Have you read Niyi Osundare’s poem, The word is an egg? It explores a deep-rooted Yoruba philosophy of the permanence and fragility of the spoken word. Osundare also drills into its creative and destructive power. That philosophy proclaims the egg shell-like nature of the word — eyin l’ohùn. Osundare’s poem took the Yoruba philosophy a notch higher. Once spoken, he said, like an egg, words are ungatherable. He wrote:
The Word, the word
Is an egg
If it falls on the outcrop
Of a stumbling tongue
It breaks
Ungatherably
Osundare’s word permanence philosophy, like Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Parmenides, shares same texture with Rainmaker, late Majek Fashek’s famous lyric, My Guitar. In it, Fashek sang:
Heaven and Earth will pass away
Night and day will pass away
Moon and stars will pass away
Friends will come and pass away
But my guitar will never go away
Majek’s is an ode to the enduring power of music. It led him to submit that while mortal, physical things are transitory and will die with the world, words of music are eternal.
Femi, son of legendary First Republic’s Western Region politician, Chief Remilekun Fani-Kayode (popularly known as Fani Power), demonstrated the eternal permanence of the spoken word. Last week, as he did this, he invoked the spirit of the word ‘disrespect’. He had accused respected veteran journalist, Dele Momodu, of ‘disrespect’ to President Bola Tinubu. On a Channels Television‘s Politics Today programme aired last Monday, Momodu compared Tinubu to General Sani Abacha. Like a 20-year old pounded yam that my people say is capable of scorching fingers, that word, ‘disrespect’ came back to sear the flesh. ‘Not only was he uncharitable and disrespectful to the President, the Vice President, the ministers, the senators and the newly-appointed ambassadors, many of whom have far more experience than him in governance and government… he also insulted the collective intelligence of the Nigerian people’, the younger Fani Power said.
This is the history of ‘disrespect’ for the Fani-Kayodes: On 22 March 1961, then Opposition Leader in the Western Region House of Assembly, Femi’s father literally set the region on fire with his ‘disrespect’. Fani Power had aristocracy in his bloodline, and was a Queen’s Counsel and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, who played a major role in Nigeria’s legal history and politics from the late 1940s until his death in 1995. He was one who, in July 1958, at the federal parliament in Lagos, moved the motion for Nigeria’s independence for 2 April 1960.
On that day in 1961, at the tenth session of the Assembly, some of the region’s considered VIPs were slated to be presented to the Governor-General, Oba Adesoji Aderemi. Fani Power hailed from Ile-Ife, and as such, was one of the subjects of the monarch. At the approach of the Governor, who was also the spiritual head of the Yoruba, being the Oba of Ile-Ife, considered to be the ancestral home of the Yoruba, Fani-Kayode’s gut reaction, considered rude, was to head for the restroom. This was presumed to be a subterfuge as he hated the politics of the Ooni. All efforts to get him to stay on failed. His ‘disrespect’ unleashed a fusillade of anger.
In its lead story of 23 March 1961, the Nigerian Tribune reported this ‘disrespect’ as Fani Power disappears as the Governor approaches. Thereafter, a volley of attacks came for the Opposition Leader. The Action Group member for Remo North constituency, Olu Awopeju, was unsparing of the ‘disrespect’. Fani Power’s action was an assault on, not only the Governor but the whole House, he said. Chief Jonthan Odebiyi, Leader of the House and Western Region Finance Minister, said that the behaviour was a challenge to the constitution as the Governor was a representative of the Queen and ‘everybody is in honour bound to give him his due respect’. Samuel Ladoke Akintola, the Premier himself, lampooned this ‘disrespectfulness’ of Fani-Kayode (a man he was to later work with, as against the rest of the rump of the Action Group. Indeed, Fani-Kayode later became his Deputy Premier on 1 January 1963). Akintola said he was ‘disturbed to observe at this historic session, the unfortunate insult passed on our Governor’.
This ‘disrespect’ was to also attract a front page leader by the Nigerian Tribune edition of the same day entitled, “Political incivility”. In it, the newspaper called for a ‘very strong censure’ for this ‘act of discourtesy’, which it said was symptomatic of ‘an ominous future for parliamentary democracy in the country’.
Fani-Kayode’s tongue, like his son, Femi’s, burnt like a lacerating whip. As the 11 October 1965 Western Region elections drew near, his tongue even burnt more. By then, he was Deputy Leader of Akintola’s coalition party, the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) and Deputy Premier. In Billy Dudley’s An Introduction to Nigerian Government and Politics (1982) Fani-Kayode reportedly said that even if NNDP was not voted for, the party would win the elections. Bola Ige, in his People, Politics and Politicians of Nigeria: (1940-1979) published in 1995, quoted Fani-Kayode, whom he labeled ‘the most fascist of them all’, to have said: ‘Whether you vote for us or you don’t, we are returning to office; we will make sure that invisible bodies vote for us if you refuse to. So you can do whatever you like with your votes. The NNDP has won these elections’.
On page 277 of this same book, Ige ascribed a statement, which has refused to be interred in the political lexicon of Western Nigeria, to Fani-Kayode after the widely rigged 1965 election. He quoted him to have said: ‘The bronze ring has been securely fitted to the High Priest’s finger’, daring whosoever’s father was bold enough to remove the ring to come forward (A ti f’òjé b’olóòsà l’ówó, ó ku baba eni tí ó bóo!). Before the said 1965 election, which had Akintola and Alhaji Dauda Adegbenro vying for Premiership on the ballot for the United Progressive Grand Alliance and NNDP, violence and threats of it ruled the airwaves. In a broadcast a few days to the election, Adegbenro offered a riposte to Fani-Kayode, which also became a famous, ‘appropriate and prophetic retort’ to the bronze ring threat. Adegbenro said, inter alia. that, “if the expropriated ring (on the High Priest’s finger) cannot be removed gently, the finger would be chopped off’! Such was the level of violence and threat of it in the politics of the First Republic.
So when the son of ‘fascist’ (apologies to Ige) Fani Power told Momodu that he had disrespected Tinubu and ‘the collective intelligence of the Nigerian people’ by drawing a comparison between him and Abacha, he would seem to have querried Yoruba people’s ancient fascination with homophones. On their journey of “like attracts likes”, Yoruba have imagery procured in the service of their explanation. One is their query of the proprietary of two homophones, Ságo and Ìgò, daring to disagree. While the Ságo is a container, a large glass pitcher used for holding liquids, Ìgò, the bottle, performs same role. Both however differ in structure. So, when these two containers begin to bicker on individual physique, the Yoruba wonder what difference exists between them.
Yoruba nevertheless agree on the existence of homophones. They also argue that only likes can attract likes. Likes, they argue, should be compared with likes. Words, like birds, should move in their own company. To give this understanding a sharper and clearer focus, two sayings come to their rescue. One is that, while contrasting words repel one another, similar words bait selves. So, what similarity does Abacha bear with Tinubu, in the words of Momodu? Afterall, the president’s own people say, “Ohun t’ó bá jo’hun l’a fií wé’hun”.
If you still do not understand the Yoruba, imagery comes in handy when they are in this type of dilemma. They then say, in physical resemblance, the head of a tortoise shares striking features with a human toe. In the same vein, they say, the seed coat of groundnut/peanut fruits bears striking similarity to the cocoon (casket) of the African pygmy rat called èlírí. Does this then give Momodu grace to engage in such comparison?
For Abacha, the dead, it will seem, do not die. This will explain the constant invocation of his spirit. Whether they were good or evil while alive, spirits of the dead play central roles in African narratives. They shape cultural identities, moral values and collective memory.
African spirituality aside, it behooves us, as citizens, to dissect both Momodu’s comparison of Tinubu’s government with Abacha’s, and Femi Fani-Kayode, Reno Omokri’s ostensible grovelling defence. After all, still talking about homophones, it has been said that when a child exhibits palpable ignorance in differentiating between ewe and òwè, it is elders’ responsibility to explain to them differences, if there are any, between them. This, the elders will do, by holding both in their two hands and showing them which is ewe and which is òwè.
Abacha was no doubt very ruthless. Before him was General Ibrahim Babangida, who, despite his reputation as an unprincipled, military ruler, conducted what has been variously dubbed the freest and fairest elections in Nigeria’s history. However, Abacha, who took over in a bloodless putsch, is reckoned as having ran one of the most convoluted transition to civil rule programmes in Nigeria. After dissolving the Ernest Shonekan Interim National Government, he banned all political parties and political gatherings. In October 1995, he began a transition programme laden with his self-succession ploy, aimed at transforming into a civilian president through a manipulated electoral process. This literally imploded the country into its worst political crisis.
Nigeria suffocated under massive human rights violations. It provoked the formation of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), and National Liberation Council of Nigeria to challenge him. A one million-man march was formed in support of his transmutation, with a Daniel Kanu leading this self-succession gambit. Then Abacha announced a foiled coup plot against him, immediately making Generals Victor Malu and Chris Garuba as heads. The panel convicted influential Nigerians like General Olusegun Obasanjo, Lt. General Oladipo Diya (former Chief of General Staff) and Major General Musa Yar’Adua, among others, with the latter poisoned in Abakaliki prison. Ogoni rights activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and his compatriots also met their waterloo in Abacha’s hands, having been executed in 1995. This led to Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations.
Abacha’s National Electoral Commission of Nigeria began the formation of political parties in July 1996. In the process, it denied notable political associations registration, registering only five. By April 1998, all the five political parties adopted Abacha as their sole candidate. However, in the words of the holy writ, by the time Abacha was saying peace and safety, a sudden destruction came. Before he could realise his dream of becoming Nigeria’s life president in 1998, he suddenly died.
With the above illustration of the venal hold on power by Abacha, both Fani Power’s son and Omokri believe it was disrespectful to draw Tinubu, a major NADECO activist who fought Abacha to the hilt, into what they felt was an incongruous comparison of him and Abacha.
Now, let us together look at the ewe and òwè of the allegation. A very senior lawyer and human rights activist once told me that, while together in detention with Gani Fawehinmi, he cautioned him to tread carefully about demonising Tinubu. ‘Chief, don’t let us forget Tinubu’s significant contribution to where Nigeria’s democracy is today’, he said he reminded the activist. This points to the fact that only people with a very short memory would discountenance the Nigerian President’s military era democratic credentials.
However, time and tide sometimes dulled the sharpness of the matchete. Of a truth, it would be uncharitable to draw a wholesale comparison between Tinubu and Abacha. In the same vein, as Yoruba say of someone whose wobbly strides are overtly manifest like a lame’s, Ó jo gáté, kò jo gàté, ò fi esè méjèèjì tiro (the facts speak for themselves). As writers, if we wrote what we write today under Abacha, we most probably won’t live to tell the tale. I practised journalism under the goggled General and I know the difference. However, Fani-Kayode and Omokri’s attempts to remove Tinubu from any blameworthiness in the Abacha-like democratic ferment that Nigeria currently witnesses is a relapse into the fallacy of excluded middle. In this fallacy, also called false dilemma, an interlocutor incorrectly assumes only two extreme options exist, whereas, a middle ground is the path to tread. Rather than sacralize the Tinubu government as both Omokri and Fani-Kayode did, the truth is that this government wears a facade that sometimes looks like a borrow from the tactics playbook of Abacha.
Methinks Tinubu painstakingly studied Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony and emerged therefrom deadlier than Abacha. It is a theory which explains how the ruling class maintains power. Writing from Benito Musolini’s jail, Gramsci theorised that a stronger power could be got, not from force or coercion of Abacha, but by willingly wringing consent off your captives. Gramsci teaches how to capture minds without shooting a shot, without recruiting Colonel Frank Omenka and Sergeant Barnabas Rogers. This makes elite ideologies appear as common sense. His latest student, Tinubu, shapes mass consciousness through dispensing cash, position and carrots, thus rendering coercion unnecessary. It is, however, despotism by other means.
Today, Tinubu has 30 governors feeding off his fingers. He gets the Nigerian political elite bending over backwards for him without killing them as Abacha did. He found out that their weakness is cash and high-sounding offices. Many of them are laden with criminal cases, he overlooked them. Just as they do in the underworld, he secretly found governors’ Achilles heels and worked upon them to his advantage. Similar to a herd of sheep, they come feeding off his tray. When persuasion doesn’t work, he switches to coercion, as in El-Rufai’s case. Today, the All Progressives Congress is like a huge sanatorium housing all manner of unwell persons. The ones in need of food, Tinubu gives them; the ones who need whiplash, he administers. If you saw the party’s last weekend convention, you will agree with me. On top of it, all opposition parties are prostrate today. Tinubu recruited hitmen to help him kill all opposition parties so that he alone can remain in contest in 2027. How is that tactic different from Abacha’s?
Rather than go the route of hiring Daniel Kanu to beatify him, Tinubu has multiple of millions hungry recruits on social media and on the ground in all the 36 states of the federation, to whom he gives miserable dole-outs. And who are ready to kill anyone who dares to oppose him with their data. So, how is he different from the goggled General? Let Omokri calmly go in peace to the land of drug barons, where he is Ambassador-designate. He can tell his grovelling homily to the birds. Only God knows what literary device Tinubu was trying to ape with the posting of a man who alleged he was a drug baron to a country where drug barons thrive. If Omokri must know, this is not how democracy works. It is not how to build political parties to face opponents. It is crass political opportunism.
Writing in How Tyrants Fall (2024), Marcel Dirsus’ quotes, which I find very appropriate to us in Nigeria, and which I re-state here, are self-explanatory: ‘A dictator can do everything to maximise his chances of staying in power’. Dirsus said on page 13 of the book, Autocracies Are Enrichment Machines page 20 and Dictators Are Often the Richest Men in Their Country, page 22. These quotes will tell us whether we are close to autocracy or really practising democracy. Let’s ponder on these as we enjoy the circus of Omokri and Fani Power’s grovelling whitewash of Aso Rock.
First published by Sunday Tribune, 29 March 2026
