Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first African-owned US-based professional newspaper published on the Internet.
Nze Chidi Okoroafor is a public affairs commentator and psychologist.
One would have thought that the unlettered occupant of the Edo Government House (Olodo 1 of Edo) had exhausted his capacity for self-embarrassment. Alas, the man continues to demonstrate that reckless verbosity remains his preferred instrument of political relevance. His recent sneering commentary on the dancing habits of Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke does not merit a serious rejoinder; it merely confirms, once more, the depth of his intellectual hollowness and the misfortune that has befallen Edo State. Edo has been celebrated for producing some of Nigeria’s finest minds and sports giants.
Edo now labours under the leadership of what can only be described as a Temu-imitation of a governor— cheap, hastily assembled, and devoid of either gravitas or candour. From the ignominious order purporting to bar Peter Obi from Edo State, through a budget presentation marked by his embarrassing, painful stuttering and incoherence to this latest descent into cultural philistinism, the pattern is consistent: a man determined to humiliate the very people he claims to lead.
Dance, owambe, and miliki are not aberrations; they are integral strands of Yoruba cultural inheritance. To attempt to shame an average Yoruba man for expressing that inheritance is to advertise one’s own provincialism.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu himself is no stranger to the dance floor. The celebrated “Tinubu dance,” complete with the signature wave and the familiar injunction to “enjoy your weekend,” has long entered the public imagination. If rhythmic expression is now to be treated as a political liability, consistency demands that the Presidency itself be subjected to the same ridicule.
One had hoped that critics of Governor Adeleke would confine themselves to substantive questions of competence, delivery, and governance performance. Instead, we are treated to gutter-level mockery of the man’s dancing—echoing the ancient scorn Michal directed at David for dancing before the Lord with all his might. The comparison is instructive. Those who reduce public discourse to such frivolities reveal more about their own poverty of thought than about the object of their contempt.
Governor Adeleke, a product of a distinctly American sensibility, has never pretended to be a dour provincial. He lives large, flexes without apology, and refuses to shrink himself to fit the small imaginations of his detractors.
What we are witnessing is less a serious political critique than a clash of civilisations: the expansive, unapologetic style of a certain cosmopolitan temperament colliding with the pinched resentments of those who confuse solemnity with seriousness.
The irony is rich. While some were imposed upon their people through arrangements that strained democratic credibility, others continue to be judged not by the weight of their policies but by the lightness of their feet.
I deliberately refrained from commenting on the forthcoming election in Osun State of Nigeria until the ballots are cast and counted. That contest will stand as a litmus test for the larger drama that will unfold early in 2027.
Those who believe that dancing is the decisive political sin may yet discover that the electorate possesses a more sophisticated sense of rhythm—and of priorities—than the loudest voices currently on stage.
