By Abraham Ogbodo
First, let me confess that I am using an appropriated cover. I needed to drag this headline off the stable of the great Dr Olatunji Dare to meet up with the commitments of the moment. He is my teacher, boss and mentor. In my growing years, he stood ahead of me as a destination. He had a mission to demystify style and make scholarship accessible to even the market woman. I started on the sub desk of the African Guardian Magazine and had the rare privilege of reading and processing for publication, Olatunji’s fortnightly column in the magazine. He alternated the page with Mr. Andy Akporugo. Either featured twice in a month.
It was the best way to start journalism. There could not have been a better introduction to style than reading either of these grand masters every week. One was the extreme end of the other. While Andy situated elegance in complexity, Olatunji found same in simplicity. It is the same feeling that comes with reading Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
But my purpose today is far from attempting the biographies or even measuring the profundity of these great essayists. I am not adequately equipped for that prodigious assignment. I only want to say that in the days following the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election by the military junta headed by General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, Olatunji Dare had a way of keeping pace with the fast-moving national melodrama. Each week was loaded with acts and arising scenes that were eventful enough to stand as acts in a concise dramaturgy. He was chronicling history in a hurry.
The frequency was choking. To separate the cascading events into different newspaper analysis on a weekly basis, was a luxury that time did not permit. They must be captured for public consumption as they arose. And the only way to achieve that was for Dr. Dare to invent the omnibus title: MATTERS ARISING. With that, he compressed the events into a compound chronicle that captured the fast-moving history. Sometimes and for variation, he settled for MATTER MISCELLANEOUS.
Now, the real business of today. Let us not pretend. The rapidity of the national happenings tasks our imaginations as writers. We cannot keep pace anymore. And so, I want to use this opportunity to appeal to all newspapers columnists to adopt the approach perfected by Dr. Dare. For instance, early in the week, I saw and heard something on television. It was called Progressive Governors Forum. I tried to process the brand in the context of its composition. Nothing connected the crowd that I saw on tele with progressivism. The name was far from being descriptive. It was not even aspirational. I could not sense a progressive path. Some governors just banded together in Lagos under the headship of Hope Uzodima of Imo State and branded themselves progressives as if that value was in proclamation and not manifestation.
They are probably progressive because they are APC governors. APC means All Progressives Congress. The acronym also stands for a combination drug – Aspirin, Paracetamol and codeine – for pain relief. Its potency or clinical relevance has long been overtaken by positive developments in pharmacology. As opposition party, the progressive component, not necessarily real content, of the APC was marketed for good purpose. It was bought and tasted in 2015. Questions on the taste of the pudding are no longer necessary after eating it.
Nigerians have been chewing APC since 2015. It cannot be remarketed, not even reformulated, to achieve a new taste. It is a bitter pill that has not cured anything. APC, even as a drug, was very bitter. As children, we invoked all the pranks to avoid swallowing it. At its mention, we recovered instantly from the fever or headache that it was meant to cure. If parents managed to force it on us, we manoeuvred to get out of sight and cast it into the water pot to dissolve away with its bitterness.
There was a declaration of a state of emergency in the week under review. It was the first of its kind. It was different from the type that happened in Rivers State. It was made by the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS). What was that really? State of emergency in West Africa? What would happen in the event of a breach of the emergency protocols? War to enforce compliance? I guess all of that was coming from the failed attempt by the military to seize power in Republic of Benin. ECOWAS chairman and Seirra Leonian President, Julius Maada Bio appealed for democracy to continue in the sub region. He sounded as if all is well with democracy and leadership in the region and the militaries of member states are just being adventurous.
The failed coup in Benin was coming after a successful version in Guinea Bissau only two weeks before. There was reason for everyone to be worried. But President Tinubu was understandably more worried than others. Republic of Benin is a stone throw away. Same way, real trouble could be thrown across from Benin into Nigeria.
Accordingly, he sent soldiers to restore order in the place. The number of troops sent for the assignment was not declared. But there was something about the deployment that didn’t sit well with Prof Wole Soyinka. He felt the deployment of troops from the military central command was not necessary. According to him, the troops protecting Seyi, the President’s son, were effective both in capacity and capability, to fix the little disturbance in Benin.
President Bio took over the leadership of the commission from President Tinubu last July. Tinubu’s tenure witnessed military takeover of power in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. His threat to enforce democratic compliance then did not only fail but split ECOWAS. The three countries successfully pulled out of the 50-year-old regional bloc to alter its 15-member structure. President Tinubu loves declaring emergency rule. And so, a President Bio may be crowing on stage but Tinubu is backstage groping to strike the right button. He is overloading his plate, ostensibly to protect himself first and foremost, and then please the West in the matter of policing democracy in the West African sub region.
In journalism, there is something called Afghanistanism. It is not a formal or registered notation. It just came about somehow along the line, much the same way as ‘Maradona’ came to describe Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s unpredictability in his heydays as military president. Meanwhile, Afghanistanism occurs when a leader abandons the issues at home in pursuit of a vain glory outside the homeland. Tinubu enforcing a state of emergency in ECOWAS member states to save democracy to please America and the rest of the West is pure Afghanistanism. It is not different from the lesson in Matthew 7: 3-5.
There was another arising matter in the week under review. This idea of making public relations capital from the release of abducted school children is most offensive. Let me recap. Some 315 school children were taken captives by bandits. After two harrowing weeks in captivity, 100 of the children regained freedom by whatever arrangement that is still kept under wraps. It was not reported that any of the kidnappers was apprehended. They remain intact in their numbers and capacity to wreck evil. Apparently, there was a bargain, the terms of which, could only guarantee freedom for 100 of the 315 abducted school children. This was showcased on national television during the week as a super performance by whichever government agencies that are responsible for our collective security.
It is good to note here that the Donald Trump that we are struggling to impress sees this incessant staging of the theatre of the absurd on the national stage from his location in White House. Nothing whatsoever is done to show a good slide. It always moves from one level of absurdity to a higher level. And then for doing nothing, we want Trump who believes only in good transactions, to understand.
At every turn, we operate to affirm an embarrassing lack of capacity to contain the issues plaguing us. President Trump and any strong world leader with imperialist drive understand this. They want to help us, albeit, on their own terms. In the matter of the kidnapped school children, there was no compulsion to advertise mediocrity to the rest of the world. If the release of all 315 captives could not be achieved, there was a better way to present the little result recorded to avoid making 30 over 100 look like an excellent score.
Let me take one more matter. It is the matter on Fubara. You all know him. His full name is Siminalayi Fubara and he is governor of Rivers State. He has been governor since May 29, 2023, except in the period between March 18, 2025 and September 18, 2025. The issues do not require recounting here. The bottom line was that Fubara lost his job for six months due to factors superior to his control. It seems he has mastered the issues that were troubling him. He was full of praises for President Bola Tinubu as he dumped the PDP, the party that brought him to power, for the APC few days ago. His former boss, mentor, and later tormentor, Nyesom Wike, the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, is still officially in the PDP. Some 15 legislators of the State House of Assembly, who are not friends of the Governor but very close friends of Wike, had earlier announced their switch over from the PDP to the APC.
Friends and foes have become members of the same family in Rivers. Wike is being awaited. I don’t want to believe that he is stranded alone on his island of intrigues. Tinubu is the family head. He knows how to rearrange the new entrants to limit friction and gain fruits. But Fubara’s game is clear. He wishes to limit the operational field of his tormentor-in-chief. I will add that, for who he is, Tinubu will be looking for effective workers, not unrelenting troublemakers, for the 2027 political harvest.
