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Articles by Festus Adedayo Ph.D
Toluwanisings’ death and social media prosecutors By Festus Adedayo
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “Toluwanisings spent his short life crafting songs that offered solace to thousands. He sang of triumphing over mockery, of light piercing through darkness, and of giants refusing to become pygmies. Yet in death, he became temporarily trapped in the very noise, malice, and belittlement he spent his career singing against.
Ebola: Day pandemic killed an Aláàfin By Festus Adedayo
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “We cannot afford to treat a deadly pathogen with administrative levity or political rhetoric. As our ancestors warned us through the sacred memory of Aláàfin Májòótú, when a government fails to cut the sapling of an epidemic early, it will eventually grow into an uncontainable beast that demands the ultimate sacrifice from the nation.
| Newspot Nigeria
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “No matter how fluid the voice of Nentawe Yilwatda could be on the campaign podium, it cannot substitute for the soothing, though coarse voice of the man the people voted into office. Nyesom Wike’s croaky voice and his bully can rally votes, but they cannot defend presidential policy failures, nor can they articulate personal vision, or take direct public ownership of government outcomes.
“I won’t be everywhere” as chichidodo, maggots-loving bird
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “No matter how fluid the voice of Nentawe Yilwatda could be on the campaign podium, it cannot substitute for the soothing, though coarse voice of the man the people voted into office. Nyesom Wike’s croaky voice and his bully can rally votes, but they cannot defend presidential policy failures, nor can they articulate personal vision, or take direct public ownership of government outcomes.
As my chicks played with hawks of Zamfara… By Festus Adedayo
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Accepting to be in Zamfara State a little over a week ago appeared to me as the dangerous dalliance between the hawk and chicken chicks. Yoruba Sakara music lord, Yusuff Olatunji, succintly painted the danger I felt. When the hawk (Asa) turns the chick into her playmate and the chick relishes this pseudo unity, the chick is playing with fire, so sang Olatunji.
Our president is ready to kick, ready to work By Festus Adedayo
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D When President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua departed the shores of Nigeria for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia on November 23, 2009, I served as Chairman of the Editorial Board of the National Lifenewspaper. The publication was owned by then Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, national leader of the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria, (ACN) and today the President of Nigeria. Official releases claimed Yar’Adua suffered from acute pericarditis, compounded by a chronic renal condition.
Good night, Dr. Ben Ohiaeri By Festus Adedayo
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D About two years ago, I received a referral to meet Dr. Benjamin Nnamdi Ohiaeri, a renowned obstetrician and gynaecologist. He was the founder and Chief Medical Director of First Consultants Medical Centre, located in Obalende, Lagos. It is a stone’s throw from the famous St. Gregory’s College and a trekking distance from the erstwhile Nigerian seat of power, Dodan Barracks.
A brother called Judas: Is Charles Soludo Cain? By Festus Adedayo
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D (Published by the Sunday Tribune, September 20, 2026) History records that the most fatal stabs always come from within oneself. In other words, there is a motif of proximity to stabs. Deepest wounds are often delivered, not by external rivals, but by those within the same household or friends. On September 22, 1828, the reality of the above dawned on the Zulu of present day South Africa.
Wike-APC: Fights always end adultery By Festus Adedayo
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “The lover in this regard, who is spitting in the APC’s face, and who sees himself as greater than their father in Aso Rock, is Wike. They should either shut their mouths or allow him call their bluffs for free. Furthermore, don’t they know that a woman who destroys her previous home will not hesitate to turn her new home into a house of commotion? If Wike glibly destroyed his PDP for the peace of APC, would he hesitate to destroy an alien home?
Two savage Kano murders, 45 years apart By Festus Adedayo
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “Today, political thugs dictate the boundaries of public engagement. They enforce the harsh reality of the Yoruba proverb — brute physical size does not open the door; only the person with the key can — “Gìdìgbà ò sí’lèkùn, àfi ẹni t’ó ní kókóró”. In modern Nigerian politics, physical force and control of armed groups have become the effective keys to political power. The entity that commands the most ruthless enforcers often secures control of the state apparatus.
Amódemájá and Nigeria’s political paradise of lies By Festus Adedayo
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “In Nigeria’s contemporary political landscape, the petroleum subsidy has become the lowest-hanging fruit of national mendacity. It is a convenient bait dangled like worms on fishing hooks to catch unsuspecting fish. Aware that the subsidy removal is the hemlock Nigerians have been forced to drink in 39 months under Bola Tinubu, with severe effects on their daily existence, politicians view it as the primary path into the electorate’s hearts.
Tortoise and the $1bn rain that came after the harvest By Festus Adedayo
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “The fundamental flaw of the Aso Rock social protection model lies in its heavy reliance on transactional optics over structural economic survival.
The snake-infested palm tree Adeleke climbed By Festus Adedayo
By Festus Adedayo Ph.D When the masquerader – a terrestrial being in the ancient cosmological beliefs of Yoruba and Igbo people – slips and falls, he immediately turns it into a corpus of art or craft he brought into the market square.The masquerader then immediately springs up from the fall, does some electrifying body gyrations and the watching crowd claps for his mastery of his craft.
Good morning, Tony! By Festus Adedayo
```html id="s7wthc" ``` By Festus Adedayo Ph.D In June, 2006 when I moved into Enugu, it was a huge culture shock for my family and me. One example should be persuasive of the shock. A few days after our arrival, I took my three-year old son to meet my Unilag classmate, Dan Nwomeh and his friends at the Presidential Hotel. On sighting them, the poor boy prostrated on all fours. Apparently aghast at the sight, Nwomeh’s friends burst into laughter.
Tinubu, Atiku as Àwòdì and Òpéèré birds in feather-plucking war By Festus Adedayo
```html id="s7wthc" ``` By Festus Adedayo Ph.D As the 2027 campaigns unfold, the persistent return to acrimony, linguistic trickery, and personal invective reminds us that while the political actors may rotate, the fundamental mechanics of Nigerian political warfare remain unchanged. Rather than offering substantive policy debates, candidates continue to rely on traditional tropes, weaponized language and public spectacles to capture power.
Osun: The mourning after By Festus Adedayo
```html id="s7wthc" ``` By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “Regardless of who is declared winner, the scars inflicted on Osun State and Nigeria’s electoral politics risk becoming what the Yoruba describe as ada’jina — a chronic, festering wound that refuses to heal. Osun has long been a volatile swing state whose political temperature swings unpredictably, depending on whether authority is accepted or rejected.
The President’s Silk cigarettes By Festus Adedayo
```html id="s7wthc" ``` By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “The truth is, whether a president smokes Silk Cut or drinks herbal tea, is secondary. What tugs at the skin of Nigerians is whether Tinubu’s administration is delivering the “corn in the pot” — the policies that sustain daily life. I think he is not. As the fable above teaches, the sweet fragrances of tobacco and coffee are pleasant but for a moment. It is the enduring fiber of the corn that lasts longer in the belly of the town.
Akpabio, Oshiomhole, Umahi: How sex threatens the Nigerian State By Festus Adedayo
- Advertisement - ```html id="s7wthc" ``` By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “Sex is however a diversionary weapon of power. With Akpabio hoping he had taken victory off Oshiomhole, he seemed to have forgotten his own scandal with former Managing Director of the NDDC, Ms. Joi Nunieh and the drama that ensued.
Oriire 44 and our double standard By Festus Adedayo
- Advertisement - ```html id="s7wthc" ``` By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Friday’s announcement of the release of the Oriire captives sent Nigerians into a state of collective rejoicing. It beautifully confirmed the universality-of-griefs thesis: that whether in Nchatancha in Enugu, Kaura Namoda in Zamfara, or Ilu-Abo in Ondo State, our shared humanity possesses a single colour.
Gbajabiamila on the crucifix By Festus Adedayo
- Advertisement - ```html id="s7wthc" ``` By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “Nigerians have literally staked a bet that nothing will come out of this scandal. In saner climes where the leadership isn’t a rotten cabbage, by now, the Chief of Staff must have become history. But here, the led can go to hell. What will happen is, while the “impostor” will be a scapegoat, his accessory in power will live happily ever thereafter.
Thumbs up for Sani: Terrorists must die! Festus Adedayo
- Advertisement - ```html id="s7wthc" ``` By Festus Adedayo Ph.D “The most pressing national concern regarding state police was addressed by Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani on a Channels Television programme last week. Anyone who deliberately takes lives and destroys communities is not deserving of leniency, he stated. “I don’t believe they deserve a second chance because, in my own opinion, they are terrorists. Bandits are terrorists.
Hunger: In defence of Bayo Onanuga By Festus Adedayo
- Advertisement - ```html id="s7wthc" ``` By Festus Adedayo Ph.D While Dikko’s unguarded comment on the state of the Nigerian people riled the people, it survived three and half decades before Bayo Onanuga picked it from its inglorious rafters. Dikko’s was widely remembered as a symbol of governmental disconnect from the reality of the people.
Tinubu is the law! By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Advertisement “Everything is my business. Everything. Anything I say is law…literally law.” Barbara Geddes, et al in their How dictatorship works (2018) quoted Malawian dictator, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, as having once said the above.
Nasir El-Rufai and the philosophy of nothing By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai caused a mild stir last week. Though the resignation of his membership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and gravitation towards the Social Democratic Party (PDP) did not come as a shock, the ruckus that attended them have been instructive. Torrents of negative comments have been heaped up as reactions to his decamping. And they are expected.
Obasa, Aláàfin Ṣàngó and the capture of Lagos By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Advertisement On Wednesday, February 25, 2025, a very toxic but innocuous advertorial was published in the Punch newspaper. It was authored by a group which called itself De Renaissance Patriots Foundation.
Babangida’s journey and his service By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Since Thursday when his autobiography, A Journey In Service, was launched, former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, has taken center-stage of national attention. The autobiography reminds me of James Hadley Chase’s Make the Corpse Walk. It is the story of eccentric millionaire, Kester Weidmann, who in his weirdest best, believed money could buy everything, life and death inclusive.
Nuhu Ribadu’s hell and other hellish stories By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Nigeria has just had one hell of a week. Like an evil spirit, hell hovered over Nigeria with fraught silence. To stave it off, Muslims will seem to have recited the Quranic verse of the Yaseen to keep the evil away. Christians banned and banished. Hell held on regardless. Hell was first let loose when a hellish temperament of the country’s National Security Adviser, (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu, escaped from its scabbard.
Three unripe mangoes plucked by fate By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Three pieces of news of deaths in the last four weeks or so got me scampering for my copy of Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard’s existential philosophy. Kierkegaard wove his theory of death around what he called the uncertain certainty of death. To him, death is that strike we all know will surely come, are aware can strike at any moment of our lives but of which human beings assume their immortality.
Obasa: Lagos na wa! By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Lagos State and the drama of its embattled lawmaker and ex-Speaker of its parliament, Mudashiru Obasa, appropriately answer to an idiom in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Insatiably curious about the mysteries of Wonderland, Alice had used the word, “Curiouser and curiouser” to express the mysteries of how she shrinks after drinking a potion.
Making of an Aláàfin: Bribe or gods? By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D In a viral video, Professor Wande Abimbola, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, and the Awise of Yorubaland – head of all Ifa oracle diviners – threw a bombshell. In it, he affirmed that the Oyo State government contacted him on the divination process leading to the nomination of a new Aláàfin of Oyo.
Between Farotimi and Afe Babalola By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Advertisement The question of whether the law of defamation is a hindrance to freedom of speech and a curtailment to democratic process confronted the Burkinabe, a few years ago. Lohe Issa Konaté was Burkina Faso, that landlocked West African country’s own Dele Farotimi. He was a journalist with the newspaper, L’Ouragan (The Hurricane).
Ayinde Barrister, North and Tinubu’s VAT Bill By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Advertisement In a gripping but evergreen musical rendition of a Yoruba folklore, late Fuji music lord, Ayinde Barrister, once deployed the canvas of the forest to paint the inequality of the world. In his Fuji New Waves album, he also depicted the acrimonies that follow the sharing of jointly hunted games. What the anecdote tells us is that, if we listen to the unspoken voices of the forest, humanity may find answers to some of its knotty matters.
The Guardian’s dog and rape of Lady Justice By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Advertisement As I was concluding this piece, my eyes caught a presidential sledgehammer which landed on the head of Conscience Nurtured by Truth – The Guardian. In a release issued by the State House yesterday, authored by erstwhile Editor-in-Chief of TheNews, Bayo Onanuga, the newspaper was accused of a crime almost similar to what General Sani Abacha accused it of in 1994 which led to its closure.
The President is a Sick man By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D On April 4, 2021, I wrote a piece with the title The President is a sick man: Buhari’s Secret Therapy Inside the ‘Oneida.’ It was a lamentation of President Muhammadu Buhari’s knee-jerk and off-the-cuff jetting out of Aso Rock Villa like a wandering evil spirit. At the drop of a hat, Buhari flew to the United Kingdom to attend to his health.
Examining the President’s T-Pain alias By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D In Arabian folklore, the genie is a spirit depicted as being imprisoned inside a bottle or oil lamp. No matter how impregnable the walls of its captivity are, the moment it is summoned, the spirit comes out and grants the wishes of the one who invoked it. Trust them for their gift of incredible ingenuity, in the thick of their daily pain, Nigerians trip above their existential woes to summon the genius within them.
Garlands for Mimiko and Farounbi By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Within a week, two great Nigerians celebrated their birth anniversaries of 70 and 80 years respectively. They are, Olusegun Rahman Mimiko and Akinyemi Farounbi. While the former, a medical doctor-turned politician, was governor of Ondo State, the latter, a broadcast journalist of over six decades, was Nigeria’s Ambassador to the Philippines. In my estimation, what links both men is a mental acuity, brilliance and patriotism that are difficult to define.
I think Tinubu was right By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D One by one, three Nigerian former military rulers, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, arrived at Babangida’s Hilltop Mansion in Minna, Niger State, last Sunday. So did former National Security Adviser (NSA), General Aliyu Gusau. The Minna meeting had every trapping of African witches assembling at the coven.
Thirty seven years after Peter Tosh’s murder By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D By 7.30pm tonight, it will be exactly the 37th posthumous anniversary of the killing of Jamaican reggae music lord, Winston Hubert MclnTosh, popularly known as Peter Tosh. Born October 11, 1944, if he were alive, Peter would be 80 years old next month. Thirty seven years ago, reggae music and indeed the world, lost Tosh, the iconic maestro, poet, philosopher and a staunch defender of African rights.
Nigeria's dinner with ‘Mugabe’ By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Have you ever read Heidi Holland’s Dinner With Mugabe? It was published in 2012 by a Zimbabwean journalist and columnist who worked with Illustrated Life Rhodesia magazine. The book is a very penetrating portraiture of Robert Mugabe. It is a psychobiography of a freedom fighter, liberal lawyer and revolutionary who later became, first Prime Minister and later, President of Zimbabwe. The book’s title was a product of a 1975 sudden call from a Holland friend.
Nigeria as shock-horror skits By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Skits literally crack ribs with laughter. The line separating fact from fiction or faction (fact and fiction) in skits is paper-thin. An instance was a skit cobbled together in Addis Ababa on January 11, 1976 at an OAU Extraordinary Session on Angola. This high-octane skit was documented by General Joe Nanven Garba in his Diplomatic Soldiering (1987). Garba was a Langtang-born Federal Commissioner for External Affairs under Murtala Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo.
The protest, M̀gbekē and her cutlass By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Advertisement There is this anecdote in Igboland of M̀gbekē and her cutlass. By the way, M̀gbekē is a synonym for an unrefined and unsophisticated girl. Each time M̀gbekē’s farmer colleagues visited her in the farm, they saw haphazardly tilled land and a female farmer lazily fondling her farm implement. Whenever Mgbeke was asked the reason for her snailish work, she complained of an old and ineffectual cutlass.
Hardship protest: “Bi iwo ba se rere…” Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D All of a sudden, President Bola Tinubu is running from pillar to post. The febrile fear with which his presidency tries to stave off the proposed August 1 hardship protest is baffling. It seems to remind one of the biblical verse in Genesis 4:7 which says, “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?” This English interpretation does not convey the message’s total interpretative capturing as its Yoruba version rendition.
Gbolagunte: Good night, great jurist By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement Gbolagunte: Good night, great jurist By Festus Adedayo Ph.D On Friday, I listened to one of the most impactful sermons ever at the New Reservation Baptist Church, Iyaganku, Ibadan, Oyo State. It was devoid of the depressing low of “style-style fundraising” and motivational prosperity sermons that Pentecostalism has sunk into in Nigeria. Church Pastor, Dr. Kayode Oyedemi, taught about how death was man’s companion which should be loved and not hated.
Dangote and NNPC’s "Gwo Gwo Gwo Ngwo" dance By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Advertisement Without moving his body, African Development Bank (AfDB) President, Akinwumi Adesina, watlzed his tall frame in a dance last week. He danced to the rhythm of Gwo Gwo Gwo Ngwo of Gentleman Mike Ejeagha’s trending song track, Ka Esi Le Onye Isi Oche. A rhythmic refrain track from an album titled Akuko N’Egwu Vol. 1., Ka Esi… has a lot of similarities with A o m’erin j’oba, both taken from Igbo and Yoruba cosmologies respectively.
Akpabio’s Kleptocrats’ Republic dilemma By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Last Wednesday, Nigeria’s upper parliament became a grammar class where semantics, syntax and structure are examined. His Excellency, the Senate President of Nigeria, Godswill Obot Akpabio, suddenly became an emergency interpreter and lexicographer. Akpabio’s interpreter’s dilemma reminds me of Field Marshal Gerald Templer.
Ogunsola: Celebrating the Man Who Wanted My Head By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D 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.
Ministering to Maalu with 774 heads By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Advertisement 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, Yoruba give effusion of reverences to people with unusual bravery. Their reverence for the Iloko however comes from this clan’s queer and odd brand of bravery: Spillage of blood. The Iloko earned their renown from decapitation of heads.
Rehoboam, presidential jet and Nigerians’ Aparo eggs By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D Advertisement Nigerians have indeed suffered tremendously in the last one year. Not strictly the hunger tugging at our bellies. That pestilence of hunger was brilliantly conveyed by the whammy soundbite, “Ebi npa wa o” as Lagos Island people’s response to the president’s fleet of gleaming SUVs last year. As an aside, permit the pun, I think that national soundbite deserves a Grammy. Lacerating words from those who rule us even rub salt on our hunger injury.
Tinubu, Ibadan is angry! By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D President Bola Tinubu’s Democracy Day broadcast of June 12, 2024, did Ibadan incalculable dishonour. The speech celebrated the heroes of Nigeria’s 25 years of civil rule with a very scant mention of Ibadan’s fight against the tyranny of military rule. Was it an institutional slight on the city of Ogunmola, the great warrior? The angry spirits of Ibadan dead must be seeking vengeance. Why does Aso Rock suffer the austerity of official remembrancers?
El-Rufai, June 12 and Abacha woken from the dead By Festus Adedayo
Advertisement By Festus Adedayo Ph.D. Yesterday, General Sani Abacha clocked 28 years in the grave. Abacha’s sudden expiration at the thick of his maximal and maniacal rule reminds Nigerians, especially those who were old enough in 1998 when he died, of how human beings should never play god. Abacha ruled with iron fist, after his seizure of power. He summarily executed dissidents and political opponents while those who held other views disappeared without trace.
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