By Tunde Odesola
When cornered by death or stalked by danger, an insect called the Malaysian Exploding Ant turns against its assailant, ruptures its abdominal muscles, causing its poisonous glands to explode.
With the explosion of the poisonous glands, the ant releases an irritating substance in all directions. The released secretion is capable of immobilising or entangling the adversary.
The Malaysian Exploding Ant loses its life in the explosion, dying an honourable death, ‘ikú yá ju èsín’, teaching its assailant a bitter lesson – never mess with a Malaysian Exploding Ant. By falling on the sword, the ant preserves its clan, sacrificing itself for its colony.
In the olden days, whenever a tyrannical Alaafin of Oyo poked the eyes of the earth with his blue heels, the Oyomesi – a fraternity of powerful chiefs – would storm the palace, and open to the Alaafin, the calabash of death. Abomination! The king must never see the inside of the empty calabash. Èèwò!!
The statement, ‘See Paris and die,’ is totally different from ‘See empty calabash and die.’ ‘See Paris and die’ proclaims Paris as the ultimate scenic city in the world where every mortal should visit before dying. But an Alaafin that sees an empty calabash is on the journey of no return.
The youths that stormed the Lekki tollgate three years ago were Nigeria’s exploding ants, who, condemning police brutality and demanding improved welfare and infrastructure, resorted to legitimate protest because they were tired of living under conditions unfit for even animals in the wild.
Seeing the sea of resolute youths protesting at Lekki, the government was neither moved to repentance nor courageous enough to rupture the muscles of its filthy abdomen. Also, the government didn’t have the courage of the olden days’ Alaafins who committed suicide upon seeing the empty calabash of death.
Rather, the government sent its sheriffs and soldiers after the youths, chanting a Bob Marley lyric, ‘kill them before they grow,’ and yet call them ‘leaders of tomorrow’ a day after the massacre.
The Nigerian youths were mistaken; they had thought their leaders were only wicked, little did they know they were heartless, too.
After smearing the Lekki tollgate with the blood of innocent citizens, the regime of The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), denied that no youth was killed, calling on wailing parents and relatives to produce the pheromones in the caked blood of the dead.
However, the late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, blamed Buhari’s regime for allowing the #EndSARS protests to get out of hand. After the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government crushed the youth’s resistance against oppression at Lekki, Buhari and his party went home, and slept soundly. We had won, they thought. But revenge is the unforgiving cousin of karma – very brutal and unforgetting.
Millions of Nigerian youths nationwide had a voice in the Lekki tollgate protest because they all are affected by the action and inaction of the directionless Buhari regime. So, they lay in wait and bide their time. Their time came last Saturday. And they utilised it to the hilt.
From the ruins of the earthquake that shattered entrenched political structures and disembowelled godfathers along with their godchildren, today, I seek interpretations to Nigeria’s new political map etched through the ballot nationwide on February 25, 2023.
The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, is not the hero of the 2023 presidential election, he is the arrow. He’s not the vehicle of the struggle, he’s the driver who preached against making monetary inducement a guarantee for support. With his message of hope and an assurance that Nigeria could be born again, Obi got support across ethnic and religious lines because poverty speaks only one language: lack.
Nigerians who queued behind Obi are the heroes and heroines of the 2023 presidential election. Even when the struggle became intense and the movement had to cross ethnic and religious lines, the heroes and heroines remained resolute for the horrors they have been subjected to by the APC and the PDP in almost 24 years is worse than the errors of the struggle.
Being a product of the All Progressives Grand Alliance and the Peoples Democratic Party, Obi is, surely, no saint, but his lyrics make sense to a nation in need of a messiah, different from those of the betrayers resident in the two leading principalities and powers of darkness called parties.
Make no mistake about it, Obi must have been pleasantly surprised with the numbers thrown up by the election. Not in his wildest imagination would he be so sure to sweep the cursed broom into the Lagos Atlantic or snatch Plateau State from under the perforated umbrella.
Obi, with the backing of his supporters, knew he had something big in his hands, but like the unpredictability of football tournaments or new inventions, he wasn’t sure how his innovation would turn out. He simply put his product in the market, and b-o-o-m, the rest became history.
Globally, braggadocio is a sauce with which politics is eaten. Former US presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton fit the bill of braggadocious leaders exuding the air of infectious confidence. Nigerian politicians too have a large dose of swag and overconfidence. The presidential candidate of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, publicly said it would be belittling of him to even take Obi’s name on his lips, now that Obi has slammed him in Lagos, he should tender an open apology to Obi for belittling the new face of opposition in Nigeria.
Bitter, sweet and curious creature, the honeybee. When the honeybee stings, its abdomen tears up, its mouth opens and closes, hitting the ground in a final kiss of death. That is the fate of the honeybee and its stinger – a weapon it uses for protection and the harbinger of its ultimate death.
Hey, the next time you see a dead bee on the ground, you probably need to stoop, if you can’t pick it up, to see if it ‘bled’ to death in the abdomen.
Science has shown that when the honeybee sinks its stinger in flesh, for example, the stinger gets hooked. In an attempt to force the stinger out, the longer part of the stinger embedded inside the bee tears up the end of the abdomen, and the bee opens its mouth ‘in shock,’ then closes it, and drops to kiss the ground in death.
Arguably America’s foremost Extension Apiculturist – Eric Mussen – lecturer at the University of California at Davis, devoted most of his 78-year life to research on bees and beekeeping before passing away in June, last year. “When a honeybee stings, it dies a gruesome death…It is only the female honeybees, also known as the worker bees, that sting. Each hive contains some 60,000 workers..,” Mussen told the Public Broadcasting Service.
The honeybee, and the Malaysian Exploding Ant, which I referred to in the first part of this article, thus, suffer the same ghastly fate when defending their castes.
Like the honeybee and the Malaysian Exploding Ant, the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party suffered self-amputation during the presidential and National Assembly elections held on February 25, 2023, bursting their abdomens, exposing their entrails – necessitating the ambulance rushing to the ER.
In Lagos, the headcount taken after the passover of February 25 shows that the days of political prisoners singing the slavish panegyric, “On Your Mandate We Shall Stand,” are numbered. Even the Architect of Modern Lagos, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, who wears a shackled cap instead of a helmet, was force-fed the humble pie before falling ‘yakata’ from construction scaffolding into the sinking sand on the Atlantic beach, and washed off into the Osun River!
With the loss the PDP suffered in its home states of the South-East, South-South and parts of the North during the election, former vice president and serial loser, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, should, by now, have come to the painful realisation that the PDP salt has lost its taste, the lion has lost its mane. In the just concluded presidential election, the ‘largest party in Africa’ was torn into shreds in Lagos, and in its former strongholds of Abuja, Rivers, Edo, Delta, Anambra, Enugu, Imo etc.
Now, the coffin is ready for the expiring patient, who is ready for the grave, already dug by undertakers, who are teary but ready to bury. So, in flames goes the wish of a party whose dream of ruling for 60 years terminated in 16 years.
By the results of the February presidential and federal legislature elections, it’s crystal clear that ignoble age-long political practices such as godfatherism, money politics, ethnicity and religious divisiveness would be a thing of the past if the majority of the 93,522,272 Nigerian voter population participate in elections and vote their conscience. Sadly, only 23,377,466 Nigerians voted during the elections, which represent 24.9 per cent of total voters.
Bemused, I watch as Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has been running on hot coals since February 25 when the APC lost Lagos to Labour Party, knocking on residents’ doors, begging for votes and personally taking selfies with ordinary Lagosians, who ordinarily, could never get close to him if he wasn’t driven by the fear of impending electoral loss.
I can see the voter laugh, close his eyes, mount his horse and wish election comes every year to humble the vagabonds in power. Times are changing. The ground is dizzy. The voter was a beggar; he had a wish and a horse, but wasn’t allowed to ride. Now, he has whip of PVC and has mounted his horse en route to his dream, woe betide the voice of retrogression wailing in the wilderness, appealing to ethnic or religious sentiments.
I wish the Labour Party wins Lagos for democracy and the opposition to thrive. For eight years, Tinubu was a pain in the neck of President Olusegun Obasanjo who allegedly sought to perpetuate himself in government through a third term agenda. Let Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour put a needle to Tinubu’s neck too – now that he will be president.
In 2006, I forced my way into the heavily guarded Osun State House of Assembly legislative chamber – venue of the South-West public hearing on constitution amendment which had the governors of the region in attendance.
Noble lawyer and courageous activist, Bamidele Aturu; may his gentle soul rest in peace, popular activist, Moshood Erubami; and many other activists across the South-West stormed the venue of the hearing, which many believed was orchestrated by Obasanjo to earn a third term.
The police and the DSS who mounted guard at the doors leading into the chambers barred activists from entering, precipitating a shouting and shoving match before the activists and many members of the public forced their way into the chamber.
An enraged Governor Ayodele Fayose climbed the table and ordered the police to flush out the ‘intruders.’ Years later, Fayose accused Obasanjo of masterminding a third term agenda.
I learnt then on good authority that Tinubu as Lagos governor was in support of some of the activists that stormed the venue to stop the purported third term agenda. Does this good deed qualify Tinubu as a democrat? NO! In eight years, Tinubu had three deputy governors – Kofoworola Akerele-Bucknor, Femi Pedro and Sarah Sosan.
So, whenever Tinubu is tempted to go imperial, as is his wont, there should be a political force to repel him as he repelled the Ebora Owu who has the sole ownership of a university, controversial library and farm in Ota. The sauce distilled as pepper soup for the goose is simmering on the boil for the gander. After 24 unbroken years of APC administration, Lagos deserves another ‘last man’ standing.
I don’t like the way Rhodes-Vivour speaks Yoruba like a faulty pepper grinding machine but to say he’s unqualified to contest Lagos governorship on account of his mother being Igbo is a symptom of afternoon madness.
Remi, the beautiful wife of Tinubu, is Itsekiri. Is it then right to say that the daughters bore Tinubu by Remi aren’t Yoruba and Lagosians? Is it right to say the children bore Seyi, Tinubu’s son, by his Igbo wife, aren’t Yoruba and Lagosians? Osun State Governor, Ademola Adeleke, was born by an Igbo woman, today he’s the executive governor of Osun. Ondo State Governor, Arakunrin Rotimi Akeredolu married an Igbo. Does that stop their children from contesting elections in Ondo? The list goes on and on.
I think it’s ripe enough time to ask about the maternity of Seyi Tinubu, and that of Tinubu’s prominent daughter, Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, who is the Iyaloja General of Nigeria. Full disclosures on the mothers of all Tinubu’s children would put Nigerians in good perspective as to who should refund Lagos State billions of naira in contracts, perks and freebies raked under the Tinubu family name.
The letter ‘T’ is synonymous with Tinubu and Tortoise. When the insensitive Governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele, came up with his watercolour design of the naira, Tinubu and his disciples such as Nasir el-Rufai, Abdullahi Ganduje and Adams Oshiomhole cried like malevolent spirits.
But since the APC won the presidential election, the once disconsolate defenders of the masses have withdrawn into their posh shells and abandoned suffering Nigerian masses to queue in the sun daily at banks, waiting to buy naira with naira. There is no human face to their shame and insensitivity.
A monk beds a prostitute at night and mounts the pulpit in the morning to condemn harlotry. I know the monk and his followers. Do you? Of course, you do. Then, vote your conscience on March 18, 2023.
Emai: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com
Facebook: @tunde odesola
Twitter: @tunde_odesola
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