Festus Adedayo
Premium Times
Ibadan, YO, Nigeria
Contact Festus
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Past articles by Festus:
Before we arrive at Rwanda, By Festus Adedayo
We must eliminate the ethnic prejudice in Lagos otherwise we will arrive faster than we imagined at a 1994 Rwanda. → Read More
My Bola Tinubu odyssey, By Festus Adedayo
On the critiquing of the Tinubu presidency, I suffered beyond people’s imagination, even up to the point of ostracism. → Read More
Of coup, interim government and allied nonsense, By Festus Adedayo
At times like this, two works of literature are my abiding refuge. One, written over a century ago, speaks to the melee, both in the APC and Nigeria as a whole. It is a poem entitled “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats. It was written at a time similar to that of present Nigeria. It was […] → Read More
Buhari's new Naira notes and death of Penkelemes' musician, By Festus Adedayo
In 1984, Nigeria happened to Ayanyemi Atokowagbowonle. Atokowagbowonle was a musician whose style was unique, his delivery peculiar and he was the official musician of the stormy petrel of Ibadan politics, Adelabu Adegoke, a.k.a. Penkelemes, of the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon (NCNC). The then new Head of State, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, had just […] → Read More
Nigeria at point zero, By Festus Adedayo
I am peering at the viral video of the naked young man inside the banking hall as I write this. His manhood dangles like the pendulum of the Grandfather Clock of colonial Nigeria. He is totally naked, even as he shouts that he needs to withdraw cash from the bank. I am aghast and disillusioned […] → Read More
Tinubu and ghosts of fuel scarcity, new naira notes, By Festus Adedayo
In a piece I wrote entitled “A O M’erin J’oba At Tinubu’s Colloquium” (1 April, 2018) I warned that the man who has now become the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was making a strategic mistake in assuming that Buhari loved him. Or that he would probably want to […] → Read More
Buhari, Emefiele’s buga handshake, By Festus Adedayo
This week, there will be a stampede in Nigeria. Stampede for the new Nigerian currencies. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN’s) policy of currency change has been variously lauded for its power to purge the system of slush funds warehoused for election purposes. However, its symptom as a vengeful political weapon manifests as preparations towards […] → Read More
The god of Nyesom Wike, By Festus Adedayo
Last week, Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike and his entourage were in Ahoada area of the State, on a mission to flag-off a road construction. Then a drama was staged. It was skillfully perfumed by a sweet-smelling fragrance which disguised its heretics. As the governor sat to the panoply of songs and fawning political chicanery […] → Read More
Multiple murders so cruel and this evil world, By Festus Adedayo
The murders of Kehinde and Bukola Fatinoye, a few hours after the new year, have made me pensive and downcast since the news broke. That dastardly murder is one event of 2023 that throws me into spasms whenever my mind reflects on it. Unable to reconcile the gravity of this evil with the aesthetic beauty […] → Read More
What is new about the New Year 2023?, By Festus Adedayo
So, that mythical Nigerian year, 2023, is here at last? For Nigerians, 2023 is not just a year of newness as all years represent for mankind. It is a year with gross implications, political, economic and social. It is a year that is at once dreaded, expected, venerated and which evokes apprehension, as well as […] → Read More
Emefiele’s terrorism mess, By Festus Adedayo
If you read God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican, you would have a whiff of understanding of the battle that assails, and the nature of the assailants of, Godwin Emefiele, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor. God’s Bankers, written by Gerald Posner, is an expose on the Papacy and the […] → Read More
Onanuga, Alake and Obaigbena at Thessalonica, By Festus Adedayo
To many, the recent virulent attacks and counter attacks by top Nigerian journalists, served a la carte to the world in the last two weeks, are indications of an autumn for journalism practice in Nigeria. Nigerians have thus been treated to a disgraceful brew of damaging and ignoble exchanges from these media warlords. The public spat has […] → Read More
Charlatanism at Chatham House, By Festus Adedayo
Tinubu’s men however reasoned that that slip at Chatham mirrored team-ship and delegation of responsibility. → Read More
Yes, Aisha Buhari eats from Nigerian poor people’s money!, By Festus Adedayo
Though wife of the Nigerian president, Aisha Buhari, has discontinued her defamation case against Aminu Adamu, the final year student of the Federal University, Dutse, Jigawa State, the court of public opinion cannot afford to throw the issue into the dustbin just yet. In what was the Nigerian First Lady’s most recent controversy, having allegedly […] → Read More
Qatar World Cup, alcohol and gays, By Festus Adedayo
A little over a week ago, on a Qatar Airways flight journeying to Doha, city of the current World Cup fiesta, I saw a film which clearly depicts the raging back-and-forth arguments between the Arab World and the West. A Betty Kathungu-Furet film, The Medicine Man is a Kenyan Swahili movie subtitled in English. It […] → Read More
Day Ayinla Omowura and Ayinde Barrister dueled in Philadelphia, By Festus Adedayo
Bala-blu-blu-bulaba, All Progressives Congress (APC’s) festival of incoherences, should attract a writer. So also the celebration and justification of its impending fatality. Feeble and laughable as it may seem, Festus Keyamo’s Ananias and Saphirra role in this frightening reality too should not escape a dissection. I would have loved to ask Keyamo, in the words of […] → Read More
South-west’s forests of a thousand demons, By Festus Adedayo
From my personal ranking of their tragic imports, three events which occurred in the last one week constitute leading narratives of where we are today. They are, one, the siege laid to Southwest Nigeria’s Lagos-Ibadan expressway by kidnappers and the suicidal plunge to death of an operative of Nigeria’s secret police, known as the Department […] → Read More
The abduction of Pa Reuben Fasoranti, By Festus Adedayo
In 1996, his car riddled with bullet holes inflicted by General Sani Abacha’s goons aimed at assassinating him, Yoruba Afenifere Leader, Senator Abraham Adesanya, had made a bullseye statement. That statement appeared to explain the raging furore among the leadership of the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group today. Adesanya’s father had twenty children. He was the only one initiated […] → Read More
Abuja bloodshed warning and Nigeria’s Cassandra complex, By Festus Adedayo
Greek mythology, in the Aeschylus tragedy called Agamemnon, told the story of Cassandra. She was a pretty damsel highly sought after by the god, Apollo. The god promised that if Cassandra gave in to his advances, he would give her the power of prophecy. Though the damsel accepted the proposal and was immediately proclaimed blessed with […] → Read More
Oluwo, Wande Abimbola and philistinism of culture, By Festus Adedayo
Sometime in the 19th century, as he stood in the ancient town of Ijaiye in present day Abeokuta, Ogun State, American missionary, Richard Henry Stone saw a young man by the gate of the mission premises. The young man was prepping himself up for a war expedition, probably the Ijaiye war. The young man boasted to […] → Read More