Ministering to maalu with 774 heads, By Festus Adedayo

The Iloko, offspring of Arelu (Iloko Omo Arelu) are held in awe in Yorubaland. For a people who fought one another in internecine wars that began in 1793 and lasted for almost a century, the Yoruba give effusions of reverence to people with unusual bravery. Their reverence for the Iloko however comes from this clan’s queer and odd brand of bravery: the spillage of blood. The Iloko earned their renown from the decapitation of heads. They cut off human heads with magisterial finish, holding the familial history of being the king’s executioner. In ancient England, as execution of enemies of the monarchy was done through the guillotine, in the Oyo Empire it was done by the Iloko with sword. The Iloko garnered multiple cognomens on account of their deft beheadings. They were the meticulous cutter of heads, the Bé’ríolá (one who relishes decapitation) and whose swords guzzle blood. An Iloko person is one who, even if the sword is as pint-sized as a Kèmbè short, masterfully uses it to decapitate his in-laws. His rationalisation for beheading one with whom he shares matrimonial bloodline is that whoever gives one their child to marry is the rightful one to behead.

A verse in Iloko’s cognomen depicts its bloodthirstiness. When other farmers cultivate yearly hectares of plantations of maize, okra, yam and “òsìbànbà tí ńbe l’órùn ebè,” the Iloko mock these farmers’ naivety of the true essence of farming. To demonstrate how farming should be done, the Iloko dug thousands of heaps. Therein, they buried decapitated heads like yam heads. Unfortunately, the heads refused to sprout. When his attention was called to the barrenness of his planted seedlings, the Iloko’s excuse was that every human creation, including animals, has their own setbacks! The paradox came when the Iloko ran afoul of the king’s laws and he was slated for execution. The Iloko then stretched his legs and hands pleadingly and demanded from the executioner which of his body parts would be cut off: the hands or legs?

Last week, in my “JF Odunjo and the hunger this time,” I reflected the acute hunger ravaging Nigeria. It is an understatement to say that many of our countrymen are dying of hunger. Some wander aimlessly on the streets, uttering indecipherable monologues, dialogues with God-knows-who. Some are locked up in sanatoria, their sanity dispossessed off them as a result of social de-masculinity. Once cohesive homes lose the social glue that gums them in amity; no thanks to the emptiness of their pantries. Financial impotence is leading to husbands losing their manhood, causing katakata in homes. Many once prude wives are now delectable prawns on adulterous beds of men with money. Female children are forcibly dispossessed of age-long home values at money-point, becoming easy preys to the lures of Sodom. In the midst of this social upheaval, Aso Rock’s tepid and Babelian answers to our affliction of hunger appear like a kick-and-go children community football. Its policies stagger and somersault like a village burukutu local alcohol drunkard.

Before the ink of my pen dried last week, however, Aso Rock had provided answer to Nigerians’ hunger. Her Excellency the First Lady of Nigeria, Remi Ahmed Tinubu (RAT), immediately moved to her backyard inside her expansive powerhouse abode. Therefrom, she emerged with solutions. She planted okra, ewedu, waterleaf, green vegetable, lemon grass and bitter leaf. She even suddenly became a doctor. Like a knowledgeable medic, RAT clinically told us how measles can be cured by eating ewedu. For ulcer, said the medic, plenty waterleaf is answer. No contribution to the national food drive could be greater.

Less than a week after, the Nigerian president, Bola Ahmed-Tinubu (BAT) also came up with government’s response to the stasis in Nigeria’s agriculture. Last Tuesday, he announced the creation of a new Ministry of Livestock Development. Its establishment was part of the recommendations of ex-Kano State Governor and Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Abdullahi Ganduje-led National Livestock Reforms Committee. Then, he appointed a herder in academic gown, Prof Attahiru Jega as co-chair of the committee. With Ganduje and Jega, Tinubu is prepared for the hara-kiri of sacrificing a child of Ore to the Ore deity.

President BAT and Madam RAT’s responses to the acute hunger in the land possess features similar to the Iloko. Is this couple of Iloko descent? It is only Iloko who plant human heads in heaps in the guise of yam seedlings. The way the Aso Rock couple is going about this hunger quench drive, rather than okra, ewedu, waterleaf, green vegetable, lemon grass and bitter leaf, they may need to dig more millions of heaps and furrows. Dry heads of hungry Nigerians may occupy those heaps. Does Madam RAT not know that home gardening is too tokenistic, too tiny an offering to propitiate to the god of acute hunger that ravages Nigeria? I also see the Iloko paradox in BAT’s Ministry of Maalu (cows). In demanding from his executioner which of his body parts would be cut off, the Iloko executioner conflated a process he jolly well knew to be wrong. He then deliberately chose to sell a dummy of personal naivety to his nemesis. Does President BAT actually believe that a ministry of livestock is response to our hunger? And it is a response to the farmer-herder crisis that has ravaged Nigeria for close to a decade now? Do BAT and RAT, like Iloko, take pleasure in hunger literally decapitating Nigerians?

It looks like this is a season when our own bat is being smoked out by owls, hawks and snakes, the bat’s greatest predators. Chiropterologists (scientists who study bats) reveal that, apart from these predators, the greatest threat to the bat is a disease called the white-nose syndrome. It is a white fungus that perches on the muzzle and wings of bats and which affects their hibernation. In Canada, white-nose has killed 90% of one of bat’s species. It was detected in 37 states and seven Canadian provinces. In Nigeria, the cause of our unprecedented inflation in history is ascribed to a disease called white-nose. It afflicts our BAT and its prognosis is Bretton Woods’ economic prescriptions.  With them, the beak-nosed economists hold our bat by its balls. Brian Tamuka Kagoro, Zimbabwean human rights activist and constitutional lawyer, defines this as political elites “getting into cahoots with foreign interests and are willing to sell their children, great grandchildren and grandmothers in exchange for expensive cars, for investments overseas, for little shining trinkets, never factories that produce… a splendid display of foolishness.”

Within Nigeria, the bat is also facing demonic predators. They come too in the form of owls, hawks and snakes. It is Northern Nigeria. For a man who said his life-long ambition was becoming the Nigerian president, the North is intent on putting ‘sand-sand’ inside BAT’s second term gari. The northern anger is manifest. Afro-haired Twitter minstrel, Shehu Sanni, alerted us to this. That northern adder – Nasir El-Rufai, and his irreverent-tongued legislator child are fighting like a decapitated venomous snake. While the father is sending cryptic messages laced with apocalypse on X, the son is spitting venom like a badly-brought-up puppy spits saliva. BAT is their target. His northern enemies are also coalescing. Recently, we saw an elésìnrìn (worthless) pilgrimage to Daura, where the most effete of Nigerian leaders in modern history lives. Nasir, the adder, was also there to offer his infamous kneeling before powerful leaders. Shakespeare predicted this coalesce in Julius Caesar: “It is the bright day that brings forth the adder and that craves wary walking.” BAT’s bad governance of the last one year has brought forth the adder of flip-flops that dog his path.

Not minding its ambiguity, the north is also using the Samoa agreement as ploy for re-grouping of bile. In the senate last week, the north had scathing words for BAT. Ali Ndume, who in 2021 was quizzed for his alleged romance with Boko Haram, complained that the Lagos Boy runs a government that blocked access to quality advice. So also Ahmad Lawan who complained that Tinubu’s policies “have caused hunger and unbearable hardships.” Wonders seem to have ended! Like sharks that can smell blood hundreds of meters ahead, the north has smelled a BAT wall with huge cracks opened by mis-governance. This was a region that kept mute for eight years as Buhari picked his teeth and drifted into deep sleep. It preened its feathers like an Odidere bird when BAT announced a presidential Muslim-Muslim ticket. What it didn’t know was that BAT is just a jolly good fellow who enjoys good life. Full stop! Those Islamic religious prescriptions the sons of Uthman Dan Fodio thought he would help them fight mean nothing to him. 

The kitchen is now getting hotter. The North’s opportunist alangba (lizard) must poke its nose inside this man-made crack to feed on ants. What could not be achieved under a Muhammadu Buhari whose greatest joy on earth was to own cows in his ranch is now being pushed under a man who hails from where the philosophy is not to bow for the cow for the sake of its meat. For the jolly good fellow, to dobale (prostrate) to the maalu so as to have access to its meat is a moral non-starter. It is immaterial. Establishing a Federal Ministry of Maalu is a dobale to the maalu. Perhaps this will appease the children of Fodio?

The wisdom in establishing a Maalu ministry is very far between. If the motive is to placate the north for a second term, does the Iloko know that blackmailers, all over the world, are insatiable? Blackmailers are akin to the proverbial wastrel child, the Omolokun, who won’t rest until it demands his parents’ life. Second, as has been revealed over the years, herders are terrorists who do not deserve human pity. The kernel in that alleged statement from Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is eternal: “It is God’s prerogative to forgive terrorists but my own business is to dispatch them to Him.” Yes, insecurity has decimated food security in Nigeria, with food inflation cruising at frightening altitude. What Nigeria needs now isn’t a beatification of terrorists, nor pandering to a set of people by a government afraid of re-election. It is strategic planning, emergency measures that can tackle insecurity and cross-border pressure on our food production. The minister of agriculture was quoted recently to have said that our silos are empty.

The hugest problem the Maalu ministry will face is that southern governors will still not allow herders graze on their soil. It is a truism that nowhere in the world are herders allowed to graze openly and brazenly as they do in Nigeria. It is obvious that in its conception of this Maalu ministry, FG didn’t reckon with the poultry and grains sector, as well as other livestock animals like piggery which are currently facing the most horrendous policy hemorrhages. Should we now have a ministry for each of them? By the way, which brand of federalism do we practice in Nigeria where a federal government that has no livestock under its umbrella, creates a ministry of livestock?

As last week got set to wind up, the Iloko got decked in victory regalia. The Supreme Court announced that the executioner has secured yet another 774 heads to plant on his heaps. Thirty-six heads of state governors were already in the kitty, demonized and tar-brushed as enemies of the struggle for a better Nigeria. We must thank the Iloko for this victory against our governor-vassals who have turned local governments into their backyard farming? It is to the 774 heads we must look up to for redemption of our decadent infrastructure, impassable roads, payment of teachers’ salaries, council workers’ salaries, gratuities, new minimum wage and others. It is the greatest victory yet for the Iloko whose sword is law. As the Oyo state governor, Seyi Makinde, brilliantly remarked, “The Supreme Court’s judgment…is a distraction; we need to face the real issues we have. Nigeria is not productive. There is hunger and anger in the land.”

We hope, with this judgment, Betta Edu will now be taken to the court to answer to the charge of allegedly siphoning N585.2 million from the Humanitarian Affairs ministry and that gari will now be within the reach of the common man. God bless this Supreme Court judgment that will make hunger a thing of the past in Nigeria. 

The god at 90

When I wrote “Is Soyinka, the god unraveling?,” (9 April, 2023) many people thought I belonged to the rank of those misbegotten children who make a pastime of casting aspersions on the literary avatar, Professor Wole Soyinka. As Yoruba will shout while expressing their indignation, can an epileptic, who makes serial pun of dying, ever be compared to one who dies once and totally? – “taa l’ó ńjé omo akuwárápá níwájú omo akúyányán?” What equation will come on earth that will make a small fry like me look into the eyes of a god like Soyinka?

The truth is, very few human beings are capable of unbuckling the sandals of that literary god. We must however keep the tradition of keen interrogation, fearless x-ray of personas and personages which Soyinka himself taught us through his non-conformist and iconoclastic essays, plays and public interventions. Kongi never taught us that gods were beyond fallibility. As fiery as King Sango was in old Oyo Empire, his major flipside was his scorching temperament which led to his suicide at Koso. Soyinka has his’ and his children-sans-biology like us owe him the responsibility of bringing out what we consider the mucks in his eyes.

Several parts of Soyinka the elephant have been explored and I am not ready to regurgitate them here. However, I am sure Soyinka cannot die. While here with us in human form, his deeds have transited him from mere mortality into enduring immortality. He will live like the Great mythic musician, Orpheus and his wife, Eurydice. Soyinka has left the realm of the human. He is a mythical being who, when this Isara god eventually transits, would just transmute into an imaginary myth recited in incantations. As a hunter, his guild would sing the Iremoje, hunters’ recitals at their colleague’s passage.

Happy 90th birthday to the god we are opportune to behold in human form.

Ogunsola: Celebrating the Man Who Wanted My head

In the year 2000, whilst I was Features Editor of the Nigerian Tribune and a budding columnist with the newspaper, a friend from the PUNCH alerted me that a hunt for my “head” was in the offing. He narrated how it began. Chairman of the newspaper, Chief Ajibola Ogunsola, suddenly walked into one of the newspaper’s editorial meetings and declared me wanted. He was said to have declared his admiration for my writings and asked that I be head-hunted. The man he saddled with that responsibility was the highly respected columnist and editor of the newspaper, Azubuike Ishiekwene.

It was impossible not to have heard of Ogunsola. Mere mention of his name evoked dread and awe in Nigerian newspaper newsrooms. Several tidbits about him oscillated in the media firmament. An actuary, this Ibadan, son of the famous Ibadan textile merchant, Madam Janet Alatede, sat like an octopus as head of PUNCH‘s board. To some, his octopus hold on the newspaper was desirable at a time when mediocrity had become a pestilence in newsrooms. To many others, Ogunsola was deserving of general dread. He didn’t allow people to make second mistakes, we heard. You could resume in PUNCH in the morning and head for the gate before dusk, your infraction being an unconscionable murder of the god of English grammar. More frighteningly, we were told Ogunsola was an atheist. The latter didn’t scare me, having had a romance with atheism, too. My teachers in the philosophy department of the University of Lagos pumped magnum opuses of atheist philosophers into my brain. Teachers like C.S. Momoh, Mama Sophie Oluwole, Joseph Omoregie, Tanu de Peter Bah, (TDP Bah) then doctoral student, Kolawole Olu-Owolabi, (God bless his soul; with his then emerging limping legs!) among others. Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, Jacques Derrida, French satirist Voltaire and the likes played atheistic hide and seek on our heads. They were only diluted by the faith teachings of hunchback Danish theologian, Soren Kikekergaard.

Not long after, Ishiekwene called me. In those days, if Azu of the highly regarded “Azu on Saturday” column spoke to you, you had heard from God. It was same with Funke Egbemode, another columnist of the newspaper’s Saturday paper. They were delights, indeed must-read, for their wits and pithy dissection of issues of Nigeria’s contemporary socio-politics. So Azu delivered Chief Ogunsola’s message.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I had committed the gaffe of telling one or two of my colleagues what I heard from the Almighty Chairman of PUNCH. In those days, PUNCH and Tribune were like the famous thespian, Chief Oyin Adejobi’s dramatisation of his cripple-from-birth life story called Orogun Adedigba – the jealous co-wives. The two newspapers sought to best each other in quality and quantity of their daily sales.

In the process of transmission of the tale, our avuncular Managing Editor, Mr. Folu Olamiti heard of my impending club transfer. He never asked me. I just began to get unsolicited pieces of advice from those who surrounded me. I shouldn’t dim my “stardom” by leaving the Tribune. It was better to be a star in a known firmament than being a moon in an uncharted stratosphere. Then, a few weeks after, Olamiti suddenly made some promotions. I became Deputy Editor, with a fatter take-home. So, when Ishiekwene called, I had more of dread of PUNCH than a desire to port.

Thirteen years or so after, one Sunday morning, I had an opportunity to meet the highly feared, reported atheist in his Lagos home, in company with Mr. Olalekan Ali, Oyo State Secretary to the State Government. Our boss, Abiola Ajimobi, felt PUNCH, owned by his kinsman, one of the greatest scions of Ibadanland, Chief Olu Aboderin, was unfair in its reportage of his administration. So we met Ogunsola who told us that government should deliver its promises to the people and PUNCH would promote its activities. Ogunsola then gave us a great breakfast. As we ate, I broached the story of his order for my head. Smilingly, he confirmed it. I left him that morning elated to have met one of the strongest pillars of Nigeria’s journalism administration.

Today, Baba Ogunsola clocked 80 years. I got this information from the brilliant tribute to him penned by my sister, Professor Abimbola Adelakun, last Thursday. All I have to offer Ogunsola are the evocative words of our elders called Ayajo. Ayato are incantatory words deployed in esoteric metaphors and similes in Yoruba discourses. They are targeted towards desirable outcomes. They are also known as transcendental words spoken to issues that need magical powers to come to pass. While offering prayers of continuous availability and good health for valuable persons, traditional Yoruba initiates chant, and I chant along with them, for Baba Ogunsola: As’odunm’odun l’awo as’odunm’odun, as’orom’oro l’awo as’orom’oro. Ase!

Festus Adedayo is an Ibadan-based journalist.