Obasa, Aláàfin Ṣàngó and the capture of Lagos, By Festus Adedayo

Aside from the ability of Yoruba anecdotal retelling latent in that Sango narrative, the downfall of Oba Ṣàngó is an in depth illustration that even in a contemporary world, no ruler or godfather is immune from the vulnerabilities of energy. It additionally illustrates the destruction immanent in human nature. The Obasa episode, although seemingly miniature, has the potential to implode and flush the Lagos godfather down the drain, replicating the Ṣàngó downfall in latest historical past.

On Wednesday, 25 February, a really poisonous however innocuous advertorial was printed within the PUNCH newspaper. It was authored by a gaggle which known as itself De Renaissance Patriots Basis. Entitled “Systematic Marginalisation of Lagos State Indigenes,” and signed by Main Normal Tajudeen Olanrewaju (rtd.) and Yomi Tokosi, the advertorial explains the legislative gangsterism presently happening in Lagos State, ex-Speaker Mudashiru Obasa’s impudent audacity and President Bola Tinubu’s nauseating silence on the civilian coup ongoing within the State of Aquatic Splendour.

The one becoming narrative that may clarify the Obasa phenomenon and the Lagos godfather’s paternalism for Obasa and his ilk is the Osu caste system in Igboland. Amongst different obnoxious techniques just like the killing of dual infants, killing of kids who grew the primary higher incisors, human sacrifices, amongst others, the Osu caste is evergreen in its evil, and rooted within the Igbo custom and faith. Reverend George Thomas Basden’s ebook, Among the many Ibos of Southern Nigeria (1921), an in depth account of the clergy’s experiences whereas dwelling in Igbo land as a Christian missionary within the early twentieth century, examines the folks’s customs, beliefs, social construction and non secular practices.

On web page 109 of the ebook, Basden defines Osu as “a slave, however one distinct from an abnormal slave (ohu/oru) who in truth is the property of the god and when dedicated to a god, he has no prospect of regaining freedom and he restricts his actions to the procuts of the shrine to which he was hooked up.” Centuries after the tip of slavery and regardless of modernity, the Osu caste’s poignant odor is rank in Igboland, as it’s nonetheless discriminated in opposition to, can’t marry a freeborn, and its aspirations are curtailed. The Osu are thus pressured to type an inter-group bond and alliance to press for his or her rights. A former minister underneath Olusegun Obasanjo, who’s an Osu, is the rallying level of this caste in opposition to discrimination by the “freeborn” Igbo. As I’ll argue, the disaster of the Lagos parliament, amongst different indicators, is fuelled by the traditional indigene/settler dichotomy in Lagos. On this case, the Lagos godfather symbolises the Obasanjo minister, hell-bent on defending his fellow Lagos migrant-settlers.

Normal Olanrenwaju’s group, which printed the advertorial, made a number of allegations in opposition to the godfather. They’re encapsulated within the phrase, “persistent discrimination in opposition to the indigenous folks of Lagos State.” Maybe, probably the most insulting to the group was the temerity of the godfather’s alternative of two non-indigenes of the state, Bisi Akande and Segun Osoba, ex-governors of Osun and Ogun states, to mediate within the disaster of the Lagos Home of Meeting. Aside from the group’s complete denunciation of this alien intervention, it particularly took Akande to the cleaners. Akande, it stated, who “is struggling for political breath” in his residence state, being unable to resolve the continued conflagration therein, feels entitled to poke-nose into the Lagos matter “as a result of his kids, Akande Funmilayo (Chairman Apapa/Iganmu LCDA) and Yinka Akande are severely benefiting from (sic) as Native Council Chairman and Director of Lekki Free Commerce Zone respectively.”

As teams or people, Lagos indigenes have all the time stood up in opposition to the ruling institution. A 1908 proposed water charge for Lagosians is an instance. On 20 July of that 12 months, Governor Walter Egerton proposed to cost Lagosians for entry potable water. This was after his authorities constructed a £130,000 pipe borne water scheme, the precursor of the Iju Waterworks inbuilt 1916. Two indigenes of Lagos, John Randle and Orisadipe Obasa, medical medical doctors, underneath the banner of the Folks’s Union, organized a rally of Lagosians at Enu Owa on 26 November, 1908, the place they took Egerton on. Randle and Obasa have been themselves not autochthonous Lagosians although. Randle, born in 1855 in Regent, Sierra Leone, initially from Oyo city, was the son of Thomas, who settled within the Aroloya a part of Lagos, whereas Obasa, whose father descended from the Elekole of Ikole-Ekiti, was dropped at Lagos in 1878. It have to be borne in thoughts that Orisadipe Obasa has no ancestral join with Mudashiru, who’s presently recreating an MC Oluomo motor-park hijack prototype within the Lagos parliament.

The indigene/settlers battle in Lagos dates again to the 15th century. The Awori earliest settlers on Lagos Island, descendants of the legendary Ogunfunminire, who hailed from Ile-Ife, had confronted a Bini try and uproot them, which was profitable. A fierce battle that occurred at Iddo had Olofin, who administered the world, being routed. Since then, the event of Lagos has attracted the inflow of migrant-settler Yorubas and different ethnicities laying declare to Lagos. The affect of migrant-settlers was so overwhelming that when in 1950, Dr I. Olorun-Nimbe emerged mayor of the Lagos Council, solely him and 4 others have been Lagos indigenes, whereas the remaining 19 officers have been migrant-settlers. The 1951 Structure, which positioned Lagos underneath Ibadan, in a Western Area administration, additional worsened Lagos’ destiny, till the 1954 Structure restored its place. In 1967, Lagos received a state of its personal and federal capital standing. So, when within the Fifties, the heartland of Lagos indigenes, Isale Eko, was demolished, teams have been fashioned to repeatedly struggle the curiosity of indigenous Lagosians. They included the Isale Eko Affiliation (1955) and Egbe Eko Parapo (Lagos Residents’ Rights Safety Council – LCRPC, 1962). The latter emerged from a merger of the Lagos Aborigines Society and the Egbe Omo Ibile Eko (Affiliation of the Sons of Lagos State), which was led by Chief TA Doherty. In the present day, probably the most outstanding of these associations is the Affiliation of Lagos State Indigenes (ALSI), hitherto led by Justice Ishola Oluwa, a retired Excessive Court docket Decide.

The position of id in Nigeria’s migrant-settlers disaster reveals its significance in Nigerian social life. It additionally reveals that id has unfavourable potentials that may be deployed as a software for mobilising violence. In 2000, Lagos deployed violence, as pushed by id, when the Yoruba indigene-settlers and Hausas engaged one different in a fratricidal battle in Ketu. That struggle, which claimed lives, indicated the adversarial use that autochthony will be put to. Students have stated that a number of of Nigeria’s worst conflicts occurred when authentic inhabitants, or indigenes, have been pitted in opposition to migrant-settlers. The Obasa budding battle, although seems political, could unravel the powers behind it.

The godfather’s migrant-settler place in Lagos is mentioned solely in hushed tones. These aware about his migration and the story of his settling in Lagos keep sealed lips. Whereas he was governor of Lagos State, some dissident teams made efforts to doc his migrancy by writing a ebook on the household tree of the Tinubus of Lagos. Another analysts have stated that if the Lagos autochthony is to be damaged into brass-tacks, nearly all Lagosians will fail the litmus check. As an example, the ancestor of the Tinubus is himself a Kanuri.

In Yorubaland, the migrant-settlers dynamics is wealthy in literature. It’s certainly an historical phenomenon. Signified by the native markers of àjèjì or àjòjì (migrants) and onílé (autochthony), the widespread phrase that defines that transaction is, no migrant-settler ought to duel with an indigene over possession of land (àjòjì kìí b’ónílé du’lé). That is the meat of Normal Olanrewaju and his De Renaissance Patriots Basis’s beef with Tinubu and why many autochthonous Lagosians – no matter Tinubu’s huge political powers in Nigeria, his talismanic affect and boundless wealth – are in opposition to his continued domination of Lagos. It additionally explains why a Tinubu, who in the present day is carrying a monstrous elephant of Nigerian energy and wealth on his head, could possibly be this needlessly bothered by the tiny cricket of being sidelined within the sack of Obasa as speaker of the Lagos Home of Meeting. The second Tinubu loses this makeshift, badly-constructed Lagos id within the battle with autochthonous Lagosians, he has misplaced all of it.

The above was recalled with the intention of stating that, though the àjèjì and onílée politics in Lagos has all the time been on the entrance burner, it has been extra pronounced in latest time. This particularly drew the ire of extra Lagosians with the godfather, an àjèjì, who has grow to be the Lord of Lagos and defender of the rights of fellow migrant settlers. Within the above referenced advertorial, the De Renaissance Patriots Basis claimed that since 1999, just one Lagos Omo-Onílé (son of the land) has been governor, ostensibly Raji Fashola. What this implies is that Tinubu, Akinwumi Ambode and Babajide Sanwo-Olu, within the phrases of the advertorial, are  àjòjì. The group additionally listed the names of many àjòjì, who it stated have, unfairly, hoisted the banner of Lagos on the detriment of Lagosians.

Some excessive ones among the many advocates of the rights of Lagos indigenes have actually equalised their battle to an historical Yoruba wise-saying that no stranger can again a toddler like its mom (kò s’éni t’ó le mòó pòn bí olómo). Some others, in pursuit of this narrative, have claimed that the àjòjì on the helm of political affairs in and of Lagos, don’t recognize Lagos sufficient,similar to the home goat undervalues the prowess of a hunter and his gun; or one who inherits an enormous agbada robe doesn’t recognize its worth (ewúrẹ́ ilé kó mọ iyì odẹ, aj’ogún ẹwù kó mọ iyì agbádá nlá). It’s on these twin premises that they derive their two conclusions. One is that, Lagos might have developed greater than it has if the migrant-settlers had been autochthonous Lagosians. Second, that Lagos might have been larger however for the truth that the wealth accruable to the ajoji from their management of Lagos are being funnelled to the migrants’ locations of origin.

Previous to 1999, there was nobody who held the jugular of Lagos like Tinubu. Earlier than the ascendancy of his volcanic phenomenon, the final energy outpost of Lagos was a gaggle pejoratively known as the ‘Ijebu Mafia’, disciples of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, working as Afenifere leaders, dwelling in Lagos. They decided the political geography of the aquatic state. Certainly, this group performed the first for the 1999 governorship, which allegedly had the late Funsho Williams coming tops however which an inside abracadabra among the many group subsequently tilted in favour of Tinubu. Instantly he grabbed political energy, Tinubu, making use of Legislation 33 of Robert Greene’s 48 Legal guidelines of Energy, which inspires the ability holder to find every man’s thumbscrew – weaknesses – discovered the Ijebu Mafia leaders’ thumbscrew and used it to dig put together their political graveyards. He then succeeded in tearing them aside, deploying the Niccolo Machiavelli divide-and-rule ways within the service of his ambition.

By 2007 when Tinubu left workplace as Lagos governor, he had completely decimated their ranks, cloning a counter-group known as the Afenifere Renewal Group and leaving the Awo disciples licking their fatally bruised wounds. Abetted by Lagosians themselves, only some, just like the late Chief Ganiyu Dawodu, fought Tinubu to the hilt, earlier than his transition. By the point the aborigines of Lagos woke as much as do a reconnaissance, it was too late. The godfather had captured Lagos and stored the lagoon and the ocean inside his limitless-space pocket. Twenty 5 years after, not solely does the godfather decide the political and financial barometer of Lagos, he determines when it’ll rain within the state or its time of drought.

The godfather’s migrant-settler place in Lagos is mentioned solely in hushed tones. These aware about his migration and the story of his settling in Lagos keep sealed lips. Whereas he was governor of Lagos State, some dissident teams made efforts to doc his migrancy by writing a ebook on the household tree of the Tinubus of Lagos. Another analysts have stated that if the Lagos autochthony is to be damaged into brass-tacks, nearly all Lagosians will fail the litmus check. As an example, the ancestor of the Tinubus is himself a Kanuri. Whereas some settlers selected the Lagos Island aspect of Lagos known as Isale Eko, the Sierra Leone returnees have been often known as Akus or Saros, and Brazilians and Cuban returnees often known as Agudas. Many of them initially hailed from cities scattered around the southwest. Solely the Aworis will be stated to personal the Lagos autochthony. Immediately Mudashiru Obasa started to recreate the MC Oluomo-style tactic within the Lagos Home of Meeting, some forces got here out to say the deposed Speaker’s àt’òhúnrìnwá (migrant) standing in Lagos and that he’s not linked in any method with Orisadipe Obasa.

The story of Lagos, its godfather and potential explosion, is starting to resemble the cataclysmic finish of the Yoruba deity of thunder and lightning, Ṣàngó. Aláàfin Ṣàngó, the third monarch of the Oyo Empire, was about probably the most celebrated and some of the controversial rulers of the Empire. He was fiery, bold, charismatic and intensely highly effective. Just like the cap insignia with which the Lagos godfather is understood by in the present day and which his worshippers scramble to don, Ṣàngó’s motif was a workers known as Ose Ṣàngó, an ornately carved image depicted by fireplace, lighting and thunder. 

The 2023 election witnessed a groundswell of push-backs by particularly non-Yoruba indigene-settlers in Lagos, in opposition to the godfather’s maintain on Lagos as private fiefdom. The result of that election confirmed a gradual whittling of the corrosive maintain of the godfather on Lagos politics. Apparently a insurrection of Lagos migrant-settlers encircled the Peter Obi Labour Occasion and succeeded in giving it 582,454 votes as in opposition to 572,606 for the godfather’s APC. The godfather should have been livid. Till then and since 1999, when he held courtroom, nobody dared to take a look at the fiery face of the leopard. Within the technique of scapegoating for this colossal rout, a supply instructed me that the godfather held his ajélè (an appointed official who oversees an empire’s financial and political pursuits) accountable and has since not forgiven him. Extra importantly, he’s cross with him for being his personal man and having the heart to win re-election as a consequence of his private effort. For any godfather, a la the precepts of the Forty-eight Legal guidelines of Energy, the ajélè had dedicated an unpardonable sin in opposition to the Leviathan. So, though Obasa rode roughshod on the ajélè as speaker, particularly in the course of the 2024 price range speech presentation, retaining him ready for hours, the godfather wasn’t fazed and possibly wrote the script. The world has since seen that, as Obasa’s water bug (Ìròmi) dances on the stream floor with impunity and audacity, executed with sheer brigandage, in addition to abetted by establishments of the Nigerian state, the danceable tune egging the poor little creature on comes from a godfather drummer dwelling in Aso Rock, whose ego was fatally bruised.

To buttress Normal Olanrewaju’s submission, in the present day, the Lagos political energy echelon, from governor, deputy governor, commissioners to particular advisers, ministers representing Lagos, to federal and state parliamentarians, is tilted in favour of the àt’òhúnrìnwá (immigrants) as in opposition to autochthonous Lagosians. Essentially the most laughable was Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, who represented Lagos West from 2015 to 2023 and earlier than then, from 2011 to 2015, was a Home of Representatives member from Lagos. In the present day, the person, often known as Yayi, has perfunctorily exchanged states of origin like a prostitute modifications her liaisons. He now represents Ogun West.

The story of Lagos, its godfather and potential explosion, is starting to resemble the cataclysmic finish of the Yoruba deity of thunder and lightning, Ṣàngó. Aláàfin Ṣàngó, the third monarch of the Oyo Empire, was about probably the most celebrated and some of the controversial rulers of the Empire. He was fiery, bold, charismatic and intensely highly effective. Just like the cap insignia with which the Lagos godfather is understood by in the present day and which his worshippers scramble to don, Ṣàngó’s motif was a workers known as Ose Ṣàngó, an ornately carved image depicted by fireplace, lighting and thunder. 

Ṣàngó, the third Aláàfin of Oyo, who reigned between the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, was a person of nice ambition, fiery charisma, and immense energy. His title is invoked in the present day to reify superior may and the thriller of energy. He mirrors a complicated interaction of management acumen, divinity, and ultimately, a reference level of potential human vulnerability. Just like the Lagos godfather, Aláàfin Ṣàngó had a talismanic and commanding presence and impressed widespread loyalty. He additionally had the magical and mystical capability to command fireplace from the sky in his match of anger. Finally, his energy led to his downfall. Someday, Ṣàngó, enraged, invoked fireplace, which resulted in a conflagration that went uncontrolled. It will definitely led to the destruction of his palace, in addition to the lives of its inhabitants. It was the start of his finish. Stripped of all he had, Ṣàngó departed Oyo Kingdom and by no means returned. He ultimately dedicated suicide at a spot known as Koso.

Aside from the ability of Yoruba anecdotal retelling latent in that Sango narrative, the downfall of Oba Ṣàngó is an in depth illustration that even in a contemporary world, no ruler or godfather is immune from the vulnerabilities of energy. It additionally illustrates the destruction immanent in human nature. The Obasa episode, although seemingly miniature, has the potential to implode and flush the Lagos godfather down the drain, replicating the Ṣàngó downfall in latest historical past.

Perhaps all of us ought to simply watch whereas an finish involves this tyrannical maintain, in spite of everything, within the phrases of Nawal El Saadawi in her A daughter of Isis, “Issues that by no means finish are solely boring, and have been it not for dying, life can be an unimaginable burden.” 

Natasha: Enjoying Rosa Parks and Portiphar’s spouse

The Nigerian Senate erupted once more final week. This time, it was not about allegation of its management being a cesspool of sleaze, a house of self-serving parliamentarians nor corruptible budget-padding which have grow to be a boring chorus. Sequel to an earlier seemingly childish squabble over sitting association, the feminine anti-hero of that row, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, got here on air on Friday to allege that her steady spats with Senate President Godswill Akpabio have been as a consequence of a sexual harassment she rebuffed previously. And the social area went bonkers.

First, the 2 points that threw Akpoti-Uduaghan and Senate President Godswill Akpabio to the centre of discourse have throwbacks to and possess symbolic bearing in American and biblical historical past. Many have berated her on why an insignificant matter of area/seat allocation on the ground of the parliament ought to get her that labored up. They have to, nevertheless, have forgotten that one of many points that ladies who attempt to sq. as much as males in a patriarchal society like ours face and struggle is visibility. Whereas in pursuit of the male dominance thesis, males attempt to maintain ladies down, such ladies attempt to assert themselves and create visibility for themselves.

 Akpoti-Uduaghan’s squabble over seating association and Akpabio’s Senate’s resistance and insistence on upkeep of status-quo remind me of the well-known Montgomery bus altercation of 1955.  On 1 December of that 12 months in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42-year-old lady named Rosa Parks did what philosophers name going in opposition to technique. Paul Feyeraband, an Austrian thinker, had in 1976 pioneered that thesis. In a racial American society of the time, the place blacks have been thought of inferior and anticipated to depart their bus seats for whites, Parks refused to surrender hers for a white male passenger. Her refusal sparked off a boycott that modified the paradigm of racial relationship in America. It even shot the less-known Martin Luther King Jr to world recognition. On the danger of sanctions for her impudence, Parks had reportedly instructed the Montgomery bus driver, “My ft are drained.” Like Parks’ struggle for the visibility of the black race, Akpoti-Uduaghan’s resistance was a struggle for the visibility of ladies.

If different ladies within the Senate like Ireti Kingibe had seen the struggle as being past mere seat allocation into an underscoring of their womanliness and struggle in opposition to the irritant male-dominated status-quo, they most likely would have given the Kogi senator extra collective push. Like Bettina Aptheker wrote in her Foreword to Nawal El Saadawi’s A daughter of Isis, “ladies (every day) battle for voice and human dignity and to beat the ties of patriarchy…and are crushed underneath patriarchal conventions”.  Girls’s sexuality is consistently crushed on this battle.

The second challenge that flows from the primary is Akpoti-Uduaghan’s allegation of sexual harassment. Folks have taken stands both on account of their abdomens, what lies between their thighs or their political affiliations. Once more, the allegation is a symbolism. Many who can’t stand Akpoti-Uduaghan’s femininity or her boldness to underscore it in a patriarchal Senate have likened her allegation to the biblical Portiphar’s spouse who alleged that Joseph wished to sexually assault her. Many have additionally introduced out her alleged historical past, which they declare feeds the trope of her standard allegations of blackmail in opposition to the male gender. If allegation is a typecast, Akpabio’s alleged historical past with ladies validates Akpoti-Uduaghan’s allegation. A few years in the past, Pleasure Nunieh, a former managing director of the Niger Delta Growth Fee (NDDC), had alleged that she slapped the Senate president when he tried to sexualise her in his visitor home in Apo, Abuja. 

On an Come up Information interview, Ireti had tried to infantilise Akpoti-Uduaghan, the identical method an enormous proportion of the Senate fatherlise Akpabio, who is barely first amongst equals within the parliament. That is because of the big war-chest within the possession of his management and talent to considerably jerk up members’ private funds via patronage. The opposite day on the identical tv station, Peter Onyeka Nwebonyi, representing Ebonyi State, did this by claiming that Akpabio was “our father.” Final Friday, Kingibe did this, too by referring to Akpoti-Uduaghan as “my daughter”. She additional fell into the argumentative pitfall of claiming that since Akpabio by no means assaulted her and the 2 different feminine senators, Akpoti-Uduaghan’s allegation have to be concocted. I pray thee, do these aged ladies nonetheless possess their colleague’s sultry disposition? And, isn’t it a rarity to see lascivious flesh-devouring vultures try and take grandmothers for supper?

We can’t undergo on all fronts by having a Nationwide Meeting that’s allegedly a cesspit of Nigerian nationwide patrimony-devourers, in addition to residence to devourers of the flesh of our ladies. Sure, it’s nearly an impossibility to show sexual harassment by a woman, however Akpoti-Uduaghan’s boldness and the sheaves of proof she claimed to own to buttress her declare needs to be inspired. Nobody should try a “household affair” settlement or else, yet one more rascally libido can be let unfastened.

Festus Adedayo is an Ibadan-based journalist.