In what seems to affirm that he wears controversies like apparel, Vice Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Party, (APC) Kashim Shettima,leapt into yet another at the twilight of last week. On Thursday, at the 96th anniversary celebration of the Yoruba Tennis Club in Ikoyi, Lagos State, Shettima was quoted to have said that Nigeria needed the hospitality of General Sani Abacha, Nigerias despotic military ruler, Nigerias own contribution to the list of infamous rulers who ruled the world with infernal ruthlessness. As the controversy over what he actually said raged, Shettima came out with a clarification: He actually said that in 2023, Nigeria needed a president who possessed a dose of ruthlessness and taciturnity. Nigerians have since been engaged with dissecting what lay atop the mind of a man who could be the countrys vice president.
We need a leader with a dose of ruthlessness and taciturnity of General Sani Abacha Nice men do not make leaders There is no one, with all due respect, that fits this better than Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, he said.
In a subsequent clarification made on his Twitter handle, Shettima claimed that the report that he attributed hospitality to Abacha didnt only quote him out of context, it was the continuation of an obsession with distorting ones views to settle partisan scores. What he actually meant, maintained the former Borno State governor, was that Nigeria needed a ruthless president in the mould of Abacha so as to address the insecurity menace it faces. I never attributed hospitality to Abacha in my speech. I did a rundown of our past Presidents and played up the taciturnity and a dose of ruthlessness of a Sani Abacha to show we need strongmen to deal with the non state actors whove turned Nigeria into a vast killing-field he continued.
Shettimas pontification and equivocation about Sani Abacha remind me of this subsisting theory about the intrusion of the dead into lives of the living and how the dead, whose lives were terminated abruptly, can, through transmigration of souls, continue to fulfill their abrogated destinies in another form. At a point when necromantic pundits submitted that President Muhammadu Buhari had but few hours to live and could not return alive from his UK infirmary where he had gone to receive treatment, his return spurned the major theory that he had in fact died in the United Kingdom. Continued the theory, a lookalike Jibril, or Jubril of Sudan was procured as his placeholder. Of all his sins against the State, Nnamdi Kanus most unpardonable against Buhari will seem to be that he took this necromantic pontification to a soberingly believable height.
A couple of weeks ago, unknown to him, I presume, medical practitioner and activist, Mahdi Shehu, also provoked the concept of death, or what the Yoruba callakudaaya.I will explain it presently. On anArise TVinterview programme, Shehu had flogged what was, in the opinion of the APC and its 2023 presidential campaign team, a dead horse, by raising a couple of critical questions that border on the educational and health history of Bola Tinubu, the partys presidential candidate.On the TV interview, Shehu submitted that Nigerians are in search of the identity of the true Tinubu. Some fundamental questions, he said, were in urgent need of answers.
We have searched the secret file of Bola Tinubu and we are asking, Bola Tinubu, please tell Nigerians, what is the name of the primary school you attended? Who were your classmates, dead or alive? If you cant remember them at least you can remember the name of your own headmaster. If you cant remember them, tell us in which town, maybe the school has been overrun by reconstructions of Lagos State or Ibadan or Oyo, Ondo. Who were your mates in secondary school? What is the name of the secondary school you attended? Who was your mathematics teacher, you said you were a good mathematics student? Shehu had asked on and on.
Was Shehu suggesting that the APC presidential candidate was anakudaaya? Or put differently, will a suggestion that Bola Tinubu is probably anakudaayaanswer to the hovering spirit of his APC-irritating questions? A few weeks ago, Dele Alake defended this same Shehu allegations with outright lies and spewed disingenuous concoctions in laundry of this Lagos contraption in a glib intervention on aChannelsTV programme. Rather than that laborious journey of untruth, couldnt he have maneuvered out of the bundle of lies by simply embracing theakudaayaphenomenon and stating simply that Tinubu died after those primary and secondary school years and just transmigrated into a new soul? As I will state underleaf, there are people who live today and who are presumed to beakudaayas. Theakudaayaphenomenon lacks empiricism, though supported by long-held beliefs and assumptions. Alake would have been more believable if he entered the world of nil empiricism to support his drudgery than manipulating Nigerians knowledge of an issue that is raging in the public domain.
So let me quickly dwell on the phenomenon of life after death, a subject that has engaged philosophy and religion over the centuries. Curiosity about what happens when man dies is a universal phenomenon. To man, sudden cessation of life and living is absurd. Man thus wants to know what transpires after consciousness ceases. Man is baffled that maggots, decay and smell take over an otherwise admirable body. Greek philosophers, Plato and Socrates tried to offer an explanation. Plato, for instance, gave a clear demarcation between the body and the soul, submitting that there is immortality of the soul. His argument is that, because the soul is immortal, it survives deaths lieutenants rigor mortis and decay who feast on the body after cessation of breath and collapse of the functions of all organs of the body. Pythagoras and Empedocles submit that people are reborn in accordance with the merits of the lives they live, whether as humans, animals and can be reborn as vegetables. This belief was rampant in Rome and Africa, giving birth to the concept of apotheosis. In apotheosis, human beings are deified after their death and given god-like status. In ancient Greece, some founders of cities like Romulus were elevated to the level of god at death. This led to the deification of Roman Emperors Julius and Augustus Caesar. In Africas Oyo Empire, King Sango became a deity at death and is today held as an ancestor.
Christian and Islamic theologians will hear none of those. After death comes judgment, they say. To them, the process of living and dying is a singular, mono occurrence. African epistemology took that fear and curiosity of death to another plane. In Yoruba theory of knowledge, for instance, a few concepts were designed to answer this curiosity about afterlife. The prominent ones among them are the theories of transmigration of souls calledakudaayaand reincarnation after life. Whileakudaayais a doctrine which holds that at death, the soul moves into another body, human or animal, afterlife holds that at death, benevolent leaders, called ancestors, continue to live, superintending over the welfare of their offspring.Akudaayais he who enters the town midday no one knows his last place of habitat, nor the bird that laid his last egg.Akudaayahas no family, no foe and is sired by nobody. Reincarnation on its own believes that after death, the Plato immortal soul leaves the body and begins another life in another physical body.
Of all these, the theory ofakudaayahas been held to be the most controversial. It is a phenomenon whichdescribes how the dead return to life, appear to man to carry out unfinished assignments and most times, sojourn in another territory. Religionists are vehemently engaged in disputations about the existence ofakudaayabecause it nullifies the main foundation of their belief. To them, deathis not only irreversible, it is the cessation of life. However,akudaayaaffirms the continuation of life after death and a linkage between unfulfilled destiny and death by seeking to resolve the conflict between them.
There have been several stories of people having encounters with certified dead persons and who have been affirmed not to be hallucinating carrying out the usual physical interactions with them. At the point of discovery that they had once lived and died, the dead disappear into thin air. A journalist once undertook to go to a place that is the town of the dead and interviewed people there. They confirmed that the dead live their normal lives in the town. Nollywood movies escalate this ancient Yoruba belief by churning out films which affirm that the mysterious phenomenon is an everyday life narrative among the Yoruba.
Most often, theakudaayais said to be dead persons whose lives were cut short prematurely and who seek a fulfillment of their destinies somewhere else. The belief is also that theori destiny of the dead person, while alive, got terminated abruptly by an individual or circumstance and so as to fulfill the corpus of that destiny, he relocates at death to another locale to fulfill that destiny. They thus reincarnate in another body but with similar physical features as they bore pre-death.
So even though the narratives are engaging, sometimes very logical and even temptingly believable, the afterlife phenomenon is still in the realm of conjecture. For science and its verifiable principles,akudaayafails woefully. Science dwells on seven essential principles of verifiability and they are theprinciple of universal open access, principle of open licensing, principle of rigorous and ongoing peer review, principle of supporting metadata, principle of access by future generations, principle of respecting various publication traditions and principle of grasping opportunities.Akudaayacannot fulfill even one of those. It is however supported by age-long beliefs, tradition and norms.
Shettima will seem to believe, in his nostalgia for Sani Abachas ruthlessness and taciturnity, that though he died in 1998 in unexplained circumstance, the late despot can continue to live in our hearts and our polity as anakudaaya. It is curious that though Abacha is a pariah in the hearts of the world, judging by his unexampled notoriety and thirst for blood, till today, he is a besotted jewel in many parts of the north. Recall that even Buhari frowned at labeling of Abacha as looter of the Nigerian economy. He has been too lip-tied to apologize for his blind, nepotistic northernism when Abacha began to cough out his loots in death. Shettima, the man who could be Nigerias vice presidents nostalgia for Abachas kind of iron fist rule is benumbing.
While APC apologists have trumpeted Shettimas so-called brilliance, he appears to me as a loose cannon and a man whose mind is a bomb waiting to explode. That is if he is not a bomb thrower at heart. If you conduct a mind analysis on him, especially through his bombasts and off-the-cuff remarks, you will discover that he is just a whiff off Abubakar Shekaus bloodthirsty notoriety. Same Shettima it was who, in June of this year said that the president Nigeria needs is not one who possesses intellect, is cerebral or is nice.Osinbajo is a good man; hes a nice man. But nice men do not make good leaders, because nice men tend to be nasty.Nice men should be selling popcorn, ice cream.But hes a very decent person, he had said, to the consternation of his audience.
By repeating this same nonsensical argument again last Thursday at the Yoruba Tennis Club in Lagos, Nigeria must begin to take a more than passing interest in the constitution of Shettimas mind. Do not forget the hovering allegation, leveled by no less a person than an ex-president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, that Shettima has a dialogical relationship with terrorism. Allegations are also flying in high places that Shettimas alleged kidnap of Chibok girls while he was governor was to remove the rug off the feet of the PDP government of Jonathan and that the girls were subsequently re-kidnapped by some Boko Haram elements. That was why, in an earlier comment, I asked that, rather than make his religion an issue, Christendom should be bothered about the propensity of having as Nigerias vice president a professed romancer and believer in Boko Harams maniacal insurgency ideology.
But what exactly does Shettima mean by Nigeria not needing a nice person as president? Nigeria is in the turmoil it is today because its successive leaders have never been empathetic to, nor sympathetic to the peoples travails. If they did, they would be concerned about their plights. Muhammadu Buharis is worse because he seems to have breakfast, lunch and dinner with a single delicacy of the head of a tortoise. His queer taciturnity draws a thick blanket on his mind and people cannot sniff the odious sewage that emanates therefrom.
Yoruba say that anyone who is as unfeeling, soul-dead and without empathy as to be able to eat the meat-less, bony, scraggy-looking head of a tortoise must have had their souls seared with hot iron. That is replicated in virtually all Nigerian leaders. Surveying the Nigerian presidential aspiration landscape, what I can see is its virtual takeover by ruthless leaders. You can only possess a ruthless mind if you stole your country blind as the allegation of looting the Nigerian till that hangs on the aspirants necks like necklaces seem to be. There is actually no dividing line between Sani Abacha and Muhammadu Buhari. They are/were both taciturn but ruthless. Only a ruthless leader will drag a country to the precipice as Buhari has done and go to Imo State on a visit as he did last week asking that he be deified for having changed the destiny of Nigeria for good.
Going back to Shehu Mahdi, it will appear that the character he constructed in that interview on Arise TV could only have been anakudaaya. No real human being could assume such benumbing notoriety other than one who passed on at a particular stage of his life, transmigrated into another body with a different name and continues to live his past in the present. The questions Mahdi then asked about primary school attended, Mathematics teacher, classmates and all that would be irrelevant for anakudaaya. When Dele Alake embarked on that esophagus defence by submitting that Tinubu sat at home to acquire the certificates he swore to on oath that he possessed in 1999, he forgot that critical cannon, the Number One rule that liars must not run foul of: A liar must have a very good memory. All the mountainous lies about their principal being daily spun would have been needless if travelers on this mendacious boat had gone back to the ancient corpus of traditional Africa to say, simply that Tinubu is anakudaaya.
Post Views:323
See the original post here:
Akudaaya: Tinubu, Abacha and Shettima's Theory of Ruthless Leadership -By Festus Adedayo - Opinion Nigeria
- Here's What You Should Know About Stem Cell Beauty Products - Who What Wear - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- After Death Dangles Answers to the Only Important Question - The Stream - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Igniting Hope conference aims to end race-based health disparities ... - University at Buffalo - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- 10 Best Horror Anime on Crunchyroll - Screen Rant - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- 10 Flowers That Represent Freedom - AZ Animals - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Demon Slayer: What is Muzan's illness? Explained - Sportskeeda - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Enterprise's Archer Copied Picard's Star Trek: Insurrection Romance - Screen Rant - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- Anemone Flowers: Meaning, Symbolism, and Proper Occasions - AZ Animals - October 29th, 2023 [October 29th, 2023]
- The billion-dollar search for immortality - UnHerd - June 24th, 2023 [June 24th, 2023]
- Should Medicine Still Bother With Eponyms? - The New York Times - June 24th, 2023 [June 24th, 2023]
- Immortality: A Love Story - Plugged In - June 24th, 2023 [June 24th, 2023]
- Harvard morgue scandal: The history of selling body parts - The Boston Globe - June 24th, 2023 [June 24th, 2023]
- Imbibe yoga in its true spirit on the International Yoga Day - Daily Pioneer - June 24th, 2023 [June 24th, 2023]
- Everything you need to know about Nick Fury as Secret Invasion arrives - Yahoo Entertainment - June 24th, 2023 [June 24th, 2023]
- Some Interesting Facts On The Hindu Epic Ramayana - The Movie Blog - June 24th, 2023 [June 24th, 2023]
- Will AI Become Our New Gods? - Answers In Genesis - June 24th, 2023 [June 24th, 2023]
- There's food growing in The Woodlands. Here's how to forage for it ... - Houston Chronicle - June 24th, 2023 [June 24th, 2023]
- One Piece: Op-Op Fruit is the source of Imus immortality - Dexerto - June 24th, 2023 [June 24th, 2023]
- King Charles III's Coronation at the Convergence of Policy ... - JURIST - May 12th, 2023 [May 12th, 2023]
- Ancient Greek healing temple in Trikala to be restored - The Greek Herald - May 12th, 2023 [May 12th, 2023]
- The long and short of telomere rejuvenation | Opinion - Chemistry World - May 12th, 2023 [May 12th, 2023]
- Is there a solution to the puzzle that is cancer? The fundamental ... - Sciencenorway - May 12th, 2023 [May 12th, 2023]
- The Week In Russia: Theater Of War - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty - May 12th, 2023 [May 12th, 2023]
- No. 788: Hi, Mom were getting ready for your big day with dirty ... - Innovate Long Island - May 12th, 2023 [May 12th, 2023]
- Star Trek: Who Is The Oldest Human? - GameRant - May 12th, 2023 [May 12th, 2023]
- Sabbaticals: A Gateway to Reimagining Health - Non Profit News - Nonprofit Quarterly - May 12th, 2023 [May 12th, 2023]
- Florence Nightingale birth anniversary: The Lady with the Lamp who founded modern nursing during Crimean War - News9 LIVE - May 12th, 2023 [May 12th, 2023]
- Defence Secretary oral statement on war in Ukraine - GOV.UK - May 12th, 2023 [May 12th, 2023]
- TOM UTLEY: Mrs U and I are better prepared for the end. But scientists say we might live to 122! - Daily Mail - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]
- Eddie Jones reveals NRL legend Andrew Johns was on the verge of a shock code switch in 2005 - Daily Mail - February 18th, 2023 [February 18th, 2023]
- The debauched world of Ozzy Osbourne - biting bats to Sharon finding him in bed with the nanny - Daily Mail - February 5th, 2023 [February 5th, 2023]
- 6 Benefits of Reishi Mushroom (Plus Side Effects and Dosage) - Healthline - December 23rd, 2022 [December 23rd, 2022]
- Alchemy - Wikipedia - December 23rd, 2022 [December 23rd, 2022]
- Emily Dickinson - Poems, Quotes & Death - Biography - December 23rd, 2022 [December 23rd, 2022]
- Alexis Carrel - Wikipedia - December 21st, 2022 [December 21st, 2022]
- Medicine MBChB - University Of Worcester - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- Republic of Florence - Wikipedia - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- Taoist sexual practices - Wikipedia - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- Herbal medicine - Wikipedia - October 23rd, 2022 [October 23rd, 2022]
- Aubrey de Grey - Wikipedia - October 23rd, 2022 [October 23rd, 2022]
- Greek language - Wikipedia - October 23rd, 2022 [October 23rd, 2022]
- Gynostemma pentaphyllum - Wikipedia - October 23rd, 2022 [October 23rd, 2022]
- Lingzhi (mushroom) - Wikipedia - October 23rd, 2022 [October 23rd, 2022]
- The Hayflick Limit: Why Every Human Can Live Up to 125 Years - History of Yesterday - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Downtown Lecture Series, now in 10th year, will focus on sexualities - University of Arizona News - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Scent of Wind Review: A Simple Tale of Kindness From Iran Echoes the Countrys Masters - Yahoo Entertainment - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Proxy voting rises when Congress usually flies in and out of town, analysis finds - Oil City Derrick - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Keith Simpson reviews 'Boris Johnson: The Rise and Fall of a Troublemaker at Number 10' - PoliticsHome - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Disney+ Releases Official Trailer for the Original Series Limitless with Chris Hemsworth from National Geographic - Yahoo Finance - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- True Fathers Resist the Holy Father - OnePeterFive - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Targeted-sequence of normal urothelium and tumor of patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer | Scientific Reports - Nature.com - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Cheers and Jeers: Thursday - Daily Kos - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- North Korea tells officials that 350,000 people died of diseases this year - Radio Free Asia - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- New York: World War II: Inventive Report An interactive presentation of how, without real danger, the - Game News 24 - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Soma (drink) - Wikipedia - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Lavish Qin Shi Huang Tomb Built for Immortality - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- The Four Directions & Medicine Wheel of Native Americans - Gaia - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Kanye, Selena Gomez have bipolar disorder. Why is there a stigma? - USA TODAY - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Forrest Bess Was a Fisherman by Day and Painter of Wild Visions by Night. A New Show Explores His Legacy - artnet News - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- 'Star Wars': 9 Force Powers Used Only by The Jedi - We Got This Covered - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- The CIA has invested in wooly mammoth resurrection technology and nobody knows why - Daily Star - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Here's why we age - Hindustan Times - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- Blind mystic Baba Vanga's five predictions for 2023 - from end of births to nuclear disaster - Irish Mirror - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- President Biden Says Covid-19 Pandemic is Over in the US - Slashdot - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- Immortality a possibility? This jellyfish could have the answer - Ohmymag - September 17th, 2022 [September 17th, 2022]
- Early Puberty Resulting From Excessive Smartphone Screen Time? Here's What This Study Found - Forbes - September 17th, 2022 [September 17th, 2022]
- Godard's assisted suicide - not an option everywhere - SWI swissinfo.ch - SWI swissinfo.ch in English - September 17th, 2022 [September 17th, 2022]
- On The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, a hard rains a-gonna fall - The A.V. Club - September 17th, 2022 [September 17th, 2022]
- The longevity diet: Lots of beans and periodic fasts slow ageing - The New Daily - September 17th, 2022 [September 17th, 2022]
- The Real Effects Aloe Vera Has On Your Body - Health Digest - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Its Time To Rethink the Origins of Pain - Scientific American - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Queen Elizabeth II: Celebrities send well-wishes as world waits for update on health - The Independent - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- The Moon: Earths Eighth Continent to This Jellyfish is Immortal (Planet Earth Report) - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- This president was shot in the back, but the doctors are the ones who killed him - Salon - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- As The Royal Family Deals With Devastating Racism Accusations From Meghan Markle, 96-Year-Old Queen Elizabeth II Now Under Extensive Medical Care as... - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- To quit or not to quit: The hardest question for sporting greats - Deccan Herald - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- OND: Harvest moon, climate refugees, wall wind turbine, JWST and more - Daily Kos - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- 10 Fantasy Shows Like Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power You Should Check Out - /Film - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Jared Kushner is keeping fit because he thinks he might live forever - Business Insider - August 27th, 2022 [August 27th, 2022]
- The Big Idea: Randee Dawn - John Scalzi's Whatever - August 27th, 2022 [August 27th, 2022]