Not So, Mr. President, Nigeria Must First Love Her Citizens!

 By Banji Ojewale

The security and welfare of the people (of Nigeria) shall be the primary purpose of government— The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

*Tinubu

In 1976, the military regime of Olusegun Obasanjo sought to stir the patriotic instincts of our young citizens by decreeing the National Pledge into our lives. It must be recited in all Nigerian schools, the junta said. The general’s martial mind given to governing by fiat and force led him through only one route to patriotism: a mental enslavement of the boys and girls through feeding on the pledge would lead, willy-nilly, to their loyalty to the state and its agents and agencies. If they voiced it out many times over the years, their impressionable minds would give way to deeds of loyalty and love for the land, even if they were under an oppressive, objectionable and off-putting government.

Pastor W.F. Kumuyi And A 60-Year Old Story

By Banji Ojewale

Except a man be born again…he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.-Jesus Christ.   

*Kumuyi

Dateline: Ijebu–Ode, Ogun State, Southwest Nigeria, Sunday, April, 5, 1964.

A preacher is delivering a message in a church. Among those he’s addressing is William Folorunso Kumuyi, 23. The lad is ‘’almost like a moralist’’, as he listens and watches the cleric. The preacher is unrelenting as he insists that it isn’t just our actions that make us unacceptable to God.

When The Police Dangles Its Carrot

 By Banji Ojewale

A child stands before a disciplinarian parent he has wronged. There’s considerably safe distance between them. The child could flee if a whip magically leaps into the hands of the offended. But there’s no cane at the moment with the man who is never seen without the opa, (baton). The young fellow sees something else with the man staring at him: a basket of assorted fruits and sweets. He’s inviting him to come closer to take his pick: fresh fruits or sweets? No cane on offer. The lad is surveying the surroundings.

Something isn’t adding up. A rod hidden somewhere? Is the basket a Trojan horse? The older man breaks the ice. He throws his arms wide open, and swings around 360 degrees to assure the calculating boy he has no malevolent agenda. This is fair and transparent, the boy concludes. So, he moves gingerly into the free hands of the man he has always known as the unforgiving rod man. What follows is a feast, a dialogue and the creation of a new world to banish the cat-and-mouse relationship between them.

Remembering MKO Abiola’s Transformer Semiotics

 By Banji Ojewale

One of the captivating political campaign lines of MKO Abiola has been immortalized in a seminal work by Professor Tunde Ope-Davies (Tunde Opeibi) of the University of Lagos. Titled Discourse, Politics and the 1993 Presidential Election Campaign in Nigeria, the book documents the drive of the gladiators to secure the mandate of the electorate.

*Abiola 

Ope-Davies’ uncanny nose for hidden details smokes out Abiola’s rush for virtually every trick in the advertising books to outwit his main challenger, Bashir Tofa, of the National Republican Convention, NRC, leading Abiola to create the famous punchline on the transformer as a metaphor for abiding leadership. MKO, as he was fondly called, was of the Social Democratic Party, SDP. He is quoted by Ope-Davies (then known as Tunde Opeibi) as saying during his search for votes that all Nigeria needed to overcome its age-old statehood concerns was ‘one transformer’, one singular and enduring personality in the saddle whose beam of integrity would permeate all of society for salutary ripples in his days and beyond.

A Word On Nigeria’s Deadly Enemies

 By Banji Ojewale

Our leaders are our deadliest enemies.

Not given to altruism, these leaders don’t also subscribe to the law of the power of example. This is the golden rule insisting that rulers aren’t graded great until they exhibit selfless, sacrificial and Spartan conduct that sparks same virtues in the citizens. But our leaders, elected, selected or ‘dictated,’ believe in the precept of the example of power. Here, the goal is, as you grab power, you must dig in, you must live in it and flaunt it and extend its frontiers like you’d be in its embrace forever.

Tinubu and Buhari

They invest their all in it, nursing it with a lusty affection that outlaws competition or regard for other existential concerns. They bequeath a depressed economy after fattening their personal bank accounts and acquiring more property than they had at the point of entry. They exploit the led and desecrate their sacred office. They arrange a superannuation that glides them into a lifetime of cloying affluence and luxury. 

Let’s Bring Back The Short Story

By Banji Ojewale

Art is a lie which makes us see the truth—Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish artist

To prepare for this short essay on the short story, I have had to rescue from my home library two old local magazines that, in an earlier generation, sought to offer vibrant voice to this literary genre. First pushed out as a monthly in March 1985, one of the publications was simply called Mc.Quick Short Stories, with a cover price of N2. If you were willing to part with that ‘pittance’ for that product, you were guaranteed an animating literary excursions with some of the greats in the industry.

So, I have in front of me Vol. 1 No. 1 1985 edition of Mc.Quick Short Stories. Wale Adeniran is the Publisher. Kole Omotoso is the Editor-in-Chief, and Femi Omowumi, Odia Ofeimun, Seun Ige and Labo Yari, in tow as Associate Editors. Graphic arts and illustrations are handled by Abiodun Araba, Victor Olusa and Akin Adejuwon. As you close-up on Mc.Quick, you run into the inner world of some of the eminent short story exponents of the age. Leban Erapu, the Ugandan intellectual, has an entry he calls, Guns and Books. He looks at Africa’s political scene, and intrigued by its internal rumblings, wonders why the problems they mischievously engineer remain unresolved. 

Nigeria: What Goes Around Comes Aground

 By Banji Ojewale

The universal principle is that what goes around must come around. It’s not so in Nigeria. With us, when what goes around goes around, it does more than coming around. As it makes its return trip, it comes aground, grounding us, leveling us, merging us with the miry mud. That’s been our history, extinct and extant. We create institutions and leaders from this back-and-forth process to form an endless cycle of vulnerable links in governance that remind us of the late poet, Christopher Okigbo: AN OLD STAR departs, leaves us here on the shore, Gazing heavenward for a new star approaching; The new star appears, foreshadows its going Before a going and coming that goes on forever… (Path of Thunder).

*Buhari and Tinubu 

 It is a villainous star, a kind of abiku that gives short-lived joy to the home where it surfaces at birth. Our present is nothing but a horrid replay of our unpleasant encounters with the past. We sowed the wind yesterday; but today we’re reaping what’s greater than the wind. What goes around comes aground.

W.F. Kumuyi Abroad: Africa’s New Narrative

 By Banji Ojewale

 The West has no business sending missionaries to Nigeria; they can’t help us; they have lost Christianity…substantially…They are the ones who need us. We will give (the erring West) pastoral help…Africa is now the historical custodian of (true) Christianity. – Bishop Professor Dapo Asaju, former Vice Chancellor of Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo State, Nigeria.

*Pastor Kumuyi

As July of 2022 closed, Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi, General Superintendent of Deeper Christian Life Ministry, DCLM, was also closing a chapter that, according to some theologians, made his ministry somehow ‘insular and centripetal’, even if his messages, as we all know, have always been universal. At an event in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic hub, Kumuyi drew our attention to a new point in his evangelical trajectory, when he formally launched the initiative he christened Global Crusade with Kumuyi, GCK.

What Public Officers Can Learn From W.F. Kumuyi At 82

 By Banji Ojewale

The international journalist, Baffour Ankomah of Ghana, is reported to have recorded the lengthiest interview session with Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi, General Superintendent of Deeper Christian Life Ministry, DCLM. As editor of the London-based New African monthly magazine, Ankomah ran voluminous portions of his encounter with the revered Nigerian churchman in October 2006, revealing more than a treasure trove of the life and times of Kumuyi.

*Pastor Kumuyi

The Ghanaian newsman said what he served the public, old and new takes on Kumuyi, was bereft of the trappings you witness between the intrusive reporter and his evasive newsmaker, between a predator and his potential prey, or between a dispassionate journalist and an equally disinterested figure. The reporter was intentional in his bid to secure an uncommon interview with an uncommon man. He got it, but at a price: he travelled with Kumuyi across West Africa, following and studying the man of God as he preached to hundreds of thousands of the poor and enthusiastic folk who wanted to benefit from his prayers and messages of salvation, hope, restoration, healing and deliverance.

Did Buhari Lose Weight In Eight Years?

By Banji Ojewale

A new race of men is springing up to govern the nation; they are the hunters after popularity, men ambitious…the demagogues, whose principles hang laxly upon them, who follow not so much what is right as what leads to a temporary vulgar applause— Joseph Story (1779-1845), American Judge

*Buhari 

Let’s be guided by the former president’s own measuring rod to assess him and other public officers.  We don’t need to go into any arcane research or some tongue-twisting grammatical constructions to determine whether our outgone leaders served themselves or served us. All we should do is to consider the body optics: has the office holder lost weight or gained extra flesh?

Frank Mba In Ogun: A Take From Jose Mourinho

 By Banji Ojewale

Jose Mourinho is the unpredictable, irritable yet unforgettable Portuguese soccer coach renowned for a host of feats confounding forecasters. He took clubs to great heights in his in-form days. Few tenderers of his era have matched his history: he has won a domestic title record in four different countries; he is one of only three managers to have lifted the UEFA Champions League twice with two different clubs; he is the first manager to clinch a European hat-trick, after winning the inaugural 2022 Europa Conference League with Roma, having previously secured the Champions League and the Europa version.

What’s the magic, if there’s any, that earns you prized international accolades in such a gritty sport? Once, in the newsroom of a popular TV station in Lagos, I listened as an analyst previewing a Mourinho match, attempted an answer; he sought a ‘’demystification’’ of the ways of the 60-year-old who calls himself the “Special One’’. He said all you needed to second-guess the Portuguese in a game was to look closely at his starting selection; it would lead you straight into his secret.

2023 Vote: It’s Now The Turn Of A Prince

 By Banji Ojewale

Because Nigeria has a near naughty knack for nibbling at the past, history is also going the full circle to dish us troubling traditional tricks and torments. One such is the dithering act we’re taking straight from English playwright William Shakespeare’s historical classic, Hamlet, as the ballot day approaches. 

The tragic hero, Prince Hamlet, isn’t sure which path to pick at a crossroads, the same way Nigeria and her citizens seem to be uncertain about the coming poll in February and March, 2023. Will the ballot hold? Or it won’t? Should it hold? Shouldn’t it? 

Book Review: One Day At A Time With Kumuyi

 Book: Daily Manna 2023 (A daily devotional guide)

Author: William Folorunso Kumuyi

Reviewer: Banji Ojewale

Page Run: 379

Publishers: Life Press Ltd, Lagos

The philosophy of the sages of old was that the day’s destiny depended on what you made of the morning. If, as you were roused back to consciousness from sleep, you plotted a trajectory of triumph over possible trials or troubles the day usually had in store, you would have won some good part of its 24 hours to your side. So, these ancient men and women put forth this axiom: the morning shows the day, meaning, what you do or permit in the morning is what the day hurls back at you every hour of the period.

Pele: Genius ‘Who Built The World Cup’

 By Banji Ojewale

When boxer Muhammed Ali passed on in 2016, George Foreman, one of the sport’s fiercest demolition experts, was approached by CBS This Morning crew in the United States of America to speak on his old ring foe. Knocked out by Ali in their unforgettable Rumble in the Jungle duel in Kinshasa, Zaïre, in 1974, Foreman said what the sport had experienced of Ali defied all known approbatory allusions.

*Pele 

It wasn’t enough to describe the man born as Cassius Marcellus Clay as the “best fighter’’, he said. According to Foreman: “…To say he (Ali) was the greatest boxer is a put-down…He was bigger than boxing. He was bigger than anything…I got into the ring with him…He didn’t have the best power…the best anything…But his presence…His greatest power was his presence…Nothing like him…’’

Since the death in December of another sports colossus, Pele of Brazil, the world is experiencing the same dilemma: a dearth of expressions to convey Pele into history. Is it adequate to see him as a legend? These days even flash-in-the-plan celebrities get the tag. How about merely dubbing him the greatest in the field?

Recrucifying Christ At Christmas

 By Banji Ojewale

Marching Jesus Christ boisterously to Golgotha for another experience of execution, excoriation and extirpation is exactly what we attempt to do every Yuletide. Although we gather ostensibly to celebrate His birth, what we really end up with is what we did that sent Him to the agony of Calvary. We shut out the Lord Who bore the death penalty we deserve as we drive ourselves into revelry not His will. We engage in epicurean feasts when we fail to reckon with what He commands: Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

As we ignore His word in the season’s ceremonies, we also look down on the friends of Jesus, the poor, the poached and the pricked. These pauperized of the society are our modern-day lepers, sentenced to a station of life away from enduring joy. But at Christmas, we lure them into our fold as objects of exhibitionist philanthropy. There’s hyped media blitz to record a one-off show of orgy where these hard-up citizens are sumptuously fed by the wealthy.

There Was A Country…Remembering Chinua Achebe

 By Banji Ojewale

In the distant past, you wouldn’t talk about Chinua Achebe without instant reference to his mountaintop novel, Things Fall Apart. He was inseparable from his literary creature that outstripped its creator. But Achebe was lucky: he was spared the tragedy of bringing forth a monster which would fatally prey on its Frankenstein god. Achebe’s own genie was genial. Upon escape from the bottle-cage, it gave the illustrious novelist a new identity tag: Africa’s foremost storyteller.

*Achebe 

However, 2012 would deliver another lingering literary lease to this great man of letters. He wrote There Was A Country: A Personal History Of Biafra. More than five decades had passed to serve as a hiatus between the book of Achebe’s youth and the new product of his advanced age. Both were mileposts, the one his first published novel (1958), and the other his last huge work before his death in 2013.

But when on November 16, 2022, the world quietly observed the eminent raconteur’s 92nd posthumous birthday, we were all drawn to his latter-day effort rather than to the one that lionized him. Why?

2023 Poll And Lessons From The Masters Of Journalism

 By Banji Ojewale

I have in front of me the 396-page book, SEGUN OSOBA: The Newspaper Years. It is the 2011 work by the pair of Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe on former newspaperman Osoba who went on to become the elected governor of Ogun State in Nigeria’s southwest. Osoba himself is silent in the biography.

But he is present everywhere, garlanded chapter after chapter by those who knew him as a friend, professional colleague, community figure, politician etc. Both those who mentored him and the young ones he trained are allowed to straddle the pages to say a word. That the eponymous personality of the work isn’t brought in to say something about himself doesn’t enfeeble the book. The writers’ approach, somehow, glamorizes their delivery.

We can also count on the relative objectivity of the witnesses summoned by the duo of Igwe and Awoyinfa to tell Osoba’s story on account of their proven candour.

Between God And Science: Kumuyi’s Take

 By Banji Ojewale

Dateline: August, 2022, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In a hospital, the fate of a pair of conjoined twins lies in the experience, expertise and exertions of some 100 medics. Dug deep in a duel to divide the duo where they are congenitally cleaved –the brains- doctors put up "one of the most complex processes ever’’ adventured.’’ Finally, after 27 hours in the theatre, preceded by months of trialing initiatives, the 3-year-olds are broken loose. 

*Pastor Kumuyi

For the first time in the world, surgeons across several countries take part in the separation task, wearing headsets to communicate. A "virtual reality room’’ is the ‘command centre’.  Dr. Noor ul Owase Jeelani, who led the team along with Dr. Gabriel Mufarrej, says: "In some ways, these operations are considered the hardest of our time, and to do it in virtual reality was just really man-on-Mars stuff.’’

 Described as space-age feat, it delivered a miracle humanity is applauding as the elusive Eighth Wonder of all time brewed in the recesses of science.

Pastor Kumuyi At 81: Peeping Into The Years Ahead

 
By Banji Ojewale

The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out. –The Holy Bible

If you have forensically studied Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi, General Superintendent of Deeper Christian Life Ministry, DCLM, through his one thousand and one books and sermons and you have also read everything about him in the newspapers, or if you have spent days and nights trafficking the internet to track him, there are two old ‘discoveries’ you’ll make again and again: the venerable cleric’s intrepidity to defy the odds for the sake of the Gospel of his Lord, Jesus Christ, and his endless search to uncover untrodden  grounds in evangelism. This man of God will dare death, devils, demons, destiny, disabilities and distractions to "seek…first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.’’

These twin preoccupations have profiled the DCLM founder since he became born again on April 5 1964. At 81 on June 6, 2022, he has behind him narratives of a man of flint who would dwarf obstructing giants of any hideous shape to proclaim his faith in every word of the Bible, even if it would take his life.

Once, in the United Kingdom for a course in October 1974, a maturing Kumuyi trashed the postgraduate programme he went for in London and dashed off to Birmingham to seek the power of the Holy Ghost he believed he needed for a result-yielding evangelical work. 

Pastor Kumuyi In Ogun State: Encountering The Potentates

 By Banji Ojewale

Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi, General Superintendent of Deeper Christian Life Ministry, isn’t a stranger in the club of men and women of weight and power in our society. Being himself a personality of position, presence and princedom, he is easily at home in the assembly of other lords, temporal or spiritual. But Kumuyi’s power is ecclesiastical, leaning on a lever outside him, outside man, outside this world.

*Pastor Kumuyi during a courtesy call on former President Obasanjo during the Deeper Life Global Crusade in Abeokuta, Ogun State...

So when he stormed Abeokuta, capital of Ogun, a state southwest of Nigeria, last week for the April edition of the Global Crusade series of his Deeper Life Bible Church, there was also a gathering of the galactic around him. In addition to the heavy presence of bishops, pastors, denomination founders, and Deeper Life State Overseers, the programme attracted top civil servants and politicians. The governor of Ogun State, Prince Dapo Abiodun, was there with the top brass of his cabinet. On the last day of the crusade, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo showed up to complete the retinue of the high of the society who reported at the event.