In the last few days certain conversations are been introduced into the political space by some janjaweed and jankariwo thinkers in respect of Mr. Wale Akinterinwa (WA) with respect to his political decisions or likely moves towards the November election.

Aside from what has been said or imagined after the primaries by those who are afraid of his political status and standing in Ondo State politics, his absence at the Southern Senatorial rally at Ore was interpreted to mean the road to a loss of the November 16, Governorship election by our party, the APC.
When that narration did not fly, a new and ” improved lie” was introduced suggesting that he has instructed his supporters to vote for the New Nigeria People’s Party at the election.

Contrary to these false information baked in some hidden covens, released into the airwaves and circulating on social media, it is pertinent to state that Wale Akinterinwa did not direct and would never direct his supporters to vote for the candidate of the New Nigeria People’s Party or any other party in the coming election.

This baseless claim is a deliberate attempt to discredit WA and to cause confusion among his supporters in particular and the APC family in general.

It is a fact that in every political season there are always many conversations. Among the dominant conversation in Ondo State this season is WA and the WA Team . A careful look at the WA team will reveal that it has the largest concentration of the organic members of the progressives in the APC which makes them the landlords or the authentic Aborigines of the party. What this means is that we have no where to go and no condition or situation can make us work against our party. It is not even in our character.

We may be hurt or angry about a situation, but we are always in control of our emotions. We are molded and schooled to always look at the bigger picture. That’s why we are proud of the phrase ” My Party is My Party”. That is, no matter what, our party’s interest is above and larger than every other interest.

Let it be known also that within the WA team, we consider electoral contests and party affairs as family matters which could be contentious but which must be resolved one way or the other in brotherly love for the benefit of the super structure, the party’s interest. While we feel embittered, unhappy and disappointed at the way the primary turned out, it never took us a long time to accept the verdicts of the party while we reconciled within ourselves that on no account should we raise any negative step against our party. There is always another day and another opportunity in politics. Why should we break the pot that holds the water? It’s not our ways.

It must also be noted that we recognize the fact that, while there is a beneficiary of the whole exercise being the candidate of our party and the flag bearer, he is just the symbol of our collective struggle towards the election. The ultimate test and focus of all party members is that his party succeeds in an election. Many of us have stayed too much in opposition that we cannot afford to become opposition politician in Ondo State in February 2025. It is not only politically undesirable but affliction shall not arise a second time and thunder does not strike a point twice.

So, for anyone to imagine that WA will give instructions that his group within APC to work against the party is to show the hollowness of some people and to think that even if such instruction is given, some of us will obey it, is a crude thought.

Let it be known that across the various Committees that were set up, our members have been involved and participating actively and ready to do more for the success of our party in the election. For instance, immediately, I got to know I was a member of the Protocol Committee on the eve of the visit to Akure South, I reached out to Hon Alex Kalejaiye and Hon. Olajide. I was physically present at the campaign at the Deji’s Palace, NEPA Roundabout and at Oda. I have made some inputs into the working of the Committee through Hon. Olajide and ready to make more. By Tuesday, we would be on the road again. Our own Yemi Olowolabi is totally involved in the work of the media and the candidate of our party is aware of his efforts already. The same thing goes for other members of the WA Team at various levels. So who are those that will be behind or vote for NNPP?

If WA has not been physically present, it is the height of excessive malady for anyone to conjure this type of insidious thought. The fact that many of his supporters have been making contributions should kill the wrongful narrative of antagonism towards the party during the election.

WA is the head of our group within the larger APC. He is the aggregation of our political interest. He is totally committed to our party in the election through the mandate given to our flag bearer His Excellency Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa whose election on November 16, 2024 is a history waiting to happen.

I must say that we are not unaware of the source of this snide side talks are coming from. We are also not unaware of it’s intended threats and implications. Let it be known that we have the courage to say those threats and challenges pales into insignificance with the victory that would be achieved in November. We have the tenacity and the courage to see through all these threats to our collective political interest in the WA Team sooner than expected.

In conclusion we urge all supporters of WA and our party to remain vigilant and disregard misinformation spread by mischief makers. Let’s focus on promoting factual information and maintaining a united front in our political endeavors.

As we march towards the election, we would walk hand in hand and side by side to an assured victory.

In the interim, let the right and proper conversation ennure while the “jedijedi” and ” penkelemesi” conversationists continue in their forlorn narratives.

Please note that For This Election Let Us Stay Informed, Stay Vigilant.

Sola Ajisafe, Esq
Director of Programmes WA Team (Member Protocol Committee of the Campaign Council).

When Oluwole Akinwande Babatunde SOYINKA, Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature, clocked 80 in 2014, this essay raised an 80-cannon salute in his honour as one of Africa’s most enigmatic pathfinder.

At 90, the bard remains a torch-bearer for continental excellence and an inspirational global export from Africa to the world.

The ‘90’ volley count is an intentional multiple of the traditional 21-gun salute in recognition of his exceptional humanity and an acknowledgment of Ogun, his companion deity.

In the African literary precinct, where minds form thoughts and thoughts mold minds, Wole Soyinka, until perhaps another revelation in his class, will remain the definitive Africa’s confounding literary enigma and the actual definition of literature itself for eons to come.

Granted that Kongi himself is not given to wanton adulation or competitive overgeneralization, especially the typically African tendency to rank, I am not Kongi and neither is this bias without basis – or reckless without a just cause.

There were great African writers before Soyinka happened to Africa. Some wrote in their indigenous languages and as a result, had a restricted audience.

There were and there are still great African writers who were contemporaries of Soyinka. Many although contemporaries of Soyinka, wrote in the language of yore leaving the reader with the literary taste that the writer was attempting to re-create the African past. Not Soyinka.

He communicated in the contemporary language of his time and with such suaveness that both awe and appeal. There will continue to be great African writers after Soyinka. Soyinka is however not just a great African writer. Neither is Kongi just another literary icon. He is literature. His life sealed and cemented his place in African history. Soyinka’s being has come to represent a theatre in 3D as his very life embodies the very substance great dramas are made of. At a relatively young age, when many feared to dare, Kongi , a one-man battalion stormed the broadcasting house in the then Western region of Nigeria, and successfully replaced the recorded lies of one of the thieving politicians at the time, with his. That was Soyinka, literature in motion.

By the time the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria were locked in a titanic survival battle with the side claiming to represent a united Nigeria, Soyinka saw through the charade of the kind of unity on offer and dared to embrace a destiny in opposition to the leading tendencies back then – he backed the right of the Igbo people to self-determination if that was what they desired as a people. The core of his stance was very simple, the Igbos had the inalienable right as humans to determine how they would want to exist as a people.

For so daring, Soyinka was hunted, hounded, arrested, and imprisoned. That was Soyinka, literature in motion.
Then came the Nobel prize. Prizes, especially super-prestigious types of the calibre of the Nobel have a way of changing their beneficiaries. Most would begin to hang out only with the rulers while then doing their bidding. Not Soyinka. Rather, Soyinka became more Soyinka. From the battle to erase apartheid in South Africa, to the precarious and dangerous challenge he mounted against vicious military rulers, Soyinka was at the forefront of civil action for the protection of the ordinary people from arbitrary rule of the juntas. How the Ibrahim Babangida government loved to dismiss Soyinka as a dramatist! But the dramatist was one of the forces who ensured Babangida was forced into submission and had to abdicate in a hurry when the hearth became too hot. That was Soyinka, literature in motion.
Soyinka in the public service. Before the ultimate showdown with Babangida, Kongi, following a call akin to an ‘if you know how to do it, then come do it’ dare from Babangida, accepted to establish and serve as the foundation Chairman of the Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC). Many had expected the crusader to fail at this assignment. Not Soyinka. As Nigerians would still admit today, Soyinka’s era in the road safety corps remains a watershed in the nation’s history. That was the era when no officer of the Corp would collect bribes from anybody even though their sister organization, the Nigeria Police, was notorious at the time for only two things – bribery and corruption. As Dele Momodu recently revealed, when an attempt was made to soil Soyinka’s reputation with a smear campaign, news hounds from the African Concord were dispatched to get the juicy details of the ’embezzlement charge’, Kongi, though 28 years behind the passage of the Freedom of Information Act, personally wrote to the bankers of the FRSC with the instruction to make all their accounts public! That was Soyinka, literature in motion.
While Wole Soyinka’s predilection as signposted by these experiences is about integrity, what is right, and what is just, irrespective of tribe, race, religion, or social status – his later life would cement his place as an avowed advocate of universal justice – no matter who the victim is. This is where he stands shoulder higher than any of his contemporaries. While some of them were perennially locked in the defense of their kin, Soyinka’s mind transcended Ake or his Oduduwa clan and captured the universal spirit that defined and separated truly great beings from the rest.
Soyinka the philosopher could be glimpsed from The Interpreters, where the bard sought to know whether it was appropriate to insist on a spot in the water whereas the water as an entity was definitely constantly mowing. In the trial of Brother Jero, it would be difficult to resist a good laugh as the prophet successfully predicted the promotion of Chume to Chief Messenger with an additional prophecy still that he would become Chief Clerk. Soyinka in that work clearly saw tomorrow as every antic of the main character has now become the trademark and a powerful tool through which self-professed spokesmen for God swindle unsuspecting folks in 2014 Nigeria. Soyinka inspires. Any student activist in the past 30 years, would either have used or have heard the famous words “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny” taken from The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka. It remains the number one rallying cry to free the souls of the undecided for battle against forces of repression in Nigeria’s unending Armageddon of civil unrest against abusive use of power and positions against the interests of the masses. Of Soyinka, John Updike in Hugging the Shore (New York: Knopf, 1983) says ‘he is remembered in Nigeria with awe, both for a political boldness that landed him in prison and for a commanding intellect that is manifest in every genre he tackles’. And what do you make of the poem, Telephone Conversation? Read the last verse, again;
“THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?” “Not altogether.
Facially, I am brunette, but madam, you should see
The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet
Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, caused—
Foolishly, madam—by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black—One moment madam!”—sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears—“Madam,” I pleaded, “wouldn’t you rather
See for yourself?”
– Wole Soyinka in Telephone Conversation

90-cannon salute to Soyinka! The African god of literature is 90. Iba!

By Olatunji Ariyomo (@olatunjiariyomo)

Aketi is dead and left behind many legacies ( both good and bad). However, Amotekun is reputed by haters and admirers as one of his greatest legacies.

At its inception, I had the opportunity to be the unofficial publicist to assist my friend and Commander, Chief Adeleye. He repaid me by picking my calls and sending his boys to distressed persons or areas anytime I called.

In 2019, he sent his officers to Osi Community and commanded them on phone when a horde of Fulani herdsmen were leading over 2000 cows with more than 30 men. I alerted him, he sent his men. Those people said they were on their way to Edo State. On another occasion some herdsmen from the Shasha market invaded my friends farm in Osi again and ate his farm. I called the attention of the Commander and he said we should demand compensation. The head of the Hausa/Fulani community from Shaha came and paid the compensation. Around same period, a childhood friend of mine who retires from Elephant cement and invested his life savings on palm tree plantation at Uso had the problems of these herders..I informed the Commander and moved his.mwn to the area. It had abated

Last year, some bands were noticed around my father’s farm in Ose local government. I called the Commander and he gave instructions that the heads of their operations in the Northern Senatorial Sector based in Ikare should mobilise his people across Akoko and Ose and storm the place. They went along with drones. Unfortunately, the information did not reach them in good time. They would have met them there and arrest them. By what was met on ground, it gives signs of kidnappers who used the place as a base for some days.

I have other examples of the exploits, the efficiency and effectiveness of the security outfit. More importantly , they do not take bribes no matter how small or big.

Sometimes ago, I learnt that herders invaded the farm of a Celestial clergyman and ate everything. They met the herders who were trying to show power. The man reported and the cows were arrested. I intervened but my intervention was needless as the man got compensated before the cows were released. This is a testimony to Chief Adeleye and his team. I guess that was in the Aketi years.

Early in the year, I got an information that some ” kidnappers” were arrested with many dogs and detained at Okitipupa. They were arrested in Akoko. I did my findings and confirmed it was true. But pronto, I was informed when those people were.released based on a ” padi-padi ” arrangement by some powerful northern governors and our Oga here It was painful but I could not do anything so that I won’t be accused of playing politics. But it was a fact that those people snd their dogs were released based on give and take mode.

About two weeks ago, I was in a car with some friends along Osi road through the Express. The road was blocked with over a thousand cows. We came down to ask them to direct their cows from the road they said ” no English”. None of us understand Hausa. We demonstrated what we wanted them to do, yet, they pretended not to understand. I now said we would all Amotekun, it was at this point one of them spoke English and said, ” go and call them”. They were incensed and care less. If it were before, they would take to flight.

As if this was not enough, I was in my farm in Idoani yesterday, right there in my farm, I met over two hundred cows eating away. I was surprised. I could not do anything for two reasons. One, the herders was nowhere to be found. Two, there was no network to call anyone, whether Chief Adeleye who I always call or he would direct his men in Ose. Even the men in Ose are already overstretched. My crops was invaded and I could not do anything. I returned back to Akure dejected, disappointed, surprised and angry. I was helpless.

I have not been able to hold myself to confront this menace and loss. Unbeknown to me, a dày before my trip to the farm, I heard what happened at Igoba and how those fellows caused a standoff yet the army was unable to do anything.

Chief Adeleye had been doing a great job before. What is happening? What about the law concerning cows roaming the street, what of underaged children leading them? What are we afraid of or what is the benefit and who is the beneficiary of this laxity. If Fulani herders could block road in broad daylight to challenge Police and the army, what will they not do in the bushes?

More than money, Amotekun must be allowed to do their job and they must be protected. They should not be under any watchlist or instruction. The reason Amotekun under Chief Adeleye and Doyin Odebowale succeeded in his own area was because, Aketi gave them the needed support and gave them the wing to fly.

I have been hearing stories of the rot creeping into AMOTEKUN. The motivation for the job is receding. We must support the government to succeed on this Amotekun for the good of all. Amotekun must not die like Aketi died. We must support Amotekun to protect our people. I have seen the source of the hunger in the land. Our bushes are crawling with herders and their cows.

We need help.