₦airaland Forum

WhizdomXX:
Many in The military have mostly become beasts against the civilians who are fighting for their welfare.

I cannot argue this...

Ibas3454:
Lawless country. If you are not guilty why are you kidnapping the young man... Nigeria army una no try

Well said...

The Justice Crack Matter

By: Deji Yesufu

His name is Justice Mark Chidibere. But his social media handles carry the name “Justice Crack”. So we will use the latter to refer to him in this article. Sometimes between 28th April and 1st of May, 2026, Justice Crack went missing. His friends and supporters went online and said that the Nigerian army had abducted him because of some videos he published online. On the 2nd of May, 2026, the army published a statement confirming that Crack was in its custody and that he was being handed over to civil authorities for prosecution. Crack’s friends made the point that it was their outcry in the media that compelled the army to bring him out. If Crack had no voice, he could very well have disappeared from the face of the earth. In August 2019, Abubakar Idris, popularly known as Dadiyata, went missing. It is alleged that he was abducted by security officials at the behest of some leading northern politicians. That young man is believed to have been murdered, because no one has heard from him since that day. It was to evade a similar situation that supporters of Justice Crack cried out, and thanks to the media, Crack remains alive today. His case for bail was heard at a Federal High Court in Abuja this morning, but it was not concluded. Justice Crack is still in the custody of the Department of State Security.

Justice Crack's crime was that he published a video where he showed Nigerians the beggarly kind of food that the Nigerian army gives its soldiers who are at the front lines fighting insurgency in the North East of the country. That video infuriated a certain Brigadier Adegoke, who allegedly subsequently got him arrested and has him face legal issues. Once upon a time, Aba Jalingo was arrested in a Nigerian airport because he wore a T-shirt that read “We are all Biafrans”. At this rate, are we not all Biafrans? A few months ago, I contacted a Nigerian soldier who had published a video accusing senior military officers of corruption and making things difficult for soldiers to do their jobs. That young man went through all kinds of legal issues, torture, and incarceration. Eventually, he was let off the hook the moment the army realised that his matter was no longer in the news. It appears that the only thing Nigerian authorities fear the most is public opinion, the media. Get your story to the media, and Nigerians will sit up. Does Justice Crack have a case?

On face value, the Justice Crack matter should never have even made it to the public at all. First, fighting on the frontlines is not a tea party. Soldiers are not on holiday. They are working, and their peculiar kind of work demands sacrifice, discipline, and focus. Nobody expects that Nigerian soldiers should be fed three-course meals on the battlefield. What is expected is that they have the basics. That the welfare of those men on the frontlines should be kept as a priority. This country fought a thirty-month civil war. There is no account anywhere that our men were poorly fed. Soldiers must be paid their salaries, and their families should be looked after. They should all have solid life insurance policies in case they were to lose their lives. And then both the Nigerian government and the insurance companies should care for their wives and children. These are basic things. A friend of mine lost his father to an American military expedition sometimes in the 1950s. His mother received a pension until her death a few years ago. When she died, the American military sent in their condolences and support. Israel has the names of the 2,500-plus persons who have laid down their lives to secure the Jewish land since they started their quest in the late 19th century. The Nigerian army must put in measures to ensure their personnel’s welfare, safety, and, in case of demise, the care of their dependents. These are the things people see and then decide to join the army. If our nation’s soldiers, laying down their lives to protect all of us, are not cared for, who would want to join the military?

Another point: the Nigerian army needs to be informed that this country, Nigeria, is now a democracy. We last had a military government in 1999 – that is, some good 27 years ago. Nigerian soldiers should come out of this antediluvian mentality that believes that they can always employ force to bully their way out of things. The very Boko Haram crisis this country is facing was made worse when their founder, Mohammed Yusuf, was summarily executed extrajudicially, rather than having him investigated and made to face the full weight of the country’s laws. Most of what has been propelling that group since 2009, when the man was killed, has been a quest to avenge his death by his followers. The result being the thousands of lives that have been lost in the process. The military should be reminded that its primary duty is to ward off external aggression against the people of a country, while the police is made to deal with internal issues.

As we discuss the matter of Justice Crack, we must also commend the civil society groups that have taken up his matter, continually updating Nigerians on his welfare. One name deserves mention here: Peter Akah. He and other civil liberty groups have stood with Justice Crack and supported him through his ordeal. These young men and women have put their lives on the line to ensure that things work for us in this country, and they deserve commendation. Some of them are also beginning to run for public office, and I believe that it is individuals like these that should be supported and voted for in the coming elections.

On a final note, I am convinced that making the Nigerian society work is not an impossible task. Not every Nigerian will japa. Even if we leave this country, we will still face social issues wherever we go. If we stay behind and help to fix our own social challenges, our children and us will benefit from it. If a social media personality brings the issue of the welfare of Nigerian soldiers to the public, he should not be prosecuted for this. Instead, the military should look into improving the welfare of its officers and men. We cannot afford to normalize corruption and incompetence in this country. Those running public institutions in Nigeria should understand that they serve the Nigerian people; we do not serve them. They are accountable to Nigerians, and they owe the people of this country some basic minimums.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

Very well written.

Online dating has become the norm, even in Nigeria. As someone who lives abroad, even I can see that.

I think the major issue with Lege's arrangement is that he is not mentally equipped to handle the demand of his job.

Agreed

MrPresident1:
This question must rank among one of the most stupid questions ever asked coming from a so-called Pastor. What do you want to do with all the tithes and offering that you are collecting, ehn ole? Thief. In the Bible, tithes and offering was a form of taxation from the haves to redistribute to the havenots. Tithing was Israel's form of taxation.

You want to collect tithes without any form of responsibility toward the people. You want to buy private jet abi? Ole buruku thief pastor.

The Church and the state is one and the state, there is no separation, every separation between church and state is a satanic contraption and configuration

Can you just imagine the crass ignorance and idiocy that is the place this question comes from?

They do "programs" with tithes and offerings.

Obviously Osinbajo was rebuking that whole church, not just Komaiya.

Yemi Osinbajo and the Prosperity Gospel

The day is Sunday, 5th March, 2026. The venue is the Rock of Ages Christian Assembly in Benin, Edo State. The preacher is Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, the former Vice President of Nigeria under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, which led the country from 2015 until 2023. Yemi Osinbajo also contested the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primaries in 2023, in which Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu emerged as the party’s presidential flagbearer. The topic that was given to Osinbajo to speak on by the minister of the church, Pastor Charles Osazuwa, was “Christian Leadership – The Need for Capacity Building”.

Those who have followed Osinbajo’s speaking engagements in recent times, particularly when he has the opportunity to speak to Christians, would realise that the Professor of Law has been making certain emphasis that appears to drum at the heart of the challenges that have befallen the Nigerian nation. Osinbajo appears to have discovered puritanism and the work ethic that they employed in their day-to-day lives, which led to the building of the great economic powers that Europe and America have today.

Prof’s doctrine is essentially this: Christians must be both light and salt to the Nigerian nation. We must rediscover the spirit of work, industry, honesty, integrity, trust, altruism, and especially the care of the poor, that has always tended to make Christian nations prosperous in the past. The last time Prof made a similar speech, he criticised the preaching that suggests that Christians should not give to the poor. In this message, again, Osinbajo makes the point that early Christians were known for their charity and care of the poor. He added that the social welfare schemes many Europeans and American nations practice today have their roots in the Bible.

Osinbajo points at the clear fact that giving to the poor was at the heart of the gospel Jesus preached and lived. He even stated that Jesus showed from the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man, and Matthew 25, that those who despise the poor will end up in hell.

If the discussion for that day had ended with Prof. Osinbajo’s speech, that would have been the end of that conference. No one would have probably heard of that speech. But Providence had other plans. Following the various speeches presented that day, the key speakers, Yemi Osinbajo, Korede Komaiya, and Olumide Emmanuel, joined the host, Charles Osazuwa, on the podium to answer some questions in a panel discussion.

Pastor Charles asked Osinbajo to answer this question: “When a country has a government, why should the church be burdened with the care of the poor?” Osinbajo replied that it is because Jesus commanded that the Church should care for the poor. He added that Christians influence government either directly, while serving in government, or indirectly through worthy examples. Pastor Korede Komaiya was obviously unhappy with Prof. Osinbajo’s message, and he commented that it is clear to him that the implication of Jesus’ death and resurrection, with soldiers being bribed to hide the truth of the resurrection, is that we despise money at our own peril. He added that “biblical prosperity is correct, original, and godly…” He said he could never understand why anyone would speak against the prosperity gospel.

Pastor Olumide mediated the discussion by explaining that obviously, what is needed is a balance. And Prof. Osinbajo added that there was really nothing like a prosperity gospel. He made it very clear that a prosperity gospel was a perversion of the gospel of Jesus. The discussion was not meant to be a debate; it was clearly a panel discussion. When preachers join a panel discussion at a conference, open disagreements do not happen often. Even where there has been obvious disagreement, the moderator tries to do damage control and finds a middle ground for the congregation to follow. But it was not difficult for some of us to observe that Osinbajo and Komaiya were clearly not on the same page that day.

The last time Korede Komaiya was in the news, it was concerning his arrest of another pastor. Pastor Festus Alilu had had a wave of inspiration and had gone to social media to excoriate Korede Komaiya for his blatant Prosperity Gospel preaching. Mr Komaiya had Alilu arrested, and he was in detention for a number of days. Komaiya claimed that Alilu had been cyber-bullying him, and since the Nigerian Police can so easily be moved by pecuniary means, it was not difficult to have Alilu detained. The matter became a national storm; Omoyele Sowore and a few other people waded into the issue, and Alilu was finally released.

Following his release, Alilu made a public apology to Komaiya, practically retracting his earlier statement. It was obvious that some big papas in the Pentecostal movement had spoken to Alilu and encouraged him to apologise, and also brokered peace. That is how that matter died down. What was not killed from that matter is these facts: Korede Komaiya is a “son” of David Oyedepo. He learnt his trade from him, and he preaches full-blown, blue-eyed, prosperity gospel. He believes that money is the central factor in Christian ministry, and the one person who needed to hear what Yemi Osinbajo was saying that day was Korede Komaiya. It was not surprising that he objected to Osinbajo, regardless of the respectable manner in which he did it. Komaiya would never have left Benin without objecting to what Osinbajo said because Komaiya is a Prosperity Gospeller. He is not a preacher of the gospel of Jesus.

The good news that came out of the exchange between Komaiya and Osinbajo is that respectable persons and people with voices are now beginning to warn against the dangers of the Prosperity Gospel in Nigeria. Some of us have been raising this alarm forever. We have been chased out of churches because we warned congregations against the gospel of prosperity. Our families have been attacked. We have become the butt of jokes in many circles.

One person suggested that I seek psychiatric help because I had the audacity to say that David Oyedepo, Enoch Adeboye, and Chris Oyakhilome do not teach the gospel of Jesus, but the gospel of prosperity. Alas, now that someone like Yemi Osinbajo is saying the same thing, our God has very graciously justified the stance we have taken for decades now.

The chief point in Osinbajo’s message must not be lost. Osinbajo is not primarily a pastor; he is today primarily a politician. Osinbajo has joined politics to bring God’s kingdom principles to reform Nigeria. At the heart of his politics is the bettering of the lot of the poor. If there is anything that is conspicuous about Nigeria today, it is the sheer number of poor people in this country. Nigeria’s poor are amassed in the midst of the plenty this country has. It is a criminal thing.

Yemi Osinbajo must have read Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s books and seen what the sage did with the very little income he got from Cocoa and Palm Kernel to develop the South-West region between 1952 and 1959. Obafemi Awolowo led the finances of Nigeria during its thirty-month war without borrowing a dime from the International Monetary Fund. At the heart of Osinbajo’s politics is “Afenifere”, the same politics that Awolowo practised. And Osinbajo knows Awoism well because he is married to Awolowo’s granddaughter.

Nigerian elites have a problem with greed, and corruption is eating into the very life of this country. Alas, a gospel has arisen within many churches in Nigeria that legitimises that greed. That gospel is called the Prosperity Gospel. Whether Osinbajo becomes president of Nigeria or not, it does not matter anymore. The man has done his bit; he has told this country, especially Christians, what we must do to save the nation from the abyss it is heading into. Government serves the people.

The church must find a gospel message that has the concern of the poor at heart, and she must first live this gospel and then teach it to the Nigerian government. Until then, things will not be any better for us in this country. And it is not a curse.

Written by Deji Yesufu

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18L2yFhEPw/

MaxInDHouse:
Modern day nation of Israel disregard the wise counsel from Jesus so they are no longer worshiping the God of Abraham!

What counsel is that?

triplechoice:
No wonder you failed to see the obvious implications of what the essay contained. You're defending something you don't fully understand.

You demanded I point out where the essay explicitly says "religious war" or even insinuate it. That to me, is trying to be clever by half. I never claimed the phrase "religious war" appeared verbatim. I showed you the implicit framing, quotes like "Islam will not co-exist peacefully with the Jews" and "the way Islam flushed out Christianity ", and you've now conceded that I insinuated it correctly. You said "on that ground I will concede to you".

But instead of owning that concession, you shift the blame to me and then defend religious war by citing the Quran. That is a dishonest way to debate. It is either the essay didn't frame it as religious war (your original denial) or it did and you now agree with the framing. . You want to have your cake and eat it too: denying religious war and simultaneously defending it.

I will come back to address the substance of your reply: your claim about the Quran and what Jesus commended..

Waiting

triplechoice:
Yes pastor Deji, you did and even more than insinuating it.

Let me quote your own closing paragraphs back to you:

You wrote, "Islam will not co-exist peacefully with the Jews"

You didn't say "Hamas" or "Iranian regime". You said Islam, a religion of nearly 2billiom people, including millions of peaceful Muslims, and even Muslim citizens of Israel

Another one:

"The way Islam flushed out Christianity from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, is the same way it will flush out Israel from the Middle East"

But that is a medieval religious historical grievance, not political analysis. You're framing a modern territorial conflict as a repeat of religious conquests

Next:

"Israel has learned from the activities of Islam in the mediaeval period "

Again not "from specific terrorist groups", from Islam as a timeless violent civilisation..
You never once named Hamas, Hezbollah, or any actual organisation. You named Islam, the definition of insinuating a religious war. Trying to deny it doesn't erase your own words


Furthermore, you ignore or are not even aware that Israel itself has 20% Muslim citizens who live, vote, and serve in its parliament and army. So, going by your logic Israel should be at war with its own Muslim population, which is completely absurd, but it's the logical result of your "Islam' vs Jews " framing

You claim to be a Christian, yet you endorse vengeance with the sword

"They will continue to employ the sword to avenge evil against their land"

But the Jesus you preach and follow said, "put your sword back.....all who take the sword will die by the sword" . He also said, "Love your enemies"

He never once commanded or praised military vengeance. When his own enemies sought to annihilate him, he died forgiving them ( Luke 23:34)

So, I will ask you directly,

Would Jesus fight a war of annihilation?

Would he tell Israel l to "learn the sword " from medieval Islam?

If your answer is no, then stop mixing Moses law with Jesus reinterpretation of it. If yes, then on what page of the Gospel did Jesus say that?
ng

First, this is Pastor Deji media handler. You can find pastor Deji on textandpublishing.com.

Second, thankfully you did not identify "religious war" in the essay, but you succeeded in insinuating this is a religious war.

On that ground I will concede to you. Except that you cannot see the MIddle East crisis and not conclude that it is religious. Musilms have it written in their scripture that Jews and Christians should destroyed.

Lastly, Jesus did commend two swords to his followers at the end of his life. It was our Lord's way of saying that security is unavoidable in the church. Nonetheless, Romans 13 has given government the power of the sword to punish evil, and Israel is using theirs very well.

triplechoice:
You are essentially endorsing preemptive religious warfare as a defensive necessity, a logic that has been used to justify atrocities by every religion.It is shameful .

Jesus command to "love your enemies" directly contradicts this mindset, not as a naive pacifism , but as a radical alternative to the endless cycle of retribution you're endorsing .

Why can't you envision a day when Isreal and their neighbours will start to live together as one? . They were living together as one before 1948.

And how many Jews are Christians to make you frame this as religious war?

"He who lives by the sword dies by the sword" was Jesus direct rebuke to Peter using violence in self defense. You as a Christian pastor should not cherry pick Moses "An eye for an eye" to override Christ who reinterpreted the law .

Where in that whole essay did the write mention "religious war" or even insinuate it?

Government and the Biblical Call to Revenge

by: Deji Yesufu

On Monday, 30th March 2026, the legislative arm of the nation of Israel, also called the Knesset, passed a law that mandated the government of Israel to execute terrorists. Prior to this day, the only person who had been killed in Israel, based solely on terrorist charges, was Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was a Nazi official who had worked actively with Hitler and had been involved in the killing of thousands of Jews in Europe.

After the Second World War, Eichmann fled Germany and was residing in Argentina. Israel’s secret intelligence agency tracked him down, kidnapped him, and flew him back to Israel. Eichmann was charged with his crimes, and after a lengthy trial, he was executed by hanging in 1962. After Eichmann, no one else has been killed by the state of Israel for terrorism. In spite of the fact that Israel has suffered terrorist attacks on its soil constantly since the birth of that country in 1948, the Jewish people held to a theory that frowns against capital punishment by law.

This theory is the idea that killing is primitive, and persons who are charged with capital crimes should only be given long prison sentences. Under this mindset, thousands of Palestinian terrorists have committed heinous crimes against the Jewish state. When the law enforcement agency in Israel arrests these persons, the worst they get is prison sentences. Yahya Sinwar, the man who instigated the October 7th 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel, was first arrested in 1988 for terrorist activities. He was sentenced to multiple life imprisonments. He spent 22 years in jail and was released in 2011 as part of a prisoner swap arrangement. The moment he got out, Sinwar began to plot the destruction of the state of Israel. Sinwar was killed by Israeli forces in October 2024. The lesson of Sinwar’s life showed the Jewish people that some terrorists are better dead than alive, and it appears that the Bible agrees with them.

The biblical position on what should be done to people who commit capital crimes like murder is simple: death. Exodus 21:12 tells us that if a man kills another, he is to be killed also. Numbers 35:33 tells us that the only way to atone for shed blood is by shedding the blood of the murderer. Unfortunately, the more our world regards the Bible and the wisdom it offers as antediluvian, the more it sees the wisdom of scripture as primitive.

Israel has been forced to look again at what the Bible teaches, and to put into practice the wisdom of the Holy Writ. If Yahya Sinwa had been executed in 1988, he would not have been alive for a prisoner swap in 2011. While he was in prison, he underwent surgery for cancer and was treated with radiation therapy by Israeli doctors. Yet, the animal came out of prison and led the incident that killed 1,200 Jews – the worst crime against the Jews since the holocaust. In this essay, I will look not just at the matter of capital punishments, but at the concept of how God has entrusted governments with the sword to carry out revenge on evil.

The biblical position on revenge that most people are familiar with is this: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay” (Deuteronomy 32:35). In other words, God is the ultimate judge in our world. But there is a strange scripture in the New Testament that tells us that God has entrusted revenge into the hands of government: “For rulers are not terror to good works, but to evil… For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Romans 13:3-4). What does this mean?

Christianity was not born as a state religion. Christianity was a minute sect within Judaism. With the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the dispersing of Christians into the then Roman world, Christians became a persecuted minority increasingly within society. Although they were persecuted, their godliness continued to win adherents to them. So that the religion grew in numbers in the Roman Empire. In 312 AD, Emperor Constantine became a Christian.

Even after his conversion, Christianity was still not a state religion, but it was clear that if people wanted to have the favour of the Roman ruler, they would have to be Christian. This is what made Christianity something of a state religion in the Roman world. In the 7th century, Islam was brought to our world by Mohammed. 150 years after his death, two-thirds of the Middle East, which used to be under the Roman Empire, had been conquered by the Muslims. It is clear that Islam made much inroads into hitherto Christian nations because those countries did not understand the powers that God had given the government to use the sword to ward off evil. But by the time Islam reached the shores of Europe, European leaders knew they had to employ the sword. They understood they had to carry out revenge. This is what led to the crusades of medieval times.

Therefore, while scripture commands individual Christian citizens of a nation not to carry out revenge, it has given the government the power to avenge evil. It is simple: if evil is not avenged by the government, people will imbibe the notion that they can get away with crimes. Murder rates are skyrocketing in Western countries because somebody deceived them and told them that capital punishment was wrong. People now kill other people, and then taxpayers would continue to fund these people’s lavish stay in a lifetime in prison. On the other hand, countries like China and Singapore are experiencing a decrease in crime because capital punishment is invoked for serious crimes that include not just murder but also corruption. What is the overall implication of the doctrine I am teaching here?

First, as citizens of a country, we have a duty towards electing worthy persons into our government. We also have a duty to ensure that we have sound laws; such laws that deter evil. Secondly, we have a duty towards ensuring that evil is avenged and avenged very quickly. There is no reason why people who have committed heinous crimes should be kept on death row for long. Such persons must be executed and quickly, too, so as to act as a deterrent to others. Individuals who have been proven to be involved in large-scale corruption cases should be made to face capital punishments, because in many cases their actions have led to the deaths of Nigerians.

Thirdly, the government must equip itself towards punishing evil. The idea of granting amnesty to insurgents like Boko Haram should never be entertained by the government. These individuals have shed blood, and their own blood must also be shed. If not, the land becomes guilty of the shedding of innocent blood. The main argument against capital punishment has always been that innocent people could be killed. It is the reason why our judiciary must be above board. We must have judges who can look at a case and decide on appropriate punishments for crimes. Where the case allows for some doubt, the accused should not be killed. But where the accused is clearly seen to have committed a capital crime, there is no reason why the government should spend money to imprison such individuals for life. They should be put away.

On a final note, I must give a word on recent happenings in the Middle East, particularly the war between Israel and Iran, with the United States of America backing Israel. Israel understands that its survival as a nation depends almost exclusively on the annihilation of its enemies. Israel understands the place of vengeance on those who carry out crimes against its people. This is what informs the country’s war against terrorist groups and countries that support terrorist proxies against their land. It is sad that atheistic and agnostic groups would employ the biblical principles of love for neighbour and use that as a basis to criticise Israel’s commitment to defend its land. But they forget that the same Bible equally teaches justice, and scripture has empowered government to avenge crimes against its people.

Israel has learned from the activities of Islam in the medieval period, and they know that if they do not employ military actions against Islamic militants, the way Islam flushed out Christianity from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, and many other Middle Eastern nations, is the same way it will flush Israel from the Middle East. There is no peace in the Middle East today because Islam will not co-exist peacefully with the Jews. And the Jews are not going anywhere; they will continue to employ the sword to avenge evil against their land.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Seyi Makinde and the Obafemi Awolowo School of Government

By: Deji Yesufu

March 6th of each year marks the birthday memorial of the late Nigerian politician, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. The Obafemi Awolowo Foundation has made it a point of duty to mark this event each year, with a program honouring the sage. This year, the event was held at Ikenne within the Awolowo family compound itself, and a few of us who attended the event noticed that all governors from South West Nigeria, the region Awolowo led, were invited to the program, but only Governor Seyi Makinde attended in person. The rest of them sent representatives. I felt that this was newsworthy, and I published it on my Facebook page. My observation was greeted with no small criticism, especially from supporters of the Governors I criticized. Some felt that as long as a Governor had sent a representative, it was sufficient. Others said that I published my observations because I was paid by Seyi Makinde. While a few felt that what I wrote was not totally out of place. Dr. Motunrayo Adetola, a physician practicing in Canada, even added that Seyi Makinde was from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), while the Governors that did not attend were from the All Progressive Congress (APC), a party that is supposed to be populated by Awoists.

Permit me to begin this essay by introducing myself. I am not a politician; I am a pastor. I, however, hold the view that Christianity can be a positive influence on a polity, and those of us who preach righteousness can use our ideas to influence the moral fiber of society, such that righteousness can exalt our country. My ideas were further deepened after I read all the written works of Obafemi Awolowo, and I discovered that at the root of Awolowo’s philosophy of government was moral upstanding. When Obafemi Awolowo was in Calabar prisons, he wrote for himself a list of codes of personal discipline, where he promised God that if he ever was delivered from the predicament he had found himself, he would not carry out retribution on all those who betrayed his course. He made the commitment to love his wife and make his home a veritable paradise for his children. The list reflected a man who believed that there are two forces at war in our world – the force of good and the forces of evil. Awolowo believed that God was all the force of good a man needs, and he would rather be on the side of God in any event because then he was certain to emerge victorious, because there is no man that can defeat God. One of the ways Obafemi Awolowo exemplified these codes of conduct was to ensure that people within the parties he led lived by a certain minimum standard. Corruption or stealing was a no-no. Awolowo said that he never allowed any party member to bring a concubine to his house. He was known to be a one-man-one-wife individual, but Awolowo allowed party members to bring women to his house only as long as they were married to them – it did not matter how many wives the man had. So, at the root of Obafemi Awolowo’s thinking was a commitment to the general good – not just doing good through politics, but a politician endeavoring to live an upright life.

This past event was not the first time I met Seyi Makinde at Obafemi Awolowo’s birthday memorial. In 2025, when the event was held via Zoom, Governor Seyi Makinde joined the discussions remotely. I had always known Seyi Makinde to be an individual who has a working mind – he reads. His foray into Oyo State politics was a lot different from the path that many other politicians go through. It is on record that Seyi Makinde is practically the only person who came into public office in Nigeria without the help of a Godfather. He had spent a great deal of his time and resources not only selling his ideas to people, but he was also known to be very generous and approachable. So, when Abiola Ajimobi was concluding his time in office, citizens of Oyo State had no qualms trying their hands on Seyi Makinde. He entered public office as the only PDP Governor in the south west in 2019. When he returned for a second term in 2023, I had my doubts. One had seen that the consistent picture of Governors in Nigeria for their second term is that they use the occasion to retire themselves to the Senate. But I still gave him the benefit of the doubt, and Makinde has not disappointed. Let me make this point too: Seyi Makinde’s government has not been excellent. His government cannot be compared to what Obafemi Awolowo’s administration did when he led the government in South West Nigeria between 1952 and 1959. Perhaps this is the reason why the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation have not given Makinde their prized leadership award. Yet, by Nigerian modern standards, Seyi Makinde has surpassed many Governors. Now, to the reason why I think there is something to learn from Makinde attending Awolowo’s birthday memorial.

Obafemi Awolowo rarely measured governance by achievements or projects carried out: roads built, salaries paid, or the like. Obafemi Awolowo founded his government on workable philosophies of government. He believed that individuals who would work in public office must be persons that are knowledgeable. People who would aspire to public office should be able to articulate their overall philosophies through writing and sell these ideas to the public. Now, the person who will sell an idea for others to imbibe must be an individual himself who is knowledgeable. A person who reads widely. A person who is able to pinpoint workable political philosophies that have served people in other parts of the world, and endeavors to transport such ideas to their local environment and adapt them to the needs of the people. Awolowo felt that the two needs that were paramount in the lives of people were education and health. He believed that a child should be educated early and that it should not be far-fetched for the government to pay for the education of that child. Awolowo understood that God gives gifts to people in society and that education will hone those gifts and help people to develop their communities. In the same vein, Obafemi Awolowo maintained that it was the government’s duty to ensure that the citizens of a locality had good health. Diseases are mostly either environmental or hereditary, hardly the fault of any person. If a people’s health is secured, they can better contribute to general societal productivity. Awo documented these ideas in books, and it is very clear to me that Seyi Makinde reads those books, and his effort at implementing some of those ideas has set him ahead of others in the South West. Here are my concluding thoughts on this subject.

In a few months, Nigerian politicians will begin to breathe down our necks and start to ask Nigerians to vote for them in yet another election cycle. Some of us who have gone through the past few elections and seen how politicians treat Nigerians are tired of it all. We want something different. I am convinced that if any politician were to “deliver” while they are in office today, they must have something akin to what Awolowo documented about government in his books. They must be individuals who have been to Awolowo’s school of government. What is Awolowo’s school of government? Awolowo’s school of government is not merely Awoism. It is rather a general commitment to enter public office to serve the ordinary Nigerian. It is a system of government that is not founded on money but on policies. It is a system of government that has “Afenifere” at its root. It is a selfless abandoning of one’s resources, time, and effort towards serving the public. Left to most Nigerians, they do not care who rules them; Nigerians do not care about systems of government; they are not concerned with whether we have military or civilian rulers. Nigerians just want security; they want food on their tables; they want to send their children to good schools and ensure they have jobs when they are done; they want to be able to go to the hospitals and find cures for their ailments, etc. Nigerians just want to live normal lives and die honourable deaths. And aspirants to public office must know how to meet these needs. But it is not enough to know them; something else Obafemi Awolowo taught us was that men must put action to their words. It is the reason why I consider it commendable that Governor Seyi Makinde would attend the birthday memorial of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. South West politicians should stop mouthing the “Awo” mantra; they should begin to put into practice the Awolowo philosophies of government. But how will they carry out something they have not been schooled on? This is the reason why the Awolowo School of Government is so very vital. You attend that school by reading all Obafemi Awolowo's written works, and then by endeavoring to educate yourself on what serving in public office is all about. People begin to discover that you have attended this school by the ideas you articulate in your writing and by the things you do each day of your life. Obafemi Awolowo’s birthday is only one day in 365 days of the year. It should not be too difficult for South West politicians, those who have benefited the most from his time in government, to abandon whatever they are doing and be in Ikenne in person to honour that great Nigerian.

This is what Seyi Makinde did last Friday, and I consider it commendable indeed.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

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PapaOutai – Remembering Rwanda

By: Deji Yesufu

Social media has a way of kicking up new songs that become quite popular and trendy. I suspect that there may not have been a more popular song than the “Papa Outai” song. I confess that the first time I listened to it, I liked it immediately. A brief online search reveals that the song was first published in 2013 by Stromae, a Belgian singer, rapper, and songwriter. But the latest version of the song, which was by artificial intelligence, mixed with “Afro Soul” tenor, was created by Mikeeysmind & Chill77, and published on Tiktok in December 2025. The latest version has since gone viral and has become the background song for TikTok videos, protest marches, and short comedies, and it has also inspired this article. The frequent call of “Papa Outai” in the song is quite gripping, and when you discover that the phrase means “Father, where are you?” you begin to think what might have inspired the song in the first place.

Stromae, whose full name is Paul Van Haver, was born on 12th March 1985, in Brussels, Belgium, to Pierre Rutare, his father, and Miranda Van Haver, his mother. His mother is Flemish, while his father was Rwandan. His father was an architect living in Belgium. He happened to have been visiting his family in Kigali, Rwanda in 1994, when he was caught up in the Rwandan genocide, and being Tutsi, was callously murdered along with the close to one million Tutsis that were killed by their Hutu neighbors in that horrible genocide. Stromae and his siblings were raised by his mother, but the absence of a father in his life would eventually inspire “Papa Outai” – a song that was originally made in French. This very short background to the singer’s life is the inspiration for this article.

A video surfaced online recently where a woman was suggesting that men should no longer take DNA tests to ascertain the paternity of their children. If not for the freedom that the social media affords for all kind of views to reach the public domain, one would have advised that woman not to have bothered embarking on such a project. Even if a law is enacted against paternity tests for DNA, many men would still do it. Incidentally, I agree with the meat of that woman’s suggestion. I also think that DNA testing does a lot more harm than good, and that if it can be avoided, it should. However, it is not my business what people use their money for. If men wish to do DNA testing on their children, they should be given the freedom to. I make my suggestion mainly because the role of a man or a father in a child’s life is so vital. I think that the mere fact that a man is given the title “Daddy”, he should bear that role and consider it a calling from God. It does not matter who donated the sperm; the real father is the individual who offered a child protection, provision, and purpose. Stromae’s lament in his song is that he did not know this as he grew up. The song should also be a reminder to those who have fathers to appreciate them while they live.

Another perspective that Stromae’s song offers us is the vital role of a functional society. Recently Reno Omokri suggested that people in science disciplines do better financially than those in the arts and social sciences. Such thinking reveals the very small-mindedness of Nigerian politicians. Everything is about money. If, for a moment, we consider that this theory is true, how will a doctor, engineer, pharmacist, or computer programmer function in a society that is at war? The social sciences and arts, although they may not earn as much as the sciences, are probably more important than the sciences. Nigeria is what she is today because we simply have not found people who will order our societies aright. Our laws are there, but there are no enforcement agencies. Our courts are replete with judges with questionable characters. Our electoral systems are not working. Today it is “transfer” we are debating; tomorrow, we are debating “transmission”. Our political parties have no ideologies. Money is the central motivating factor for many Nigerians. No society thrives in this kind of environment, and Stromae’s song reminds us that we can wake up one day in Nigeria with a genocide in our hands. It is bad enough that this country has battled Islamic insurgency since 2009 and our military has been unable to defeat them. Some have suggested that the military themselves are compromised with some of them retaining sympathies for Boko Haram, while others see the continual violence as a means of enriching themselves from contracts while purchasing ammunition. When the social fabric of a country is defective, we leave ourselves to the dangers of wars. Rwanda had to suffer that genocide for Paul Kagame to rise up and offer that country leadership, however despotic some might regard it. At least, there is peace, progress and prosperity in that country today. Nigeria cannot afford another civil war. The earlier the better we fix our social problem. Hopefully, our fathers' lives would be preserved, and they will be present in the lives of their children to raise them up.

Of the many videos that the AI enhanced Papaoutai song I have seen, it is those that are used for the Iranian protests that inspire me the most. In the middle of January 2026, young Iranian men and women flooded the streets of their major cities in Iran, demanding an end to the government of the Ayatollah Khamenei. The young people were met with force, and an estimated 30,000 people were mowed down. Some of them were shot dead in the hospitals where they had gone to recover from bullet wounds. Others were stuffed in body bags. The Islamic regime ruling that country has gone on a killing spree, and the worst part of it all is that major news outlets all around the world have remained silent the killings. This was what happened in 1994, when the Rwandan genocide occurred. The world's superpowers were called upon for help, but they looked the other way as innocent men and women were killed. it was not until Paul Kagame’s rebel group entered Kigali that the killings stopped. This was the tragedy that took Stromae’s father’s life, and it is what inspired the song we are talking about today. The saddest part of the killings in Iran is that it is not the fathers who are being killed now, but the children. It is only after the murderous Ayatollah regime has left that we will know the extent of the damage done. Our common humanity demands that you and I should cry out when others are being killed. I understand the political dimension of it; the fact that many right-wing persons like us also kept quiet when the Gaza killings were going on. The difference between the killings in Gaza and Iran is simple: Gaza is full scale war with a foreign power, a war elicited by terrorist groups that came from Gaza itself. The Iranian killings are the rulers of that country murdering their people. There is a lot of difference there!

The good news about Stromae’s song is that the absence of a father is not the end of the world for a child. There are many men who grew up strong and stable under the oversight of a mother who acts both as a father and mother to the children. There are other fatherless children who enjoy the blessing of other fathers coming along with them and guiding them through life. There are other young men and women who, in spite of the absence of a father, learn the lessons of life all by themselves and make a life for themselves. This is where I get the theory that God is the Father of all creation, and many times in the absence of a father, God steps into the life of a child. The greatest Father influence anyone can have is knowing God through his Son, Jesus Christ. In that case, we do not need to call out “Papa Outai” anymore. We know where our Father is. Our Father is in heaven. Amen.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at newdejix@gmail.com

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How to Survive Government’s “No Work, No Pay” Policy - JOHESU

Let me begin by congratulating members of the Joint Health Sector Unions in Nigeria (JOHESU) who have now come under the “No Work, No Pay” policy of the Nigerian government. It is a government threat that had long been hanging over our necks, and now that it has been slammed down on us like the French guillotine, it is our duty to ensure that we remain alive despite the macabre pain that the action is meant to inflict. Congratulations is due in our case because, in a practical sense, the strike action has only just started. The first two months of the strike, during which we were paid, were preparatory for a period like this and the smarter ones among us ought to have known that this will happen – and we should have been prepared. This essay is however meant to help those among us who are not prepared, and it is also meant to give us the inner fortitude to fight to the end; so that we do not become slaves within a system that all of us are building.

The purpose of this strike action is mainly to obtain better remuneration for staff of Nigerian hospitals, who obtain their salaries from the CONHESS salary scale. CONHESS is the Consolidated Health Salary Structure that was birthed by the Nigerian government in December 2009 for staff of public hospitals in Nigeria. When this salary structure was obtained, Nigerian doctors insisted on having a different structure for themselves, which they named CONMESS – Consolidated Medical Salary Structure. CONHESS runs from level one to 15. CONMESS runs from level one to 7. Government’s salary scales are given to newly employed staff based on the number of years spent obtaining a degree in the university. A bachelor of art degree will usually take about four years and someone employed into the hospital with this degree enters at CONHESS 8. An Engineering degree takes five years and they enter at CONHESS 9.

A medical doctor spends six years in the university, plus a year internship, but the resident doctor is employed into the hospital with CONMESS 3; which is equivalent to CONHESS 11 (Grade Level 13). CONHESS 11 is the salary of a Senior Nursing Officer – a position you reach after you have spent no less than twelve years working in this hospital. In other words, the Nigerian government pays doctors nothing less than ten years of studies ahead of other health workers. Second, the CONMESS salary structure has been adjusted upward three times now since its commencement in 2009. The agreement was that all salary structures would be adjusted simultaneously. Despite upscaling of the CONMESS, the CONHESS has remained unchanged since 2014. It is this injustice that this strike action is aimed at solving. Now, to the main point of this essay: How should you and I survive this strike action? The following are a few tips.

First, we must understand that government salary will come to an end one day; and a strike action like this, without pay, is practice towards that time. In this particular case, you should be encouraged to know that the salaries were actually paid, they are only being withheld by the various hospitals. They are saving the money – we will collect them eventually. But in the meantime, we must develop a new perspective to money. Generally, civil servants are very unwise with spending and events like these help restore to our minds why we all should use money wisely. The key word here is FRUGALITY. It means spending on the most important things, and saving the rest. After collecting two months salary during this strike, you and I should have been prepared for the inevitable. But even if this has met you unprepared, it is not the end of the world, there are other things you can do.

Second, we must prove our worth. Nigerian doctors working in our public hospitals give the impression that they are the most important set of workers in the hospital. This strike has shown to everyone that the absence of even a cleaner in a hospital will render the system unworkable. Workers in every unit of every department are consummate professionals. It means that now that the public hospitals are not working, private hospitals are working. With the mass exodus of medical professionals out of Nigeria, there is a high demand for us in private institutions. Every one of us should be gainfully employed at the moment. If you are not, you are probably not worth being within the hospital. So, save every extra kobo that you can because this strike action may be a very long one. Government has no choice but to kowtow to our demands because there is no country in the world that can afford to have its public hospitals shutdown. Apart from the stigma it attracts in the international community, it also means that the Nigerian government is unable to offer health care to its people. Eventually, government will discover our worth and they will pay us for it. In June, 2023, the Tinubu government did agree that we have a case and had promised an upward review of CONHESS. This strike action is demanding that they should put word to action.

Third, we must be our brother’s helper. In spite of the fact that every one of us are professionals and ought to be earning money at the moment, there are still many among us who do not have these abilities and are wholly dependent on government. Many of them are too proud to ask for help, and they are the ones that would usually fall victim of the “come and sign” threat that government has just published. Those of us earning something somewhere, should send money to these brothers and sisters of ours. That money should not be a loan, but a gift. Consider it a help-line in a difficult time. You will get your money back through the gracious hands of God that says it is more blessed to give than to receive.

This strike action must be total. We must fight to finish. There are no people who obtain their rights on a platter of gold. The very salary structure we are earning even now was obtained for us by strike actions like these by our senior brothers and sisters, many of whom are retired today. If we continue in this oppressive system, we will end up working as slaves in a system that all of us are trying to build together. Nigerian doctors do not have two heads. They do not earn two degrees from Nigerian universities. They may be leaders of the medical team in the clinical sections of the hospital, but they are not the all-in-all in the hospital, so much that newly employed doctors are earning the same salaries which some assistant directors earn in the hospital. This is pure injustice and this strike action is meant to resolve this.

This strike continues! Aluta continua!! Victoria asserta!!!

Still very much available...

Marriage and Marketing Forces

By: Deji Yesufu

I read an article recently. The young man said that three middle aged men spoke to him privately, and separately too, that he should not be in a hurry to marry. They told him that if they were to live their lives all over again, they would probably never marry. They advised that in their own estimation perhaps it is better to keep short term relationships with women and care for the children that result from those relationships. A happy-ever-after marriage is not practical on this side of heaven. Just about the time I read that article, my daughter reported an incident in her class to us at home. One of her classmates just fainted in class. When she was revived and asked what the trouble was, she told her teachers that her parents were fighting. Perhaps the trouble at home reduced her appetite and because she had not eaten, her body succumbed to the weight of her thoughts.

I am a blogger and I am married, and many times when I write on marriage like this, people conclude that I am reflecting the state of my home publicly. Let me say upfront that this article has nothing to do with my home; even though, like all marriages in Nigeria, my own marriage has had its ups and down. My concern really in this article is to reflect on the state of marriages in this country, and perhaps find a response to those men who are counselling our young men not to marry. And, perhaps, find some counsel for our parents on how to handle their marital issues while at the same time protecting the young children God has put into our hands to raise. My standard is the Bible and I hope that you will come along with me as we find some wisdom within the Holy Writ.

When I think about “Marriage and Marketing Forces”, I am thinking naturally, first. I am not looking at marriage from the point of view of the Bible. Rather, I am thinking of the natural inclinations of men. Here is what is factual about men and women: most men remain virile and productive most of their lives – from early teens till even as late as their eighties. While the biological clock of a man is just starting, those of many women is winding down. On the side of population, there are many more women than men. In fact, in the days gone by the way society handled the proliferation of unmarried women was to get men to be polygamous. Christianity has now constrained men to one wife, leaving many women unmarried (I should put a side-note here that men still go ahead and have side-chics to make up for this defect. An argument for another day). In economics, market forces is basically resolving the tension between demand and supply. If a product is much in the market, the value comes down. If there are many unmarried women in society, the sacredness of marriage begins to be threatened.

As we deal with the market forces around marriage, we also must return to the state of the home. In my estimation, while a man leads a house, the woman owns the home. The state of the home is the state of a woman’s mind. I hold the theory that many women are the course of the problems in their homes. Most women take their husbands and their marriages for granted. The only reason why three middle aged men, all very successful in what they do, will regret marrying is because they are in a situation in their homes where their wives give them little or no regard. One woman told me “…you know you men like to be respected…” I thought to myself is not what men like; it is what men have earned. A man provides, protect, and leads a home. He gives his wife a name and honour outside. And this same woman return to that house and cannot respect her husband? In Wale Adebanwi’s book on HID Awolowo, the Yoruba matriarch spoke about how she protected her husband from the prying eyes of other women. She never took him for granted. On the other hand, many women cannot respect their husbands. The side-chic phenomenon is usually employed because many men realize that their wives will not learn a lesson until the woman discovers that there is competition outside. Besides, when the wife brings her madness, the man escapes to the other woman. When he has stayed away for a week or two, she begins to beg him to return. Marketing forces!

Is there a way out of this quagmire? I also think that the happiest day of a couple’s life is their wedding day. After that, the happiness in the home begins to go downhill. But I think there is a solution to this problem and I will try and conclude the essay that way.

The solution to marriages not failing is the gospel and the Christian church. It is sad that most marriages start in church but continue without the influence of the gospel or the church on it. Now, here is one fact we must realize: when the pastor ties the man and woman together at the altar, the pastor is also saying that the extent to which your marriage will thrive will be the extent to which you submit to Christ, the gospel, and the influence of the church on your home. Now, I agree that many churches are a synagogues of Satan. I agree that many counselling sessions with pastors have been the root of the problems of many homes. I agree that many pastors have become slaves to money rather than common sense. Yet, there is still no solution to marital issues outside Christ, the gospel, and the church.

The man and the woman coming together to marry, must at some point in their lives be married to Jesus Christ. They must have repented of their sins to him; submitted their lives to him; and learnt to obey his commands to their hearts. Anyone who enters marriage without having Christ as Lord of their heart will fail in marriage. It is after these, that the couple can come together and marry. Now, within marriage, two injunctions become the rule for husband and wife: “Husband love your wives… wives submit to and respect your husband”. There is no order to these injunctions. The man is not to love the wife first and then the wife to respect and submit to the husband next. No. These are individual duties that God command each party within a marriage to carry out, whether or not the other party is doing theirs. Love for wife will keep a man’s eyes single. He will not take a side-chic. Respect for husband will confer on men the honor they deserve, which will lead a man to love his wife more. Making their home an increasing paradise on earth. When trouble arise, or there is a disagreement between them, it is still the same order of loving wife and submitting to husband that will resolve the matter.

Therefore, if you are not a Christian, I expect that you will follow the counsel of those young men in the first paragraph: do not marry at all. Or, better still, marry more than one wife. Create market forces within your own home that will make your wife submit to your lordship. For the woman, I sincerely have no counsel for you. Perhaps, if you fast and pray, and engage deliverance pastors long enough, you will find solution to the problem you created yourself. But for those who have ears to hear: there is no marriage where Christ is not first Lord of the individual hearts. Then each party must commit to obey God’s commands to them. There is also a final component to all these: there must be a church where the couple must go to each Sunday to hear God’s commands to their hearts. Such a church will never need to mediate marital problems if the couple are already doing what they are supposed to do. But if the need arises, a pastor should look into a marital challenge and simply remind the couple of God’s commands to them.

So, if you are a young man out there and you want to marry, I believe I have explained to you what you need to make your home successful.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached on naijareformed@gmail.com

Source: https://textandpublishing.com/marriage-and-marketing-forces/

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Religion, Ethics, and Nation Building

By: Deji Yesufu

At the time of penning this article, the United States of America is weighing its options with regard to regime change in Iran. The people of Iran have been involved in violent protests all around the country, calling for an end to the oppressive theocratic government that has been their lot for the past 47 years. This is not the first time Iranians have demonstrated against the Ayatollah; however, it is the first time such a demonstration is being held under the oversight of a government in the United States that is sympathetic to them. The Ayatollah came to power in 1979 during the government of Jimmy Carter – a sit-duck liberal government – that looked the other way as the constitutional monarch in Iran at that time called for help and was overthrown. Other demonstrations have held under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who also looked the other way. Iranians are lucky to have Donald Trump in government, and Trump sees that regime change in Iran, the primary sponsor of jihadist doctrines around the world, particularly in the Middle East, is something that is inevitable. Removing Ali Khamenei from the overall governance of Iran would do the world great good.

These world events lead me to think deeper about the subject of religion, ethics, and nation-building. I used to hold to the concept that a country should be a secular state, while religion should be the private practice of every man’s conscience within his home. I no longer hold that view. There is no such thing as secularism. In fact, secularism is a religion in itself. Every country is governed by fundamental principles and ideas. The state of that country, the prosperity and progress of its people, and the future that country envisages for itself and its neighbors hinge on what those fundamental principles are. Somebody said that a country is either governed by the Ten Commandments or by Shariah Law, and I agree with him. The Ten Commandments are Judeo/Christian ethics that emanate from within the Bible. They teach essentially two things: love for God and love of neighbor. Love for neighbor means the sanctity of human life (thou shalt not kill); right to private property (thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shall not steal, thou shalt not covet); and justice for all (thou shall not bear false witness). These laws form a people’s ethics, and they are further encapsulated in the laws of the land. In other words, the laws of God, religion, must dictate the actions of a people – ethics. On the flip side, where a country is governed or influenced by Shariah Law, that country is governed by the dictates of Allah, the Muslim’s god. A good example of what Shariah Law can make a country become in modern times is Iran, a net exporter of terrorism to other countries.

Now, if I have succeeded in showing you that religion (the Christian religion) is fundamental to how a nation works, and ultimately to nation-building, I wish to now return to the subject of ethics. How should citizens of a country live? The biggest challenge that people have is the fact that most people love the sound of their own voices; most people talk, and they do not do the things they espouse. The biggest challenge with religion is not that we do not have enough preachers or churches; our biggest problem is that many people have not learnt to live out the fundamental tenets of what they espouse as belief. The modern world talks about liberty to practice one’s religion not because the plurality of religion is necessarily a good thing, but because true religion should birth sound ethics. Also, a man’s way of life becomes commendable and something people will emulate when they have seen him carry his doctrine to a necessary fruition – ethics. The best preaching of religion is not what people say; it is essentially what people do. We wonder at the success of Christian missionaries in the late 19th century and early 20th century in Nigeria. But there was really no secret to their success. Those men practiced what they preached! They were not just glib talkers. They educated the young of the populace. They fed the poor. They built hospitals that provided free medical care to people. The locals saw that their communities got better because of the white missionary who functioned among them, and they came to his church. They let go of their animist pasts and imbibed Christianity. While it is impossible to preach religion without using words, the words we use to explain our religion begin to carry meaning and power when those who espouse religion live out truth, justice, and love to their neighbors.

Obafemi Awolowo said that the British were “first-rate imperialists” – his exact words. When you consider how an Island country in Europe would colonize almost half of the world, you begin to agree with Awo. But as powerful a colonizer as the British were, India found an answer to defeating British colonialism. They discovered that the British people had a moral compass that could be touched. They saw that if you raised an army against the British and went to war with them, you were likely to return defeated. But they saw that the British had some fundamental tenets they lived by – the Bible: love for neighbor; do unto others as you will have them do unto you. Mahatma Ghandi discovered the doctrine of peaceful protests. The idea of using the media to push public opinion. He even saw how effective hunger strikes were and utilized them. Now, with the coming of the two great wars at the beginning of the century, coupled with a weak British economy, having lost one million men in the wars, colonialism was no longer a profitable endeavor around the world. And as many countries as sought to be free through peaceful means got their independence from the British. But at the heart of the agitation was the belief that peaceful means could move the minds of the British public to compel their government to match their words with action.

Is there a lesson in all these for modern Nigeria? Plenty.

First, there must be a reformation of Christianity in Nigeria. The state of a country is the state of its predominant religion. The state of northern Nigeria is Islam. The state of Nigeria as a whole is the false gospel that pervades most of our public space. Christians must challenge their pastors to preach the gospel – and the gospel alone. Not a false message of health and wealth. Social media has helped in this project, but it is still not enough. Christian churches must lead the effort for societal reformation and development. Where the government has failed, churches must take the space. Churches must offer affordable health care and sound education to people. The Roman Catholic Church and the Anglicans have been foremost in this in present-day Nigeria. But a lot more can be done. If we are genuinely salt of the earth, our words must translate to genuine charity for our neighbors.

Second, the people of this country must find the right political ideas and implement them. Politics is a science. It is a science because it requires study, experimentation, observation, and inferences that would yield certain likely results that will be beneficial to society. It will require studying the lives of people and seeing what could be implemented to benefit the people. If one must succeed in politics in Nigeria, for example, one must know how to marry the two predominant religions in the country – Islam and Christianity. A political view that will appeal to the whole country cannot be critical of one religion (I admit that I cannot be a politician in Nigeria because I will always criticize Islam). And it is not enough to import a political view into Nigeria; one must see that it is practicable and beneficial. This will require studying, testing, and implementation. The Nigerian politics of bigmanism will not do it.

Third, we must find able men to lead. When we have succeeded at finding a political theory that is most practicable in Nigeria, we must then find able men to implement it. I am convinced that the people who will save Nigeria are our young people. The fathers may develop the political theories, but our young men must be given the opportunity to put these theories to work. It will be a difficult task, because Nigerian politicians are generally selfish. But hopefully one day, we will find such persons that can do the hard work. I believe that there should be a resurgence of a political group that is akin to the Nigerian Youth Movement of the 1930s. Where young men gather together, who are not limited by religion or ethnic bias, but who are committed to a better Nigeria. These young men should proffer political theories and debate them until they reach workable ideas that are fitting for the country. Then they must build a financial chest that is central to the organization, and not the donations of one man. Then these young men must make the leap and run for office. They must be altruistic, disciplined, and driven by a common vision. They must endeavor to translate their political ideas into action. This is what Obafemi Awolowo and the Action Group did in the 1950s, proving to the British that Nigerians could govern themselves. Unfortunately, since that time, this country has not had such visionary leadership.

Conclusion

I am a pastor, but I wonder what good Christian ministry is if the people we are preaching to do not have food to eat. What good is religion when the children of the people we are preaching to have no education, no skill, and no future? What good is religion when the people under the sound of our voice do not have access to affordable medical care? When Jesus ministered in first century Palestine, he healed the sick and fed the hungry. While we do not have miraculous powers to do as Jesus did, we could still imbibe the heart and spirit of Jesus that had love for people. You cannot separate religion from a functional society. Those who are Christian preachers insist that a sound gospel message must be preached in our churches. We insist that Christian pastors and laymen must translate their words into action. We insist on being a light to our world. If religion is true, it should affect the ethics of a people. When the overall spirit of a land is deception, corruption, and theft, then the pervading religion of those people is false – it does not matter what the religion is. We, however, maintain that the Christian message is true, and we hope that by our preaching and our living, we can be a light to our nation. Thereby contributing to nation-building.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

MufasaLion:
Science trumps any other field of study!

Why do you say that? I like to have a bit more reasoning.

Science or Art Class – My Daughter’s Experience

By: Deji Yesufu

My daughter resumed her first year in senior secondary school last year. While her mother and I rejoiced over the much progress she had made in school this far, we also agonised over what class she should belong to – arts or sciences. My thinking was that she would do better in the art classes because her arithmetic skills are not very strong, but she excels with words and spoken English. We spoke with the guidance and counselling personnel in her and they recommended she should go to the art classes. Now, while a lot of the things I do in life today are in the humanities (art), I am always thankful that I went through the rigour of the sciences, and I thought I should do the same with my daughter. At last, we allowed her to do art, as she was more inclined to those subjects than the sciences.

The morning she was to resume school and report to her art class, I called her and counselled her. I told her that the students doing “science” will look down on her and her colleagues in the art classes. I know this because we also did the same thing in the 1990s, when I entered senior secondary school. I told her that she should never be disturbed by this. I told her that in my senior secondary school class of 1991 to 1993, Demonstration Secondary, ABU, Zaria, the most accomplished person among all of us is an art student, a lady, Hadiza Bala Usman. I told that Hadiza is so well placed today that she cannot even join our secondary school WhatsApp group! My daughter claimed she had heard but probably never knew how important that counsel will serve her. This second term, a parent of her best friend counselled the daughter to no longer walk or associate with my daughter. His argument was that his daughter did not do well in Physics in the first term, so why should she be walking around with an art student? Perhaps, if she had had a science student as best friend, she might have done better. When I heard that, I told my girl, “Keep your distance from that girl”. While the argument behind that parents’ thoughts may sound mundane, everyone has different purposes for sending their children to school, and I do not want my child to be the reason someone will blame their own children’s failure on.

A few years ago, I saw a post on Nairaland. A young man said that he does not think he would be studying engineering at any Nigerian university. He explained that throughout his stay in secondary school, all his Maths, Physics, and Chemistry teachers were engineering graduates. He then posed this question: “Is it that engineering graduates don’t get jobs in Nigeria?” When I saw the article, I shared it with people in my university WhatsApp group and asked them to answer the “WAEC” question. Here are the facts of life: what you read in the university may give you an initial impetus towards succeeding in life, but what eventually brings lasting success is what you make of what you have learnt on campus. So, one of the most profitable jobs in Nigeria today is medical courses because people will always be sick and they will need a doctor. The problem, however, is that many doctors and other medical professionals may never go beyond average in life. They will graduate, get a job, work thirty to forty years on that job, retire and die. The people who will make it big in this life are those who take what they have learnt and build something out of it. Many of those people are usually not the “science” graduates, but the arts graduates.

Here is another interesting fact: scientists are the people who work in the system. They are the technocrats and the professionals, etc. The art students, the lawyers, the journalists, musicians, etc, are the ones who run the system. The art students employ science students. The people who go on to lead countries as politicians are usually lawyers and journalists. The scientists: the doctors, pharmacists, etc, work for these people. One day, somebody found out that I went to school with Hadiza Usman. The guy sent me a message asking me to link him up with her so she could get a job for him. That is the reality of life. It is the so-called “art” student that all of us are now looking at to give us jobs.

There is no doubt that the sciences offer a lot of opportunities for people. Mastering Physics, Chemistry, and Biology will open you up to so many disciplines that one can specialise in. The fact, however, is that not every person will become a scientist. Some people will thrive more in the literary disciplines and others in the humanities. If you force them to read science, they will simply be frustrated. I know of a guy whose parents insisted he must do engineering. He managed to graduate with a third class. Handed his certificate to his parents and went on to do music. How parents will today, in the twenty-first century, be forcing down “science” into the throat of their child, is something I will never understand. Is it that this parent thinks that “art” students cannot make it in life? Or, are they hoping that their own children’s success will be their means of pension in the days to come? I cannot understand it.

Here is the final thought that I wish to challenge my readers with: our children today should be challenged to do everything. If it is possible for a child to read both the sciences and the arts, they should do it. When they get to the university, they can now specialize into something they may wish to do. But their learning in school will never leave them. Today, I spend all my time reading History. I write literature. I am heavily critical of the government. And I preach religion. Those are the art courses. If I had done History, Literature, Government, and CRK in senior secondary school, it would have helped me more in what I do with my blogs and social media content. I have had to learn all these things all by myself. It has not been a waste, though.

Let me end by saying this: We are blessed indeed to have life and to live in a time when learning has exploded. There is no discipline anyone takes from the university that they cannot make a success of. Also, there is no discipline that you cannot learn all by yourself. Even sitting with YouTube, you can learn a discipline. So, rather than espousing this whole idea that “science” is better than the “arts” or art students are better than scientists, let us be thankful that we have these opportunities in life. And then let us use these opportunities to better the lot of people all around us.

I hope you found this helpful. Thank you for reading.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

The article is posted with author's permission.

huptin:
I have refused to comment on this issue till Anthony Joshua recovers. GOD WILLING.

It is a good decision. Let's see him get better

The Anthony Joshua’s Road Accident

By: Deji Yesufu

Yesterday, 30th December 2025, Anthony Joshua, a two-time heavyweight champion of the world, was involved in a ghastly motor accident on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. Reports emerging from the accident are still sketchy, but apparently, he was travelling in a Lexus SUV when the car collided with a stationary truck in the Makun area of Ogun State around 8am. Some people are blaming the incident on overspeeding. Others think that while overtaking a vehicle, a tyre on the car burst and this was what led to the driver losing control of the car and colliding with the stationary vehicle. Joshua was with his personal trainer and coach, whose names are given as Latz and Sina – both of whom may have lost their lives in the accident.

Social media has been flooded with videos of Joshua being pulled out of the wreck; he is clearly in pain, and he is being transferred to another vehicle to be taken to the hospital. The incident is made worse with the usual Nigerian factor of onlookers spending more time and effort capturing the accident on video than helping the wounded. Many times, the poor judgment that people exercise when accidents happen is the cause of many deaths. Accidents are emergencies, and what you do in a space of two to five minutes after the incident happens might determine whether someone lives or dies.

Two weeks ago, I was a guest of Abimbola Adelakun, a columnist with Punch newspapers. She was celebrating twenty-five years since the death of her mother, Mojisola Ajoke Adelakun. The woman was returning to Ibadan from Oyo town, where she worked, when she had this ghastly motor accident and died. She was 40 years old. My own mother, Dr. Henritetta Temilola Yesufu, also had a ghastly motor accident on the Oyo-Ibadan Road in 1981. Everyone in that vehicle perished. My mother was saved because an ambulance was passing by just at about that time, and she was resuscitated and taken to UCH. She was saved mainly by the grace of God and by the country’s working health system at the time. I took the Lagos-Ibadan expressway just last week, and the experience I had, particularly with my children with me in the car, led me to make the decision of returning from Lagos by train.

Nigerian roads are not just bad; the drivers are reckless. But I would be returning to that theme in a moment. My children and I were waiting for the train to arrive when I saw the message that Joshua had been involved in the accident on that same road I was trying to avoid travelling on. The effort we had put into taking the train, notwithstanding the time wasted doing it, was probably worth it after all. Now, I am beginning to read commentaries from government apologists. Some are telling us that accidents happen in foreign countries also. Somebody has suggested that Diego Jota was travelling in Europe when he lost his life in a similar ghastly motor accident. All in a bid to tell us not to castigate the Nigerian system: “…our country is sha trying…” – to use the modern colloquialism our young people use (I have told my children that they should never use “sha” when they are speaking to me. It is a bastardization of the English language). Back to the matter.

First, a response to government apologists. While I understand that there are a few people who earn their living from castigating the government, a few of us do not. In fact, we put our means of livelihood in peril when we speak these truths to power. Nigeria is not a one-party state; we are not running a military government where all kinds of criticism of the government is censored. This country is a democracy, and it behooves men of sound thinking to speak truth when the social fabric of the country is threatened. Once upon a time, this country had opposition. The government has silenced all kinds of opposition. They appear to have bought everybody up, and everyone is singing the praises of the government. There is no society that thrives that way.

A working democracy will always have two arms: the people in government – they are the winners who are enjoying their time in office, along with the resources they earn while doing this. There are also those who lost in the last election, who must compose themselves as an opposing force, and who never tire at criticizing the government. They put the people in office on their toes, shedding light on systemic failures and calling attention to their fixing. The result is that eventually, society benefits from these two systems. A second point I must quickly make is that the Nigerian government must be commended on some infrastructures they have put in place in the past few years. The Lagos-Ibadan expressway, having now been completed, has made travelling easy for Nigerians, and obviously, many people are coming into the country to enjoy these dividends of democracy. But these should not obfuscate the need for certain important things to be put in place as far as road safety is concerned.

The first thing that comes to mind is the state of mind of Nigerian drivers. When I take public transport, I observe the average Nigerian driver. I discovered that they usually use the seat belt only when they see “Road Safety”. The moment “Road Safety” is out of sight, they remove the seat belt. I have come to realize that many drivers in Nigeria, including those we will call elite among them, either have no education or are poorly educated. Now, the things that the Nigerian Road Safety Corp make demands of drivers are just simple, basic, commonsensical things. A driver of a vehicle is holding the safety of everyone in that vehicle in his hands. A driver must be an individual who is temperate and of sound judgement. He must be patient and considerate. An angry and impulsive person will bring the same tendencies to their driving, and in some cases could end up causing accidents on the road.

My study of our past leaders, particularly those in Yoruba land (Obafemi Awolowo and Bola Ige readily come to mind), showed me that those men were particular in choosing their drivers and their cooks. These two people are not ordinary domestic staff. They hold your life in their hands. In the heat of the 1962 crisis in the Western Region, Awolowo’s cooks were paid to poison him. The cooks reported the matter to him themselves. Awo had sent all the children of his domestic staff to the same schools he sent his own children to. They had no choice but to return the favour. The result was that these men kept their cooks and drivers for life. Unfortunately, many Nigerian drivers are not just poorly educated; they are also abrasive, rash, argumentative, insulting, and uncouth. This shows in their driving, and it is a miracle of God’s mercies that we do not have more accidents on our roads. Something must be done to the minds of the average Nigerian driver. The Nigerian Road Safety Corps must work on this. I have written on the Nigerian Road Safety before, how I met a splendid young man there who was doing his job. Well, I hate to report to you that that young man has japa. So, besides the fact that the country is suffering from a lack of drivers, our best minds, in many fields, just keep leaving the country.

The second defect that Anthony Joshua’s accident revealed is the poor state of the health system in Nigeria. As I write this, the Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU) have entered their second month of strike. This body consists of all health workers in the hospitals in Nigeria, besides doctors and nurses. They have complained for years that the Nigerian government has not given them their due. JOHESU went on strike following the strike action that Resident Doctors had called. Frequent strike actions in Nigerian public hospitals have led to an increase in private medical institutions all around the country. But because the owners of these institutions must make a profit, they do not employ the best hands to manage patients, and these hospitals cannot be used by the poor. In the final analysis, if health care is to be effective and accessible to Nigerians, it must be run by the government. So, Joshua’s accident revealed our poor emergency system and our lack of medical professionals.

Nigeria happened to Joshua yesterday, and he is very lucky that he did not lose his life in the process. It will take a while for him to recover from the loss of his friends and fitness coaches – he might never even recover from it. Anthony Joshua is officially a British boxer, but in recent times, he has been identifying more and more with his Nigerian roots. You see him spending time training in Nigerian gyms and even jogging on the streets of Lagos. The young man loves this country, and it is obvious that he would be investing a lot of the fortune that he has made from boxing in Nigeria. This is not the way to pay him back.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source: https://textandpublishing.com/the-anthony-joshuas-road-accident/

illicit:
The Leader and The Led

Nice one

Unfortunately I wrote all I discussed with him from memory, left out a lot we discussed about

Three Hours with Niyi Osundare

By: Deji Yesufu

Today, I attended the 25th anniversary of the death of Mrs. Mojisola Ajoke Adelakun, mother of Abimbola Adelakun, that fiery Thursday back-page writer for Punch newspapers. I had looked forward to the event because I knew that I was almost certainly going to meet some leading media person, writer, or social commentator there. I was not disappointed. At the church, where the memorial service was held, I saw Prof. Niyi Osundare. He was seated to my right. I kept a close watch on him; I planned to “ambush” him and glean some words of wisdom from his hoary head. Niyi Osundare is a seventy-eight-year-old university don, writer, social critic, etc. Osundare is known most for his poems and the manner with which he crafts them to speak to societal decay.

The moment the service was done, I approached the Prof. and introduced myself as a great follower of his literary work. I told him I may have listened to all the interviews he had ever granted Splash FM. I told him the story of his classmate, whom he met in a hotel, who was working as a hotel assistant, while he was already a senior lecturer at the university. I told him the moment he spoke about breaking down in tears on sighting a friend who could not further his education because he did not have anyone to send him to school, that I also was moved to tears by that story. Prof. then took his time to tell me more about that story. About that time, Abimbola approached us to thank us for coming. She asked to know whether we knew the venue of the event center where the reception was to be held. I told her that I knew it – I actually did not, but there is nothing Google Maps cannot do these days. I volunteered to lead Prof to the place. In the process of doing this, I got a free ride, a three-hour discussion with the erudite scholar, and a great deal of wisdom, also. I would be sharing a bit of it here.

Prof. wanted to know what I do for a living. I told him I was a blogger, an electrical engineer, and a pastor. He said, “Ah…, bloggers are the most feared people on earth these days.” He told me that in those days, for him to have his article published in the papers, he would have to drive to Lagos from Ibadan and submit them to the newspaper house. He said even then, editors would butcher your piece, you would almost never recognize it when it emerges in print. He said today, however, you can publish your article from your bedroom. He warned, however, that what he fears is that this has allowed for the proliferation of fake news, and fake news might be the ultimate undoing of our world today.

As we drove to the venue of the reception, our conversation strayed to the question of Nigeria. The matter of the country’s want of formidable leadership came up, and the unrelenting scourge of corruption in our national life was all we lamented. I then told Prof. of my reading of all the written works of Obafemi Awolowo. His face lit up: “…now that was when Nigeria had leadership…” He regrets that we may never see those times again in Nigeria. I explained that I think that there is a welter of young politicians who are coming up in Nigeria today, and who may find the Awolowo story and example as something to imitate. Prof. Osundare said that he once had some people ask him about politicians nowadays who wear Obafemi Awolowo caps from place to place. He said he told them that formidable leadership is not in the cap you wear, but in the manner you think. Until our leaders begin to think like Awolowo, it does not matter the cap they wear or the gown they put on, or the name they bear; they will not produce the kind of leadership Awolowo produced.

Then I reminded Prof of his poem: “My Lord, Tell Me Where to Keep Your Bribe?” and I told him how much it influenced my thinking. He then took his time to tell me about how he came to write that poem. He said just about the time Buhari came to power, he ordered a raid on the homes of some judges in Abuja. Lo and behold, many of them had money stashed away in their houses. A lot of the monies were in dollars, pounds, and other foreign currencies. He wondered what exactly a nation’s judges would be doing with the money kept in their bedrooms. He surmised that it could only be a product of bribes. He said for three days he could not sleep over the matter. That his wife even told him not to kill himself over Nigeria. Eventually, he found some ease when he penned that poem. Prof. told me that he was taken to court over that poem, and the case is still pending. I was aghast. Our discussion then drifted to the matter of lawlessness in Nigeria, the inability of courts to uphold justice, Dele Farotimi, etc. We concluded that at the foundation of society must be truth, and where the people who ought to uphold the law do not do so, such a society can only deteriorate. It will not improve.

Prof. told me that he is largely retired now. He spends his time sometimes in America, where his family still resides, and Nigeria, where his root is. He said nothing can keep him from leaving Nigeria. He explained that Nigeria has given him so much, and that it is his duty to continue to look for ways to make the country better. He regretted the actions of the Seyi Makinde government that cleared out the greenery close to Agodi Garden, all in the name of building an estate. He explained that his latest studies are on the environment and that there is a simple equation to all these: human beings consume oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Plants and trees consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. When you cut down all the greenery and trees in the city, you are depriving the city of a fresh supply of oxygen. It will be a lose-lose for us at the end.

As we concluded our discussion, Prof. encouraged me to keep writing. He explained that he has found out that outside the humanities, medical doctors and engineers are best the best writers we have. He says that he believes that our training, which has taught us to pay attention to details, is usually brought to bear when we write on social issues, too.

Prof. was going my direction in town, and so he dropped me very close to where I could find a vehicle close to my home. I enjoyed my time speaking with this great educationist, humanist, octogenarian, and Nigerian. Prof. Niyi Osundare is a great Nigerian, and we must both celebrate persons like him today, and uphold him as individuals our youths should imitate. Dr. Ropo Ewenla, who was one of the MCs of the event today, ensured that Prof. Osundare was the first person to be introduced to the guests. The professor was very uncomfortable with the announcement, but he sure deserves it. May his days on earth be long, and may this country be filled with more of such good men.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

So, the interview proceeded...

Source

otipoju:
Her life. Her choices.

I listened to the entire thing and got to know her background and therefore inserstand the mindset behind her actions in relation to her charging very high for performing in church programs.


She does not see herself as an evangelist of the gospel whose primary focus spreading is spreading the good news sof Jesus Christ.

Insteqd, she sees herself as a folk singer who sings songs to comfort and inspire broken people...and therefore her momey must be complete before she can come a and perform.



Thirdly , she sees Jesus and Christianity differently from a disciples Christian. For her Christ is not THE WAY to salvation, but is just one of many ways " cultural interpretations and expressions of man's relationship with the creator.

So nothing special about Jesus other than he was a prophet like the rest of them.

I've never been a fan of hers. Her mindset an d mine about Christianity are opposite...even though I now understand why she acts the way she does.

Well, perhaps the liberty we must all give ourselves to be ourselves. We don't have to conform to people’s mould of who we should be.

Sola Allyson and Irresponsible Journalism

By: Deji Yesufu

I saw a link online by the Nigerian Tribune that bore the caption “Marriage hasn’t given me joy”. It was a caption quoting Nigerian musician Sola Allyson. The link included a thumbnail prominently featuring Allyson’s husband, Toyin Obaniyi. I know Toyin and Sola a little and was a bit taken aback by the caption on that thread. I immediately checked the link, and the report had it that Sola Allyson had appeared on a Oyinmomo TV, where she shared a little about her life, marriage, and music career. They quoted Sola as saying she was not happy in her marriage; that she lived in a separate house from her husband, etc. In summary, they concluded that Sola Allyson’s marriage was on the rocks – and the interview was something of a tell-all to the press. When I read the story, I was sad. I immediately spoke with a friend with whom I attended an Ibadan church some years back, a church that Sola and her family also attended at the time. We both mourned the challenges that marriages have to endure in these times, explaining that even leaving Nigeria has not made marriages less prone to breakups.

This morning, I had the good sense of listening to that interview myself, and I could not believe what I was hearing. Sola Allyson said nothing about her marriage breaking up; she did not say she and her husband were living in separate houses. She was completely misquoted. After watching the interview, I immediately tried to check the Tribune link again, and I discovered that it had been pulled down. Somebody in the editorial team of that reputable media house had noticed the error and removed the story completely. While I celebrated this, I noticed that many other blogs had picked up the original story that the Tribune published and had run away with it. They, on the other hand, have not pulled down their articles. The height of irresponsible journalism is listening to a person and totally misconstruing what they have said. If the statement had been made privately and the report was then misconstrued, one could understand. But how do journalists today listen to an interview that the whole world has the opportunity to listen to and reach a different conclusion from everyone? It beats me completely. The quest for clickbait should not reduce the high standard that journalism should come with. Thankfully, Tribune has redeemed itself. I hope that these blogs will do the same. While on the matter of Sola Allyson and her interview, it might be beneficial to examine what Sola Allyson actually said in that interview.

Sola Allyson spoke about her marriage. This is what she said essentially: “…I have married a man… I am not in a man’s house… He is in my house… and I am in his house…” She said essentially that a woman should not be subordinated to her husband – there should be a sense of equality in marriage. That a man does not own the woman; a woman is her own self, who has come into a marriage to help the man. She made it clear that a woman should not compete with a man. Rather, the two should complement each other.

One must understand Allyson and where she is coming from. The generation of many of our parents in Nigeria came from a culture where women are only seen but are not heard. In some places, the woman is almost treated like cattle – a thing to be used. A lot of such people do not even think that women should be educated. I will regard it as one extreme. Now, the challenge with life is that in the process of running from one extreme, we flee to the other extreme. It takes understanding and wisdom to reach a healthy balance. It is this other extreme that I discerned in Allyson’s words – the world of feminism. The idea of the independent woman. The woman who is equal to her husband. The woman who questions the whole idea of submission. Allyson actually said that the man and woman should submit to each other (ignoring the fact that the Ephesians 5:21-24 scripture that says man and wife should submit to each other, had verse 21 speaking to the overall context of fellowship in church, while verses 22-24 was speaking about authority in the home).

Here is the healthy balance to it all: the home, the church, and the society must be led by men. Women are able helpers to these men. The husband and the wife are not equals; the husband is lord to the wife (1Peter3:6). A responsible man (in this context, a Christian man) must earn the respect of his wife by ordering his home in the wisdom of God: providing for them, protecting them, and giving them leadership. In such a context, after years of offering such leadership, the question of equality in the home never comes up. The father leads – period. When men sell their rights of leadership to irresponsible living and sin, women have to step into the gap. And this is where you begin to have the kind of commentaries you get from Sola Allyson. Allyson has spoken based on what she knows, and it is just fine. The higher ground I am inviting my readers to is to understand that men can offer their homes such leadership that cannot be disputed by any kind of feminism.

Sola Allyson also spoke about the fact that marriage is difficult and that if any couple wants to make a success of their marriage, they will need to work at it. She explained that many people give false impressions of what marriage is to younger people, where they make people believe that marriage is bed of roses. She responded to some questions from the anchor by saying that while her husband is still at home with her, things could change tomorrow. It was comments like these that the bloggers saw and concluded that her marriage was on the rocks. But the woman was being dreadfully honest. I have written two articles explaining this very thing: marriage is difficult. There is no point telling the world that one’s marriage is a bed of roses – it is simply not the case. On this particular point, I am 100% with Allyson. I hope that young people entering marriage will have their minds well prepared. I think that, like anything in life, if couples use the time of courtship to agree on how to handle difficult moments that can arise in marriage, they are likely to rise above those things when they happen. There are some marriages where one spouse spends all the time saying that no challenge will befall their marriage, all in the name of positive confessions. Unfortunately, they enter into marriage and realize that there is no amount of positive confession that can evade challenges in a home.

On the whole, I enjoyed the interview Sola Allyson granted Oyinmomo. It revealed some aspects of the lady that I did not know at all. She explained that her rise in life and through the music industry was both fortuitous and the blessings of God. She spoke about those who influenced her singing – men like Pasuma, Obesere, KWAM1, etc. She spoke about how she always knew she was a queen, despite growing up in so much destitution. She is clearly very independent-minded and also very intelligent. She revealed to me something I have always suspected about the human being, which is that God has put gifting in all of us. These gifts are honed through education and providence. She spoke of how one man led her to study music, rather than English or Law, which she originally intended to study. And she spoke about how she has known growth both in life, career, and family. She said she never actually planned anything in her life; her life simply panned out through the grace of God. She wishes she did not have to work as hard as she does to get things in life, but she also realizes that nothing good comes to us in life without hard work.

Sola Allyson concluded by saying that she fears granting interviews because she is almost always quoted out of context by journalists. The interview was barely out before bloggers began to reach very irresponsible conclusions about what she said. I have written about where I disagreed with Madam Sola in this article. This is quite different from misquoting her and reaching conclusions that she never intended. One can understand why Sola Allyson will not grant another interview to a Nigerian media again. She did not deserve this kind of press coverage; our journalism can do a lot better than this.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source: https://textandpublishing.com/sola-allyson-and-irresponsible-journalism/

I Visited Obafemi Awolowo’s Grave

By: Deji Yesufu

I had a traumatic experience at the market recently. The Seyi Makinde government has been carrying out a number of building projects all around the Bodija market here in Ibadan, which has reduced parking spaces throughout the market. I drove into a space where I was hoping to leave my car to do my business in the market. When I parked, no one told me that it was also my duty to patronize the women in that square. When I returned, one of the women selling accosted me. Her point was that I parked my car in their space, and went elsewhere in the market to buy the same things they were selling – I ought to have patronized them. The argument was logical, and at first glance, I would normally have apologized and let the matter be. But there was something in the way she spoke: it was the attitude that I owed her and others something; that I did not have the liberty to go anywhere I wished in a market where I pay money to have my car parked. Immediately, I rebelled against that spirit and made it clear to her that I did not have to patronize her. The matter degenerated into a shouting match, where she began threatening to raise a mob against me, and even said I must never park my car in that square again. I was a bit shaken by that incident because there appears to be this anger in Nigerians that they are seeking to pour on people around them. That simple altercation could have turned out to be something worse.

Every time I visit the market, or anywhere I see Yoruba people, especially women and children congregate, I think of Obafemi Awolowo. Oyo State is called the Pacesetter State. She is “pacesetter” because when Obafemi Awolowo and others led government in Ibadan between 1952 and 1959, they came up with so many firsts in the annals of governments in Nigeria. They established the first television station in Africa – ahead of many countries in Eastern Europe, including France and Spain. They also built the first football stadium, now called the Obafemi Awolowo Stadium. They built the first skyscraper in West Africa – the Cocoa House. The first modern housing estate in Nigeria – the Bodija Housing Estate. First free universal primary education policy in Africa. First free medical service scheme in Nigeria. First regionally implemented minimum wage scheme in the civil service in Nigeria. And many other “firsts” like those. When you read Obafemi Awolowo’s essays, you do not hear him write about “projects” or “firsts”. I read all the written works of Obafemi Awolowo, and there was nowhere he mentioned “Cocoa House” or “Liberty Stadium”. The man concentrated on principles of government, and quite naturally, the outworking of those principles brings all the “firsts” we see. It is sad that immediately after his time in government, there were the locust years of the Akintola administration and the coming of the military. So, when I see these women in the market, and I see load carriers (alabaru), and all these menial workers doing things beneath them, I mourn. Obafemi Awolowo never planned this sort of thing for the Yoruba people, nor did he think that Nigeria would be in the sorry state that it is in right now. Towards the end of his life, Awo saw that he needed to document his ideas so that people in the future could find them and help realize them. It was by reading those ideas that I became an avowed espouser of “Awoism,” and it is the reason why I visited his grave site on the 5th of November, 2025, at Ikenne.

5th November is the birthdate of Yeye Oduduwa – late Mama HID Awolowo, Obafemi Awolowo’s beloved wife in his lifetime. Ambassador Olatokunbo Awolowo Dosunmu leads two foundations in her parents’ name – the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation and the HID Awolowo Foundation. The first foundation focuses on realizing the visions and principles of Obafemi Awolowo, which he espoused in his lifetime and then documented in his books. The foundation in his wife’s name is concerned mostly with helping the girl child realize her God-given potentials, and also helping women to rise above the male stereotypes that many women have been caged in within the Nigerian space, and to help them fulfill their God-given potentials. The program was themed “Breaking Barriers on Standing Still? Nigerian Women in Politics 30 Years After Beijing”. It was held within the Obafemi Awolowo family compound in Ikenne, at the Efunyela Hall – a hall that the sage built to host political gatherings at his home. The Chairman of the occasion was Senator Daisy Danjuma, with the Deputy Governor of Ogun State, Engr. Noimot Salako-Oyedele, appearing as a guest of honor. Speakers at the event were Dr. Chantal Fanny (from the Ivory Coast), Prof. Olabisis Aina, Senator Uche Ekwunife, Barrister Hanatu Musawa, and Moremi Ojudu. Honorable Abike Dabiri and Prof. Adedoyin Aguoru were the moderators for the event. The discussions centered essentially on encouraging women to realize their potential as future nation builders and to help them evade the usual pitfalls that women fall into when they enter politics. Dr. Awolowo Dosunmu, the host of the event, made the point that her mother, whom the foundation is named after, actually ran for political office in 1965. She stood in for her husband, who was in prison at the time, and campaigned to be elected the Premier of Nigeria. Save for the rigging and the commotion of those days, she could easily have won.

While I soaked in the talks and events of the day, my mind was actually on Obafemi Awolowo. I drank in all the ambience of the Ikenne township. Ikenne is a very small town, and whatever development it enjoys today is owing largely to the person of Obafemi Awolowo. I stayed at the Soname Hotel. It is a guest facility that shares space with the Remo Stars’ stadium and training ground. From my room, I could actually see the players training. When I asked a woman by the road how I could get to Awolowo's house, she said “… just take a bike, and they will get you there…” The house is an address on its own – “Awolowo House”. I felt rebuked. Why would anyone not know Awolowo’s house in the whole of Ikenne? The man’s face is literally on one of Nigeria’s currencies – our one-hundred-naira note!

The Awolowo compound is a modest space. The main house where the sage lived was built sometimes in the mid-1970s – that is, a good five years after he had left the Gowon administration. It is a one-storey building that has a winding staircase situated in the living room that leads up to rooms upstairs. Awolowo also built the Efunyela Hall inside that compound – A building named after his mother, and there is a library in the compound, the Sopolu Library, which is named after his father. I believe after his death, the Mausoleum that houses his remains was built, and the museum, where many of the sage's personal items are housed, is also in the compound. The Mercedes car he used is carefully preserved there too. I also noticed that Awolowo may have had a detestation for living in GRAs. His Ikenne and Ibadan homes are situated right in the middle of where ordinary people live. All the houses that were neighbors to the Ikenne house had no fencing around them. In fact, quite a number of them had shops right in front of them where petty trading was being carried out. Awolowo grew up in very humble beginnings, and he never lost touch with his roots. He always knew that God raised him up to do these things in his lifetime, and he ensured that his connection to his roots remained. I will not hesitate to visit Ikenne again, and I do implore anyone reading this who has not visited the sage’s home to find time to do so. It is an experience worth having. Finally, I gathered some courage, and I visited Papa's burial site. Let me summarize that visit by saying that it was a spiritual encounter.

The Obafemi Awolowo Foundation has a leadership prize that it gives to worthy Nigerians every two years. There have been some years when the committee involved in selecting those nominated for it has ended up not choosing any winner. Here are the past winners: Wole Soyinka (2013), Thabo Mbeki (2015), Afe Babalola (2018), and Akinwumi Adesina (2023). There was no winner for 2016. It is also interesting to note that since the inception of this award in 2013, no Nigerian Governor or President has won it. This speaks volumes to the kind of political leadership we have in this country today.

The anger I encountered at the Bodija market, where that woman accosted me for not patronizing her despite parking my car in front of her shop, is a symptom of the bottled-up frustration that many Nigerians have with this country. There is no need to enumerate these things; they are obvious for everyone to see. The point that I hope my visit to Obafemi Awolowo's grave would wish to emphasize is this: once upon a time, Nigeria had visionary, quality, purposeful, altruistic, selfless, hardworking, and result-oriented leadership. Today, all that is history. The country appears to be on autopilot. Our best minds are fleeing the country and going to help develop other people’s lands. Obafemi Awolowo would never have japa even if things were as bad as they are today in his time (And things were bad at some point too. In 1962, there was ample opportunity for Awo to flee Nigeria and evade political persecution, but he did not). He would have remained behind and helped to fix things. We totally underestimate what it took to drive the British out of our land. I am convinced that the same spirit, focus, and vision that led the nationalists to show the British that Nigerians can govern themselves is still with us today. Bad, incompetent, and “anyhow” government can be replaced with sound leadership in our country. Obafemi Awolowo documented those ideas in his books. And a visit to his home and grave could give inspiration towards those ends.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source

This article was written to commemorate the 110th posthoumous birthday of HID Awolowo.

U

dawnomike:
A good Samaritan should read and summarize the content to people like us that attended evening school at Feyingbolè grammer school/Adifase high school.

You can make the effort to read it. It will be worth the while

Nyesom Wike and Lieutenant Yerima: Concerning Chains of Command (CCC)

By: Deji Yesufu

One does not need a prophet or a doctor to reach the conclusion that all is not well with public service in Nigeria. If you get sick in this country, the first port of call for most Nigerians is private hospitals. If you need anything done expressly, productively, and intelligently, you do not go to public institutions in Nigeria; rather, you employ private hands. Many public institutions now operate something they call a “PPP” – Public-Private Partnership. In these contracts, private entities invest in public institutions, and reach an agreement that the private company will recover its investments with profit, while the public institutions have the opportunity to function and provide services to people. This article will not attempt to examine the problems with public institutions in Nigeria. Rather, I hope to extricate one element within the Nigerian civil service and show that as long as there is no working chain of command in public life, there can be no country.

What occasioned all these was the spectacle that greeted the whole world a few days ago. Nyesom Wike, the minister for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, is seen in a video confronting Lieutenant Yerima of the Nigerian Navy over the ownership of a land in Abuja. It is obvious that this land belongs to a senior naval officer, who has only recently been retired by the Bola Tinubu government. But this officer might have acquired this land, and also instructed his “boys” to ensure that no one trespasses on the land. There has obviously been an earlier encounter on that same land between officials of the Federal Capital City and the Navy. Minister Wike had believed that if he came to the land with the full force of his personality and the weight of officials from his office, the soldiers on that site would be intimidated and would give in. On the other hand, it was obvious that the soldiers were ready for a fight. Wike is seen confronting the young man, calling him a fool, and demanding that he get his way immediately. The boy is unmoved. And his response, “… I am not a fool, sir…” has since made him a hero before many Nigerians. Minister Wike is clearly portrayed as the villain in this matter. But things are not always black and white – especially for those of us who have history etched on our minds.

A few weeks before he was assassinated, Lt. Col. Victor Banjo wrote his boss, Major General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi, a letter, where he reminded his superior of the reason why the chain of command is sacred in the military, and why it must not be desecrated. Banjo had been arrested on the 16th of January, 1966, as part of those who planned the coup that had eliminated the leaders of Nigeria the previous day. Banjo was arrested by two officers in the military while he waited in the ante-room to Ironsi’s office. He had come to see his boss. The officers who arrested Banjo were his juniors. But they arrested him merely by wielding weapons at him.

Banjo said in that letter that the chain of command in the military was not a divine instruction, but rather something founded on years of tested tradition. He then predicted that if he could very easily be arrested by junior officers, there was nothing stopping another junior officer from arresting Ironsi himself with a gun. Banjo was trying to show that authority should not be wielded merely with weapons (or uniform, as the case was with Lieutenant Yerima), but through the chain of command. That is why, a few days after Ironsi’s death, when Brigadier Ogundipe ordered a junior officer of northern extraction, and the latter ignored him, Ogundipe went into hiding immediately. The authority of a man emanates from his office and not from weapons. What then is the chain of command within Nigerian public office?

One of the biggest problems with the average Nigerian mind is the fact that we have lived for too long under the oppressive rule of the military, and very few Nigerians understand the role of the military in the Nigerian national life anymore. It appears that Nigerians think the military is doing us a favor by staying away from government. In fact, there are metrics that show that the Nigerian military is practically untouchable. This is why, after that unfortunate squabble between Wike and Yerima, retired Gen. Tukur Burutai issued a statement lampooning Wike and saying that his actions threaten national security. It is no longer news that people in the Nigerian military are kept at bay, and kept from returning to ruling Nigeria by a political class that “settles” them. One of these means of settlement is giving many people in the military unfettered access to landed property. To the extent that no one questions ownership of those lands, as long as the owner is “an officer”. If we manage to remove Wike’s rumbustiousness from that scene, what happened that day is a clear violation of the chain of command.

The Nigerian military is a group of men, although possessing arms and ammunition, who are themselves servants of the civil populace. The civil populace has elected men and women into government, and also invested these people with constituted authority. It means that people in public office have authority over every person within that public space, including the military. Minister Wike does not need the endorsement and approval of President Tinubu to access a landed property within Abuja, where he is the Minister. As Minister of the FCT, Wike is practically the governing authority in Abuja. The only person his authority does not cover is the president who appointed him to office. What I saw in that video was not a bold, handsome, and young military officer; what I saw was Brigadier Ogundipe of 1966 being replayed again.

What I saw was a northern military hegemony that is bent on clipping the wings of a constitutionally appointed government official. What I saw was disdain for authority and a silent protest against the way and manner persons of southern extraction were using power in the North. It is not surprising that a thing like this will happen only weeks after news of a potential coup against the Tinubu government had just reached Nigerians. When the names of those being investigated in the coup were listed, all of them were from the core north of this country. If Nigerians think that July 29th, 1966, cannot repeat itself again, they should think again. Regardless of who Minister Wike is, the fact remains that his office allows him access to any space within the FCT. That he needed to storm that land with the weight of his office, and in person, was already a detraction to his authority. And that a young officer, a mere lieutenant, will disobey his orders and nothing happens, is not a good sign at all.

Let me conclude with a balance: Minister Wike has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately. It is no longer a secret what he did in Rivers State to secure Bola Tinubu’s win in the presidential elections of 2023. It is also not a secret that his appointment as Minister of the FCT is a kind of “settlement” for what he did for the APC in that year’s election. In fact, Wike has become the means of not just helping the APC win elections but also destabilizing other political groups – like the PDP, where he is still a member. I make this point to show that authority or command does not always stand on constitutional pronouncements; they also hinge on moral standing.

The Bola Tinubu government cannot run roughshod over constitutional provisions in this country and then turn back to stand on the same constitution to derive its authority from it. A man’s moral strength, the fact that he has done everything well, many times, stands as the basis for his command or authority. When a man has no morality, he will require the whole weight of his office to implement a command, and he will be humbled by a mere junior officer in the military. All is not well with Nigeria, and those who have the ability to pray should ask God for help. If the government of Bola Tinubu is overthrown by unhappy northern military officers, this country may never recover from the confusion that will follow. We have managed to keep the military in the barracks for 26 years. We should do everything to ensure they never return to government.

Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at naijareformed@gmail.com

Source: https://textandpublishing.com/nyesom-wike-and-lieutenant-yerima-concerning-chains-of-command-ccc/

olaiya2007:
I wonder why the antagonist by the northern forces... It's obvious they're happy with the religious killings and ethnic cleansing by their fulani jihadist

I agree completely. These things have carried on this long bc of tacit support from those that call themselves peaceful Muslims.