Talented filmmaker, Tunde Kelani, recalibrated a popular Yoruba folklore in his famous Agogo Ewo (the forbidden gong) movie. A supremacy battle ensued between Eledumare – God, and Land. The two earthly ancient principalities had gone hunting and jointly killed an Emo rat. When it was time for sharing of the game, both got locked in a duel on who was the eldest and thus should take the chunkiest part of the animal. Armistice could not be found. In unspeakable display of greed, Land eloped with the totality of the ground game. Furious at this despicable treatment, Eledumare relocated from the earth to the firmament. From then onwards, like the proverbial bitter yam whose excesses made it a pariah and ineligible for a pounded yam meal, Land’s excesses led to its total rejection. In sympathetic protest against Land, all that Eledumare created withdrew their bestowals upon the earth. Rain, for instance, sheathed its downpour and plants adamantly refused to sprout, leading to massive hunger in the land. Weeping and wailing sundered the earth, so much that the mammary glands in maidens’ breasts withered unceremoniously. Abiodun, wife of highly respected and one of the best known, critically acclaimed Yoruba dramatists to have emerged from postcolonial Africa, Duro Ladipo, also known as Moremi or Oya, was the narrator of the folklore. She leads the chorus of the Yoruba incantatory song, Olunrete and her children listeners spice it with the backup, Aja nrete ja. Then, Duro-Ladipo delves into an epic poem of the evil machination of a selfish combine of leaders in an imaginary country named Jogbo. These leaders, she narrates, are locked in a conspiratorial gang-up to castrate the land.
It is important to quote the epic poem verbatim for its relevance in today’s Nigeria: “You form yourselves into parties to selfishly deceive us that you would reform Jogbo. In utter contravention of the spirit of your advertised intention, our collective game which we jointly killed has become the booty you share among yourselves. You are embezzlers (egbe apapin) who shave and beautify one part of the head, wickedly leaving the other half unattended. You indulge in splendor but forget the masses of our country.” The epic ends with the narrator enjoining the masses of Jogbo country to be watchful and vigilant.
Last Tuesday, a roiling crisis struck the Nigerian senate like lightning. When it subsided, it revealed the Nigerian parliament’s sinkhole appetite for filthy lucre. Storm petrel and unapologetic northern Nigerian senator, Abdul Ningi, representing Bauchi Central Senatorial District, had stirred his usual hornet’s nest. The recently passed Nigeria’s 2024 budget had undergone serious disparaging from Ningi who claimed it was padded with the sum of N3.7 trillion. As usual, he also attempted to weaponize and whip up Nigeria’s fragile ethnicity sentiment