Ademola Araoye

You are still leadership material. Your father navigated the then still waters well. He didn’t bleed and delivered on the bargain of the pact. But still it was package for brigands. So the streaming news is bad. And in the fashion of Leonard Cohen, you got me singing, even though the news in bad. The elements continue to threaten, because of the coming waves of anger in the prophecy of my Iya Ikotun. Iya Ikotun is dangerous. She eats nor broods no pepper, except the occasional alligator pepper. Perhaps that Is why we see victors of yesterday in acrobatic somersaults. They are singing rueful rhymes like incontinent canaries. The septic tanks are now clean. Neat. The graveyards are lighter. The departed can sleep well in their final abodes. They shall fear no earthly neighbors visiting in the wee hours draped in dollar greenback and Euro. The rabbit holes are fully plugged. Yesterday’s victors had their day hauling their odious prizes and mock-bragging the Nigerian humanity. They worshipped and baptized their children’s in champaign. As for me, on Iya Ikotun’s prophecy I stand. I am waiting for that one day…Just that one day.

• Ademola Araoye is a former Nigerian diplomat and a retired official of the United Nations. Currently a Visiting Professor associated with the SARCHi chair on African Diplomacy and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, Araoye is author of critically acclaimed books including Cote d’Ivoire: The Conundrum of a Still Wretched of the Earth and Sources of Conflict in the Post-Colonial African State. He is a regular contributor to TheNEWS magazine