Obasanjo’s Moment Of Epiphany

 By Promise Adiele

I met Olusegun Obasanjo for the first time in his Abeokuta home in 2017. I had gone to interview him with Prof. Hope Eghagha as part of the research materials we needed for a national project. After three hours of robust engagement on various topics about Nigeria, I no longer had any illusions about Obasanjo’s sagacity, intellect, and sometimes exaggerations which exonerated him of all culpabilities, creating an infallible image of a being.

*Obasanjo 

To say that Obasanjo is intelligent is to put it mildly. He recounted historical events with an uncanny exactitude and subtle arrogance that belies his position as a no-nonsense former leader of the most populous black country in the world. One can profitably argue that few people know or understand Nigeria more than Olusegun Obasanjo.

Where Are Incorruptible Judges?

 By Promise Adiele

Olu Olagoke’s timeless play The Incorruptible Judge is a profound literary piece. It penetrates the Nigerian social fabric, exposing the clammy, savage grip of criminality, especially bribery and dreary obsession with lucre within government establishments. The text dramatizes how a young school leaver, Ajala, in search of a job, falls victim to an immoral employer, Mr. Agbalowomeri, who demands a bribe of five pounds before employing him.

Instead of offering the bribe, Ajala reports the matter to the police. The detective in charge of the case, Sergeant Okoro, gives marked notes to Ajala for onward delivery to the corrupt employer. The bait works, and Mr. Agbalowomeri is arrested red-handed. The matter is charged to court where the incorruptible Justice Faderin takes charge.

Nigeria: From ‘Go To Court’ To ‘Withdraw From Court’

 By Promise Adiele

A new strand of neurosis seems to pervade Nigeria’s political sphere compelling victims to embrace bipolar conditions with relish. Indeed, political exchanges before and after the recently concluded general elections convey a degree of rational deficiency among some observers, especially those sympathetic to power desperado’s inclination to State Capture. 

*Peter Obi 

These developments force one to ask the all-important question reminiscent of Sunny Okosun’s timeless song - Which Way Nigeria? The current election season has exposed many people, hitherto perceived as sensible, in their stark, irreconcilable idiocy which calls to question public perception of individuals. For some Nigerians, the meaning of politics is distilled in shamelessness, dishonour, debauchery, and the subtle inauguration of treacherous culture across the country. 

Obidient Movement As A Fascist Group

 By Promise Adiele

For the sake of peace in Nigeria, let us unanimously agree that the Obidient Movement is a fascist group. (Make peace for reign, abi?) But if we must subscribe to that spiteful narrative, let us innovatively, redefine and explicate fascism. Although generally understood as an authoritarian rule that abhors opposition, fascism must acquire a new identity for a better understanding in Nigeria since it is associated with the famous, radical Obidient Movement. 

*Peter Obi mobbed by a crowd of admirers...

In Nigeria, the brand of fascism associated with the Obidient Movement means rejecting all forms of official criminality and conspiracy in governance. It means the revolutionary denunciation of all manipulative tendencies which invidiously compromise the architecture of equitable, democratic representation. It means all efforts to uproot the edifice of deception, outrageous villainy, and the entrenchment of illegitimate power outposts in Nigeria. It means the attack against all forms of venal forces that have kept the country in the doldrums. 

Open Letter To Wole Soyinka

 By Promise Adiele 

I greet you, sir. I crouch and genuflect before your domineering presence – the irrepressible man of letters, the first black man to win a Nobel Laureate. Despite your recent paradoxical posturing which suggests a striking alignment with corrosive forces in Nigeria, you remain a global totem of literary ingenuity.

*Soyinka 

You are a legend in the literary fraternity, a position you share with your late friends and compatriots Chinua Achebe and J.P Clark. No genuine engagement of African literature is complete without a mention of your names. Besides your creative impute to the literary family, you are a critic, autobiographer, activist, translator, and a radical opposer to all forms of misrule. In appropriating Ogun, the Yoruba god of iron and subterranean agent of self-examination as your patron god, you challenge humanity to self-purify and reject all forms of subjugation. You are a great man, and there is no controversy about it.

Explaining Peter Obi’s Victory

 By Promise Adiele

This is not a critical dissection of the recently concluded presidential election in Nigeria, an exercise globally acclaimed as a collective assault on the humanity of Nigerians and their civic beings. That political obscenity, through coordinated acts of criminality, raped the intelligence of Nigerians, summarily calling to question those who populate our public service and security apparatuses. 

*Peter Obi

The reactions following the elections have been seething and hysterical, especially for those who believed INEC chairman Prof Yakubu Mahmoud that the results would be transmitted directly from the polling units to the commission’s portal. 

Alas, the BVAS was deliberately incapacitated. It was a beguiling gimmick unleashed on Nigerians through well-lubricated machinery of composite deception. Regrettably, the announced results have momentarily conferred a spurious legitimacy on the ruling APC as they glory in their capture and seizure of vengeful power. The humiliation continues to assail the length and breadth of the country as Nigerians are rudely encouraged to accept the vulgar manifestation of power desperadoes in the country. The temptation to discuss issues arising from the election is compelling but I must remain focused and faithful to the title of this essay. 

Nigerian Destiny: In The Hands Of The People

 By Promise Adiele

Is destiny real? Can it be changed? Call it fate or predestination – destiny bulks bigger in the heuristic realm where humanity feebly exudes confidence and power. Many people understand it as the inevitable outcome of human endeavour within the context of existential ordering. Man’s plurimental consciousness provides an escape when his self-absolutism collapses at the altar of his numerous foibles. 

Blame is never far away from failed destiny. When failure happens, we say destiny has failed. When life succeeds, we say destiny has succeeded. The argument becomes a witness. However, ascertaining a true destiny is difficult. In Sophocles’ King Oedipus, was it Jocasta’s destiny that her son would marry her and have four children with her? Could she have stopped the odious destiny? 

Nigeria: The Victims Of APC And PDP Reign

 By Promise Adiele 

Isidore Okpewho’s novel The Victims conveys all the soul-wrenching, tragic trappings of conquered people under the scorching atmosphere of polygamy. It would not have mattered much if the tragedy in the novel descended on the reprobate harbingers of flame and furnace, namely  – Obanua and his mother Ma Nwojide. But the knowledge that the tragic whirlwind consumed innocent children continuously pulls at the strings of the heart.

Why is it that sometimes the perpetrators of tragedy are always spared while innocent people bear the brunt of truculent fate? Why should Obanua and his mother Ma Nwojide remain alive in the novel after releasing hailstones which decimate innocent children whose death breaks the barriers of our emotions? It just was not Okpewho’s creation. It is a typical reflection of Nigeria where wicked people write tragic scripts and choose innocent populace as characters. 

Tinubu: Should Nigerians Really Shut Up?

 By Promise Adiele

Nigeria’s god of literature, Wole Soyinka, needs no elaborate introduction. His evident literary flourishes underscore a deep mastery of the English language which he eminently utilises to address socio-political conditions in his native Nigeria and across the world. He has, several times, confronted misrule, urging the economic weary, downtrodden masses to stand up against bad governance and reject the entrenchment of power monsters in the polity. In his globally acclaimed civil war memoir, The Man Died, Soyinka magisterially submits that “the man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.”

*Tinubu

By that epoch submission, the Nobel laureate encourages victims of feral exercise of power to speak up and not shut up because death is the comeuppance of timid acceptance of political and economic terrorism. Soyinka’s advice to the populace to speak up contradicts Bola Tinubu’s admonition that Nigerians demanding a new beginning from the present All Progressives Congress disaster should ‘shut up.’ Tinubu, the APC presidential standard bearer, was unmistakably direct when he recently encouraged his audience to tell those demanding a change of government in Nigeria to ‘shut up.’

Peter Obi: Nigeria’s Beacon Of Hope

 By Promise Adiele

Overwhelming excitement. Sheer euphoria mixed with anger. Ecstatic frenzy sustained by passionate commitment. That is the story of Nigeria’s current revolution predicated on the ideology of omniscient humanitarianism. Peter Obi is the proponent of that ideology and millions of Obidients are the protagonists. Make no mistakes about it, there is a battle for the soul of Nigeria. While millions of youths are determined to save their country from all the spiralling contradictions of suffering and hardship, the human principalities responsible for these conditions are also fighting back. Thus the war rages. 

*Peter Obi 

It is class struggle, the cornerstone of Marxist sensibilities. Within four months, the Peter Obi story has become folklore, upsetting the subsisting narrative in Nigeria’s political terrain. The historical peregrination of revolution across the world follows a familiar pattern with what is happening in Nigeria now. However, the Nigerian revolution transcends nebulous categories such as ethnicity and religion. Indeed, it is a new beginning in Nigeria. 

Peter Obi Caught In The Act

 By Promise Adiele

In Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not To Blame, as King Odewale informs his wife Ojuola that he caught Aderopo red-handed plotting evil against the throne, the reader is aghast with surprise. How could Aderopo, the Obidient and unassuming son of Ojuola plot evil against the throne? In the same manner, the Labour Party presidential flag bearer Mr. Peter Obi has been caught in the act doing something. Plotting evil against the throne? No!!! Come with me let’s find out what he was caught doing. 

*Peter Obi 

So far, events leading to the 2023 general elections in Nigeria indicate a paradigm shift in the country’s political evolution. The blind can see it. Mortar and pestle are aware too. What hitherto seemed impossible or unrealistic has become possible, an undeniable actuality that daily queries every empirical explanation. Suddenly, Nigerian youths have justifiably found their voices with a compelling need to be part of the political process in their country. 

Exposed: The Real Peter Obi!

 By Promise Adiele

Today, I am possessed by the spirit of exposure. Without let or hindrance, resistance or disputation, I surrender to the service of my fatherland to expose, perhaps in the process, educate the foolish and enrich the wise, nothing more. While exposing, I didn’t consult the Ifa oracle or Delphic oracle, both Yoruba and Greek prognostic divination essences famed for revelation. 

*Former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi (left), receiving The Voice Achievers Award 2014 from Mr. Joop Berkhout (right) for his outstanding example in Leadership and Governance at the Netherlands (pix by The Nation newspaper of October 20, 2014)

Exposure, that act of revealing the unknown, invades my conscious mind. It goes beyond the paralyzing mental hypnosis suffered by victims of religious ecstasy. I am fully aware and awake, with no hallucination, reverie, or phantasmal anecdote. I have no choice in the matter, therefore I must expose. Exposure is different from prophecy, the alter ego of prediction. While exposure reveals what exists but is not known, prophecy reveals what does not exist, therefore not known. Today, I am not predicting anything. Every presidential aspirant must be exposed, nothing hidden. No guesswork. No half-truths. 

Peter Obi And His Supporters

 By Promise Adiele  

Femi Osofisan’s play Morountodun derives its historical substratum from the Agbekoya uprising of 1969 in the Western part of Nigeria. Popularly known as the ‘farmers’ revolt’, the incident occupies an iconic place in Marxist revolutionary ethos which is why many critics describe Osofisan as a helpless Marxist writer, an emblem he unsuccessfully tries to discard. 

*Peter Obi

In 1969, while the civil war was raging in the Eastern part of the country, illiterate, uninformed, uneducated farmers, without any political structure, took up arms and fought the government in Western Nigeria. Their pain was manifold but they bore it with equanimity. They lived through deprivation, government irresponsibility, official rascality, decayed infrastructure, and many other aberrant social conditions. 

But a time came when the farmers could not take the pains anymore, they revolted. The immediate cause of their revolt was the introduction of higher taxes which meant that they had to pay more. Throwing all cautions to the wind, they adopted a guerrilla approach, fought the government and overthrew the prevailing superstructure. In the end, the government was forced to the negotiating table. 

Sexual Immorality And Social Decay

By Promise Adiele

Isidore Okpewho’s novel, The Last Duty illustrates the grim demand for sex in exchange for money and sundry items of survival in a war situation. In the novel, Toje, the conceited, narcissist Urukpe chief, in a dire demonstration of callousness, incriminates his business rival Oshevire for allegedly conspiring with rebel soldiers. While Oshevire is in detention leaving his wife Aku and only son Oghenovo, Toje unconscionably takes advantage of his absence, offers Aku food and money in exchange for sexual gratification to revive his infirm manhood.

Faced with hunger and starvation, Aku gives in to Toje’s morbid sexual request much against her own convictions. In the same vein, the sub-plot of Festus Iyayi’s novel, Violence recounts how Adisa, Idemudia’s wife succumbs to Obofun’s sexual demands in order to raise money to pay her husband’s hospital bills. Her immoral act becomes inconsequential as the hospital bill is paid by her husband’s friends Osaro and Omoifo by the time she arrives at the hospital with the filthy lucre. 

Rape And The Nigerian Condition

By Promise Adiele

A first glance at the title of Alexander Pope’s poem The Rape of the Lock immediately rouses the sensibilities to his deployment of the word ‘rape’. Although the mind instantly acquires a sexual cognition of ‘rape’, Pope’s use of it connotes entirely different meaning in the context of the poem. For Pope, ‘rape’ means to take away or remove something from its original place thereby depriving the owner of its importance and service. Indeed, this appears remote from ‘rape’ which describes the forceful initiation of sex without the consent of one of the persons involved. 

Before we begin to scrutinize rape, let us establish that the symbolic ethos of any society is essentially composed in its moral order by which the conduct of members is regulated. A breakdown of moral order in any society through rape signifies a dislocation of cosmic harmony and therefore requires propitiation, sometimes punitive; in order to salvage humanity’s doomed fate before chthonic gods. Rape is an undesirable, anti-social act which must be consistently repudiated and abhorred. I do not know of any religion, culture or creed that condones rape. Whether as an act of sexual perversion or an act of stealing, rape today – like all other social vulgarity – stands trial in the court of public opinion.

Vote For Me In 2019

By Promise Adiele

This is not a treatise on campaign or a call for votes towards 2019. I am sure those who identify me as an unrelenting critic of misrule and socio-economic polarity at any level will immediately think I have inevitably joined the desperate among us who are already clamouring for votes towards 2019. No, I have no such ambition and even if I do, I lack the financial muscle to actively participate in the thorn-strewn landscape of Nigerian politics. I am not schooled in the inordinate ideologue of the current political class whose activities in recent times continue to advertise Nigeria as an exemplar of political mediocrity. For our politicians, 2019 is here upon us, no stone should be left unturned, all hands must be on deck, the electorate must be conquered and the price, the luscious nucleus of the exchequer, must be won.

Vote for me in 2019 has become a subliminal, recurring ingredient in the speech menu of expired and aspiring politicians who have started campaigning towards the 2019 general elections although INEC has not lifted the ban on political activities. The amusement in our political widening gyre has prematurely commenced, the scheming for the bounty from our land is on, the aggregation of interests, subterfuge and manipulation is in full gear.