Monday Lines 1
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu returned over the weekend, swagger intact, despite his tumble in Turkey. His face was calm; his steps steady. His left arm tucked into the left fold of his riga; his right palm expectantly popped into the waiting hands of top appointees lined up to receive him. Ministers and governors do this airport praise-and-worship ritual routinely. From the aircraft steps to his waiting car, Tinubu left no one in doubt: power, in his court, walks with a king’s gait.
‘American Idolatry: The Worship of a President’ was an opinion article published in the November 9, 2004 edition of the Yale Daily News by Christopher Ashley. What I have here is the Nigerian version of that headline; it borrows from Ashley’s critique which deplores the worship of a leader who demands “support of his person in spite of his policy” and argues that people must resist such idolatry. For Nigeria, the warning goes daily unheeded. For America, the writer’s primary audience, the warning came twenty years too early—before Donald Trump and the flood from his swamp.
‘Everybody believes in democracy until he gets to the White House’. That quote is from American political scientist, Thomas Edward Cronin, who, in 1972, did an analysis of the relations that existed between US presidents and their secretaries. The quote above is the title of the article. The title interests me more than whatever analysis he did – because it is so true here and everywhere.
Bringing the Cronin quote here, experience confirms to us that every ambitious politician in Nigeria is a democrat until he gets to the Villa. Throughout his eight years as governor of Lagos State, I never saw Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu in slavish relations with Abuja and the strong presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo. Governor Bola Tinubu was a celebrated democrat, daring and outspoken. Tinubu worshipped no one – not even the godfathers who made him. Now, less than two years in power, he has been made a deity, and he enjoys it with the several pots and baskets of votive offerings. He basks in the claps, drums, songs from the rich, slavish votaries at his shrine. To know how much he loves his deification, watch him at the airports.
Democracy decays. Ours has—and the odour is horrific. Under Obasanjo, we had a legislature and a judiciary that acted as checks on the rampaging treads of an elephant. We also had a president who, for all his flaws, checked the festering tendency of lawmakers and judges to commodify their offices. Today, under Tinubu, one suspects even the president may be surprised by how small these institutions have become—so diminished that he carries them, squeezed, in his back pocket.
No presidency, not even Trump’s, has ever been this blessed, unrestrained. It is imperial.
Personalist leaders are pests of democracy, they destroy it from within.
Historian and public intellectual, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., in his ‘The Imperial Presidency’ (1973), warned that “no one institution—neither the president nor Congress nor the court—should hold the power.” What Schlesinger wrote was, in fact, an elaboration on a caution issued 125 years earlier by Abraham Lincoln. In a 15 February, 1848 letter to William Herndon, Lincoln insisted that “no one man should hold the power of bringing …oppression upon us.” When power is concentrated in one man, or in the presidency itself, what emerges is no longer democratic leadership. It is imperial rule. In the words of Lincoln, when presidents stand “where kings have always stood” what you have is an imperial lord presiding over a system emptied of the meaning and substance of democracy. Yet Schlesinger was not arguing for a weak executive as an antidote to the “imperial presidency.” His prescription was “a strong presidency acting within the Constitution.” This raises the central question: how do we get a strong president, and how do we distinguish such strength from imperial excess?
Louis W. Koenig, a US professor of government, attempted an answer in ‘The Chief Executive’ (1975), a study of what citizens desire, and fear, in a presidential democracy. Koenig identified five principles that must define a “good” presidency:
1. Presidential power must be exercised through constitutional means.
2. The presidency must respect the public’s capacity to distinguish between good and bad candidates, between wisdom and folly.
3. The presidency must observe the right of the opposition to criticize, to challenge, and—even—to remove it through free elections.
4. The ethical standards on which democracy rests must apply to the president personally.
5. Democracy and its public offices, including the presidency, require an ethical foundation within society itself.
Now, which of these five principles can we honestly find in our Presidential Villa? If you demand too much of any of the items, you are likely to be “a danger to this democracy.” The ideas came from a US citizen. Before anyone begins to question the applicability of American political thought to the Nigerian situation, let us remember this: we did not author the system we are running—or the one that now runs our lives.
We copied our presidential democracy from the Americans. The founding fathers of the United States carefully thought through what they have. They conducted several experiments before settling on what we later rank-xeroxed. They began with a confederation that had no clear head, only to discover that a house without a head is a structure built for commotion. They then produced a constitution that vested the presidency with “substantial powers.” Even so, history records that the authors of that constitution were “clearly opposed to the creation of an American king.” One scholar interrogates the above further and says that “The (US) President was supposed to be a strong executive, not a monarch, —one watched closely by Congress, the Supreme Court, and the citizenry, to guard against Caesarism.”
Keeping vigil at the airport for the Nigerian president’s arrival is a lesson on self-delusion and corrupted loyalty. At what point did we acquire this culture of ministers, governors and military and security chiefs waiting for godot at airports for their “visiting” president? Each time they do that, they look like overgrown school kids expecting their headmaster’s arrival. If the minions feel no shame, they should know that their neighbours are catching it on their behalf.
I do not know of any democracy prescribing this aberration. But I know it is normal in a monarchy where the king rules in his majesty. When the Alaafin of old left his palace, every street, village and town stood still in awe and reverence of a king who was son and father of death. More historic is the story of Ooni Adelekan Olubuse I who was the first Ooni of Ife to travel outside Ile Ife, visiting Lagos on the invitation of Governor –General, Sir William MacGregor (Government Gazette of Lagos, February 28, 1903). History says that while the Ooni was on that journey, all Yoruba kings along his route vacated their palaces until his return. Even his people gathered at the river, vowing to wait for him.
It also happened once upon a time in the animal world:
Lion, king of the jungle, set out on a long journey. Soon, the other key animals gathered by the footpath, awaiting his return—Elephant, Tiger, Buffalo, Gazelle, Giraffe, and the rest. They kept vigil, stood stiff, afraid that sitting might look like disrespect, treason or treasonable felony. Even Elephant learnt to stand small.
Days turned into weeks. The Lion did not return, yet the waiting continued.
One day, the Tortoise passed by and asked, “Why are you all standing here?”
“We are awaiting the Lion,” the animals replied.
“For how long?” asked the Tortoise.
“As long as it takes,” they said.
“How about your work?”
“It must wait. The king must see that we are loyal.”
The Tortoise shook his head and felt sorry for them. “You are not loyal to the king; your loyalty is to yourself.”
Along with the idolatry of king-worship in a democracy comes the absence of questions and answers. Nothing can be more politically correct than seeing no evil and hearing no evil. And, silence can be sweet; it can also feel safe. But read Langdon Gilkey’s ‘The Political Meaning of Silence’. Death is bad; silence, where speech is necessary, is worse. It folds self, soul, and body. As Gilkey warns, “What silence qua silence mediates is the destruction of the self…” Silence hollows out the silent. As Shakespeare reminds us, “And oftentimes excusing of a fault / Doth make the fault the worse.”
We saw the president’s arrival, the fall and the rise in Turkey. We saw his engagements in the early days there. We did not see what he did in the latter days until he landed in Abuja on Saturday. The king came home at night, ministers and courtiers lined up for handshakes; the king exchanged short words with every mini-king who made it to the tarmac and proceeded to fold into the Villa. There were no questions to welcome the “father of the nation.” People who dared to ask questions did so under their wives’ beds. Even we, the press, have had no question for the president, and none for his handlers. Television stations that broke the news of his arrival showed footage. There was no demand from daddy what he brought from where he slipped.
Not asking questions can be a poisonous indulgence. Robert Locander’s ‘The President, the Press, and the Public: Friends and Enemies of Democracy’ treats issues such as this. Locander argues that “the president, the press, and the public can act as either friends or enemies of democracy.” In the scramble for the meat of this fallen elephant, the actions of all three, these days, are clearly enemy actions. We have become idolaters, worshipping the throne while paradise slips from our hands.
Monday Lines 2
Small talks with a childless mother
One sad Monday in June last year (2025), I wrote in passing about the perils of fibroid and the ruin it does to hopes, wombs and homes. I got plenty of reactions and comments, some of them from ladies who have seen everything fibroids- with all the tears and pains.
One victim volunteered a close-up picture of her problem for me:
“You may publish,” she said.
She attached her real name to the message. I found it very surprising that she said that much. I was surprised because afflicted women rarely talk; they merely sulk on their reproductive disappointments. The person who spoke with me added that she had twice gone through fibroid procedures.
“I did the second surgery because it grew back since I didn’t have children still. They say fibroid grows in a disappointed womb. It takes over when pregnancy refuses to occur.”
But why did she open up? I asked her.
“Well, I talk to guide others. People now speak out on previously no-go areas. I was stunned when a lady told me recently that she had a hysterectomy…”
“Hysterectomy?”
“Yes. Removal of the uterus, the womb, so as to save the woman from very bad troubles and complications.”
“Removal of the womb is huge, and final. It means there will be no conception again and no biological child. You didn’t do that?”
“No. I didn’t. Mine was just the removal of the fibroids from the uterine walls. But, I still don’t have a child yet…”
“Sorry about that…” She could go for IVF or surrogacy, I sugggested. She kept quiet. I suspected finance.
“But who really is a mother? Why can’t a woman be a mother without a child?” she asked while hinting that she had decided to live a full life of service, with or without a biological child.
“Why not?” I responded. Madam Efunroye Tinubu was ‘a mother without a child.’ She actually had two children, but both of them predeceased her. After those terrible losses, she worked really hard to have more children. She changed husband after husband, drank medicine after medicine, but destiny stood on her way. She then ploughed her boat fully into the oceans of business and politics and made a success of both in Lagos, and later, in Abeokuta.
I read a portion of Madam Tinubu’s biography to my friend: “The Lagos Observer, reporting her death editorialized as follows: She (Madame Tinubu) played no mean part in the circumstances which necessitated British interference in the death struggle between Akintoye and Kosoko for the Lagos throne, and led to her expulsion in 1853. She was, by the way, the last of the principal actors in this historic drama. She left many an indelible mark, too, in Egba history. Requiescat in pace!”
Bitter-sweet.
The conversation was intense as it drifted into the emotional swamps of childlessness and how to handle it, especially when the clock moves towards midnight.
Stories of childlessness are emotionally charged themes in life and in fiction.
‘Efuru’ is a 1966 novel written by Flora Nwapa. Literary historians say it is the first novel written by any African woman and published internationally. In ‘Efuru’ we have Efuru, the protagonist. She has beauty, she has character glazed with inner and outer strength. But she is unlucky with children. She is unlucky, she has a child who died at infancy, then her womb dries up. Her husband, the ‘weak’ man she tends like a child, leaves her. She marries another man who, for the reason of her childlessness, goes for another woman.
Childlessness is a silence that follows the childless everywhere. Efuru, the character, is childless but she finds great success in trade. In her story is the story of the lake goddess, to whom the childless lady becomes a devotee. “Efuru…dreamt of the woman of the lake, her beauty, her long hair and her riches. She was happy, she was wealthy. She was beautiful. She gave women beauty and wealth but she had no child. She has never experienced the joy of motherhood. Why then did women worship her?” (Efuru, page 221).
Life is full of puzzles and complications. A childless goddess has devotees.
In the Nigerian (African) society, childbearing gives individual and social fulfilment. Beauty, health and wealth do also; one set complements the whole. Some people have one of those; some two, three; some all the four, some none. Life!
“Many fairy tales begin with a childless woman who seeks a remedy for her infertility. If she’s a queen, she’s desperate to give her husband an heir. If she’s a simple woman, she yearns for a child to fill the empty space in her house, in her heart. The wish of the childless woman is always granted in the fairy tale…”
‘Fairies’ are “small imaginary beings of human form.” Fairy tales are what their adjective says they are: fairy. Real life is much more complex and full of shocks and disappointments.
Michelle Tocher is a Canadian author of many story books. One of her writings is ‘The Childless Mother’ in which she speaks of her own fruitless struggle with barrenness. The quote above opens her paradoxical story of being a mother without a child. She wrote: “…I would call them the ‘childless mothers’ – the women who might have loved to have been mothers but didn’t have children because nature and destiny had another plan. I count myself among them.”
That woman, Michelle Tocher, is in every country and in every city and town.
A Grade A Customary Court, sitting at Mapo, Ibadan, Oyo State, towards the end of 2025 dissolved a marriage that went bad because of childlessness. In that case, reported by the Saturday Tribune of November 1, 2025, we find the woman at the centre of the case, one Silifat, abandoned, frustrated and harassed. In her evidence, she told the court her story: “My husband and I met about five years ago, and he paid my bride price.
“We had a beautiful relationship at the beginning of our marriage, and we were happy. We started experiencing a strain in our marriage when we had a delay in having children.
“My once loving and caring husband gradually became cold and withdrawn towards me. He stopped giving me attention and cared less about my welfare.
“He also denied me sex and refused to give me his support in all efforts that I made to have children.
“My husband, to my shock, later deserted me. He left home three years ago without leaving a clue as to his whereabouts.
“His family members likewise would not let me have peace of mind. They became hostile and demonstrated that their shoulder was not there for me to cry on. They demanded that I move out of their son’s house.
“My lord, I have had enough of my in-laws’ hostility. I pray the court will dissolve our union so that I can move on with my life.”
The court granted her prayer.
The Yoruba ancestor said olówó kò r’ómo rà (the rich cannot buy children). You and I know that this saying is long dead. Science killed it. It is the poor and the powerless who are found today childless.
Some weeks ago, I spoke with an old friend in desperate search. She would want to adopt a child but there is a long queue with attendant lobbying and racketeering in state-run ministries and agencies. “Can governments and governors look into the sleaze in this hole?” She asked no one in particular.
“Babies go to the highest bidder. It is messy.” She told me.
It is said that poverty exposes life’s cruelty. Surrogacy as another more modern, more biological option is as expensive as Rolls Royce Phantom. It is for the rich; she can’t cope. What other options are there for her and for others like her? Life is “a comedy for the rich, (and) a tragedy for the poor.” I got that line from Sholem Aleichem, Yiddish author and playwright who lived from 1859 to 1916.
There is an old song: “Eni tí kò bímo, ayé á fi ìwòsí lò wón” (a woman without children is open to all sorts of insults). It happened to Efuru and it is on the very last page of her story:
“Then, I became ill. Where the illness came from, nobody knew. Everybody thought I was going to die. Many dibias were consulted and we were asked to sacrifice to the gods, our ancestors and the woman of the lake. All was in vain. I was worse. Then a rumour went round that I was guilty of adultery. That I, Efuru, the daughter of Nwashike Ogene, was guilty of adultery. My mother was not an adulterous woman, neither was her mother, why should I be different? Was it possible to learn to be left-handed at old age? Then, my husband, Eneberi, had the nerve to ask me to confess so as to live. Eneberi, my husband, of all people, asked me to confess that I am an adulterous woman. Ajanupu saved me. I was too weak to do anything. But Ajanupu said a few home truths to Eneberi. I hear he is in the hospital on account of the injury given to him by Ajanupu.
“She took me to a doctor in Aba. I was cured. I came back a month ago. I went to my husband’s house and collected my belongings. Then I called my age-group and told them formally what I was accused of. According to the custom of my people, selected members of my age-group followed me to the shrine of our goddess – Utuosu. There I swore by the name Utuosu, she should kill me if I committed adultery. She should kill me if since I married Eneberi any man in our town, Onicha, Ndoni, Akiri, or anywhere I had been, had seen my thighs.
“I remained for seven Nkwos and now I am absolved. Utuosu did not kill me. I am still alive. That means that I am not an adulterous woman. So here I am. I have ended where I began, my father’s house. The difference is that now my father is dead. But I have nothing to say to Eneberi. He will forever regret his act. It is the will of our gods and my chi that such a fortune should befall me.”
The centenary of Efunroye Tinubu’s passing was marked with her biography published in 1987. It is a story every ‘stressed’ woman should read. It offers hope and, I believe, it gives direction. With understanding, the marriage that died in Mapo, Ibadan, could have been saved. Having at least a biological child is the socially ideal, but not having should not remove meaning from life.
Efunroye Tinubu was a mother in her childlessness. Historian and Yoruba novelist, Oladipo Yemitan, author of Tinubu’s biography, wrote of her burial: “After her body had been committed to mother earth, the rest of the weekend was devoted to merriment and feasting. No honour more grand could have been done her if she had been survived by a dozen children.”
Among the Yoruba, having children is not enough to rejoice over; it is the one buried by children who truly had children. Madam Efunroye Tinubu died on Friday, 2 December, 1887, a woman of means and meaning. She died without a child of her own but she left behind a ‘nation’ of children in Lagos and everywhere bearing her exclusive name forever. Anyone who is a Tinubu today is, one way or the other, of that woman. In life she was childless, in death, she became a mother of countless children.
In 2026, may the childless who seek God’s favour find it.
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