BY ONOME OSIFO-WHISKEY

IN the late 1980s, The Guardian of London amidst rave reviews, drew a charmed embrace from the rest of the British press and the general public. That was when the paper’s Longman’s GUARDIAN New Words, a dictionary of new words that made entry into the English language by 1986, hit the streets and newsstands. The book’s over 1000 new words, according to its blurb, range “from scientific and technical terms to trend usage and the terminology of politics, business, social issues and leisure”. Similar innovative publications in Nigeria — were they to hit the local newsstands and bookshops in these giddy days and times — would have been mind-blowingly interesting to the reading or learned public. They could be heartbreaking as well. For instance, the Yoruba word japa, which Google translates as “to run away” or “to flee”, has in the last few years assumed a dimension at once negatively profound and acerbic with social, political and economic implications. While it captures the high tide of young, highly educated but frustrated Nigerians fleeing the country — for greener pastures — to

Today, he is the Lord of the Manor at Aso Rock Villa, Abuja, wielding power in humongous excess of his lilliputian ballot box victory.

He can annul governorship offices and yet return the fallen occupants to power at his presidential pleasure or based on his executive whims and caprices

America, Canada, Britain, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, etc, its serious indictment of our national politics [with its deep-seated corruption], economic woes and low leadership indices cannot be overemphasised.

Soro soke, another terminology or phrase [with a Yoruba origin],which means speak out, captures the courageous but peaceful civil protests in Lagos over economic hardships and bad governance during the era of late President Muhammadu Buhari. Of course, not every new word coming into the Nigerian public domain is a damning lambast of the government of the day. Words like berekete [plenty, abundance, surplus], wahala [trouble, challenge] and shakara [bragging, boasting] are a sumptuous parade of catchwords or phrases of a socially brilliant and creative public. Yet no inventor of new words or phrases of great aristocracy, intellect and class comes near Nigeria’s current President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, whose jagabanised title of Asiwaju possibly makes him the nation’s political “front runner” of his era. In this regard, words of gorgeous, soapbox meaninglessness like boulabou need not come up for mention. Rather, Emilokan [It is my turn (to rule)], assuredly is it. When Tinubu came up with this phrase three years ago to jump start his presidential campaign, it did carry a weight higher than the cagey preposterousness of the oracular pronouncements of the godly Greek Lady of Delphi.

His self-assuredness was great, resting on the almighty truism that leadership and power in a politically debauched Nigeria were for those who have the gravitas to pocket same at will, the so called electoral supremacy of the ballot box notwithstanding.

Power Tinubu did get, whether or not it was just a win of 25 to 30 per cent of the vote. This is sweet magic but it is the reality. Yes, it is power at the speed of thought, power at the beck of oracular science! But it is power. Today, he is the Lord of the Manor at Aso Rock Villa, Abuja, wielding power in humongous excess of his lilliputian ballot box victory. He can annul governorship offices and yet return the fallen occupants to power at his presidential pleasure or based on his executive whims and caprices. He can executively will it that ministers and governors, like in the days of yore under the military, come to the airport to bid him goodbye or welcome him from many of his foreign trips — trips whose number only university professors of mathematics can possibly accurately calculate.

No matter? No, not quite so. While rights and powers like this may well be the legitimate Emilokan booty of his office, it sadly stamps on the office and person of the President the disease and sickness of Emilokansomiasis, itself some ravaging cancer of political selfishness. Emilokancracy, the government of “It is My Turn” may be too narrow, too insular, to be politically feasible. The President, a great K.O. Mbadiwe man of “timber and calibre”, would obviously not like to be so judged. It then becomes imperative to widen the strategic reach and accommodation of the Emilokansomiasis that brought him to power in the first place. Great and smart. So, without noise, without a boulabou hoopla, he had to deodorise both Emilokansomiasis and Emilokancracy into a wider Awalokan [It is OUR Turn] political construct, one that invests it with a tidy, strategic popularity in his native, geopolitically important Southwest. Logistically, and of course with perfumed Machiavellian and Buharian tactics, the Yorubas of the Southwest have to be made to greatly profit from a “system capture” of the nation’s commonwealth and its politics.

Straightaway, the Southwest suddenly becomes the new epicentre of political and economic power. Positions such as Governor of the Central Bank

In the circumstance, when tomorrow comes, the tomorrow of 2027, Emilokansomiasis, with all its seasoned braggadocio, all its sweeteningly revamped Awalokan political mathematics, may find it very pretty challenging guaranteeing the Jagaban of politics a Rock of Gibraltar standing in the Presidential election

of Nigeria, Minister of Finance, Chief of Army Staff, Inspector-General of Police, Minister of Petroleum Resources [held by Tinubu himself], Group Managing Director of Nigeria National Petroleum Company [NNPC], Comptroller-General of Customs, Comptroller-General of Immigration, Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, and countless chairmanships and directorships of parastatals and companies are the special reserves for Tinubu’s Southwest. This is the great magic for both the Tinubu Emilokan and Awalokan structures in the land! Brilliant!!

Unfortunately, the magic of Tinubu’s Emilokansomiasis upsets the nation’s intricate ethnic balance, setting fire to its highly inflammable political structure. Thus, since the Nigerian Civil War, never have the trenches of ethnicity been so sharply deepened and widened. Between the Yorubas and Igbos, an underground war of tribal bitterness and attrition has been raging, itself largely the outcome of the defeat of Tinubu by Peter Obi of Labour Party in the 2023 Presidential election in Lagos State, the supposedly impregnable political fortress and headquarters of the President.

In the North, besides Boko Haram’s long existing war of attrition, the ravages of the internecine skirmishes thrown up by ragtag formations of Fulani cattlemen and Bandits [both groups, in the main, the encouragement, if not creation, of President Buhari for the promotion and sustenance of Fulani irredentism] have rendered the country socially and economically restive amidst grave political worries. Thus, Tinubu’s politics has not been able to endear him to the North.

In the circumstance, when tomorrow comes, the tomorrow of 2027, Emilokansomiasis, with all its seasoned braggadocio, all its sweeteningly revamped Awalokan political mathematics, may find it very pretty challenging guaranteeing the Jagaban of politics a Rock of Gibraltar standing in the Presidential election. That, in itself, is the way these things go by. Like with the Communists’ Marxist postulation by which the thesis gives rise to its antithesis, even Nigeria’s very gifted Machiavelli and power mathematician may find in his deft magic wand some real plague as well.

Oh, what a charmed political scenery ours is!

• This article was originally published in Tell magazine. It is republished here with permission