Business
Drama as Pastor E.A Adeboye and Wife engage in hot romance On stage during book presentation
The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, created a scene at the Youth Centre of the Redemption Camp, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, on Tuesday, when he kissed his wife, Folu Adeboye, on the stage during a book presentation in his honour.
Adeboye, who expressed surprise at the occasion, said he would have stopped the project if he knew about it, adding that he was undeserving of the honour.
Present on the occasion were Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo; former President Olusegun Obasanjo; Presiding Bishop of the Living Faith Church, Worldwide, Bishop David Oyedepo; and the General Overseer, Trinity House, Pastor Ituah Ighodalo.
Folu told the audience that she hid information about the book from her husband for one year, adding that she planned it to coincide with his 75th birthday.
While standing with Adeboye on the stage, together with their four children, she said her hubby was only informed about the event a day before.
The Master of Ceremonies teased Folu to tell the audience the pet names she gave her husband, demanding an expression of love since the occasion also marked 50 years of their marriage.
“Pastor ID, why are you fast? This is just presentation of a book, not marriage anniversary. Whatever you want, I will do it…,” she replied, as she hugged the husband and went on to kiss him as the audience erupted in excitement.
Adeboye, in his remark, expressed surprise at the book presentation, which was written by 40 people.
He said, “The event of today, without any doubt, has been a great surprise to me. This is because my wife hid it from me, and we don’t normally hide anything from each other, because we have been married for 50 years and we are still on honeymoon.
“Why the event is a surprise to me is that God also hid it for me. I had no inkling at all from my Daddy that something like this is happening. If God hid it from me, it must mean that He approved of it. My wife knows that if I had any idea about what is happening today, it will never happen. I would have stopped it long ago because who am I without Jesus Christ? If there is anyone to be celebrated, it should be Him.
“People say I am humble, but people need to know where I am coming from. I cannot say I have any ability or wisdom. Everything has been the Lord Himself. When I was about 40 and I saw grey hairs on my head, I wondered why and God said I was carrying a burden that was not mine.
“God said, ‘I am just using you as camouflage. People need to see someone. So, I am putting you forward so that I can do the work from behind.’ So, everything that is happening in RCCG, nothing is of Adeboye at all; it is all about God. So, for you to say you are writing a book about somebody that is nothing, someone who has almost zero beginning, from a poor family and passed through secondary school by God’s grace. For God to allow today to happen without telling me, it can only be that He wants to draw your attention to Himself that if you allow Him, He will do great things, using you as camouflage.”
Adeboye said it was a miracle he was at the occasion as he had slept one hour a night during the seven-day convention of the church which ended on Sunday.
While appreciating people who wished he lived long, he said he would die when his assignment was over.
“All those who prayed for me to be 80, I said amen. Those who said 90, I said amen to them, but those who said I would be 100, I did not answer them. Then someone said I would live to 120 and I said what would God say I did wrong to keep me for another 50 years? I will go as soon as I finish my assignment,” he added.
The cleric lauded his wife for always standing by him, saying she was the greatest gift he had aside from the Holy Spirit.
While recounting a year when they both fasted for 40 days three times over an issue, Adeboye said his wife refused to back out when he asked her to stop.
“If you can find a woman that can stand by you with 40 days of prayer and fasting, first, second, third time and willing to go with you as long as possible, then I will classify your wife as second to mine. Without my wife, I cannot be doing what I am doing today,” he said.
The cleric later presented his four children to the gathering, describing them as God’s gifts to his family.
Earlier, former President Obasanjo had narrated how he consulted Adeboye before accepting to run for President in 1999.
He said after meeting Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu in South Africa, who encouraged him to go ahead, he sought counsel from Adeboye.
He said, “For doing nothing, I was sent to prison. I came out of prison, and some people came running after me to contest to be President of Nigeria. I wondered that the one I did before, what did I get out of it? Prison! And now, you want me to do another one, that will be double prison.
“And when you are at crossroads, you need the direction of God to know which way to follow. I prayed and fasted and wasn’t satisfied. I decided to go to South Africa to meet people I had high regard for: Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Mandela said I should follow my instinct. Tutu said I should not be tired of serving my people.
“I came back home to see pastor. And I told my story. We prayed and he said you can go, when God tells me what I should tell you, I will call for you. I was surprised that Mandela and Tutu gave me answers on the spot, but he said I should go. When will God tell him?
“A couple of weeks or thereabouts, I was sent for and he said God had said I should go ahead. If there was any doubt in my mind, all were gone.
“I picked my Bible to read while returning home and it was the Book of Esther that I opened. I saw where Esther was told that maybe it is because of this that God has brought you here.”
Obasanjo, who noted that politicians were supposed to influence the lives of the masses positively, said Pastor Adeboye had done more than politicians in this regard.
He said, “As politicians, we are supposed to touch lives, but, for Pastor Adeboye, he has touched more lives than politicians. He has been a man of God with a difference, whom I benefited from personally when I was consulting to contest the 1999 election.”
He added that it was the wife of the General Overseer that invited him, without the knowledge of the husband, asking that Adeboye should forgive them for this.
Obasanjo said, “I was told not to reveal my coming here by Mummy (Adeboye’s wife). How can I come to you without calling you? But, that was the instruction. Until I am in this hall, I never see anything about this programme. That means we have committed sins by keeping this secret from you and we seek for forgiveness from you and I am sure we have been forgiven.
“While I was in prison, Abacha had said three of us–myself, Shehu Yar’Adua, MKO Abiola, none of us will come out alive. Two of them did not come out of prison alive, but I came out. Not because I was clever, good and upright. It was all because of the grace of God. Sir, I thank you for helping me to make the right decision at that crucial time of my life. He, who does not respect this man, does not respect God.”
The Acting President, Osinbajo, who was Adeboye’s protocol officer, said he accepted to run as the Vice-President after the cleric asked him not to reject the nomination.
Osinbajo, who also defended Adeboye’s use of private jet because the RCCG was in more than 180 countries of the world, second to Coca-Cola with branches in 200 countries, cited three different instances when the pastor influenced his life positively.
He said his passport had been stolen in South Africa for about three months when Adeboye prayed for him and the thief returned it when he had lost all hope.
The Acting President said about a month later, his second daughter, who was ill and at the point of death was healed after a prayer by the cleric.
“Of course, many know that I am not a politician and I was not a politician when I was nominated to be the vice-president. What I told those who approached me was that I would speak with two people-my wife and daddy (Adeboye). People around me said he would say no. I was also quite certain that he would say ‘Don’t bother or let us just think about it’. But I was surprised when he told me that if I was nominated, I must accept it. He was categorical about it,” he added.
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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