosiji’s resignation with a screaming headline, Congress clash: AG Secretary’s crisis!

Still believing that Akintola was not implacable, Awolowo sent five leaders of the AG to make him change his mind and return for the Jos convention. The Express reported in its edition of February 8, 1962 that the Premier rebuffed them, with the screaming headline, SLA snubs the elders! The leaders were Dr Akinola Maja, Chief T. A. Odutola, Alhaji S. O. Gbadamosi, Chief E. A. Okunowo and M. A. Ogun.

Akintola then began to weed out known supporters of Awolowo from his government. He began with the removal of Mr J. O. Odeku, newly elected Assistant Federal Secretary of the AG at the Jos convention, from his office as a member of the Marketing Board. Thereafter, on May 6, 1962, he dismissed Mr Alfred Rewane, Chief S. O. Lanlehin and Mr Ayo Akinsanya, Chairman and Executive Directors respectively of the Western Nigeria Development Corporation (NDC). This, Ige said, was regarded as a “political slap on Awolowo.” Akintola also further incensed the Awolowo group by sending Oba C. D. Akran to London, ostensibly to seek an alliance between the Akintola faction of the AG and Remi Fani-Kayode’s NCNC.

AG’s Yoruba West and Mid-West Executive Committee, on May 19, 1962, however, met and moved a motion for Premier Akintola to resign. The next day, the Premier held a press conference and declared that he would not. He then called on the Governor-General and the Speaker of the Assembly to convene an emergency meeting to test his popularity, a plea turned down by both. On May 21, 1962, Sir Adesoji Aderemi, the Governor-General, addressed a letter to Akintola, removing him from office.

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At the height of the crisis, Akintola attempted to mow down opposition. On November 5, 1963, a woman, Mrs Sikuola Odunaro, shouted the name of Awolowo in Ibadan while the Premier was passing by. Akintola ordered that she be bundled into a police van.

In 1964, the year that followed, Akintola attempted to establish a rival faction of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, the cultural-cum-political group that metamorphosed into the AG, founded in London by Awolowo. Akintola named his rival faction, first, Egbe Omo Yoruba and later, Egbe Omo Olofin. His major undisguised aim was to finally put a seal on the political effervescence of an Awolowo who was by then serving a ten-year jail term in the Calabar prisons. Akintola centred his own Egbe around political arch-enemies of Awolowo and new converts who believed that his jailing had stopped Awolowo’s relevance.

The Egbe had as members former Administrator of the Western Region in the Emergency year, Dr M. A. Majekodunmi, who was a personal physician to Tafawa Balewa; Chief H. O. Davies, some high court judges and traditional rulers. Some leaders of the Awolowo camp had by then also begun changing camp to Akintola’s. At the maiden meeting of the new Egbe, held on January 3, 1964, Akintola’s Egbe issued a press release which castigated Awolowo, calling him unprintable names.

After Akintola’s NNDP, a coalition of his United People’s Party and Fani-Kayode’s NCNC, was purportedly re-elected in 1965, the West was thrown into complete anarchy. The government went into a heavy economic recession. Workers refused to pay taxes, using highly erratic payment of salaries as justification. Akintola then resorted to cutting the prices of cocoa from £110 per tonne to £60.

This ignited an unprecedented violence, with lives and property destroyed, in what has been described as Operation Wetie. Farm hands set cocoa farms on fire, while Hausa settlers in the Sagamu area and other parts of the West were burnt alive. But Balewa, being an ally of Akintola, did not want to re-invoke the 1962 powers of Emergency, turning the other eye. On a tour of Benin, when asked by journalists if he did not see the escalating crisis, Balewa said he could not take action merely by judging the intensity of lawlessness in the West on account of newspaper reports of the brigandage.

A few days after, on December 9, 1965, the Nigerian Tribune wrote a fortuitous and clairvoyant editorial comment calling on the Premier to resign. “Today, we say to Akintola, get out! We say he should get out today for the sake of Nigeria, for the sake of Western Nigeria and for the sake of his family.” A week to the putsch of January 15, which claimed the lives of Akintola, Balewa and many other key functionaries of government, Tribune again wrote another editorial on January 7, 1966, entitled, Those Who Have Eyes, where it called on “those who have eyes” to learn “a big lesson” from the ousting of the David Dacko government of the Central African Republic.

I wrote all the above to give insight into the crisis which trapped both Awolowo and Akintola. At this time, with the passing of the administrative baton from the former to the latter, Western Region’s economy was reputed to have experienced a “golden age” of rapid, proactive growth, with the West considered one of the most advanced regions in Africa. Western Region pioneered incredible social programmes and modern infrastructure founded on a robust economy through its cocoa exports.

With the above in mind, emerging thoughts suggest that, unbeknownst to Awo and Akintola, there might have been a connivance between certain foreign interests and local forces outside the Western Region who resented the West’s supersonic development and therefore sowed destructive tares of discord between the two leaders. If this indeed happened, the agent provocateurs achieved their aim, as the crisis halted the Western Region’s remarkable developmental pace and marked the decline of development-oriented leadership in the region.

Unfortunately, no lesson has been learnt.

As we rue that era of discord, we still have the present to manage. Unfortunately, what we see all around us today are small gods stomping the earth as though they own it, acting as if there will never be a tomorrow. We live a present which has leaders who hate Awo, want the West to idolise them like him, govern like Akintola but get their media hyenas to postulate a-historical defence of their Awoism. May history be kinder to us than our own age has been, just as it has remained kind to Awolowo.