Business
Danger of hatred of ‘the other story’: Story of Yewande Oyediran By Felix Aina
There is always the flipside of every narrative. It is called ‘the other story’. The other story is very unpopular, very turgid, very unassuming and lacks the currency and obstinate recurrence of ‘the story’, its twin sibling. The other story is ancient and as old as man. All over the world and since ancient times, the other story has always suffered acute discrimination and condemnation. The moment the world hears ‘the story’, it pushes the other story to the background, holding on to the story as a writ, the gospel truth. In many instances, however, the world has suffered greatly by its alienation of ‘the other story’ as it turns around to be the dominant narrative of the world, the compass that navigates global phenomena and even practices. One very peculiar thing about the other story is that, the moment it survives the onslaught of discrimination, ostracism and deliberate conspiratorial bottling, it lives for ages, quickly dethrones the story and transforms into becoming the real and enduring narrative. The other story has survived till this moment of modernity.
Take for instance the story of Galileo, Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician who was reputed to have played a major role in the scientific revolution of the Renaissance. During his period, Rome was the centre of the world and Catholicism ruled the globe. The dominant story of educated people of the world or ‘the story’ at this time was tilted towards the Aristotelian geocentric view of the earth being at the center of the universe with all heavenly bodies revolving around the Earth. Beefed up by biblical exegeses which state that “the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved” and Psalm 104:5 which says, “the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved” as well as Ecclesiastes 1:5 which states that “And the sun rises and sets and returns to its place,” the world held on rigidly to its view. By 1615, Galileo championed heliocentrism and piqued by his affront, his writing was submitted to the Roman Inquisition by Father Niccolo Lorini and the charge was that Galileo and his followers were seeking to reinterpret the Bible. This was a crime that presented as a violation of the Council of Trent. Galileo was tried by the Inquisition and found “vehemently suspect of heresy.” He was forced to recant his view and throughout the rest of his life, he was under house arrest. Galileo’s other story was later to shape the world and geography till today. He was preceded by Renaissance mathematician and astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus.
Or the birth of twins among the Efik and Arochukwu of current South and South-east Nigeria. The dominant story was that that this strange pair of babies was an evil curse and taboo to be sired. In the belief of the natives which lasted for generations, the father of one of the twins must have been an evil spirit and the mother, guilty of a humongous sin. In a dilemma as to the determination of who out of the twins was fathered by the evil spirit, Efik and Arochukwu people gave the twins scalding treatment of abandoning them in the evil forest to die. Then came Aberdeen, Scotland-born Mary Mitchell Slessor on missionary journey to Nigeria. Mary, daughter of a shoe maker who lived in the slums of Dundee, arrived Calabar in September of 1876. Riled by this dominant story of the evilness of twins, Slessor adopted every child she found in the forest abandoned. She was harangued and called eccentric. She even sent out her missioners to scan the forests for these babies whom she protected and cared for at the Mission House which soon stared brimming with babies. She lived in Okoyong, among the Efik, for 15 years. She learned to speak Efik and when she died, Efik gave her an equivalent of a state funeral, transporting her body down the Cross River to Duke Town and a Union Jack shrouding her coffin. She was also honoured by Clydesdale bank at the World Heritage Series, as well as the Famous Scots Series, even featuring her on the back of the bank’s £10 note. Her other story is the dominant narrative today.
Or even the story of the hundreds of years of the thriving slave trade. The history of slavery spans virtually every culture, nationality and religion. It was the dominant story from ancient times, even though relics of it have survived till present time. Indeed, the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC) made reference to slave trading as an established institution. It was the dominant story in virtually every civilization. The Byzantine-Ottoman wars, as well as the Ottoman wars in Europe, came to bear as a result of the capturing of a large number of Christian slaves. Though it is yet to apologize to the rest of humanity, Britain was a major player in the Atlantic slave trade, especially after 1600. In almost all the thirteen colonies of America and Canada, the dominant story was that slavery was a legal institution. When the other story aside the thriving story of slave trade began, it was spearheaded by Denmark which became the first European country to ban the trade and the rest of the world took a cue. Today, the western world, kingpins of the earlier story of slavery, claims to be riled by the fact that it once partook of slavery.
Not to talk of the story of Egyptian civilization and its encounter with religion. Tagged as cradle of civilization, Egypt, divided into Upper and Lower, came into contact with religion as a result of practical reality. River Nile had become a huge cross to carry for Egyptians of the time. Seasonally, it overflew its banks and killed hundreds of Egyptians, swept away their homes, livestock and crops. Their survival was largely threatened. The dominant speculative belief was that the gods and goddesses were angry with the people. Egyptians thus veered into totenism as a panacea to their problems and worship of gods which however failed to ameliorate their problems. Gradually, they encountered Babylonian astrologers who told them that whenever the Sirius star shone, the next moment, there would be heavy rain and that no god was responsible for their fatalities. They were then able to construct a big basin which they perforated and were able to divide the day into 24 hours, the day and night, using the sun and moon to measure time. They created embankments against flood and thus moved from the speculative story of the anger of the gods into science, alchemy and mummification of bodies, all leading to the great civilization that Egypt later became.
Down here in Nigeria, there are a thousand and one dominant stories that had to gradually vacate the scene for ‘the other story’. The most readily available is the political story of a man who later became the political and cultural avatar of the Yoruba people. After leaving the Western Region as Premier, with the strings of developmental firsts he brought the way of the west and his mental investments in the future of mankind, like the writing of the Pathway which he wrote after examining virtually all constitutions of the world, Obafemi Awolowo thereafter leapt into political witch-hunting and heavy adversarial machinations. He was jailed in 1962 and hundreds of his loyalists left him. Indeed, his adversaries made jest of him and claimed that he had effectively entered his political darkness. The then dominant story of power was SLA Akintola, the Premier, which was told by his coterie of loyalists who had become the reigning avatars of the time. Shortly after, ‘the other story’ overtook the story. Awolowo’s innocence of all the charges from his enemies became the other story; he became Nigeria’s Military Government’s Federal Executive Council Vice President and by the time he died in 1987 and till today, he had become a recent ancestor of the Yoruba people, worshipped in veneration and reference. Many of those whose forefathers tried to smother ‘the other story’ of his messianism are today converts of his ‘the other story.’
What the above stories point at is that the world had always regretted its rigid abidance by the centrality and unimpeached nature of the dominant story. The lesson it teaches is that there is always the other story to the story and it would be akin to self immolation not to listen to it. Thank goodness that modernity has sharpened the critical nature of the human brain, it would be difficult to sell to the world an ‘another story’ that is devoid of logic and common sense. Thus, using logic, both inductive and deductive, man is able to critically examine both ‘the story’ and its twin, ‘the other story’ and to come to conclusion of the truth for all seasons that it must underscore.
Which brings this writer to the story of the tragic spousal violence that trended a couple of months ago in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital. The hero and heroine of that story are a couple called Lowo and Yewande Oyediran. The Lowo, the story has it, got killed by his wife while brawling over a child sired by the former out of wedlock. It has been amplified by the media, contours created, variants moulded out of the story and sold to a thirsty audience. Just like the feminine advocacy that world history was written from the perspective of man, with several matriarchal ingenuities and developments shrouded from global view. Now, women want to get world history to be her-story, from woman perspective and not strictly his story.
If we would not be committing the same fallacy that our forefathers committed by holding on tenaciously to ‘the story’, shutting their minds from ‘the other story’, we should begin to ask questions and critically appraise and interrogate this tragic spousal brawl story that we have heard. For instance, two people witnessed the death of Lowo that fateful morning – Yewande and Lowo himself. One is deceased and the other, alive. Granted that Yewande may want to tilt the story to favour her, would it be wrong to listen to her story? Isn’t there the possibility that the world has been fed half-truths by its belief that Yewande, said to be a brilliant, incorruptible Director of Public Prosecution in the Oyo State Ministry of Justice, was the aggressor and the murderer? Has the world listened to her version of the story of a 2-year matrimony that was riveted by in-laws’ acute hatred, alcoholism, on and off love and hatred by a man she swore to live with till death did them part? Did she really kill her husband?
While not asking for an abandonment of the story the world has, can it please listen to the other story and make its judgment? The danger of holding on rigidly to our verdict of Yewwande Oyediran being guilty-as-charged, is evident. The 35-year old lady could as well be our daughter, our sister, our cousin, our wife. By refraining from hearing ‘the other story’ on the dawn of February 2, 2016, we would be no better than Father Niccolo Lorini of the Inquisition who stampeded the author of ‘the other story’ of world geography and astronomy, Galileo, to his death.
*Aina is a Lagos-based attorney and human rights activist.
NNPCL and Corruption’s Final Throes
By Pius Olasanmi
In the twilight of the Obasanjo administration, when Nigerians were still capable of being outraged, when Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of refineries was a buzzword that still held some mysticism to bamboozle citizens, during a conversation, a certain man said something profound. The man said, “As a businessman, if I were the owner of these refineries, knowing that they are three decades old, I would take the last money I have, hire bulldozers, raze them to the ground, and obtain loans to build new ones.”
When we pressed him further on why he would engage in such waste, he explained that repairing the refineries is the real waste. He explained that even if the TAM were honestly carried out, a thirty-year-old refinery would never compete favourably with a new one that would integrate contemporary technology. Operating at its best, such a refinery would never be comparatively more efficient. It is therefore pointless to have spent another one naira on the refineries at that point.
A few months later, I had a conversation with a then-lawmaker on an entirely different matter. I mentioned that the National Assembly has failed by not crafting legislation that would criminalise and punish public office holders who foist wrong decisions on the country. The logic: a public office holder need not steal to be punished, wrong decisions should attract penalties for an office holder who opts for the worst of all options when there are less injurious ones.
These established premises speak to the ongoing nauseating efforts at revisionism by those who wrecked the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and its previous iteration, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Notably, this campaign to rewrite history is traceable to Engineer Mele Kolo Kyari, the disgraced immediate past Chief Executive Officer of NNPCL and his hirelings. They have suffocated the news and the public opinion space with even more lies than they spun while in office.
The Saint Kyari campaign is anchored on convincing Nigerians that the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna Refineries were fully functional when he was booted out of office. So brazen is the campaign that one of its talking heads challenged the group chief executive officer (GCEO), Engr. Bayo Ojulari, to “inform Nigerians categorically what happened to the functioning refineries he inherited from his predecessor, Engr. Mele Kyari.” The effrontery.
We have not forgotten so soon the charade that followed the baffling claim that Nigeria has spent $2.8 billion on the repair of the refineries, while they are not churning out even a single litre of refined product among them. Saint Kyari and his goons played all manner of tricks, all of which embarrassed President Bola Tinubu, who had counted on ticking off the return to productivity of the refineries as part of his achievements, only to realise that he was deceived into celebrating phantoms. Tragic.
Lest we forget, 200 trucks were arranged as props in a well-directed video clip to celebrate the re-streaming of the Port Harcourt Refinery. The disappointment. Nigerians were to learn from several reports that the Port Harcourt refinery was not producing and was instead using old, stored petroleum products to load trucks. Worse still, the Kyari crew was passing off sanction-tainted Russian-sourced crude oil refined in Malta as locally refined products. More insult was piled on the assault on our collective sensibility with the lies that the Port Harcourt Refinery exported semi-finished products. Brazen.
Meanwhile, Kyari and his hirelings called those who pointed out or protested these glaring scams all manner of names. They hid behind industry technicalities and jargon to create the impression that those of us who knew Nigerians were being robbed did not understand what we were saying. The point remains that a $2.8 billion investment can potentially build a refinery with a capacity of around 100,000 barrels per day (bpd). Of course, the actual capacity of such a refinery will depend on various factors, including the complexity of the refinery, the technology used, and the location. That is the amount that Kyari’s regime at the NNPCL took and did not give Nigerians refined products.
Fast forward to Kyari’s sack and the appointment of Engineer Bayo Ojulari, who has demonstrated that things can indeed be done differently. Kyari’s exit was expectedly followed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) going after him and his associates. The extent of the theft is better understood against the backdrop of N80 billion being found in the bank account of one of his associates. They went on the run.
Perhaps because the EFCC was biding its time on securing international warrants for the arrests of these characters on the lam, they have become emboldened. They have decided to fight back and rewrite the story of their participation in the greatest fraud against Nigerians. Engineer Ojulari’s renewed mindset, which is entrenching a semblance of the transparency Nigerians demand, became their natural target. The demons that once roamed around the corporation came out with malevolence. They started spinning stories of corruption to tarnish the incumbent who refused to hide their crimes. The objective: bring Ojulari down. But alas, he is winning the war as it stands.
His innocence is proven, and it is glaring that those who want him out are mere charlatans who can no longer ply their corrupt wares because of the impact of the new reforms. Corruption in the NNPCL is in its final throes. The fake news being unleashed against the incumbent leadership is akin to corruption’s last kicks as reforms in the sector strangulate it and its practitioners. The reforms must take place in the NNPCL, whether the industry demons like it or not.
As a parting shot, Kyari and his associates would do well to prepare their defence. In addition to accounting for the $2.8 billion they laundered in the name of repairing the moribund refineries, they must also answer for the poor decision to fix that which is irretrievably broken. Awarding contracts for Turn Around Maintenance of 59-year-old refineries that a right-thinking person had suggested should be demolished almost twenty years ago, when they were only 30 years old, is criminal. Trying to deceive Nigerians that the fake repairs worked is treason.
Olasanmi is a public affairs analyst writing from Lagos.
GRANDIS 5STAR LUXURY APARTMENT & SUITES SET TO REDEFINE LIVING IN VICTORIA ISLAND
Set to Rise elegantly against the Lagos skyline, is the Grandis 5Star Luxury Apartment & Suites. According to Adejuwon Ademola, The General Manager of the Development company, it is more than just a residential building
“it’s a lifestyle statement. Standing 17 floors high in the heart of Victoria Island, this revolutionary masterpiece of modern architecture will offer a panoramic 360° view of Eko Atlantic, Victoria Island, and Ikoyi, transforming every apartment into an exclusive penthouse experience for the world’s most discerning elite.”
Developed by Dumarco Construction Limited, a globally acclaimed company with decades of delivering complex, high-value projects in the highly regulated petroleum, oil, and gas industries, Grandis 5Star brings unmatched international safety standards, uncompromising quality, and timeless elegance into Nigeria’s luxury property market.
> “When you live in Grandis, you’re not just buying a home—you’re investing in peace of mind, world-class safety, and an effortless luxury experience that will remain pristine for decades,” says Adejuwon A. Ademola, General Manager of Dumarco Construction Limited.
The Gold Standard in Safety and Quality
Dumarco’s roots in the oil and gas sector mean the company operates to some of the strictest safety protocols in the world. Every stage—from conceptualization, design, construction, to long-term maintenance—follows internationally accepted procedures and quality assurance measures. Cutting corners is simply not in Dumarco’s vocabulary.
> “In the oil and gas industry, there’s no room for compromise. We’ve brought that same discipline and zero-tolerance for mediocrity into property development,” says Ademola. “That’s why Grandis will be one of the safest and most enduring residential developments in Nigeria.”
To ensure transparency and prevent (project complacency), Dumarco deliberately separates the developer, contractor, and consultant roles, engaging only the most competent professionals in each respective field. Dumarco’s project team includes globally recognized contractors such as Julius Berger, Cappa & D’Alberto, and Elalan, Migliore Construczione & Tecniche (MC&T) and their partners VENCO IMTIAZ CONTRACTING COMPANY (VICC) based in Dubai, UAE, Business Contracting Limited, alongside leading consultants like Morgan Omanitan & Abe, LAMBERT, and James Cubitt.
Grandis – Investments, appreciation, returns and profitability
Our selection process for the location of the project alone was pains-taking and completely thorough scientific process. Top professional companies were employed to conduct a scientific data acquisition and analytical survey of the entire Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lekki and Eko Atlantic before a project site is selected. Analyzing and acquiring areas developmental charts and trends, studying and gathering historical and present sale prices, rental charge and occupancy rates over a 50 year period from every individual street before the selection of the location of any of our developments especially true for the Grandis Project
He adds,
“Our clients and residents can be rest assured that the location of Grandis has been scientifically proven through all existing data to provide our clients with a 100% occupancy rate, highest developmental location, highest rental income and investment returns. ”
The Grandis Experience
Located minutes away from international corporate headquarters, embassies, and landmarks such as Eko Hotel, Radisson Blu, and the Radisson Red, Grandis offers unmatched convenience for professionals, diplomats, and high-net-worth individuals. Every residence is designed for both indulgence and efficiency, with high-grade finishes, smart-home systems, and private amenities that ensure seamless living.
From sunrise over the Atlantic to the glittering Lagos night skyline, residents will enjoy uninterrupted luxury, supported by discreet and highly trained staff, advanced security systems, and a design that prioritizes comfort and privacy.
> “We designed Grandis for people who want everything—security, elegance, convenience, and the assurance that their home will look as spectacular in 20 years as it does on day one,” Ademola notes.
A Legacy That Lasts
With its combination of visionary architecture, peerless safety, and meticulous maintenance planning, Grandis is built to remain iconic for generations. Thanks to Dumarco’s meticulous approach, the building’s service charges are expected to remain low while its value and appeal continue to appreciate over time.
In a market often marred by shortcuts and substandard practices, Mr Ademola says
Grandis stands as a beacon of what luxury living should be—safe, spectacular, and built to last.
“Grandis 5Star Luxury Apartment & Suites — Where safety meets sophistication, and every detail is designed for a life well-lived.”
He added
Website -www.dumarcoltd.com
Project website – www.26idowutaylor.com
Email [email protected]
Tel / WhatsApp +234 9077777883
GM – Adejuwon A. Ademola
celebrity radar - gossips
Nationwide Talent, One Broadcaster: Tinubu Picks Pedro, Bello, Din, Mohammed to Lead NTA
Tinubu Overhauls NTA Leadership: Media Powerhouse Rotimi Pedro Takes Helm as DG
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has announced a major shake-up at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), appointing renowned media executive Rotimi Richard Pedro as the new Director-General in a move widely seen as a bold step toward modernising the state broadcaster.
Pedro, a Lagos native, brings nearly 30 years of expertise in broadcasting, sports rights, and marketing communications across Africa, the UK, and the Middle East. A trained entertainment and intellectual property lawyer, he also holds an MSc in Investment Management and Finance from City University Business School, London.
In 1995, Pedro founded Optima Sports Management International (OSMI), which rose to become one of Africa’s leading sports content providers—distributing premium events such as the English Premier League, UEFA Champions League, FIFA World Cup, and CAF competitions to audiences in over 40 countries.
His career highlights include top roles at Bloomberg Television Africa and Rapid Blue Format, as well as advisory work for FIFA, UEFA, Fremantle Media, and the African Union of Broadcasters (AUB). At the AUB, he was instrumental in securing exclusive pan-African free-to-air media rights for all CAF competitions.
Alongside Pedro’s appointment, Tinubu named Karimah Bello from Katsina State as Executive Director of Marketing, Stella Din from Plateau State as Executive Director of News, and Sophia Issa Mohammed from Adamawa State as Managing Director of NTA Enterprises Limited.
Industry insiders credit Pedro with building commercially viable broadcast platforms, driving sponsorship growth, and delivering world-class content to African audiences. His appointment marks one of the most significant leadership changes at NTA in years—signalling the government’s intent to strengthen the broadcaster’s competitiveness in a fast-evolving media landscape.
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