Point One

You wouldn’t recognise the cause at the last count from where it began. The agitation kicked-started three weeks back as an iconic movement of Nigerian youths protesting police brutality against citizens and seeking the disbandment of the notoriously cruel Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). By the time it ran aground, it had morphed into wantonly vengeful violence and racy criminality as arsonists ran riot, torching private and public assets they had marked out. In a number of cases, hoodlums lynched security personnel perceived as adversaries in a manner reminiscent of arbitrary immolations of alleged witches during the protestant renaissance of the Middle Ages. It was youthful venom unleashed as never seen before in this country’s history. But the upheaval also bore clear markings of a class revolt – with warehouses of government, public utilities and treasure stores of private personages looted and vandalised by impoverished masses who seemed to be exacting a pound of flesh from the...

It was a highly controversial unit of the Nigerian Police that got defunct in circumstances not too different from those in which it sprouted: the squad came into being in a crisis and was dismantled in a crisis. By the time Police Inspector-General Mohammed Adamu felt sufficiently compelled to hack down the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) on 11th October, there was already palpable yearning in the Force for exorcism of its memory from the entire system. This was because no police personnel or facility having the flimsiest connection with the opprobrious SARS was safe from the rage of protesters. The squad’s offices which the Inspector-General ordered taken over by regular police became sitting ducks for public attacks, such that there were reports of new occupants falling collateral victim of public fury intended for SARS. You could guess the fate of any ex-personnel of the controversial squad who dared flaunt that identity. Actually, it became hazardous just to be a personnel of th...

Buffalo soldiers historically were all-Black personnel of the United States Army who served on that country’s Western frontier following the American civil war, and were carved into cavalry and infantry regiments by the 1866 Army Organization Act. Established by Congress as the first peacetime all-black squads in the regular U.S. Army, their functions involved settling railroad disputes, building telegraph lines, repairing and building garrisons (Americans call these ‘forts’), helping the settler population to colonise lands violently taken from native Indians and protecting the colonisers from the displaced natives seeking to reclaim their homeland. Although they mainly served the interest of their Caucasian masters, legendary Reggae icon, the late Bob Marley, in his famous song titled ‘Buffalo Soldiers,’ linked the exploits of these servicemen to survival fighting and recast them as symbolising of black resistance. Incidentally, it was Marley as well who taught the wisdom of measured...

U nless something gives in the brewing test of will over recent increases in domestic price of petrol and electricity tariff, Nigeria is about hitting a storm of civil unrest that portends fresh dislocations in the national economy. The Trade Union Congress (TUC) will this Wednesday, 23rd September, head to the trenches with 79 civil society groups and ally labour unions on ‘an indefinite industrial action and national protest’ over the policies of the Muhammadu Buhari administration that it argued had left Nigerian workers and their families in life threatening penury. The action will kick in upon expiration of a seven-day ultimatum issued by the union in a letter last week to the President. Few days further down – that is, Monday, 28th September – the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) will as well pick the gauntlet in what it threatened would be a “total shutdown of the country’s economy,” if issues at stake aren’t addressed by the expiration of a 14-day ultimatum it issued. Congress Pre...

Legendary Williams Shakespeare, in his work The Tragedy of Coriolanus , characterised ordinary Roman citizens of the 5th Century BC called plebeians (or ‘plebs’) as a fickle lot easy to manipulate. For that reason, heroic Roman soldier Caius Marcius, who was honoured with the name ‘Coriolanus’ after his gallant conquest of the city of Corioles, had nothing but contempt for them. But the plebs were ultimately to determine Coriolanus’s fate, because when the Roman senate proposed making him a consul after he vanquished the Volscian army, Coriolanus was requested to go canvass votes from the people; which he did only reluctantly because of his contempt for them. The plebs initially agreed to give Coriolanus their votes, but they soon recanted at the prodding of some tribunes who convinced them that he was an enemy of the people. This drove proud Coriolanus into a rage upon which he unleashed an abusive rant on the people. But without their votes, he could not be made consul; and in anger,...

  You could measure a man’s depth through his handling of irritations – warranted or not – by his linkages. On 13 th August, this year, United States President Donald Trump got a question at a media parley on his country’s experience of the Covid-19 pandemic that left him off-beat. But he managed to hold his famous bile. Senior White House correspondent of The Huffington Post , Shirish Dáte, had raised his hand casually and was recognised by Trump, who never liked the pen tribe or made pretences about it, to ask his question. Dáte, however, broke from the conventional line of questioning to pose a simple, but cutting question: “Mr President, after three-and-a-half years, do you regret at all, all the lying you’ve done to the American people?” Trump was visibly blindsided and struggled to get his bearing by asking the reporter: ‘All the what?” Dáte was not fazed, he rather dug in calmly, saying: “All the lying, the dishonesties.” You could see Trump yet straining for a handle as h...

  Caveat: This piece was written before government raised a visitation panel for Unilag and asked Babalakin and Ogundipe to step aside. It is trite to say these aren’t the best of times for frontline citadel of learning, the University of Lagos (Unilag). The institution has been in turmoil since the purported removal of Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe as vice-chancellor by the governing council led by Dr. Wale Babalakin, which also named sociology Professor Theophilus Soyombo as acting vice-chancellor. As at the close of last week, Soyombo had assumed office; but it was at best a nettle reign considering the majority in the university community refusing to recognise his leadership while affirming residual recognition of Ogundipe as head of the institution. Ogundipe’s removal climaxed a long-running crisis of confidence between Babalakin’s council and the university management he headed. The pro-chancellor announced the vice-chancellor’s sack at an emergency meeting of council in Abu...