#Festusadedayo

By Festus Adedayo “I know the arithmetic of the budget and the numbers that I brought to the National Assembly, and I know what numbers came back… Those who are talking about malicious embellishment in the budget; they did not…

By Festus Adedayo Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature, William Butler Yeats, aptly put it in his famous The Second Coming. When things fall apart, wrote Yeats, not only can’t the centre hold,…

By Festus Adedayo So at plenary in the senate last week, Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, rushed naked out of the bathtub. He raised his hand up. In the presidency’s search for scapegoat, Akpabio suddenly became Archimedes.…

By Festus Adedayo (Published by The Cable, January 21, 2024) Big calamities seldom knock before opening the door. Calamities’ sneaky essence is articulated in one song by grand old Odolaye Aremu, Ilorin, Kwara…

By Festus Adedayo For the Algerian journalist, editor and editorialist, playwright and director, novelist and author of short stories, political essayist and activist, Albert Camus, life is meaningless and absurd. To him, it is…

Written by Festus Adedayo If Nyesom Wike had read the character portrait of the Ijaw man as sketched by Dr. Percy Amoury Talbot, an early 20th century British historian and colonial administrator, he would most probably have thought…

Written by Festus Adedayo In 1995 when I joined the Tribune newspaper and “squatted” with a friend in Odo-Ona, one of Ibadan’s slums, I met one young boy in whom I took interest. His mother was a dedicated teacher and a devout…

Written by Festus Adedayo Yoruba have a solemn way of expressing disgust with vacuity. Wherever elders look forward, in huge expectation, that a respected person would utter words of knowledge - ogbon but its antonym – ago…

Written by Festus Adedayo Prof Akinwumi Isola’s Efunsetan Aniwura (1981), his first play written in 1961-62 while he was a student at the University of Ibadan, is highly celebrated. It is a historical drama which reflects…

Written by Festus Adedayo When death became ubiquitous and cheap as air, afflicting the young and the old in their scores, Yoruba of old said it had become three-for-a-penny. There was what they called iyo olo’kan (one-penny…