Obasa, His Mouth And Wild Pigeon

Mudashiru Obasa was until January 13, 2025, the Speaker, Lagos State House of Assembly. He was first elected to the House in 2007. He was re-elected in 2011, 2014, 2019 and 2023! If his mouth allowed him to complete his current term, he would have been a member of the Lagos legislative arm for 25 years.

Like the proverbial squirrel whose palm kernel was cracked for him by a benevolent spirit, Obasa began his political career as a councillor in 1999 at his Agege Local Government Area of the state under the banner of Alliance for Democracy (AD). He has God to thank and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to worship for his rise to political stardom.

But like the biblical Jeshurun, who in Deuteronomy 32: 15 is recorded thus: “ But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked; thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation:, Obasa thought that having been Speaker for a period of 10 years less four months, he is now bigger and stronger than those who made him. He was made to pay for that indiscretion on January 13, when he was impeached by the House.

The pigeon is a lovely bird. It is equally a spiritual bird. It is not the type of avian that one will slaughter occasionally for consumption. Yeah, people do eat the pigeon. It is a delicacy one will crave after the first taste. But the bird is revered and, in some cases, worshipped as a deity. Its most appealing characteristic is its loyalty to its owner. The pigeon can be trusted to stand by you no matter the vicissitudes of life.

Pigeons are sold in pairs, male and female. Its reproduction is also in pairs. It lays two eggs, hatches the two and they come out male and female. Why it is so, only the Creator knows. A domesticated avian, the pigeon has its sibling in the wild. It is called òrófó in my place. The English translation of òrófó is wild pigeon.

Òrófó shares the same reproductive system with the pigeon. The two have so many things in common. The only difference is that while the pigeon is a peaceful bird, òrófó on its part is boastful. There are so many folktales about òrófó. One of them tells why one can hardly find a flight of òrófó as one finds a colony of pigeons. Òrófó, according to the tale, tells the sharpshooter that it remains out of the reach of the hunter’s bullets. To prove it, the hunter often fires at the bird of pride. In some cases, the hunter uses a catapult. The pigeon does not suffer such fate.

The most interesting tale about òrófó is the one the elders of my place use in cautioning men to be circumspect about what comes out of their mouths. The saying, the mouth of a bird is its undoing; the wild pigeon lays two eggs, hatches two chicks and brags about that its nest is filled up with chicks (Ẹnu ẹyẹ níí p’ẹyẹ; ẹnu òrófó níí pa òrófó; òrófó yé eyin méjì, ó bímọ mẹ́jì, ó ní ilé òun kún ṣọ́ṣọ́ṣọ́), tells the story.

According to the tale, while in the comity of other birds, òrófó boasted that its nest was filled up with so many chicks. Other birds that were familiar with the reproductive capacity of òrófó wondered where it got the other chicks. But the hawk had a different idea. Since òrófó said its house was filled up with chicks, it would not be a bad idea that anytime the hawk was hungry, òrófó’s nest was where to go look for food. And on each occasion, the hawk would end up eating the two hatched chicks in òrófó’s nest, leaving the mother to wail about the calamity. That is why it is difficult to find a flight of òrófó; its offspring are in the belly of the hawk due to the indiscretion of the mother bird.

As it is with òrófó, so it is with any man who cannot control his mouth. The Holy Book, the Bible, in Proverbs 18:21, talks about the power of the tongue. It says in the tongue lies death and life. The Scripture, again, in James 3:5-6, describes the tongue as a fire in spite of its small size. African Indigenous Religion (AIR) – I got the new nomenclature from Professor Wande Abimbola who cautioned that we should not denigrate our religion by calling it African Traditional Religion (ATR) – talks about the talkative pawn of Àlàbá (Ìwòfà Àlàbá), who says everything he sees.

Ìwòfà Àlàbá, however, met his waterloo the day he told the king that he saw a dried-up corpse on a tree, which talked like it was still alive. The king and his chiefs followed Ìwòfà Àlàbá to the spot and though there was a corpse on the tree, it refused to talk. It was after the execution of Ìwòfà Àlàbá for deceiving the throne that the corpse spoke! Discretion is the master of all wisdom.

Nigerian politics is a one-way traffic. There are owners of each state of the Federation. Governors are the most powerful in the political calculation of this era. It is even more dangerous if the governor enjoys the backing of the godfather. There is no point denying that President Tinubu is the godfather of all political godfathers in Nigeria today. He is what my people call Òòsà àkúnlèbo (the deity one worships on his knee). Many said that the president earned that stature through the deployment of his deadly political strategies. Those who contested that in the past have terrible tales to tell.

It was that formidable man that Obasa confronted frontally while receiving Governor Babajide Sawo-Olu to the Lagos State House of Assembly to present the year 2025 Appropriation Bill to the House on November 21, 2024. It is foolish to call the servant on an errand for the master, stupid. The insult goes back to the master.

To start with, Obasa was said to have kept the governor and members of the Governor’s Advisory Council waiting for close to two hours. Why did he do that? Did he not have the information that the governor would be coming? What point was the Speaker trying to prove?  And when he elected to receive the party, the Speaker spent 11 and half minutes, lecturing, threatening and disparaging the August visitor.

I watched the video of the encounter, and I wondered who prepared pounded yam for Obasa and assured him that getting the soup would not be a problem. I equally got a full text of the Speaker’s speech, and each sentence points at a man who voluntarily sought death in its corner! From the beginning to the end, Obasa spoke like someone who has Lagos in his pocket.

In paragraph four, for instance, Obasa warned that the conviviality between the House and the governor notwithstanding, “… it is necessary to harp on the fact that under democracy, this arm of government remains independent.” He told the governor that the Assembly “is a sanctuary and temple, just like every other temple anywhere where we all worship. No one will violate any temple and expect the gods to accept his or her sacrifice. And if such happens, there must be an appease to the gods to accept such atonement. No amount of intimidation or coercion will disintegrate or change the belief of all the members of this institution!”

Obasa was bold, and he did not hide it. Governor Sanwo-Olu, he warned, should perish the idea of getting a wishy-washy budget as “this honourable House will look at the budget and do the necessary scrutiny as usual”, adding that the assembly “will never be disgraced, abused or ridiculed in the name of creating a seamless working ambience.” Good talk. But not here; not in this nation!

The governor maintained his cool. That probably emboldened the Speaker to further warn “that those who live in glass houses must not throw stones as the saying goes…. In other words, those who are facilitating or planning to interfere in this House or destroy the cohesion of this institution should also be prepared for the same fate.”

Like someone under a spell, Obasa went ahead to talk about the touchy issue of Lagos governorship in 2027 and declared that if he made up his mind, he would contest, pointing out that he was not “too young or lack experience to run; whereas those who have been before me are not better off.”

Then he boasted, like a poor student of the concept of Avoidance Strategy in Stylistics, about his enviable ancestry which he claimed had never been in doubt and declared that he had “never claimed to be related to Onikoyi, Oniru, or any of the other popular Lagos families as the case may be.” Háà! ‘Lénu e (for your mouth), Mudashiru!

My people say that every man knows which proverb points in his direction; only the coward feigns ignorance. Who was Obasa’s target when he talked about not claiming any relationship with “any of the other popular Lagos families as the case may be?” Who were the past governors of Lagos State that “are not better off?” How did the Agege boy forget that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was once a governor of the state; that Tinubu is believed to have ‘built’ Lagos? Did he also have the inimitable Alhaji Lateef Jakande in mind as one those past governors?

If it were to be true that Obasa is better than all the other past governors of Lagos State, what does the first law of Robert Greene’s “The 48 Laws of Power” say about subordinates not outshining their masters? Where was Obasa when the late Senator Bayo Osinowo addressed the Assembly and told them how God reminded Satan that He, God “will never create, and I have never created, and I will never create what I can never destroy”?

Why did the ex-speaker decide to throw overboard the fine words of advice from the late senator to wit: “So, the leaders will not promote anybody they can never destroy. The leaders will not promote anybody they can never tear to pieces. They have codes, as they are promoting you, they are keeping your…, what do you call it, your file. So, if you continue doing good, they keep on giving you good things… But when you step on the toes of those who created you, you are in trouble. My new colleagues, I am begging your listen to your leaders…?”

Obasa grew up in Lagos. His knowledge of native wisdom may not be as sound as those of us the Lagosians call “ará ìlú òkè (those from the hinterlands). But he spoke about “eni bá yára l’ògún ńgbè. Meaning, the god of iron favours the swift”. If he knows that, why did he forget the wisdom in the saying that the okro can never be taller than the one that planted it; that to harvest the seeds, all the farmer needs to do is to bend the stem?

If native intelligence is lost on him, what about the injunction in the Qur’an, which in Surat 6, (2) Al-An’am, Allah “He is Who has created you from clay, and then has decreed a stated term (for you to die). And there is with Him another determined term (for you to be resurrected), yet you doubt (in the Resurrection)?”

Why did he not ask his Christian friends in the House to interpret Jeremiah 18:1-6, where God instructed Prophet Jeremiah to proceed to the potter’s house to learn the wisdom of what the creator can do to his creatures? Why did he not read verse 6 which says: “O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? Saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.”

If it were to be a sane clime, Obasa would have been applauded for establishing the independence of the Assembly. But here, the godfather is like God. He creates and destroys that which he created! That is exactly what happened to Obasa on January 13. At a time, he was hearing the footsteps of his fellow members behind him, he never realised that those ones had gone back to take instruction from the godfather. That was why when his time came, nobody stood up to defend him! The creator holds the “codes!”

Power is like the venison of hoopoe (Àgbìgbò). It is the sweetest of all meats. No hunter likes to share it with anybody. If the godfather’s son is interested in Lagos in 2027, wisdom demands that all clay political creatures of the godfather should steer clear. Every wrestler should know that whenever he is confronted by his personal god, the end to all bouts has come. When a pigeon turns to òrófó, the hawk is always available to eat its chick.

How Obasa allowed himself to be drawn to fight his own Ori (head/destiny) is a research topic for students of Political Science. Now the godfather has scored yet another goal. 2027 will be an interesting year in Lagos. But more importantly, the dramas and razzmatazz that will herald the year are going to be more interesting. May we all be alive and have enough money to buy popcorn and ice cream as we watch the soap opera.