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Tag: Festus Adedayo

  • Wike’s Nigeria feeds citizens’ bodies to pigs

    Wike’s Nigeria feeds citizens’ bodies to pigs

    Nigerians and indeed, the world, watched aghast last week as a South African grisly movie reel began to roll. Full of all the elements of a movie, it was however a real story. The cast was two black women who, on August 17, were shot and fed to pigs by a white farmer. The victims, Maria Makgato, 45 and Lucia Ndlovu, 34 were scavenging for edible food in consignments of recently expired or soon-to-be-expired produce on a farm located near Polokwane, a South African northern Limpopo province. The expired edible foods were meant for pigs. Before her gruesome murder, Makgato was mother of four sons of between 22 and five years ages. Farm owner, Zachariah Johannes Olivier, 60, had reportedly ordered his employees, Adrian de Wet, 19, and William Musora, 50, to kill the two women. Their bodies were then fed to pigs, in order to destroy evidence of their murder. Ms Ndlovu’s husband, Mabutho Ncube, who came to the farm with his wife, had been shot, too but crawled into safety with his gunshot wounds. Several days later, police found decomposing, horrific bodies of the women in the farm’s pigsty, partly eaten up by the swine.

    In South Africa, farming communities are severally under attacks by white farmers, exacerbating an already high crime statistics in the country. This is especially rife in rural areas, despite the official cessation of the obnoxious racist system of apartheid 30 years ago. In same August, in the eastern province of Mpumalanga, two men – a farmer and his security guard – were arrested in Laersdrift, located beside a small South African town called Middleburg, for allegedly murdering two men on a farm. Accused of stealing sheep, the men were incinerated beyond recognition. The court had to subject their ashes to DNA analysis to be able to establish their identities. In the same vein, a 70-year old white farmer, Christoffel Stoman, of Lutzville, a Western Cape province, had allegedly driven over and broken the two legs of a 6-year old boy for picking a fallen orange on his farm. The boy’s mother, walking with him past Stoman’s farm, on their way to town to purchase groceries, was horrified as his son got mowed down by Stoman.

    As they watch this grisly movie, like the rest of the world, Nigerians are entitled to their shock. However, literally and figuratively, on the social and political planes, our country can be said to be grappling with leaders of similar sadism as South Africa’s Oliviers. Almost on a daily basis, Nigerians’ bodies are figuratively fed to swine, simply because they pick expired pig foods from our collective farm.

    Nigerian leadership in the last seventeen months, like Olivier, has figuratively thrown Nigerians’ bodies to the swine who now take turns to feast on our flesh for supper. Nigerians are writhing under excruciating poverty occasioned by wickedness in high places. They encounter limited vision and foresight of leaders who claimed it was their time to rule but who have no time to think through the people’s plights. Perhaps the greatest Olivier-like savagery inflicted on Nigerians is the gradual destruction and undermining of the foundation of democracy by the born-to-rule taskmasters. In almost 17 months, all the institutions of democracy, like the electoral system, free press/speech and impartial judicial system have been dealt mortal blows. They are all comatose today. This speaks to that eternal aphorism that democracies are not killed by guns but by wicked undermining of its foundation.

    If Nigerians are so distressed about the misrule in their country today, unfortunately, they are in a Catch-24 situation. We are locked up in a paradoxical situation from which, except an intervention of providence, we may never escape. As Sule Lamido warned recently, if the Leviathan in Aso Rock didn’t control the Senate, the Nigerian Army, Nigerian police, DSS etc and yet won the 2023 election, it is wishful thinking that anyone can stop the reproduction of this misrule in 2027. The ones at the top today have worn upon them the classical head of the Medusa. In real terms, like the sobriquet of one of the friends of Ayinla Omowura, an Abeokuta musical warlord of the 1970s, they are reincarnates of Ab’esuj’obi – one who shares kolanut with the devil.

    According to the playbook of democracy, opposition deepens democracy. In Nigeria, the Leviathan has effectively castrated opposition. And this is why we should all be bothered. It is a Lagos model given federal promotion. The Leviathan then dipped his hands into his wiles pouch. From there, he brought out a colony of termites, led by a choleric dictator who is seeking political vengeance in his home state. His main assignment was to gradually corrode virtually all the internal strength of the PDP. I will not be shocked if the Leviathan is also the sponsor of the crisis in the Labour Party as well. Like a colony of pests called termites, Aso Rock and Nyesom Wike have visited on our country, using Rivers State as model, one of the most debilitating democratic devastations ever in history. This means that, whatever tyranny and limited vision leadership which Nigerians complain of today has a longer expiry period than they may think. We should all buckle up for a marathon. It is a distressing reality.

    What happened in Edo State last month, coupled with the lawlessness that has eaten up Rivers State today, are clear signals that the electoral, judicial and police institutions have been ambushed. In broad daylight, with the obvious abetment of the Villa, electoral process was cavalierly thrown to the swine. The animals in turn mauled it with maniacal relish. It was obvious that Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC didn’t have any qualm licking the pus-dripping wound of the Leviathan and his accomplices.

    With wanton abuse of electoral rules by INEC, advocacy for the abrogation of state electoral commissions for being lapels of state governors will not make any sense. From what is going on in Rivers today, with INEC openly in bed with a federal minister whose Hippopotamus ego will not stop from his Samson complex, any INEC-conducted state election will automatically be a from-frying-pan-to-fire situation. We will obviously be substituting local state despots for Abuja despots. In all, INEC’s Edo sham election hasn’t shown that the commission is the solution to governors’ brazen perversion of democracy. Kayode Egbetokun stands smilingly on the fringe to offer autocracy and totalitarian rule a pillow for comfort and the judiciary a final seal.

    The second prong from which to look at this pig-food relationship is ethnic relations in Nigeria. As it stands, in the last nine years or thereabout, ethnic tensions here have ratcheted up so frighteningly, just like among black and white people of South Africa. When you read posts on social media, especially from both Yoruba and Igbo, a tingling feeling of foreboding will creep up your nerves. Of a truth, there is a subsisting history of almost a quarter century-old hatred ramped up between the two ethnicities. However, between 2015 and now, a heavy salvo has been unleashed on the relations between the two ethnicities, so much that if there is any slight prick, the bubble will burst finally.

    The most incalculable salvo, more devastating than the machine guns of the civil war, was smashed on ethnic relations in Nigeria by Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year rule. In my piece of May 26, 2019 with the title, Who will be Nigeria’s last president?, I argued that, by the time Buhari exited Aso Rock, there might be no Nigeria as handed over to him. My hunch was based on Buhari’s ultra-ethnocentric rule. That playbook is being revamped today. All the cement and glue that made a united Nigeria have practically been deliberately peeled off or worn out. Ethnic tensions are at a frighteningly high level, reminding one of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Buhari, on national TV, once referred to the Igbo as a “tiny dot in a circle.” It was not different from the pre-fixing of the word “cockroach” by Hutus against the Tutsi. Both depicted a negligible, expendable ethnicity. While in Rwanda, it inflamed passion and expedited genocide, in Nigeria, it bred resistance. Buhari then prosecuted this hate agenda with clinical finish, so much that, by the time he left office, ethnic relations between the east and other ethnicities landed on the borderline.

    Curiously and seemingly illogically, since this current government assumed office, Yoruba and Igbo, who were united by their mutual pummeling by Buhari, have squared up to themselves in a needless ethnic animosity similar to the escalation of war between Israel and Palestine. The Leviathan has done little or nothing to quell the inflamed passion and escalation of distrusts between them. The hatreds are bereft of logic, scarcely backed by history and are mere whimsical carry-overs of political antagonisms. Why would a people who have similar histories, struggles and challenges in the hands of their mutual oppressors, hate each other this much?

    It is so bad that, if one of the two ethnic stocks, like Maria Makgato and Lucia Ndlovu did, goes rummaging for edible food in the other’s compound, just as Olivier’s maniacal identity profiling of South African blacks, one will feed the other’s flesh to their pigs. Sometimes when I read very acidic but senselessly divisive posts from both sides on the social media, not only do I shudder, I wonder whether the writers were same offspring of leaders like Michael Okpara and Mama HID Awolowo/Alhaji Dauda Soroye Adegbenro? In 1964, both camps, leaders of two erstwhile politically irreconcilable parties – the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) and Action Group (AG) – came together to form the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) and campaigned round Ibadan during Okpara’s visit. By then, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was locked up in the Calabar prisons by the Igbo/Yoruba common enemies.

    In closing, the story of Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s government in Malawi will tell us not to take for granted the danger of a one-party state growing on the Nigerian soil. Banda’s was an extensive cult of personality. He ordered all business buildings to hang his official picture on walls. Today, a particular cap of specific branding is worn by all top officers in Nigeria today, including Villaswill Akpabio, a man who should ordinarily be at the head of checks on the excesses of the executive. Banda brooked no poster, clock or picture hung on the wall that was higher than his portrait. It was a criminal offence. Whenever any film was aired in Malawi, a video of Banda waving to the people must be mandatorily shown. Same happened whenever Malawian national anthem was played. If Banda paid visit to any Malawi city, a group of women were mandatorily expected to salute him at the airport and wag their buttocks erotically to prep up the leader’s voyeur instinct. The performances were also accompanied with special clothes that had Banda’s picture on them. He banned faiths like Jehovah’s Witnesses permanently from Malawi while other houses of worship were mandated to get his government’s approval before preaching.

    One major blood-dripping hallmark of Banda’s one party state despotism happened in 1983. Three ministers in his government, Aaron Gadama, Dick Matenje, Twaibu Sangala and a Member of Parliament, David Chiwanga were suddenly found dead. At a meeting with Banda, they voiced their support for a migration from Banda’s one-party state to multi-partyism. They told him to his face that he should perish the thought of a life presidency. Not only did Banda dissolve cabinet immediately, he stripped all members of their status and ordered the three men to be rounded up. They were also tortured and bundled into a Peugeot 604 belonging to Matenje. An accident was then staged for them with their car overturned. It was later discovered that they had been murdered with tent pins which were hammered into their heads. During their burial, Banda ordered that their caskets must not be opened for public viewing. They were subsequently buried at night.

    If we think the above is impossible in Nigeria, we should just keep an eye on what is going on in Rivers State. Hours to the state council election, the situation escalated into an embarrassing exchange of allegations between Egbetokun and Governor Similayi Fubara. That is democracy under the Leviathan. We must know that autocracy creeps in harmlessly, just the way music furtively slides into its listener’s consciousness. Of this, Bob Marley once sang, “one good thing about music – when it hits, you feel no pain.” There is a progressive shrinking of the civic space and its replacement with democratic stifling. Wike has suddenly become so powerful that every democratic institution – INEC, judiciary or police – is hidden under his Isiagu clothes. He arrogantly boasts, in inebriated gutturals, that he is the custodian of fire and he can set ablaze any state at his whim. The Leviathan is not bothered. Nigerians laughed at this grisly humour from a totalitarian.

    Wike’s boast and the political calculation of the Leviathan who is playing games with the “head” of Nigerians, preparatory to a one-party state, remind me of the Chewa. A Bantu ethnic group of Malawi, the Chewa tribe can also be found in Zambia, Zimbabwe and a sprinkle in Mozambique. They are a very metaphysical people, renowned for witchcraftcy and secret societies called Nyau. Researches conducted by Reverend H. Debrunner, leading to the book Witchcraft in Ghana (1961) says witches play games, including football, at night like ordinary people. In order to do this, they ”’cut off a person’s head and play ball with it.” He corroborated this with another research work by Marwick (1965) who said that similar practice was prevalent among the Akan witches of Ghana who “engage in… harmless pleasures such as dancing and playing football where they are said to use a human skull.” Incidentally, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who personified witches’ cruelty in his presidency of Malawi, was Chewa. If, like the two black South African women, shot and fed to pigs by a white farmer, Nigerians continue to be daily fed to the swine on social and political planes by the Leviathan and his appendages, we can only chorus, “Long live Hastings Kamuzu Banda.”

    Things are tumbling down fast in Rivers, with morbid signals of owls – birds of bad luck omen – crowing in the air. In many African cultures, owls are representative of bad luck or omen of death. They are feared and avoided. Wike and his Villa minders may be kneading together a script which will result in a Dr. Moses Majekodunmi being a gubernatorial placeholder in Rivers. When a State of Emergency was imposed on a chaotic Western Region in June 1962, leading to the Premier’s exit from power, that singular action spelled the death-knell of the Republic. Rivers is the economic livewire of Nigeria. Its peace is the peace of Nigeria. Any tampering with the lucid-hour sanity of that Ijaw state could signal a rupture of Nigeria. It was easy for Olusegun Obasanjo to foist it on an agrarian Ekiti State. It could spell national disaster in Rivers. Hope the Leviathan and his cantankerous sidekick are listening?

    * Dr. Festus Adedayo writes for The Sunday Tribune.

  • Laolu Akande: The Supplanter Comes Full Throttle — Festus Adedayo

    Laolu Akande: The Supplanter Comes Full Throttle — Festus Adedayo

    I ordinarily do not rejoind rejoinders to my pieces. My philosophy is that, the same freedom I enjoy to air my views is same the person penning the rejoinder has. However, I have had to break this principle, in reply to the doggerel written by Mr. Laolu Akande, the Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media. Of a truth, after reading his, with the benefit of hindsight, I felt I shouldn’t have written it, thus saving Nigerians the horror of encountering Mr. Akande in his rawest fit.

    I have known the presidential media assistant for more than two decades now and I, as well as those who know him, know that his short fuse is akin to an epileptic fit. That he would translate this drawback into the management of his office was not a surprise. What is surprising is that mature minds in the presidency couldn’t rein in this personal limitation from becoming an official imprimatur that paints the hallowed office of the Vice President in the visor of a common motor park tout whenever this fit is in full blossom. Like in the rejoinder under reference.

    Not only do I know Mr. Akande very well, on my part, I thought he was my friend and that he is aware that friendship shouldn’t stand in the way of making comments on issues that affect the country. Specifically, I knew Mr. Akande in 1995, about 24 years ago, at the Tribune House, Imalefalafia, Ibadan, Oyo State.

    Surprisingly, while Akande pretends never to have worked there, I still carry the glory of this frontline newspaper which made me what I am today. Those who are in the know would tell you what Akande used the Saturday Tribune newspaper he edited then for, which he knows that I know. With what we all know, Akande is the least person to impute motives to what journalists write. It is on record that almost all the lead stories in the newspaper under his editor-ship were against the government of the day. Would it be right to say he collected money from the opposition then?

    I hope Mr. Akande remembers that I was not just an insider in the Tribune then, we were sufficiently close for me to know what he did. The language he used for me in the said rejoinder did not in the least shock me, his friend – I assume! – of almost 24 years, given the fact of what I know about how Mr. Akande regards relationships.

    My friend, Akande, was a member of a 5-man circle of very closely-knit friends in the Tribune at that time. Can he explain why the other four were sacked in 1997 and he did not only survive the sack, he, like a supplanter, took over the post of one of his sacked friends? Or has he forgotten how he became the editor of the Saturday Tribune, a position he took from his sacked friend? Till today, Mr. Akande’s friends still lament the knife with which his Cassius stabbed their Julius Caesar. The quadruple facilitated his employment at the Tribune. This is basically why I am not bothered about his intemperate language. All of us, his friends, do not expect anything noble from Mr. Akande.

    On March 17, 2018, celebrated and respected journalist, one of our immediate forefathers in the pen profession, Mr. Dele Momodu, wrote a very emotional piece about Mr. Akande. He entitled it An Open Letter to Laolu Akande.

    In that piece, Mr. Momodu traced the genealogy of his association with Akande. He began by wondering “what people eat or drink inside the Aso Rock Villa that makes some of those of (our) ilk, who we once admired, misbehave the way you (Akande) did last night.”

    READ ALSO: Osinbajo to brief Nigerians on meeting with Buhari– Akande

    Like me, Mr. Momodu had known him for more than two decades. He wrote about how, on meeting Akande in America where he was sojourning, he “expressed the difficulties and vagaries of life (he) faced in America,” how he made him North American Bureau Chief for Ovation International and how, at some point, the editor “complained about the way you handled transactions and so on” and how he “simply abandoned a company that provided some modest income for (him) in America.”

    He had been publishing a ragtag online medium called Empowered Newswire which visiting Nigerian politicians to the US claimed he was using to extort money from them. Mr. Akande’s reply to a similar piece I did critiquing the VP authored by Momodu was, “For good measure, Bob Dee, maybe we should just remind our readers that not only are you an active member of opposition, you also retain with top notchers of the PDP significant business relationships.” It was a euphemism for alleging that the respected journalist was compromised.

    I noticed that in the said rejoinder, Mr. Akande repeatedly referred to me as “Mr.” Being someone with visceral hatred for titles, I do not bother about whatever prefix anyone attaches to me but, in this instance, I noticed that this was done for spite purpose, even when Mr. Akande is aware that I hold a PhD – not honoris causa – from the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan, same school I am aware that Mr. Akande struggled unsuccessfully for close to two decades until he abandoned his doctoral pursuit. For his information, while he is stagnant intellectually, I have gone a step forward to acquire an LLB from that same University of Ibadan.

    Now back to his claim of my manufacture of the information in the piece. While I owe him no apology whatsoever, explanation or any detail, I leave Nigerians to place us side by side and judge who is believable between us. Here was a presidential aide who, about a week ago, took about 200 million Nigerians for a ride, telling them that there was no sack of his principals’ aides by the President.

    A few hours after, a colleague aide of his at the presidency told the world that there were indeed sacks of the same people. Mum has been the word from the supplanter since then. In saner climes, it was enough reason to resign his portfolio. Shamelessly, he still appends his signature to releases. No remorse, no shame. Till today.

    Mr. Akande is apparently one of those “government people” whose warped and narrow minds cannot conceive the possibility of anyone critiquing government personalities without having been compromised.

    He has failed to tell the world who could have compromised me to write an old information that was common knowledge on the Nigerian information highway. I am sure that those who were privy to the information must be laughing themselves hoarse at Mr. Akande’s unexampled attempt to make a corpse walk.

    As a parting shot, the person I pity most is the VP who is trapped in the cocoon of this irascible element who has transposed his short fuse into the management of the press of the vice president. I recommend the examples of his colleagues – Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu – to him. When you critique their boss, not only do they take it in their strides, they do not smear the critic in swine lingo as Akande does.

    Today, Mr. Akande has scant regards among Nigerian media chiefs due to this limitation of his and how he cannot maintain friendships. No wonder the office has almost nil media rating. Many of the barbs the professor VP receives are ostensibly ones meant for his media chief who will descend into the gutters and splash sewers on whoever tells the world that his principal isn’t exactly a nephew of Angel Gabriel. No one is.

  • Festus Adedayo: “A Columnist Gone Rogue”- Laolu Akande

    Festus Adedayo: “A Columnist Gone Rogue”- Laolu Akande

    Letter to the Editor:

    RE: THE TRIALS OF BROTHER OSINBAJO

    Mr. Festus Adedayo’s article above is a sad descent into the gutter by this gentleman. When a professional columnist of Adedayo’s age and experience puts his reputation behind outright fiction and absolute mischief, usually it is a sign that the poor fellow is compromised. This is the sad reality we face today and it is truly troubling.

    But let us give Mr. Adedayo the benefit of the doubt. Let us assume that he has some facts to support the reckless insinuations and innuendoes in his article.

    He should then be able to answer the following questions.

    He claimed that the Vice President, together with some Redeemed Church ‘accomplices’, gathered to pray at some place unstated in his home State of Ogun, at a date that was not indicated, for the purpose of interceding for the VP to become President, and by extension, hoping for, or seeking the death of the President.

    READ ALSO: The Trials Of Brother Osinbajo, By Festus Adedayo

    So where exactly in Ogun State did this prayer session take place, and when? Was it in a church, in which case there would likely be an audio recording? Who are the prominent pastors or other persons involved that can testify to what transpired – what are their names? Who is the “strong Buhari ally” who made a surprise appearance at the gathering and brought the story back to Mr. President? If, as Adedayo claims, the VP has been hounding and haranguing this Buhari ally since then, why is it so difficult for him to cry out and publicize his strange discovery?

    Who primed Onnoghen to “package Buhari inside a judicial casket” during the 2019 elections? And to whose benefit? If, for any reason, the Buhari election was nullified by the judiciary, how would that benefit his running mate, since they contested on the same ticket?

    These asinine stories put together by Mr. Adedayo betray a more evil motive. The Vice President’s commitment to the service of the Nigerian people under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari is unrelenting. But there is a desperation in some quarters to create a division between the President and the Vice President. It appears that they need some well known press names who are prepared to write anything. But for what reward? One wonders. They clearly found one here, as the writer’s jaundiced article bumbled from the realm of baseless claims to outright fiction.

    We do not expect an apology from Mr. Adedayo to the Vice President. This is the style of these professionals gone rogue. They are prepared to smear others and stick to their vile stories. Their conscience seems unperturbed by their reckleness. But, again, we give him the benefit of the doubt, let him answer the questions we have asked.

    *Laolu Akande is the spokesperson of the Vice President of Nigeria, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, SAN.

  • The Trials Of Brother Osinbajo, By Festus Adedayo

    The Trials Of Brother Osinbajo, By Festus Adedayo

    Anyone who has access to a political barometer will see clearly that Aso Rock is quaking at the moment. The dusts the quake is provoking is so huge that it can block nasal passages. You only need to make use of the barometer and become Johnny Nash instantly. Nash? John Lester “Johnny” Nash, Jr. was an American reggae and pop music singer-songwriter who was best known for his 1972 hit song he labeled I can See Clearly Now. In the song, Nash acknowledged his erstwhile inability to visualize critical occurrences but proclaimed thereafter that, “I can see clearly now the rain is gone// I can see all obstacles in my way//Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind//It’s gonna be a bright (bright)/Bright (bright) sunshiny day.

    In the last few weeks, there have been snippets of very disturbing news sneaking out of the Nigerian seat of power. They are indicative of the fact that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has been under the buffeting of his boss, Muhammadu Buhari. The snippets, though seemingly hazy, are very glaring to those who understand the tone and tenor of presidential seat of power dissonances in a Third World like Nigeria. Most times, the dissonance does not obey the geography of such, all over the world, especially in mature democracies. It could be triggered by inane, mundane and very illogical indices. It could even be an insignificant, incorrigible and absolutely irresponsible allegation as the occupiers of the seats’ mutual spousal disagreements. In most cases however, the dissonances are founded on projected power calculus and perceived rupture of this calculation. The victim does not have to deliberately hurt the calculus. When the projections of power are shaken, they are stimuli for taking very sweeping jabs at the lower occupier of power seat.

    When Buhari went on his earlier UK search for health remedy to an undisclosed ailment, it was a top gossip in the seat of power that Osinbajo, engrossed in a prayer session with his Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) accomplices in his home state of Ogun, and frantically being prayed for, for God to make him president by one of the pastors who starred at the prayer session, didn’t know that a strong ally of Buhari – unbeknown to the ally that such “prayer coup” was ongoing – had entered their midst, innocently there to pay obeys ance to the VP. Still with their eyes closed, the prayer warriors nearly prayed that the ground should swallow them when, upon opening their eyes, they saw the president’s ally with them. If you were praying the VP into the office of the president, with the VP shouting thunderous “Amen” to your prayer, weren’t you praying for the boss’ death? That was the first infraction against the laws of power the VP was said to have committed. And one of the reasons Osinbajo hounded and still harangues the ally till today.

    The second foot Osinbajo reportedly hit against the stone was said to be his role during Buhari’s AWOL shuttle to his infirmary. That Walter Onnoghen, allegedly primed to package Buhari inside a judicial casket during the 2019 elections, emerged acting Chief Justice of the Federation through his acting pen angered Villa power apparatchik, so much that they imputed a political Judas into Osinbajo’s act. The removal of Lawal Daura, erstwhile Director-General of the Department of State Services on August 7, 2018 also rankled these owls. If Osinbajo stepped on their mamba’s tail by this act, he fiddled with their lion’s tail subsequently when, at a conference of Online Publishers Association of Nigeria (OPAN), he unabashedly said that, before Saturday, January 12, Buhari was not aware of Onogohen’s trial. What this did was to populate and give official imprimatur to the belief that Buhari was just a mere scarecrow decorating the patio of Aso Rock. As if wearing Omoyele Sowore’s activists’ bandana, the VP also told whoever was behind the Onnoghen trial that, “It has consequences such as we have today, such that people say how can such an important person be subjected to trial without the Federal Government.” More stinging to this set of people known as the cabal, was the fact that Osinbajo sidelined all of them in his decision-taking during the period, was already strutting hither thither like an accursed turtle-dove which, to them, added to the coup-prayer session, was an apparent indication that he was sure Buhari wouldn’t come back and the clock was ticking for the cabals at the Villa.

    Unforgiving and vengeful as the power vultures surrounding the president can be, they swallowed this rheum, even past the electioneering period. When they were sure that the VP believed it was peace and safety, they unleashed their dragons. The first in tow was the disbandment of the Economic Management Team (EMT) that he previously headed and its replacement with an Economic Advisory Council (EAC) under the chairmanship of Prof. Doyin Salami. Buhari was not done in his castration of his VP, he instructed him to thenceforth seek approvals for all the agencies under his suzerainty. Osinbajo was chair of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), National Boundary Commission, Border Communities Development Agency and the Niger Delta Power Holdings Ltd. Bothered by the impression that this calibration of a man who was aiming that if fate smiled at him, he could be a Buhari in 2023, his aides began a move to robe an Omoye whose madness, the Yoruba say, had reached the market-place in her disgraceful nakedness.

    The most recent in the list of artillery fires shot at the VP is the removal of his aides, 35 in all. The ding-dong over the authenticity of this claim has been baffling. While government loyalists initially claimed that opposition was merely crying wolf, the press ferreted out the list. While the VP’s aide denied that there was a sack, Garba Shehu, his counterpart with Buhari, claimed that there was indeed a rout but it was in “our interest” – the people of Nigeria, that is.

    On Thursday night, the VP aide had tweeted, “a list circulating in the media on the so-called sacked presidential aides is not genuine and ought to be ignored,” while his colleague, after a long-winding and circuitous merry-go-rounding, in one breath submitted that “the Presidency wishes to strongly deny rumours of a rift between President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo,” but in another breath, said that, indeed, “there is, on-going, an unprecedented overhaul of the nation’s seat of government, arising from which a number of political appointments have either been revoked or not renewed in the Second Term,” but that it was in our interest as a people, so as “to streamline decision-making, cut down multiple authorities and reduce the cost of administration,” and that “the office of the vice president, His Excellency Yemi Osinbajo has, in compliance with the directive of the President, equally been shed of a number of such appointees.” As a parting shot, strictly for the birds, Shehu had said, “The streamlining was not personal or targeted to undermine the Vice President’s office, as the so-called insider sources quoted by the media appear to make it seem.”

    There are some issues of national concern in the shrouded brickbats between the VP and his boss. One is that, the two officers of the presidency are as dissembling and riotous as the lack of locus among their bosses, as well as the messages they communicate. If you take the dislocations in their messages as symptomatic of the presidency, then you would be acquitted by logic if you submit that the Villa is currently a house of commotion.

    READ ALSO: Festus Adedayo: “A Columnist Gone Rogue”- Laolu Akande

    Common sense is on sabbatical, especially in the release by Shehu. If the presidency had been cutting cost, how many aides were relieved of their jobs in Buhari’s office? Nigerians will like to know. If they had been relieving people of their jobs, “cut(ting) down multiple authorities and reduce the cost of administration,” how come that a few weeks ago, the wife of the president got, according to her, unsolicited, six more aides in the offing? If you go to the brass-tacks, you will even discover that the said sacked aides of Osinbajo were just offerings to the gods of nepotism and cronyism. You would find on that list the names of children of friends and all that, who, professionally, are just emerging from diapers. Until this purported sack, Nigerians didn’t know that there was such a Babelian number of aides attached to one man. Since Buhari is the maigaskia, can he come clean with the people who purportedly voted him into office and tell them how many of such aides their national sweats sustain their voyeuristic excitements at the Villa? Since they have a website at the Villa, how come this list is not there? This is how low Nigeria has sunken under her current taskmasters.

    This most pitiable sight in the sorry equation at the Villa is the VP. A very sound academic, I still remember one of the students he supervised her PhD thesis, now a professor of law and SAN, who waxes lyrical whenever talks come to Osinbajo’s academic excellence. Upon coming to Aguda House however, Thomas Jefferson’s eternal quip, to wit that, “whenever a man has cast a longing eye on (an) office(s), a rottenness begins in his conduct” becomes very apt to describe his actions. He has given intellectual abetment to Buhari’s draconian governance, carried his can of spittle smilingly and frightened off his own kinsmen in the course of doing all that. Now that he has entered the belly of the dragon, Osinbajo has these people behind him seldom. The situation became so bad that a man with such lustering academic laurels tumbled down to becoming a butt of jokes all over, described unflatteringly as VP in charge of condolence matters and VP academics.

    The most cogent lesson in the trial of Brother Osinbajo is the need to build home base. Rolling into the fifth year of his vice presidency, except for an army of recruited Alsatian dogs on Twitter paid to bay for blood and bark at genuine concerns over his groveling before a cow so as to eat beef in 2023, Osinbajo is as bereft of a base as floating ojuoro and osipata – hyacinths – on the river top. Those waiting to clear their 2023 river of such hyacinths are finding it so easy to shovel Osinbajo off their space.

    you ask me, however, I will queue behind Osinbajo. The few sparkles of governance Nigerians have had thus far came from him when Buhari was infirm and vacillating in the UK. Nigerians know that Buhari is just a ceremonial figurehead who “does not know” and has no whiff of what is going on in his surroundings. That hogwash from Shehu, to wit that, “the President is in absolute control of his government,” that “the media should stop attributing non-existent powers to some people” and that “there cannot be anyone too powerful for President Buhari to control” should be the most laughable cant Nigerians have heard this year.

    Osinbajo should continue to pray to his God. If he comes out unscathed, he will be our modern day three Hebrew boys. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that these people are have sold their souls to Mephistopheles for a farthing. They have ordered him thrown into a fiery furnace.

    Fashola and the Quid Prod Quo of Our Roads

    The Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, last week, joined the list of government fat cows who exhibit crass disdain for the plight of their people. In a chat with State House correspondents after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Fashola said reports that the state of Nigerian roads was pitiable, was a mere hype. The minister, while maintaining that Nigerian roads were not in the kind of bad shape as often narrativized by the people, said this while asked to justify the huge amount of billions voted for construction of Nigerian roads yearly and the terrible state they still are. “The roads are not as bad as they are often portrayed. I know that this is going to be your headline, but the roads are not that bad”, he said.

    Fashola’s speech infelicity found a corollary in an earlier gaffe from the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sani Nanono. Nanono had said that there was no hunger in Nigeria, contrary to the claims of the people and that food was very cheap to buy in Nigeria. He made this known while briefing the world as part of activities to mark the 2019 World Food Day in Abuja. He even said that the level of self-sufficiency Nigeria had attained was such that she would feed her neighbours without batting an eyelid.

    “I think we are producing enough to feed ourselves. I think there is no hunger in Nigeria; there could be inconveniences. When people talk about hunger in this government, I just laugh. In this country, it is fairly cheap to buy food” he said.

    That Fashola had joined this club of indiscretion is the most disheartening of the story. Lauded for his infrastructural strides as Lagos State governor for eight years, it was a big let-down that the minister could sound so removed, so insulated from the plight of the people. If he didn’t know, at a conservative estimate, 90 per cent of Nigerian roads are in very sorry states. That the roads are in very troubling states, becoming grooves where Nigerian blood are sacrificed almost every other hour, is not as worrisome as the fact that they have become veritable avenues for governors and ministers to siphon public money into indecipherable bottomless pits, some kind of Donald Trump’s quid pro quo, if you like, between the interests of their purses and the welfare of the people. Roads are constructed today and in a few months, they become craters. Nobody carries the can, nobody is queried and society lives happily ever thereafter.

    Methinks these statements from those who are supposed to serve us are manifestations of the low estimation of these men of us and the disconnect they suddenly feel from us the moment they become Honourable this and Honourable that. These men don’t go to the market to buy foods but feast on government largesse, seldom travel on Nigerian roads but fly in choppers and jets to their destinations; their children don’t go to public schools but join their contemporaries in Ivy League universities in Europe and America; how then can they feel our plights?

    The truth is that Nigerians are hungry, more than they have ever been and Nigerian roads are horrible, killing citizens daily. The earlier Fashola reversed from this barren road trodden by David Mark during the Ibrahim Babangida regime, the better for him. It is a road filled with craters, potholes and leads to acrimony from the people.

    *Festus Adedayo is an Ibadan-based journalist.

  • Ahmed Lawan, Festus Adedayo and the APC mob

    Ahmed Lawan, Festus Adedayo and the APC mob

    Senator Ahmed Lawan is the incumbent Senate President of Nigeria, having won the election into that office, 79-28, beating his rival, Senator Ali Ndume of the same ruling All Progressives Congress. Lawan was the anointed candidate of his party, the APC, but he worked hard to negotiate with and secure the support of other members of the Senate across party lines.

    He secured a bi-partisan victory in such a convincing manner that has caused turmoil in the People’s Democratic Party, Nigeria’s main opposition party. The PDP has since ordered an investigation into how its National Assembly members voted contrary to the party’s directives. The PDP must pursue that course with extreme caution in order not to shoot itself in the foot. But what has Ahmed Lawan done with his victory and what has been the fall-outs?

    Immediately after his declaration and inauguration as Senate President of the 9th National Assembly on June 11, he and his equally “anointed” Deputy, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege went straight to the Aso Rock Presidential Villa to pay homage to President Muhammadu Buhari. When they got there, Ovie Omo-Agege whose role in the 8th National Assembly was controversial, knelt down before the President as if he was in front of a demi-god. In Africa, some Presidents consolidate power so much in their persons, that people actually worship them. Ovie-Agege knelt down; Nigerians cried out in criticism. I didn’t join that needless outcry, because from the looks on Omo-Agege’s face, he came across like the kind of guy who would even have preferred to prostrate before the President, and if he was asked to jump up in the air, he would gladly have done so. It is part of African culture to pay respects to elders, but a “Kabiyesi syndrome” as poet laureate Niyi Osundare once put it, persists in Nigerian politics. Men and women of power are treated like monarchs and there is never a short supply of acolytes, relying on culture and custom, curtsying and genuflecting, masking what is in reality, opportunistic sycophancy.

    Ahmed Lawan’s first act in office (his urgent and prompt visit to the Presidential Villa) became an issue because he had promised that he would not run a rubber-stamp Senate, and that the 9th National Assembly (the Senate President is the Chairman of the National Assembly) under his watch, while seeking a harmonious and qualitative relationship with the Executive arm of government, would act only strictly in the interest of the Nigerian people and in line with the legislature’s Constitutional mandate. Rushing off to go and “kiss” the President’s feet, just hours after being inaugurated didn’t send the right signals to an observant public. The newly elected Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives would soon follow in tow, but those ones at least allowed one or two days to pass. The dynamics of power in African democracies more or less subordinates one arm of government to the other, structurally and unjustifiably, but the sad part is how those who should ensure the integrity of spaces wilfully violate them.

    Shortly after President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration was inaugurated for a second term on May 29, 2019, his first assignment in office was to jet off to Saudi Arabia for a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Barely 10 days before then, he was shown observing the Umrah (lesser hajj) in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. The incumbent Senate President, Ahmed Lawan and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila have both followed in the President’s footsteps, visiting Saudi Arabia, either before or after their emergence as heads of the National Assembly. The number of trips that have been made to Saudi Arabia by the Nigerian ruling elite, before, during and after the 2019 general elections deserves an independent and rigorous study of its own for all its connotations. These trips are not limited to religious observances, there have been reports of interactions with Saudi officials. Even Christian officials working for the Buhari administration have had to visit Saudi Arabia, decked in traditional Saudi garbs. For more than the reasons of spiritual pilgrimage, Saudi Arabia has always been Nigeria’s strategic partner, but the kind of Saudi Arabian sycophancy that the current government has been demonstrating is the most bizarre that I have seen. Our embassy in Saudi Arabia must be the busiest mission that we have. Were Saudi Arabia to allow dual citizenship, many of our political leaders would have since joined the queue to beg for Saudi citizenship. For now, they have just turned it into their second London and they go and return, and do not fail to flaunt the trips in our face.

    But whereas, we may cite the aforementioned illustrations as evidence of Senator Ahmed Lawan’s attempts to be like the boss, he eventually took a significant step to assert his independence and demonstrate that he has a mind of his own. The fact that he abandoned that attempt in the face of harassment and intimidation, indeed his cowardice in the face of pressure, and how that could well be a sad indication of what to expect, is the bigger point of this commentary. Six days ago, the Senate President Ahmed Lawan, unlike President Buhari, “hit the ground running” by announcing the appointment of his aides. President Buhari is yet to appoint any personal or official aides, his former aides continue to work for him by conduct in utter violation of Sections 151 and 171 of the Constitution. Lawan took the right step of announcing his aides. He retained three media aides who worked with his predecessor, Senator Bukola Saraki – Senate President of the 8thNational Assembly. These are Mohammed Isa, special assistant on media and publicity, Olu Onemola, special assistant on new media, and Tope Brown, special legislative assistant on photography. He retained another Saraki aide: Dr. Betty Okoroh. He further announced Dr. Festus Adedayo, former Special Adviser Media to former Governor Chimaroke Nnamani (Enugu State) and Senator Abiola Ajimobi (Oyo State), and a journalist with the Nigerian Tribune newspapers as his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity.

    By retaining former aides of Senator Bukola Saraki, a former Senate President who had been declared persona non grata by the Presidency and the ruling APC, Lawan was obviously looking at continuity. He didn’t want to start his career as Senate President on a tabula rasa. It helps to have in place persons with institutional memory who may know where all the corpses in the office are buried. Part of the problem we have in the governance process in Nigeria is that every new person who assumes an office believes that the first thing to do is to get rid of staff who may have worked with the predecessor and who may still be loyal to that predecessor. Lawan took the moral high ground. He showed confidence by re-appointing some of the persons who worked with Bukola Saraki. Then, he chose as the head of his media team, a man who has been very critical of the Buhari administration and even of him. By Adedayo’s account himself, Lawan said he was looking for a man who could get the job done. Certainly, Festus Adedayo has the experience and the skills to deliver on the job. When I was approached about two years ago to provide a shortlist of persons who could act as spokesperson for a government agency, he was one of the top favourites on the short list that I submitted. Festus Adedayo has the know-how, the intellectual heft, the street wisdom, the personality, and the courage to do a job that I consider, in retrospect, the most suicidal job in government.

    As things have turned out, Festus Adedayo’s appointment as Special Adviser, Media and Publicity to Senate President Ahmed Lawan became the latter’s first major test. An APC mob crawled out of the woods to demand that this was an unacceptable choice. Adedayo was accused of having written a series of anti-Buhari, anti-Lawan, and anti-APC articles in the Nigerian Tribune where he runs a column titled “Flickers” and also works as an editorial board member. Social media herdsmen pursuing this line of argument created a #sackFestusAdedayo handle online and within 24 hours they were in everyone’s face urging that Festus Adedayo does not deserve to get such a high office in a government that he had consistently disparaged and under a President for whom he seems to have no respect. Passages from Festus Adedayo’s writings were copied, pasted and distributed. He was accused of trying to reap where he did not sow. Those who claimed they worked to ensure APC’s victory and Ahmed Lawan’s emergence as Senate President protested that they had been insulted and marginalized.

    They talked about the soup that they had prepared and now that the food was ready, it would be most unfair to invite an enemy to the table. Festus Adedayo was accused of having no shame, to have done so much damage condemning a party and a government, and to have the temerity to attend an interview for a job under the same government and believe that he could be allowed to take the job. He was labelled an enemy and an unprincipled person. He was asked to go and get a job from the PDP. “You can’t eat where you did not help to prepare the food”, they told him! The way the APC mob was talking about “soup”, “food”, and “juicy positions”, an outsider following the entire saga would think the Nigerian political arena is one big kitchen where Nigerians fight over food, soup and fruit juice, rather than a democracy. There was so much talk about whose stomach should consume the food that the APC had prepared in Ahmed Lawan’s kitchen. We were even told that the APC has seasoned media managers who have worked and suffered and now that it is dinner-time, outsiders should be kept out.

    In less than 48 hours, there was a press statement relieving Festus Adedayo of his appointment. This must be one of the shortest-lived appointments in Nigeria since 1999. Senator Lawan acted too prematurely and cowardly. He succumbed to blackmail. He may have been intimidated by the fact that the wife of the President, Aisha Buhari also waded into the matter with a widely circulated tweet, but he should have restrained himself from rushing to judgement. He interviewed Festus Adedayo. He didn’t just appoint him without a prior check. To sack him so hurriedly just because of the harassment of the APC mob shows cowardice, lack of principles, and an abject moral stature. He says he will not be a rubber stamp Senate President. He has just rubber stamped the wish of the APC herdsmen on social media. So, if tomorrow an opposition candidate opposes an Executive motion on the floor of the Senate, and we have the APC Senate gang screaming, what he would he do? A man who cannot stand by his own choice and principles is a weakling whose politics cannot be trusted.

    Senator Ahmed Lawan, who was brought to office on a bi-partisan basis must show greater confidence going forward. He must be the Senate President of all Nigerians not a Senate President that shakes and dithers when either the wife of the President or a frustrated APC mob sneezes. I have been told by a guest on The Morning Show – which I co-anchor on Arise News, Channel 416 on DSTV – (I will not mention the guest’s name because we intend to invite him again) that it would have been better if Festus Adedayo did not accept the appointment in the first place, and that persons in the public place should always stand by their own beliefs and not seek to benefit wherever there is food to be served. Festus Adedayo has already defended himself in characteristically sturdy and lyrical prose. But I told the fellow I hope the professional political class will also abide by the moral code that he prescribes. He merely repeated his position.

    It seems to me, overall, that the ruling APC is mismanaging its success by adopting in most cases a winner-takes-it-all attitude, sheer intolerance, post-election and the needless dictatorship of the APC Headquarters. The only exception to this rule is probably the Dapo Abiodun administration in Ogun State where after the election, all stakeholders have been invited to be part of an inclusive process instituted by Governor Abiodun. I am told, however, that he is also under pressure from the APC to keep “enemies” away from the “kitchen.” The situation is worse in Edo and Bauchi states where infantile politics, and ego-conflict are on full display over the inauguration of the State Houses of Assembly and the election of principal officers. The APC must be reminded that Nigeria belongs to all of us whatever creed we subscribe to. The prevalent Manichean interpretation of power: them vs. us; winners vs. losers belongs to the age of Thomas Hobbes. There was a time after the 2019 general elections that President Muhammadu Buhari talked about inclusion – but there has been nothing inclusive so far since he assumed office for a second time. It is dangerous that other levels of government are beginning to emulate and mutate the arrogance of the APC.

    When there is inclusion, the advantage is a no-brainer: when a so-called enemy is brought into the fold, he automatically becomes a friend, because clearly, there is no way a Festus Adedayo as spokesperson for Ahmed Lawan would have continued to criticize and condemn either Lawan’s Senate Presidency or the Federal Government. Nobody saw that or they thought it didn’t matter. Alimentary politics blocks vision and reason. Perhaps seeing how Adedayo has been treated, Olu Onemola, who used to work for Saraki, has rejected his re-appointment by Lawan. This is not a good sign- Lawan should note that. I urge Senator Ahmed Lawan to avoid this kind of situation in the future. Critics are not destroyers. They are also part of the national common project. Nobody should be subjected to an apartheid treatment or the politics of segregation just because they express a different opinion. Central to all of this is the failure to understand the difference between the job of a journalist and the job description of a spokesperson. I reserve the commentary on that subject for another occasion.

  • The Festus Adedayo They Thought They Could Pull Down

    The Festus Adedayo They Thought They Could Pull Down

    I was just informed a few minutes ago of the withdrawal of the appointment me as the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the Nigerian Senate President, Dr. Ahmed Lawan. I had hitherto enjoyed every bit of the diatribes provoked by the appointment.

    I was told it was the most discussed issue in Nigeria in the last few days. Of course, it was not humanly possible for me to read the over 5, 000 tweets and thousands of comments on other social media. As at the time of writing this, the issue was said to be the most-discussed in Nigeria on the social media. Said to be the brainchild of some hired Rottweiler dogs loyal to some lords in the APC, a campaign dubbed #sackfestus adedayo was mounted immediately and within hours, had given birth to thousands of recruits. Many of the commentators who took liberty to harangue me have no idea of who I am and went on a railroaded binge to dress me in an alien robe.

    Of a truth, I am a venomous critic of President Muhammadu Buhari, with no apologies. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Adams Oshiomhole, Ibikunle Amosu, Bukola Saraki and several others have been on the receiving end of the unkind temper of my pen. But call my attention to five pieces I did in dispraise of Tinubu, I will call yours to the three I did in his praise, at very grave danger to my life and career, even though Tinubu can’t pick me up in a crowd.

    Someday when he and I meet, I hope to tell him the consequential bullet I once bit for his sake. Since 1998 when I began column-writing, I have a graveyard of public personalities whom my cudgel has whiplashed for perceived infractions in power. Give me 10 pieces I wrote in uncomplimentary review of President Buhari, I will give you 20 I did in utter vilification of Jonathan, his ministers and those close to him. Jonathan never raised a voice against me. One thing my traducers don’t know is that I have no attachment to those criticisms. I am like a prophet; once I deliver my message, I move on.

    What those who are vilifying me for always writing against government should have done was to rise from their laziness and conduct an x-ray of my writing. In my close to 20 years of public sphere intervention, I am a rabid anti-establishment person. I believe that in establishment lies the plague of the Nigerian state and my writings reflect this much. Even though I am everything but a saint, I believe that government should reflect the highest moral echelon of society and those who run it should make covenant of chastity and fidelity with themselves.

    More fundamentally is that my pen knows no friend or foe. Very early in my writing career, I learnt that I could go far in the people’s heart if I sided with the public against government. This was abetted by my philosophy degree background which teaches me to always look for disorder, even in order. I am a natural pessimist and see pessimism in optimism. Anyone who does a critical assessment of my journey as a columnist will see this without any equivocation.

    I doubt if any government has received greater unfavourable reviews from my pen than the Olusegun Obasanjo government. His ministers were weekly captives of my acidic pen. His Chief Press Secretary, Chief Tunji Oseni, upon once inviting me to the monthly Presidential Media Chat, told me to my face that he regretted inviting a rabid anti-Obasanjo journalist like me to the event. Chief Bola Ige, God bless his soul, was the first recipient of my column’s bile in the government. He wrote Page 9 while I wrote Page 3 of the Sunday Tribune, with his Uncle Bola’s Column, even as Attorney General of the Federation.

    A few weeks after the ministers’ inauguration and they were given Wardrobe allowance, I flagellated all of them, including Chief Ige, a known acolyte of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who owned the medium. When Chief Ige reacted to my attack and spoke of me in bad light, I took him up again and almost insinuated that he was senile. Rather than take further umbrage, he apologized to me. This was the Ige who, one day when I went to his house, in the company of other colleagues, once commended my writing.

    READ ALSO: JUST IN: Senate President Reverses Appointment of Festus Adedayo as Media Aide

    Very scant people know that the governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde, is my friend. A few weeks ago, I rudely dragged him to the public square over his decision to cancel the N3, 000 school fees in the state, so much that those who know my association with him asked if there was a dissonance in our relationship. If you rummage through the archives, you would see lacerations on the body of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, products of my unkind jabs. It began from 1999. If I have written 100 articles referencing Abubakar, we may barely find three that are positive about him. Apart from seeing him on the television, I probably saw him once in my life in the crowd.

    Former governors Niyi Adebayo of Ekiti State, Olusegun Osoba, Adebayo Alao-Akala, Rashidi Ladoja received unkind tackles from me. I am very close to Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State; the day I felt his decision was against my people of Akure, I wrote against him. Rummage through the archives, you would see how I pounced on Senator Bukola Saraki severally with my pen; you would think we once sparred over possession of same woman. The truth is, my writings are political party and tribe-blind. I detest injustice, politics and run away from politicians as much as I can. One thing you cannot accuse me of being complicit of is the vermin that has eaten into the fabrics of my journalism profession. While I am not a saint, I have never blackmailed anyone in my life and I have very scant veneration for the god of Mammon.

    The person who nominated me for this office under contention will bear me witness: I told him point blank when he intimated me of the proposed nomination that I had sworn never to do the job of a publicist again in my life, after my two experiences in government. It is a job that almost asks for your life; where you have no respite of any kind. More importantly, all my life, I have never lobbied for any office. Second is that, I believe that my stints in government have almost killed the deposit of writing talent in me. Judging by my beginning as a writer, today I should be one of Africa’s most-read fiction writers.

    Meeting Senate President Ahmed Lawan in Abuja rekindled my hope in Nigeria. Like me, he is tribe-blind. He is also very unassuming and cerebral. He interviewed me and another candidate as if we were in a doctoral defence class and settled for me as his choice. Nigerian politicians have a lot to learn from that gentleman and his politics of blindness to tribe and political party affiliation. He told me he wanted excellence and would pick whoever among us he saw as equating that score.

    I have read all manner of lies concocted against me on the social media by politicians, all because they want this job at all cost. I do not have any problem with that. One post said Tinubu gave me a Lexus jeep. Those who are close to me know how mendacious this is as I have never even entered such Luxury in my life. That I was considered for the job is enough happiness for me and that, in my life, I would see a Nigerian like Lawan who has such pan-Nigerian mindset, is a great accomplishment.

    I was told the job has been withdrawn. I thank Lawan for the offer. He will be my model of a good Nigerian forever. If those who spearheaded the attack thought it would silence me in my bid for a good country, they have another think coming. I can never be silenced. I will always advocate for a good country; whether it hurts Buhari or anyone.

    If I had finally settled for the job, I would be doing it at a great cost. I am right now a student of the Nigerian Law School and the rules forbid my working while a student. I would have had to walk away from a painful studentship I embarked upon last November that will come to an end in about two and half months from now. It is providence in action that I am not going to have the job.

    To those who spearheaded it, I have no space in my heart for any acrimony against them. It has further strengthened my belief that we must rid Nigeria of hate and politics of the stomach. One thing that Nigerians who read my column should be rest assured of is that I will never waver on the side of power or any politician in government for a pot of porridge. According to Bob Goldstein, “a principle isn’t a principle until it costs you something.” I am happy that this is what my quest for a good society, through my writing, has cost me. This is my creed.

  • JUST IN: Senate President Reverses Appointment of Festus Adedayo as Media Aide

    JUST IN: Senate President Reverses Appointment of Festus Adedayo as Media Aide

    The Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, has reversed the appointment of Mr. Festus Adedayo, as his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity.

    The Senate President in a statement issued by his Chief of Staff on Thursday said he reviewed Adedayo’s appointment after wide consultation.

    Lawan, however, wishes the Media expert the best in his future endeavours.

    Factual Times earlier reported that APC stakeholders have rejected the appointment of Festus Adedayo.

    The APC stakeholders during a press conference held in Abuja described Adedayo as strong anti-Buhari media influencer.

    Adedayo is a former Chairman of Editorial Board of Tribune newspapers.

    Source: Factual Times

  • 2019: Revolt imminent if church shows apathy –Adedayo

    2019: Revolt imminent if church shows apathy –Adedayo

    Former Special Adviser on Media to Governor of Oyo State, Festus Adedayo, has said that there may be revolt by the congregation if the church does not get involved in the process of electing God-fearing persons into government in the 2019 elections.

    He made this known in a lecture he delivered at the Seminar Series of the Ibadan Anglican Church Diocese, held at the Comfort Akinfenwa Events Hall, Molete, Ibadan on Tuesday with Bishop of Ibadan Anglican Diocese, The Most Revd Joseph Akinfenwa in attendance.

    Adedayo said that because governments were proving incapable and were showing helplessness at solving people’s problems of existence, they run to the church for succour.

    “Governments are literally throwing their hands up in surrender. The perils and pains are proving intractable for secular powers-that-be to handle. Unemployment has reached a crescendo; economic, health and social crises have proven really indomitable, in spite of coordinated attempts to tackle them. Hopelessness is becoming infectious like a pestilence and the world, which had made governments and technology its hope, is returning to the Church for the way out of its existential dilemma,” he said.

    According to him, if Nigeria was not successful in electing God-fearing men and women into positions of power in 2019, who will in turn ameliorate the heavy load which the church carries, the pressure on the church would multiply, probably leading to a revolt of immense proportion.

    “As predicted in II Timothy 3:1 which says, ‘but know this, that in the last days, perilous times will come,’ the perilous times are actually here and science and technology are profoundly incapable of providing solutions to the pains suffered by humanity.

    “The perilous times are the existential void, agony and crises that man undergoes today. The pains man underwent decades ago are little compared to his challenges today. The Church is still where people frequent for solutions to these existential crises and where they get “spiritual fixes” whenever they get to inexplicable crossroads of their lives,” he said.

    Read also: INEC sets dates for general election from 2019 to 2055

    He called on the church to wake up from its apathy of the past towards politics and the process of acquiring political power.

    “You cannot blame the church wholesale for this. The church had been driven away from having anything to do with the process of seeking power. The backstabbing, murder, corruption, occultist search for power and sundry vices of politicking in Nigeria would make anyone who has integrity to protect to see politics and politicians as lepers.

    “Due to the abdication of space by the righteous for the unrighteous to reign, the worst of us have superintended over the best of us, while the collective keeps silent. For how long will the righteous stay on the sideline and allow the heathens to foul up Nigeria?

    “Not only must it come out of its hiding place, the church must take full and undisguised interest in who runs for offices, from the minutest to the biggest office in the land. It must move against the reprehensible set of people who contest elective offices and who have, over the years, drawn Nigeria backwards.

    “The church must also wholeheartedly goad on and support the few good ones in society who demonstrate purity of mind and character,” he said.

    The Seminar series also included another lecture on security consciousness by the church.