By Festus Adedayo

Nigerians and indeed, the world, watched aghast last week as a South African grisly movie reel began to roll. Full of all the elements of a movie, it was however a real story. The cast was two black women who, on August 17, were shot and fed to pigs by a white farmer. The victims, Maria Makgato, 45 and Lucia Ndlovu, 34 were scavenging for edible food in consignments of recently expired or soon-to-be-expired produce on a farm located near Polokwane, a South African northern Limpopo province. The expired edible foods were meant for pigs. Before her gruesome murder, Makgato was mother of four sons of between 22 and five years ages. Farm owner, Zachariah Johannes Olivier, 60, had reportedly ordered his employees, Adrian de Wet, 19, and William Musora, 50, to kill the two women. Their bodies were then fed to pigs, in order to destroy evidence of their murder. Ms Ndlovu’s husband, Mabutho Ncube, who came to the farm with his wife, had been shot, too but crawled into safety with his gunshot wounds. Several days later, police found decomposing, horrific bodies of the women in the farm’s pigsty, partly eaten up by the swine.

In South Africa, farming communities are severally under attacks by white farmers, exacerbating an already high crime statistics in the country. This is especially rife in rural areas, despite the official cessation of the obnoxious racist system of apartheid 30 years ago. In same August, in the eastern province of Mpumalanga, two men – a farmer and his security guard – were arrested in Laersdrift, located beside a small South African town called Middleburg, for allegedly murdering two men on a farm. Accused of stealing sheep, the men were incinerated beyond recognition. The court had to subject their ashes to DNA analysis to be able to establish their identities. In the same vein, a 70-year old white farmer, Christoffel Stoman, of Lutzville, a Western Cape province, had allegedly driven over and broken the two legs of a 6-year old boy for picking a fallen orange on his farm. The boy’s mother, walking with him past Stoman’s farm, on their way to town to purchase groceries, was horrified as his son got mowed down by Stoman.

As they watch this grisly movie, like the rest of the world, Nigerians are entitled to their shock. However, literally and figuratively, on the social and political planes, our country can be said to be grappling with leaders of similar sadism as South Africa’s Oliviers. Almost on a daily basis, Nigerians’ bodies are figuratively fed to swine, simply because they pick expired pig foods from our collective farm.

Nigerian leadership in the last seventeen months, like Olivier, has figuratively thrown Nigerians’ bodies to the swine who now take turns to feast on our flesh for supper. Nigerians are writhing under excruciating poverty occasioned by wickedness in high places. They encounter limited vision and foresight of leaders who claimed it was their time to rule but who have no time to think through the people’s plights. Perhaps the greatest Olivier-like savagery inflicted on Nigerians is the gradual destruction and undermining of the foundation of democracy by the born-to-rule taskmasters. In almost 17 months, all the institutions of democracy, like the electoral system, free press/speech and impartial judicial system have been dealt mortal blows. They are all comatose today. This speaks to that eternal aphorism that democracies are not killed by guns but by wicked undermining of its foundation.

If Nigerians are so distressed about the misrule in their country today, unfortunately, they are in a Catch-24 situation. We are locked up in a paradoxical situation from which, except an intervention of providence, we may never escape. As Sule Lamido warned recently, if the Leviathan in Aso Rock didn’t control the Senate, the Nigerian Army, Nigerian police, DSS etc and yet won the 2023 election, it is wishful thinking that anyone can stop the reproduction of this misrule in 2027. The ones at the top today have worn upon them the classical head of the Medusa. In real terms, like the sobriquet of one of the friends of Ayinla Omowura, an Abeokuta musical warlord of the 1970s, they are reincarnates of Ab’esuj’obi – one who shares kolanut with the devil.

According to the playbook of democracy, opposition deepens democracy. In Nigeria, the Leviathan has effectively castrated opposition. And this is why we should all be bothered. It is a Lagos model given federal promotion. The Leviathan then dipped his hands into his wiles pouch. From there, he brought out a colony of termites, led by a choleric dictator who is seeking political vengeance in his home state. His main assignment was to gradually corrode virtually all the internal strength of the PDP. I will not be shocked if the Leviathan is also the sponsor of the crisis in the Labour Party as well. Like a colony of pests called termites, Aso Rock and Nyesom Wike have visited on our country, using Rivers State as model, one of the most debilitating democratic devastations ever in history. This means that, whatever tyranny and limited vision leadership which Nigerians complain of today has a longer expiry period than they may think. We should all buckle up for a marathon. It is a distressing reality.

What happened in Edo State last month, coupled with the lawlessness that has eaten up Rivers State today, are clear signals that the electoral, judicial and police institutions have been ambushed. In broad daylight, with the obvious abetment of the Villa, electoral process was cavalierly thrown to the swine. The animals in turn mauled it with maniacal relish. It was obvious that Mahmood Yakubu’s INEC didn’t have any qualm licking the pus-dripping wound of the Leviathan and his accomplices.

With wanton abuse of electoral rules by INEC, advocacy for the abrogation of state electoral commissions for being lapels of state governors will not make any sense. From what is going on in Rivers today, with INEC openly in bed with a federal minister whose Hippopotamus ego will not stop from his Samson complex, any INEC-conducted state election will automatically be a from-frying-pan-to-fire situation. We will obviously be substituting local state despots for Abuja despots. In all, INEC’s Edo sham election hasn’t shown that the commission is the solution to governors’ brazen perversion of democracy. Kayode Egbetokun stands smilingly on the fringe to offer autocracy and totalitarian rule a pillow for comfort and the judiciary a final seal.

The second prong from which to look at this pig-food relationship is ethnic relations in Nigeria. As it stands, in the last nine years or thereabout, ethnic tensions here have ratcheted up so frighteningly, just like among black and white people of South Africa. When you read posts on social media, especially from both Yoruba and Igbo, a tingling feeling of foreboding will creep up your nerves. Of a truth, there is a subsisting history of almost a quarter century-old hatred ramped up between the two ethnicities. However, between 2015 and now, a heavy salvo has been unleashed on the relations between the two ethnicities, so much that if there is any slight prick, the bubble will burst finally.

The most incalculable salvo, more devastating than the machine guns of the civil war, was smashed on ethnic relations in Nigeria by Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year rule. In my piece of May 26, 2019 with the title, Who will be Nigeria’s last president?, I argued that, by the time Buhari exited Aso Rock, there might be no Nigeria as handed over to him. My hunch was based on Buhari’s ultra-ethnocentric rule. That playbook is being revamped today. All the cement and glue that made a united Nigeria have practically been deliberately peeled off or worn out. Ethnic tensions are at a frighteningly high level, reminding one of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Buhari, on national TV, once referred to the Igbo as a “tiny dot in a circle.” It was not different from the pre-fixing of the word “cockroach” by Hutus against the Tutsi. Both depicted a negligible, expendable ethnicity. While in Rwanda, it inflamed passion and expedited genocide, in Nigeria, it bred resistance. Buhari then prosecuted this hate agenda with clinical finish, so much that, by the time he left office, ethnic relations between the east and other ethnicities landed on the borderline.

Curiously and seemingly illogically, since this current government assumed office, Yoruba and Igbo, who were united by their mutual pummeling by Buhari, have squared up to themselves in a needless ethnic animosity similar to the escalation of war between Israel and Palestine. The Leviathan has done little or nothing to quell the inflamed passion and escalation of distrusts between them. The hatreds are bereft of logic, scarcely backed by history and are mere whimsical carry-overs of political antagonisms. Why would a people who have similar histories, struggles and challenges in the hands of their mutual oppressors, hate each other this much?

It is so bad that, if one of the two ethnic stocks, like Maria Makgato and Lucia Ndlovu did, goes rummaging for edible food in the other’s compound, just as Olivier’s maniacal identity profiling of South African blacks, one will feed the other’s flesh to their pigs. Sometimes when I read very acidic but senselessly divisive posts from both sides on the social media, not only do I shudder, I wonder whether the writers were same offspring of leaders like Michael Okpara and Mama HID Awolowo/Alhaji Dauda Soroye Adegbenro? In 1964, both camps, leaders of two erstwhile politically irreconcilable parties – the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) and Action Group (AG) – came together to form the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) and campaigned round Ibadan during Okpara’s visit. By then, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was locked up in the Calabar prisons by the Igbo/Yoruba common enemies.

In closing, the story of Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s government in Malawi will tell us not to take for granted the danger of a one-party state growing on the Nigerian soil. Banda’s was an extensive cult of personality. He ordered all business buildings to hang his official picture on walls. Today, a particular cap of specific branding is worn by all top officers in Nigeria today, including Villaswill Akpabio, a man who should ordinarily be at the head of checks on the excesses of the executive. Banda brooked no poster, clock or picture hung on the wall that was higher than his portrait. It was a criminal offence. Whenever any film was aired in Malawi, a video of Banda waving to the people must be mandatorily shown. Same happened whenever Malawian national anthem was played. If Banda paid visit to any Malawi city, a group of women were mandatorily expected to salute him at the airport and wag their buttocks erotically to prep up the leader’s voyeur instinct. The performances were also accompanied with special clothes that had Banda’s picture on them. He banned faiths like Jehovah’s Witnesses permanently from Malawi while other houses of worship were mandated to get his government’s approval before preaching.

One major blood-dripping hallmark of Banda’s one party state despotism happened in 1983. Three ministers in his government, Aaron Gadama, Dick Matenje, Twaibu Sangala and a Member of Parliament, David Chiwanga were suddenly found dead. At a meeting with Banda, they voiced their support for a migration from Banda’s one-party state to multi-partyism. They told him to his face that he should perish the thought of a life presidency. Not only did Banda dissolve cabinet immediately, he stripped all members of their status and ordered the three men to be rounded up. They were also tortured and bundled into a Peugeot 604 belonging to Matenje. An accident was then staged for them with their car overturned. It was later discovered that they had been murdered with tent pins which were hammered into their heads. During their burial, Banda ordered that their caskets must not be opened for public viewing. They were subsequently buried at night.

If we think the above is impossible in Nigeria, we should just keep an eye on what is going on in Rivers State. Hours to the state council election, the situation escalated into an embarrassing exchange of allegations between Egbetokun and Governor Similayi Fubara. That is democracy under the Leviathan. We must know that autocracy creeps in harmlessly, just the way music furtively slides into its listener’s consciousness. Of this, Bob Marley once sang, “one good thing about music – when it hits, you feel no pain.” There is a progressive shrinking of the civic space and its replacement with democratic stifling. Wike has suddenly become so powerful that every democratic institution – INEC, judiciary or police – is hidden under his Isiagu clothes. He arrogantly boasts, in inebriated gutturals, that he is the custodian of fire and he can set ablaze any state at his whim. The Leviathan is not bothered. Nigerians laughed at this grisly humour from a totalitarian.

Wike’s boast and the political calculation of the Leviathan who is playing games with the “head” of Nigerians, preparatory to a one-party state, remind me of the Chewa. A Bantu ethnic group of Malawi, the Chewa tribe can also be found in Zambia, Zimbabwe and a sprinkle in Mozambique. They are a very metaphysical people, renowned for witchcraftcy and secret societies called Nyau. Researches conducted by Reverend H. Debrunner, leading to the book Witchcraft in Ghana (1961) says witches play games, including football, at night like ordinary people. In order to do this, they ”’cut off a person’s head and play ball with it.” He corroborated this with another research work by Marwick (1965) who said that similar practice was prevalent among the Akan witches of Ghana who “engage in… harmless pleasures such as dancing and playing football where they are said to use a human skull.” Incidentally, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who personified witches’ cruelty in his presidency of Malawi, was Chewa. If, like the two black South African women, shot and fed to pigs by a white farmer, Nigerians continue to be daily fed to the swine on social and political planes by the Leviathan and his appendages, we can only chorus, “Long live Hastings Kamuzu Banda.”

Things are tumbling down fast in Rivers, with morbid signals of owls – birds of bad luck omen – crowing in the air. In many African cultures, owls are representative of bad luck or omen of death. They are feared and avoided. Wike and his Villa minders may be kneading together a script which will result in a Dr. Moses Majekodunmi being a gubernatorial placeholder in Rivers. When a State of Emergency was imposed on a chaotic Western Region in June 1962, leading to the Premier’s exit from power, that singular action spelled the death-knell of the Republic. Rivers is the economic livewire of Nigeria. Its peace is the peace of Nigeria. Any tampering with the lucid-hour sanity of that Ijaw state could signal a rupture of Nigeria. It was easy for Olusegun Obasanjo to foist it on an agrarian Ekiti State. It could spell national disaster in Rivers. Hope the Leviathan and his cantankerous sidekick are listening?

By Tunde Rahman

Nigeria has significantly contributed troops and police officers to the United Nations peacekeeping operations worldwide since 1960. That year, the Nigeria Police deployed the first-ever contingent of individual police officers to the UN Mission in the Congo. Assistant Commissioner of Police Louis Edet led the team at the time. In these operations, Nigeria resolutely committed herself to the onerous task of maintaining world peace and security. Some of the country’s gallant officers paid the supreme price, while many were injured and maimed for life. During the military era, particularly during the reign of General Ibrahim Babangida, under the auspices of the African Union and ECOWAS, there was the ECOWAS Monitoring Group, which intervened decisively in Liberia, paving the way for the restoration of civil rule in that country. Rebel leaders had turned Liberia into a theatre of war in their desperate battle for power. Nigeria’s troops were also the military backbone of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) from 2003-2018, restoring security throughout that country.

Since then, Nigeria has been involved in peacekeeping operations in many African countries, including Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia, Mali, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Somalia, Rwanda and Burundi. The government has contributed a lot in finance, logistics and civilian experts to these missions. Beyond Africa, the country’s police force participated in operations in Western Sahara, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, East Timor, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan, to mention but a few.

It is relevant to point out that Nigeria’s engagement is not only in peacekeeping or maintaining law and order across these nations; the country has helped stabilise and strengthen democracy in Africa. For instance, it’s on record that Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo played a leading role in the international effort to restore democratic order in São Tomé and Principle when President Fradique de Menezes was toppled by the military in that country in July 2003 while visiting Nigeria. Obasanjo and other foreign leaders reined in the military junta that ousted Menezes. The former Nigerian president took Menezes in his plane, leading him back to power in the oil-rich island republic.

In addition, Nigeria’s effort helped ferry former military leader Yahya Jammeh from The Gambia when he became a stumbling block to constitutional order.

After losing the election his regime organised, Jammeh refused to concede defeat to Adama Baro, who won the poll. The private plane of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, now President Bola Tinubu, was deployed to evacuate the once-dreaded Jammeh out of The Gambia.

I can continue enumerating Nigeria’s efforts to help maintain peace and security worldwide.

It is against this backdrop of the country’s considerable efforts in maintaining peace and deepening democracy in Africa and beyond that the recent demand for a permanent seat for Africa in the UN Security Council be considered. No country in Africa has contributed to global peace and security than Nigeria in terms of human and material resources. The request for a well-deserved permanent seat for the continent was the high point of Nigeria’s presentation at the just-ended 79th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA79) in the United States.

Vice President Kashim Shettima led Nigeria’s delegation to that session and presented the country’s national statement on behalf of President Tinubu. The president stayed back at home to attend to pressing domestic issues. That decision, the first by any Nigerian president since 1999, deserves commendation.

To say that Vice President Shettima ably represented the country is to state the obvious, particularly for those who watched the presentation live or on television. Resplendent in the country’s traditional white flowing babariga with a matching Borno cap, VP Shettima did an excellent job.

Making a case for this all-important seat on the UN’s exalted podium, the vice president said: “Reform of the Security Council is critical if the UN is to strengthen its relevance and credibility in our rapidly changing world. Some permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have offered encouraging, if tentative, indications of support on the issue of reform of the Council. We welcome the change in tone and urge acceleration in momentum to the process.

“The Security Council should be expanded, in the permanent and non-permanent member categories, to reflect the diversity and plurality of the world. We fully support the efforts of Secretary-General Guterres in this regard. Africa must be accorded the respect that it deserves in the Security Council. Our continent deserves a place in the permanent members category of the Security Council, with the same rights and responsibilities as other Permanent Members.”

With a population of over 1.3 billion people and home to the most critical mineral resources that will power the global economy, a permanent seat for Africa in the UN Security Council will ensure inclusivity and a spirit of brotherhood. Given its strategic importance, Africa should join the council’s five permanent members. And more than any other country on the African continent, Nigeria truly merits this seat. It is an entitlement and a matter of right.

First, the seat will serve as due compensation for Nigeria’s labour of service to the world. The country’s active participation in peacekeeping missions helped save countless lives and restore peace and stability to many countries. The UN has acknowledged this important work. In a publication of the world body in February 2019, the UN singled out Nigeria for praise for her service and sacrifice. However, the UN should do more than commendation. The world body should offer Nigeria this much-desired permanent seat to appreciate the country’s contribution.

Second, as indicated earlier, Nigeria contributed the most troops and police to UN missions among African nations. The Nigeria Police Force committed more men and materials to keep the peace in Africa and elsewhere. According to the Minister of Defence, Mohammed Badaru, Nigeria contributed to 41 peacekeeping missions globally and deployed over 200,000 troops to UN operations since her first deployment in the Congo. He spoke in New York at the summit of the Future Interactive Dialogue on the theme: “Enhancing Multilateralism for International Peace and Security.”

The attendant cost to Nigeria’s engagement in these peacekeeping operations is enormous. For instance, official sources revealed that ECOMOG, a regional mediation force put together to end the protracted Liberian civil war, was operated at an estimated cost of $8 billion to the Nigerian government.

Third, and more importantly, with its large population of young, energetic, and creative people and enormous resources, Nigeria can provide the required leadership for Africa at the UN Security Council.

This is a role the country has been performing for many decades. It has the potential to perform this work even better. Nigeria will be the real giant of Africa if it rises to this eminent status.

Former South African President, the highly revered Dr Nelson Mandela, was once reported to have said that the Black Race would not achieve its status until Nigeria sorted out itself.

When President Bola Tinubu’s administration’s reform agenda fully manifests, Nigeria will sort itself out sooner, not later. Then, the country will take its rightful place as the true leader of Africa in the community of nations.


-Rahman is a Senior Presidential Aide

By Wole Olujobi

His nickname “Habiblife” resonates well with his admirers because he has a spirit that illuminates the lives of others. For him, life is music that must not be extinguished by the noxious chord that hallmarks the emptiness of life.

That is Habib Adamson Aruna, a “legal alien” from Edo State nurturing a life in Lagos.

Put him on a scale of justice as depicted in his zodiac pantheon, Habib, renowned for his strong moral compass and natural ability to see both sides of every argument, exudes the Libra graces, such as charm, beauty of the heart and well-balanced chord that define his personality.

Habiblife is my Number One “Broda mi” among several other “broda mis” in the newsroom of Daily Independent Newspaper. For me, he is evidently the biggest colourful brand in the newsroom comradeship. Not for him the vacant, flat, coarse and drab anonymity of a bland and insipid Editor.

In Habib’s free life of an accomplished newshound, his sign-off salutations are both salutary and ribald. They include “gbayi paddy mi” (God bless you my friend); “egbe” (you are an uninitiated); “abi I dey craze”, and “Life goes on there”, among several other signature banters that make him a universal pal in the egalitarian enclosure called the Newsroom.

In the convivial ambience of the “suffocating” newsroom, Habib munches and chews carelessly at his kolanut in his left hand, as he pounds away with his right hand at the keyboard of his desktop computer, to beat the deadline terror that hallmarks the news processing time-out. And while doing that, quality is his watchword.

Graceful, and generous to a fault, I respect “baba beji” as a model of a family man who always thinks about home in a profession that denies practitioners the luxury to fully observe the basic rules of family life.

The bustling Habib in his Cupid’s prop has a dainty and disarming photograph that hangs loosely by his desk. And when overwhelmed by the pressure of shuffling and reshuffling of news items for early “bed-going”, a mere glance at the infectious photograph or a call from the woman (his wife) in the frame, who he calls “Iya Ibeji Original”, elicits an encore that enlivens the more the ever-effervescent editor.

We were both on the Politics Desk of Daily Independent before fate took us again to the News Desk of the same newspaper where he was Group News Editor and I was Deputy News Editor, the position he held professionally and brilliantly that prepared him to become the Editor of one of the titles of Daily Independent Newspapers before Governor Akinwumi Ambode appointed him his Chief Press Secretary.

A reporter that can’t grow under Habiblife’s tutelage to become a top flight journalist had better go back to the motor park. Ekene Okoro, Tunde Opeseitan, Grace Edema and Stella Odueme are my witnesses.

Check the company he keeps and you find an intimidating galaxy of stars. They include his heartthrob Iyabeji Original, Nurudeen Habib Aruna, Alex Emeka Duru, Bamidele Temitope “Kandour” Johnson, Dibiana Edwards, Jide Ajani, John Ajayi, Babajide Kolade Otitoju, Ekene Okoro, Tunde Opeseitan, Charles Okogene, Olumide Iyanda, Kenny Okeowo-Michaels, Bamidele Segun Ogunwusi, Ayodele Ozugbakun, Gbenga Aruleba, Ayodele Ojo, Semiu Okanlawon, Tayo Olatoye and Harry Iwuala, among several others, who add value to his life.

Broda mi, your good deeds speak for you among several people you have impacted their lives. As you climb the transitional and golden age called “sexagenarian”; an age that symbolizes the onset of a decade brimming with changes, new-found freedoms, and the exciting prospect of embarking on new adventure and the age that defines you as a man of worth, you will shine glowingly in all you do in the name of the Almighty Allah.

Cymbals and tambourines for ‘broda mi’ in whom I am always well pleased. Congratulations!

* Olujobi, a journalist and Commissioner in Ekiti State Local Government Service Commission, writes from Ado-Ekiti