That some people have made it a habit to consistently challenge the authority of state officials to act in a manner consistent with the execution of their duties should be seen as an invitation to chaos and boldly challenged. Those inclined to are free to read meanings into the decision of the Bariga Local Council Development Authority, LCDA, to (re)name the bus-stop formerly known as Second Pedro after singer Olamide Adedeji aka Olamide Badoo. But they should not question the authority of the LCDA to take that decision. Very much unacceptable are the utterances of those who say the action of the LCDA is an instance of ethnic chauvinism.
This can’t be the case when placed in context against past decisions in equivalent places where those that have been the most critical, in fact noisiest in their condemnation, come from. I will return shortly to this point but not without first restating that the Bariga LCDA in Lagos acted within its remit as a municipal authority when it renamed Second Pedro Bus-Stop Olamide Badoo.
Without a desire to be disrespectful or dismissive, these critics are by their action anarchists speaking from both sides of their mouths. They would sooner impose on others standards and demands they won’t for a moment contemplate for themselves. To them, there should be no apologies. Let them make of that decision what they will but it does not change the fact that the Bariga LCDA has the authorisation to take the decision it took. I should in this vein observe that Mr. Femi Falana was, therefore, being tautological when in his intervention on the needless and obviously contrived debate around this issue, he conceded that the right to name streets and related monuments are vested in local authorities, then went on to add that these authorities must return to the people in their exercise of this power.
In what way would they return to the people? Is it by organising public hearings or town hall meetings? Who elected these local councils/governments officials into office? Are they not the elected representatives of the people? Yes, I know some hold firmly that elections no longer count and this for the very good reason of electoral fraud and manipulation. But must we cut off our nose to spite our face? With what shall we replace elections? Again, I understand the ignorance of some of us, which include a sizeable number of the anarchists critical of the Bariga LCDA, who have been consistent in their call for military intervention. The bile in a number of them is matched only by their irresponsibly exaggerated claim that the Bola Tinubu administration is worse than a military regime.
Some others go to media houses, some of whose programmes have been reduced to circus shows and staged theatrics, to say the Tinubu administration is the worst in the political annals of this country, hopping from hyperbole to buffoonery. Yet, they make these loud claims and voluble protestations without agents of the secret police making uninvited midnight or dawn calls to their homes that are not unknown to ordinary Nigerians. We forget not only too soon but most foolishly all in our desperate bid to be political. What the likes of Femi Falana do in their desire to be politically correct is the Nigerian version of the kind of wokery that produced Donald Trump in reaction to the extreme and unrelenting demands of the identity politics of liberal America.
The action of the Bariga LCDA is a reaction to the identitarian politics of a section of the Nigerian population, one that is encouraged by politicians and commentators of a certain populist orientation. They are forever hungry for attention and want always to be on the popular side of public issues. This trend has been evident and on the upward swing at different times since the country’s return to civil governance in 1999. It assumed a perilous urgency in the wake of the 2023 election, resulting in a vicious circle that is driven by a mishmash of ethnic, religious and political considerations.
All segments of the Nigerian population are to a greater or lesser extent guilty of and affected by this but (and here is the rub) they have in the last few years, indeed since 2023, centred around the Igbo and their place in Lagos.
There is no reason why this should be so except that some people are determined to push the narrative that the Yoruba habour something akin to a natural dislike of the Igbo and would for this reason read ethnic meanings into every action of a Yoruba person, whether in their private or public capacity. These are meanings they won’t dare read into similar actions from their parts of Nigeria. This is the sentiment driving the narratives around the renaming of Second Pedro Bus-Stop, unofficially called Charly Boy Bus-Stop, as Olamide Badoo Bus Stop. Of the several bus-stops and streets that were renamed only two had the names of non-Yoruba people. One was the unofficial Charly Boy Bus-Stop and another Ifeanyi Street. But somehow it was the bus-stop that had Charly Boy’s name that led to a ruckus for the obvious reason of his persona and name recognition. This made it easy not only for the renaming to be politicised but also ethnicised. What is more, Charly Boy is a prominent supporter of Peter Obi whose followers claimed won the 2023 election.
Why should a state official in Lagos be apologetic for their action or be damned as an ethnic chauvinist or an entire ethnic group called names simply because an individual among them acted in a manner taken for granted in Igboland as elsewhere in Nigeria? Who were the ethnic chauvinists when Abakaliki Street was renamed Club Street in Awka by the Willie Obiano government in 2018? Who were the activists and cyber warriors that took up arms when the people of Imo rejected the renaming of Assumpta Avenue after Muhammadu Buhari by the Rochas Okorocha government in 2017? Every Nigerian knew when Peter Obi as Governor of Anambra deported some indigenes of Akwa Ibom and Ebonyi to their states in 2011. Who led the fight against their deportation then? Where were the Obidients then?
But it was Peter Obi who wrote a petition to the presidency when Raji Fashola deported nine vagrants to Onitsha from Lagos in 2013. He made a meal of that episode apparently to lay the ground work for his presidential ambition. State officials are prone to acting in ways only they can explain. It was just last week that some Nigerians were lamenting the renaming of University of Maiduguri after the late President Buhari. Why must the renaming of a bus-stop now have ethnic motivations?
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