Bíòbákú’s Party And Tinubu’s Malapropisms -By Festus Adedayo

Last week, again, Tinubu relapsed into his usual malapropism. At the breaking of fast with members of the House of Representatives at the Villa, he admitted that the “heat was high voltage from the critics” but he and his political party, the APC, eventually weathered the storm. While promising the parliamentarians a second term, subject to an agreement between the APC and the political parties the legislators belonged, he was emphatic that it would be to the exclusion of “the Biobaku party.” Everybody laughed. Someone at the gathering, in the din of grovelling laughter, could be heard wondering what the president meant again by this. What is the “Biobaku party”?

My childhood friend, Osasere Adagbonyin, gave me my first encounter with malapropism. In Ilesa, Osun State in 1984, shortly after we left high school, he recited to me the story of a man whose wife was barren but who, in a bombast, and a total deflection from what he meant, upon meeting the doctor, said, “Dr., my wife is un-bear-able; she is in-conceive-able; she is impregnable!”

In the run-up to the 2023 elections, presidential candidate Bola Tinubu was embroiled in a dozen of such speech blunders. It was so bad that opposition political parties cheekily claimed his recurring faux pas indicated he was not mentally fit to administer Africa’s most populous nation. For a finicky people, unpretentious about their choices of sanity in leadership, Nigerians are consensus ad idem with the Òkò-Ìrèsé tribe. They would not want an embarrassment in the Aso Rock Villa.

Òkò-Ìrèsé are a sub-Yoruba group who can be found in Kwara and Oyo States. Oral history, as well as traditional accounts, attribute Òkò’s founding to a hunter prince who was in search of a fertile land. Late Ilorin bard, Odolaye Aremu, popularized Òkò-Ìrèsé people’s carefulness in choices, especially, in their historical commercial activities of buying and selling of slaves. Their Oríkì, praise poetry, speaks to those finicky choices made by their forebears, especially their historically recognized meticulous nature in commercial slave sale and purchase transactions. For them, like Nigerians, wrong choices are a red flag. At slave markets for human purchase, their forebears were picky, lest they purchase slovenly slaves who periodically decorated their cheeks with whitish, early morning caked saliva called lala. In chanting the Òkò-Ìrèsé’s Oríkì, Odolaye articulated those finicky and careful choices. They were “Oko Irese ọmọ wòyírà, kò má ba r’ẹrú k’ẹrú, ẹrú k’ẹrú abilala l’ẹnu…“

In January 2022, while addressing some market women who came visiting him, Tinubu announced to them that their Permanent Voter Card (PVC) had expired. “In case they do not announce to you on time, the PVC you have has expired,” he said. INEC had to promptly counter him, resulting in an apology by one of his aides. Again, in March of that year, during his 69^th birthday colloquium celebrated in Kano, Tinubu urged Muhammadu Buhari’s Federal Government to recruit 50 million soldiers as booster for the security forces. The suggested recruits, he pontificated, “will eat cassava, àgbàda (real word in Yoruba for corn being àgbàdo) in the morning, yam in the afternoon…”

As if it was one month, one gaffe, in April of same year, the then presidential aspirant then asked, “Do you know how many of you are tweeting on WhatsApp right now?” Then, on October 15, he said his ally-now-turned-political-foe, then Kaduna State governor, Nasir El Rufai, had “turned a rotten situation into a bad one.” By November 17, he had turned the confetti of gaffes into a way of life. On that day, at a town hall meeting he had in Imo State, Tinubu uttered the infamous doggerel, “Bala Blu, Blu, Bulaba”. Till today, no one can tell what it meant. On November 25 of the year, eight days after the Imo indecipherable, the blunder to come became more utterly embarrassing. At Oporoza, Gbaramatu Kingdom, the presidential candidate said then Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege, would be the next governor of the “Niger Delta” State. Tinubu then crowned his blistering gaffes at the October 17, 2022 Arewa Stakeholders meeting in Kaduna. Asked of his take on the global climate change by reporters, he said it “is a question of how do you prevent a church rat from eating a poisoned holy communion?”

Many of his supporters were worried. What could be the catalyst for these blunders? While some say it was a calculated attempt to pain himself as an underdog to be pitied and dissemble the ranks of the opposition. Tinubu’s erstwhile estranged deputy as Lagos governor, Femi Pedro, attributed the malaprops to “slips of tongue” which he said were buoyed by fatigue and high campaign pressure. Some also said that as a human being, Tinubu was prone to gaffes. On their face value, the gaffes are potentially fatal.

My initial comparison of Nigerian finicky choice of leadership with the Òkò-Ìrèsé sounds contradictory nevertheless. If they were finicky in their choices of leaders and abhorrent of a leader who constantly descended into malaprops, why did they choose Tinubu? Or, could the people’s case be contiguous with that of a farmer often referenced in manifest stupidity? Knowing before hand that his farmland was infested with Ikún, a ground, tree-dwelling squirrel known for its bushy tail and agility, reputed in folk stories to be deaf, this farmer nevertheless went ahead to plant groundnuts on it. At harvest time, distraught that Ikún had turned his plantation into ruins, my people mock the farmer’s stupidity.

At the time when, as presidential candidate, Tinubu offered Nigerians gaffes a la carte, the people were just emerging from similar malapropism afflictions under Buhari. The Daura-born ex-soldier sometimes waffled into nothingness, far away from the content of his engagements. You will recall that in October, 2016, on a visit to Germany, while he stood beside the world’s most powerful woman, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Buhari was asked by journalists to react to his wife, Aisha’s consistent harangue of his government. He had replied: “I don’t know which party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room and za oza room.” If you watched the telecast of that event, fix your gaze at Merkel: She seemed to glare at this inappropriateness from a fellow world leader. How could any perceptive leader denigrate womanhood in the presence of the then most powerful woman in the world? To me, it was not just inappropriate; it was sexist, reflecting a disconnect somewhere.

Again, on September 23, 2019, Buhari had joined other world leaders at the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Climate Action Summit which held in New York. Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres and other senior UN officials were there. At the panel discussion, the moderator had asked: “President Buhari, Nigeria has a very young population; perhaps you might highlight what a pathway for a resilient future looks like?” It was a question that required a prompt, off-the-cuff and suave answer. Rather, Buhari asked for the speech he had earlier read and lapsed into an incoherent reply which immediately sparked furore on the social media.

Many people have subjected President Tinubu’s “Biobaku” ad-lib statement to rigorous scrutiny. Their submission, parodying Ola Rotimi’s famous play, is that our president has gone Malapropos again. Three words appeared within the radar that Tinubu could probably be referencing. One is the name of famous pre and post-independence scholar of history, Professor Saburi Oladeni Biobaku. The second he might have meant was “Àbíkú” and the third, “Abóbakú”. The three are Yoruba words. Whichever he meant, it was in bad light and as such, in searching for peripheral linkages to his mind construct among the three, our choice word must not convey positivity.

Professor  Biobaku, known for his rhythmic initials, SOB, the most famous bearer of that name the president referenced, evokes nostalgic, positive historical memory. A Nigerian scholar, historian, politician who lived between 1918 and 2001, an ex-boy of Government College, Ibadan, was born in Abeokuta, Ogun State. Biobaku was taught by Chief Obafemi Awolowo in his primary school days at the Ogbe Methodist Primary School, Abeokuta. He later became Awolowo’s Secretary of the Premier Executive Council (SPEC) in the Western Region. He was also the first African Registrar of the University of Ibadan.

In fact, when Chief Awolowo was to actualize his dream of bringing together the then fractious Yoruba people, Biobaku was one of the historians he consulted to establish the Yoruba language society. Biobaku’s 1957 book, The Egba and their Neighbours, originally his doctoral dissertation from the University of London in 1951, which he later turned into a 136-page text, is a huge bank of information on Egbaland in the 19th century. It became the second Nigerian-authored historical book published by the Oxford University Press, coming after Professor Kenneth Dike’s famous 1956 Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta (1830-1885).

The most famous story associated with Biobaku is the jostling for the Vice Chancellor position of the University of Lagos in 1965. Having earlier been appointed VC of the University of Zambia, he was dissuaded from accepting the offer by Nigeria’s Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and was instead offered the University of Lagos. It became a huge cauldron of inter-ethnic animosity between the Yoruba and Igbo. At this time, the animosity had reached feverish height. It signposted the S. L. Akintola government’s battle to typecast Igbo’s Eastern Region as nepotist and not worthy to partner with the Western Region in the political alliance that was afoot. Chairman of the Nigerian Railways, Dr. Okechukwu Ikejiani and Prof Eni Njoku, first VC  of University of Lagos, 1962 – 1965, who was seeking re-appointment, were then represented by this semiotic battle. Its height was the allegation that Dr. Ikejiani had employed an Igbo medical doctor who earned an annual salary of £2,600 and yet had no job because the hospital earmarked for him was not going to be ready in the next eighteen months. The Daily Sketch newspaper, Akintola’s megaphone’s edition of April 6, 1964 carried a rather sarcastic story on its front page with the title, Yoruba nru, Ikejiani nsanra, meaning that, while the Yoruba race was going lean, Ikejiani (and invariably, his Igbo stock) were getting fatter.

Apart from campaign ground statements which he made that became instant headlines in the Sketch, Akintola’s visceral campaign against the Igbo involved pun-twisting the name of Ikejiani into a sarcastic Yoruba adaptation, so as to suit his pillory of the race. Akintola, reputed orator and very deep in Yoruba morphology, in this “ìkejì á ní” (second will have) punning, was wont to ask his audience, “The first (Igboman) would have, the second (Igboman) would have; what have you got?” The Akintola government later released a White Paper on the New Political Alignment: Western Nigeria: Western Nigeria Official Document No. 1, 1964 that detailed allegations of nepotism against Ikejiani. It alleged that out of a grand total of 431 names on the staff list of the Railway corporation under him, 270 were Igbo and 161 of other ethnic groups; of the 57 direct senior appointments made by the corporation, 27 were Igbo, 8 were other tribes and eight others were expatriates.

This inter-ethnic battle and allegations of tribal patronage in early Nigerian higher education was  notorious in the 1965 battle for the Vice-Chancellorship of the University of Lagos. Playing on both professors’ names, Akintola was said to have told the university academic audience that “we said we would give you a man who would not die (Yoruba translation of Bíòbákú), yet you insisted that it is the man who eats the dead (Yoruba literal translation of Eni Ńjòkú) that you want!”

On June 8, 1965, Biobaku, then newly appointed VC, was then stabbed by a student, Kayode Adams. Adams was an old boy of Ibadan Grammar School. His appointment came at the cusp of non-renewal of the VC tenure of professor of Botany and first vice chancellor of the university, Eni Njoku. Not only was Njoku loved by the entire university, the school felt that Biobaku’s appointment was aimed at feathering Yoruba ethnic nest. The decision led to demonstration by students and request to the then Minister of Education, Chief Richard Akinjide, to rescind the decision. With the help of Chair of Council, Prof Horatio Oritsejolomi Thomas, Biobaku sneaked into the school.

As narrated by Biobaku himself in his autobiography, When we were no longer young (1999), he was stabbed after his address to the students at Idi-Araba. Biobaku had earlier penned When we were young (1992). Though he later pleaded not guilty, citing insanity, Adams only suffered judicial retribution. This was because of the attempt to life he was charged with, in accordance with sections 229 and 230 of Criminal Procedure Act (CPA). None of his rioting colleagues was touched. The court confined him to the Yaba psychiatry but in October, 1969, Adams was found dead at the Bar Beach.

So, was it Saburi Biobaku, that highly-placed scholar, one of Yoruba’s most highly placed icons, that Tinubu was referencing in that bad light? It was not likely.

Could the president have meant the “Àbíkú party”? In poems written by two Nigerian literary prodigies, Wole Soyinka and John Pepper Clark, in their 1967 and 1965 poems respectively, they explored the Yoruba concept of belief in a spirit child called Abiku. In Yoruba cosmological belief, that child is destined to die and get reborn repeatedly, as a plague to its mother. The two poets however sculpted the Abiku with different strokes. While Soyinka painted it as defiant in a detached and cynical brush, with focus on the child’s supernatural nature, boasting that “In vain is your bangles cast”, Clark conversely sculpted the child being pleadingly entreated to consider staying back on earth, confronting it with the emotional peril its persistent journey out of the earth posed to its distraught family. Was this what the president meant? Have the “Àbíkú” political parties become such a pest on the president? Was he interceding with them to retreat from haranguing him like J.P. Clark or daring them like Soyinka’s Abiku?

The third of what Tinubu could have meant was “Abóbakú,” also referred to as the Olókùn esin. Meaning, “he who dies with the king,” it is the relic of a practice in the old Oyo Empire. In it, an individual, most times the Aremo, the king’s eldest son, at his demise, was traditionally designated to accompany the monarch on a journey of no return by being buried alive with the Alaafin. It signifies Yoruba belief in the continuation of life in the hereafter. The Abóbakú practice was formally halted around 1946, at the death of Alaafin Siyanbola Ladigbolu 1, who reigned from 1911 to 1944. As the Olókùn esin was about to be interred with Oba Siyanbola, the British Colonial Resident, Captain William Ross, intervened, forbidding the reluctant Abóbakú from being buried alive with him. A cow substitute was immediately and subsequently used for the rites. So, did Tinubu mean that the opposition were Abóbakús? Not likely.

Many have read the Tinubu “Bíòbákú party” comment to mean that he was  mocking the coalition-backed ADC due to what he regards as its multiple personal interests. But this still does not answer to this particular “Bíòbákú ” word usage. I personally think something is wrong somewhere. It could be a throwback to an ancient Yoruba saying. When a plantain is ripening, it is doing one of two things. Transiting from its unalluring greenery into a beautiful, yellowish colour, the plantain is, at the same time, in preparation for a decay. When you then clap excitedly that the plantain is ripening, you are looking at it with myopia. My people then say, “Ógèdè ńbàjé, è l’ó ńpón”. It is the message of the Agidigbo drum. Only the wise dance to it and the scholarly understand it.