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Tunji Olaopa And His Problems As An “Autobiographer”

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Readers’ Showers Of Encouragement
Prof. Tony Afejuku

By Tony Afejuku

    Let me state urgently that I don’t know Tunji Olaopa. I have never met him physically and do not believe or expect that his path ever will cross mine. But this open factual remark does not really mean that I don’t know this young and youngish former federal permanent secretary who became a professor of political science at Lead City University, Ibadan after his unexpected retirement from the Federal Civil Service. Of course, his premature retirement we must blame on the vagaries of the Federal Civil Service of sometimes vicious politics, to put it mildly. In a place like the Federal Civil Service peopled by men and women and officers, senior and junior officers, of vicarious authority and existence one cannot but be surprised that a public servant of unquestionable critical insight such as Tunji Olaopa’s would always be viewed and treated as an aberration to be thrown out once the slightest opportunity presented itself. Now let me re-qualify my opening remark. I know Tunji Olaopa but by reputation. I have at different times read his articles published in this newspaper and other ones. Besides, this author whose newspaper articles have made serious impression on the minds of many readers happens to be a former Higher School Certificate (HSC) student of Olivet Baptist High School (Olivet Heights), Oyo which I savoured for a term and a half long before Tunji Olaopa entered the four walls of that famous college known far and wide for its academic and soccer exploits. So I know Dr. Tunji Olaopa after all – as a far younger student who never saw or caught a glimpse of my brake light, in a manner of speaking, in school and in college. 

    When Tunji Olaopa’s The Unending Quest for Reform: An Intellectual Memoir recently came out of the press in faraway Austin, Texas, USA, I became interested in it on the triple grounds briefly related above. I made the right effort to have a copy of it for my personal edification being a lover and critic of his kind of book – I mean of his “intellectual memoir” which he calls an “autobiography” as well. Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah and Professor Eghosa F. Osaghae who respectively wrote Foreword One and Foreword Two to the book equally followed his example to call An Intellectual Memoir an “autobiography.” Do I agree with the three of them? These three minds undoubtedly have critical and creative gifts. But are they right absolutely to call the memoir autobiography? An attempt to answer this question offers me as a reader versed in autobiography the first problem in calling and interpreting Tunji Olaopa’s memoir which it correctly is as an autobiography, which strictly it is not. To call the book “autobiography” is misleading. Tunji Olaopa realizes this hence he tries to resolve his dilemma by giving his essentially public servant’s book its correct title of The Unending Quest for Reform: An Intellectual Memoir, as already indicated. It is a captivating account of his civil service record and experience. This explains Tunji Olaopa’s concentration on what I will call here events which centre on his political memory. 

Qua autobiographical work of art, Memoir as work of art cannot be interpreted as autobiography even though it rightly contains very pertinent information about his Aawe homeland origins. I am not interpreting the book, I am only trying to criticize it according to standards, in comparison to other autobiographical works of art, for instance, the Italian Michel de Montaine’s Essays whose “fancies” were not to “convey information about things” not squarely useful to his unique self. The chief task of the autobiographer is the presentation of himself. In other words, self-justification is the sole aim and concern of the autobiographer. An autobiography, an ideal autobiography, that is, does not, to all intents and purposes, represent the efforts of a series of men or of individuals each making what he or she could make out of series of events and or the work of his or her predecessors. This is within the orbit of a memoir.

    Tunji Olaopa writes ambitiously which leads to other problems. The memoirist delves into history, into historical facts, which his present readers are not assumed to know. For example, the operation wetie in the Yoruba region historically called the “Wild , Wild West” on account of the violence which the political disagreement and tragic quarrel between the Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola factions of the Action Group unleashed in that part of Nigeria in the fabulous nineteen sixties. Interpretation-wise, the liquidation operation wetie engendered is not in any way different from the criminal and militant fire and chaos we have witnessed in different parts of Nigeria today.  Thus Tunji Olaopa’s book is relevant pertinently as history – which detracts from the narrator’s self. In fact, his focus on historical facts in several places in the narrative also arouses his interest in philosophy/psychology which cannot but enable one to say that the narrative is a philosophical/psychological stratification which Tunji Olaopa tends to utilize to give shape to his matter. Closely related to this is the matter of his mystical and mysterious experience at Olivet Heights and that of his Christian and spiritual advancement. His interest in Rosicrucianism, ifa, and Christianity is compelling and it enables the reader to have a thorough glimpse of his sensitive, inquisitive and penetrating mind. And his sagacity and consciousness as a bookworm that feeds on different kinds of books and the thoughts of their authors permit the reader to call him an autobiographer – as Bishop Kukah and Professor Osaghae have done!

    Am I at last guilty of the sin of contradiction engendered by our narrator’s confusion? Clearly not must be and is my answer. The problem is not this reviewer. The problem is the memoirist who also wants to double as an ‘’autobiographer’’ as I have tried to argue. As a matter of fact, he also reveals himself as an essayist as witnessed in several paragraphs in the chapters. What everything I have said so far indicates is that Professor Tunji Olaopa is a victim of autobiography because of its protean, chameleonic nature. Roy Pascal makes this plain in Design and Truth in Autobiography. Georg Misch also seemingly makes this plainer in A History of Autobiography in Antiquity

    My prime concern in this short enterprise is with the interpretation and shape rather than with the subject of The Unending Quest for Reform: An intellectual Memoir. One reason for this is that I personally have slim hope for the bureaucratic leadership in present day Nigeria. The reforms Tunji Olaopa proposes will not be allowed to flourish in this country – his country your country my country our country. The Simeon Adebo model in the Western Region and the Allison Ayida example in the Federal Civil Service have since ceased to be because of who we are. Whatever brilliant ideas patriots such as Tunji Olaopa may have will never grow, or, be allowed to see the light of day by those who will hijack them to suit their nefarious, malicious and anti-Nigerian intentions and purposes. By the way, what has become of TETFUND that the Academic Staff Union of Universities caused our federal government to establish long ago? ASUU’s brilliant ideas that gave birth to TETFUND were swallowed by would-be killers of Nigeria and of our public universities. Tunji Olaopa’s will be put through the mill by envious, jealous, lazy, dull and unpatriotic bureaucratic colleagues and leaders who have been misleading our politicians and political leaders. 

    A crucial statement on Tunji Olaopa’s book under review: Every lover of Nigeria should read it. It is a priceless memoir-cum-autobiography as well as  “autobiography-cum-memoir” written and designed to call our attention to the service and labours of Nigeria. In any case, I have not deliberately set out to promise, promote or recommend it. It recommends itself even though the numerous pictures that adorn the pages give the wrong impression that the book is a run of the mill portrait. It is not and it is not even a variety of it – although readers and critics may debate the importance of the pictures in the book that Tunji Oloapa wants us to accept as a portrait of the “autobiographer.” The pictures of himself and other persons of high society cogently show the narrator’s preference of mind as plainly as an intimate memoir could do. For it is not in our memoirs but in our autobiographies that we record ourselves, our true, genuine selves. In this lies the essence and true nature of the art of autobiography. But this is debatable, I must admit. 

    My final statement is this reiteration: Every lover of Nigeria should read The Unending Quest for Reform: An Intellectual Memoir. A great deal of the Nigerian problem is revealed in it. 

Afejuku can be reached via +2348055213059.

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Opinion

Burning Issues: (Hunger In The Land) 3

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Readers’ Showers Of Encouragement
Prof. Tony Afejuku

By Tony Afejuku

The subject of hunger cannot but enter the lens of this column today – for hunger is a burning issue and subject that is part of Nigeria’s cultural studies currently that experts in the field and discipline cannot but give attention to at this point in time. Indeed, at this point of our democratic dispensation we must be committed to examining all that we possibly can examine about the unusual hunger that is now part of our new culture.

Clearly, if culture is how we respectively live our everyday lives, then it is worth studying or focusing on. How we are surviving in this democracy that has no respect or sympathy for our stomachs is really worth examining and interrogating from the perspective of culture. Culture is how we live and survive. What do we eat to live? What do we eat to survive? What do we feed on to live in harmony with one another? To ask the last question in another way: How can we be happy if and when we don’t eat or feed well? Or if and when we don’t have the wherewithal to eat, feed and live well and happily, how can we do our duties rightly and patriotically for your country my country our country? These are pertinently essential and essentially pertinent questions within the domain of cultural studies. To get answers that we may deem accurate to these questions, we may need to think of the relations between food, or, more accurately, between hunger and power. Michel Foucault (1926-1984), the French historian of ideas and philosopher, literary critic, and political activist and teacher who has been acknowledged generally as the foremost scholar to have done the most substantially significant and the most significantly substantial work on the relations between power and culture, would weep for your country my country our country were he to rise from his grave today and visit this land where un-democratic hunger whips us all with the whip of whips. Oh! How power reigns and rules with the whip of power! Oh! How the whip of power has unleashed hunger on the land, this land! Oh! How the whip of hunger manufactured by fellows who are mis-appliers of power and its weapons have un-dignified us all with huge hunger!

I am writing this with painful pain, and tearful tears. I am writing this in a state of joyless joylessness. I am writing this in a state of mournful mournfulness. I am writing this in December – in December-less December, in December of December-ful hunger – created by peculiar political conditions in a country, in a land, called Nigeria where stampedes for food kill, kill, kill and kill, kill, kill the people, boys and girls, men and women, old and un-old, every now and then. But this December has been a December to be ever remembered for its stampedes of deathful deaths in Ibadan, Abuja, Okija, and elsewhere hurrying nigh. Oh December of Christmas-less Christmas! Deaths, deaths, deaths and deaths, deaths, deaths all in your name and in your season of hunger-ful hunger unknown before now! And a father’s groan: “What do we eat now? My boy is saved. But what will we eat now?” A mother wailed: “Five thousand, five thousand naira line and queue, a mere five thousand, and my girl is dead! My daughter is dead! Killed by five thousand.”

Anyone or any reader who is not profoundly affected by these wailings (and other hunger-induced debris in the land) must have buried in his being the heart of stone regulated by the impure impurity of wickedness. And anyone, any reader, who rejects this view shall invite us to recognize in his or her being the apparently related relations between their muddied and muddled hearts and those of the hypocrites in political power. We will not be surprised if fake words, fake outpourings of sympathy, from our people in political power will now stage an assault on the true feelings of all of us who are hungry, but are still lucky to be alive because we were fortunate to miss the rice, naira and vegetable oil stampedes. From now till heaven knows when the fantastical outpourings of sympathy and sundry sentiments will enter the spaces of our electronic and non-electronic media. The politics of tragic lies and deceits will invade our unwilling consciousness officially through the popular press. Of course, such active social and political lies would not be unnecessary in the absence of hunger and economic hardship in the land. If food was cheap, if our naira was worth its name and real value, if the price of a litre of fuel was not excessively excessive, the reality of our new normal, or our new normalization of hardship that would require us to perish before we would live to survive and survive to live, would be a non-reality.

Let me at this point say openly that akara is part of my daily or almost daily fabulous menu. I cherish it every morning and evening. But for quite some-time now this delicacy of mine has not entered my mouth. The recklessly high cost of beans used for its production now debars it from my qualitative menu. In Lagos, Benin, Sapele and Warri which I ransacked at different times in my quest to know precisely how akara producers-cum-sellers sell similar fried moulds of akara, I discovered that the prices for the moulds hover/hovered between one hundred and two hundred for small or average moulds. Above average and king size moulds hover/hovered between five hundred and one thousand naira. Once upon a time in the not too distant past I could not consume five hundred naira worth of akara at a go. But this is not the case any longer. In Lagos or Benin or Sapele or Warri, to send the right message to my stomach, I need nothing less than four thousand naira worth of akara. I am not a glutton. I am not a heavy eater. The reality, however, is that eating eight thousand naira worth of akara alone every morning and every evening is injuring my pocket in a fantastically painful manner. If I am complaining as I hereby do, you can imagine how bleakly bleak the situation of our less fortunate compatriots is or can be. They cannot readily eat akara any longer! If you doubt me, go do your own research today, and report your findings tomorrow or next tomorrow.

Nigerians are not living. Nigerians are dying and will continue to die of hunger. Hardly is anyone in the lower ring of our society eating a decent meal. Hardly is anyone in the class of the down-trodden eating a meal of quality, that is, even if they ever have anything to eat every blessed day. Let no one be deceived or be carried away by the utopian economic fantasies of our politicians in power. On this score I have a number of offerings to render and tender. But I will not go beyond here. Yet I should like to advise, unsolicited, the President and his presidencynologists thus: In the New Year they should compel themselves to enact policies that must provoke the right conversation that must enable even their critics to explore the dialectic of like and dislike, of “attraction and rejection,” in the endeavour to halt and end our current fatalism. President Ahmed Tinubu, the only PAT in the land must make this his burning issue in the New Year. It is time for him to find time to read and digest Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations from the very beginning to the very end. Doing so shall enervate our President to stop our dystopia.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.

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Opinion

Gen Alpha And The New Africa (PART 1)

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Dele Jegede In Conversation With Prince Yemisi Shyllon
Prof. Toyin Falola

By Toyin Falola

This is a long read on an important subject. We are about to phase out, in the next three years, the Gen Z and replace them with the Gen Alpha. The first set will graduate from high school in the 2025/2026 session. Get ready! Africa is strangely plagued with a long list of issues that have endured for many years despite being a nation full of possibilities. A widespread and persistent taint of corruption has crept into the fabric of government, undermining confidence and development. For young people, in particular, the high unemployment rate paints a depressing picture of wasted potential and unfulfilled aspirations. Outdated political structures and a leadership class more focused on preserving power than fostering an innovative environment often eclipse the promise of democracy. Also, economic instability induced by government errors and global inflation puts many millions of people on the brink of destitution.

Despite the persistent challenges, Africans have, over several decades, developed tools to navigate this volatile environment, tenaciously persisting and adjusting through demanding times. Still, over a great part of the nation’s history, collective actions against these systematic flaws have been sporadic and essentially reactionary. Many Africans, especially the older generations, have accepted the government’s shortcomings as inevitable, a weight that cannot be avoided, rather than issues that must be actively addressed. Cultural standards that emphasize respect for authority and the idea that change must start from the highest levels of political power have further eroded the concept of responsibility.

Born into a continent already suffering from political stagnation, economic inequalities, and unrest, Gen Alpha is poised to join this reality. Unlike their predecessors, this generation is being raised with the required tools to address problems rather than merely inheriting them. Equipped with an intuitive knowledge of technology, a strong sense of global citizenship, and a creative streak that blossoms even in the face of shortage, Gen Alpha is rewriting the script. These children and teenagers are growing up in an atmosphere where demands for accountability, activism, and demonstrations are no longer subdued but rather yelled loudly on global forums. As the first generation to witness the full potential of online activism in real time, they allow even the voices of the most underprivileged people to start movements that transcend national borders. Gen Alpha is showing a relentless need to create their responses, question accepted fate, and demand more from those in charge in a nation where governments have regularly fallen short of their promises.This generation is not waiting for a revolution; they are steadily creating one in a calm, consistent, and peaceful manner. The activities they engage in reflect a notable shift in the African social fabric, defined by a rejection of blind patriotism, the challenge of complacency, and the embrace of responsibility and creativity as essential tools for nation-building. Gen Alpha is fundamentally a reflection of the creativity to make the ideal of a better Africa a reality and the boldness to dream of such.

Africa’s Gen Alpha is ready to challenge conventional wisdom and bring in a new age connected with responsibility, development, and innovation at a time when young movements all around the world have been responsible for overthrowing governments, redefining economies, and reshaping societal norms. Their activities are already being felt in homes, schools, and internet groups, and this is only the beginning. This generation will redefine wealth creation outside the idea of handouts, hold power responsible in a manner never seen before, and use technology to realize goals.

With Gen Alpha, Africa is entering a new era, not merely experiencing the birth of a new generation. This is not just because they were born in 2010 upwards, but because they are growing up in a world quite different from prior generations, which sets them apart from any other generation. The early memories of these children and teenagers are shaped by a society full of connectivity and creativity. Globally, they are the offspring of Millennials—a generation that bridged the gap between analogue and digital technologies. Gen Alpha has only ever known the smooth integration of technology into daily life. Their environment is one in which everything is on demand, including smart devices and touchscreens, which are rather the norm.

When kids grow up, they begin their entrepreneurial path with their first YouTube channel or coding project, where creativity becomes a form of money. Gen Alpha is starting businesses, creating content, and influencing markets across the globe even before they reach the age required to vote. Their technical knowledge is not learned; rather, it comes naturally, paving the way for a future generation that will rethink what it means to create, work, and live. While these traits are global, they are especially unique in Africa, where the furnace of political and economic changes has shaped the Gen Alpha.
Unlike their counterparts in more stable countries, Gen Alpha in Africa is personally familiar with the consequences of malfunctioning systems. Adversity is not just a concept for Gen Alpha in Africa; it is the backdrop against which they are growing up. Their early years are marked by systemic corruption, where inefficiency and exploitation regularly complicate even the most fundamental civic processes. They grow up driving on pothole-filled roads, attending schools where strikes cause months of interrupted learning, and experiencing such frequent power outages that generators have become a common feature of life. Yet, instead of caving into despair, these children are learning to be tenacious and solve problems.

Parents from the Millennial and Gen Z generations who are tech-savvy, informed, and progressively dissatisfied with the status quo contribute to this resilience. By helping their children to take ownership of their lives, these parents—many of whom have struggled to find opportunities in a system designed to stifle them—are building a sense of independence and agency in their children. Rather than seeing technology as only a source of entertainment, they teach their children to question authority, think critically, and use technology as a tool for empowerment. In many African households, when it comes to the future, waiting for government participation is no longer a topic of conversation. Instead, they concentrate on self-sufficiency—generating revenue, creating solutions, and avoiding system inefficiencies. Gen Alpha is largely anchored in this idea. To them, conventional paths of success, such as working for the government, getting pensions, or just dedicating oneself to a specific field of work, seem outdated and even humorous. Exposure to lifestyles from across the world made possible by social media has expanded their viewpoint. Seeing young people in other parts of the globe starting companies, creating software, and influencing public policy has influenced their belief that they can achieve the same, if not more. Growing up, these youngsters develop a strong awareness that borders are becoming less relevant in a society that is becoming increasingly digital. The things that count are skill, access, and a willingness to think differently.

The challenges that Gen Alpha faces in Africa shape many aspects of their lives. Regarding their problems, they do not believe that the government will help resolve them. The older generations, who were taught to be tenacious and flexible, do not share their degree of complacency. Still, their lack of resources has made them bold, creative, and relentless in their pursuit of a better life. While previous generations see change as a slow and regular external process, Gen Alpha sees it as something they can create themselves. These children will grow into individuals who create platforms to elevate marginalized voices, design software to solve traffic problems and start businesses that not only survive but flourish in an unsteady economy.

For a good part of Africa’s history, respect for individuals in positions of authority has been the norm. Older generations, shaped by military regimes and colonial dominance, often adopted a calm tolerance when faced with systemic flaws. Whether it was held by a government official, a traditional king, or an elderly member of society, challenging authority was uncommon. Respect was linked with obedience, and dissent was considered irresponsible, as it was deemed a direct assault on the well-ingrained cultural standards of hierarchy and order. Children were taught to accept decisions made by those in authority, regardless of their competency or good intentions, and to lower their eyes when speaking to elders. Many houses followed this daily ritual, and the docile culture permeated even government, where successive administrations thrived on a population too weary from economic hardships to confront them.

Many Africans, believing that change could only be brought about by supernatural intervention or a miracle passed down from generation to generation, accepted corruption, ineptitude, and simple apathy as their reality. For many years, their collective attitude focused more on survival than confrontation. However, the narrative veers differently as soon as Gen Alpha shows up. This generation is rejecting passively accepting the status quo, as they have been raised in a digital era where knowledge can be obtained instantaneously and without any filtration. Now, they scream into the internet the tales of corruption and exploitation their parents told behind closed doors.

Retweets, hashtags, and viral videos help to validate these tales. Without them, silence becomes complicity, fueling system degradation rather than a virtue. Unlike their predecessors, Gen Alpha are not shy about demanding responsibility at every level of government. They find it puzzling that roads remain unpaved even though money has been allocated for development. They question political officials who try to evade public scrutiny and hold them responsible for unmet promises. Through social media channels such as Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, they can instantly expose inefficiencies, corruption, and injustice. Africa is most likely to witness a more robust culture of openness.

The 2020 #EndSARS movement was a significant event that challenged police aggression and demanded responsibility from an agency meant to protect lives, not recklessly waste the lives of young people for baseless reasons. Though Millennials and Gen Z were the major players in the production, it was difficult to ignore the presence of Gen Alpha’s voices and their eyes giving testimonies. Many of them, though too young to participate physically in the protests, heard the shouts and saw the images on social media. They absorbed the lesson that silence is complicity and that change is possible when people gather. Consequently, they engaged in online campaigning, acquiring the tools and tactics of activism. They witnessed the effectiveness of collective action and the futility of silence, absorbing these lessons in readiness for the challenges their generation will encounter going forward. These experiences are shaping them into more informed and active participants, emboldened to attempt restoring sanity and integrity in a society plagued by widespread corruption across various sectors.

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Opinion

Kemi Badenoch’s Bad Knocks  On Nigeria 

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By  Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

One of the interesting proverbs I picked up in our General African Studies (GAS 201) course with the late Professor Jabez Olowo Ojoade in the University of Jos in 1979 was ‘it is a bastard child that points at his homestead with his left hand! The Akan people of Ghana put it this way: a bastard child points to his father’s house with his left hand’. The Yoruba say that ‘a person who points to their homestead with the left hand is not a good person’, while the Luhya of Kenya say that ‘when pointing to your village, use your right hand’. It is in the Swahili language that a sort of generalised use of the left hand is concretised when it says ‘the left hand is for personal hygiene, not for pointing!

Bastard child! Homestead! Pointing with the left hand! These three constituents and functional parts of the proverb tickled my teenage imagination to no end. What is it about the left had that it should not be used to refer to one’s family? Why is this metaphor common across the continent? Indeed, there must be something about the family, about the homestead, about one’s origins that deserves respect no matter the circumstances.

By the way, some Nigerians in the diaspora also point to Nigeria with their left hand. ‘That country’, is often used to describe the place where some spent eighteen or thirty of their lives as they tried to find their feet. So, in a sense, Kemi is simply doing what some full-blooded Nigerians do in reaction to the anomie which currently rules the land. Kemi stands out because of her delicate and prominent position in the world. We all took offence when Bully Donald Trump referred to ours as ‘shithole countries! At that level, who said what becomes very important, that is, the message is given prominence because of the stature and calibre of the messenger.

            The proverb, according to Wikipedia, is ‘often used to convey that someone who is not respectful or grateful to their roots or heritage will eventually be rejected or ostracised by their community! The left hand, we are told, is for personal hygiene. We don’t use it to give or receive gifts; we don’t use it to serve drinks or for traditionally important functions.

             In the African context, a bastard child is not one who was born out of wedlock or whose father is not known to the family. Bastard child represents a person who is disconnected from their family. Pointing to the family house with the left hand is indicative of disrespect.

            These thoughts flooded my mind when I read recently elected leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, Kemi Badenoch, gave some hard and bad knocks to Nigeria, the Nigeria Police, and governance in her Nigeria, her ancestral home. To be sure, nobody who has encountered some men of the Nigeria Police in action can fault Kemi. Her chemistry of being brutally frank is what has taken Kemi to the heights in Conservative Party politics. Whether she can indeed lead the Party to victory in an election is a different kettle of fish. As the potential leader of the British government, all cards will count when push gets to shove. Which is why Kemi should remember that no well-trained child points to the family house with the left hand.

            Nigeria is in process. It is a building site. And we started this project of disparate and different cultures fused together when the British pounced on our ancestors to create Nigeria. We look back to the years when a British monarch, King Henry VIII (1491 to 1547), who ate two of his six wives for breakfast and dinner. Wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were executed by beheading. Jane Seymour died under mysterious circumstances. Perhaps if Diana had emerged in the 15th century as wife to a British monarch, the reigning king would have sent her to the guillotine instead of the tunnel in Paris! Some British monarchs actively participated, supported, and profited from the transatlantic slave trade. British monarchs oversaw the colonisation of indigenous lands in Africa, North America, and Australia sometimes through genocide! No where in Africa, our dear left-handed and grandly insolent Kemi, would a Prime Minister allow his wife to remain in an adulterous relationship for decades as Harold Macmillan did with wife Lady Dorothy Macmillan did with the bisexual Bob Boothby in the 20th Britain!

            We may need to remind Kemi that racism still dominated policing in Britain as it does in much of the Western world. Yet, we have not painted the entire police system as being racist. Indeed, Kemi, without officialdom around her can still be profiled by a police officer if she were found driving alone in some areas of London! Her skin colour, is not typically British, I dare say. Yet, we have not said that Britain is racist. The ‘how dark’ racist discussions which precipitated Harry and Meghan fleeing the British monarchy is still very fresh and raw in our consciousness; yet, Nigeria’s Vice President has not called the British monarchy a racist institution.

            Time will fail me to discuss the Damilola Taylor case in year 2000 when the Metropolitan Police handling of Taylor’s murder was seen as slow and inadequate due to racial bias. By the way, Damilola was both British and Yoruba like our illustrious and petulant Kemi who believes in giving hard knocks! What about the Stephen Lawrence 1993 murder case which the Metropolitan Police badly handled owing to racial bias? In 1999, Roger Sylvester, a Black man, died in police custody and an inquest showed that the police used excessive force. In 2009, newspaper vendor Ian Tom died after being struck by a police officer during the G20 protests in London. The 1999 Macpherson Report, which investigated the Stephen Lawrence case, concluded that ‘the Metropolitan Police as institutionally racist! As late as 2017, the Lammy Review which was led David Lammy (MP) concluded that “black and minority ethnic individuals were more likely to be stopped and searched, arrested, and imprisoned than their white counterparts! Need I say more?

So, our dear daughter and bright star Kemi in the British firmament, we shall not point to you with our left hand, because in spite of you, you are our daughter. We can only say that the Nigeria Police is in good company of the Empire of the Police system which was created in 1820 by your progenitors from the other side! Colonial vestiges are not easy to shake off!

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