Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) says it took over control of Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) Limited over inability of the DisCo to clear its acquisition loan from Skye Bank, now Polaris Bank.

IBEDC distributes electricity to consumers in Oyo, Osun, parts of Kwara, Ondo, Ekiti states.

After a court ruling empowering AMCON to take over the asset, IBEDC came under receivership on Thursday, January 20.

The DisCo was acquired by Integrated Energy Distribution and Marketing Limited (IEDML) the same firm that acquired Yola DisCo, all during the 2013 power sector privatisation exercise.

It later returned Yola to the federal government over insecurity issues in the franchise area. It was only in December 2021 that another private firm took over Yola DisCo from the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE.

IEDML got 60 per cent stakes in both DisCos to become the core investor.

However, the funding for the assets acquisition were loans taken from banks and have had repayment issues eight years after acquiring IBEDC.

Just in November, AEDC, another of the 11 DisCos had acquisition loans settlement issues with UBA, prompting UBA to takeover the DisCo in full receivership.

AMCON in a public notice, stated that it had appointed Osayaba Giwa-Osagie to take over the the entire undertakings, assets of IEDM including shares and interests in related companies and entities, and also monies kept in banks in Nigeria.

AMCON said it executed the takeover of IEDM following a default in a Loan Servicing Agreement executed with Polaris Bank.

“AMCON has pursuant to Section 48 and 61 of AMCON Act 2010 been appointed Receiver/Manager over all the Assets of Integrated Energy Distribution and Marketing Limited as stipulated in the instruments executed in favour of AMCON by virtue of the Loan Purchase and Limited Servicing Agreement executed with Polaris Bank Limited dated 30th November 2018 and a Notice of Appointment of the Receiver/Manager dated August 6th, 2021, which was duly stamped by the Commissioner for Stamp Duties” the statement read.

Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) had previously fined IBEDC N50 million for ”its failure to secure a refund of an interest free loan the Board of IBEDC granted to its core investor group.”

Also in a memo to the staff by the IBEDC Chief Operating Officer (COO), John Ayodele, AMCON would not sack the management of IBEDC unlike the AEDC case where the management and board were reconstituted.

“Further, to the judgement wherein the Federal High Court on the 8th of September 2021 granted preservative orders in favour of Asset Management Corporation (AMCON), (being the Receiver/Manager of Integrated Energy Distribution and Marketing Limited); the court has appointed Kunle Oqunba to act as Receiver/ Manager Nominee in the receivership action.

“Based on the foregoing the Receiver/Manager came in today 20th January 2022 to the IBEDC Headquarters to take charge formally and subsequently met with the Management team. Therefore, I hereby wish to inform all staff that there is no cause for alarm.

“We are assured of job security which entails our position/ duties in the company, being entitlements to our salaries and other benefits etc.

“On behalf of the Management, I urge us all to kindly go about the efficient discharge of our duties to ensure a speedy and mutually beneficial resolution.

“I wish us all the best, while I appeal that we continue to remember IBEDC in our prayers,” Ayodele stated in the memo.

Daily Trust

Independent National Electoral Commission on Friday said it would beam its searchlight on politicians and political parties to track the sources of funds for their campaigns in the 2023 general election.

The commission, therefore, promised to set up committee to monitor election expenditure ahead of the elections.

Chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, represented by a National Commissioner, Kunle Ajayi, stated this in Abuja during a policy roundtable conference on political campaign finance organised by The Electoral Forum, an organ of the Initiative for Research, Innovation and Advocacy in Development with support from MacArthur Foundation.

He said, “As long as we have not notified anybody that the race to the 2023 general election has started, we are not unaware of what anybody is doing. We follow the law strictly.

“We have not officially declared notice for the 2023 general election, but when we so declare, we will put our monitoring committees to motion like the Central Bank of Nigeria, DSS, EFCC, ICPC, (commercial) banks and other law enforcement agencies. We have that plan already.

“Every candidate must be made to declare his bank asset. That is where they draw out their money, so we will make them present their statement of account right from the onset.

“We will make it mandatory for them to turn in their bank statement so that if they say they are doing billboard and the account remains the same, then there is a problem.”

INEC chairman also said that INEC would also monitor the movement of money on election days to help tackle vote-buying at polling units.

Mahmood said that through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, commercial banks would be mandated to report all suspicious transactions ahead of the election.

The INEC chairman also threatened to prosecute any bank that failed to cooperate.

Speaking on the issue of vote-buying, Mahmood said, “We are going to establish finance monitoring teams and they will be among the electorate but they (politicians and political parties) won’t know.

“We are going to do it in a way that the influence of money will be reduced because we want to make the electoral field a level playing ground for both rich and poor candidates and electorates. Everybody will go on an equal economic level so that you won’t influence the voting pattern.”

Punch

Abeokuta Grammar School Old Boys Association, Agsoba has urged the Ogun State Government led by Prince Dapo Abiodun to follow the rules of law and be impartial on the land crisis between the school and those alleged to have encroached on their lands.  

This appeal was made in a report by the President-General of AGSOBA GLOBAL, Chief Sunday Oduntan with an appeal to the government not to politicise the issue or create a crisis that could affect the government if it shows bias on the matter.  

He hinted on a note allegedly forwarded by one of the illegal occupants, one Mr Kuforiji to the State Governor, in a bid to blackmail and politicise the land issue with Graceland community Olokuta and Abule Nla community.

The President-General assured all old students of the school that, "nobody can deny Abeokuta Grammar School the ownership of the land bought by the school founding fathers since late 50s and early 60s, since they have proper documentation and receipts of purchase as the rightful owner in their possession".

He expressed shock at how those who encroached on the lands have prevented their contractors from bringing blocks to the site through Abule nla and Olokuta for fencing.

In his words he alleged that, "the illegal occupants have brought fetish pot to the site, they also brought thugs to come and haras the workers on site".

Chief Oduntan however assured that the Agsoba will never resort to violence or illegal acts saying "we will never use thugs, the law is on our side, we shall only use the rule of law".

He appealed to the state governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun to follow the rules of law and be impartial in his interference.

Police in Ogun State have arrested a man, Oyedele Joseph, and his wife Elizabeth for allegedly invading Toyon High school, Ere village in Ado Odo local government with thugs to beat a teacher, Abel Thomas for beating their son.

The suspects were arrested after the policemen attached to Ado Odo divisional headquarters received distress from the school, that parent of one of their students had beaten and injured one of the teachers.

Police Public Relations Officer, Mr Abimbola Oyeyemi who confirmed the arrest of the couple in a statement in Abeokuta explained that the teacher, Abel Thomas was said to have corrected an SS3 student of the school, Joshua Joseph who went home to inform his parent that he was beaten by the teacher.

He pointed out that the parent mobilised some thugs and descended heavily on the teacher, beating and injuring him.

Mr Oyeyemi said the suspects also damaged the back screen of a Toyota Corolla vehicle belonging to another teacher of the school, Jolayemi Sunday.

He noted that the injured teacher had been taken to the hospital for medical treatment.

Meanwhile, Commissioner of Police, Mr Lanre Bankole has ordered that the escaped thugs who accompanied the couple to attack the school should be hunted for and brought to justice.

Mr Bankole also directed that the arrested couple should be charged to court without delay.

..says FG violated IPOB leader’s rights

A State High Court in Umuahia, Nigeria’s Southeast, has ruled that the federal government violated the fundamental human rights of detained IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, when the military invaded his home in Abia state in September 2017.

The court handed down the ruling, Wednesday, in a fundamental human rights suit filed by Kanu through his lawyer, Aloy Ejimakor.

The court said the invasion was a violation of Kanu’s right to life, dignity of his human person, his personal liberty and his privacy.

The court, which rejected the government’s objection to the suit, said the government should pay N1 billion as damages to the IPOB leader and publicly apologise to him.

The court, however, refused to nullify the ongoing trial of Kanu for alleged terrorism, saying it lacked jurisdiction over the matter.

Ejimakor, nevertheless, said the ruling would have an impact on Kanu’s criminal trial.

“If your fundamental rights were violated, then it means that legally, you cannot be said to have jumped bail because the idea of jumping bail and the rendition are all related to what happened (the military invasion) in 2017.

“So if what led to his inability to face his trial in 2017 was a violation by the government of Nigeria, then legally speaking you cannot say that he jumped bail,” Ejimakor said.

“People are celebrating, my client is celebrating. I am happy with the ruling,” he added.

The lawyer said the court “most importantly recommended a political solution to the Biafra agitation”.

Apart from the Federal Government of Nigeria, the respondents in the suit included the Attorney General of the Federation, Chief of Army Staff, Brigade Commander, 14 Brigade Ohafia, and Inspector General of Police.

Others were Commissioner of Police, Abia State, Director-General of the SSS, and Abia State Director of the SSS.

IPOB, which is leading the agitation for an independent republic, Biafra, which they want to be carved out from Nigeria’s Southeast and parts of Southsouth, has been accused of being responsible for the deadly attacks in the Southeast and Southsouth.

Kanu was previously arrested and released on bail. He had jumped bail in 2017.

He was “intercepted” in Kenya in June, last year, by Nigerian security agents and brought back to Abuja.

PT

The Ogun State Commissioner for Finance and Chief Economic Adviser to the Governor, Mr. Dapo Okubadejo, has bagged the “2021 News Direct Commissioner of the Year Award of Excellence”.

The award, according to the organizers, is in recognition of his various economic transformation and re-engineering initiatives which have bolstered the economy of the State and improved its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). 

Conveying the decision of the management of Nigerian NewsDirect newspaper to confer the award on the Commissioner, the Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, Prince (Dr.) Samuel Ibiyemi, identified deployment of revenue assurance platforms(leveraging ICT), establishment of the Ogun State Land Administration and Revenue Management System (OLARMS), and investment in digital economy, among others as some of the strategies which the Commissioner deployed to achieve the strides.

“As a highly successful financial expert with robust experience in private sector, you have no doubt brought to bear your wealth of experience in re-engineering the finances of the State, thereby making fund available to drive several development projects of this administration.

“It is on good record that with your magical wand, the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of the State has been moved higher by over N40bn(against year 2020,  and excluding final figures for December, 2021) and you have also ensured strategic spending such that many developmental projects across the State are receiving attention.

“You have no doubt leveraged on using ICT tool to drive and reposition the economy of the State by blocking all leakages and ensuring that resources meant for coffers of the State government did not stray into any other pockets.

Of commendation is equally the launch of the Ogun State Land Administration and Revenue Management System (OLARMS), which is described as a revolutionary technological initiative in the management of land resources in the country, with capacity to not only boost the income of the State, but also raise its Ease of Doing Business index.

“The Honourable Commissioner should also be informed that the benchmark of the nomination took a comparative juxtaposition of all Commissioners in the country and basically anchored on indices of innovativeness, quality, due process, and impacts, among other deliverables”, Ibiyemi pointed out". Ibiyemi stated.

Responding, Okubadejo noted that the award which will be formally conferred on him at the 11th Anniversary Lecture and Awards Ceremony of NewsDirect Newspaper, slated for January 21, at the Federal Palace Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, "is an excellent morale booster” which would continue to encourage him and other leaders in both public and private sectors of the Nigeria economy to strive for excellence.

While thanking the newspaper for the honour done him, he promised to continue to contribute his best to the development of the State in his dual role of Commissioner for Finance and Chief Economic Adviser.

Governor Nyesom Wike has accused a divisional police officer in Rivers State of operating an illegal refinery in the state.

Wike said the officer heads the police division in Emohua Local Government Area of the state.

He demanded his redeployment from Rivers State.

“He must leave this state. I can’t be governor here and the security man owns an illegal refinery. No, it is not possible. The man has to go. Take him to wherever they allow bunkering,” Wike said on Friday in Government House, Port Harcourt in a meeting with local council chairmen and heads of security agencies in the state.

Commissioner of Police in Rivers State, Eboka Friday, was at the meeting. The police have yet to comment on the governor’s allegation and his demand.

Wike’s remarks were contained in a statement on Friday from his media aide, Kelvin Ebiri.

The governor said it was unfortunate and unbelievable for security officials in Nigeria to be involved in illegal bunkering. “I can’t believe it,” he said.

He accused the civil defence officer in-charge of vandalisation of oil pipelines in the state of being a saboteur, and demanded his immediate redeployment from Rivers.

Wike has repeatedly said that the soot in Port Harcourt and its environs is caused by the operation of illegal refineries in the state, and has vowed to go after their operators.

The governor at the Friday meeting ordered the local council chairpersons in the state to go after the operators of illegal refineries.

‘It’s total war’

“I’ve called you here to tell you that it’s a total war. It is either we do it or we don’t do it. We cannot allow what is going on to continue. Two things – our people are dying, it’s shortening our own revenue.

“You check from the Federation Account, Akwa Ibom and Delta states are getting more, why? Because, these boys of the cartel have caused so much problems for us. So we will not allow it,” Wike said.

“Now, every council chairman must go and identify where illegal refineries are taking place. If you identify one, you get N2 million. So, go and identify as many as you can. I will pay N2 million for each one. I am going to fight against this. Our people are dying and we owe our people the responsibility to protect them, to save them from death they never caused.

“So, you must, and you’re given 48 hours to go and identify all illegal refineries sites, and those who are in charge of them,” the governor said to the council chairmen.

PT

Credible information indicates that the Islamic State in West Africa Province attacked Mainahari community near Wakabiu in Biu Local Government Area of Borno State.

According to a source from the Biu army barracks, the insurgents threw bombs to the village around 3:00 this afternoon which alerted the army of the impending attack.

However, the insurgents were successfully repelled by men of the Nigerian Army.

“We were at the barracks when we began to hear sounds of bombs around 3pm. Then we heard that they were trying to enter Mainahari village near Wakabiu, but the army was on alert and they immediately engaged the insurgents.

“There was no casualty on the side of the Nigerian Army but we were told the army killed scores of the insurgents, seized a gun truck and many ammunition from the fleeing insurgents,”Zainab Buba, a civilian source at the Biu army barracks stated.

Zainab said the insurgents, having been overpowered by superior firepower of the Nigerian Army, retreated in disarray while the soldiers went in pursuit of the fleeing insurgents.

Punch

At least five persons have been reportedly killed in a fresh farmers-herders clash in Imeko-Afon Local Government Area of Ogun State.

Houses, four maize barns, motorcycles, and other valuables were set ablaze in the clash.

The clash came barely a year after a similar incident claimed scores of lives in the Yewa axis of the state. 

Our correspondent gathered that the clash started on Wednesday when the Fulani herdsmen and some Ohori farmers engaged one another in a bloody clash at Idofa Village, leading to the loss of lives and properties worth millions of naira.

It was learnt that the people of Aworo Community in Yewa North Local Government had chased the herdsmen to Idofa in Imeko, killing three of them and their cows.

They accused the herdsmen of destroying their farms and water sources through open grazing of cows; a practice the Ogun State Government had banned.

The locals told our correspondent that residents had started fleeing the village for fear of reprisal.

A source said there was a reprisal on Thursday in which two residents were killed with one burnt beyond recognition.

Police Public Relations Officer, Abimbola Oyeyemi, who confirmed the crisis, said no arrest had been made.

“No arrest has been made yet, but we are on it and we are sure that those who committed that act will be apprehended.”

Daily Trust

So I was at the Alausa Governor’s Office in Lagos. Accessing the governor was like seeking needle in a haystack. His Press Secretary sent words up that an irritant interloper had come to ferret response to a newsmagazine’s damming expose on the governor. After hours of waiting, a commissioner (names withheld) sauntered in and met me where I sat immovably like Mount Kilimanjaro. “You can’t write that story,” he began in a steely voice sauced with veiled threats. “Go back to Ibadan. We will talk to your boss.” That was how the story never saw the light of the day.

The Nigerian Tribune, of which I was its Features Editor during this period, had sent me in pursuit of the facts or fiction surrounding the newsmagazine report. The principal of that ancient school, Government College Ibadan, (GCI) at the time had suddenly gone AWOL, incommunicado and inaccessible as the proverbial excrement of the masquerade. Grapevines alleged that Lam Adesina, then governor of Oyo State, had ordered that all data of the school’s attendees between the period of Governor Bola Tinubu’s claim of attendance of GCI be brought to him in the Government House, where they were brought under governmental lock and key. The media that was seeking corroboration or the antonym of the claims, went after the GCI Principal. He had disappeared into thin air. Perhaps, a one-on-one interview with the governor would do? 

In 1999, one Waliu Balogun wrote a petition against Tinubu leveling a number of damning allegations that bordered on fraudulent claims of educational attainments. Among other things, he accused Tinubu of lying in an affidavit attached to his Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) form that he lost his degree certificates while he was on exile between 1994 and 1998. The newsmagazine later published those details in a gripping expose which left sour tastes in the mouth.

One after the other, all Tinubu’s claims, sworn to under oath in the Form CF001 he filled with INEC were shredded to smithereens by the magazine’s story. St. Paul’s School, Aroloya, Lagos, which he claimed to have attended, the magazine said its investigative reporting found never existed just as his name was conspicuously missing from the records of the Government College, Ibadan which he claimed to have attended between 1965 and 1968. Indeed, GCI’s alumni association, the Old Boys of the school, debunked the claim. So also was Tinubu’s claim that he attended Richard Daley College, Chicago, between 1969 and 1971. Punctured also were the governor’s claims of having attended the University of Chicago in the U.S. between 1972 and 1976, as well as obtaining a B.Sc degree in Economics from the university. A request to those institutions for affirmation of Tinubu’s studentship by the magazine was a resounding No. Till date, in spite of his having vanquished the legal principalities spearheaded by the late Gani Fawehinmi, with the Supreme Court voiding Fawehinmi on technical grounds, none of Tinubu’s classmates, schoolmates or even teachers, has come out in public to counter the facts of the legal behemoth erected against him.

Four years later, in 2003, it was time for Tinubu to fill the Form CF001 again, in pursuit of his second term bid. His enemies who were waiting for him to make those claims again were dazed when they saw what the governor filled. In all the columns, the gentleman simply filled NOT APPLICABLE; Primary School, Not Applicable, Secondary School, Not Applicable and University, Not Applicable. Could that have meant that the man never attended any school?

Tinubu was not alone. Rife as expectations were from the new-found Nigerian republic in 1999, like alligators, renowned for incredible nasal power of smelling a drop of blood even in ten gallons of water, Nigerians smelled crises in the cache of scandals that involved newly elected office holders of the republic. Less than three months after commencement of the Fourth Republic, Nigeria began to manifest noticeable cracks. It took political scientists and students of Marxian dialectics to allay our fears and tell us that those cracks were curative, self-correctional and akin to the Marxist theory of thesis and antithesis which, when they jam, produce a synthesis.

In quick successions of messy, damming scandals, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari, Senate President Evan(s) Enwerem and Bola Tinubu got entangled in seismic, roiling scandals of identity misappropriation, subversion of their oaths of office and perversion of truth. While the latter two were swept away by the typhoon of the crises, Tinubu not only survived the wire mesh, to spite the allegations, he is today one of top three most consequential, powerful Nigerians alive and a presidential office aspirant to boot.

Salisu Buhari, the affable and young Speaker of the lower parliament had just been unraveled by the media as an age inflator and certificate forger. Hitherto, a Kano-based businessman, Buhari shuttled into politics but two weeks into being in office, the rested news magazine, TheNews, in its February 16, 1999 edition, published details of his age and certificate forgery. The magazine wrote that he was actually born in 1970 and not 1963 as he claimed.

Again, TheNews put a lie to Buhari’s claim of having graduated from the University of Toronto, stating that he not only never attended the school, the mandatory youth service he claimed to have underwent at the Standard Construction in Kano was a ruse. On July 23, 1999, like a rain-soaked squirrel, Buhari was contrite, disgraced and admitted all the allegations. “I apologize to you. I apologize to the nation. I apologize to my family and friends for all the distress I have caused them. I was misled in error by a zeal to serve the nation, I hope the nation will forgive me and give me the opportunity to serve again,” he murmured as he resigned from the House. He was subsequently convicted of certificate forgery, sentenced to two years in prison but later got pardoned by President Olusegun Obasanjo. 

Senate President, Evan Enwerem, was to kiss the canvass a little while after. In the race for the senate presidency, he had sidestepped his closest sprinter rival for the office, Chuba Okadigbo by 66 to 43 votes. Shortly after his ascension in 1999, Enwerem was shoved into the sieve, scrutinized on allegation of identity opacity. He was held up on the fire-spitting wire gauze for falsification of his name. A ball-fire of controversy erupted on whether Enwerem's real name was Evan or Evans. In the melee, on November 18, 1999, his ouster, spearheaded by Okadigbo and his allies, became a fait accompli.

Between his consequential emergence on the political turf of Nigeria in 1999 and now, only an armchair, analytical yokel will underrate or belittle Bola Tinubu’s awesome and colonizing genius in Nigerian politics. He became so consequential that some translucent analyses compare him to the sage, Obafemi Awolowo. It will appear that immediately he got away from the drowning tidal waves of that identity theft legal tango and the lacerating fisticuffs of his numerous political adversaries, Tinubu tightened his muscles on the political levers of Lagos, a state which had always been the microcosm of Nigeria since it became the federal capital of independent Nigeria in 1960. He saw how the almighty power of the media, like a mammoth whale, almost succeeded in capsizing his ship of state and political career.

Rising from the ashes of the crises, Tinubu encircled his claw-like fists on the media, meandering himself into its total corpus and essentializing himself in its operations. While English crime thriller writer, René Lodge Brabazon Raymond, popularly known as James Hadley Chase, says that fear opens the wallets of the rich, Tinubu’s street chemistry, which he deploys, says that licit and illicit favours, prebends and perks imprison consciences and arrest captives faster than glue gum traps mice. Unconscionably, Tinubu waves these aces with the magisterial clinicality of a professional executioner, succeeding in the process in harvesting a huge political, media, government, judicial, corporate, etcetera clienteles inside his massive pouch.

The truth is that, since 1960, seldom has Nigeria had a political aficionado who deployed the genius of the streets in the service of politics as Tinubu. Scarcely can anybody have the mis/fortune of encountering him without becoming a captive of his cash influence. Someone once said that even the god of Mammon would be envious of Tinubu’s sagacity in deploying its monetary weapon.

Within the span of his Lagos governorship of eight years, from someone who those who knew him said was passably well-to-do, Tinubu grew a monstrous wealth, such that a 2015 back page opinion piece in the Sun newspaper claimed he owned almost half of Lagos and urged Buhari to clone the Vladimir Putin method with which the Russian president neutralized drug czars who funded his presidential emergence. Within this period, Tinubu also acquired a humongous political influence in Lagos and outside of it that could rank that of Pharaohs and emperors of old. In 2007, an ex-governor, who witnessed the miasma of power flakes encircling him as he arrived the Lagos airport, jealously told me that it was godlike.

Superficial analyses of Tinubu claim that his vice-hold grips on Lagos can be found in his ability to recreate and “build” persons in state and national offices, as well as sustaining a linear pattern of succession. This, such analysts claim, reflects his sagacity. Those who know the modus operandi of this power retention system machine however put a lie to it. To them, deep underneath it is an opaque, yet fastidiously maintained and pervasively sustained mega corruption and perpetuation of self hegemony by a carefully mastered mind coercion that is promoted by a cultic abidance to an oath of allegiance.

Those who see Tinubu’s strength in his fluid recruitment of aides should also be able to answer why he suffers huge casualty of his investment in such persons? Could it be that he uses them as indentured viceroy? Or that the rebellion we see from them is an attempt to set themselves free of his hold? From Babatunde Fashola, Muiz Banire, Akinwumi Ambode to his erstwhile lickspittle, Rauf Aregbesola and many others, there must be a single thread that unifies Tinubu’s foot soldiers’ rebellion against him. Unfortunately for Tinubu, this same set of soldiers, knowing the secrets of the sustenance of their power machine, are today against his emergence as Nigeria’s president and will willingly supply the fire that will incinerate his ambition. In Yorubaland today, apart from Lagos and Osun States, which APC governor can Tinubu claim to be under him?

If nothing else, the controversy provoked by Bisi Akande’s My Participations unraveled the mythic notion that Tinubu promotes his aides to the top for the love of country. Back and forth arguments, especially on Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s nomination in 2015, revealed that not only is the Lagos landlord obsessed with self alone, ascension of others in his loop is secondary and is subordinated to personal interest. The world saw that Tinubu grudgingly acceded to Osinbajo's candidacy only when his personal interest hit the rocks.

Last week however, Tinubu paid a visit to President Muhammadu Buhari, a few hours after the latter granted an incoherent interview where he claimed that if he named his successor, the fellow could be assassinated. A content analysis of the president’s statement must have revealed to Tinubu that he could never have been the one Buhari was referring to. Tinubu must know that Buhari knows that a plan to murder Death would be easier done than assassinating Nigeria’s Mafia don, the Capo dei capi himself.

The most mis-recommending criterion against a Tinubu presidency is that, in mental depth, the Lagos Landlord is just a whiff higher than Buhari. Remove the Cockney accent he feebly mimics, you will find out that most times, his extempore speeches lack coherence, logic and verve.

Counter arguments have been proffered against the school of thought that says that Tinubu’s ultra-stupendous wealth should not recommend him against vying for the Nigerian presidency. You will recollect that the military apparatchik argued along this line against an MKO Abiola presidency. Abiola, they said, was as wealthy as to grant Nigeria loans. Weak as the argument was, it is strong in Tinubu’s disfavor for its moral and deleterious implications. While the world knew that Abiola’s wealth was procured from international dealings, especially in ITT, Tinubu is said to own a pie in virtually every sector of Nigeria’s economy, ranging from oil, steel, finance (tax), airline, real estate, media, you name it. These are funded in names of shells and proxies. In all these, as the Americans say, we can see the bucks but not the shop. What morality will Nigeria be preaching by having a president of such opaque composition and disposition?

Either real or imagined, it is said that the only thing that is real about Tinubu is his person and that every other ascription on him is a borrowed robe. He has not come in the open to effectively disclaim the allegation that his name is not his name; that the parents he claimed were not his'; that the certificates he claimed to be his are not and that the schools he claimed to have attended didn't know him. I don’t know a baggage huger than this for a country like Nigeria that is struggling to sell herself to the world to now have its president burdened by this pernicious pedigree.

With the calamity that the Buhari presidency has posed to Nigeria, it will be more calamitous to have a Tinubu as his successor. Governing Nigeria is not all about identifying surrogates who will man critical political offices for future political gains. Nigeria needs a cerebral, healthy, comparatively morally overboard president, a man, borrowing from Oscar Wilde’s description of his gay partner friend, Alfred Douglas in De Profundis, who is not a man for whom the gutter and all that is in it fascinates.     

One would have expected Tinubu to heed the counsel of Apala music icon, Ayinla Omowura. Omowura must have had in mind leaders who are heavy-laden, burdened by baggage of their past, when he counseled that, as all shrubs and leaves in the forest should not be the predilection of a herbalist seeking curative herbs; not all palm trees in the forest should excite the palm-wine tapper either. In Yoruba, he expressed this as, “gbogbo ewe ko l’ojawe nja; gbogbo ope ko l’onigba ngun.” Sagacious leaders who carry stupendous moral baggage of the Tinubu hue should know the forests they should venture into.

The forests of  presidential contest that the Lagos Landlord is about to venture into is what same Omowura, in his vinyl, referred to as “igbo odaju” – the forest of the heartless, the carapace-hard heart hunters. Anyone who does not have the benefit of a real mother – a real mother’s prayers are like magic, steeped in mystical and metaphysical powers. Anyone, said Omowura, who does not have a real mother who can provide witchcraft protection for them, should not venture into the igbo odaju. Never! Abraham Lincoln, father of American nation, also alluded to this when he said, “I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.”

Some Yoruba lament what they call the predilection of Yoruba in pulling themselves down. This piece would be their perfect example. It is thinking like this that has condemned Nigeria to stagnation. The truth is, Yoruba are very proud of their pedigree and wear it like a lapel on their sleeves. So how can same Yoruba who have preached moral uprightness to the rest of the world for centuries, now queue behind a man who cannot point his right hand at his father’s homestead? Let the rest of Nigeria be rotten egg. Yoruba will still underscore societal purity. It should gladden us that Yoruba are the ones revealing the maggots in their home so that when they expose others' maggots, they will occupy a higher moral ground. It is better for Yoruba not to lift a presidential leg forward than lift one that is riddled with a festering and putrid sore. In any case, what Nigeria needs is a president that is a leader who is not crippled by ill health and is adequately schooled in the nuances of 21st century solutions to our self-inflicted, existential challenges.

Since independence in 1960, six ‘major’ Yoruba sons have attempted a shot at Nigeria’s civilian presidency (excluding fringe aspirants of the Babangida political guinea-pig era). They are Obafemi Awolowo, Lateef Jakande, MKO Abiola, Bola Ige, Olu Falae and Olusegun Obasanjo. If Tinubu carries through his recent declaration, he will be joining this pantheon. Of this lot, Tinubu would be the only one whose pedigree is shrouded in a miasma of dubiety.

Yoruba will totally support Tinubu in his presidency dream if he agrees to fill in the INEC forms all those claims he made of his roots in 1999. He must fill in the 2023 Form CF001 St. Paul’s School, Aroloya, Lagos, as his primary school; Government College, Ibadan; Richard Daley College, Chicago and the University of Chicago as his alma maters, without Tokunbo Afikuyomi swearing on oath that he filled them for him by proxy.