Davido, Reno Omokri and Arítúlà’s lost sparrow, by Suyi Ayodele

On June 10, 2026, at the FIFA World Cup Countdown Concert in Los Angeles, David Adeleke, better known as Davido, stepped onto one of the world’s biggest stages wearing a jacket with a simple message: “Bring Them Back.”

The message was not about fashion. It was not about music. It was about the schoolchildren and teachers abducted from Oriire area of Oyo State more than a month earlier and still held in captivity by terrorists.

Millions saw the message. Millions who knew nothing about the tragedy in Oriire suddenly became aware that somewhere in Nigeria, children who should have been in classrooms were spending their days and nights in the bush at the mercy of armed criminals, inclement weather and poisonous vipers!.

One would have expected universal applause. Instead, the usual defenders of power sprang into action. 

Among the loudest voices was Reno Omokri, who argued that drawing global attention to the plight of the abducted children could embolden their captors. According to him and others of similar persuasion, publicising the tragedy might strengthen the kidnappers’ bargaining position.

The argument was astonishing.

Children have been stolen. Teachers have been stolen. Families have been shattered. A community has been traumatised. Yet the concern of some people is not the crime itself but the publicity surrounding the crime. Their position amounts to this: suffer quietly. Do not shout.

Do not embarrass the government. Do not remind the world that Nigerian children have vanished into the forests. In essence, they are asking us to lose not only our children but also our voices. The Yoruba have a proverb for such absurdity: Nǹkan ẹni kìí nù, kí ohùn ẹni náà tún nù. A person should not lose his possession and lose his voice as well.The wisdom behind that proverb is illustrated in the ancient Ife story of Arítúlà.

Arítúlà owned only one possession of value: an Ológoṣẹ́, a sparrow with which he entertained people and earned a living. Seeking prosperity, he consulted three Babalawos. They told him that if the bird ever got lost, he must neither search for it nor raise the alarm.

One day the bird disappeared. After waiting in vain for its return, Arítúlà went back to the diviners. They instructed him to perform a sacrifice and gave him a gong inscribed with an Ifa corpus. He was told to visit the palaces of powerful rulers and threaten to beat the gong.

At every palace, alarmed rulers rushed out and demanded an explanation. When Arítúlà explained that his sparrow was missing, they showered him with gifts and wealth. Before long, the poor man had become rich.

Puzzled, Arítúlà returned to ask why he had first been forbidden from searching for the bird and later encouraged to announce its loss. The answer was simple.

There is no point crying where nobody can help. But once a man sights those capable of offering assistance, he must not keep silent. 

The old sages captured it in another proverb: Ojó tí a bá ti rí elékún ẹni làá sunkún. One begins to weep when one sees the person capable of consolation. Davido’s jacket was nothing more than Arítúlà’s gong. It was a cry directed at the world. It was a reminder that Nigerian children remain in captivity. It was an appeal for attention, pressure and urgency. 

Those attacking him seem to believe silence is a strategy. But what exactly has silence achieved?

From Chibok to Dapchi and now Oriire, Nigerians have cried, protested, marched and pleaded. Often, all they received from government was sympathy wrapped in official statements. Yet even sympathy is preferable to indifference.And history teaches that many injustices survive precisely because people stop talking about them

The real discomfort caused by Davido’s action was not that it would embolden kidnappers. The real discomfort was that it embarrassed those in authority. The reminder appeared on a global platform at a time when politicians are busy counting defectors, calculating electoral advantages and preparing for the 2027 elections.

A jacket succeeded in doing what countless official statements have failed to do: it forced attention back onto forgotten victims. 

That is why the reaction was so fierce.

The irony is particularly striking in the case of Reno Omokri. What Reno and his too-much-noise-about-the-children-will-energise-their-abductors gang are telling us is that we should not talk again about the stolen children in Oríire and elsewhere in Nigeria. They presented to us the laziest of all arguments by saying that our previous noise over a similar unfortunate incident amounted to nothing! 

But their real issue is that by wearing the emblem which drew global attention to the fate of those children, the Tinubu administration is thoroughly embarrassed! That is why the argument of ‘nothing happened with the noise we made over Chibok girls in 2014’ became their reference point!

They are never attuned with the wisdom that when a man sights his helper from afar, he must begin to weep profusely. They have forgotten that from the days when lizards were few, the sages gone counselled that we should search for any missing item anyhow (Ìwákúwã làá wá ohun tó so nù). The government Hallelujah gang forgets that it is more convenient for a mother to announce that her child is dead than to tell the grieving party that her child is lost.

It is even worse in this case because those children did not wander away on their own. They were snatched from the classrooms where they were being taught good citizenship and how to become useful members of the society. To find them and bring them back to the comfort of their homes and the delight of their parents and relief of a nation under siege, no efforts should be spared; no method should be deemed too crude.

We argued the similarities between the Chibok girls’ episode and Oríire’s dastardly act on this page three weeks ago. It is rather very unfortunate that Reno, whose voice was the loudest when the Chibok girls’ episode happened, is the one preaching ‘caution’ in this matter because he has found comfort in the bosom of those he once labelled evil. This is why he found it convenient to advise us to behave like the legendary Arítúlà, who must not shout even when his most precious item gets lost! Fortunately for the rest of us, we are knowledgeable enough to know that only a half-divined Ifa does not favour the client.

Just as we were trying to rationalise Omokri’s posture on Davido’s costume, like the daily weeping of the woman who kills her husband, (Ojoojúmó bíi ekún ap’okoje, another bad news hit us like a thunderbolt. The Katsina State Government, on Saturday, June 13, announced that General Rabe Abubakar (Rtd), the former Army spokesman, who was kidnapped penultimate week alongside his wife, had died in captivity.