Tunde Odesola
(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, April 3, 2026)
With sand, twigs, silk, leaves and bark, the Arigisegi builds its house. If Àrígiṣégi had a father, his name would have been Àràmàndà. But Àrígiṣégi is not human; it is an insect. In the Yoruba worldview, the Àrígiṣégi is a queer insect. Àràmàndà, the supposed name of Àrígiṣégi’s father, means wonder. The queerness in the Àrígiṣégi and the wonder in his father explain why the Àrígiṣégi, unlike many other insects, is permanently indoorsy: it lives inside its house, it never ever leaves its house…until. Whenever the Àrígiṣégi feels like moving, it carries its entire house on its head and moves with it. The phrase ‘everywhere you go’ was first uttered by Àrígiṣégi, the son of Àràmàndà, before that huge telecoms firm made it its mantra.
Let’s break Àrígiṣégi down. ‘Àrígi’ connotes the ‘one who lives in the abundance of wood’. ‘Ṣégi’ means ‘And yet cuts wood and carries them on his head’. Umhm! Yoruba forebears and their enduring orature. They seal the name Àrígiṣégi with a curse. They say: The weight of self-inflicted load kills the carrier. Àrígiṣégi ni ẹrù ó pa!
Àrígiṣégi is not domiciled solely in Africa. In Obodo Oyinbo, it is called the bagworm. Delineating the line between religion and research, the white man took the searchlight of science to the bagworm to unravel why an insect would build a house around itself, live in it, and move with it. The white man discovered that the bagworm is the destructive caterpillar of a moth in the family Psychidae. The male bagworm is winged, while the female is wingless. During mating, the winged bagworm flies to the female to copulate. The female lays between 300 and 1,000 eggs inside a bag built with sand, twigs, silk, leaves and bark. After egg production, the female bagworm dies off, leaving the eggs to stay alone through incubation and hatching. The bag is an effective camouflage against predators, often deceiving them into believing the debris-like bag is nothing but rotten foliage. The bag moves about for food during various stages of reproduction.
When I set out to write this article, I was convinced in my heart that the feet of convicted child sex offender and Nollywood actor, Olanrewaju James Omiyinka aka Bàbá Ìjẹ̀sà, should be put to fire because the thespian, despite being convicted of rustling, is secretly cuddling the goat of his neighbour: ‘wọn n pe Bàbá Ìjẹ̀sà ni ole, o n gbe ọmọ ẹran jo’. I was convinced that Bàbá Ìjẹ̀sà thinks the louder he wails his false plea of innocence, the more believable his tale sounds. That is why I have dragged Bàbá Ìjẹ̀sà to the village square today.
As for the self-acclaimed Yoruba nationalism crusader, Chief Sunday Adeyemo aka Sunday Igboho, I asked myself if it was right to lump a convicted child sex offender in the same bag with the battleaxe of the Yoruba self-determinism struggle, Ighoho Osha. My heart ticked ‘yes’. But, fairness tickles good journalism. So, I asked my heart to give me a valid reason why Bàbá Ìjẹ̀sà should enter the same dock with Sunday Igboho in the court of public opinion.
My heart pounded and responded, saying, “Bàbá Ìjẹ̀sà shattered the lives of a child and those of her relatives, haunting numerous members of the public with his action caught on camera.”
My heart continued, “But Sunday Igboho, by issuing threats to the supporters of Peoples Democratic Party presidential leader, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and the supporters of African Democratic Congress leader, Mr Peter Obi, commits a crime against democracy, the rule of law and the Nigerian Constitution.”
While both Sunday Igboho and Bàbá Ìjẹ̀sà are criminally guilty, Igboho is never likely to be brought to book because the dog of the king is the king of dogs. Who is going to beat the slave of the king?
In his barbaric viral video, Igboho barked, “Tinubu for second term 100%. No more Atiku or a mad Obi. Asiwaju for life! After Tinubu’s eight years, we will beg God to give him two more years. If your mother is mad, you dare bring a mad Atiku or a mad Obi to Yorubaland. Right now, all the votes of Lagos State belong to Asiwaju 100%! We are going to vote in Lagos.”
I shudder to think that this is the same Igboho I defended in a couple of articles when then-President Muhammadu Buhari sent his mad dogs after him one midnight in Ibadan, killing his relative, cat, and vandalising his house and property. To escape Buhari’s killers, Igboho scaled the fence of his house and vanished into the night; otherwise, his family and friends would have been looking forward to his fifth memorial anniversary.
At the height of Buhari’s ethnic brutality, I penned the article “Igboho writes President Buhari,” published in The PUNCH on July 26, 2021, painting the fascist leader’s undisguised hatred for other Nigerian ethnicities, except Fulani. Earlier, on February 8th of the same year, I wrote an article in The PUNCH, “The Sunday Igboho I know,” praising the courage of Igboho. In the article, I argued that Igboho rose to the limelight as a result of government failure. This was after he challenged suspected Fulani marauders in Igangan, Oyo State, who had turned the town into their fiefdom. I also featured Igboho in another article, “Can African bulletproof stop AK-47 bullet?” published in The PUNCH, on January 18, 2021. In the article, Igboho boasted of possessing African juju capable of stopping bullets from AK-47 from penetrating the body. But when goons from the Department of State Service raided his house in Ibadan on July 1, 2021, Igboho fled.
Igboho’s fundamental human rights are enshrined in Chapter IV, Sections 33-46 of the Nigerian Constitution. They include the rights to life, dignity, personal liberty, fair hearing, privacy, and freedom of expression, movement, and association. So are the rights and freedoms of every Nigerian. By threatening the Nigerian electorate, Igboho runs foul of the rights and freedoms of millions of Nigerians.
In a country run by conscience, security agencies would have invited Igboho for interrogation, and if his explanation is not tenable, he would have his day in court. But the Nigerian government is the Midas who turns every gold into rust.
After Igboho ran his mouth like a faulty faucet against Nigerian voters, a young TikToker named Funny Thinker called his bluff, saying it was wrong of Igboho to threaten voters. A crude and cruel Igboho came out belching fire, issuing a fatwa on the TikTokker and two others, Alado and Adebat, saying in a telephone conversation, “Hello, Adebat! You must bring Alado and Funny Thinker to my house in Ibadan within 24 hours. If you don’t bring them, walahi, I can’t guarantee what will happen between you and me.”
Sadly, the intelligence units of the Nigeria Police Force, the DSS and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps are aware of the threat Igboho posed to Nigerian voters, yet none of the three security agencies has taken any action. When threats like these go uncurbed, the 2027 general election will walk into the valley of the shadow of death. In the countdown to the 2023 general election, a chieftain of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, Musiliu Akinsanya aka MC Oluomo, warned Igbo voters to stay at home if they were not going to vote for the APC.
A couple of times when I criticised Igboho and the Aare Ona Kakanfo, Gani Adams, my homie and former colleague at PUNCH, Wale Adedayo aka Babalawo, would call me to say, “Pally, leave these people (Igboho and Adams). The Yoruba nation needs them. The Yoruba nation needs a Third Force to counter the violence of these Fulani people. Otherwise they would overrun us o.” I wonder what opinion Wale and numerous supporters of Igboho in opposition parties would hold about Igboho now.
Elections should not be conducted in compliance with the do-or-die theory propounded by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. After nearly 30 years of unbroken democratic rule, the Nigerian electoral process should flash the green light, not red.
…Baba Bàbá Ìjẹ̀ṣà may talk himself back to jail
