Babangida: ‘The Prince’ At 78, By Festus Adedayo
One of Nigeria’s arguably most impactful rulers, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, was 87 years old yesterday. A combatant officer of the Nigerian Army, who joined the force in 1962, IBB, the acronym he became known by while he was the Nigerian military head of state, will go down in history as…
Sowore, Alaafin Aole and Murder In Wukari, By Festus Adedayo
Like Alaafin Arogangan and Aole, history’s recording spool is fast-putting in a permanent form, Buhari’s penchant for hitting his foot against the stone. I sneaked into the spool and found what it etched on the Buhari, history tells me, is Alaafin Aole personified. There is this folk song sang mostly…
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Lie-gerian Army’s 1000 Unmarked Graves, By Festus Adedayo
Bankole Folorunso Adedayo was my blood brother. Born in 1973, he was a soldier of the 1 Brigade, Nigerian Army, Sokoto. In 2000, a terse posted letter arrived the News Room of the ANN Plc., publishers of the Tribune newspaper, my erstwhile employer, from his own employer. That letter shattered…
Obaseki In the Mouth of the Boa Constrictor, By Festus Adedayo
<blockquote>Porcupines are very unassuming but potentially dangerous Their incisors vibrate against each other could fatally injure potential attackers or even cause their death. Let the boa constrictor, the Nigerian godfather, be wary of the coming of porcupines. The Obasekis might just as well herald their political deaths. Ghanaian traditional Ewe…
Dead Burying Their Dead and El-Rufai’s Dishonest Demographics, By Festus Adedayo
Tragedy struck when he was assassinated mid-life in 1987. However, the 43 years life of Jamaican reggae music star, Peter MclnTosh, otherwise known as Peter Tosh, put a considerable weight on existence over and above metaphysics. No, this is not an avenue to venerate the poetry in Tosh’s songs, his…
Fasoranti and Rise of Nigeria’s Un-Nigerian President, By Festus Adedayo
The killing on Friday of the daughter of Pa Reuben Fasoranti, 94-year old leader of Afenifere, a pan-Yoruba group, may yet be throwing up two apparent equations in a post-Fulani herdsmen-sympathetic Nigerian leadership which may begin in 2023. The first is that, President Muhammadu Buhari may be the last Nigerian…
Munching Sour Nigeria Over Delicious Pounded Yam, By Festus Adedayo
Speaking on a topic he said was a slap-dash title called "The Academic Craft", Obadare dwelled on ideas of how to be an academic, together with its accompanying qualifications of a moral canvass and infrastructural imperatives. According to him, the talk was cobbled together to explain the academic in the…
Soyinka and Murderers of Memory, By Festus Adedayo
Two seemingly unconnected events occurred in the last two weeks, with very serious social implications for the polity. One was the Muhammadu Buhari government’s return of the teaching of history as a standalone subject in all basic and secondary schools across the country. The second was the ostensibly gossipy, “very…
Ahmed Lawan, Festus Adedayo and the APC Mob, By Reuben Abati
I urge Senator Ahmed Lawan to avoid this kind of situation in the future. Critics are not destroyers. They are also part of the national common project. Nobody should be subjected to an apartheid treatment or the politics of segregation just because they express a different opinion. Central to all…
Buratai’s Bruises On Nigerian Troops, By Festus Adedayo
Whether the Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Buratai, failed to think through his statement last Tuesday condemning Nigerian military troops who are on the frontline of fighting the Boko Haram insurgency or he was just being magisterial like all bosses do, the import and symbolism of that waffling condemnation,…
