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Postscripting the Panic Lokoja ‘Endorsement Rally’

Postscripting the Panic Lokoja ‘Endorsement Rally’

Tunde Olusunle

President Bola Tinubu’s body language very evidently is sending frills and jitters to sections of his party faithful in Kogi State. Those who know Tinubu well know that he is not given to garrulity, or verbal frivolities. Say all you care and he simply supports his chin with his hand taking in the lines and hysteria. He seems rather more inclined to introspection and action, than verbal effusions. He has elected a strategic siddon look approach to domestic politics in the “confluence state.” All politics should ideally be local. But those with the self-entitled belief that they should hear from the lips of this god but are not, have plunged into a staccato of blunders and frenzy of missteps. 

Saturday, October 11, 2025, a group which tagged itself “Stakeholders of the All Progressives Congress (APC)” from Kogi West Senatorial Zone congregated in Kabba, the political headquarters of the district. The assembly comprised in the main of past and present benefactors of Yahaya Bello, the immediate past Governor of the state. There were past and present state parliamentarians, the state executive council and party leaders. In a senatorial zone with three national assembly members notably Senator Sunday Karimi, the Member Representing Lokoja/Kotonkarfe in the House of Representatives, Danladi Suleiman Aguye, and his counterpart for Kabba-Bunu/Ijumu, Salman Idris, were absent. The body, without evident and discernible concurrence from the Eastern and Central Senatorial Zones, “endorsed” President Tinubu and the Kogi State Governor, Ahmed Ododo, for second terms. Ododo is barely 21 months in office by the way. 

One week later on October 18, 2025, a supposed statewide “endorsement rally” was staged in Lokoja the Kogi State capital to validate the position earlier taken in Kabba concerning the inviolability of the Tinubu/Ododo 2027 return tickets. Those who monitored the event described it as a circus, a charade. A particular commentator said on his social media page: “I was in Lokoja yesterday. I was close to the venue of the stage-managed endorsement rally, held at the Old Lokoja Stadium. It was hugely boycotted by the foundation members of APC Kogi, the Abubakar Audu/Abiodun Faleke political family. Even Audu’s son, the Minister for Solid Minerals, Shaibu Audu, was noticeably absent. There was no political figure of substance at the event. It was a grand failure.”

Followers of politics in Kogi State have posited that the “endorsement” scam scheme is the holistic orchestration of Yahaya Bello. Since his recalcitrant miscalculation of running against Tinubu at the 2022 APC presidential primary even when more formidable aspirants stepped aside to clear the pathway for the president, there has been seething disaffection against Bello by Tinubu’s henchmen. At various strategy meetings of the president’s team, video clips of Bello’s preelection indiscretions and foibles were reportedly reviewed and analysed. In one particular video clip, Bello stormed out of meeting called by former APC National Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, admonishing presidential aspirants at the time, to rally behind a particular aspirant. He threatened to address the press and stated that “no Jupiter”  could dissuade him from pursuing his ambition to a successful conclusion.

There is yet another video clip, where Bello prosecuted a disdainful mimicry of Tinubu’s famous adjustment of his flowing agbada, the day he made the historic emilokan declaration in Abeokuta the Ogun State capital. The internet is nemesis. Bello attempted to atone for his lack of depth and circumspection in the immediate aftermath of the APC presidential primary, when he relinquished his erstwhile presidential campaign headquarters in Abuja to the Tinubu project as convening hub for youth mobilisation. Adherents of Kogi State politics, however, noted that Bello’s exuberance was at play again when the position of National Chairman of the APC was zoned to the North Central last July, following the resignation of Dr Abdullahi Ganduje a month earlier. Whereas Bello reportedly believed it was time for him to be “rewarded” by Tinubu being from the North Central, Tinubu favoured a more sober, less tempestuous university scholar, Prof Nentawe Yilwatda from Plateau State, hitherto Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction.

Buffeted by ongoing judicial inquest into allegations of the theft of hundreds of billions of naira under his watch as governor between January 2016 and January 2024 in which Tinubu has refused to meddle, Bello is substantially at sea. He is therefore inclined to commit to everything and anything that will ingratiate him to Tinubu. Didn’t this very same Bello tell Nigerians back in 2016 on the occasion of his very first visit as governor, to former President Muhammadu Buhari, that he would happily jump into a furnace of fire on Buhari’s orders because Buhari made him? Bello therefore desires the overarching canopy of President Tinubu for his political self-preservation by putting himself forward as chief campaigner for the President in Kogi State.

Alongside this, he craves the perpetuation of Ododo, who he singlehandedly handpicked to run in the November 2023 governorship poll in Kogi State, in office for a second term. There are loud insinuations that both men, and a few other kinsmen, hold the knife to the mutton of state resources. According to the commentator earlier cited on the Lokoja rally, the tragi-comedy relied on very reluctant participants. Attendes were predominantly monetarily-induced and literally dragged to the venue of the hoax, just to give an optical illusion of popular participation. Sadly, Bello did himself no favours when he threatened the Kogi State electorate with violence should they be inclined to other candidates than those he has prescribed for them. Bello the self-styled “white lion” of Kogi politics vowed that the people of Kogi State will cower when he roars. 

Bello, who was fingered in untoward electoral practices as governor, including the animalistic novelty of procuring a helicopter to fire live bullets at voters on queue in his quest for reelection in 2019, has been roundly chided for threatening electoral mayhem come 2027. Murtala Ajaka who contested against Bello’s man Ododo in the 2023 poll, and Senator Karimi, are on the same page with the coming success of President Tinubu in 2027. They are unanimous in their conviction that he has acquitted himself substantially in Nigeria’s peculiarly difficult social, economic and political circumstances and deserves the overwhelming nod to complete his good run. But they don’t agree with Bello’s warmongering rhetoric in a state whose customary calm, charm, serenity and stability, has been unsettled by insecurity in recent months.

For the avoidance of doubt, a civilised endorsement rally was held in Lagos Tuesday October 21, 2025. It had in attendance all three of Tinubu’s successors: Babatunde Raji Fashola, Akinwumi Ambode and the incumbent, Babajide Sanwo-Olu. The state legislature led by the long-serving Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Ajayi Obasa, the traditional institution, leaders and elders of the state featured prominently at an event which was interactive and seamless. Typical Lagos-style, it broke into a carnival, without anyone professing his “tigritude”, without swear words, invectives and intimidation. Nobody was chanting “ekwechi” or “echane” battle songs. As my senior colleague and kinsman of blessed memory, Prof Ayo Olukotun would have put it while effecting a coinage from a Yoruba expression the Lagos event was a “jelenkeist” outing, easy and smooth.

This is why there must be decisive official reaction to Bello’s incendiary talk, beyond the cautionary notes already served by well-meaning political leaders in the state. Between the national leadership of the APC and the security superstructure, Nigerians expect some reprimand for Bello’s potentially combustive utterances. We live, rather sadly, in a country where order, sanity, integrity have been thrown to the dogs. Elsewhere, Yahaya Bello, an accused person, would not be the headliner of Tinubu’s reelection campaign. Not in John Dramani Mahama’s neighbouring Ghana. Tinubu indeed has demonstrated resolve when it mattered, to keep in abeyance those whose conduct is capable of impugning his reputation and that of his administration. 

Tinubu booted out Betta Edu, Yilwatda’s predecessor from the federal executive council on allegations of corruption in January 2024, and showed the door to Uche Nnaji his Minister for Science and Technology for certificate forgery, weeks ago. Nyesom Wike, Tinubu’s Minister in-charge of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), did not irritate the nation’s ears last month, with his typical self-serving live television interviews during which he fritters public funds insulting and casting aspersions on others. He has most probably been put on leash. This Tinubu doesn’t seem to like “idoti,” as we allude to dirt, garbage and rubbish in Yoruba.

Bello should be assisted to spend his time in sober reflection and retrospection, regularly engaging with his attorneys on his variegated pendency before the courts. He should be more active on his prayer mat, penitent about his past, and prayerful about ongoing legal proceedings. Make no mistakes, there are precedents of former Nigerian governors who underwent extended, after-office “vacations” within the walls of our custodial centres, following verdicts about their times in office. Let him ask Jolly Tanko Nyame and Joshua Chibi Dariye, former governors of Taraba and Plateau states.

• Olusunle, PhD, Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, is an Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Abuja

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Tunde Olusunle President Bola Tinubu’s body language very evidently is sending frills and jitters to sections of his party faithful in Kogi State. Those who know Tinubu well know that

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Modernism Speaks with a Nigerian Accent

Modernism Speaks with a Nigerian Accent

Alluring in scope and audacious in intent, the Nigeria Modernism exhibition at London’s Tate Modern redraws the world map of modern art, inscribing Nigeria into its canon with quiet authority. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports

For once, the story of global modernism lifts its gaze beyond Paris and New York to those who shaped it from Lagos, Zaria and Nsukka. Nigeria Modernism, now showing at Tate Modern until May 2026, feels less like an exhibition than a long-overdue act of restitution—a righting of the record that has lingered too long in the wings. It might just as well be called a revolution—albeit one waged in silk gloves and hushed confidence. This is no riotous insurgency but a velvet mutiny: a movement that drifts through museum doors, charms the canon with a conspiratorial wink, then, almost mischievously, rewrites the script of art history with effortless grace.

Unfolding through a partnership between Access Holdings Plc, Coronation Group and Tate Modern, the exhibition traces a golden arc from the 1940s to the 1970s—decades brimming with artistic ferment and post-independence fervour. Fifty artists and more than 250 works collectively dismantle the fiction of modernism as Europe’s private invention. Here, modernity dances to a different beat: it sways in aso-oke, hums in pidgin, and converses with Picasso not as pupil but as peer.

At the heart of the exhibition stand seven wooden sculptures by Ben Enwonwu, commissioned in 1960—the year Nigeria drew its first independent breath—and now part of the Access Holdings Art Collection. Their poised figures rise like sentinels of reclaimed memory: elegant, unbowed, and quietly triumphant. Returned to London not as colonial trophies but as cultural envoys, they embody history’s most graceful reversal—Nigeria, once studied, now doing the teaching.

Moored in Enwonwu’s steady brilliance are kindred spirits who helped give modern Nigerian art its many dialects. Uzo Egonu abstracts memory into geometry, turning exile and belonging into delicate negotiations of colour and form. Ladi Kwali, the potter-queen of Abuja, shapes clay into quiet theology—each vessel a tribute to patience and poise. Circling them are Bruce Onobrakpeya, Uche Okeke, Yusuf Grillo, Demas Nwoko, Aina Onabolu and Kolade Oshinowo: artists who forged a visual language in which spirituality and experimentation converse with the ease of old friends. Together, they built a modernism that expanded rather than erased tradition—one that spoke to the world, yet never forgot the timbre of home.

Measured in equal parts diplomat and visionary, Enwonwu embodied the dual temperament of Nigeria’s modernism—its outward confidence tempered by inward reflection. If he negotiated with empire through poise and brushstroke, Bruce Onobrakpeya acted as its alchemist, fusing folklore, theology, and printmaking into a luminous alloy of faith and form. Yusuf Grillo’s indigo saints, serene and meditative, hold the stillness of stained glass, while Uche Okeke’s line drawings pulse with mythic urgency. Together with Demas Nwoko, Aina Onabolu, and Kolade Oshinowo, they forged a distinctly Nigerian idiom: a modernism that embraced tradition without surrendering to it, speaking to the world while retaining the cadence of home.

To call it a milestone would scarcely suffice. For Tate Modern, Nigeria Modernism represents the most comprehensive survey of Nigerian modern art ever staged in Britain; for Nigeria, it is a declaration of reclamation—an assertion that its modernists were never latecomers, but active interlocutors in the global avant-garde. “Seeing our art on the walls of Tate Modern filled me with indescribable pride,” remarked Amaechi Okobi, Chief Communications Officer at Access Holdings. “It felt as though home had travelled—Nigeria itself being celebrated in the heart of London.”

That sentiment rippled through the opening, described by Ngozi Akinyele of Coronation Group as the largest in Tate’s 25-year history. “We are stewarding a renaissance,” she said, “in art as in music, film, and fashion—a renaissance that restores dignity and belonging.” Her observation resonates with striking clarity: if Afrobeats has already colonised the world’s playlists, Nigeria’s painters and sculptors are now remapping the museum, staking their claim on walls once thought beyond reach.

Both Access Holdings and Coronation Group extend the partnership beyond the hushed galleries of Tate, sponsoring student tours and cultural-education programmes that keep the conversation alive back home. Access continues to expand its corporate collection and mentorship schemes, while Coronation’s galleries sustain a dialogue between modern and contemporary African art. The collaboration feels less like corporate branding than a form of aesthetic diplomacy—where commerce and culture meet with the ease of old friends, and influence is exercised with unassuming grace.

Inside the exhibition, the atmosphere tilts toward the transcendent. Kwali’s clay radiates quiet conviction, each vessel a tribute to patience and poise. Grillo’s indigo blues hum with devotional serenity, holding the stillness of stained glass in their luminous depth. Onobrakpeya’s prints murmur with encoded myth, intricate and alive, conjuring a world where folklore and modernity entwine. Together, these works generate their own weather—vibrant, electric, insistently Nigerian. Here, modernism speaks not as borrowed vocabulary but as mother tongue, fluent in tradition yet unafraid of reinvention.

“This is not just Nigeria on display,” remarks one curator. “This is Nigeria taking its place in world history.” After decades of being sidelined in art-historical narratives, Nigeria’s modernists now occupy the centre—not as curiosities but as co-authors of modernity. Nigeria Modernism also gestures toward a subtler, deeper restitution. Beyond the ceremonial return of bronzes, it restores narrative agency: the power to define one’s own modernity. It reminds the viewer that Nigeria’s artists were never waiting for permission to be modern; they were merely waiting for recognition.

Shimmering in the subdued light of Tate Modern’s galleries, that recognition glows. Modernism here speaks in Yoruba cadence, hums in Igbo idiom, and keeps time to the earthy percussion of Gwari clay. It is confident, complex, and gloriously self-possessed. As the Thames drifts past the museum’s concrete flank, the works inside radiate something larger than art: reclamation, affirmation, and the quiet jubilation of a history finally heard.

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Alluring in scope and audacious in intent, the Nigeria Modernism exhibition at London’s Tate Modern redraws the world map of modern art, inscribing Nigeria into its canon with quiet authority. Okechukwu

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At Lagos Photo 2025, Artists Present 50 Shades of Incarceration

At Lagos Photo 2025, Artists Present 50 Shades of Incarceration

Yinka Olatunbosun 

The 15th edition of the LagosPhoto Festival has opened across multiple venues in Lagos and Ibadan, bringing together about 50 artists and collectives under the thought-provoking theme “Incarceration.”

Organised by the African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), the 2025 edition opened on October 25 and runs till November 29, marking a new era for Nigeria’s foremost international photography festival. Now staged biennially, LagosPhoto has deepened its curatorial scope while expanding regional collaborations and global participation.

This year’s festival unfolds across the African Artists’ Foundation, Nahous Gallery, Didi Museum, Freedom Park, and Alliance Française in Lagos, as well as the New Culture Studio in Ibadan.

Curated by Courage Dzidula Kpodo, Robin Riskin, Maria Pia Bernadoni, and Kadara Enyeasi, under the direction of Azu Nwagbogu, founder and director of AAF, the exhibition probes how photography and lens-based practices can interrogate systems of control while reclaiming visibility and narratives of freedom.

“The festival calls on audiences to examine the many forms of incarceration—imposed by the self or by others—that continue to threaten subjugated peoples in their efforts to shape their futures. It is an invitation to explore pathways toward freedom, and how images can enact and reimagine liberation,” the curatorial statement reads.

True to its tradition of expanding the definition of photography, LagosPhoto 2025 embraces a range of media including film, performance, sound, installation, textiles, and archival material.

Lead curator Courage Dzidula Kpodo noted that this year’s edition introduced a more democratic process through an open call for submissions, enabling artists from around the world to participate.

“This year was quite different,” Kpodo explained. “We put out an open call, so even someone in a remote corner of Asia could send in an application. Through this, we discovered remarkable works we might never have found otherwise.”

One such discovery is Johis Alarcon, an artist of Andean and African descent from Ecuador, whose work investigates the overlooked history of African enslaved descendants in South America.

Across the festival’s venues, the exhibitions are organised into thematic clusters addressing identity, gender, violence, and archival memory.

“At AAF, we explore how incarceration can even be self-inflicted—how individuals, shaped by past traumas, may internalise confinement,” Kpodo said. “At Didi Museum, the works deal more with gender, violence, and archival research, while the Ibadan section focuses on architecture and the afterlife.”

Curator Maria Pia Bernadoni reflected on the festival’s intellectual evolution, linking Incarceration to ongoing conversations about mobility, borders, and human limitation.

“Every edition grows from reflections on what’s happening around us,” she said. “In 2019, we explored Passports and the limitations imposed by nationality. Incarceration continues that thought—how borders, prisons, technology, and even social media shape our freedoms and our minds.”

The choice of venues amplifies the dialogue between history and space. The reopening of the AAF space after two years—alongside exhibitions at Nahous Gallery (within the historic Federal Palace complex where Nigeria’s independence was declared), Didi Museum (the country’s first private museum), and Freedom Park (a former colonial prison)—offers a layered backdrop for artistic engagement.

In Ibadan, the New Culture Studio, designed by Demas Nwoko in 1970, hosts installations that engage with architecture and the metaphysics of confinement—extending the festival’s conversation beyond photography into the terrain of spatial and spiritual inquiry.

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Yinka Olatunbosun  The 15th edition of the LagosPhoto Festival has opened across multiple venues in Lagos and Ibadan, bringing together about 50 artists and collectives under the thought-provoking theme “Incarceration.”