By Abdu Rafiu
Four issues are burning in my heart this day. The first is the Sword of Damocles dangling over Siminalayi Fubara’s head despite Chamberlainist appeasement to placate the gods in his domain and placing the fetish of sacrifice in the shrines. But the chief priest is unimpressed. He is determined to conquer territory and has sworn to invoke lightning and thunder– lightning to bare its blinding flash and thunder to roar and strike with its fiendish devastating blows. It is now only a matter of time. His incantations have been loud and undisguised. Ayodele Fayose, former governor of Ekiti State, has said that only prayers can save Fubara. He should know, speaking from experience. In his case, when the lightning first gave hint, just in split seconds before the accompanying rumbling blows of thunder struck, he had dashed under the bed. The thunder arrestor prevented a fatality; he was crippled in a little degree and was healed. He regained strength through the unceasing supplications by his reputed prayer-warrior wife. He came back to regain the throne. In the case of Fubara, in the earlier brush with thunder, the thunder arrestor worked well. Even then he was bruised and after six months he returned to the saddle. The thundery weather is, however, unrelenting. The thunder-cloud is gathering fast and dark. It is more ominous now than ever.
The city fathers described as the elders of the embattled state have collectively waded in fearing that the thunder storms this time would sweep the state clean; the morning-after debris of the devastation no one can predict. Dr. Peter Odilli spoke forcefully so that no one would accuse him in future of keeping silent in the event the rot in which the state is enmeshed takes a life of its own and hits everyone hard in the face– to put the gathering storm mildly.
Mr. Nyesom Wike conducts himself as if he is not subject to any authority and control. It is not as if there was an out-of-season election in the offing, he was in the state on election campaign, ostensibly for Bola Tinubu to return to office next year, 2027. INEC is not known to have blown the whistle for hustings to begin, and no one has called him to order. My reading of it is that he went to Rivers State to reassert himself as the lord of the manor to whom the governor must pay homage and whose clearance and not so much of loving guidance must be awaited. It is Ambode all over again!
Fubara himself was and still is staid; he was lily-livered at the beginning. When he later he sought to assert himself, it was too late. Even when the storms began to rage, his pre-occupation was to appease his traducers in order to keep his office instead of standing up on principles like a man. Who was Wike’s own god-father when he was in the saddle? Fubara had placed himself in the hands of a calculating and ruthless supposed benefactor. Now the thunderstorms he dodged when he had all the goodwill of this world to stand firm are back. What then was the purpose of the emergency, what did it achieve if the same charges drawn up against him and the attendant fears of chaos and confusion which necessitated the drastic measure are what have been dredged up today to raise their ugly heads? While many saw the situation as combustible waiting only for a cigarette end to set off a conflagration of unimaginable proportion and therefore saw the declaration of the emergency rule as called for to avert the explosion, and hailed it as timely, some others who were discerning saw through it all. Will the President send back Rtr.Vice-Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas as sole administrator since the conclusion seems to be that no lessons have been learnt? Strangely, the voice of APC to which the governor and the legislators all lay claim has been feeble. They have been unable to call their members, the legislators to order
All men of common sense should prevail on the legislators to change their attitude. Fubara has less than two years to go. When the time comes, the voters will overcome their cognitive impairment and use their votes to reaffirm Siminalayi Fubara or send him away. That is the remedy to his presumed transgressions. It is the way to avert the threatening explosion in the incendiary oil-soaked state and return to peace.
As I wrote this, the news break came that the Chief Judge of Rivers State has declined the request from the House of Assembly to set up a seven-man committee to investigate Fubara. The nation should salute his courage.
DAVIDO AND THE PATERNITY WEB
David Adeleke more known world-wide as Davido is fighting the battle of his life to get out of the paternity entanglement in which he has found himself. A young girl of 12 is at the centre of the controversy, claiming that Davido is her father. Davido said five DNA tests had been carried out and he would no longer entertain any drum-beat of the claims by the girl, Anuoluwapo and her mother, Ayotomide Labinjo. The claims are bad music in his ears. He said the results of the DNA returned negative. “After five DNAs…she and her mom better leave me alone and go find her papa.” He said he did not know the lady and Kemi Olulonyo thought it was probably Davido’s cousin, B-Red that was involved because both look alike.
Davido’s father, Dr. Adedeji Adeleke well known for his enormous material endowments, took over the matter from the star musician, saying the blood of his son has been found not flowing in the girl’s veins. And this is coming from the result of DNA tests carried out by multiple hospitals. He made particular reference to one done at Vedic, a hospital run by an Indian.
Dr. Adeleke said the matter was first brought to his attention in 2014 through a letter to him by a lawyer in Ibadan in which it was claimed that Davido had put a lady, Ayotomide Labinjo, in the family way. The lawyer said Davido abandoned the lady and her child. The letter was from Ayotomide’s mother, that is Anuoluwapo’s grandmother who had interrogated her daughter to confess to her who had put her in the family way. She has two daughters, the other, Titi, lives in Abuja and she wondered why it is Titi, Ayo and herself who have been responsible for the care of the girl, Anu; what about her father?
Dr. Adeleke went on: “Immediately I saw this letter, even before calling David, I called this woman and said: ‘Look. I’m not speaking to my son yet, but I’m going to speak to him. But I’ll suggest to you to give me your address in Ibadan. I’ll send my driver to come and know where you live, but I can assure you that if this girl is my granddaughter, you have no problems with me; I’ll welcome her into my family happily’. She was happy. She gave me her address, and I gave the address to my driver.
“… I called her, gave her the information that anytime they were ready, I would send my driver to pick them up from Ibadan. So, on the appointed day, I sent my driver to Ibadan. Very early, my driver brought the mother of the child, the grandmother, and the baby. The three of them came. And because my driver knows Vedic Hospital, they were already there before I came in with David, because I asked David to come here, and his aide, Lati. So, David, I. and Lati met them at Vedic Hospital. We went upstairs where the samples were taken.
“So, we were all in the same room, and he (the doctor) told us the procedure. It was not blood. I’ve read on social media that they were drawing blood. It’s not. It was not done by blood. It was from saliva in their mouth. And he told us that these samples would be sent to South Africa for analysis. The grandmother of the baby and I signed that both of us would be the ones to receive the result.”
Now the outcome: “When the result came, there was 0.00 possibility that Davido was the girl’s father.” Another test and this time involving B-Red was carried out, which made the tests to total five in all. “The test also turned negative.”
Dr. Adeleke said despite the negative results he had been responsible for the university education of Ayotomide, the girl’s mother and the primary school education of the girl, Anuoluwapo. She completed her primary school education but Ayotomide stopped her university education after two sessions. He said he is a grandfather of 14 children and wondered why, given his immense financial muscle and philanthropic disposition, he would hesitate to have one more grandchild.
Ayo Labinjo, using her daughter’s Instagram handle said she and Davido met at GQClub at Ibadan where she was a waitress, and accused Davido of abandoning her and portraying her as a call girl, a girl of low virtue. “I realised this story has now gone global again but we have largely moved on. David Adeleke has largely ignored me for years because he thought he picked a prostitute from GQClub in Ibadan. I was a waitress and not picked up on the streets. I come from a good home. My late father was a good man who worked more for the betterment of Nigeria before he died. My daughter is a very tech savvy, intelligent achiever.”
Dismissing Davido’s claim of DNA tests, Ayotomide said Dr. Deji Adeleke took them “to a lab, not a hospital where Anu’s blood was drawn in 2014 and they discarded behind our back and a fake result was printed.” Indeed, “the Lab technician masked as ‘Dr. Alex’ who was identified as a brother to Actress Sotayo Gaga was the one who confessed in an epistle that he never did any test for Anu and discarded the blood drawn from her. “We wasted our time… they lied that we did two tests, now five and then claims he’s never met me. I’m not fighting for my daughter. My daughter is fighting for her identity. David is a US citizen. I will request the US State Department to contact the Embassy in Lagos or Abuja to help us supervise and witness an independent DNA test…The language used was awful. My daughter did not beg to be here. Saying you’ve never met me or telling your family that I was a prostitute is wrong. Bullying my daughter is wrong.”
She added: “I am very protective of my daughter’s mental health after the level of bullying she went through for years. My daughter cried for days, fainted in school and went through psychotherapy.”
Dr. Adedeji Adeleke exhibited a graceful disposition from the very beginning when the matter was brought to his attention by calling the mother of Ayotomide upon receiving the lawyer’s letter. He arranged for a DNA test, common these days in the face of mounting paternity denial. His fatherly step to support and sponsor the education of both Ayotomide and her daughter, Anuoluwapo, is laudable. It is in line with the culture of the Yoruba people. In the South-West culture a family does not throw away a child. A youth can deny paternity of a baby a thousand times; what the mother, but particularly the grandmother of the young man does is to go quietly behind him to claim the baby as belonging to the family, and celebrate its arrival. Throw away a baby on grounds of paternity dispute? It is not done. Where Dr. Adeleke fell a little short was to permit the conflict to be so widely externalised. He should call the lady, Ayotomide and persuade her to go back to school. The 12-year-old girl at the centre of the controversy should be told to get ready to go to secondary school, preferably outside the shores of our land so she can overcome her psychological trauma and regain her sense of self-worth hit in her search for identity.
In matters of this nature, I ask myself: where is my erstwhile boss, Sad Sam? There was this similar case in 1971—by a couple at Surulere in Lagos. The lady said her husband was not the father of her child. The man vigorously laid claim to the paternity. The matter went to court where it was fiercely fought. In response to the unrelenting claim by the man, Oga Sad Sam intervened, firing a salvo to him: “Who told you? Who told you that you are the father? Only a woman knows the true father of her child.” It was not an age of DNA which arrived in Lagos only as recently as 2017 called Lagos Forensic Centre at Odunlami Street. It was established by the then Governor Akinwumi Ambode’s Administration. The first paternity testing service powered by what is called “next-generation sequencing technology” was launched by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu in November 2024. It was founded by Dr. Paul Faduola.
We learn in higher knowledge spreading on earth today that the adoption of a child could even be more blessed to a childless couple who have difficulty in bringing forth their own biologically raised kiddies. Food for thought on what is said In the Light of Truth, the Grail Message in the Lecture, The Mystery of Birth: “In His parables Jesus has given the best examples. In the Sermon on the Mount and in all His other sayings He has clearly pointed out the good results of such practices. In so doing He always spoke of ‘thy neighbour’, thus pointing out the best, the simplest and truest way towards redemption of karma and towards ascent.
“’Love thy neighbour as thyself’ He charged, thus giving the key to the gate leading to all ascent! It need not always involve a case of illness. The necessary care and education of children quite naturally offer to many opportunities that they embrace in themselves all that comes into consideration to free a man from his karma. For this reason, children are a blessing, no matter how they are born and developed.
“What applies to parents applies equally to brothers and sisters and to all who have a lot to do with children. They also have opportunities to profit by this new comer, be it only through striving to cast aside bad habits or similar things, by practising patience and giving careful help of different kinds.
“The child itself, however, is no less helped. Birth gives each individual the possibility to advance mighty step upwards. If this does not happen it is the fault of the individual himself, because he did not want it.
“Hence every birth should be regarded as a benevolent and impartially distributed gift of God. Those, who being childless, adopt a strange child will be no less blessed, indeed the blessing will be all the greater on account of the adoption, provided that it is done for the child’s sake and not for personal satisfaction.”
The Guardian
