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Festus Adedayo

A couple of months ago, history walked on its two legs into my feeble embrace. When it did, I never knew it was Providence’s own way of anticipating Nigerian Aso Rock’s nauseating historical revisionism. History’s embrace had come by the way of a terse mail I received from foremost online medium, Premium Times. The newspaper had been sent an enquiry from a South African British author on February 7, 2025, “wanting to make contact with one of your Op-Ed writers, Festus Adedayo.” The enquirer described himself as “an old Africa hand (who) lived and worked in Nigeria…(who) also wrote (a book) on the Nigerian civil war”. I immediately proceeded to make contact with the British author. One thing led to the other and the enquirer and I were glued together by Thoth, the Egyptian mythological god of writing. He then couriered to me a copy of his recent book with the title, Takka Takka Bom Bom: A South African Correspondent’s Story (2022).<!--more-->

My new friend is 86 years-old Albertus Johannes Venter, famously known as Al J. Venter, with a Boer and German ancestry. He is a white South African war correspondent, documentary filmmaker and author of more than forty books. Venter initially served in the South African Navy between 1956 and 1960, rising to the rank of Acting Leading Seaman. He was twice wounded in combat, by a Soviet anti-tank mine in Angola and by sub-machine gun fire. Venter was in Nigeria in 1965 to work for John Holt, and during the Nigerian 1967 civil war, covered it as an Africa and Middle East correspondent for Jane’s International Defence Review, which produced the war memoir, Biafra’s War: A Tribal Conflict In Nigeria That Left A Million Dead (2016). In coverage of the war, he was in the company of his friend, Frederick Forsyth, who was BBC’s war correspondent for Biafra.

Venter also covered a number of wars in Africa. He was in Uganda during Idi Amin Dada’s bloodthirsty reign in the 1970s which culminated in his hour-long documentary, Africa’s Killing Fields, which gained viewing traction in the United States. He also spent several years in the Middle East, traversing Israel and Lebanon, covered the Israeli invasion force that made incursion into Beirut in 1982 and the war hostilities in Sudan, Angola, Congo, Rhodesia and Portuguese Guinea. His recent war coverage was in Sierra Leone, working with South African mercenary pilot, Neall Ellis, as they flew combat in a Russian helicopter gunship, an experience he published as a book on mercenaries he titled War Dog: Fighting Other People's Wars.

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In my piece of November 24, 2024, with the title, Obasanjo and Tinubu’s Tańtólóhun dogs, I critiqued Nigeria’s presidential media team’s reactive and oftentimes combative approach to communication. In it, I drew a parallel between this bellicose communication approach and German art enthusiast and scholar, Horst Ulrich Beier, famously known as Ulli Beier’s narrative about the power and powerlessness of dogs. For a media team, President Bola Tinubu apparently or ostensibly keeps a kennel of Rottweilers dogs who, like Beier’s Tańtólóhun dogs, almost every time get unleashed on perceived haters of their principal.

Outgoing African Development Bank (AfDB’s) President Akinwumi Adesina seems to be the latest victim of the blood-baying incisors of these Tańtólóhun hounds. In the last two years of this administration, the presidential groove must be brimming with dry bones of top-placed Nigerians whose fleshes have been mercilessly torn into pieces by these insufferable dogs. As president of AfDB, Adesina has variously commented on the economies of virtually all countries in Africa. His' had been a passionate bother about the slide in African economies and how, in the immortal words of Chinua Achebe, African leadership had left its plates unwashed and a swarm of flies now holds conferences inside its dirty plate.

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Following this path, which has variously earned him kudos as a concerned African, Dr. Adesina, in a keynote address delivered at Chapel Denham, an investment firm’s 20th anniversary held in Lagos, issued a stern warning that, if Nigeria desires to attain a globally competitive and industrialized status by 2050, it must radically transform its economic model. He then warned of a looming deeper economic depression which he saw manifest in his mental computation. His bother was that, with a current per capita of a mere $824, Nigerians are significantly worse off than they were in 1960 at independence.

Silence should have been a golden reply. Weren’t we warned that it is not all clothes that are spread to dry under sunlight? Replying Adesina with such gruff is akin to a proverbial man without a virile sexual potency, and who, rather than insert into where his effort was needed, claimed he could insert a thread inside the eye of a needle! Street wisdom counsels silence in this regard. Between the duo of American president, Abraham Lincoln and celebrated American humorist, Mark Twain, a quip credited to either of them dictates the route to follow by the presidential media office in the circumstance. It says, it is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubts. The moment our boss, Bayo Onanuga, chose to disobey Twain and Lincoln, he let the cat out of the bag.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) by the media office, we were entertained to a caterwaul of boring statistics. Adesina’s “figures (that) do not align with available data”, it said, and his comparative analysis of Nigeria’s GDP per capita in 1960 and 2025, misleading. “GDP per capita is not the only criterion used to determine whether people live better lives now than in the past. Indeed, it is a poor tool for assessing living standards,” the post stated. Apparently still fuming that anyone had the temerity to have another opinion about the Eldorado government Aso Rock runs today, Onanuga argued that GDP does not reflect economic realities: “GDP per capita is silent on whether Nigerians in 2025 enjoy better access to healthcare, education, and transportation, such as rail and air transport than in 1960,” he said.

However, the Tańtólóhun dogs did their comparative analysis and reached a conclusion favourable to their narrative. “We can comfortably say without contradiction that it (the economy) is at least 50 times, if not 100 times, more than it was at Independence,” they said. They also recalled that, “in 1960, Nigeria had only 18,724 telephone lines for about 45 million people” but, “today, over 200 million Nigerians have access to mobile and digital services.”

The tirelessly whining old Ọkọ Idọgọ train eventually arrived its destination. According to the Nigerian presidency, which reads 2027 into every patriotic call for a governmental sanity, Adesina’s statement was politically motivated. It compared him to the Villa’s tormentor and Achilles heel. “Adesina spoke like a politician, in the mould of Peter Obi, and did not do due diligence before making his unverifiable statement,” Onanuga said. The question that needed to be asked the Tańtólóhun dogs was asked some decades back by another Juju music great, Chief Ebenezer Obey, in an evergreen vinyl. In an imponderable situation as this, Obey asked the Woman cloth seller who held a whiplash as she stood guard of her clothes, what correlation existed between cloths and goats that could necessitate her standing sentinel over cloths with a whip: Do animals eat lace cloth materials? (Kínni Màmá Aláso ńtà t’ó y’egba dání, àb’éwúré ńje lace ni?) We are asking the Tańtólóhun dogs same Obey question over this statement against revered Dr. Adesina.

Venter’s Takka Takka Bom Bom: A South African Correspondent’s Story is a 27 chapter book of 399 pages, with a chapter entitled “Nigeria: Crazy, but I love it!” It was a title he got from his first report for Argus Africa News Service describing his experience in a 5-year old post-independence Nigeria. Compared to other countries he had been, the then 27-year old Venter said he spent “next to nothing” commuting from Calabar, through Port-Harcourt, Onitsha, Benin across land to Lagos. “It was significant that I never once encountered any hostility throughout my Nigerian peregrinations, political or otherwise. Lagos was then among the most secure cities in Africa,” Venter wrote, stating, “We were out every night, often on foot, moving around the bars on Lagos Victoria Island or up to Yaba and Ikorodu Roadway - often until the wee hours.” Is the situation same today in Tinubu’s Nigeria? The plenty in Nigeria of the time can effortlessly be found in Venter’s fluid narrative. It is also in the people’s sense of nationalism. Take for instance an American Peace Corps female volunteer whose story is in the book. She had sent home a postcard which referred to Nigeria as a disgusting filth pile and slums. All hell was let loose when somebody in the post-office passed the card over to someone in government. Not only was the lady kicked out of the country, Nigerians were still disconsolate until Washington apologized for this indiscretion.

This particular quote from Venter excited me: “…the standard of governance in Nigeria was exemplary… Things worked and that included finances. After completing a spell with the British group John Holt, I shipped all my goods and chattels to South Africa when I left Nigeria. Several months later, a cheque arrived in the post in Johannesburg for money that, the accompanying statement revealed, was a refund for taxes overpaid.” Can one of the Tańtólóhun dogs tell us whether this is still the Nigerian picture?

Nigeria’s presidential office would want us believe that Nigeria is better today than at independence, simply because Nigerians now have access to mobile telephony and modernity. For its attention, statistics on poverty rates, income growth, and factors like affordability of housing, commute times, and environmental quality are better indicators of a people’s overall well-being. The Villa should have availed us that. A few days ago, the World Bank alerted that poverty rate among Nigeria's rural population had slid to an alarming 75.5 per cent. This digs at the core of a deepening inequality and widespread economic hardship across the country. While glittering modern houses abound today, the percentage of Nigerians who had access to shelter in 1960 across population was more than those who do now. Same goes for the percentage of citizens who can access education and even healthcare services. In Benue especially, Northeast and Northwest, Nigeria has literally reverted to the 1967 civil war carnage era with deaths in those areas most likely to have tipped over the one million figure of Biafra.

Now, we have the Nigerian government gloat on a claim of its having paid up IMF debt. The reality staring us in the face is that the suffering of Nigerian people is spreading like bushfire in the harmattan. If the Villa voodoo media doctors can, for a minute, open the shutters and see beyond the comfy Aso Rock, what will confront them is the reality that, every hour, Nigerians slide into poverty and die because they cannot access healthcare and food. Thousands also slant into depression. Flaunting apocryphal statistics of citizen-comfort across ages won’t work. Such exercise is as smelly to the nose as the “remains of dead animals, birds, reptiles,” apologies to Venter, an image provoked as he filmed a documentary on witch-doctors at the Akodessawa Fetish Market, Lome. Citing another Venter phrase, the Villa statistics-bandying, without corresponding description of the people’s plight today, finds simile in his description of someone “using magic to communicate with supernatural spirits and dead people.”

Today, while Aso Rock is winning the war of political demographics and idolatry bow of opposition parties by its feet, it is not winning the hearts of the people. Nigerian political parties, governors, senators, Reps are jumping inside the dirty pond of APC to swim in the mud preparatory to 2027. Great that a Charles Soludo, desperate for a second term, has found an “ideological” liaison in a combine of APC and APGA for an illicit romp. Yes, the president is now “Dike si mba Anambra,” (warrior from the Diaspora) a chieftaincy title conferred on him on Thursday by Igwe Chidubem Iweka who said it was a title “by all the royal fathers from the 179 communities of Anambra State.” What war has the president won since he secured the tenancy of Aso Rock that makes him a Dike, warrior? Hunger war? Hopelessness war? Insecurity war? War against corruption? After politicians finished their trade-off huffing and puffing at the Alex Ekwueme Square, Awka that Thursday and federal largesses exchanged hands, did the people of Anambra go to bed happier or hungrier?

It is apparent that the statistics juggling by “Dike si mba Anambra”’s people are all geared towards 2027. Beautiful. While they appear to have tightened the nuts and bolts of the human factor, I wish they spare a minute to screw together God’s nuts and bolts, too. It is like hunting a game, killing and disemboweling the animal but failing to reckon with its bile busting to foul up a neatly-dressed venison. This reminds me of a gory picture Juju music maestro, King Sunny Ade, painted in one of his 1970s songs. KSA’s imaginary enemies had sent a kid on an errand to the l’éku-l’éja market, almost similar to Lome’s Akodessawa Fetish Market. The kid’s assignment was to buy some fetish bric-a-bac with which they hoped to put a final seal of spiritual victory on their enemy. The fetish objects comprised one of the most lethal assemblages ever, but effete in the real sense of it - dry head of a cobra, bought for six pence; seven carcasses of the animal called Itun; seven bitter seeds of Abere and seven seeds of alligator pepper, all of which were pounded with a traditional black soap. Little did they know, sang KSA, that like nincompoops, (Paddy Ọdẹ-nsin) they had been sold a dummy!