Ancient Yoruba says, he who seeks to purchase only the fresh head and limbs of a tortoise will end up buying the whole creature — “Ẹni t’ó ńwá orí ahun láti rí; t’ó ńwá ẹsè ahun láti rà, onít’òhún á ra odidi ahun.” That ancestral wisdom, which carries the weight of Nostradamus’ predictions, captures the kernel of the tango between the 31-member Nigerian Progressive Governors Forum (PGF) and FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike last week.
The abrasive Wike arrived at the “Ìṣò L’ékụ-l’éja” — the herbalist’s stall of rats and fish, representing the 31 governors — and asked to buy only a tortoise’s head and limbs. In his guttural, impatient voice, Wike insists he wants no part of the full creature. But the Hope Uzodinma-led PGF is querying the logic of this impending transaction: If Wike’s Rainbow Coalition supports President Bola Tinubu’s return to office, it must go the whole hog and buy the tortoise whole. The PGF refuses to let an outside coalition weaken the ruling party or fragment grassroots loyalties ahead of 2027. Anyone who wanted its tortoise cannot be allowed to have its fragments.
That territorial war sparked immense political tension last week. PGF members filed out like wild cats — or enraged termites defending their mound. On Arise TV, APC chieftain Farouk Aliyu admitted Wike had caused massive distraction. When termites are confronted with external invaders of their territory, their fit of anger is synonymous with what you saw in the governors’ eyes last week. Wild cats’ fit is often very clear and unmistakable. Confronted with an interloper, their eyes narrow and dilate entirely. They look onto their target with a fixed, heavy-browed gaze, ready to pounce. Those days as kids, when we were playing in sand dunes and decision time beckoned, we sang: “The eyes of the leopard are red; the tail of the leopard is turgid!” – “Ojú ekùn ńpón, irù ekùn ńle!”
Yet, at their Abuja press conference, the PGF veiled its red eyes in diplomacy. Uzodinma was apparently afraid of the leopard and avoided naming it outright, even when Wike was the subject of the press conference. Who dares to peer a torch into the eyes of “Ògìdán, olóólà ijù” — the lone predator in the wild whose patterned spots is scarified by nature with tribal marks, and whose sharp claws mark its prey like an artist’s knife?
Still, Uzodinma found his footing: the PGF remains unequivocal that it will endorse no political alliance outside the official APC structure. It dismissed Wike’s Rainbow Coalition as a rude interloper. Aliyu reinforced this, insisting that APC will only sell the whole tortoise: the governors, not Wike, will run campaign structures in their respective states.
Wike would not hear of that. He promptly went deep down into the sewage, brought out chunky smelly faecal matter with his bare hands and pelted it on the PGF. Governors opposed to his Rainbow Coalition were “419-smart and politically lazy,” he said. If you didn’t hear it well, you’d think a motor-park tout was the protagonist. He singled out Kwara State governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq and Uzodinma in an ad-hominem rain of abuses that signpost his garrulity and intolerance for the other person. Aliyu promptly called out his arrogance, urging him to watch his words and learn humility.
Beyond the insults, this friction highlights a deeper struggle for party control on the road to 2027. Stripped to its core, the exchange resembles the accusative howling between an adulterous woman and her liaison, something in the mould of a mistress and her partner washing their dirty linen in the public after a failed extra-marital fling. Rather than mere “shame,” the dynamics of traditional adultery aptly explain this drama. As Dadakuada bard, Odolaye Aremu, chanted: “Ìjà níí gb’ẹyìn àlè” — Fights are always the end of adulterous flings.
APC’s decision to bring a quarrelsome, voluptuous fling into its household in 2023 was bound to prove fatal. That liaison is akin to a man who takes a termagant — a woman always aggressively nagging, scolding and fighting to wangle her way through in her husband’s home (Pa-mí-nkú obìnrin tíí se orí bęnbę s’ókǫ) — as a consort. The end is predictable.
First, adultery is an affair kept secret until a messy spat exposes its squalid details. It is only when a messy fight ensues between the offeror and offeree — apologies to lawyers — that, in moments of exchanges of howling, its messy details unfurl. Outside of Aso Rock and Wike, no one knows the terms of agreement struck in 2023 between the philandering Villa and the PDP fling who is today in charge of the FCT. Second, a habit of illicit escapades as the APC has had in three years-plus with all manner of whores cannot but eventually lead him to an asínwín (madwoman); an àjẹ (a witch), or an òbùn (a filthy woman). In courting Wike, the APC’s hired farmhand (alágbàro) must have strangely acquired a field crawling with venomous snakes.
But the streetwalker the APC picked in 2023, with whom it has been in bed, has got her rewards. In the television interview, Aliyu said this much: “If you want to say that Wike has helped us, we accept that. But he has also been adequately compensated. The position of FCT minister is good and huge compensation in a political setting of this country.” Aliyu then concluded: “We don’t want either Wike or any other person from any other party to insult our leaders just because you have helped us.”
Adultery is abhorrent to political morality. In any sane polity, a figure who served as local government chairman, governor, and minister under an opposition political party and turning around to become a major-domo in the ruling party, is a bizarre arrangement. When you eagerly pick up a chattel discarded by another, you must ask why the original owner let it go. Did APC assume that the PDP which allowed Wike slid in the last months of 2023 was stupid? It is like finding a motionless buffalo stuck in a marsh (àbàtà) and excitedly pulling out a knife to skew its flesh, ignoring that its heavy filth might have caused its collapse.
If APC thought it found a humongous buffalo of Nyesom Wike’s monstrous size trapped in a puddle and picked it up, it apparently didn’t reckon that its overweight of dirt could have led to its fall. Couldn’t the Wike buffalo have been trapped by its own hubris? Now that the house is in commotion, no one should pity the APC for shouting “Eureka!” over a trapped buffalo find. If Wike was not poisonous to a peaceful PDP, would the original PDP have discarded its chattel?
Yoruba proverbs note that a half-cured lunatic has cyclic manifestations. In 2023, the APC was enchanted by Wike’s allure; now, it realizes it carries a faggot infested with stinging bees on its head. From the way this pretty woman sitting comfy in its living room laughs when there is no joke, (apologies to Bob Marley) the huge problem that lay ahead is finally here.
The APC governors complain bitterly today about Wike’s gutter rhetoric. Another proverb exposes their ignorance of power dynamics. It says, if one’s mother’s lover is greater than one’s father, one must address him as ‘father’” (Bí àlè ìyá ẹni bá ju bàbá ẹni lọ, bàbá là á pè é”). The lover in this regard, who is spitting in the APC’s face, and who sees himself as greater than their father in Aso Rock, is Wike. They should either shut their mouths or allow him call their bluffs for free. Furthermore, don’t they know that a woman who destroys her previous home will not hesitate to turn her new home into a house of commotion? If Wike glibly destroyed his PDP for the peace of APC, would he hesitate to destroy an alien home? It reminds me of the tortoise who lifts up a morsel of food and his child opens her mouth to be fed with it. In reply, the tortoise asked her if he wasn’t miserly, how would the world name him ahun, the miserly?
For APC, Odolaye Aremu’s song captures its current travails: He sang, apparently sarcastically — The monstrous desire you craved is what you have now! — “Ohun t’óo l’óó dà, l’o dà yìí o!” Traditional folklore tells us that baby vipers eat their way out of their mother’s stomach: “Ọmọ inú ọká níí ṣe ikú pa ọká.” A party that covets unchecked bigness inevitably creates its own internal opposition and possibly, death. That is the bigness APC craved.
All said and done, he who brings the cripple to the shindig must take him back home. Aliyu and some other APC stalwarts have asked their Baba to quickly come back home. When he comes back from his photo-ops with French’s Emmanuel Macron, he must take his cripple back home. For the APC, that saying by the Yoruba — though extremely sexist and one of the weapons used by traditional Africa to under-price the woman — that a household where a bad-mannered woman gives binding instructions is a house on the verge of disintegration is trite. Wild trees will grow over it (Ilé tí obìnrin bá ti ńké atótó arére, títú ni ńtú, igi arère níí hù níbè kéhìn). How can a strange fling give instructions to children of a home? How can a strange house guest be allowed to run the home?
A brother called Judas: Is Charles Soludo Cain?
History records that the most fatal stabs always come from within oneself. In other words, there is a motif of proximity to stabs. Deepest wounds are often delivered, not by external rivals, but by those within the same household or friends.
On September 22, 1828, the reality of the above dawned on the Zulu of present day South Africa. Afflicted by a strange psychosis that struck him after the death of Nandi, his mother, King Shaka Zulu went berserk. He ordered a year-long mourning of Nandi, forbade planting of new crops, banned milk from the kingdom and ordered the execution of pregnant women, as well as their husbands.
How does the kingdom handle this? Shaka’s half-brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana, as well as his induna, (chief advisor/attendant) Mbopha, had immediate answers. As Shaka’s army embarked on a military expedition northwards, the conspirators saw a loophole. While Shaka slept at his royal kraal in kwaDukuza, the trio caught him off guard, stabbing him fatally with their spears. As he lay dead, Dingane seized the reign of the Zulu Kingdom.
If that example is too alien, lost in the bowel of two centuries, let’s come home, to a contemporary example on the African continent. Thomas Sankara and Blaise Compaoré were what Yoruba call Kòrí-kòsùn — bosom, intimate and inseparable soulmates who shared an extremely close, deep bond. That bond was to later become one of the most famous real-life political fratricides on the continent. While Sankara was Head of State of Burkina Faso, he and Compaoré were not just ideological allies; they referred to each other as “brothers in arms.” In 1987, Compaoré orchestrated the fatal coup that got Sankara executed. He then took over power, while systematically legitimizing his regime by deconstructing Sankara’s revolutionary legacy.
West African Mali empire epic griot recall themes of betrayal similar to the above. The epic goes thus: At the death of King Naré Maghan, his first wife, Sassouma Bereté and her son, Dankaran Touman, conspired against Sundiata Keita, Dankaran’s crippled half-brother. They did this out of envy and fear of Sundiata’s fame. An earlier prophecy had predicted Sundiata’s greatness. Both mother and son mocked Sundiata’s cripple state and then tried to eliminate him. The late King Maghan had in fact left a testament that the young, disabled Sundiata should take over the reign of the kingdom but Dankaran, who now usurped the throne, forced his crippled brother into exile.
Balla Fasseké, Sundiata’s devoted griot and advisor, took sides with Sundiata, leading to his exile, too, by Dankaran. In exile, Sundiata waxed stronger while, on the throne, Dankaran appeared to the people as a weakling. Then, when Soumaoro Kanté, Dankaran’s sorcerer, invaded Mande, out of fear, Dankaran fled. The void of a vacant monarchy led the Mande to send emissaries to Sundiata who, in a triumphant return, eventually became the king.
In both ancient and contemporary times, there is a huge literature of brothers stabbing brothers. From the biblical Cain killing his brother, Abel, out of jealousy of divine prosperity; to Julius Caesar being stabbed by his friend, Brutus, the literature drips of blood. Among the Igbo, there is a recurring motif of two brothers hunting or traveling together. One, the less-acclaimed/jealous brother plots to kill the other, so as to claim the crown or inheritance. Also in Igbo cosmology, extracting personal gains from one’s kinsman (Nwanne) at the expense of his life or well being, for personal gain, is considered a severe cultural transgression. Chinua Achebe’s literature is filled with such thematic warnings. He built a cultural archetype about fratricide as capable of breaking the fabric of Igbo community.
Again, traditional Igbo sees any attempt at breaking Umunna (kinship) values as cultural transgression. It questions the morality of exposing and externalizing home-front disputes as tantamount to handing over one’s kinsman to external political adversaries.
From whichever lens you may look at it, though framed as fiscal transparency and Anambra State governor, Prof Charles Soludo, claimed he was “setting the records straight” by releasing his Anambra brother, Peter Obi’s alleged debt claims, what he did was actually Brutus stabbing Caesar, simplicita. It is fratricide disguised as governance audit. After he stabbed Caesar, Brutus’ defence, too, just like Soludo’s, was that it was done out of duty to the Roman state.
The above stab is also a replica of what happened between joint Roman Emperors and biological brothers, Caracalla and Geta. It is one of Roman antiquity’s most brutal accounts of sibling rivalry. It is dubbed the story of political fratricide and paranoia. Both brothers were born only eleven months apart. Their parents were Emperor Septimius Severus and Empress Julia Domna. Both brothers grew up in the palace with mutual childhood hatred, up until their adulthood.
A contemporary historian, Cassius Dio, recorded that both men serially clashed over sports, music, and social circles. Their father, in his bid to stabilize his dynasty, made them co-emperors. History recorded that while Caracalla was emperor in 198 AD, Geta was in 209 AD. In 211 AD, as he lay dying on his deathbed in Eboracum, modern York, Severus’ famous advice to his sons was, “Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men.”
On the throne, however, the hostility of the brothers paralyzed Roman governance. They then mutually divided the imperial palace into two. To avoid being poisoned, they fortified their doors with bodyguards and employed food-tasters. They even attempted to divide the Roman empire into two, a plan that was thwarted by their mother who tearfully asked if they wanted to divide her body, too. In December 211 AD, Caracalla decided to eliminate his brother. He arranged a fake reconciliation for their mother’s apartment, a place that would raise no suspicion and make Geta feel safe. There, Caracalla’s guards pounced on Geta and, as he fled to their mother’s bosom, clinging to her neck, he was stabbed to death nevertheless.
After killing him, Caracalla ordered what was called condemnation memory – a damnatio memoriae – which removed his brother’s name from every inscription in Rome, including his images. Any contrary effort, he decreed, was an offence against the Roman State. He also executed about 20,000 of Geta’s palace staff, supporters, friends, and political allies all over Rome.
What Soludo did last week in Anambra State is comparable to damnatio memoriae. Just as Brutus stabbed Caesar under the guise of “doing it for the republic” and administrative duty, on the on-going loan brouhaha, Soludo is Brutus and Caracalla rolled into one. Through Dr Law Mefor, his Commissioner for Information, Soludo disclaimed Obi’s self portrayal as loans-repellant during his time as Anambra State governor. Mefor, in a statement, said Obi left unpaid loans from eight different external borrowings, the total balance of which, at the official exchange rate, stood at N127.4 billion.
To me, the veracity or otherwise of both men’s claims on the loans is secondary. My questions to Soludo are: Since the man he claimed is his “good friend” — for whose sake he is stabbing his Nwanne — left office in 2007, has Soludo ever heard a word of the humongous broad daylight theft done on that friend’s behalf in his home turf? Has Soludo ever since then heard successors of his “good friend” talk about the loans he took while in office? Does he know that putting a shroud on his “friend’s” dirty linen was done in the spirit of their own brand of Umunna?
My concluding question to Charles Soludo will then be — is this newfound “Et tu, Brute?” spirit of his, which propelled the stabbing of his Nwanne — a result of an ambition to be president of Nigeria after his Anambra tenure, or, is Charles naturally a grumpy Cain and a betrayer Judas, who sold his predecessor for 30 pieces of shekels?
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