News

Wande Abimbola @91: How an àbíkú decided to live (5)

Published

2 years ago

February 2, 2024

Tunde Odesola

Building the letters of the alphabet into bricks of sentences and paragraphs is serious business. While writing the fourth part of this article last week, the roots of my creative fibre hit the rocks when I needed simultaneous imagery to portray twin dangers. I fetched a popular proverb, “Ikú ń de dèdè, dèdè n de ikú,” to convey the imagery but ran into a roadblock, still. Ikú means death. But I don’t know what dèdè means.

For a long period, I racked my brain; searching and researching, constructing and deconstructing, writing and unwriting, but I couldn’t untrap myself from the knot called dèdè. So, I decided to call a friend as they do in ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’

I called a friend and said, “Ikú ń de dèdè, dèdè n de ikú is a popular Yoruba proverb. What’s dèdè?” My friend, whose voice excites the eardrum like ocean waves spreading frothing fresh bubbles on the beach, hails from Ila-Orangun, the beloved home of palm wine. He said in Yoruba, “The word is not ikú, it’s ikún. Ikún is a rodent. Dèdè is a trap. It means the rodent is eyeing the trap just as the trap is eyeing the rodent.”

The name of my friend is Sulaimon Ayilara, known to his teeming fans as Ajobiewe, the popular bard and actor, who broke into public consciousness in the Fèyíkógbón and Super Story drama series of the 1980s and early 2000 respectively. In my piece last week, I forgot to attribute the unknotting of dèdè to this great oral poet. Ajobiewe, please, take a bow!

FROM THE AUTHOR: Wande Abimbola @91: How an àbíkú decided to live (3)

Were singing the only profession that provided daily bread for all mortals, I would’ve died of starvation. I think my voice is good when I speak but when I sing, things fall apart. My voice just doesn’t have regard for musical keys – like most Nigerian soldiers who have no regard for constituted authority, stupidly feeling they are superior to the civilian populace.

Ogunwande has a great voice which moves listeners to tears when he sings the panegyrics of Yoruba deities, wars and mores. In the course of my interviews with him, he sings about the virtues of Yoruba revivalism and truth, punctuating his folklore with, “Uhmm, nkan se wa;” – we are doomed.

He renders a short song in praise of truth and continues with the story of how he became the VC of Great Ife. “When my friend, Sanda, told me Chief Adisa Akinloye had collected my letter of appointment, I said it’s ok. I reminded him that my main reason for choosing academics was to be a scholar and not an administrator. I just drove to Ife. It never bothered me and I never made any enquiry about it,” Ogunwande said.

But some days later, Ogunwande got a letter from Akinloye, saying, “Prof, please, see me in my house on….” Ogunwande went to Sanda, his friend, and showed him Akinloye’s letter. Both of them went to Akinloye’s house in Ibadan on the appointed day.

“Akinloye was blunt. He said he collected my letter after Oyo people complained that I was an enemy for being a Unity Party of Nigeria member. Akinloye, an Ibadan indigene, said there was no Ibadan indigene among those vying for the VC post, stressing that his action was based on the protest of Oyo people, and not to favour Ibadan. Chief Richard Akinjide came in while we were at Akinloye’s house. There was a crowd in the house.

FROM THE AUTHOR: Wande Abimbola @91: How an àbíkú decided to live (4)

“I told him I wasn’t an enemy of the NPN. I reminded him he was the one, in company with other chieftains such as Chief Bode Thomas and Chief Abiodun Akerele, who brought the Chief Obafemi Awolowo-led Action Group to Oyo. I reminded him of the speech he delivered in Oyo which called for Yoruba nationalism. I said I’m a UPN member because of Yoruba nationalism,” Ogunwande said.

Akinloye kept quiet for some time. A woman in the crowd shouted, ‘Wande dobale!’, ordering the academic to prostrate. Did he prostrate?

“Never, I didn’t. Akinloye said he wouldn’t have them humiliate me. He described me as a decent man, adding that some other fellow would’ve renounced the UPN and joined the NPN. Long before the VC position became vacant, I had served as the Chairman, Oyo State College of Arts and Science (OSCAS), a position I was appointed into by the Oyo State Governor, Chief Bola Ige.”

“Meanwhile, the Elepe of Iseke was my aunty’s husband. When he died, his son ascended the throne and made me the secretary of the Council of Baales of Alahoro. So, Oyo people, who heard that my letter was withheld, also found their way to the residence of Chief Akinloye, in solidarity.

“One candidate among the three of us shortlisted for the VC position had quickly renounced the UPN and joined the NPN. But President Shehu Shagari saw through the ploy. The Secretary to the Federal Government, Alhaji Shehu Musa, particularly said there was nothing wrong with a man to serve his state as chairman of OSCAS. Eventually, President Shagari noted that all three of us were UPN members.

FROM THE AUTHOR: Wande Abimbola @91: How an àbíkú decided to live (2)

“I got to know all this because I had a student, Olu Afolabi, whom I taught at UNILAG. He was a student unionist at school but had joined politics and become the Deputy Majority Leader, House of Representatives. He was at the meeting with the President when the issue was being discussed along with Chief Akinloye, SFG, and others. When the SFG said I should be given my letter, it was him who got the SFG to do another letter immediately after the meeting, and personally brought it to me.”

According to Ogunwande, the seven years he spent as VC were the happiest days of his life. His first and second terms were four and three years respectively. During his era, OAU had 30,000 students. Then, Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo; Moore Plantation, Ibadan; and the School of Agric, Akure, were all part of OAU.

About a year after being appointed by Shagari, the military, led by General Muhammadu Buhari, sacked the democratically elected government of Shagari on December 31, 1983, floundering Nigeria down the path of 16 years of successive despotic rules. In those heady days of military rule, student protests were rife. How did Ogunwande deal with student protests?

“Whenever I heard that students had gathered in numbers and were surging in protest to my residence, they always met me standing by my gate or on the road – walking to go and meet them. I’m talking of about 20, 000 charged students. Whenever they become unruly during the protests, I charge back at them and ask, ‘Are you barbarians?’ Don’t you have a leader? But I was always ready and willing to listen to them. Àyà níní tó òogùn lótò; courage is equivalent to charm.

“My success as VC boils down to upholding the truth and being fair to all at all times even though I consulted Ifa and made sacrifices to the gods on major decisions. But I wouldn’t have succeeded if I didn’t uphold the truth. I ran an all-inclusive administration that met with the students every month. I didn’t miss any of the monthly meetings with the students.

“The students saw my sincerity and fatherly leadership. After each meeting, they would tell me to pray for them. After praying, they will sing ‘Babalawo, mo wa bebe, alugbinrin…There was a particular protest when all students across the country converged on OAU for a mother-of-all protest. I consulted Ifa and Ifa told me to make a sacrifice, after the sacrifice, the students dispersed peacefully, with those from outside running back to their respective schools and Ife students going back to classes.”

Buttressing the supremacy of sacrifice over supernatural powers/charms making oogùn síse) and Ifa consultation (Ifa dida), Ogunwande explained that sacrifice is the power of the Yoruba. “That’s why foreign religions are always against sacrifice done in Yoruba traditional religion. When you give sacrifice to the gods, we, traditional religion worshippers, believe you’re feeding the entire universe because organisms of the air, land and water are going to partake in it.

“For instance, a sacrifice placed by the river, aquatic animals such as fishes, crabs etc, would eat part of it; birds of the air and land animals would eat from it. Even ants would partake, too. We believe that all the creatures that ate from the sacrifice would communicate with Oludumare about the good you’ve done by feeding them. Sacrifice is like fuel, once you do it, it’s boom! It’s efficacious,” Ogunwande said.

Illustrating his point with folklore, Abimbola sang in Yoruba, “Sacrifice is the eldest of three siblings. oogùn (supernatural power/charm) is the younger, Ifa casting is the youngest.”

Ogunwande, the father of three sets of twins, earned N49,000.00 per month when he was VC, an amount that cannot buy a bag of rice today.

Concluded.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

Facebook: @Tunde Odesola

X: @Tunde_Odesola

(The full story will soon be out in book form. Watch Out!)

News

[OPINION] House Agents: The Bile Beneath The Roof

Published

2 hours ago

September 17, 2025

Editor

By Israel Adebiyi

I had tried, for months, to keep this subject at arm’s length. After all, The Nation’s Pulse has, by tradition, stuck its gaze on the big picture of national polity. But last week, my colleague, Joseph Kanjo, the ever-blunt Ijaw man, reminded me with his usual candour: “Israel, forget it. This matter has swum into national waters. You’ve got to discuss it on air.” And so here we are.

From Lagos to Abuja, Port Harcourt to Benin, in every major Nigerian city, there exists a tribe of middlemen who have turned the simple act of finding a home into a nightmare theatre of deceit, extortion, and despair. They call themselves “agents.” But tenants, with good reason, now call them Shylocks.

Nigeria is living through one of its most pressing social problems, a housing deficit of over 20 million units. As urbanisation outpaces construction, the scramble for shelter has grown more desperate. The result? An inflated rental market where landlords demand one, sometimes two years’ rent upfront, and tenants are left calculating survival in instalments.

In this scarcity, agents found their goldmine. They became gatekeepers, the ones you must pass through before seeing the landlord, the ones who “hold the keys.” And, like Shakespeare’s Shylock demanding his pound of flesh, they squeeze tenants until every drop of naira is bled dry.

Take Chinyere, a young nurse in Abuja, who shared her ordeal with me. After months of searching, an agent finally led her to a one-bedroom apartment in Kubwa. The rent was ₦600,000. By itself, already steep. But then came the add-ons: 10% agency fee, 10% agreement fee, inspection fee, caution fee, and a mysterious ‘legal’ fee. By the time she finished calculating, her total outlay stood at ₦850,000 – nearly ₦250,000 more than the agreed rent. “When I asked what the ‘legal’ fee was for,” she said, “the agent laughed and said, ‘Madam, that one na normal. No legal o.”

Or consider Osatohamwen, a factory worker in Benin, who parted with ₦50,000 as “inspection and commitment” fee just to secure a viewing. The agent vanished, phone switched off, house nowhere to be found. Such stories abound, whispered in frustration and traded in bitterness by Nigerians across class divides.

What deepens the irony is that many of these agents take you to houses even they themselves would not live in. Dilapidated structures with cracked walls, leaking roofs, toilets that smell of neglect, and kitchens that could host cockroaches for dinner. Yet, they pitch them with salesmanship worthy of a Broadway stage: “Madam, this one na hot cake. If you no pay today, tomorrow e go don go.”

It is the cruelest part of the deception, dressing up misery as opportunity, knowing full well that desperation will silence protest.

The tragedy is not just that tenants are extorted. It is that housing, one of life’s most basic needs, has become a gamble. Instead of safety and stability, many Nigerians now associate house-hunting with anxiety, loss, and betrayal. Families uprooted because a landlord suddenly doubled rent. Students stranded because an agent promised a “self-contained” that turned out to be a room with shared facilities. Newlyweds spending their honeymoon nights on relatives’ sofas because the house they paid for was given to someone else with “better money.”

The bigger shame is that Nigeria’s regulators look the other way. The housing sector remains one of the most unregulated spaces in our economy. No clear codes for agents. No enforceable penalties for fraud. No safeguards for tenants. In the vacuum, chaos reigns and the Shylocks thrive.

The comparison is sobering: in developed countries, property agents are licensed, their fees capped, and their conduct regulated. Here, anyone with a key ring and a contact on WhatsApp can become an “agent.” And Nigerians, desperate for shelter, must play along.

Let’s be clear: agents are not the disease; they are the symptom. The disease is a deep housing crisis that leaves millions without roofs, and those with roofs perpetually at risk of eviction. The cost of cement rises, urban planning is chaotic, mortgages are inaccessible, and public housing is virtually non-existent. In such a system, desperation breeds exploitation, and agents merely mirror the larger dysfunction of the state.

But it need not be so. Shelter is not a luxury. It is a right. And like food and water, it must be treated as such. Nigeria must wake up to the urgency of reforming its housing sector by building more affordable homes, regulating agents, and protecting tenants from predatory practices.

Until then, the Nigerian tenant remains trapped between the landlord’s demands and the agent’s extortion, forever paying pounds of flesh in a market where survival is traded for profit.

So, when next you hear the phrase “house hunting,” don’t imagine a hopeful family searching for a new home. Picture, instead, a weary Nigerian, pockets drained, dignity bruised, whispering under their breath: What’s up with Shylock house agents?

News

Textile, Garment And Tailoring Workers Assault Journalists In Edo

Published

12 hours ago

September 16, 2025

Editor

Some members of the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria (NUTGTWN), Edo State branch,
on Tuesday, assaulted journalists who were invited to their secretariat to cover their meeting.

Deputy General Secretary of the NUTGTWN, Comrade Emeka Nkwoala, invited the journalists to the secretariat of the body to get the outcome of a meeting he was directed to hold with them following the resignation of the branch chairman, Mike Ochei from the Caretaker Committee, and the suspension leadership of the union in Edo State over his resignation.

The Caretaker Committee was set up by the leadership of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) to resolve the crisis and conduct election into the state leadership of the Congress.

Ochei, while resiging was quoted to have said that he was coerced into the membership of the caretaker committee, hence his resignation.

Trouble, however, started, when, after the journalists introduced themselves inside the hall, and as Nkwoala about to talk, some of the members of the body started shouting ‘we don’t need press,’ it is an internal affair, they must leave,’ which was followed by some of the union members physically assaulting the journalists. One of the members poked his hands into the eyes of one of the reporters, while they used derogatory words on them.

Addressing journalists after the uproar that followed the meeting, Nkwoala said Ochei was contacted and informed before he was nominated to serve in the NLC committee, stressing that it was, therefore, wrong for him to have claimed that he was coerced into the committee.

He, thereafter, apologised to journalists who were harassed by some members of the union.

Nkwoala said: “I want to apologise on behalf of our union, we are a matured union, we hold the press in high esteem and we relate very well with the press. From the inception of our union, our past leaders didn’t joke with the press. Is it Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, Comrade Issa Aremu or the current General Secretary Comrade Ali Baba? We don’t joke with the press. We apologise for the embarrassment that our members caused you. We are not known for such.

“The state of our union right now in Edo State is that we have suspended the Mike Ochei led state exco. They are on suspension till further notice. That was the resolution we reached with the various chairmen of the zones in Benin City today, it was also the resolution of our National Administrative Council (NAC) of our Union via our zoom meeting yesterday (Monday). So they cannot represent the NUTGTWN anywhere in whatever capacity.”

On the way forward for the crisis in Edo NLC, he said: “Our allegiance is to the national leadership of the NLC ably led by Comrade Joe Ajaero and the Professor Monday Igbafen led caretaker committee. We believe that the leadership of the NLC has machinery in place to deal with some of these issues, for us we are part and parcel of the NLC and we will continue to pay our allegiance with the leadership of congress led by Comrade Ajaero.”

News

Edo Deputy Gov Tasks Lab Scientists On Research, Vaccine Production

Published

15 hours ago

September 16, 2025

Editor

Deputy governor of Edo State, Hon. Dennis Idahosa, on Tuesday, urged the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria (AMLSN), to go into deep research, and channelled scientific findings to boost public health.

Idahosa also urged the scientists to set up a vaccine manufacturing company in Edo State.

The deputy governor spoke when he played host to the state chapter of AMLSN, saying “as we speak, we still do not have a vaccine manufacturing company or industry in the whole of Nigeria. That, to me, is worrisome.”

Idahosa, who hosted the scientists on behalf of Governor Monday Okpebholo, added: ” This is the heartbeat of the nation. I think we should roll up our sleeves and do what other states in this country have not done before. Let Edo be the beginner.”

He appreciated the laboratory scientists on the courtesy visit, just as he commended them for their contributions and medical interventions, which he said had given a boost to the public health sector delivery system in the state.

Making reference to the campaign manifesto and five point SHINE Agenda of Okpebholo, Idahosa affirmed that, “after security, health is number two. We are laying so much emphasis on health. Edo State is going to be happy with what we are going to do with the health sector.”

Idahosa assured the scientists that he was going to work closely with “the think tanks in the health sector based on raised areas of needs,” as “government would look at the best way to proffer solution to some of these challenges.”

State Chairman of the AMLSN, Dr. Ekhaguere Ehigie who earlier congratulated the Edo State Government for victories at the polls and in court, highlighted issues that plagued laboratory practice in Nigeria.

He advocated the setting up of modern molecular laboratories and use of Nano technology to boost disease diagnosis, accurate laboratory results and monitoring/surveillance of public health.