The Nigerian presidency is an energizing elixir. It has proven to be very effective in breathing life into dry bones. To old creaky engines, it gives deep cleaning; it replaces worn parts and upgrades the lubrication system. Olusegun Obasanjo went in there and got transformed from an imprisoned stork to a clean-shaven ladies’ egret. The Balogun Owu has since refused to age. Muhammadu Buhari entered the Villa peaky, ill and ailing. He left the place with his engine and chassis reinvented. His successor, super rich Lion of Bourdillon, broke the Internet with gaffes, slips and falls during the 2023 campaigns. He hasn’t yet spent two years in the Villa but he has also had a dramatic TAM (Turn Around Maintenance). The rough idling, vibrations and engine misfires are all gone. His cooling system is now cool and steady. These and many more are what the man celebrated two days ago as he officially turned 73, robust and rounded. He had many nice things said of him by those who seek (or already have) his mercy and favours.

Where life expectancy is less than 50, netting seventy years plus is a boon. William Shakespeare rejects the withering properties of age and cuddles the vibrancy of youth. In his ‘The Passionate Pilgrim’, Shakespeare leaves lines of contrasts on ageing for us to read and ponder. He writes that “crabbed age and youth cannot live together.” And he explains why: “Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care; Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare. Youth is full sport, age’s breath is short; Youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, age is tame.” Shakespeare ends those parallels with a yell of rejection and acceptance: “Age, I do abhor thee; youth, I do adore thee.”

Now, who is old, who is young?

People in the sciences say every person has two ages. They call one chronological age (number of years a person has lived); the other they say is biological, a person’s functional age. The Yoruba have a third category; they call it Atubotan (the after-death years). Short or long, the first is guaranteed for all; the second is a factor of luck and choice; the third is largely determined by how we spend the first two. Very few are blessed with all three.

Less than two minutes from a town called Iragbiji in Osun State is another called Ikirun. It is about ten minutes from my own Eripa. Long gone Oba Lawani Adeyemi was Akinrun of Ikirun. The oba gathered fame across Yorubaland for the audacity of his longevity. He thought it was his right to live long and he loudly claimed it. When courtiers and all who courted his mercy wished him long life, Oba Adeyemi’s standard response was “Ó di dandan” (it is compulsory). At well over 70 years, Adeyemi’s people made him oba in 1945. His enemies thought him already at the departure lounge. They said he would soon vacate the space for them to take. There are legends that say with every rumour of his death came the actual death of the rumour mongers. Soon, no one warned no one again before they stopped wishing the oba dead. As years rolled into decades, the oba’s enemies dried out, the ones still alive became his friends. They had to; Ó di dandan.

Adeyemi stayed put on that throne until 1989 when he bowed out quietly. His people still celebrate the years in his reign not because they were unusually long, but because they were largely positive in the life of the community. He had the years, he was functional. More importantly, he had Atubotan. The oba had many children; he did not spoil them with palace spoils. They do not need unmerited honorary doctorate degrees from backwater universities to remain tall. The oba trained all his children such that the late king continues to live long after his death. His grandson was a Head of Service of the Federation; another is one of the richest in 2025 Ibadan. The rich needed no paternal imposition before he got to the top of his trade. President Tinubu very well knows Crystal Hospital at Akowonjo in Alimoso Local Government area of Lagos, it belongs to one of the eldest of Oba Adeyemi’s children. One of the youngest is a veteran in Osun State House of Assembly.

Where I come from, we rejoice with the joyous which is why I join in congratulating our president on his 73rd birthday. But as he celebrated that occasion with pomp on 29th March – a day to Villa’s sumptuous Sallah, I hope he reflected on what his presidency has meant to the Nigerian outside official powers. Many are stranded on the rough, dusty road to survival. They trace their misery to the leader’s mirth; their poverty to the president’s pleasure. They think their agony is power’s easement. It is not funny.

A democracy that repairs only the leaders is roguish and immoral. Yet, as we tell all these things, wisdom dictates that we march seven steps near the king, and six steps in nuanced back off. In Alex Danchev’s ‘Waltzing with Winston (Churchill),’ we are told that “the loyalties which centre upon number one are enormous. If he trips, he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes, they must be covered. If he sleeps, he must not be wantonly disturbed. (But) if he is no good, he must be pole-axed.” Literally, to pole-axe is to attack, strike, or fell with or as if with a poleaxe. That is the price all who claim “number one” must pay when they are not acting good.  

The president preached sacrifice on his birthday but his birthday table showed assorted, sumptuous surplus, everything. His wrongheaded policies he described as “the right thing to do for our nation’s future.” His wife is a pastor, she should blow into his ear the saying that only the living praises the Lord. Can a leader whose subjects wallow in want get blessed with their prayers? Among the Bantu of Eastern, Central and Southern Africa are a people called the Mashona. Anthropologist Denys Shropshire in a 1931 journal article tells us that in that place is a bird called Mukaranga wa Mambo. The storyteller says this bird “begins by making excited, shrill, chattering cries until she is attended to, after which, flying with contented chirps from branch to branch, she brings the traveller to the promised nest of honey.” A starved, marginalised citizenry has neither honey nor applause for unfeeling, feasting rulers.

The vulture is Yoruba’s totem of longevity; a symbol of death and rebirth. The Yoruba say igúnnugún (vulture) would not die unless it is old. But they celebrate more than the years. What a man put in his age is more important than the years. Which is why I find Yoruba’s view of ageing and old age somewhat intriguing. There is an ambivalence here. They despise the ugliness of vulture but they covet vulture’s enduring agedness. They say because the vulture does not die young, they too must live longer than life. But they qualify it: The years must be years of peace and plenty. They covet what they see as vulture’s longevity but not its unsightly totality. They want long life but not ageing with the debilities it connotes. They ask if you’ve ever seen a nestled sick bird. They want life without its co-morbidities.

Nigerians see their government as a colony of vultures. In ageing and eating, the vulture is a bird of patience. It does not nurse the sick back to health. Instead, it waits for the hungry to die; it insists that rotten flesh is good food. Vulture is also a bird of opportunity. Nigeria is a vultures’ field. You ask why? I wonder too and I ask vulture biologists (ornithologists). They tell me that vultures approach dead or dying beings from openings – mouth, eyes, nostrils etc. And, Nigeria has many of such loopholes. Our vultures start the gutting from the guts, they then go to other inner organs for lunch. They move to the muscles and tear at the tissues. For supper, they access smaller spaces for tendons, they chew at other body parts; they clean out the carcass and move on to the next meal. When their earth completes its yearly revolution, they roll out the drums in celebration of their victory over their own people and land.

When vultures surround you, make sure you stay alive, do not die. Nigerians have really tried not to die for the vultures of power to rejoice over them. Now, if food avoids Vulture, what will Vulture eat? The human being called Yoruba says in a proverb that when what is edible is not available, what is not edible becomes edible. Vultures feed on vultures if that is the only available carrion. What you feel in Rivers and Lagos and Kano are hungry vultures circling weak vultures for food.

We celebrate the president at 73. He will live life longer than his presidential tenure. But we must tell him that his government retains its painfulness; the NYSC corps member’s description of his reign as terrible was apt. The town is bitter; the city is unpleasant. 

How then do we take back our country – if we ever had one? I am not the only person asking this question. But I am going to risk adding that if you are not satisfied with where your feet have taken you, the rational direction is to walk for change. Ask those who know the ways of vultures. If you do not want vultures around you, the effective way is to show them that which scares them: The effigy of a dead vulture.