Amódemájá and Nigeria’s political paradise of lies

In 1969, legendary Yoruba Sakara music lord, Yusuff Olatunji, serenaded and celebrated the sterling qualities of the Seriki of Egbaland, Chief Abdul-Wahab Amódemájá. Amodemaja held an Egba high-ranking military-derived civil title. In his Volume 3 album entitled Amódemájá, using a twin engine of dense metaphor and vivid imagery, Olatunji advocated for the place of good people as templates of a good society. The man he called “Abudu Amodemaja” was his prime example. He sang: “If you behold some people gaily and expensively dressed, sitting in royal poise on elegantly embroidered horses, unbeknownst to an enraptured world taken in by these adornments, these men are merely decorated swindlers.” Olatunji’s raw Yoruba rendering was: “B’óo r’òmo elòmíìn l’órí esin, jìbìtì l’ó fi ñs’èsó.” The paradox of esin (horse) and èsó (adornments), set against jìbìtì (swindle), was a potent literary tool this Sakara legend deployed to teach the virtues of the noble citizen.

 Are there still good people in Nigeria? Are there good people in Nigerian politics? Can they be found anywhere in Nigerian government circles?

 Yusuff Olatunji sang this song barely nine years into the Nigerian post-colony. It was an era when personal honour was paramount, and dishonorable people were treated as social rejects and villains. Olatunji himself had carved a remarkable niche in the social cosmos. A musical hippopotamus, his feat in popularizing traditional Yoruba music across Nigeria and the West African coast was adjudged legendary. Deploying profound poetic lyrics, philosophical reflections on existential matters, and a mastery of the single-headed frame drum called the Sakara, Olatunji denounced societal ills while celebrating impeccable character.

 Amodemaja was equally known by the moniker, “A. B. Council” due to his massive influence in First Republic’s Abeokuta Council local administration. Musicians of the era took turns celebrating this incredibly influential powerhouse of Egbaland. Yet, Amodemaja was a prominent Ogboni secret society leader for whom the Edan – a sacred, highly revered pair of cast brass/bronze figures clipped by an iron chain that served as membership emblem and spiritual authority in the indigenous Yoruba Ogboni society – was his bond. In an emerging post-colony where Christianity and Islam had colonized the religious consciousness of the people, how did that society reconcile this complex reality?

 Amodemaja spent a lengthy period as the Adelé Oba (Regent) of Egbaland before the coronation of Oba Oyebade Lipede as the 9th Alake of Egbaland. His character must have been the reason why, when he passed in the late 1970s, his death caused a seismic rupture in the social fabric of Egbaland. Indescribably hurt by the shock of his passage, his fellow Egba son and Apala music spellbinder, Ayinla Omowura, composed an evergreen tribute in his honour. In it, Omowura deconstructed death as a “disheveled idiot with ugly, black, and dilating eyes” for its audacity in stealing the crème de la crème of society. Suddenly, as Omowura sang, the cadence of his drums shifted. His drummers masterfully infused the solemn, heavy rhythmic beats of the Ogboni traditional dance into their drumming. It was a final salute to a man for whom neither the Bible nor the Quran, but the cylindrical Edan, was his bond – a tribute that led critics to submit that Omowura himself was likely an initiate.

 Forgive the digression. The offering today is not music, traditional worship, or a tribute to departed heroes. It is politics – raw Nigerian politics in its most roiling, unfiltered form. The focus today is the dwindling values of Nigerian politics and politicians, alongside the elaborate swindle racket that governance in the country has become.

 Look around you today. Even before they officially mount campaign podiums, Nigerian politicians have begun regaling us with grand promises. In real terms, these are simply an assortment of lies in which they do not believe and which will never materialize.

 What is the precise place of lies in Nigerian governance? A vast body of literature exists on lying as a political weapon. The Nigerian electorate should, as usual, prepare to be treated to a confetti of falsehoods as we travel the 2027 election road. Worldwide, debates on social and political lies continue to engage public discourse. Are political lies symptoms of a systemic cancer, or are they mere political sports that should be excused? In the 2022 Annual Billy Dudley Memorial Lecture he delivered, Prof. J. A. A. Ayoade, dwelt extensively on this phenomenon. It is a paper that remains an essential reading.

 Lying, Ayoade noted, is “ubiquitous and prevalent in human society.” He defined a political lie as one “purposely constructed in the politician’s heart to deceive the public with a view to gaining and/or maintaining political power.” He observed further: “Studies say that Americans lie an average of 11 times per week. This is in contrast to Donald Trump, who, according to the Washington Post, logged 20,055 falsehoods in 1,207 days – an average of fifteen lies per day. The average politician, starting at age eighteen, would have lied 33,747 times by age seventy. At 30,000 false claims attributed to Trump in his four-year term, he told 88.9% of the lies the average citizen would tell in fifty-three years.” This reality likely drove Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka to dub Nigeria “the Republic of Liars” in his 2015 work, InterInventions: Between Defective Memory and the Public Lie.

 The maths above does not diminish the toxicity of political lies or the sheer scale on which politicians deploy them. The liar, Ayoade argued, “opts to lie because he calculates that the truth cannot deliver the expected reward to him in that particular case.” He cited Adolf Hitler, who concluded that “it is not truth that matters, but victory.” Ayoade set this side-by-side with former Aviation Minister Femi Fani-Kayode’s boast that he would rather die than defect to the APC. When Fani-Kayode eventually defected, he justified eating his words by stating, “There is no point having principles without power” – a sentiment echoed by American politician, Robert S. Strauss, who famously remarked, “If you’re in politics, you’re a whore anyhow.”

 In Nigeria’s contemporary political landscape, the petroleum subsidy has become the lowest-hanging fruit of national mendacity. It is a convenient bait dangled like worms on fishing hooks to catch unsuspecting fish. Aware that the subsidy removal is the hemlock Nigerians have been forced to drink in 39 months under Bola Tinubu, with severe effects on their daily existence, politicians view it as the primary path into the electorate’s hearts. Both President Tinubu and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar have boarded this convenient vessel to secure prime space in the public consciousness. Yet, the truth remains that neither figure holds the masses as their main concern; the primary objective is the preservation of their elite status and personal political empires.

 As the whistle blows for the commencement of the 2027 political campaigns, Nigerians are once again in for a seasonal roulette of tears, sorrow, and blood. It is a season of sabre-rattling, damaging rhetoric, and a dangerous descent into political anarchy. The dress rehearsals are already being served à la carte across the nation. Politicians are painting the dais red with do-or-die rhetoric. If I’m asked for examples, my response remains that once an okra farm is within reach, harvesting it before it becomes overripe need not be a complex enterprise. Yoruba say this as “Bí oko ò jìnnà, ilá ìí kó”.

 One example holding Nigerians on tenterhooks is the ongoing drug allegation debate -a humiliating spectacle for the nation. It is humiliating because, regardless of guilt or innocence of the charge, it is a shame that a Nigerian president is subject of a drug inquisition. After all, Yoruba say if one does not walk needlessly like an Òkété, the African giant pouched rat, no one would offer one the rat’s palm kernel favourite meal.

 The central dispute, whether evaluated in American court dockets or in the court of public opinion, centers on whether the Nigerian president was involved as a baron or courier of illicit narcotics. In recent statements, the Washington-based lobbying firm hired by Atiku Abubakar, Von Batten-Montague-York, claimed that FBI files link Tinubu to a criminal organization smuggling heroin during the 1980s and 1990s. As the firm presses its claims, the presidency’s efforts to distance itself from the matter have only drawn more attention to the allegations. It then will seem that, the more it tries to pull its horse from this dirty manger, the more messy dung this heroine drama pelts on its face. The American lobbyists, in a most recent X post, claimed that Tinubu would face international embarrassment at the UN General Assembly. Looks like, in the hands of Atiku, our president is carrying on his head a faggot enveloped by a notorious beehive (ó ti ru igi oyin).

 Through this evidentiary search — what some have termed “legal tourism” — Atiku Abubakar appears to be pursuing a Samson option: the total destruction of what he views as a political house of cards built by his former friend and ally.

 This dynamic recalls an ancient fable of Ekùn, the Leopard, who was a shadow merchant:

 Long ago, in a distant valley, the Leopard, Ekùn, amassed immense wealth by selling a rare, mind-clouding herb harvested from swampy thickets. The trade devastated the forest›s youth, cutting their lives short, while Ekùn quietly lined his vaults for decades. When animal elders finally gathered to investigate the destruction, Ekùn set his secret storehouses ablaze to erase evidence and fled across the great mountain.

 In the realm beyond, ruled by Ẹfòn the Buffalo, Ekùn forged a fresh alliance. Believing his dark history was permanently erased, he used his vast riches for philanthropy – feeding the poor and housing the homeless. Over time, he earned Ẹfòn’s trust and a seat by royal right hand.

 Decades later, a traveling merchant from Ekùn’s old valley arrived as royal guest of Ẹfòn. He bore an old, rusted iron chest salvaged from the burnt thickets of yesteryears. Inside were charcoal ledgers and dried herb samples, all stamped with Ekùn’s unique claw-mark seal.

 Horrified by the revelation, Ẹfòn the King ordered the chest’s contents burned in a sealed chamber, with Ekùn inside. Knowing the mind-destroying fumes – the very source of his fortune – would prove fatal to him, Ekùn trembled and refused to step inside. His guilt exposed, the King stripped him of his regal robes and had him dragged away in chains, leaving his past to finally claim him.

 Tinubu and Atiku, friends-turned-foes, risk treating the nation to an equivalent of a Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) — the Cold War military doctrine where a full-scale nuclear attack by one power guarantees complete annihilation for both sides. For both men, this dynamic represents a destructive equation. Francis Bacon’s reflection on friendship underlines the tragedy of this dispute: «Age appears to be best in four things: old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.» Even Yusuff Olatunji, in the album referenced earlier, sang that the deity in a friend›s house should not seek one›s ruination: “Òrìsà ilé òré eni, kò gbodò run ni.” Both gladiators seem deaf to that counsel.

 Yet, this destructive chess game continues between men vying for the ultimate political prize. As this piece was about going to press, news filtered in that a regime fawner has called for an exhumation of Atiku’s 2006 indictment by the EFCC. He has thus issued a 14-day ultimatum to the EFCC to reopen and prosecute these historical corruption allegations against the Wazirin Adamawa.

 Seasons of political campaigns in Nigeria remain seasons of vitriol and drama. Painfully, everyday citizens are regularly drawn into these partisan conflicts. To be fair to contemporary politicians, rhetoric, exaggeration, and underlying tension have long been part of the nation›s political lineage. Like Tinubu and Atiku, when the relationship between erstwhile friends, Western Region Leader Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Premier Chief S. L. Akintola, broke down irretrievably in the 1960s, the region was consumed by incendiary rhetoric. Campaign grounds became arenas of ethnic anxiety and personal insults, where hostility was openly weaponized.

 As the 1964 general elections and the 1965 Western Regional elections approached, Premier Akintola formed an alliance with the Northern People›s Congress (NPC) led by the Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello called the NNDP. Action Group also aligned with Nnamdi Azikiwe’s NCNC to form UPGA. Akintola accused UPGA of facilitating an Eastern takeover of the West, using campaign tropes that framed the opposition as an ethnic vehicle designed to disenfranchise the Yoruba. He frequently repeated names like “Okafor” and “Okeke;” “Ikejiani” which he inflected to “Ekini-ani” to highlight claims of Igbo domination of western region civil service appointments. He used this logic to justify his alliance with the NPC. Conversely, UPGA labeled Akintola a feudal puppet and traitor who sold Yoruba to Hausa-Fulani hegemony.

Akintola, an orator par excellence, who used to be labeled by Adegoke Adelabu as “Osanyin Awolowo” – “Awo’s deity” due to his tiny voice like that of an Orisa deity – deployed the Yoruba language to great effect at campaign rallies. Veterans of that era recall that during campaigns in the Ekiti district – where Awolowo’s reputation was held in high regard – Akintola openly mocked the opposition’s emphasis on formal education. He joked that only in Ekiti could one find professors named after birds, playfully altering the name of the renowned economist, Professor Aluko, to «Professor Agbe and Professor Atioro.» In the Bendel area, he derided Awolowo’s prominent supporters like Dennis Osadebey, declaring: “Bí Òrìsà bá d›ébè, a ó f›òkò tu ká!” –  meaning, even if a deity manifested as a farm mound, his party would level it with hoes.

In the Eastern region during the Second Republic, political contests were equally fierce. In old Anambra State, the primary struggle was between Jim Nwobodo of the NPP and Christian Chukwuma (C. C.) Onoh of the ruling NPN. As both sides competed, language became a central weapon. Campaign strategists satirized opponents using localized humor and wordplay. Nwobodo’s supporters mocked Onoh’s name through deliberate homophones, calling him ‘Onoh ono Okpa,’ meaning “Onoh who swallows Okpa,” – a popular, protein-rich traditional food pudding made from ground Bambara nuts – while Onoh’s camp portrayed their rival as desperate for political survival. Figures like Nnamdi Azikiwe were surrounded by elaborate political mythologies, with supporters attributing near-mystical resilience to him to rally voters.

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When political engagement is reduced to manufactured promises, historical grudges, and calculated character assassination, governance loses its moral compass. Just as Yusuff Olatunji warned his listeners 57 years ago not to be deceived by the grand adornments of riders on horseback who conceal fraudulent intent, the contemporary electorate must learn to look past the elaborate pageantry of the political class.

Until citizens demand genuine integrity and accountability over strategic deception, the nation will remain trapped in a paradise built on falsehoods – a system where power is pursued as an end in itself, and public good remains a secondary consideration.