Connect with us

Society

Tinubu: Nigeria is Not Lagos (Part 1)

Published

on

By SHAKA MOMODU
“In Japan, a corrupt person kills himself. In China, they will kill him. In Europe they will jail him. In Africa, he will present himself for election.”
– Anonymous

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo once said that Nigeria is the only country where if you catch a thief red-handed, the thief will be the first to drag you to court. The above quote whose real author I couldn’t establish and Obasanjo’s characterization of the Nigerian thief is spot on and speak to the Nigerian conundrum. The fact is that no one has captured the reality of Africa’s leadership challenge better than the two. Nothing depicts the tragedy of Africa, particularly Nigeria, more than the above quote. It tells the story of how Africans have underdeveloped Africa.

Nigeria which was long thought of as the hope of Africa, has unfortunately stuttered miserably. Hope increasingly looks like a distant illusion for the so-called Giant of Africa. A once promising nation has been subdued and scorched by a succession of bad leaders and their aspiring successors. It has witnessed the rise of tribal lords, religious fundamentalists, corrupt and amoral persons elevated to positions of power and authority to chat the destiny of their people, and unfortunately celebrated by the people. The tragic consequence is a nation heading to the brink of disaster.

There is an old saying in the land of my fathers: “If you fill your mouth with broken bottles, you will spit blood.” Nigeria has been spitting blood since it allowed men with a violent heritage to fill its leadership positions.
Frankly, our politicians’ understanding of democracy is threatening the security of lives and properties as well as the corporate existence of the country. Our so-called democracy has witnessed the rise of godfathers, whose sense of public office and purpose of governance is sharing public money and appropriating public property for personal use, creating gangs of armed thugs and militia armies to rig elections in order to perpetuate themselves or proxies in power. National interests are being undermined by tribal and religious affinity.

To rub salt into the wound, many of the aspiring candidates for the different elective positions to replace the current crop of extremely selfish and bad leaders, or names being bandied about in the media as President Muhammadu Buhari’s possible replacement are not only unsuitable for public office, they embody the worst vices that any decent society with the desire to make progress should ordinarily strive to exorcise from its governance system to secure the future of the next generation. But here, many people celebrate and revere them for their incompetence and criminal pillaging of the state’s resources. People who should ordinarily be serving long prison terms or would have paid the ultimate price for corruption in saner societies are the ones jumping around, aspiring to be president, governors, lawmakers and local government chairmen. How can our country make progress with these sorts of people as leaders?

Now, let’s go to the main focus of this write-up which is about former Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s overbearing influence and corruption – the big elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. It’s an open secret that the former governor of Lagos State and strongman of Lagos politics, Bola Tinubu is interested in contesting the 2023 presidential election. For sometime now, the debate about his suitability for the position has dominated the public space. Even though he is yet to formally declare his intention to run, his body language has given sufficient indication that he is actively planning and preparing to seek the ultimate office in the land.

Planning committees and contact groups have been set up across all zones in the country to advance that purpose.
And he has been unusually careful not to intervene in burning national issues for fear of giving the all-powerful cabal the ammunition to block his candidacy or where he decides to speak, you come away with the impression of someone who has lost his testicles to his frenemies. What started as whispers, seen then as an unlikely possibility and perhaps, a mere intent to grandstand and dramatise without substance has swelled into staggering noisy stridency of voices of many recruits whose only interest is the cash windfall to harvest from what promises to be a massively funded presidential campaign, that is sure to come their way.

Tinubu knows the power of money, and equally understands human frailty. In the last 22 years, he has amassed prodigious wealth by virtue of holding public office and continues to control the levers of power in Lagos State despite being out of office since 2007. He decides who gets what. He is rich, very rich, he even boasts of his massive wealth, owns two brand new private jets, pours millions of pounds into the governorship aspirations of candidates, yet no one can point to any legitimate means of income that generates that kind of wealth. No one knows how much taxes he pays to the state and federal governments. Various businesses have been associated with him and his allies but a cloud of secrecy hangs over his links to the businesses – businesses clearly established with a corrupt intent, or a product of abuse of public office and trust.

For those who hide behind a finger to ask for evidence of Tinubu’s corruption, the erstwhile Managing Director of Alpha Beta, the Lagos State controversial consultant on IGR, Mr. Dapo Apara’s petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) through the law firm, Adetunji Shoyoye and Associates, is your answer. It’s about the illegal activities taking place in Alpha Beta Consulting, one of the firms associated with Tinubu. Alpha Beta has held the exclusive franchise for revenue collection for Lagos State Government for nearly 19 years. Recall that Tinubu was in office when he awarded the contract to Alpha Beta, a company he had and still has interest in (held for him by proxies), to be the sole revenue collector for the Lagos State government. There was no competitive bidding for that contract. The current Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, a Professor of Law, was his Attorney General then. He must have seen that contract and must have known that it was a pure act of corruption.

Mr. Apara stated in his petition to the EFCC that Alpha Beta has been an IGR consultant to Lagos State since 2002, earning about 10% of whatever it collects for the state. He accused the firm of corruption, tax evasion and money laundering, among other things. He said the company had failed to pay taxes in the sum of N100 billion. What did EFCC do? It simply allowed the petition from no other person than a former managing director of the firm to gather dust on its shelf. And seeing that nothing was done, the firm has continued its nefarious activities till this day. Long before Apara’s bombshell, precisely in 2006, then Chairman of the EFCC, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu at a plenary session of the Senate specifically highlighted Tinubu’s corruption as one that had “international dimension”.

With such questionable financial dealings which have earned him prodigious wealth and the political power he wields over governance in Lagos in over two decades, he has held steady the loyalty of a horde of fanatical supporters, effectively using this to infuse his political base and spread his influence to other Southwest states. Not done with his material possession that has nearly crippled Lagos, he now wants to be president of Nigeria. What temerity!
As much as I have tried to understand the rationale behind peoples’ support for this fellow, to the extent of enlisting the services of behavioural experts and social anthropologists, there is still a part of me that is at a loss to understand why otherwise educated and enlightened people are queuing behind his ambition to govern Nigeria despite knowing about his atrocities in Lagos and his vast unexplained wealth. Are these people saying to the rest of us that are not falling head over heels with his ambition that it is okay for one man to maintain such a totalitarian control over Lagos State and illegally appropriate public resources the way he is doing? Are they saying corruption by others is condemnable while Tinubu’s own is tolerable?

Are these people saying it is okay for him and his children to be running a parallel government in Lagos State?
Indeed, he has been running a parallel government since he left office – he determines who becomes governor, lawmaker, senator, council chairman and even who gets government’s contracts. As a matter of fact, he determines what goes and what does not go. He has a finger in every pie in the state. After the death of his mother, Chief Abibatu Mogaji who was the President-General of the Association of Commodity Market Women and Men of Nigeria, Tinubu arbitrarily and single-handedly appointed and imposed on the traders his own daughter, Folashade Tinubu-Ojo as her successor. He truncated the process of the traders to elect someone among themselves. His daughter never had a shop in any market prior to her appointment by her father as reported then. Who does that? Can anyone tell me where Tinubu derived such authority as a former governor to unilaterally make that controversial appointment?

Anyone with well-tuned political antennae would have known that the motivation was to grab and maintain political sway, and had nothing to do with making the association better. It is all about the huge revenue generated from levies arbitrarily imposed and forcefully collected from market traders for which there is no accounting. The money doesn’t go into maintaining the markets or to the state government, but to wet the ravenous appetite of an overbearing godfather. It is also about ensuring that traders in Lagos continue to vote for him and his chosen candidates, knowing full well that traders in the informal sector and members of their families constitute a major political demographic in a state like Lagos.

His son, Seyi Tinubu now bestrides the Lagos landscape like the lord of the manor. His presence anywhere in the city sends shivers down the spine of many a government official. Like his father, he gets what he wants. His Loatsad Promedia and E-motion outdoor companies have total control of outdoor signage on most lucrative routes, viz. Lekki-Ajah and Epe axis, Falomo and Bourdillon areas of Ikoyi on the Lagos Island, Third Mainland bridge, Murtala Mohammed International Airport road, etc. The implication is anyone wanting to advertise on billboards on the routes he now controls has to go through this rookie practitioner with doubtful certification from regulatory agencies. His only pedigree in the field is his father’s chokehold on Lagos. For a guy that made his debut in advertising four or five years ago to have risen so fast to pull off such a feat speaks to Tinubu’s overbearing political influence. Today, Seyi enjoys unfair advantage over other operators in the industry but who is Seyi without his father who in a state of heady self-declaration is known to cry out: “I am Lagos.”

Tinubu’s continuous manhandling of Lagos has reached an unprecedented scale, such that nothing happens in the state without his knowledge. His spies are everywhere and report to him daily the activities and crucial decisions of government. In other words, Tinubu has been running the affairs of Lagos State since 1999 in varying degrees, depending on the personality of the governor in office. He has been able to achieve total control over succeeding administrations in the state with his firm grip on the State House of Assembly, a lackey house that is more loyal to him than the people they represent. He single-handedly handpicked and railroaded every member of his party into the state legislature. Election results were merely written by the godfather and his agents and rubberstamped by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the courts. With the loyalty of the assembly members well assured, Tinubu is able to threaten with impeachment and arm-twist any sitting governor who tries to assert his authority. Nearly all critical executive appointments are nominated by him.

Having conquered Lagos and expanded some influence to one or two Southwestern states, Tinubu is getting more bold and confident of riding roughshod over the captive states and the people. And now, he wants to capture Nigeria to do with it as he pleases. Imagine that reality for a moment! How can any sane educated human being be promoting him to the highest office in the land?
His ambition to be president is a slap in the face of all Nigerians of good old precious values. Ascending the presidency will be the ultimate reward for his impunity and will engender a brisk-street confidence that he can get away with anything – that the law is made for others and not for him.

I concede that Tinubu has not been convicted of any crime, so all his rights and privileges are preserved and protected by the constitution. But he has never been tried for all his abuse of power and corruption in and out of office. I can bet my life that if he is investigated and sincerely tried based on facts already in the public domain, he will have a huge debt to pay to society.
Now, let’s even leave his abuse of office and corruption (of “international dimension”) for a moment and honestly interrogate his political exploits. Tinubu is the main architect of the general malaise in our country today. His desire to be president at all cost led him to fetch Major General Muhammadu Buhari from retirement – a man he once described as “an agent of destabilisation, ethnic bigot and religious fanatic who if given the chance would ensure the disintegration of the country”, according to a Wikileaks transcript of a conversation between him and the US Consul-General in 2003. He had warned then that Buhari should not be trusted with power due to his ethno-religious bigotry. He pointed to Buhari’s tribalistic nature as potentially dangerous to the unity of Nigeria. In his own concise summation, “Buhari and his ilk are agents of destabilisation who would be far worse than Obasanjo.”

Tinubu later denied that he made those statements about Buhari to the US Consul-General following his alliance with him in 2014/15. Tinubu and his apparatchiks made a complete about turn on Buhari and started to spew a new narrative on Buhari’s unblemished record of performance and competence, adding that he would be a unifier. Well, Buhari went on to win the 2015 presidential election and Tinubu’s influence/stature catapulted through the roof. His lackeys went to town, celebrating him as the hero of democracy and “the greatest political strategist to come out of Africa”.

Of course you know in this part of the world, it is very easy to be celebrated as a hero no matter the crimes one has committed or continues to commit. Just spread some money around, memories will fade quickly and juries can be bought. However, Tinubu’s summation about the danger Buhari represents has proved so prophetic that I am just in disbelief how precise and forthright he was (forget all those denials).
What manner of man recognises danger in all its ramifications and for selfish political ambition leads his people into it with false promises of security? Now we can’t sleep anymore with our eyes closed. We can’t travel by road anymore. What about Tinubu? He flies his private jets. While things are tough for you and me, Tinubu is enjoying his best moment ever. As herdsmen are killing your neighbours and burning down their homes, he (Tinubu) is safe in his house. He is even building another palatial palace in Ikoyi, that straddles between Bourdillon and Queen’s Drive, a mansion like no other.

Never forget that it was Tinubu who brought Buhari and led the repackaging and rebranding of the man to make him president. So he bears direct responsibility for the complete failure of leadership our country is experiencing today on Buhari’s watch. Everyone kidnapped or killed, every woman or girl raped by the bandits or herdsmen, wherever, however, Tinubu shares part of the blame, let no one deceive you. He told us Buhari was capable of leading this country in a progressive way. He assured Nigerians that Buhari was the man to fix this land and clean up the ‘mess’ that then President Goodluck Jonathan and his team had created.

He and his All Progressives Congress (APC) apparatchiks rewrote the man’s history and achievements in superlative terms and presented him as a saviour who was coming to right all wrongs, rebuild and restore the glory of our fatherland. With that, he successfully hoodwinked a gullible young generation who neither studied history nor learned any lessons from the past to fall over each other to support a man they barely knew, whom he had once described and rightly so, as a tribalist and an agent of destabilisation. Today, the catastrophic consequences of his false narrative that propelled Buhari to office are self-evident for all to see. Indeed, his depiction of Buhari as a tribalist, a religious fanatic and an ethnic bigot was on the money.

The president’s six years in office have proved Tinubu right in every material sense. It is no longer a matter of debate or conjecture or some distant allusion based on hate that on the president’s watch, the country is broken and more divided than at any time in its chequered history. The level of lawlessness and the general insecurity across the country today are indescribable. All manner of terror franchises have turned our natural pristine forests into safe havens for their most heinous activities, while the government looks on in complete surrender. Many lives and properties have needlessly been lost due to Buhari’s poor leadership.

I am curious to know what Tinubu’s campaign would be like? Whose mess is he coming to clean, Buhari’s or Jonathan’s? Can anyone help me out?
Now, how can the man who foisted this calamity on the nation be the one to succeed him? How can any sane human being be promoting Tinubu for president? It is annoying that many educated persons are behaving like dimwits by supporting a man who at the very least should be crawling on his knees to every household in this famished land of our fathers, begging for forgiveness from Nigerians for the tragedy he has brought upon them and their country. For God’s sake, how can Tinubu replace Buhari? What manner of people are we? Are we so cursed as a people that we keep groping in the dark for solutions to our problems? I know that the godfather of propaganda himself is about to unleash another round of propaganda, half-truths and lies on our country. But we must be vigilant and resist propaganda this time. The thinking, I presume, is that if propaganda did it for Buhari, why not for Tinubu?

I fervently pray that his presidential ambition ends in smoke but I am not so unmindful of the fact that Nigerians are smart people, but with a history of foolish choices. Rewarding someone who foisted this tragedy on our country and who has not been able to keep his hand out of the Lagos cookie jar since 1999 with the presidency would amount to handing over to him a bigger cookie jar to do as he pleases. That will be a total surrender to the whims and caprices of someone whose deception doubles his appetite for primitive wealth acquisition. Imagine for a moment what will happen to NNPC, Customs, Federal Inland Revenue Service, etc.

If I may ask, what on earth does Tinubu now stand for? On what endearing value would he stand for election that you are willing to risk the future of your children in his hands? He has since jettisoned those things that he used to champion; namely, restructuring or fiscal federalism to make the country work better for all its components parts, state police, free, fair and transparent elections, etc, all for a seat at the table of those with their foot on our neck.

Talking about elections, they are only free and fair when his party wins. He celebrated and praised the daylight robbery that happened in the Osun gubernatorial election and the one that returned his new ally, Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano to office.
Still on free and fair elections, many won’t forget in a hurry how in the 2019 presidential election, thugs of the APC targeted areas in Lagos they suspected would vote for the candidate of the opposition party and actively prevented them from voting. In the process, ballot boxes were openly destroyed by them, all in an effort to minimise the performance of the opposition candidate. The so-called great political strategist didn’t realise that the thugs were hurting Lagos’ overall voting relevance? Nor can one forget that in the run-up to the governorship election in 2019, Nigerians from a certain ethnic group and their businesses were threatened by APC’s thugs in Lagos, leading to voter apathy in the election proper and a shoo-in for Tinubu’s chosen candidate (we are waiting to see how he will deny him a second term ticket).

If Tinubu and his acolytes could get away with such electoral malfeasance at the state level, one can only imagine what he would replicate on the national stage, if given the chance. The truth is, in a free and fair election in Lagos, Tinubu would lose scandalously. Everything about the man Tinubu is doubtful and questionable. From the secondary school he claimed to have attended to other educational attainments, his state of origin, identity of his parents, to even his actual age, doubts and questions persist. Added to all these are his past misdeeds in the United States of America. What kind of person is that?

In Lagos where he must be obeyed years after he left office as a governor, Tinubu has ensured he continues to draw from the treasury, courtesy of a nebulous and fraudulent pension law for ex-governors and their deputies. An ex-governor is now entitled to a house in Lagos, another in Abuja, cars, security, aides, paid medical expenses, full salary and allowances, all at the state’s expense. That law was rushed through the legislature in the closing months of his eight years in office. Unfortunately, eligibility to benefit from the law started with Tinubu. Alhaji Lateef Jakande, the first Executive Governor of Lagos State, the epitome of service, a visionary par excellence, the true father of modern Lagos was ineligible to draw from that pension law. Lagos under Tinubu was the first state to pass such a law in the country. With his bad example, others states followed suit. Is this the man you want to be your president? God forbid!

In his eulogy to the late Jakande, he claimed he tried to walk in his spirit. How deceptive can this man not be? The late Alhaji Jakande didn’t live in a grandiose mansion in Ikoyi, or on Victoria Island even though he served as governor. He was not a moneybag or bullion-van politician like Tinubu, no one ever saw bullion vans ferrying cash into his house on the eve of a presidential election. He neither owned millions of pounds to sponsor candidates for elections, nor private jets after occupying public office. Jakande didn’t award contracts to companies he had interests in as a sitting governor. He didn’t have bulletproof high-end SUVs; he didn’t drive around in a convoy of glittering cars, no shrieking sirens to scare people off the road, no security escorts. His security and safety were in the hands of the people he once served, his neighbours were his companions. Until his death, he lived in a nondescript single-storey building in Ilupeju, among the ordinary people. He was a true hero, unsung by the vocal minority who make heroes and statesmen of villains like Tinubu.

Unfortunately, our country doesn’t have men of conscience anymore. A cadre of old hacks and grifters is being lionized as Nigeria’s hope of redemption. A motley assortment of shady characters and activists is assaulting our sensibilities with warped new values. They take no prisoners and deodorise the manifest flaws of characters they crown heroes.
There is a saying in the land of my fathers: “If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

Anyone who viewed the video of Tinubu at the Kano airport recently would definitely have noticed the sluggishness in his gait. Are those rooting for Tinubu saying they hate this country so much that they would prefer we move from one sick, broken man to another with a history of running abroad for medical treatment? We must be vigilant and respond decisively to his deodorised profiles so as not to repeat history. This is a clarion call to Nigerians to reject Tinubu and his presidential ambition because he has failed the personal attributes test of the president Nigeria needs. He is not even remotely charismatic, neither does he possess the gift of oratory to mesmerize the people.

We want a leader who can express himself in a lucid manner, not one who mumbles and muddles up well-written speeches. We yearn for a leader who feels our pain and who understands that public office is a call to serve, not one who views it as an opportunity to appropriate state resources, and award contracts to companies he has interests in, or to have his hand in the cookie jar. We must reject Tinubu today, tomorrow and always, and state unequivocally that Nigeria is not Lagos.

Society

KFC Reacts As FAAN Shuts Lagos Airport Branch Over Discrimination Against Son Of Ex-Ogun Governor.

Published

on

By

 

The Management of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has reacted to the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN)’s move to shut down its branch at the Muritala Muhammed Airport, violating laws protecting the rights of people with special needs.

The action was confirmed through a statement released on Thursday by FAAN’s Director of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection, Obiageli Orah.

 

The official statement, titled ‘FAAN shuts down KFC outlet at MMIA,’ highlighted that the closure was in response to the outlet’s breach of the Lagos State law on People with Special Needs, specifically referencing Part C, Section 55 of the General Provisions on Discrimination.

 

Responding to the development, KFC posted on its official X account that it opposes bias and discrimination, stressing that the incident did not reflect its standards.

 

The organisation disclosed that it had embarked on efforts to address the situation and urgently implemented sensitivity training for all its employees.

 

The statement read, “KFC is unwavering in our stance against bias or discrimination in any form, with inclusivity and respect as non-negotiable pillars of our values.

 

“However, this recent incident has underscored the pressing need for immediate action. We have embarked on efforts to address the situation and extend apologies and deeply regret the frustration and distress experienced by our guest.

 

“In response, we are urgently implementing sensitivity training for all our employees. This incident is not reflective of our standards, and we will act swiftly to rectify it.

 

“We are actively exploring solutions to equip our team members and establishments better to ensure that every guest feels genuinely welcomed and that we deliver empathetic customer service that proactively addresses the diverse

needs of each guest.”

Continue Reading

Society

Sunday Igboho, Gani Adams on warpath over assassination allegation…..

Published

on

By

Yoruba Nation agitator, Sunday Adeyemo, alias Sunday Igboho; and the Chief of Staff to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, Mr Tayo Ayinde, have both threatened to drag the Aare Ona Kakanfo, Iba Gani Adams, to court for allegedly accusing them of plotting an assassination.

Igboho and Ayinde, in separate pre-action letters by their lawyers, demanded that Adams should retract the said assassination claim against them or they would drag him to court.

But when contacted by The PUNCH, Adams declined comments on the matter, saying: “No comment on that. No comment.”

In a March 20, 2024 pre-action letter, Ayinde’s lawyer, Adeyinka Olumide-Fusika (SAN), demanded that Adams should retract the allegation “without any need on my client’s part to press you further on the subject.”

Olumide-Fusika said the pre-action letter was informed by the content of a press release issued by Igboho, titled: “I did not take part in killing Chief Bola Ige…”

According to Olumide-Fusika, Igboho said the press release was in reaction to some allegations against him in a viral voice note made by Adams.

Olumide-Fusika said, “In the press release, Chief Sunday Adeyemo claimed to be reacting to ‘issues raised by the voice notes going around on social media released by Aare Gani Adams,’ which ‘attacked his character’.”

The lawyer said his client’s name was mentioned in Igboho’s press release, a situation that had made many people from within and outside Nigeria to inundate him with phone calls, prompting him to go and listen to the said voice note.

According to Olumide-Fusika, the 10th paragraph of Igboho’s press release suggested that Adams claimed that Ayinde hired Igboho to assassinate him (Adams).

According to Olumide-Fusika, Adams, in a viral voice note, was allegedly heard saying in Yoruba language: “I would send you a letter signed and sent by these people to Tinubu, imploring him to stop wasting time and give them the go-ahead to eliminate me (Adams). The letter was signed by them and sent to Tinubu’s Bourdillon address, and it was received there. Those are the characters in the circle of this thoughtless fellow; he covets their association. My enemy’s friend is my enemy. He (Igboho) says we should combine forces to liberate our people, but he is in bed with enemies of our cause.

“So, be careful associating with Igboho. Just last night, he was with Tayo Ayinde, the Lagos State Governor’s Chief of Staff. He was heavily paid. You know that I have an extensive intelligence network as Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland. Until about 2:45am, he was with Tayo Ayinde, the Lagos State Governor’s Chief of Staff, who Tinubu also uses in Lagos to coordinate the execution of his evil machinations. He has been doing work of that nature for Tinubu since his days in the SSS.

“He resigned from the SSS, Ibadan to concentrate fully on such work for Tinubu, who compensated him with the office of Chief of Staff to the Lagos State Governor. It was at his hotel somewhere in Ikeja, Lagos, that Igboho visited him to collect money for logistics to confront me. Igboho left lbadan at about midnight to attend this meeting which ended at about 2:45am.

“Tayo Ayinde gave N45m in cash to Igboho for the operation, thus shortchanging Igboho to the tune of N5m out of the N50m purse provided by Tinubu. The discovery of this has brewed disenchantment in their midst.”

In the pre-action letter written on Ayinde’s behalf, Olumide-Fusika described the alleged claims by Adams as injurious to the person of his client, asking the Aare Ona Kakanfo to retract the same.

The lawyer said, “You will agree with me that the imputations in the above are as serious and damaging, as those who have listened to the ‘voice notes’ have represented it to my client by their telephone calls and visits. It includes that my client is complicit in a conspiracy to murder you (Adams), and is in fact the coordinator of the phantom operation.

“Given your own experience in life, I am sure you will appreciate how painful it is to be unjustly accused, as you have done in this instance against my client.”

The lawyer added, “My instructions are, therefore, to respectfully demand that you retract the false and wicked allegation, either through another voice note to go round the same social media, or by a press release referencing and recanting the allegation.

“I do believe that this gentlemanly request will be voluntarily heeded by you without any on my client’s part to press you further on the subject.”

On his part, Igboho in a letter by his lawyer, J.A. Sanusi, dated March 18, 2024, addressed to Adams, stated that he had been inundated with several calls “over the unfortunate lies peddled by you (Adams) against him (our client).”

The lawyer, on behalf of Igboho, said the people of Nigeria world over wished to confirm the veracity of the said “malicious interview or phone calls you (Adams) had with a person unknown that has become subject of public embarrassment and caused serious odium against the person of our client.”

The letter, which asked Adams to retract the allegations, also demanded the sum of N500m in compensation.

It partly read, “You (Adams) are aware that there is an audio clip which is presently going viral on all new media platforms where you have alleged the following against our client (Sunday Igboho) viz:

“That our client is an assassin who used to work for His Excellency Bola Ahmed Tinubu, President, Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“That our client is rumoured to be one of the persons that assassinated the late Chief Bola Ige, SAN, together with one Fryo.

“That our client was involved in a series of murder cases but escaped prosecution as a result of his political connection.

“That our client received the sum of Forty-Five Million Naira (N45,000,000.00) sometime in 2022 to carry out some dirty works for His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR; and

“That our client swindled Nigerians in diaspora for a fake self-determination agenda of the Yoruba race.”

Sanusi said Igboho wished to inform Adams “that the malicious lies against our client only exist in the figment of your imagination as our client is a law-abiding citizen, whose only offence at the time was to protect the interest of the Yoruba race, a responsibility which you were ordinarily saddled to discharge but failed to so do.”

He stressed that the false outburst had not only caused embarrassment but also economic losses to Igboho.

He stated further, “It is in the light of the above that we call on you to forthwith retract all the negative comments (highly defamatory too) made against the person of our client which has just been released to the social media, including YouTube platform.”

The lawyer said Igboho would be seeking redress in the court should Adams fail to meet his demands.

 

Continue Reading

Society

Olayemi Cardoso Trudges On

Published

on

By

It was unprecedented, and never before seen, the way the naira to the dollar exchange rate galloped out of control. There was close to a 300% fall in the value of the naira against the dollar. From as low as 450 naira to the dollar, we witnessed an astronomical climb to about 1900 naira to the dollar. It defied all economic theories and indices, as the CBN huffed and puffed to anchor the psuedo-fall of the naira. The dollar remained bullish and defied all the laws known to the nation’s financial regulators, including the ‘laws of gravity’ within those 8 months spell. Ten months after, the dollar that was rearing towards a rate of 2,000 naira to the dollar, has now plummeted to about 1,362 naira to a dollar at the parallel market. The dollar-rate run has finally come to a halt, but not without some very drastic measures put in place by the apex bank.

It was more than evident that the exchange rate was not determined by market forces. The per-second shift in rate was egged on by speculators who had made the naira a commodity, and were making a kill off of the buying and selling of the naira and dollar. They were enabled by online exchange platforms, especially Binance and other cryptocurrency channels. The CBN had to clampdown on these agents. Notably, Binance executives were interrogated by the CBN along with the NSA’s office over fraudulent activities enabled by their platform, that saw to the manipulation of the naira-dollar exchange rate. Binance had just recently been fined over 4 billion dollars for financial impropriety in the US, and it remains to be seen whether the CBN will take such measures, including their demand for the names of subscribers that have been used as proxies for the sponsorship of terrorism.

The partners in crime to the cryptocurrency exchange platforms have been the BDCs. They also arbitrarily switched exchange rates along the lines of the rates quoted by the online platforms. The CBN along with the EFCC had to crackdown on some of the manipulative BDC operators across the country. More than 4000 BDCs had their licenses revoked. Some due to irregularities, and some for fraudulent activities. The CBN has in addition, released new guidelines for the operations of the BDCs, including an increase in the capital requirements to bolster the regulation of the BDC operations in the country. Other measures taken includes the decision to allow International Oil Companies repatriate only 50% of their proceeds abroad. There’s also the enforcement of the Net Open Position of commercial banks, as it was seen that the banks were holding far too much foreign exchange than they are supposed to. The aforementioned efforts have in turn made the naira bullish in its climb up the exchange rate capsule, regaining some of its lost glory. The CBN’s understanding with IMOs is also making available an estimated 20 billion dollars into the Nigerian Market from diaspora remittances. Even the Almighty NNPC is today channeling its earnings to the CBN, which is also boosting our FX reserves and building on transparency.

 

2024 is seeing a lot of positives from the CBN’s tough stances and decisions. It has been able to clear FX backlogs of about 7 billion dollars which will no doubt boost investors’ confidence. Its recent offer of 500 billion naira at the OMO auction was over-subscribed, selling N1.053 trillion, with 79% of the total bids (530 million dollars), coming from foreign investors. This is quite impressive and is a sign that foreign investments are queueing into the country. The CBN has also been able to sustain increases in our foreign reserves, thereby sustaining the availability of forex in the exchange market. As the nation’s daily crude output increases, it will also help improve on our forex inflow, along with other FPIs.

A lot of Nigerians insist that Nigeria does not have a money problem but a spending problem. Just recently, there was a lot of buzz around a seminar hosted for State commissioners of finance at a Hilton hotel in the UK. Those kinds of events and other foreign travels that become jamborees, eats up quite an amount of foreign exchange, and if you put the figures together from all government ministries and agencies, it could be nothing short of a few billion dollars per annum. As a measure to that kind of waste, Mr. President issued a directive to the SGF’s office, banning all foreign trips by all government officials, except with the express approval of the Presidency. This move certainly looks like a Cardoso advisory. It would be a waste of effort and policy if the CBN is struggling to rake in foreign exchange, meanwhile government officials are draining the purse on trips that should be avoided in times of austerity like this. During the campaigns, Mr. President told us about the trust he reposes in the Headmaster, Mr Cardoso. From what we have seen so far with the Headmaster, the naira is ‘headed’ for more gains in no time!

Continue Reading

Trending