Business
‘You lack common sense’ – Ex-President, Olusegun Obasanjo blasts Awujale of Ijebuland over Telecommunication Mogul, Mike Adenuga
Few weeks ago, the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona, released his autobiography titled “Awujale: The Autobiography of Alaiyeluwa, Oba S. K. Adetona, Ogbagba II”.
In the book, the monarch alleged that former President Olusegun Obasanjo used the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC to blackmail and extort money from some wealthy Nigerians, particularly his cousin, Mike Adenuga, who had a running with the Antigraft agency in 2006.
Although the monarch’s autobiography was published in 2010, extracts from the book was circulated by some unknown individuals recently.
In his response, Obasanjo wrote a letter dated December 30th 2016 to the monarch, countering his allegations and addressed him as a serial liar who lacked common sense. According to Obasanjo, common sense suggests that rumor mongering should not be associated with a monarch of the caliber of the Oba of Ijebuland. Full text of Obasanjo’s letter to the monarch after the cut
December 30, 2016
His Royal Highness,
Oba Alaiyeluwa S. K. Adetona,
The Awujale & Paramount Ruler of Ijebuland,
Oba Adetona Road,
P. O. Box 263, Ijebu Ode.
The extract from your Autobiography “Awujale: The Autobiography of Alaiyeluwa Oba S. K. Adetona, Ogbagba II”, published by Mosuro Publishers 2010, pp. 187-195, which I attach to this letter was presented to me for my attention.
Your assertion in the publication was a tissue of lies and untruths. Olopade is one of my best friends and yes, I would be at his birthday celebration but I would not have invited Mike, your cousin, to meet me anywhere other than my office or official residence as President of Nigeria. Kabiyesi, do you think I would set the press up to capture me and Mike in a photograph for the newspapers? That would be puerile of me as President. Of course, I could not say that Mike could not do that. That you think that I, as President of Nigeria, would descend to such depravity makes me think of you much less than I thought of you, until now.
The invitation to Mike to contribute to the building of the Library block of Bells University was issued to him by the then Vice-Chancellor, Professor Julius Okogie, who never told me about inviting Mike to so contribute until Mike pulled out. And that I have not and I will not talk to Mike about it should convince you that I know nothing about its genesis.
Under my watch, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, was free to do its job as it saw fit. Common sense would suggest that wild rumours should not be perpetrated by an Oba of your calibre. Kabiyesi, your cousin did not tell you that My Chief of Staff, Abdul Mohammed, put his reputation on line by assuring EFCC that Mike would go nowhere and they should trust him to give him his passport. I did not even know that Abdul had done that until the Chairman of EFCC, Nuhu Ribadu, reported the case of my Chief of Staff seemingly colluding with Mike to run out of the country. But I had implicit confidence in my Chief of Staff and I was to resolve the issue. Should your cousin not have mentioned to Abdul who guaranteed the release of his passport his fears and intention to go on exile?
On several occasions, Nuhu Ribadu has asserted that, under my watch, he was a free agent to do his work as he deemed fit. Where it was necessary, he reported the outcome of his work to me and the subsequent or follow-up actions he intended to take. On no occasion did I guide, lead or direct him on what to do.
Mike did not need to send anything to me to satisfy me, he needed to satisfy EFCC and so your sending any documents to me was insinuating that I am the one to be satisfied rather than the EFCC. So, such documents were not paid any attention by me. You, as the cousin and part beneficiary from Mike as you have told me in the past, would not be able to see the tree from the forest as far as the mode of operation of Nuhu Ribadu was concerned viz-a-viz Mike. If the EFCC was investigating anybody, I did not consider it right for me as the President of Nigeria to be undermining EFCC by hobnobbing with that person. EFCC must be given free hand to do its work. Even if such a person was my child, the best I could do would be to secure a good lawyer to handle the matter before the EFCC for that child.
It is not only in the case of Obajana Cement that you were rumour-mongering about me. You have done that repeatedly on many occasions. The latest one you did in 2016 was you telling me that you heard that I had gone to Rasak Okoya to seek to marry her daughter, Abiola, when it was the girl that came to appeal to me to intervene to placate and appeal to her father to forgive her for all her misbehaviour to her father. I did and the father and daughter were reconciled. I told you even then that it was unbecoming of an Oba. Of course, I am used to such rumours, slandering and insinuations since my days as a Unit Commander in the Army and I have developed thick skin. If ten per cent of the rumours ascribing businesses and properties I know nothing about were true, I would be the richest man on earth.
But recently, when Aliko, yourself and myself were together, Aliko assured you that I never ever had a single share in any of Aliko’s business interests but whenever he has called on me to help within and without to promote his business interest, I have always helped and I will always do because that is part of my job as a Nigerian leader – to help Nigerians grow their businesses or interests – and I have done that for other Nigerians and indeed for non-Nigerians, Africans and non-Africans who have requested me for help.
It was revealing to me on that occasion when Aliko made the point that one of his directors on his cement company is somebody very close to you.
I owed nobody any apologies in the course of doing my work as I believe I should do it or in the course of defending the interest of Nigeria and defending my integrity. As I could not open the treasury for S. O. Bakare for your so-called political support to me, I did not regard that as an offence. To the extent that I believed and regarded as proper, I instructed Tony Anenih as Minister of Works to patronize S. O. Bakare as a Peugeot car dealer. I will not comment on Atiku issue that you touched upon in your book because I have dealt with that elsewhere and you were only dabbling into an area where and thing you are absolutely ignorant about.
All that you wanted me to do in respect of Mike was improper whether when I was President or when I was out of office. I must not be seen to be in the way of allowing law to take its natural course. All I should do is to help the course of the law and help secure a good lawyer to help the process.
It is of interest to me that Mike did not tell you that when he wanted national honour, he came to me and I did not react until Babangida recommended him and said, “Of all those I have helped, Mike is one of the most appreciative.”
Kabiyesi, if I have squandered all the goodwill I had, you would not have contacted me on behalf of All Progressive Party, APC, to receive them in 2014 and you would not have been personally present when I received them as I demanded. I probably have greater goodwill today internally and externally than I had in office.
Kabiyesi, the total sum of what you have put down in those pages of your book is that I dislike Mike. Maybe I need to remind you that if there was any iota of truth in such a position or mindset, Mike would not have been granted the mobile telephone licence which made him a billionaire. It was my prerogative as the President so to do. You may also be reminded that in the first round of the auction which Mike did not make, the country earned US$285 million for each licence. The country earned only US$200 million from the licence transaction with Mike and in the subsequent transaction with Etisalat, the country earned US$400 million. It was a deliberate action on my part that a Nigerian should own one of the licences. Anybody else but Mike could have been that Nigerian.
Kabiyesi, the type of hate propaganda you have tried to project in that section of your book against my person is grossly unbecoming of an Oba let alone an Oba of your status and stature.
However, I still accord you the respect which I believe an Oba should be accorded and one for that matter who I presume to be a friend. In spite of your unfortunate projection, my position remains the same – respect for you as an Oba and a friend.
Kabiyesi, I believe that I should set the record straight for posterity and to caution you from engaging in unedifying rumour-mongering and untruth. Accept the assurances of my highest consideration.
OLUSEGUN OBASANJO
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
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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