By Bola Bolawole

“Are you no longer from Ondo State? You used to advertise that place as your dear native land!”

“Don’t mind him! Despite all the earth-shaking events taking place there, he has kept mute. Kidnappings, killings, protests…”

“The state celebrated its 50th anniversary; yet, nothing was heard from him. Is it because you knew your people had nothing to celebrate?”

“I was not invited! Grandma taught me never to go near such places…”

“I understand money flowed like water; money they could not spend on better things was wasted on a celebration that celebrated nothing…”

“If that money had been committed to security…”

“You twosome should stop putting down my state! Birthdays are celebrated not because of achievements but because we are still alive!”

“In a sense, that is true! When there is life, there is hope! There is still hope that e go better for your state…”

“Wishful thinking! Despite being an oil-producing state earning 13% derivation, you have nothing to show for it, except cries of 'we dey here dey suffer' from your people …”

“Are you saying you don’t know that much of those cries is politics and bad belle?”

“The daily kidnapping is politics, abi?

“And the unending killing of Kabiyesis? Admit the truth if only for this once…”

“No, don’t say that! He has always spoken the truth, and that is why I love him, but why he is not doing so this time around is what surprises me…”

“He must have been bought!”

“I beg your pardon! If I have nothing, I have my name and integrity, which I will defend with the last drop of my blood…”

“Then, why have you kept silent in the face of tyranny? Wole Soyinka said in ‘The Man Died’ that…”

“Oh-ooo! In all those that keep silent in the face of tyranny, the man dies…”

“E ku a-i-gbagbe! Respond to that!”

“Of course, I will! Politics is around the corner, so I take everything that I hear with a pinch of salt and never on their face value. Some of the complaints I have heard are from political partisans who are only vending their personal interests…”

“Even when it is said that there is nothing on ground to justify the humongous amount the state collects monthly from Abuja?”

“And that the governor is vindictive? Busy fighting petty wars! And aides are deserting him in droves…”

“He is also plotting to subvert the constitution of the Federal Republic?”

“So you, too, have heard? He plans to play in Ondo state the same Obasanjo card that failed in Abuja…”

“What is the Obasanjo card? This is the problem I have with people like you who cannot talk straight but employ innuendoes as camouflage…”

“Let’s not unnecessarily drag this matter. Ondo state is not smiling - and you know it. Your dear homeland is having the worst of times. Is this how you will fold your hands and watch?”

“Cry, the beloved state! In case you didn't know, my maternal great-grandfather hailed from Ondo state…”

“And my son married from the state! If you see the way his in-laws bombard him with requests! Ebi n pa wa! Cries of 'we are hungry' all the time! Only God knows how many times he has also contributed money to pay ransom to kidnappers or bury the victims of kidnapping.”

“I will answer you both if you care to listen. Insecurity is a national issue…”

“But that of Ondo state is getting past be careful! What is the governor doing with his security votes? Why is Amotekun moribond in the state? Where are the Forest Guards that Mr. President approved for all the governors…”

“And how far with state police? It does not seem as if security is rated highly on their priority list in that state…”

“I hate the way you people keep referring to my state as ‘that state’; it is derogatory”

“Sorry about that, but it is your yam that dipped your fingers inside oil…”

“And you, too, have not helped matters the way you have been tongue-tied over matters that affect the well-being of your state. Anyone who reads the way you usually advertise yourself as an indigene of the state would think you love the state…”

“So, in your reckoning, I don’t love the state…”

“Na for mouth?

“Jumping on the bandwagon of abusers is not the right way to go. Criticism must be constructive; even justified anger must be tempered. That is when whatever advice you give can be listened to and progress can be made. Abusing just for abuse sake solves no problem. That is not to say, however, that I have not heard the cries of my people, even beyond what you twosome have highlighted. A group of 7th - 9th Ondo State House of Assembly members ceaselessly prod me that they have not been paid their entitlements. I belong to groups that spend hours discussing how to lift up our communities in particular and the state in general - but it has not been easy at all…”

“And why has it not been easy?”

“Because, often, we fight symptoms instead of attacking the disease itself. We chase shadows instead of confronting the monster…”

“You have relapsed into the usual speaking in parables again…”

“Speaking in tongues, you mean to say! Don’t forget he is born-again…”

“That is beside the point. Now, tell me, the man you are complaining about, how did he emerge as governor? Was he the best qualified and most competent or was it just by the whims of one man acting despotically like an emperor? That is the starting point! Why are we all ‘yes-men’ and ‘yes-women’ fawningly gesticulating and currying favour in the court of tin-gods for the crumbs that fall from their table?”

“We should ask you the question why people around leaders don’t tell them the truth?”

“Wait until you get there yourself! Governments everywhere - secular, religious, traditional, democratic, autocratic, revolutionary, name it - are structured in a way that makes speaking truth to power difficult…”

“And why is that so?”

“Human nature! The nature of the man who holds the knife and also holds the yam, and the nature of those struggling to get a piece of the action. It takes men and women of extraordinary courage and talent to break loose from the norms and behave otherwise. And such leaders are rare…”

“And they seldom are allowed to rule…”

“Oh-ooo! So you can see that the shoe is on the legs of both the leaders and the led. Why do people ignore electing good leaders but turn around to complain about the bad choices they make?”

“Ol’boy, you have fallen quiet! Is anything the matter?”

“Not really! Trying to flow with the philosophy of our friend again…

“If I may continue, people deserve the kind of leaders they get! Most times our people themselves are willing tools in the hands of bad leaders. Governors don’t sign cheques; how, then, do they manage to embezzle billions? Those who help them are not spirits…”

“And now that this governor is preparing for an illegal third term in office?”

“That is another four NYSC years for your people!”

“Ol’boy, what has NYSC got to do with what we are discussing here?”

“Now Your Suffering Continues - NYSC - for another four years!”

“I see!”

“But has the man told any of you that he wants a third term?”

“The rumours are all over the place. Don’t you think this Lucky of a man is carrying his luck too far? He is carrying his sacrifice beyond the mosque! Must Aiyedatiwa also become Ondo-da-tiwa!”

“As a veteran journalist, one with a nose for news, you cannot claim not to have heard the rumour”

“Even if I did, I will follow the advice of Grandma on the matter…”

“Grandma, again!”

“Yes! She said what is rumbling in the bush is coming to the main road. So, wait for it there”

“I see! So, if truly Aiyedatiwa is baying for Ondo-da-tiwa, he will come into the open sooner than later”

“Exactly! It is a project you hatch in secret but must execute in the open.”

“It was after Obasanjo came into the open with his own third term agenda that the National Assembly hammered him on the head!”

“Are you saying the same hammer awaits Aiyedatiwa?”

“Time will tell!”

“And your parting shot on Aiyedatiwa’s performance?”

“Whether or not Gov. Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa has performed is debatable. Those who wear the shoe in Ondo State are in a better position to say. I am an ‘Ondo state abroad’ person, as they say. But are there security issues? Yes! Is there an infrastructure deficit? Yes! Do the people expect more from their governor? Yes! Are the resources accruing to the state now better than in times past? Yes! Has the fortunes of the people improved with improved resources? Not really! Does the governor have good plans for the state? I think so; what with signature projects like the deep sea port and petrochemical fertilizer projects? But the age-old problem of governments in my dear state remains…”

“I am eager to hear that…”

“...Their provincialism; their small-man mind and a mentality that constrains them from effectively telling their own story. Such that those with far less achievements than theirs appear to be doing even far more.”

“And what solution do you offer?”

“Let that be a topic for another day!”

...Bola Bolawole is a former editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief. He was also the Managing Director/Editor-in-chief of The Westerner news magazine. Bolawole writes the ON THE LORD'S DAY column in the Sunday Tribune and TREASURES column in New Telegraph newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television. Bolawole can be reached through his E-mail and phone: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ; 0807 552 5533; 0803 251 0193. NNL.

By Azu Ishiekwene

My mother used to warn me that the words of my mouth could claim my head if I weren’t careful. She should have saved that warning for another man: Nasir El-Rufai, former minister and governor of Kaduna State. I’ve often joked that even if you beheaded El-Rufai and minced his skull, his tongue would still be wagging. Those who have been in his crosshairs might agree.

By Bolanle Bolawole

I watched the video of a traditional ruler from Igboland, Eze Ogbunechendo of Ezema Kingdom, HRM Igwe Lawrence Okolie Agbuzu OON, CFR, making three controversial statements at the first National Traditional and Religious Leaders Summit held in Abuja last Tuesday.

By Azu Ishiekwene

There Was a Country, lamented Chinua Achebe, Nigeria’s literary icon and one of the world’s greatest storytellers. Achebe’s title evokes many things in the mind beyond its primary thematic concern – a journal of the author’s experiences of the Biafran War, which raged between 1967 and 1970. Among other things, it raises the question: What happened to the country?

By Demola Bakare fsi, anipr

In Nigeria’s anti-corruption discourse, we often celebrate the spectacle of arrests, prosecutions, and convictions. Headlines scream, social media roars, and public anger briefly finds relief. Yet, after the noise fades, corruption stubbornly persists—mutating, adapting, and resurfacing in new forms. This reality invites a difficult but necessary question: Are we fighting corruption only after the damage has been done, or are we doing enough to stop it from happening in the first place?

By Bolanle Bolawole

Unlike Comrade Dipo Fashina (aka Jingo) and Comrade Segun Osoba, Comrade (Professor) Biodun Jeyifo never taught me at the University of Ife (renamed Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile-Ife. But like other Marxist lecturers at the university such as Professor Toye Olorode, Idowu Awopetu, G. G. Darah, Malam Femi Taiwo and many others, BJ actually taught me outside the classroom walls.

By Segun Adediran

The architecture of death row is not built of stone and steel, but of stagnant time. To be on death row is to live in the "After"—dead, yet living. You are a ghost inhabiting a body that the state has already marked as a tragic clerical error. It is the only place on Earth where the future is not a mystery, but a fixed point on a calendar: a Tuesday at dawn, a Thursday at midnight, creeping toward you with the silent, rhythmic inevitability of a tide.

By Bola Bolawole

“Men at some times are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings... ” - Cassius to Brutus in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

By Chuka Nnabuife

Even the most accomplished propagandists might once have doubted that Nigeria would reach a point where its history could be taught to children with one of its foundational peoples deliberately marginalised or erased. Yet that is the unsettling reality now confronting the country’s basic education system.

By Hassan Gimba

Israel's message to one of the intermediaries was that it would not participate in the US attack, and therefore asked Iran not to target it. This request was also met with a negative response from Iran, which explicitly stated that with the start of US military action, Israel would be attacked. This made Netanyahu threaten to attack Iran with a force “1,000 times more than they have known”, alluding to the use of nuclear bombs. The US and Europe have been, as part of their propaganda, telling whoever cares to listen that Iran would use the bomb if it had it. The world has now seen who is itching to use it.

By Bolanle Bolawole

In the first instalment last week, the response to the question whether the new FG-ASUU agreement will end strikes in our universities was ambivalent. “Yes” to some but “No” to others. “Yes” if the agreement is seen as a means to an end and not an end in itself. If it is seen as the first step that begins a journey of 1000 years, as a Chinese proverb puts it, because the task of rescuing our university system from the depth into which it has fallen will take more than the signing of an agreement to accomplish.

By Azu Ishiekwene

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger - three rogue states that have formed an Alliance of Sahelian States (AES) to resist external pressure from ECOWAS on military rule - have just won the biggest diplomatic jackpot beyond their wildest imagination.

Not even a sorcerer would have guessed that, as a reward for their delinquency, this trio would receive support, endorsement actually, from the dominant power in the world since World War 2 – the United States. But much better than prodigals, they are about to receive flowers for their waywardness.

According to the BBC, Nick Checker, head of the US State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, would visit Mali's capital, Bamako, to convey the United States' "respect for Mali's sovereignty" and chart a "new course" in relations, moving "past policy missteps." The statement adds that the US also looks forward to cooperating with Mali's allies, neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, "on shared security and economic interests."

New possibilities or what?

Forget the diplomatese and sugar-coating! This is a declaration of intent, and it states, even in its nebulous ambiguity, that the US has cut all pretences and will do or undo business with anyone, anywhere, without hesitation, on a whim. The days of thoughtful, considered diplomacy are over.

In Niger, the military junta of General Abdourahamane Tchiani had expelled 800 US troops from the large drone base Washington had built in Agadez, after the Biden administration demanded a roadmap to restore democracy in Niamey.

Trump may well roll back the tanks with a deal, any deal to undercut or compete with Russia and its Wagner agents, Niger’s new super ally, while France remains bitter, despised and stranded.

To spite France for President Emmanuel Macron’s condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin had launched a foray into Francophone West Africa. President Donald Trump might well have taken a leaf from the Kremlin’s playbook after Macron censured his Greenland fantasy.

This massive oxygen tank from the most unlikely quarters is a boost not just for delinquents elsewhere, but also for a whole new phase of America’s transactional politics, thanks to President Trump, the deal-maker who strikes deals without moral or institutional qualms. Even the saying, “no sentiment in business,” was never such an absolute Machiavellian riposte.

The price of delinquency

But it’s not only the global powers that may need to reset their interests. The way things are going, the ECOWAS, which has had a torrid time convincing the military leaders of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger that coup-making is unacceptable, now has to contend with America warming to Mali and co.

The trio's exit has had real negative consequences for the affected countries and the subregion as a whole. Although there isn’t sufficient quantitative data yet, the three countries, with an estimated combined population of 73 million, comprise 15 percent of ECOWAS’ total population, 50 percent of its landmass, and contribute about 7 per cent of its GDP. Even though they are landlocked, losing them has impacted the size of the regional market.

In Niger, one of America’s potential new brides, food prices have risen by an estimated 21 percent, while the country’s budget has fallen by about 40 percent due to regional sanctions. In the region as a whole, household mobility and intra-regional trade have decreased, as have the numbers of migrant workers, students, and families who regularly move across borders for work, education, or healthcare.

Diplomatic efforts to bring them back have failed, either bungled in haste or sabotaged by the new military leaders, who have little appetite, if any, for a return to civilian rule. Why make peace when war is an option?

Cauldron game

This is the cauldron into which we must now factor the Trump administration's opportunism. Instead of mediating the crisis in a way that benefits ECOWAS and the US, the president decides to rub salt in the subregion’s wound.

It would be interesting to see how the subregion responds, especially since it has nothing near the gift of cunning or leverage that Europe used to dissuade Trump from grabbing Greenland. Before the rapprochement, the US had placed the three AES members on its comprehensive travel ban list, a measure the countries immediately reciprocated.

Does this “new course” mean a reversal of the US “missteps” which also affect Sierra Leone, while seven ECOWAS members, including Nigeria, are on the partial ban list?

Mum is the word

There’s yet no official response to the indications of back-pedalling by the US, either from the AES, ECOWAS or the AU. One clear thing, though, is that such a step will further drive a wedge between the subregion and its delinquent states. However, it is unlikely that they would gamble their present relationship with Russia, warts and all, for a roller-coaster ride with the US.

The motive of the US is not a stable, cohesive, interdependent subregion capable of deepening trade and cooperation. It’s yet another subversive attempt by Trump’s administration to smash, grab and convert any critical resources that it can find at any cost.

A variant of this strategy first played out with South Africa, where Trump insisted on a non-existent “White genocide” to create discord, and then later in Nigeria, where he used the excuse of a “Christian genocide” to raise sectarian tensions.

Subversion as diplomacy

His administration appears to have gone up a notch, with covert meetings between leaders of Alberta separatists, committed to breaking away from Canada, and members of the U.S. State Department.

Administration officials claim that the meetings have involved a civil society group, and not official members of the separatist movement. Yet, Trump’s unrelenting covetousness has made it difficult for some to believe that this is not in furtherance of his Project 51st US State.

While the Trump administration’s interest in Alberta may also be to spook “stubborn” Prime Minister Mark Carney, the common thread between Alberta and the Sahel is critical minerals. The military leaders in the AES know that with this US president, business trumps rogue politics. They have spurned any idea of a political transition and are instead preparing for a lifetime in office.

Disregard for democratic values that might have concerned the US in a former life is no longer an issue. In the current dispensation, if it’s not critical minerals – which the Sahelian states have in abundance – or the promise of a nice piece of real estate, forget it.

The fire next time

Captain Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso has scrapped the legal framework that allowed multiparty democracy and dissolved all political parties. At the same time, the reports from Bamako and Niamey do not indicate any immediate plans to return to civil rule. The current mood in the world’s major power centres does not suggest any need for haste.

The rogue states can take their time, as we wait for the fire of diplomacy by subversion to make its next fall.

... Azubuike Ishiekwene is the Senior Vice Chairman and Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It. NNL.