Editorial
Ordeal of ‘Olori’ Naomi: A metaphor for Tinubu’s failed state
Nothing speaks more to the irony of fate and contradiction! Since the first stampede in Ibadan on Wednesday, December 18, 2024, Nigeria has been in a set of unusual frenzy – one that underscores everything the country has turned out in recent years – a country were the wicked reigns – a country where the victims are confined to applauding their oppressors or suffer for not doing so.
Silekunola Moronke Naomi, the ex-wife of the Ooni of Ife showcases the symbol of this uncanny situation. She is currently an inmate at the Agodi Correctional Centre in Oyo State. Her offence was organising the event that led to the deadly Oyo stampede on that fateful day where 35 children reportedly lost their lives.
How did she get there? Kindness! Her good heart led her there. The narrative was that she had earlier sent out an invitation to help 5,000 indigent children of the state to come for some freebies in the spirit of the Yuletide. But she simply got more than she bargained for. Many say, this was not her first time. But how was she to know that these were not normal times. She never envisaged the level to which the country had generated. That was the anti-climax.
Now, she has become the victim. Slammed with a four-count charge of “conspiracy and murder” before the Chief Magistrate Court in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, she is ostensibly being made to carry the can of the entire frustrations from the obvious failures that have beset the country over the years – outcomes of not only an insipid and clueless leadership, but one led by a political party that has served the citizenry with nothing outside one thing – PAIN!
They insist that she must pay for her “crimes.” Their footsoldiers are all and about, boasting that she must be used to set examples against those others who commit similar mortal sins or are intent on doing so. The police – now a willing tool – more as an agent of repression and oppression, have suddenly found a new gusto. They now want to do their duty and enforce the law.
Even the President, upped this ante when he told his visitors, at his first media chat in Lagos: “I’ve been giving out foodstuff and commodities, including envelopes in Bourdillon, for the last 25 years, and I’ve never experienced this kind of incident because we are organised and disciplined. If you know you won’t have enough to give, don’t attempt to give or publicise it.”
That Tinubu, chose to toe this line of blaming others outside himself, remains the major tragedy. But you know what? All the frenzies are tailored for one thing – a distraction. They are meant to deviate from the main issue – hunger in the land. The ground for that calamity was watered by the callousness and mindlessness, if not the bestiality of the past 18 months since the government of President Bola Tinubu took charge.
We submit that no government, past or present, has plunged Nigeria into the level of bottomless pit of hopelessness witnessed during this period. Not even the government of Muhammadu Buhari, his predecessor. Yes, under that locust-ravaged eight years, the performance of Nigeria became so abysmal that it became the poorest country in the world. Yes, Nigeria struggled with other countries in the world for the top position in the misery index. Yes, Nigerians became so despondent that many incidents of frustrated citizens practically jumping into lagoons or drinking poison to end it all, became rampant.
Yet, things were never this bad. In fact, whatever the country witnessed in that era, have increased in multiples under Tinubu’s nose. If indeed the ex-queen committed any crime, it was not in her kindness to save these Nigerians from imminent sure death by hunger, it was in not capturing the level of hunger and despondency in the land.
For those calling for her head, including the analysts making noise in the media, what plans could she have put in place to wedge those scores of empty bellies? What magic could she have performed to contain that hungry crowd with fire in their eyes? Did these critics not hear that mothers, practically threw their children over the fence, so that they would not miss the opportunity of grabbing something, if only to assuage the hunger of that day? What magic could have sufficed outside abandoning the project totally.
Indeed, witnesses have come out to testify that the December 18th event was not the first time the same Olori organised the event. Yet, she never had such a sad outing. Where then did she err to the level of being served such a sad fate, all because she wanted to feed the poor? This is the question many of her traducers must answer. When has kindness become a crime?
Okay, the police that are now harrying and haunting her with murder charges, where were they before the incident? Did they need to be invited before they would act in public interest? How many times were they invited to hound Nigerians into detention or even liquidating others during demonstrations? Who invited them during the August 1-10 hunger protests?
Yet, the same institution, which was quick to corral scores of underage children into their gaol and charge them for treason simply because they protested against the biting hunger in the land, could not find and employ the same enthusiasm in protecting hungry citizens from plunging to their early death in the same manner. They now needed to be invited.
Ostensibly, the similar calamities that occurred in Abuja and Okija in Anambra State, on Saturday, December 21, just some few hours after have since shown where the problem lies – the empty stomachs of Nigerians – their hopelessness – their misery – no more, no less. They also indicate that the solution does not lie in rounding up the Good Samaritans like the Olori, but in tackling the crisis from the root – filling those empty stomachs. Nothing else would work.
Mathew Hassan Kukah, could not have made a better point in this regard, when he said in his Christmas message that: “The tragedies that occurred in Okija, Ibadan, and Abuja where innocent people lost their lives in stampedes at food distribution points are a metaphor for the situation of desperation that citizens have been thrown into. The failures of government to respond concretely toward ending the horrible crisis of hunger and desperation has created the conditions for these avoidable tragedies.
“Citizens are lapsing into despair. The Catholic Church is not new to providing succour for the needy and vulnerable. Government needs to work more closely with institutions that help to promote the common good of our society.”
Before him, Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), in the 2023 presidential election, had pointed to the danger in the current clampdown on the Olori and others, saying: “While still in mourning mood over the precious lives lost due to tragic incidents stemming from the distribution of palliatives, I am deeply pained that such occurrences are a reflection of the severe hunger and poverty currently ravaging our nation.
“I want to make a heartfelt appeal to the government to reconsider this action. Acts of goodwill, even when they unintentionally result in unfortunate outcomes, should not be criminalised. This particular initiative was intended to alleviate suffering and bring relief to the people.
“If accountability is to be sought, it should begin with the leaders and policymakers whose cumulative actions—or inactions—have inflicted the widespread hardship and suffering we see today. It is the systemic failure of governance, not the efforts of well-meaning individuals, that should be scrutinized. As a nation, we must collectively retrace our steps and prioritise policies and actions that uplift the lives of our people. Let us redirect our focus toward creating a system where no citizen is left desperate for necessities.”
Because we are on all fours with the above views and also insist that the main culprits are Tinubu and his government for wantonly battering the Nigerian economy by unleashing such mindless, heartless and outright wickedness on the citizenry through his obviously impulsive policies, Olori Silekunola Moronke Naomi and all those similarly arrested must be released immediately. Let the wicked pay for their sins, not the benevolent and kindhearted.
On Wednesday, July 8, 2026, Peter Obi, candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), practically took the media space of Nigeria by storm, with his alarming claim that he might not be alive to contest the 2027 presidential election.
Obi was not talking about some strange illness discovered by his doctors, which had limited his days on earth or alluding to any other kind of natural cause of death. On the contrary, he was forecasting of a more diabolical, highly sinister variant of unnatural, untimely kind of death – political assassination or any other dimension relating to it.
The former Governor of Anambra State, who has remained the main thing in the polity since taking the Nigerian political firmament by storm with his emergence as contender for the nation’s number one job in 2022, ending up with a stunning performance in the February 25, presidential election as candidate of the Labour Party (LP), despite all odds, and prediction of naysayers, was not in doubt about where the threat was domiciled.
A guest of #WithChude, a popular podcast, hosted by Chude Jideonwo, he was instead quite emphatic that his reading of his current ordeal suggests that his traducers, might not stop with their clear intent of preventing him from being on the ballot in the 2027 presidential contest, but up the ante to the level of taking his life if the push eventually graduated to shove.
He did not mince words where the arrows were coming and who was pulling the bows, but was equally emphatic of that as well – the All Progressives Congress (APC) government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Hear him: “Every single thing I do for a living, this government is frustrating it. Deliberately so. Everything. So, there is even a possibility, if they have the opportunity, I will not be alive.
“It’s not an accusation. I know. I get frustration every day. Because you do things that you think would be normal – it is not normal anymore. They won’t come directly and say, ‘Oh, we’re doing this,’ but you can see their hand in virtually everything.
“They are attacking everybody who is in opposition personally. I am being attacked personally. Everything. Even to provide me with necessary things that I should have been entitled to, not at all. I had a case recently at the airport, where people who work in the airport came and locked my car. And I said, ‘It’s me.’
“But I said, ‘Look at the cars of other people.’ And you could see them talking to each other, as if, ‘Who is this one? And I see people I know at the airport, they will not greet me because they are fearing that if they greet me…And I have people send me invitations and say, ‘My son, my daughter is wedding, but please don’t come.’”
Since this outing, it has been hoopla on the Nigerian turf as the centrifugal and centripetal forces pull from all sides on the matter in a dog-fight between the government forces and Obi’s supporters.
In fact, Abuja did not waste time in producing a quick riposte, with Bayo Onanuga, spokesman of the President, ostensibly conveying the sentiments of his boss on the matter, dismissing the NDC candidate as a liar and a cry-baby.
He has support from Festus Keyamo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Management, who quickly pulled out a video of what was supposed to be the airport incident Obi was referring to underscore the point that the former governor was indeed the guilty party.
In fact, so intense was Keyemo’s intervention that he not only instructed Obi to render an immediate and unreserved apologies to the airport staff – the selfsame people he accused of insulting him – but pay N25,000, which he claimed was the mandatory fine for the “crime” of parking in an unauthorised place, he allegedly committed.
Now as the drama in the nation’s theatre of the absurd continues to build up into a fearsome political fireball, it is pertinent to assess the situation, based on the facts on the ground – past and present.
In so doing, it is apposite to review the images on the huge national screen playing from the reel of events since Obi happened on the Nigerian political space. This will underscore whether his outcry could be considered as coming from genuine fears or dismissed as non-issues, as the Aso Rock Villa, enjoins.
Does NEXT International Supermarket, arguable once the biggest monuments in Abuja and one of the visible concerns linked to Obi, suddenly going up in flames some years back, not deserve a mention in the current conversation?
What about the outburst of Monday Okpebholo, Governor of Edo State, warning the NDC candidate never to step his foot in Benin the capital or anywhere within the territory without his express say-so? Where does that fit in?
How does Abuja capture the real life attack on Obi, then a chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), in the same Benin under the nose of the selfsame Okpebholo? Does that bullet-ridden vehicle that told the story of the entire macabre event in more ways than words not mean anything?
Okay, how is Obi supposed to process the silence of Abuja after an APC chieftain warned him not to step his feet into Rivers State or do so at the pain of death, when elsewhere such open threat ought to instigate an instant action, including the arrest and prosecution of the culprit?
What about the outburst of the selfsame Onanuga warning the NDC candidate – never to interfere in Lagos politics – following the blitzkrieg that came after trouncing Tinubu in his own backyard during the 2023 presidential election?
How was Obi supposed to process the pulling down of a prime property in Lagos belonging to his brother, in the context of this warning and other events that nuanced the actions of Alausa and other players since that 2023 routing?
Given this list of what is in the public domain, though not exhaustible yet – not knowing what else could have transpired beyond what is known to him and his supposed traducers alone, does it make for Obi to be complacent and believe that all is well?
For us, no politician in Nigeria today could be accused of being too careful with the foregoing events, not the least, Obi, given the long list of unresolved political killings history in the country.
The horrendous cases of the likes of Funso Williams, Bola Ige, Aminasori Dikkibo, Harry Marshal, Ogbonnaya Uche (OGB), who fell to the bullets of gunmen at various times, have not continued to blur the nation’s political firmament, but remain sad reminders of how awry things could go.
WHIRLWINDNEWS believes, therefore that the case of Obi deserves more than being dismissed with a wave of the hands as Abuja has since done. We believe that, not only the NDC candidate, but the nation needs the assurance that he is alive to contest in the election.
The consequences of Obi coming to harm might be graver than those who believe they are safe in the fortresses of Abuja foresee. It might signal the doomsday. Therefore, that assurance must come in visible words and deed. Now!
It began less than 10 minutes after taking the oath of office. In his address to the nation, he uttered those three-letter words – subsidy is gone. The ink with which he signed the documents declaring him President was yet to dry.
That was it. From that moment, Nigerians have known nothing but poverty, tears and death. It was a declaration that came out of impulse rather than articulacy. It was not even contained in his original speech prepared for the occasion. But it sprouted out – from a rash, unthinking and impetuous mental construct.
But the effect was instant, the impact direct. From that moment, Nigerians have never known peace. Every thing took a cue. Minutes after, the news broke that the price of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise known as petrol had jumped from N189 to N550. It was that instant. Today, it hovers around N1,500.
The effect: Within minutes, transportation cost quadrupled. So too, commodity prices. Caught unawares, marketers, who had earlier thought it was a day of the rains as customers rushed to their shops, soon became suspicious and then got wiser – these were not ordinary customers but smart alecs playing a fast one on them.
They stopped selling, retrieved the items they could from those who had not disappeared with their goods and closed shop to study the situation properly. Hours after, they responded. A plate of eba and soup, went up from N200 to N1,000. Prices hit the rooftops.
In fact, the vehicle transporting what used to be Nigeria, which had been moving at a horse and buggy pace in the days of Muhammadu Buhari, stopped abruptly, engaged the reverse gear and began galloping backwards. That has remained the ugly, parlous tale of the Tinubu days, since May 29, 2023.
Now, the expectation would be that the President and his government that wrought such a horrendous punishment on the polity, would themselves take some blows. But nada! Instead, the opposite was the case. Within months of plunging the citizens into the untold hardship Tinubu went on a binge, spending money – in the words of Olusegun Obasanjo, former President – like a drunken sailor.
Few weeks after, as Nigerians were reeling and gasping in pain from the impact of their new situation, 469 newly-minted Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), rolled out from factories in Japan, where they were produced into the premises of the National Assembly for the just inaugurated members.
Put the cost at N100billion – that is N160million for each unit, plus other charges. Reason: The lawmakers needed the vehicles because of their good suspension system, to navigate the so many bad roads in Nigeria. Yes, you heard right. How could they think well and make good laws after the hassles of the bad roads? Tinubu saw reasons, acquiesced and voila!
But it did not end there. Tinubu suddenly realised that Kashim Shettima, his deputy, needed a new home “befitting” his new office. Pronto! A voucher of N21billion was raised and he had it. Till date a haze still hovers over the project.
The last news that was heard was that Number Two refused to take residence because the entire environment, including the toilets was wired to the teeth to monitor him. And Number Two needed privacy.
Again, in the same weeks, Oga Patapata, also realised that Madam needed to transport more comfortably. Pronto! It was arranged. Another voucher was raised for cars for the Office of the First Lady. Cost N1.2billion. Of course, madam needed the comfort for peace at home.
Naturally, since transportation is not done by land alone, he also took care of that. For the sea, a yacht was procured. Cost N5billion. Because the birds in the presidential fleet were not good enough, Tinubu did the needful.
He enriched the fleet with the one befitting of his status and had it transformed to mimic the US Air Force One. To complete the status symbol project, he also added a replica of The Beast, the US presidential automobile.
Ironically, the funds used in procuring these luxury lifestyle, came, not out of productive ventures of Nigeria, but through borrowing. Today, Tinubu has practically borrowed Nigeria blind, doubling or even tripling that of his predecessors.
Meanwhile Nigerians had upped the ante from mere groaning and skreiching. Citizens, unable to take it anymore, now stop their hitherto sleek vehicles on the Third Mainland Bridge and plunge into the Lagos lagoon to end it all. The option is now more rampant than remote and occasional.
Many others, taking the Socrates option, now drink hemlock and many more simply sleep off without any intention of waking up. That is where we are. That is the new Nigeria – the Tinubu Nigeria. But there is more.
Terrorists and the landlords of the forest, having now discovered that the Commander-in-Chief has other fancies than security and welfare of the people – the constitutionally-declared primary purpose of government and scant regard for the citizens, have practically gone haywire. They have taken over and established their authority.
Presently, outside those wantonly slaughtered or butchered in their homes like animals at the abattoir, incinerated alive while sleeping on their beds, among other forms of decimation, many more citizens are now spending months, going to years as victims of captivity with them in various forests in Nigeria.
In their rampage, the terrorists have since broken all barriers considered out of place hitherto. One of their escapades is the present videos of the school children and teachers taken from Oyo State. The gory imagery captures the current Nigerian story.
For instance, on Thursday, just as the sound of heavy celebration was going on in neighbouring Ogun State as the world marked the Ojude Oba yearly carnival, two of the victims, one of them with a toddler on her back, were pleading for their lives, as others went through various forms of torture, including heavy whipping like beasts.
Don’t forget that the terrorists had earlier slaughtered one of their colleagues. In the new video, the totally terrified women, informed that they had chosen another victim to be similarly eliminated. Yet, no word about rescue! Terrible!
Interestingly, if not painfully, Tinubu’s response, in the few cases he bothered, was to see the crisis through the politics lens. His most recent reaction was to tell the world that the harvest of attacks and carnages ravaging the country, were sponsored by his political enemies, intent on shoving him out of power. That to him was all that mattered.
Now, where are your powers as C-in-C? They are mostly found in the most disgraceful economic and political acts of impunity. Nigerians now waking up to hear of the award of brain-dazing contracts such as the N15trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and Badagry-Maiduguri Highway – with scant regard for official regulations, is now becoming more common than rare.
Few days after one of the teachers was beheaded and the video of the hideous act made to circulate on the social media, the President and his All Progressives Congress (APC), party, rolled out the drums of his winning the party’s ticket to contest the 2027 presidential election.
To say that it has been three years of weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of the teeth, is a clear euphemism. There is no starker way of putting it than calamity – pure, unmitigated catastrophe – disaster.
Then comes the big question. Nigeria is already breasting the tape of these ruinous years of the first term. Suppose Tinubu succeeds in renewing his tenure by January next year? Will Nigeria survive five more years of a life like the last three? What will be left of Nigeria? Is there a way out, outside shouting – God forbid!?
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