The grave dangers you never knew about the so-called rehabilitated or repentant Boko Haram finally revealed from the horse’s mouth. And it’s bigger than anybody could have imagined.
My father's best friend was a man called Uncle Bayo who disappeared from our lives without explanation. I was 12 the last time I saw him. He came to our flat in Gbagada, argued with my father in the bedroom for an hour, and walked out without saying goodbye to me. My father never spoke his name again. Neither did my mother. Uncle Bayo became a silence with a shape.
Twenty-six years passed. I was in Philadelphia for a conference. A networking dinner at a hotel downtown. Across the room, a man about my father's age caught my eye and held it too long. He approached me during dessert and said my surname like it was a question he already knew the answer to.
We sat in the hotel lobby until 2am. He told me the story my father never did. They had started a construction company together in the early 90s. It had failed because of a contract dispute with a senator. The senator had paid only half the money and refused the rest. The debt had crushed them. Uncle Bayo had blamed my father for trusting the senator. My father had blamed Uncle Bayo for not reading the fine print. The friendship had shattered. Two men who had been closer than brothers had become strangers over something neither of them could control.
Uncle Bayo had moved to America after the falling out. He had built a new life, a new business, a small contracting firm in West Philly. He had married a Ghanaian woman and had two daughters. He had never returned to Nigeria. He had never called my father. He had assumed the silence was mutual.
I asked why he approached me now. He said he recognised my face because I looked like my father at 30. He said he had been waiting for decades to see that face again, to explain something that was never about betrayal. He said the argument had been about shame, not money. Both men had felt they failed each other. Neither had known how to say it.
I called my father from the hotel room. It was 3am in Lagos. He answered on the second ring, voice thick with sleep and alarm. I told him who I was sitting with. The line went quiet. Then my father did something I had never heard him do. He cried. Not softly. The kind of crying that comes from a place words cannot reach.
Uncle Bayo flew to Lagos 3 months later. They met at the same flat in Gbagada. They sat in the same living room where the argument had happened. They didn't re-litigate the past. They just sat together, two old men with white hair and matching hypertension medication, and let the silence heal.
My father died last year. Uncle Bayo spoke at the funeral. He said the greatest thief in life is not money or failure. It is the belief that there is always more time.
Call them. The debt is not theirs. It is yours.
Leadership Tussle: Nafiu Bala Resigns As ADC Chairman
By Funke Ogunlolu
The 2023 Gombe governorship candidate and former national deputy chairman of the African democratic congress. Nafiu Bala has tendered his letter of resignation after declaring himself as the interim national chairman of the party.
In the letter Addressed to the former national chairman of the party, Ralph Nwosu, Bala stated that his resignation was to pave way for smooth and effective coalition as well as restructuring the party.
Bala assured that he is not abandoning the party and ready to serve in any capacity but the former Gombe governorship candidate was silenced on the David Mark-led interim leadership.
The announcement came after the official handing over of ADC to the former Senate President and his team by the former national executive committee on Wednesday.
During his declaration as the national chairman, Bala had accused Mark-led interim leadership of the ADC of hijacking the party through unconstitutional means and warned of impending legal action to challenge what he described as a “total surrender” of the party’s structure to external political actors.
The former deputy national chairman emphasized that the party’s constitution clearly outlines the processes for leadership succession and that, in line with those provisions, he was now assuming the position of interim national chairman.
(Editor: Paul Akhagbemhe)
This is my new video on YouTube about how Nigeria went from having 24 international merchant ships in 1964 to none by 2026. The decline was largely driven by corruption and embezzlement. Many of the ships were eventually seized in foreign ports due to unpaid debts.
Here’s the link: https://t.co/S2SXJ8Tm3G
I really wish this video will go viral. If this comes across your timeline, please share.
I expect Bwala to be rewarded. Not cause he performed greatly but cause his liege lord rewards his people for taking bullets for him. He did what no one else in the administration wanted to do and as such his boss would reward him. Na we dey cry about the optics, BAT no send
@daviruz@OneJoblessBoy The unfortunate man wears it everywhere. It's just sad . Should have just stuck to being the clown that we have always known him to be.
Unlike the other guy who said victory was not worth it when it comes at the cost of his countrymen lives and blood, with this current guy, it is your lives and blood that will give you the victory you deserve and desire. Goodluck people.