Hunger: In defence of Bayo Onanuga, By Festus Adedayo

The words, “hunger” and “Onanuga” are almost homophones; words of similar sounds. I am goaded on by the Yoruba epistemology which counsels that likes should be compared with likes. As tortoise’s head safely compares with the big toe, so does a groundnut shell compares with the cocoon of the world’s tiniest rat Yoruba call the eliri*. *But comparison is not my bother here. My interest is the decimation of the cries of the afflicted by the powers that promised hope, a people ensconced in the barn in Abuja.

Presidential media adviser and frontline journalist, Bayo Onanuga, is in the eye of the storm. His curt, off-the-cuff, and seemingly unfeeling remark on a television programme last week — “I don’t see the level of hunger people are talking about” — has earned him the rough edges of Nigerian tongues. He didn’t end there. The siege on the country by terrorists, bandits, and kidnappers, Onanuga suggested, is contrived by the media. “The way they report insecurity is as if the entire country is consumed,” he said. To Onanuga, the abduction of 39 pupils and teachers, and the maniacal slitting of Michael Oyedokun’s throat, are seemingly a mirage; perhaps just another of Shakespeare’s farcical plays.

Onanuga’s recent outing can be figuratively compared to two local vegetable variants. The Yoruba call them t**ètè and dágunró. By all standards, Onanuga is a Nigerian media icon. The history of the Nigerian press’s battle against military autocracy cannot be written without a sizeable chapter reserved for him and colleagues of similar persuasions, many of whom were martyred for the democracy we have today. 

Tètè and dágunró * are species of the same mother with a Siamese semblance. However, while t**ètè is an edible culinary recourse, dágunró is harmful, a punishing broth of a cuisine. Elders warn that attempting to cook them together in the same pot ends in disaster (Ìje tí e je tètè, e má je dágunró*). That, to me, was what happened to Onanuga last week. How did a man who fought valiantly with his pen on the side of the people during military regimes now irreverently smash both dágunró and t**ètè  with his molars? By cavalierly dismissing the widespread hardship and insecurity that ordinary Nigerians suffer, Onanuga seems to have mistaken dágunró, the Nigerians of military rule Nigeria, for t**ètè, Nigerians under Bola Tinubu’s suzerainty. To the Nigerian people, this felt like a friend plunging a dagger into their hearts.

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This same dagger to the heart echoes the Ides of March on 15 March, 44 B.C. When Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated by a conspiracy led by his trusted ally and protege, Marcus Junius Brutus, literature and history offered different accounts. Shakespeare famously invented the line “Et tu, Brute?”—And you, Brutus*?* But historians note that a popular rumor in Rome at the time was that a dying Caesar, struck by the ultimate betrayal, groaned in Greek: “Kai sy, teknon?”—You too, child?

That figurative question is exactly what the Nigerian common people asked Bayo Onanuga last week. His interventionist trajectory on their side decades ago belies his current off-hand dismissal of their travails. When the Yoruba are pained beyond measure, let down, and colossally betrayed, they go pensive. From the stabs of their hearts emerge profound philosophical sayings. One of such is, “if the one restfully leaned on contemplates shifting from the comfort they offer, they at least should inform those who leaned on them, lest them fall face flat on the floor. This, they articulate as, “eni a f’èyìn tì, bí ó ba yè, wíwí níí wí”. Did Onanuga give ample notice he had defected to the ranks of their suppressors? Another aphorism, which I reproduced a few weeks ago here, comes when they are anguish-propelled. Permit me to again bring it out of my scabbard. It is a rhetorical question. It is, “Broken bottle on our forehead, bludgeon on the back; Is this how they play comradeship at the Ede market?” Its parent word is actually, “*Òpáláńbá ń’wájú, kùmò l’éyìn orùn, sé b’òjú ti rí nìyí, t’áa fi ńje obì l’ójà Ede?” *

Or, could Onanuga’s sin be more than mere betrayal? Beyond an inability to see naked insecurity and extreme poverty, could it be a failure to propitiate Èṣù, the god of the mouth; and the human mouth deity, which the Yoruba call Olúbọbọtiribọ? In Yoruba spiritual anatomy, the mouth is the “Baba Ebo” — the father of all sacrifices. It occupies a delicate placement, balancing both ingress and egress forces of the body. Just as no human bone is as strategic as the teeth – *a la *Ayinla Omowura – so is the mouth. The graveyard of political power in Nigeria is littered with bones of officeholders who run foul of *Olúbọbọtiribọ *by failing to give the mouth its cross-functional due regards. Those who despise the god of the mouth are cast in the sewage of history. Did Onanuga fail the mouth deity in this regard?

Consider 9 April, 1992, when General Ibrahim Babangida proscribed the African Concord magazine. A *The Guardian *in an interview that he was enamoured of Chaka, the Zulu warrior and Hannibal, the Carthaginian war General of the Second Punic war. Reminded by the astounded editors that both were ruthless, smilingly, his gap tooth flipped open, Babangida reiterated that, regardless, he was in love with the deadly Generals. In that offending edition penned by another media icon, Dapo Olorunyomi, *African Concord * then concluded, “Will (IBB) the man who has pulverised the civil society and noble institutions make it?”

Thoroughly embarrassed, Babangida told the magazine’s publisher, his friend, MKO Abiola, that only a personal apology penned by the impious Onanuga could bring back the Concord press. Abiola then summoned Onanuga, demanding an apology to propitiate the gap-toothed god.

Rather than yield, Onanuga penned a resignation letter to Abiola, stating: “Journalism, especially the one to which I subscribe, is not meant to make the environment cosy for leaders of nations; it is meant to cause them sleepless nights… What shall I be apologizing for?” When Onanuga and his friends went on to found TheNews, he declared their ideological underpinning by saying, yes, they were independent, but this “is no excuse for opportunism and spineless neutrality in the major issues that affect the well being of the Nigerian people. We shall be partisanly (sic) neutral on the side of truth, justice and good government.”

Thirty-four years later, sitting regally as a media adviser to a principal who is eighth in the line of succession to IBB, the military General, why would Onanuga eat dágunró* *and tètè with the same teeth?

In that same television interview, Onanuga was mealy-mouthed. While on one hand denying the harrowing fate of Nigerians, he advised civil servants earning 70,000 minimum wage thus: “If I work for government and I am earning ₦70k, except I am crazy or dumb lazy, I will go and do something at (sic) the side to add to my income”. Does he know he was urging workers to run counter to Section 2(b) of the Fifth Schedule of the 1999 Constitution which forbids “something at (sic) the side”, as well as the 2021 Public Service Rules which prohibits most public servants, with few exemptions, from engaging in any other business?

In the interview, Onanuga said further: “We have been pigeon-holed into certain assumptions and conclusions.” Assumptions of hunger, conclusion of suffering? By this, he placed the people in a pigeonhole, rubbishing as non-existent the hunger and suffering of selfsame Nigerian poor he fought for, took barbs for and escaped military juntas’ death pills for.

But, come to think of it, what has the pigeon, eyelé, got to do with a hole? The pigeon is a totem of fidelity, one of the most loyal animals on earth. The Yoruba believe that when a pigeon hibernates with a landlord, sharing meals and drinks with him, she will not abandon him on the day of his travail. In emergencies, pigeons even alert neighbors with their chirrups. So, why would Onanuga use this metaphor to torment ordinary Nigerians with their friend, the eyelé? If he says the prevailing national agony is contrived, could we logically conclude that the tyranny he painted of the military era was equally contrived? 

Indeed, the graveyard of political power is filled with victims of Olúbọbọtiribọ. On 22 September, 2017, presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, was similarly struck. The Buhari presidency, he announced, neither believed nor classified killer herdsmen as terrorists, but merely as “criminal gangs.” Later, in June 2021, reports emerged claiming the government had reached a truce worth N100 billion with Miyetti Allah, allegedly offered as ransom for wanton killings and kidnappings. Today, Nigerians see Buhari – God rests his soul – as complicit in the orgy of terrorist strikes we face today, as much as his hirelings dressed in media visor.

Take Alhaji Umaru Dikko as another instance. As the powerful Minister of Transport under Shehu Shagari, amid widespread cries of poverty, Dikko infamously stated that he could not believe Nigerians were hungry because they had not yet started eating from dustbins. Dikko alone has the patent of the Onanuga statement.

Olúbọbọtiribọ similarly struck then-Colonel David Mark. At the height of his majesty as Nigeria’s Minister for Communications, in 1989, during an infrastructure inspection tour in Akure, Mark told debtors that “Telephone is not for the poor.” It was seen as the ultimate symbol of elitism, class division, and disdain for the ordinary people.

The deity was equally unsparing of Mohamed Sa’ad Abubakar, the Sultan of Sokoto. As reported by the BBC on 29 July, 2011, while fuming against a military crackdown on Boko Haram insurgents, Abubakar told a gathering of religious leaders, “We cannot solve violence with violence.” This was at a time when gallant Nigerian forces had brutally suppressed the uprising of the sect and killed its leader, Mohammed Yusuf. The Sultan even demanded that the five policemen on trial for Yusuf’s killing must never be given bail.

Recently, First Lady Oluremi Tinubu became a victim of Olúbọbọtiribọ. Addressing the nation’s economic despair, she touted the “hope” of granting women money to start roasting corn or making àkàrà and kúlí-kúlí. In an address to State House Correspondents last Wednesday,Akara business doesn’t take a lot of money. To start roasting corn, or somebody even said kúlí-kúlí doesn’t take much…” she said.

The remarks have since been provoking nation-wide outrage. This was the same woman who, a few weeks prior, mandated APC state governors to gift party women befitting vehicles, most likely SUVs worth multiple of millions of Naira. Did Nigerian women vote for her husband only to be tied down to a “renewed hope” of frying àkàrà? Invoking the parallelism of literature that can be tied to this “à*kàrà** *frying”, we can conveniently say, for the Nigerian women in the hands of the First Lady, they are in a ‘from frying pan to fire’ situation. It reminded citizens of the ancient Yoruba saying about governmental duplicity: the same dog that tenderly feeds her own baby with breast milk ferociously hunts down the offspring of the grasscutter. Did Nigerian women vote her husband as president only to be tied down to a renewed hope of bakers of kúlí-kúlí and àkàrà?

In saner climes, an infraction against *Olúbọbọtiribọ *earned its victims banishment from representing the people. Here, they are garlanded. Some say it is due to the highly-burnished Nigerian short memory.

It reminds me of Nigeria’s only Prime Minister, Tafawa Balewa. By 1964, the violent political crisis in the Western Region of Nigeria had escalated. Balewa, who projected the image of an “unworried” and “unconcerned” Prime Minister with his “ominous silence,” was pummeled by the Western Region media. It is same way Bola Tinubu is harangued for worsening hunger and killings in Nigeria today. Balewa still advertised a façade of insulation from the worsening fate of the West and someone who didn’t read newspapers. On a tour of Benin in June, 1964, still feigning ignorance of the crisis, Balewa was quoted to have said that he could not judge the intensity of lawlessness in the West on account of newspaper report of the brigandage. Onanuga, last week, also took sizeable slices of this Balewa omelette that precipitated blood when he said media reportage of insecurity and hunger was contrived.

Worse still, as Balewa departed Nigeria for Accra to attend an OAU meeting in October, 1965, he was still quoted to have alleged that the violence in the region was contrived. While at the Ikeja Airport, he was asked by journalists what he was going to do about the fire raging in Western Nigeria. Successfully tucking his bother inside his flowing babanriga, Tafawa Balewa reportedly looked round and cynically declared; “Ikeja is part of the West and I cannot see any fire burning.” That same fire consumed him on 15 January, 1966. It was a case of a disease that would kill one which is always pampered and treated with kid gloves. 

While Dikko’s unguarded comment on the state of the Nigerian people riled the people, it survived three and half decades before Bayo Onanuga picked it from its inglorious rafters. Dikko’s was widely remembered as a symbol of governmental disconnect from the reality of the people. Like Second Republic Nigeria where politicians mismanaged the economy amid dwindling oil revenues, which resulted in mass suffering and extreme scarcity of basic commodities, Nigerians are back to this inglorious era. With Onanuga’s claim and Remi Tinubu’s condescending take on development of the Nigerian woman, we may have heard the defining summary of the Tinubu government about Nigerian citizens’ plight.

As Dikko’s comment reflected the Shagari government’s tone-deafness to the people’s plight, Onanuga and Mrs. Tinubu’s have effectively summarized what the current administration thinks of its citizens. No wonder Dikko, who waited for Nigerians to feed from dustbins, was eventually given the dustbin treatment in December 1983 — abducted in London, drugged, and crated like a bin commodity. Olúbọbọtiribọ, it seems, smilingly takes its pound of flesh.

This is the only defence I can offer for my senior colleague in journalism’s fascination with Diko, Balewa and other victims of Olúbọbọtiribọ.

Thumbs Up for Sani: Terrorists Must Die!

Kudos have rightly gone the way of President Bola Tinubu recently. It is gladsome that a presidency which, for 37 months of its shelf life, was notorious for its snail-speed throttle on the state police idea, is suddenly putting on track spikes. The way Tinubu is sprinting on the state police bill today, he may well be garlanded, alongside Noah Lyles and Sabastian Sawe — the American world’s fastest short-distance sprinter, and the Kenyan globe’s fastest long-distance runner, respectively. Senate President Godswill Akpabio has also suddenly found a similar rhythm. The sprint with which he and his coterie in the parliament once approved humongous presidential loans is finally finding a home in the state police matter.

Western Region Premier, Chief SL Akintola, popularised a wise saying from which both Tinubu and Akpabio might borrow a leaf. Seeking to be independent of the Action Group party that brought him into office, Akintola threw a proverb to his rescue: “when a benefactor gives a beneficiary the gift of a ram, the benefactor must abstain from holding on to the ram’s leash.

While the drafters of the state police bill deserve kudos for significantly taking policing from the federal government and placing it in the grip of state governors, the several safeguards aimed at inhibiting governors from taking imperial possession of it are further gladdening. One such safeguard is that, while governors can appoint state police commissioners, the bill also requires the National Police Council endorsement, legislative confirmation, and independent oversight as mechanisms to prevent abuse.

However, the metaphorical ram’s leash remains in the provision which empowers Abuja to provide grants and financial assistance to state police services. It is an avenue for *quid pro quo *— what in Nigerian parlance is called “rob-my-back-I-rob-yours.” This tactic is said to be in flagrant use by Abuja today, as it allegedly pays billions in so-called ecological funds to governors defecting to the ruling APC.

The most pressing national concern regarding state police was addressed by Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani on a Channels Television programme last week. Anyone who deliberately takes lives and destroys communities is not deserving of leniency, he stated. “I don’t believe they deserve a second chance because, in my own opinion, they are terrorists. Bandits are terrorists. When you call them terrorists, it means they are people who have killed innocent citizens. Certainly, they have no right to live; they must be eliminated,” Sani said.

Patented by the Muhammadu Buhari government, the Tinubu administration has seemingly plagiarised the amnesty-for-terrorists policy the way a chameleon plagiarizes colour. It is so sheepishly lapped up today as we witness villagers pointing at killers of their bread winners driving government-given cars and garlanded with huge cash. It is so bad that it makes men of conscience want to puke. It is widely alleged that the Villa even pays ransom to terrorists, with rumors suggesting that a department exists within top security top brass office for negotiating with them using billions of our national patrimony. Successive Katsina governors have been seen gifting terrorists huge sums of state money, funding their pilgrimages, with one of the governors even publicly taking photographs with them. How will these states, in the new kingdom of state policing, fight crimes without compromising?

The only silver lining is that when state policing fully takes off, complaints of complacency will finally be placed squarely at the doorsteps of state governors, and no longer the Villa.

Festus Adedayo is an Ibadan-based journalist.