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.

If Sudan And Hong Kong Should Visit Nigeria Today

By Banji Ojewale

If Sudan and Hong Kong should visit Nigeria today, the world might not be in much shock at the outcome of the trip. I’m sure of two consequences.

First, we would be unprepared for them, despite the handwriting on the wall alerting us that we’ve been found wanting in the balances. In much of our post-independence history, we were never seen to be ready for events that came calling like a ‘‘thief in the night.’’ How do we handle nocturnal robbers? We don’t cuddle them. We cull them.

*Korean soldiers 

Secondly, flowing from the first, our leaders would misread the signs of the times and accord the strangers a most satanic, sanguinary and smoky reception. Ditto for the local ‘malcontents’ hosting them. Our leaders would chase them to the outermost and innermost parts of the land and mete out penalty outstripping their impudence that brought in Hong Kong and Sudan.