Tinubu’s lifejacket and a deer’s sacred skin, By Festus Adedayo

What hunters see in the forest is enough to make children of men without balls blind. An ethnographic study of hunters in a wild called Ìgbẹ Alágogo conducted by a scholar at the University of Ibadan, Ayo Adeduntan, gave birth to the narrative.  Ọláníyì Ọládèj̣ọ Yáwóọ̣ré had gone hunting one day and came face to face with a deer breastfeeding her young. Stupefied by this weird sight, an unusual dizziness pounced upon the hunter. But “an animal is pursuing me” is a disgraceful song that must never be sung by a man born to hunt. Yáwóọ̣ré quickly picked himself up and fought back with a dose of potent Ọfọ (incantation), one of the priceless assets he inherited from his father: “The ladybird beetle does not suffer from sight impairment…”

Hunter dipped his hand into his cloak and brought out a phial, the content of which he then used to wipe his face. Now he can see! Now that he could see, he had very little difficulty making sumptuous meat of the deer. At home, hunter skinned his game and hung its hide to dry in the open. This is where the story starts to be sweet like a soup of deer meat.

The second day, a mysterious woman visited Yáwóọ̣ré and a conversation ensued. The mysterious woman then told the hunter: “I know you killed a deer. But you did because we wanted you to. Now, why do you show off with its skin? Why did you spread it out, pegged to the ground outside? You sure want to show the whole world that you it was that killed the animal. Were you the one who actually killed the animal or we gave it to you? Don’t you know spreading out the hide in the open that way is exposing our clothing to the mundane world?” Yawoore got the message. He made amends.

At the APC Renewed Hope Agenda Summit held at the State House last Thursday, Tinubu was Yáwóọ̣ré, the ostentatious hunter. The sniper had just killed a sacred deer with a marksman’s dexterity. Like the hunter, it was time for Tinubu to gloat. Trust our president, he was at his best turf. Armed with his ancient Cockney, the president, who had just killed an elephantine game, said “nothing (is) wrong with a one party state.” He asked his people to “wipe them clean.” You would think he was talking about a bowl of pounded yam accompanied by a plate of ram meat. 

I looked at his face. The whole world was like a colony of ants before the president. APC, he boasted, was “one party ruling and carrying on with the aspirations of Nigerians,” in what actually came in an incoherent waffle. “You don’t expect people to remain in a sinking ship without a life jacket. I am happy with what we have accomplished and expecting more people to come; that’s the game.” 

Yáwóọ̣ré then told the Old Woman, “Old one, it was Ògún (the god of iron) that killed it.” The mysterious woman would not have that claim and promptly interjected. “Not Ògún, we allowed you to kill it.” Sobered, the hunter accepted his guilt, soberly retorting that, “I did not know that it (the skin) is your cloth.” Yáwóọ̣ré then reported the encounter to Ọlaifa Adigun, the Olúòdẹ, head of hunters, proceeded home and removed the deer skin. His open advertisement of conquest against the unseen forces was going to be his nemesis. The hunter must have known that, to dare Witches by counting their nine-finger arm in their presence had repercussions. It would have been a declaration of war against women Yoruba call Ẹlẹyẹ.

Unlike Yáwóọ̣ré, on Thursday, Tinubu was not sober. He had similarly spread a sacred deer hide in the open to dry. He was even unconscionable. In what appeared an account of his 730 days in office as the Nigerian president, Tinubu gloated about what he called his government’s economic reforms. Echoing Bongos Ikwue’s line in his evergreen track, ‘True Love,’ the president hid behind the ancient wisdom of “Nothing good comes easy” in life to justify the people’s suffering under his government. He maintained that, “sometimes, only hard decisions can make things easy in the future.” Leading an administration which, while campaigning for Nigerians’ votes in 2023, carried the heftiest baggage of anticipated elasticity of corruption, Tinubu’s testimony on Thursday of fighting corruption in 730 days was the imponderous, “You could see EFCC recover over seven hundred and fifty-something houses from one person”. He also claimed that life had become better and the future assured for the people of Nigeria. But, is it?

At that State House gathering, a picture was raised for all to see. It was that of Tinubu and his coterie of palace jesters, having written a national qualification examination, marking their own scripts and awarding themselves pass marks. Take the National Security Adviser (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu for example. Ribadu regaled Nigerians with statistics of a Nigerian security Eldorado under Tinubu. A few days earlier, Babagana Zulum, governor of Borno State, had punctured his deceptively inflated balloon. Persuaded that Ribadu’s fawning statistics of securing Nigeria was an embarrassing fallacy that cannot save his people, Zulum asked Borno to look heavenwards for salvation. He declared last Monday for fasting to seek God’s intervention. Zulum also alleged that some military officers and politicians were informants and collaborators for Boko Haram terrorists and the Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists. Many of them are contractors who feed on the blood of the people. This came on the heels of another revelation by the Chief Whip of the Senate, Mohammed Tahir Monguno who, last Wednesday, disclosed that 63 residents of two communities in Borno North were killed in a clash between Boko Haram insurgents and ISWAP insurgents. So, what was Ribadu blabbing about?

Like one watching a surreal film, then slid Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume, unto the stage. Borrowing from Godswill Akpabio who asked a female legislator if she thought the parliament was a nightclub, I was tempted to ask if everyone at the State House that Thursday was drunk. Akume’s words sounded bombastic, high sounding but lacking grounding in reality. “Mr President’s leadership reminds us of the legendary Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore — the man whose foresight, discipline, and tenacity transformed a small nation into a global model of prosperity and order. This is the quality of leadership Nigeria is privileged to have today,” Akume waffled shamelessly. I had to race for my book of history. Were there two Yews? Did Akume truly liken this same Tinubu to the father of modern Singapore or he was on a junket of figures of speech? The Yew of Singapore transformed his country from a struggling port city into about the most prosperous and efficient worldwide. His countrymen were not recorded to have died in droves during this period. I have heard of the words, ‘bootlicking,’ ‘sycophancy’ and ‘grovelling before power’ before now but I had never felt its coarse texture as this. Akume brought its feel and colour to me vividly.

Then entered Akpabio, a major cast at the State House circus. In the last two years as Nigeria’s Senate President, Godswill will seem to have triumphed more in wordplay and legislative buffoonery than lawmaking. Like one primed to play in an orchestra, Akpabio was at it again last Thursday. He lauded what he called “Tinubu’s political sagacity,” submitting that “Nigerians are grassroots people, they are very excited” basing this on “the fact that even the members of the national assembly and senators said they have never had it this good.” Why won’t they, legislators who now collect N1billion and N2billion for constituency projects? After this stellar buffoonery, Akpabio now mimicked the same uncritical legislative showmanship for which the Nigerian parliament has a notorious renown. He then “move(d), and let it be moved, that not only President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be a sole candidate for the presidency in 2027, but he will also be a sole candidate for the whole Nigerian population.” That is a recipe for disaster.

Nigerians will know that Akpabio doesn’t disappoint. He didn’t last Thursday. He is a known serial groveler by the feet of power. In 2015 as Chairman of PDP Governors’ Forum and governor of Akwa-Ibom State, this same Akpabio, on July 15, 2024, announced his endorsement of Goodluck Jonathan and projected victory for him in 2015. He preceded his endorsement with same longish hogwash as this. Like they do at the bioscope, everything for Akpabio is in the superlatives, garnished with theatrics. Both collided at that State House event, as he said, “other political parties have been turned into shreds.. and (he saw) the umbrella of the PDP (with) over 100 holes” and “everything in the south-south has collapsed for you (Tinubu)… same thing that is happening in the nation.”

I am sure Mr. President enjoyed the circus. But I know he is too steeped in the waters of Nigerian politics not to know that the likes of Akume, Akpabio and Uzodinma were merely playing the politics of the stomach and recycling the usual Nigeria’s tree-falls-bird-flies politics. Persuaded that the president, while growing up like every Yoruba child, must have heard the story of the great Elephant in the hands of destructive fawners, let me recall it here. Represented as a character with power, majesty and acclaim, the mammoth-sized beast was the untouchable king of the jungle whose humongous size was a huge bother to other animals. Several efforts were made to oust his prowess, to no avail. So, a plot was hatched using his majesty as his destruction. Tortoise, a clever and serpentine animal, was procured to do the hatchet job. Tortoise resolved that, given Elephant’s size and height, violence would not bring him to his hilt but a seemingly innocuous strategy of deception, praise-singing and boot-licking.

One day, Tortoise then went into the cave of the Almighty Elephant. His message was that, all animals had purposed to make him King of all Animals in the jungle. Elephant was to come to the palace adorned in the full regalia of a King. Prior to the day, Tortoise dug a very deep hole that could occupy Elephant’s mammoth size by the palace. It was decorated with a beautiful wool carpet worthy of a king’s royal feet, complete with an ornamented chair just at the edge of the royal carpet. Encircling the carpet, Akume, Akpabio, Abdullahi Ganduje, Uzodinma and all their tribe of Hallelujah Boys clapped and hailed the new King. He was dressed in flowery royal robe. As he walked majestically towards the royal carpet, they cheered the Elephant on, shouting “a o m’erin j’oba, eweku ewele.” In turn, fascinated by the splendor and cheers, Elephant walked majestically until he fell into the ditch and unto his death.

We are the only ones who can tell our Elephant the naked truth. If the president can look out through the windows, he will see how Nigerians deride him. Not because of his tribe but because he has allowed himself to be captive of unrealistic statistics. Yes, apart from the Ibrahim Babangida military government, there doesn’t seem to be any other government that has midwifed policies as much as the present administration. The reality however is that those policies fall face flat on their faces, without corresponding positive effect on the people. Nigerians are hurting; they have been since May, 2023. Halfway through his first term, I stand to be corrected, Tinubu is the most hated Nigerian today. 

Rather than the PDP being a faulty aircraft and passengers stranded with no life-jacket, Nigerians under Tinubu are the ones marooned in the cloudy sky of Tinubu administration’s malfunctioning leadership. They have no life-jacket. It is simply because they are not better of than they were almost two years ago. Electricity tariffs keep castrating the people. Cost of fuel is prohibitive. Nigerians are dying because they cannot afford drugs. Insecurity is sending hundreds of Nigerians to their deaths. Joblessness has become a pestilence while our young ones still find it a comparatively better succour to perish in the Mediterranean. In the last two years of being in office, the president, his family and political lackeys have quadrupled their wealth and comfort, at the expense of the Nigerian state. Like Yáwóọ̣ré, they now flauntingly spread the sacred deer’s skin in the glare of the public.

Only last week, one of Akpabio’s lackeys and trusted lickspittle, Onyekachi Nwebonyi, Senator representing Ebonyi North, canvassed the demolition of houses contiguous to the Abuja airport. He claimed they were unsightly for the FCT status, would scare off investors and, whenever he was in the air and saw the slums, he probably felt like puking in a lavatory. The senator’s call is a total clone of the theme of Aminata Sow Fall’s The Beggars’ Strike. Set in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, the elite called for action against what they termed ‘human detritus’ noticeable all over Dakar. This was a term for beggars who must be got rid of for driving away tourists. While Mour Ndiaye and his assistant, Keba Dabo, succeed in carting the beggars away, when Ndiaye desires to become vice president of Senegal and needs to give alms to beggars for spiritual advantage as prescribed by the Marabout, he finds the beggars unavailable for his bid. 

Forget Tinubu and his cohorts’ misleading doublespeak, the prospect of a de facto one-party state is possible. This is so especially when you realize that funny legislative characters like Akpabio are Tinubu’s consorts. While Akpabio won’t have any qualms about licking the president’s spittle and stamping APC as Nigeria’s constitutionally recognized sole party and Tinubu, sole candidate, in exchange for a life tenancy in the senate, Nigerians will make this impossible. A de jure one-party state is however possible. Its prospect is ripe in an APC where all Nigerian forces and absolute powers are fusing inside one party under Tinubu’s “sweep them clean” triumphalism. In a de jure one-party state, other parties would exist but the APC and the president will certainly be so lawlessly authoritarian that they would criminalize public smile.

Yes, as Tinubu said, “freedom of movement and association is not a criminally punishable, (sic).” However, with this gale of defection sweeping all and sundry inside his party’s pouch, it may be a recipe for tyranny of the majority. By either hook or crook, the president has killed the sacred deer. His audacity of choosing to spread the deer skin for all to see may eventually court the disaffection of the Old One, the Nigerian people. Now our own Ndiaye in Fall’s satiric novel, when Tinubu needs Nigerians, the beggars he treats with such conceit, he may not find them. Again, like the urchin who cursed the Iroko tree and persistently looked backwards in fear of immediate repercussion, does the president think the Oluwere ghormid resident inside the bowel of the Iroko strikes with immediacy? 

Festus Adedayo is an Ibadan-based journalist.