A Lagos politician, Kolade
David, chose to end his tenure as the Chairman of the Bariga Local Council Development Authority, LCDA, on a controversial note. In a viral video that is still trending, he announced the renaming of some streets. Out of the seven renamed streets, one: “Ifeanyi Street”, was rechristened “Abolore Akande (9ice) Street”.
What sparked the outrage was David’s pronouncement that “Charly Boy Bus-Stop”, along with “Ajidagan Street”, which became famous during the popular Charly Boy Show of the 1990s, were renamed after Olamide Adedeji (Olamide Baddo). The outgoing official claimed that the beneficiaries of the renaming were “our people who have put the name of our local council out on the global map through their respective God-given talents and crafts as well as eminent personalities…” President Bola Tinubu and Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu were also listed as beneficiaries.
For sure, the official had the power under the law to name and rename those streets and bus-stops. The way a person uses his power shows the kind of person he is. Kolade David obviously needed to curry the political favours of the president and governor after the expiry of his tenure. He also sought cheap popularity to bolster his position in Tinubu’s political nest. After all, if he had not created a fuss around himself by renaming Charly Boy Bus-Stop, his name which is trending, albeit for the wrong reason, would have remained in obscurity.
Personally(and I think I speak the minds of many), Olamide, founder of the YBNL music label, deserves a street, a bus-stop and even more. He is a prodigiously talented, creative artiste. He is a major pillar that shaped the “Afrobeat” music brand which has given Nigeria a special place in worldwide entertainment. He created the shaku-shaku shuffle dance following his Shakiti bobo track contained in his Eyan Mayweather album (November 2015). Olamide took up from where Da Grin, the pioneer of Yoruba language rap artistry stopped, and made it an acceptable mainstream offering. In this, he rode the same wavelength with his Igbo inseparable friend, Chibuzo Nelson Azubuike (Phyno), another vernacular rap spectacle.
Together, Baddo and Phyno have done several chart-bursting collaborations, top of which is Fada Fada. Olamide has also raised a number of top Afrobeat stars, some of whom went on to achieve bigger universal acclaim than himself. These include Igbo boys – Ckay and Rema. Others are Ashake, Fireboy DML (of the Peru-para fame), Bnxn and others. Olamide is indeed fada fada in Afrobeat and a gold medal on the neck of Nigeria. He is a complete and detribalised gentleman who, like Phyno, has managed his personal brand reputation so well. He is virtually scandal-free.
It is such a shame that a favour-seeking politician like Kolade David dragged him into a negative trending news that is alien to his character, all for selfish political gain. Charles Oputa (Charly Boy) has also put that same Gbagada and environs on the world map. I don’t like his punk lifestyle, but that’s not the issue. It was his social activism which he symbolised with his legendary superbike that made the people to name the junction between Ajidagan Street and the Oshodi-Oworonshoki Expressway “Charly Bus-Stop”. The people, not government officials, gave the bus -stop its name. It is now up to them if they will change their mind and call it “Baddo Bus-Stop” henceforth.
Of particular interest is Kolade David’s use of the word: “our people”. It is not only a reckless display of tribalism, it is also part of the creeping Igbophobia that has always been the staple of Tinubu’s buccaneering political group. This group, largely made up of politicians from other parts of Yorubaland outside Lagos State, has, in the past 26 years of Tinubu’s dominance of Lagos politics, sought to redefine the historical, political and economic character of Lagos. They have systematically dislodged original indigenes of Lagos from power and taken over. Lagos is the only state in Nigeria where the indigenes have no power over their own political and economic affairs. They are marginalised like a conquered people.
After subduing the indigenes, this group is now focusing on the Igbo residents who hold a commanding presence in the economic landscape of Lagos, as well as pose a potential political threat to them. The results of national elections in Lagos since 2019 have given the Tinubu boys the assignment of either forcefully absorbing the Igbo into their ranks as they did the indigenes, or seeking to uproot them.
These same elements spread fallacies against the Igbo ethnic group, accusing them of claiming that Lagos is a “no man’s land”, and that the Igbo are hostile to those who settle among them from other places. While the Charly Boy bus-stop controversy raged, a photograph of a street named after Professor Wole Soyinka in Awka, Anambra State, surfaced in the social media. Streets were named after several Yoruba leaders such as Obafemi Awolowo, Adegoke Adelabu, Ladoke Akintola and others throughout Eastern cities in the First Republic. None of them has been changed, despite the Civil War.
Sometimes people can get carried away to think this is a case of “Yoruba fighting Igbo”. This is clearly a misleading notion. Original Lagos indigenes, like former Works Minister, Chief Adeseye Ogunlewe and Peoples Democratic Party leader, Chief Bode George, have always spoken out against the anti-Igbo antics of the Tinubu group; so have others. Indeed, multilinguist, Adedeji Odulesi, a social media activist, creates exclusive contents debunking the ignorant rants of alleged hostility to settlers in Igboland.
We must know these people for what they really are: political freebooters who thrive by sowing seeds of disunity and ethnic profiling against the Igbo in order to pocket the economic and political bounties of our national commonwealth: Lagos.
They must be shamed
The post Behind renaming of Charly Boy Bus-Stop, by Ochereome Nnanna appeared first on Vanguard News.
