Almost mid way into the Tinubu presidency, the face of the 2027  opposition to his perpetuation is on display. An untidy opposition is nearly on full display but in a perpetual stampede. Key opposition figures are lashing out at surrogates of the ruling party from different  angles in a most uncoordinated matter. In the process, they are all exposing their weaknesses and unpreparedness to assume power.

The major organized opposition party, the PDP, is in perpetual flux. Perpetually writhing from internal chaos fuelled by planted dissidents, the party still manages to  host major opposition voices. Their mascot is former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, a perpetual presidential candidate and national lead grumbletonian.  He seems to have monopolized the enterprise of opposition rhetoric and thus kept Tinubu’s spokespersons busy.  In his latest bouts, Atiku has kept up the theme of accusing Tinubu and the ruling APC of trying so very hard to make Nigeria a one party autocracy. 

On a weekly basis, herds of PDP members have been migrating into the ruling party. This is familiar Nigerian political behaviour. Unofficial sources insist that the Tinubu war machinery has a secret budget for fomenting trouble in the PDP and literally buying defecting members from all opposition parties. It is said that the PDP and Labour Party are pricier than defectors from other minor parties.  In turn, permanent trouble makers in both major opposition parties are on permanent retainership to ensure that the major opposition parties remain perennially embroiled in crises, including fisticuffs and open wrestling at meetings.

Only last week, a meeting of the Board of Trustees(BOT) of the PDP in Abuja was so engulfed in open brawls that when the police arrived, they could only play the untidy role of fight separators instead of firing tear gas and rubber bullets for which they are better practiced and trained in such situations. 

The unconfirmed narrative around the confusion in the PDP is that Mr. Nyesom Wike, FCT Minister and Tinubu’s resident political attack spaniel, has the unscripted job description of keeping the PDP in perpetual discord up to and beyond 2027. He has no business in facilitating settlement in the party or even ensuring that the party survives as one.

In  his practiced role of opposition town crier, Mr. Atiku has recently  upped the ante of his alarm bells. Only a few days ago, he screamed out against the arrest and detention of Mr. Omoyele Sowore and Prof. Usman Yusuf  on baseless charges as evidence of a plan to incarcerate all outspoken critics and opposition figures all over the country. The ruling administration is yet to respond to this charge but has insisted on the criminal culpability of the affected individuals for the offences that led to their arrest and arraignment.

The Bauchi State Governor, Mr. Bala Mohammed has similarly been insistent in his solo criticisms of the Tinubu administration from a policy perspective. His attacks have focused on northern regional interests. He has been insistent that Tinubu’s troubled Tax Bill, for instance,  is essentially an anti- northern ploy to keep the region in perpetual economic under development. Tinubu and his support cast of partisan governors have insisted otherwise but Governor Mohammed is unbowed and unbent. So far, he has targeted Nyesom Wike at the level of the opposition PDP, insisting that Wike is playing an untidy partisan script on behalf of Tinubu to permanently destabilize the PDP ahead of 2027.

The case of Mr. Peter Obi and his host Labour Party belongs differently. Obi has remained the most consistent and orderly voice of the opposition  especially in the post-2023 election season. Mr. Obi has hinged his opposition voice on systemic irregularities in the Tinubu-APC regime. He has been insistent on harping on the neglect of funding and prioritization of healthcare, education and poverty alleviation in the policy mix of the Tinubu presidency. Not to mention the disastrous security landscape and dastardly economic management profile of the administration. The major headache of the ruling party with the Obi version of opposition is the role of the Obidient Movement in the Obi political factor. It is not the Labour Party per se.

While the Labour Party remains a minority party controlling only the lone state of Abia, the Obidient Movement is an amorphous popular movement with an intangible horizontal structure that has been difficult to track and control. The Obidients are everybody who disagrees with the status quo, every youth who rejects the politics of business as usual and the bogey of ethnic factionalism in Nigerian. There is literally no ward, local government, state or national structure to bribe, buy or systemically  destabilize. The Obidients are a broad spectrum of Nigerians spread across the length and breadth of the nation in no particular pattern.  They are people with a shared belief  and shared values. Those shared beliefs happen to run counter to the dominant doctrine and creed of the ruling party and traditional Nigerian political doctrine of “anything goes for as long as we win”.

The apparent formlessness of the Obidients phenomenon is what equipped them to ambush the Tinubu party in the 2023 presidential elections. They shocked Lagos, shook Abuja, swept the South-east, South-south and almost took the North-central. The formlessness of the Obidients equipped them to stage these surprise political ambush operations which was a major upset in that election.  Therefore, on the scale of opposition threats, Peter Obi and the Obidients pose by far the more lethal and credible threat to the political status quo going forward.

In an attempt to penetrate the inscrutable mien of the Obidients, the Tinubu-ethnic high command floated a kite only a fortnight ago. Chief Bisi Akande, known Yoruba chieftain and Tinubu-APC political  gadfly went on the social media to allege that the Obidients movement was behind the #EndSARS revolt of 2020 which shook Lagos and the rest of the country. According to this latest fabrication, the #EndSARS revolt was manufactured by the Obidients in far away United

States and ‘imported’ into Nigeria with the sole aim of ending Tinubu’s political career, hence the revolt made landfall mostly in Lagos and the location of the Lekki Toll Gate.

Yet, it is widely known that the #EndSARS revolt was a nearly spontaneous uprising of Nigerian youth against rampant nationwide harassment of and brutality against Nigerian youth by the SARS unit of the Nigerian police. Obviously, Mr. Akande’s recent fabrication is an attempt to criminalize the Obidients by tainting them with a subversive tar brush so that they could perhaps be branded a treasonous ‘terrorist’ organization by a pliant NASS and over compromised national security establishment.

 It is therefore proper that Peter Obi and other Obidients have risen to speak out against Mr. Akande’s myth making by challenging him to substantiate his claims. The task before the Obidients movement in the light of this is to deepen the sources  of the strength that led it to dazzling success in the 2023 presidential elections.

Of late however, opposition to the Tinubu-APC hegemony has showed up in a more consequential quarter- from inside the APC itself. My friend Nasir El-Rufai, former Kaduna State Governor, has been quite busy politically of late. In addition to battling his local opponents in the state, he has openly attacked the APC hierarchy and political leadership at the national level openly. Specifically, El-Rufai has pointed at the intellectual hollowness of the APC leadership as the source of its policy incoherence and bad governance in the country.

Tinubu’s resident hounds have quickly accused El- Rufai of a ‘sour grapes’ mentality, insisting that he is being critical of the party and the government because he was unsuccessful in securing security clearance to get onto the Tinubu cabinet. The man has stubbornly stood his grounds. He has insisted that he will carry on with his opposition spirit but within the party. This is a clear indication of imminent cracks within the walls of the ruling APC party.

Soon after El-Rufai’s face off with mainstream APC, former Transportation Minister and first runner –up in the last APC presidential convention, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, spoke out at a democracy conference in Abuja. His contention was that Nigeria’s political culture is essentially Machiavellian in a rather devious and even violent manner. Nigerian politicians will kill, maim, steal to secure and remain in power. He indicated clearly that those expecting Tinubu to voluntarily hand over power to them are being delusional. He reiterated the standard Machiavellian dictum that power is never voluntarily given away  but must be violently snatched.

This assertion has thoroughly upset the Tinubu power establishment.  They have condemned Amaechi for advocating violence in politics. Specifically, Tinubu’s Minister of Defense and former Governor of Zamfara State, Mr. Matawalle,  has come out to criticize Amaechi’s perspective. The federal government has also spoken out against Amaechi through the many minions in the Abuja state house.

An interesting  response has emanated from the Tinubu camp on the swelling opposition currents against the administration in the count down to its mid term. Staunch Tinubu acolytes have reminded opponents of the man’s hidden strengths and track record of power absolutism. In a viral Facebook post about four days ago, Mr. Joe Igbokwe, an unrepentant Tinubu devotee, reminded those opposed to Tinubu’s second term of the man’s arsenal of political assets which include tenacity, ruthlessness, huge resources, preparedness and experience. What Mr. Igbokwe dared not openly mention is of course Tinubu’s stupendous wealth which implies an awesome war chest of cash that can be deployed to submerge any and every opposition in the country at any moment.

The present state of the exchange between the incumbent Tinubu power formation and the opposition indicates a less than clear picture. The opposition parties are in a flux and uncoordinated state. At the level of their own internal party dynamics, these parties are in a state of perpetual calamity. At the level of policy divergence from the ruling party, we can hardly identify the opposition parties as different or divergent in any substantial way from the incumbent calamity which has literally ruined the country.

The possibility of an internal split within the ruling APC is a latent possibility. It is clear that the Tinubu faction that is the incumbent authority in the land is a conservative prebendal money-grabbing faction of the APC. It has no intellectual or ideological content or focus. The more enlightened social democratic and progressive wing of the APC is the arm with people like El-Rufai, Amaechi, Osinbajo, Oshiomhole etc as main voices. They were excluded from the power centre soon after the Tinubu victory.

The only option open to the opposition political forces in the country ahead of 2027 is a serious structural and electoral  coalition. This should consist of elements of the PDP, Peter Obi and his  Obidient Movement and the alienated progressive  arm of the APC. The Labour Party should be discounted. It does not exist as an objective political reality except as a weak link in the destabilizing arsenal of the incumbent authority. The new opposition coalition must however aim beyond 2027.While it can upstage Tinubu and his rabble in the immediate 2027 contest, the coalition must redefine Nigerian politics in a manner that incorporates more serious Nigerian technocrats, academics and civil society leaders as party members and think tanks.

The current stampede in the opposition camp is a positive development. It should point opposition politicians in the direction of the task ahead. For them to sit back and think that their isolated noise making will end the Tinubu infamy is the height of self-delusion. The work ahead is serious and tasking.

Nasir el-rufai, the immediate past governor of Kaduna state recently took his former party – the All Progressive Congress (APC) to the cleaners. Speaking as a guest at a national Conference in Abuja on 'Strengthening Democracy in Nigeria' the former governor slammed his party for abandoning its founding principles and fostering poor leadership. El-Rufai described the state of governance and opposition in the country as a “national emergency." He lamented the lack of internal democracy and active party structures within the APC, saying, “I no longer recognise the APC. No party organ has met in two years - no caucus, no NEC, nothing. You don’t even know if it is a one-man show; it’s a zero-man show.” 

The former governor criticised the quality of leadership emerging from political parties, attributing it to unqualified delegates. You cannot afford to have illiterates, semi-illiterates, and cunning people as your leaders. This is why we end up with the poor leadership we have today,” he said. Reflecting on the party’s foundation, el-Rufai said the APC was originally established to combat corruption, rebuild the economy, and enhance security. He, however, said the goals have been abandoned. His outburst and vituperation against APC grabbed major newspaper headlines in and outside Nigeria. 

El- rufai is well known for his political shrewdness. And nobody takes away his political tact, dexterity and sagacity from him. It takes a man of his caliber to navigate effortlessly through the murky waters of the Nigerian politics and blend easily even with his publicly sworn political enemies within a span of over two decades. This man was never a friend or fan of Buhari before 2014. But he became governor under the tenure of the said Buhari and stood solidly behind him to the point of making enemies for himself. He was never a familiar face or a factor in Tinubu’s political calculation until the last hour. He understood the barometer of Nigerian politics which is more or less horse-trading of political positions and interests as a requisite to work together better than his contemporaries. 

Move with the winds of change in government and grab whatever comes out of it forms major part of his political ideals. He is a man who stands solidly on the immovable rock of his convictions and pursue his aspirations without any shame or regrets. The same old attitude was brought to bear at the wee hours of Tinubu campaign for president. However, the most successful political antics of over two decades guiding the political philosophy of el-rufai came crashing like a park of cards in his very face. He was jolted to his marrow but then was rightly consoled that pay-back time was around the corner.

Therefore, the season to launch himself back into the political consciousness of the people - positioning himself as a true democrat is now and he grabbed it with the last energy left in him. He chose a national platform set to address democratic weaknesses to launch his verbal assault on APC and to a large extent Tinubu’s administration. His decoy worked and is still working. His political stand on the future of Nigeria no doubt gathered the much-needed attention and has expectedly provoked hot debate from all corners. 

He is a man of himself not persuaded by superior argument except his and it does not matter whose ox is gored when he takes decisions. This I-too-know perception of his pitched him against powers that be and has contributed mostly to his journey to political wilderness and misfortune. People have juxtaposed his present umbrage against APC and the current government with his antecedents as minister of the Federal Capital Territory and former governor. 

The question of his intolerance to dissenting voices, high-handedness, nepotism and disregard for rule of law continue to resonate at every turn. Many believed he is a loser shaking the table to save what is left of his political career after a stunning disqualification as ministerial nominee without any promise of an appointment coming. Others believe he was shabbily treated by APC and Tinubu led government who he sacrificed resources to ensure they won in 2023 thus should have been compensated with a juicy political appointment. 

His admirers tend to forget that loyalty matters in political patronage and ascension. And loyalty is not a byword of their master. Many of them do not see anything wrong with the unstable political nature and history of their tin-god as a factor working against him. Typical of a Nigeria politician with an axe to grind with any government, he dismissed his aborted ministerial nomination with a wave of hand and never complained about that or condemned President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for not intervening. 

He echoed, after his ministerial disqualification that he never wanted to be minister. His son Bello el-rufai took the message of non-interest in political appointment further to buttress his father's position. One wonders what a man who does not want a ministerial position was looking for at the Senate Chamber for confirmation? 

Those who understood politics knew from the events of last one year that el-rufai was no longer a member of APC. According to him, 'though I am a founding the member, the party has left me behind.' What happened at Abuja event was a reinforcement of his belief and confirmation of his position. The salvo fired against APC has prepared enough ground for rallying the support of some disgruntled members of APC especially those in Buhari’s camp and other political parties and preparing ground for the emergence of a new mega political party. 

The harsh economic realities in the country brought upon everyone by the cluelessness of Tinubu administration is one reason people may listen to the likes of el-rufai. However, those who have volunteered to work with him from other political parties on this his ambiguous political project or vendetta should rightly and firmly wear their thinking caps. There is more to it than patriotism and service to the people.

Sunday Onyemaechi Eze, lecturer Department of Mass Communication and Head Internationalisation and Partnership, Coal City University, Enugu

In the aftermath of the announcement on 28 January 2024 by Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger Republic denouncing the Revised Treaty of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and leaving the regional bloc “without delay”, reactions spanned the spectrum from hubris to hyperbole. From Nigeria, the regional anchor and chair of the Community, the predominant sentiment was - “the three countries would have more to lose.”

Outside the continent some described the situation as “West Africa’s ‘Brexit’ moment” or Sahelexit, likening it to Britain’s decision in 2016 to quit the European Union (EU). Reinforcing the comparison, the finalization this past week of the exit of the three countries from ECOWAS coincided with the fifth anniversary of the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU. The temptation to read too much into this coincidence should be resisted.

It is significant that the announcement by the three ECOWAS frontier states in 2024 was made shortly after the arrival in France of Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu for what was said to be a “private visit”. All three countries have been involved in a plurinational dispute involving both Nigeria and France and connected with military rule and transitions to elected government.

In reality, however, the disputes have been more about the historical legacies of French colonial rule, the complex insecurity in the Sahel, and Nigeria’s regional role. In their joint statement, the three countries accused ECOWAS of being “under the influence of foreign powers and betraying its founding principles.”

These were not allegations to be treated lightly. There was also significance to the fact that the announcement came on the eve of ECOWAS’ golden jubilee year and represented the latest escalation in the debate about how to calibrate inter-state relations in an increasingly complex regional environment.

It did not have to end this way. As a matter of law and notwithstanding the peremptory language deployed, the departure declaration by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in 2024 denouncing the ECOWAS Treaty was not immediate. Article 91(1) of the Revised ECOWAS Treaty requires departing countries to “give to the Executive Secretary (President of the Commission) one year's notice in writing” and their departure can only take effect at the end of the period.

ECOWAS had every opportunity during this period to exert itself to show it desired a different outcome. In the end, the Community appeared manifestly incapable of sustaining two contradictory ideas. One is the strategic importance of good neighbourliness within ECOWAS as a regional community of sovereign peers; the other is the commitment to government founded on democratic legitimacy.

The fact that ECOWAS finds itself in the current predicament ostensibly over the fate of elective government in the region is a somewhat, perverse acknowledgement of how far it has advanced since its origins.

Of the 15 heads of state and government present at the adoption of the Treaty of the Economic Community of West African States in May 1975, seven were military rulers and another six were succeeded by soldiers. Felix Houphöuet-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire was the only president among the original signatories who was neither a soldier nor directly succeeded by one, but his successor was toppled by the military in December 1999. Abdou Diouf, who represented Senegal at the adoption ceremony was a Prime Minister to President Leopold Senghor, whom he later succeeded as president on 1 April 1981.

Cape Verde and Senegal remain the only ECOWAS countries to have been spared the experience of military rule. This fact should ordinarily have equipped the Community and its member states with adequate skills in reacting to military coups. However, it would be a mistake to suppose that this denouement is the result of an argument over coups alone or mostly.

ECOWAS began life in the middle of the global energy crisis of the 1970s, founded by rulers who declared it their goal to “foster and accelerate the economic and social development of our states, to improve the living standards of our peoples.” A combination of misrule and debt overhang miscarried this objective even before the ink was dry on the parchment it was written on.

In the wake of the instability that followed, the Community adjusted its mission in 1981 to include mutual defence and security, importing an implicit obligation of regional solidarity. When the Mano River countries, first Liberia and then Sierra Leone, descended into war from 1989, Nigeria, then led by military ruler, Ibrahim Babangida, launched a regional intervention known as ECOWAS Ceasefire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in 1990.

A review of the original ECOWAS Treaty followed in 1993, chaired by Nigeria’s former military ruler, Yakubu Gowon, himself the prime mover behind the original ECOWAS vision. The Revised ECOWAS Treaty again enhanced the obligations of mutual solidarity among the countries of the sub-region.

As the anchor country in ECOWAS, Nigeria was naturally expected to bear much of the burden of financing this obligation. But a straitened economy at the end of decades of misrule has frustrated that capability on the part of Nigeria at precisely the time that the countries of the Sahel needed its presence the most in response to Islamist insurgencies.

The resulting vacuum has been filled by external actors. The French proved to be the worst enemies in their attempt to fill this vacuum, providing the soldiers who seized power in these countries with a common foil. French departure in November 2022 and regional isolation by ECOWAS have proved to be a boon to Russia which has quickly built up assets and relations with the regimes in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.

Notionally, the departure of these three countries will cost ECOWAS 54.35% of its landmass, 20% of its sovereign membership, 16.5% of its population and seven per cent of its GDP. The actual costs are incalculable. First, Mali and Niger, which are landlocked, have been historic buffers between the violence of the Sahel and the Maghreb on the one hand and the coastal states of the Gulf of Guinea on the other. Their departure could create new security exposures.

Second, the informal economies of West Africa depend significantly on these countries. Trade, migration and pilgrimage routes traverse through them, and the impact on the poor and the excluded who rely on these informal routes could either prove to be prohibitive or expose the hollowness of the region’s inter-state borders in legitimacy and meaning in the lives of ordinary people.

Third, the three countries are important for civil aviation in West Africa for overflights. If they were to deny these, ticketing and routing into their southern neighbours could also become prohibitive.

The upshot in a region defined by notoriously porous borders and transnational communities is that severing ties could be easier said than done. Even now, there is still a reason not to give up hope: Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger retain their membership of the CFA Franc Zone in the West African Economic and Monetary Union, UEMOA, five of whose members remain in the ECOWAS.

ECOWAS has put a brave face on its diminution, claiming that its institutional doors remain open to these countries but their Alliance of Sahel States (AES) is up and running. The feeling remains inescapable that this outcome was not foregone and that it has been enabled by high-level ineptitude among the leadership of ECOWAS.

Ghana’s new president John Mahama, has in a practical manner made it a priority to advance rapprochement with the AES countries, by appointing a personal envoy to lead this process. The Community should fully support him.

It is impossible not to contemplate what might have been. Over the past year while the imminence of these losses escalated, Nigeria’s President and Chairperson of ECOWAS, Bola Tinubu, has been to France on numerous occasions. Consider what might have been if he found time to engage and personally visit these West African neighbours. Surely, that was a mission fit for a new presidential jet.

A lawyer & a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu

Irish poet and playwright, Oscar Wilde, in his lowest moment in prison, drew a comparison of how he sank from being one of the greatest writers of the late 20^th century, into a bisexual pedophile. Son of Anglo-Irish intellectuals, Wilde was a writer with lacerating wit. He equally dressed flamboyantly and garnished his writings in flamboyant imagery. He was however bisexual, a precursor to the creed Trump detests today. Wilde’s ordeal began when he issued a civil writ against 9^th Marques of Queensberry, John Sholto Douglas, for criminal libel. John was the father of Wilde’s homo liaison, Sir Alfred Douglas. Though he won the suit, evidence from the trial made Wilde eligible for trial for gross indecency in homosexual acts. It became one of the first celebrity trials of the century. Overwhelming evidence confirmed that the writer of the famous The Picture of Dorian Gray indeed seduced teens into homosexual activities. At age 39, the court held that Wilde seduced Alphonse Conway, a boy of 16. Another teenager of same age, Walter Grainger, claimed Wilde threatened him with “very serious trouble” if he revealed their homo dalliance.

Convicted and sentenced to two years maximum penalty, Wilde was in jail from May 25, 1895 to May 18, 1897. He spent the term in Newgate Prison in London, Pentonville and Wandsworth Prisons and then to Londonto Reading Gaol. While, as prisoner, he was being moved from Wandsworth to Reading, he faced the lowest point of his life when a crowd which spotted him on the train’s platform jeered at and spat at him. In his De Profundis, also known as Letter to Sir Alfred Douglas, which he wrote in his last year in prison and published posthumously, Wilde had written: “She (his mom) and father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honored, not merely in literature, art, archeology and science, but in the public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low byword among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into synonym for folly.”

I told the tale of Wilde’s unraveling above to illustrate how human beings and nations unravel. In the last two weeks, the world saw America unravel, its dirty entrails revealed to the world. Before now, the narrative was that, it was African and Third World despots and leaders who shared animal features with our ape ancestors. They reacted according to the stimuli of their whims and intrinsic human wickedness. They were emotive and made no effort to shroud their human passions and desires. Many African leaders have, over the century, been profiled as despots because they couldn’t tame their passions and emotions. They came across as wicked and self-centered, sometimes acting out as narcissists. No doubt a product of close to a century of colonialism, it was believed that some of these beastly leaderships the Third World produced could not be found in America. On the contrary, “God’s Own Country” was the manifestation of human purity and America epitomized the height of the purest of human character.

When a situation makes everyone equal in action, the Yoruba have allegories with which they justify it. One way they do this is to invoke the imagery of an African chickens’ pen. As a way of reducing costs of daily sustenance, most African homes maintained pens. They are enclosures within compounds where livestock or pets are kept. They serve as immediate relief from the rigour of dashing to the market for protein. At dusk, these animals, especially the local livestock, are lured from roaming round compounds into the various pens/cages, lest they become preys to reptiles. Because this practice is replicated in virtually every home, when it is time to equalize human action, it is invoked as an allegory. It illustrates a sense of similarity; that, what is done beyond the shores of individual localities is the same, irrespective of any allusion to sophistication. This is found in the aphorism, “everywhere, without exception, at dusk, hens are packed inside the pen” (ibi gbogbo l’a tií ńk’ádìye alé).

This aphorism has served as excuse for failure. It has also served as justification for horrendous human actions. It is a weak line explored to say that corruption or evil is innate in every man, no matter the clime or skin colour. Despots have invoked it to claim that their actions were normal human reactions. More importantly, the aphorism has served to legitimize and sustain that theory which says that, there is a beast in every man, apologies to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s musical line, “…this uprising will bring out the beast in us”.

Many analysts who got sucked into the theory of American leaders’ ‘righteousness’ and Third World leaders’ beastliness, find another aphorism as justification. With it, they explain racial leadership character differences. So, they ask if it wasn’t the same rain that fell on and nurtured the bitter-leaf tree into its repulsive bitterness that also fell on the sugarcane which in turn comforts man with its sweetness (Òjò tó rọ̀ sí ewúro náà ló rọ̀ sí ìrèké). The bitter-leaf, in this case, was African leaders who were demonized for almost a century as wicked and selfish. The sugarcane is American leaders whose perceived purity lifted their countries to the zenith of positive global reckoning. This subsisted until about two weeks ago when America’s self-imposed righteousness unraveled.

Mobutu Sese Seko illustrates this bitter-leaf leadership thesis. Born Joseph-Dèsirè, he was President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1997. Then came Robert Mugabe, who served as the president of the Republic of Zimbabwe from 1987. And Francisco Macìas Nguema, first president of Equatorial Guinea from October 12, 1968, till 1979 when he was overthrown.  So also was Ahmed Sèkou Tourè, the first President of Guinea. From 1958 when he came into this position, he was there till 1984. The continent also had the likes of Abacha, Charles Taylor, Siad Barre of Somalia, Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, Hissene Habre of Chad, Idi Amin Dada of Uganda and many more. America and the west constructed a cemetery for all of them and cast them in boulders of infamy. It must be said that virtually all these African despots claimed they did all they did to make their countries great. Like Donald Trump.

But, how were we to know that America itself was the proverbial ‘physician, heal thyself’? The last two American presidents, especially Trump, deconstructed America so badly in the eyes of the world, making them not different from Third World countries.

At the twilight of his administration, President Joe Biden shocked the world when he issued an official pardon for his son, Hunter. As at that time, Hunter was facing sentencing for two criminal cases. In September, he pleaded guilty to tax charges and was found guilty of illegal drug use and possession of a gun. He became the first American sitting president’s child to become a convict. In 2001, Bill Clinton equally pardoned Roger Clinton, his younger half-brother, who had been convicted in a 1985 cocaine-related offence. During the first coming of President Trump, in 2020, he equally pardoned Charles Kushner, father-in-law of his daughter, Ivanka. He has also recently announced that this same Kushner will be America’s ambassador to France. On his first day in office, in the confetti of Executive Orders he signed, Trump also pardoned more than 1500 of his supporters who were serving prison sentences for their participation in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The attack was said to be the final denouement of a seven-part plot by Trump to overturn the election. In 36 hrs, five persons died, one of whom was shot by the police. A police officer also died a day after being assaulted. Scores were injured, including 174 police officers and damage caused to the US exceeded $2.7m. While it was riot in America, if it occurred in one of those Third World countries, it was a coup. And whether successful or otherwise, the mastermind were coup plotters, susceptible to America’s usual paternalistic rhetoric. The prisoners were Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) fanatics protesting his presidential election loss. Trump was sentenced in over 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, in efforts to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election. These convictions signal that in Trump, America now has its first and only criminal elected to its presidency. Such self-serving actions and criminality were hitherto ascribed to nepotist dictators for which African leadership had incontestable patent.

Today, you would see Mobutu Sese Seko, Robert Mugabe, Francisco Macìas Nguema, Ahmed Sèkou Tourè, Abacha, Charles Taylor, Siad Barre, Omar Al-Bashir, Hissene Habre, Idi Amin Dada, all wrapped into one in Trump. He is as conceited as the typical African despot, arrogant in his self-righteousness as all of them rolled into one, and persuaded, like them, in his own vain conceit. President Trump recently hinted he would walk through the same ignoble track of a third term in office, though the US constitution forbids it. It was a low for which Olusegun Obasanjo suffers the worst unpleasant appraisals till today and for which all the despots above are reserved a place in the hell of global estimation. Trump, in a recent parley with House Republicans, said, “I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100 percent sure”. He continued, “I think I’m not allowed to run again;” and asked rhetorically, in a prodding of Mike Johnson, the House Speaker,  “Am I allowed to run again?” He said further, “Mike, I better not get you involved in that”. All he got from Johnson, an ex-constitutional lawyer, was a chuckle, with other lawmakers sharing an infectious guffaw at this American Wonder.

Trump had previously dismissed insinuations of a third term when he said, “I suspect I won’t be running again, unless you do something…Unless you say, ‘he’s so good, we have to just figure it out.’” That same week, Andy Ogles, a Republican House member, had introduced a bill which sought allowance for Trump to run for a third term. Ogles’ alibi, bowing to Trump’s prodding of ‘he’s so good, we have to just figure it out,’ was that Trump “has proven himself to be the only figure in modern history” capable of “restoring America to greatness”. If the world knows Trump enough, it will know that America would soon receive its first genetic transplant of an African sit-tight  leadership. Trump is provoking trade war, withdrawing America from globally-beneficial institutions like WHO, threatening to harness territories like Greenland, all in the name of his MAGA.

Donald Trump’s son, Trump Jr., recently hallmarked his father’s Greenland harnessing when he made a surprise appearance there. Immediately, Nigerian maga on social media asked what stops President Bola Tinubu from cloning the same nepotist hubris and weave his son, Seyi, round Aso Rock. Trump should be made to know that, at the end of all these, yes, America will be lush once again for Americans. However, that country would have forever lost the savour of respect and dread for which the world stands in awe of it. By the time Trump ends his Adolf Hitler-like preferencing of his Aryan race as the most superior in the world, America would wake up lost and naked.

As Trump is busy affirming the “everywhere, without exception, at dusk, hens are packed inside the pen” to the world, in Nigeria, former Rivers and Kaduna state governors, Rotimi Amaechi and Nasir El-Rufai, are struggling to deconstruct the thesis. At an “Impact of democracy on the national economy” in Abuja last week, both acted from the playbook of a typical adulterous woman sent packing from her erstwhile home. Underlining their “dogo turenchi” is the theme that, while the present government, from which they are estranged, is performing horribly, if they had played prominent roles therein, it would not have been otherwise. That submission attempted to deconstruct the “ibi gbogbo l’a ti nk’adiye ale” thesis.

Quite frankly, Amaechi and El-Rufai were dead right. Nigerians are too docile and possess incredibly short-spanned memory. It is these two limitations that Nigerian politicians capitalize upon to catapult themselves into power. When you add the infectious poverty that afflicts the Nigerian to the mix, you have at your finger tips zombies. Evergreen Anikulapo-Kuti got it right. “My people sef, dem fear too much…” he lamented. While many attribute this to the sparse blood spillage in our fight for independence, some say our docility is a product of our comfort. You cannot also fault El-Rufai’s claim that there is no internal democracy in the ruling APC. But, if I may ask, which party in Nigeria observes internal democracy? The former Kaduna governor had equally lamented that, “You cannot afford to have illiterates, semi-illiterates, and cunning people as your leaders. This is why we end up with the poor leadership we have today.”

My take is that indeed, Nigeria, America and many parts of the world are today facing an Autumn in good leadership. Global leadership is fast decoupling from the people who constitute its foundation. If Amaechi and El-Rufai had been in plum offices today under the APC, there would be nil or marginal differences in the people’s sorrow. Nor any complaints from them. Their comments above are the usual initial traps politicians set to seduce electorates penultimate lunching new parties or entering into alliances. Both Amaechi and El-Rufai were in office when the Muhammadu Buhari government dealt incalculable blows on good governance. It was the most opaque, naive and directionless in Nigeria’s history. Yet, we didn’t hear any hoopla from the duo.

On the whole, Trump is teaching leaders of the world that indeed, “everywhere, without exception, at dusk, hens are packed inside the pen”. As Trump’s Third term ambition grows, it will trigger a wave of African leaders also nurturing perfect alibi for sit-tightism. This brings me to an intersection to disagree with El-Rufai’s claim that the present APC leadership is illiterate. I agree more with ex-Youth and Sports Minister, Solomon Dalung, who recently said that the combine that surrounds power today is educated but lethal. Cunning and sadistic, yes, they are. It is why I am of the opinion that it will be difficult to dislodge Tinubu from power

Rather than sounding sanctimonious, El-Rufai, Amaechi and the Nigerian opposition will need to abandon rhetoric. I am sure that what God deployed to drive Satan away from Heaven wasn’t mere demagogic narratives. What the Nigerian opposition needs to do to drive away the Morning Star is to recreate an American Donald Trump as an aspirant for Nigeria’s No 1 office. A Trump clone will dislodge the current ruling establishment. In Trump is a symbolism of leadership madness, unconventionality, criminality and unorthodoxy. Don’t our people say it is only a meek face that gets riven with pimples (Ojú tó rọ ni rore nsọ)? Yoruba reckon with this when they say, you must deploy madness to cure madness. While campaigning for votes, Tinubu himself said you cannot snatch the kernel from the palm-nut with rhetoric. What Nigeria’s opposition needs to dislodge the kernel from the hard palm-nut is a stone on the floor and another stone to smash it at the top.

Ganusi and the fire this time

All over the world, musicians are reputed to have patented argots, slang and jargon  that signposted global conversations. In the tiny Island of Jamaica, the unkempt, locked-hair, weed-smoking, reggae music singer, Peter Tosh pioneered the word ‘Rasta’ as prefix for devotees of a new religion that began to reign in the West Indies. That religion believed that His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, formerly Abyssinia, and the last Emperor of the Empire, was “King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah and Elect of God”. In a musical track titled “Rasta Shook Dem Up” released in 1966, Tosh patented the usage of the word for worshipers of Selassie named “Rastafari.” It was derived from Selassie’s pre-monarch name, “Ras Tafari Makonnen,” “Ras” having come from an Ethiopian Semitic word meaning “Duke” or “Prince”.

In the early 1980s, when Yoruba Awurebe music icon, Alhaji Dauda Adeeyo, alias Epo Akara, was accused of couriering Indian hemp to Abidjan, Cote d’voire, his traducers had an upper hand in spreading the news. He had to denounce it in a track he called O wa l’Abidjan. In it, he sang that he was engaged in legitimate sale of Ankara clothes which was a major trade in the French-speaking country. A new kind of cloth style became known as L’Abidjan in the Southwest of Nigeria then.

About two weeks ago, Yoruba Fuji icon, Wasiu Ayinde, unwittingly added to the lexicography of the Southwest. His mother, Animotu Sadia, had passed and among a beehive of people who flooded his Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State home for the burial were Islamic clerics. In Yorubaland, clerics at such occasions, whether Christian or Muslim, have come to be synonyms with scavenging for perks and food. Islamic clerics are the most notorious. I remember that while growing up, a very unflattering but predominant phrase that was bandied about was, “If an Alfa goes to an occasion, how to know that the event was fruitful and he ate to his fill was that the Alfa’s elbow would be soaked in oil” (Bí Aafa ba lọ òde, bí òde bà dun, igbunwo l’a tí mọ, torí yíò mú epo dẹdẹ ni!).

An apparently clandestinely recorded video had Ayinde complaining that the flood of clerics to his house in the guise of condolences, was stomach-driven. This was not the novelty Ayinde pioneered. The lexicographic enrichment came from the musician’s usage of a barroom, society’s lowlife slang to describe the scavenging. He said the clerics had chosen his house, rather than his father’s house at Fidipote area of Ijebu-Ode, to “Ganusi.” Ganusi can be used either as a noun or verb and has literally shut down the social media in the various mutations it has suffered.

Many people have done a syntactic and lexical examination of “Ganusi” since then, many times without fruition. It is most probably a weave of two words “Ga enu” (prized open like a trap) and “si” (to) to arrive at a word which conveys the meaning of a deliberate ploy to fill the tummy. Such act of prizing open the mouth is deliberate, purposive and tendentious, while not being real as it is concealed. Ayinde was obviously communicating a tendency that is getti