Ekiti and doom foretold
Obuko de, oorun de” is the sententious dismissal, by the Yoruba, of not unexpected knavery. Where does the obuko (billy goat) go without its overpowering body smell? “To be thus is nothing,” Lady...
View ArticleYoruba ronu
The 2015 election is just another set of elections in Nigeria’s Fourth and longest running democratic republic, right? No. It is rather an acid test — and rude challenge — to the fundamental ethos of...
View ArticleOlumo wars
Olumo Wars, the war of attrition for the soul of Ogun State, ahead of the 2015 elections, clearly showcases the destructive intra-progressive tension, particularly in Western Nigeria. At one end of the...
View ArticleBeyond a Buhari presidency
No prize for guessing right — the October 15 presidential declaration, by former military Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, is sending the Goodluck Jonathan establishment into a tizzy. But it...
View ArticleTambuwal and the integrity question
Ripples‘ candid view: Aminu Tambuwal, Speaker of the House of Representatives, should have resigned his speakership. From the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) camp, now busy shopping for sympathy, and...
View ArticleJonathan and the ghost of Chibok
Nigerians first… Nigerians always!!! President Jonathan declares, theadvert swooned in false gaiety, as if there was some big carnival in town. Instead, there is a big funeral. Which Nigerians is the...
View ArticleOgun: Anthony Vs Augustus
In the battle for the soul of post-Julius Caesar Rome, Mark Anthony had a grand lamentation. In Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, Anthony said though Augustus Caesar was a mere subaltern when...
View ArticleHis Excellency, the Brigand
The irony was clearly lost: it was November 20, the birthday of President Goodluck Jonathan — and so much executive banditry from his side! Was that happenstance? Or, as in the technique of creative...
View ArticleOsundare: a breath of fresh air
In the present morass, Prof. Niyi Osundare winning the 2014 Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) is a breath of fresh air. Still, a breath of fresh air evokes an ironic déjà vu. A few months before...
View ArticleBeyond winning and losing
The Lagos All Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial primaries have been won and lost, with Akin Ambode emerging victorious. But why does it evoke eerie parallels from the Femi Agbalajobi-Dapo...
View ArticleReturn of Buhari?
Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native (1878) is a flawed heroine’s tale of dashed expectations. The heroine was Eustacia Vye, beautiful and enchanting, but priding herself above her native Egdon Heath;...
View ArticleAsiwaju and fiends
Then 4th Republic history is written, a good part of it will focus on Asiwaju Bola Tinubu versus a concert of fiends, united in spite. If not brilliant, this ensemble has been persistent and deadly. A...
View ArticleMaking Osinbajo count
This piece, Ripples’ last for 2014, has been conceptually helped by two Facebook posts. One was by Kayode Samuel, journalist and former commissioner under Governor Gbenga Daniel in Ogun State; the...
View ArticleBetween Agbaje and Ambode
In Jimi Agbaje, suave gentleman and pharmacist, as Lagos candidate, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has altered its preference for roughnecks as South West gubernatorial hopefuls. Witness: Ekiti’s...
View ArticleBetween Agbaje and Ambode
In Jimi Agbaje, suave gentleman and pharmacist, as Lagos candidate, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has altered its preference for roughnecks as South West gubernatorial hopefuls. Witness: Ekiti’s...
View ArticleYet again, Sege talks the talk
President Goodluck Jonathan and his alienated godfather, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, have been heating up the polity, with their less-than-presidential bile. In fairness though, the former...
View ArticleNon-violence and allied pacts
“You dare God but scamper before men”— Yoruba saying What globally renowned Africans, Kofi Annan (Ghana), former United Nations secretary-general; and Emeka Anyaoku (Nigeria), former Commonwealth...
View ArticleBuhari agonistes
From the present agonies of Citizen Muhammadu Buhari, issuing from a sham certificate controversy, it is a far cry from the halcyon days of 1984! The then Brigadier Buhari was a dashing though taciturn...
View ArticleMacbeth Jonathan
Like Shakespeare’s King Macbeth, charmed and ruined by the three witches, three apparitions continue to haunt Goodluck Jonathan, president of the Federal Republic. But these apparitions belong to three...
View ArticleBull in a china shop
Tortoise: I’m going on a journey. Audience: When will you come back? Tortoise: When I’m disgraced. —Yoruba saying. Those the gods will destroy, they first make mad. — An African saying. Fools tread...
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