Wike And Fubara: Tinubu’s Sham Agreement

 By Ugoji Egbujo

The agreement between a pimp and a prostitute ought not to be written. Because if the pimp and prostitute still have any trace of honour left in them, they wouldn’t want the transaction made legible for their grandchildren to read. However, when shame has fled and taboos have become doormats, a pimp can demand a written document.

*Tinubu and Wike 

And when they have a contractual dispute, a bishop might step in to ask the prostitute to sleep with more clients to satisfy the covenant. If reminded of the sinfulness of fornication and trade in flesh, the bishop might say that he did it in the interest of peace and to safeguard trade customs. Peace and custom are laudable virtues but when shallow peace is purchased at the cost of normalization of evil, society is imperiled. 

Baba, Go Straight To Niger, Forget Daura

 By Dele Sobowale

“The evils that men do live after them…”- William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, in Julius Caesar

Outgoing President Buhari announced a few weeks ago that he might relocate to Niger Republic – if people disturb him too much in Daura. Since then, some commentators have assumed he was serious with the declaration; a few said he was only joking and his comments should not be taken too seriously. I take a different attitude.

*Buhari 

Irrespective of whether he meant it seriously or as a light joke, I think he should fly straight to Republic of Niger – where a befitting Presidential Lodge is probably waiting for him. After eight years as President of Nigeria, during which he did Niger more good than Nigeria, he should, quite rightly, expect a warmer welcome there than Daura or any place else in Nigeria.

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? 

Kill All The Lawyers

 By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” – William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2

Tamuno Igbikiberebima is an unlikely star in an action movie. He is a lawyer employed with Nigeria’s national hydro-carbons monopoly. On 17 December, 2020, Tamuno was home in Rumuigbo, in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area (LGA) of Rivers State, in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, contemplating Christmas in the season of COVID-19 and on his phone in front of the gate into his premises, when a Toyota Camry car pulled up beside him.

From the bowels of the car, a young man emerged armed with what the police later confirmed to be an AK-47 rifle and ordered him into the car. Tamuno had the presence of mind to ask why, to which the young man reportedly responded that his mission was to waste him. Tamuno takes the story from here:

“When I noticed how he was handling the gun, it appeared to me that he is not proficient in gun handling. I told myself that ‘ordinarily one-to-one this man cannot beat me.’ ….When he faced the nozzle of the rifle down trying to cock the gun, I started struggling with him.

The Politics Of Naira Redesign

 By Robert Obioha

The plan to redesign the naira by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has, like any other issue in Nigeria, been riddled with controversy and even politics. Ordinarily, the redesign of the naira for the envisaged benefits, which many Nigerians are interrogating, would not have generated the needless acrimony if adequate consultations were made and major stakeholders carried along. 

The differing opinions on the issue from those serving in this government is unnecessary. It is an avoidable distraction. It also shows the level of incoherence among ministers and officials of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. It is unthinkable that such a change in redesign of the naira is being contemplated without the knowledge of the minister of finance even if the law establishing the CBN did not expressly stipulate so.

Nigeria: When Stinginess Becomes A Virtue

 By Hudson Ororho

In  our first year in secondary school at St. Peter Claver College, Aghalokpe, Delta State, we read a book, under the watchful eyes of our Priest/Principal, Rev. Fr. Jeremiah Cadogan, SMA, titled: Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. If my recollection has not failed me, the book has two principal characters:  Scrooge and Manley. They were business partners.

*Obi

In the story, not much was said about Manley save that he was a good man. Scrooge, on the other hand was described as a mean and miserly fellow. He would give shishi to no one. He does not even respond to the Merry Christmas greetings from the locals, describing same as sheer humbug. He was even stingy to himself as he would not enjoy the traditional Christmas turkey. The locals despised him. In retrospect, I wonder if he ever wore a St. Michaels label or a Marks and Spencer shoes.

Nigeria Is Very Sick And Urgently Needs A Qualified Physician!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
President Buhari’s regime has about a year to hit its expiration point. Perhaps, the only thing that still retains the capacity to squeeze out some smiles on a couple of faces today is the faint hope that the president might fulfill his pledge to firmly resist the deadly attraction of that poisoned fruit called “tenure elongation.” Indeed, many Nigerians are willing to take the risk of entertaining some optimism about this. 

Despite the blizzard of outrageous claims roughly thrown at Nigerians every other day, it has become just impossible to muster any bit of expectation that the Buhari regime might still be able to shock Nigerians with any edifying impact on their lives before it exits.  

Perhaps, the only reassuring feeling out there emanates from the palpable wish that the days and months might develop wings and fly away so fast so that with brightened faces and deep relief, Nigerians can happily embrace and congratulate one another that, eventually, the nightmare is over. 

The relief alone will be highly therapeutic, in fact, capable of increasing many lifespans. 

Nigeria: Script For A Final Looting Spree

 By Ochereome Nnanna

The Good Book says “by their fruits ye shall know them”. When you dress a person in borrowed robes just to show off, William Shakespeare (Macbeth Act 5, Scene 2) says it will be “(hanging) loose about him like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief”. Before 2003, the Finance portfolio of the Nigerian economy had always been handled by men. After his frivolous first term, former President Olusegun Obasanjo decided to get serious in his second. Nigeria had a debt overhang of $32bn owed to the Paris Club alone.

*Buhari 

Obasanjo saw that his global gallivanting and begging for debt forgiveness was not cutting ice. He needed to do more than merely advertise his “beautiful” mug on the streets of Western capitals.

The Quintessential Soyinka At 85

By DAN AMOR

It was once the fashion to single out four men of letters as the supreme titans of world literature – Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe –  each the embodiment of a great epoch of Western culture – ancient, medieval, Renaissance and modern. These four literary icons of all times remain secure, but idolatry of Professor Wole Soyinka as the prototype of the inquiring spirit and courageous intellect of modern man has been sharply appreciated in our time, especially as we pass beyond the more leisurely issues of the post modernist era.

*Wole Soyinka

The intensely contemporary character of his works has made him the tallest iroko tree in the post-modernist forest of global dramatic literature. Yet, the commencement, two weeks ago, of the Wole Soyinka 85th Birthday Festival, which ultimately climaxed on July 13, his date of birth, unfortunately doesn't seem to wear the official insignia of the Nigerian government especially because he has started telling them the truth about the Nigerian condition. But, it is expected, as Christ Himself says in Matthew 13:57, "A prophet is not without honour, save his own country and his own house."

Pius Adesanmi: The Human Oxymoron Politicians Must Learn From

By Banji Ojewale

Professor Toyin Falola has put it most concisely: Pius Adesanmi is the man who leaves and lives. He argues that although Adesanmi is leaving the scene, still he lives. He’s gone, but he’s not done. He’s gone, but he’s still on. He’s dead, but not dusted. There is more to Falola’s dirge than the lyrical alliteration.

*Professor Pius Adesanmi 

There’s also more to the oxymoron of a departure that yet defies an exit. To capture or press a point, you must confront it with its alter ego. To prove Adesanmi 'lives' on, you challenge his death with the greater fact of what he has left behind that offers assurance of his being alive, as it were. You put the two opposite each other: Adesanmi’s death and his works and life that touched many he seems to have left orphaned.

Nigeria: The Fable Of A Clone, A Clown And A Crown

By Banji Ojewale

Out there in faraway Poland the other day, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari put out a disclaimer that he isn’t what Mazi Nnamdi Kanu of proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, says he is. Kanu asserts the man we refer to as our beloved president is really his double. The one we voted for died in London last year during his medical tour, he says. His loyalists then packaged a lookalike from Sudan called Jubril Aminu Al-Sudani to impersonate him, the Biafran agitator concludes. Kanu hasn’t thrown the tale to us as a joke. He believes in it as he does he is the runaway leader of outlawed IPOB. He has captured a credulous followership, among them many of the high and the low in the society. 

*President Buhari 

Even the yarn has got sections of the global media salivating. On American television programme, The Daily Show hosted by South African Trevor Noah, a correspondent ridiculed the Nigerian leader’s denial. He imitated a fraudster composing a scam email thus: “I’m a real president who’s trapped in my country because they think I’m a clone. Please send me $10000.’’

How Oshiomhole’s Panel Trekked From Abuja To Abeokuta

By Paul Oreniyi

And yesterday the bird of night did sit,
Even at noon-day, upon the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say
“These are their reasons; they are natural.”
For I believe they are portentous things
Unto the climate that they point upon.”
“Indeed, it is a strange disposed time,”
to further quote the inimitable.
– William Shakespeare.

 

*Oshiomhole 

It had all the trappings of a Hollywood movie, save that it is a tragic, if not macabre one. Viewed from a related angle, features of a palace coup are also visible, enacted fully or piecemeal – “here”, and to be fully enacted “there” if Abuja is found remiss in the rapidly unfolding events of the ruling party.

Nigeria: Beware The Ides Of March

By Anthony Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie

“Beware the Ides of March,” said the soothsayer to Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare’s famous play Julius Caesar. In those words, Caesar was given an alert about his imminent assassination in the hands of Roman politicians, among whom was his friend Brutus. Approaching another year of elections, this admonition has become frightfully pertinent.

*Cardinal Okogie

For what is being witnessed looks like a reenactment of the Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. In this reenactment, Julius Caesar would represent Nigeria, the Roman politicians who plotted his assassination would represent the average Nigerian politician, with Brutus, the politician pretending to be Caesar’s friend, representing politicians who, in their diabolically deadly intrigues, pretend to love Nigeria, but are actually plotting her descent into bloody disintegration.

‘Redemption Songs For Buhari’s Presidency’

By Martins Oloja

In an ancient political plot captured by Shakespeare in his classic, Julius Caesar, a minor character, Artemidorus, prepares what he calls a caveat for Caesar. 

*Buhari

He reads the warning aloud that he (Caesar) may escape an evil plot by his friends and members of his ‘inner circle.’(Reading aloud from the letter) Artemidorus warns in clear terms:

“Caesar, beware of Brutus. Watch Cassius. Don’t go near Casca. Keep an eye on Cinna. Don’t trust Trebonius. Pay attention to Metellus Cimber. Denius Brutus doesn’t love you. You’ve wronged Caius Ligarius. These men all have one intention, and it’s directed against Caesar. If you aren’t immortal, watch those around you. A sense of security opens the door to conspiracy. I pray that the mighty gods defend you! Your friend, Artemidorus.”

Nigeria: Mystery Snake And A Nation’s Comedy Of Errors

By Tayo Ogunbiyi

The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare’s early plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play.

The play tells the story of two sets of identical twins that were accidentally separated at birth but were eventually united after a series of witty events.

Today, the phrase ‘a comedy of errors’ is often used to describe a situation that is so full of mistakes and problems that it seems funny. On that premise, it won’t be out of place to tag our nation as a Land of Comedy of Errors.  Things happen in our clime that you cannot but remember the famous Charley Boy Show where anything can happen.  

The Robert Mugabe In Most Of Us

By Martins Oloja

This week I have had to deepen my understanding of why Master Jesus had to be angry with (religious) hypocrites of his time. Jesus is introduced to us in the scriptures as a calm, cool and collected teacher, preacher and healer until he encounters hypocrisy and speaks angrily about hypocrites. In the account in Matthew 23, Jesus who for the first time shows that he can lose his cool too, pronounces a series of woes on the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees. 

*Mugabe

He condemns the Pharisees’ lack of spiritual values, as shown by the arbitrary distinctions they make. For example, they say: “If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is under obligation.” They thus show their moral blindness, for they put more emphasis on the gold of the temple than on the spiritual value of Jehovah’s place of worship. And thus, they “have disregarded the weightier matters of the Law, namely, justice, mercy and faithfulness.”​ (v-16-23).

The Military And Its ‘Python Dance’ In South-East

By Adaeze Ojukwu

‘All the world’s a stage,  And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances…’ – William Shakespeare

The Nigerian Army is at it again. Few days ago, the 82 Division of the Nigeria Army launched ‘Operation Python Dance’ in the five South-East states. The division cited security concern as the major reason for the operation.

Meanwhile, pandemonium has spread across several cities in the South East, particularly Onitsha, with the presence of thousands of heavily-armed military personnel and armoured vehicles on major roads and streets in the region. Deputy Director, Army Public Relations of the division, Colonel Sagir Musa, said the exercise would ensure security of lives and property during the yuletide season.  According to him the operation would address security issues such as kidnapping, abduction, banditry, herdsmen/farmers clashes and violent secessionist protests.  According to him, its major objective is to enforce a crime-free Christmas period in the region, just as he warned individuals and groups to shun violence to avoid being targeted by security operatives. Despite the noble objectives of this onslaught, many Nigerians, particularly those of lgbo extraction, view this move with suspicion and skepticism.

Members of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and many Nigerians have dismissed the military invasion as another ploy by government and its security apparatus to unleash mayhem on the region, for its unabated agitation for independence. Others see it as part of punitive measures against Igbo people  for being part of the ‘five percenters’ that did not vote for President Muhammadu Buhari in last year’s general elections.

The operation, no doubt, has continued to generate spirited debates, due to inherent flaws in its concept, timing and the culture of alleged human rights abuses of the army, in addition to escalating hostilities across the country. Indeed, it appears that the army is undertaking a futile venture, as it seems ill-conceived and ill-timed. Embarking on such a military attack at Christmas season, which is one of the most celebrated and sacred Christian festivals among Igbo people, is most insensitive. Moreso, it is coming  few days after Amnesty International released a damning report of killing of unarmed Biafran protesters by the Nigerian Army, last year. Since August 2015, security forces have killed at least 150 members and supporters of the pro-Biafran organization, IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra) and injured hundreds during non-violent meetings, marches and other gatherings,’ it said.

The group said ‘it investigated the crisis brewing in the South-East, where IPOB campaigns for an independent state of Biafra.’  The report ‘documented extra-judicial executions and the use of excessive force by military, police and other security agencies. It also shows a worrying pattern of arbitrary arrests and detentions, including soldiers arresting wounded victims in hospital, and of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees,’ it added.

Sylvester Akhaine’s Logic Of Struggle And Humanism

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

The world is a theatre of struggle. Every stage one finds oneself at, one should know that it is a struggle; it is one of the principles of social Darwinism – Sylvester Akhaine

With Donald Trump clinching the United States’ presidency on the back of the promise to privilege the welfare of Americans and deport immigrants he considers as parasites, such foreigners have only the option of making their own countries great to cater for them and obviate the need of seeking succour overseas. To make their countries to attain a level where they do not need to be economic refugees in foreign countries like that of Trump imposes on such citizens the necessity of a struggle to remove impediments to the development of their societies.

*Sylvester Akhaine

For African states and other formerly colonised countries of the world, the need for a struggle to attain their national destinies is very familiar. It was such a struggle that paved the way for political independence in the 1950s and 1960s in African countries. Thus for these African states to overcome their new masters, whether internal or external, there is the need for them to resume the path of struggle. This validates the intervention of Sylvester Odion Akhaine, through The Case of a Nursing Father, in the contemporary discourse of resistance by the citizens of post-colonial states against their economic and political oppressors to create prosperous societies.

Beneath the veneer of a preoccupation with existential affairs such as those at the home front as signified by the title of the book are weightier issues of a people’s struggle to be free from oppression in its multi-faceted forms. But then, even at the home turf, a struggle is required for the solidification of humanism. This is demonstrated by the author’s refusal to align with the members of his elite class who objectify their fellow human beings by making children from poor homes as housemaids.

While such housemaids spend their days in drudgery in the service of oga, madam and the children, no one spares a thought for their education. The author resolves the conflict that could ensue from his resistance by becoming a nanny in order to accommodate the professional demands of his medical doctor wife. By both husband and wife accepting to take turns to care for their first child, they avert a feminist war of equality.

Thus, in the African context, there is the robust possibility of mutual help between a husband and a wife as counterpointed by a brand of Western feminism that breeds an unnecessary gender hostility.

Our Quintessential Soyinka At 82

By Dan Amor

It was once the fashion to single out four men of letters as the supreme titans of world literature - Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe - each the embodiment of a great epoch of Western culture - ancient, medieval, Renaissance and modern. These four literary icons of all times remain secure, but acclamation of Professor Wole Soyinka as the prototype of the inquiring spirit and courageous intellect of modern man has been sharply appreciated in our time, especially as we pass beyond the more leisurely issues of the post modernist era.

*Soyinka 

The intensely contemporary character of his works has made him the tallest iroko tree in the post-modernist forest of global dramatic literature. Yet, the commencement, two weeks ago, of the Wole Soyinka 82nd Birthday Festival, which ultimately climaxes today, July 13, his date of birth, unfortunately doesn't seem to wear the official insignia of the Nigerian government especially because he has started telling them the truth about the Nigerian condition. But, it is expected, as Christ Himself says in Matthew 13:57, "A prophet is not without honour, save his own country and his own house." 

In retrospect, in March 1996 when the Nigerian artistic and literary community was agog with the explosion of a series of events to mark the tri-centenary and two score anniversary of the birth of Von Goethe (1749-1832), the German creative genius and great thinker of all times, the Sani Abacha-led military junta, despite its sadistic, base and tyrannical complexion, surpassingly accorded the celebration an official recognition while declaring Soyinka, the custodian of our artistic signature wanted, dead or alive. Given the authoritarian intolerance of the Buhari government and the President's implacable disdain for anything cerebral, no one actually expected less from them especially at a time when Soyinka is telling him to listen to the cries of the Igbo and the minorities in the country, and to heed to the call for the restructuring of this lopsided federation. Oscar Wilde, the great Victorian English epigrammatist, in a state of protracted gloom once observed that: "Formerly we used to canonize our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarize them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable." Indeed, the brilliant Wilde cannot be faulted. But there is no more breeding ground for such critical vituperation than our current socio-political climate.

The Parable Of The Madman (1)

By Dan Amor

In his short story, "The Madman", Prof. Chinua Achebe (of blessed memory), easily Africa's most celebrated novelist of the twentieth century, ventures into a poetic realization of a disturbing irony. The consuming paradox centres on the protagonist, Nwibe, a wealthy farmer who has so distinguished himself that he is about to be initiated into the select, dignified society of men who hold the highest and most venerable title in the land- the Ozo title holder.

*Chinua Achebe

Returning from an early morning work on his farm on a fateful Afor Market day, Nwibe stops to have a bath at the local stream. Meantime, a desperate madman comes along to quench his thirst at the stream; he sees Nwibe's loin cloth, gathers it and wraps it over his nakedness. Angered by the sordid affront, Nwibe runs after the madman in obvious nakedness thereby turning himself to the original madman.

Symbolically, this involuntary but tragic exchange of identity between a sane person and a madman is registered by the jeering, ironic laughter of a taunting madman. Nature, which seems to be participating passively in this tragic irony, solemnly echoes the madman's mocking laughter: "the deep grove of the stream amplifying his laughter." Nwibe, who has been appropriately compared to Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart as a man of "fierce temper whose judgement deserts him when he is under its full sway", fully recognises not only the outrageousness of the madman's affront, but more significantly, he understands the ominous import of the sacrilegious challenge. The words Nwibe screams out to the madman: "I will kill you ... I will whip that madness out of you today", convey, in fact, more than the obvious threat.

They also carry the veiled desperation of a man who realises that his precious life is about to take a certain tragic turn if nothing is immediately done to save the situation. The condition in which a stark-naked sane man pleads through a threat with a clothed madman for, of all things, clothes to cover his nakedness, is rife with a sweeping irony. In his stark nakedness, Nwibe pursues the fast-retreating clothed madman who is "spare and wiry, a thing made for speed." In a short while, what Nwibe has dreamed, swiftly becomes a merciless reality in the irony of mistaken identities. The involuntary transfer of clothes which only threatens possible disaster which, in fact, is still laughable, while it remains a private matter between Nwibe and the madman, suddenly assumes a tragic dimension the moment the first witness appears on the scene: "Two girls going down to the stream saw a man running up the slope towards them, pursued by a stark-naked madman. They threw down their pots and fled screaming."