I have missed the satire writings of Professor Olatunji Dare until I came across this one this morning. Wow.
By Wale Ojo Lanre, Esq.
Honestly, I do not know whether you have read the article written by one Lasisi Olagunju. If you have not, please go and read it. If you have, then either you will agree with me or you will curse me.
Because what he wrote is, on the face of it, a worthless article. Yes, worthless.
As our elders say, ọ̀rọ̀ tí kò ní ìtúmọ̀ kì í pé ní etí ẹni. Nonsense does not survive careful listening. And yet here is a piece so long, so calm, so confidently written that one begins to suspect that the author deliberately set out to provoke common sense.
I read it once and shook my head. I read it again and sighed. By the third reading, I became angry.
How can a man wake up in the morning, sharpen his pen, summon history from 1862, 1946, 2008, 2011, and 2026, garnish it with Shakespeare, Roman poets, Bolanle Awe, Toyin Falola, palace intrigues, and council advertorials, and still write something this irritatingly sensible?
How?
Ọgbọ́n tí ó pọ̀ ju, a máa fi í ṣeré. Too much wisdom often disguises itself as mischief.
I know this man. Yes, I do. But I never knew he could go this far. I never imagined he could descend to the dangerous level of crafting and conjuring a ballistically useless article that leaves monarchists offended, historians uncomfortable, politicians exposed, and everyone else confused.
Let me state this upfront before anyone rushes to misinterpret my anger. I have known Lasisi Olagunju for years. I like him. I respect him. I admire his mind.
Which is exactly why this nonsense shocked me.
Because this is not the rubbish of an empty head. This is the calculated mischief of a man who understands that ọ̀títọ́ kì í koro ṣùgbọ́n ó máa ń dun. Truth has no bitterness, but it hurts.
And that was when it dawned on me.
This article is not stupid at all. It is wicked.
Only a wickedly intelligent man will pretend to be foolish just to tell the truth naked.
This takes me back to the day Lasisi Olagunju first walked into the newsroom of the Nigerian Tribune in Ibadan. When he arrived, he did not look like trouble. He still does not. He stepped gently, almost apologetically, like a man afraid of breaking the floor tiles, placing one leg before the other like a chameleon crossing glassware. Fragile looking. Unassuming. Quiet. The kind of man you would trust with your bag, your secrets, and even your history.
Then the former Editor in Chief, Biodun Oduwole, now a pastor, handed him over to Mr Akin Onipede, who was also assuming duty as a brand new editor that very day, and introduced him with that dangerous sentence: a first class graduate in English from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.
That was when the problem began.
He did not look cerebral. He did not speak like a philosopher. He did not radiate intellectual arrogance. Yet within weeks, his aura betrayed him. The sentences were too calm. The arguments too clean. The references too deliberate. As our people say, ẹni tí ó bá rìn pẹ̀lú òmùgọ̀ yóò mọ̀ pé kì í ṣe gbogbo òmùgọ̀ ni òmùgọ̀. Not everyone who looks foolish is foolish.
That was when I called Debo Abdullahi, then my assistant on the Features Desk and now Editor of Tribune, and warned him. This your guy that sneaks here once in a while is not only adákeja bí Esu. Ogbologbo Oso ni. He is a veteran wizard.
Debo, a man not given to loud laughter, only smiled thinly and said, “Hún.”
He understood.
Lasisi Olagunju is the most dangerous kind of thinker, the one who dismantles empires with footnotes.
This brings me back to his article, “Ibadan Is Oyo.”
In it, he does not insult history. He uses it. He does not abuse kingship. He demystifies it. He does not deny Oyo. He explains Ibadan.
From the 1862 war against Ijaiye, through the 1946 refusal to pay the Alaafin’s salary, to the shifting postures of obas in 2008 and 2026, he exposes the uncomfortable truth many prefer to bury. Power obeys seasons, not sentiment.
Yesterday’s permanence becomes today’s rotation. Yesterday’s loyalty becomes today’s alignment. Not because history changed, but because interest did.
He reminds us that Governor Ladoja decentralised the council because there was no throne worth fighting over. He reminds us that Alao Akala made the Alaafin permanent chairman and later reversed himself when friendship expired. He insists, correctly, that politics, not mythology, drives these decisions.
And then comes the part that offended many, his caution to the new Alaafin.
Why should a journalist advise a king? Who asked him to speak of humility, friendship, reading, and restraint?
But that outrage itself reveals our problem.
Ọba tí kì í gbọ́ ìmọ̀ràn, àgọ̀ rẹ̀ a gbóná. A king who rejects counsel warms his own palace.
Lasisi Olagunju does not deny the dignity of the Alaafin. He warns him. He reminds him that crowns attract devotion only when worn with wisdom. He draws from Shakespeare, from history, and from Toyin Falola’s luminous counsel that the Alaafin must learn history, avoid revisionism, and shun superiority contests.
He does not mock the throne. He protects it from arrogance.
Ibadan, as he shows with scholarly restraint, was never a slave city. Its founders were shareholders in Oyo’s history, not tenants. Ibadan has always partnered power, not worshipped it. That republican DNA has not changed. Pretending otherwise is nostalgia masquerading as authority.
This is why Ibadan can be pro Oyo and still reject overlordship. This is why allegiance cannot be commanded by proclamation. It must be earned.
So when I shouted, I was thinking like an irredentist supporter of the Alaafin. When I calmed down, I remembered that I am a rational being.
Lasisi Olagunju’s crime is not stupidity. His crime is clarity.
He is a wicked wizard of wisdom, a calm troublemaker, a gentle intellectual saboteur, Elemi Esu ponbele.
May God bless him, the great son of Eripa, for committing the unforgivable sin of thinking too well in a season that rewards noise.
Some people throw stones at palaces. Lasisi throws facts.
And facts, unfortunately, do not apologise.
I come in peace this morning. I am in Usi, Ekiti. Come and beat me.
