US Bases In Middle East Are Easy Target For Iran 🇮🇷

Trump acknowledged that Iran has enough missiles to threaten the US overseas bases. Here’s the arsenal that’s raising alarm inside the Pentagon:👇

1️⃣ Fattah — Unveiled in 2023, this 1,400 km missile carries a 450-500 kg warhead on a maneuverable reentry vehicle. It alters trajectory during terminal flight, actively dodging interceptors and making multi-billion dollar US defense networks look obsolete;

2️⃣ Fattah-2 — This is a goes further combining the ballistic missile a transport vehicle system. After booster separation, it maneuvers inside the atmosphere at hypersonic speed, defying radar predictions. At 1,400 km, it forces US commanders to realize their interceptors are chasing ghosts;

3️⃣ Haj Qasem — This 1,400 km solid-fuel missile carries a 500 kg maneuverable warhead specifically designed to defeat THAAD and Patriot. The upgraded Qassem Bassir variant adds electro-optical guidance and a stealth carbon-fiber airframe to target runways and command centers without GPS;

4️⃣ Fateh-110 — The backbone of Iran's Short-Range Ballistic Missile arsenal, with hundreds produced annually. This solid-fuel missile hits Mach 3-4 at 300-500 km, carrying up to 650 kg with sub-100 m CEP via inertial/GPS guidance. Exported to Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Syria, it proved decisive in the 2025 12-Day War against Israel. With over 2,000 ballistic missiles in Iran's arsenal;

5️⃣ Dezful — Evolved from the Fateh family, this missile pushes 1,000 km at Mach 7-9 with only 5-6 minutes of launch prep. It carries a 450-700 kg separable warhead, uses radar-absorbing paint, and curves to defeat heat detection. It shreds interception timelines and turns Western shields into sieves;

6️⃣ Zolfaghar — At 700 km and Mach 5, it has already struck ISIS in 2017 and, more importantly, hit the US Al Asad base in 2020 with precision. With hybrid INS/GPS guidance and a 450-600 kg warhead, it has already demonstrated exactly where American assets sit in Iranian crosshairs;

7️⃣ Kheibar Shekan — A 1,450 km solid-fuel missile built to destroy hardened aircraft shelters before jets can scramble. With a lighter airframe and enhanced accuracy, it compresses warning time to nearly zero and turns America's "concrete protection" into tombs;

8️⃣ Qiam-1 — No external fins mean lower radar visibility during ascent and simpler launch logistics. Already combat-proven, this missile proves Iran just needed a smart design that compresses detection windows and complicates the enemy's math.

9️⃣ Khorramshahr 4 — It hits Mach 16 exo-atmospheric and Mach 8 on reentry, evading radar with low signature. The Khorramshahr-4 (Kheibar) spans 2,000-4,000 km, carries a 1,500-1,800 kg warhead capable of striking 80 targets with cluster munitions. Proven in 2025 Israel strikes, it puts US bases, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and even southeastern Europe in the kill zone;

🔟 Zolfaghar — At 700 km and Mach 5, this Fateh-110 evolution uses hybrid guidance for 10-100 m Circular Error Probable (CEP) accuracy. It has struck ISIS in 2017 and the US Al Asad base in 2020.

TRUMP'S WAR

The "president of peace" just launched his newest war,  and within hours, bombs buried more than 50 schoolgirls under rubble. This is heart wrenching.

On Saturday morning, an airstrike flattened the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, a city in Iran's southern Hormozgan province. The girls inside were between seven and twelve years old. Around 170 students were in the building when it was hit. 

Iran's semiofficial Mehr News Agency now reports at least 63 students killed and another 60 injured. Sixty-three children. In a school. On a Saturday morning.

This is what "freedom" looks like, apparently. Trump told the Washington Post his only concern is "freedom for the people" of Iran. In a video on Truth Social, he urged Iranians to "take over your government" once the bombing stops, as if you can liberate a people by massacring their children in math class.

The administration named this operation "Epic Fury." That's not a military codename. That's a Call of Duty expansion pack. And the real-world body count is already staggering.

Foreign policy analysts have warned that unlike the limited strikes the U.S. carried out against Iranian nuclear sites last June, a broader conflict with Tehran could drag on for years. We've heard this story before. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. The playbook never changes,  only the flag on the coffins.

Remember: this is the man who built his entire political brand on being "America First" and opposing foreign wars, who campaigned in 2024 promising to "stop the endless wars." 

Now he's bombing elementary schools and calling it a noble mission.

ISLAM IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH A FREE AND CIVIL SOCIETY

Do not be confused. The Muslim faith is practiced by countless good and peaceful people, many of whom I know and respect. 

Islam is something completely different. It is not a faith. It is an ideology, a totalitarian shadow government, a hostile takeover, systematic atrocity and oppression ... with religious compulsion and control baked in. 

And it must be stopped.

Christians and Muslims can and should live together peacefully, cooperate productively, and build a great and prosperous nation. 

Democracy and Islam, by contract, are entirely incompatible. It is impossible for light and darkness to co-exist.

People of all faiths should stand together against the evil of Islam before this civilizational cancer metastasizes further.

It's not Biafra who should leave Nigeria. It's the Islamists in the North who should be forced out. Let them have their own backwater hellhole and leave the rest alone.

Selah.

OLATUNJI DISU: THE POLITICS OF AN APPOINTMENT .

Sources close to the Presidency told SaharaReporters that Akande, a long-time ally of President Bola Tinubu, was reportedly humiliated after Lagos power brokers rejected his preferred candidate, Deputy Inspector-General of Police Mustapha Adegoke Fayoade, for the top police position.

Powerful political figures from Lagos, often referred to as the ‘Lagos Boys,’ reportedly sidelined former Osun State Governor Chief Bisi Akande in the contested succession process following the forced retirement of former Inspector-General of Police Kayode Egbetokun.

Sources close to the Presidency told SaharaReporters that Akande, a long-time ally of President Bola Tinubu, was reportedly humiliated after Lagos power brokers rejected his preferred candidate, Deputy Inspector-General of Police Mustapha Adegoke Fayoade, for the top police position. According to one of the sources, Hakeem Muri-Okunola, Principal Secretary to President Tinubu, worked behind the scenes to promote Disu’s appointment without informing First Lady Oluremi Tinubu, who had played a key role in Egbetokun’s earlier appointment and could have influenced her husband’s decision.

Chief Bisi Akande and Mustapha Adegoke Fayoade are from the same town, Ila-Orangun. The ‘Lagos Boys’ believe Fayoade would naturally be loyal to Akande and not to them. So, they moved swiftly to get Disu in behind First Lady,” the source said.

“You know Disu claims Lagos State (as his state of origin). They argued that while Fayoade served as ADC to Chief Bisi Akande when he was Osun governor, Disu once served as ADC to Tinubu when he was Lagos governor. That was the major selling point.”Another source revealed that members of the Lagos political circle, including the President’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, viewed Akande as overly rigid and overly insistent on protocol.

“They said Baba Akande’s problem is too much, that he always wants protocol strictly observed. Oluremi Tinubu wants a competent person since the saga of Egbetokun and his son. Meanwhile, the President was not happy about the development,” the source added.

Sources identified other influential members of the so-called ‘Lagos Boys’ faction, including Hakeem Muri-Okunola; Tayo Akinmade Ayinde, Chief of Staff to Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu; Oba Abdulwasiu Omogbolahan Lawal, Abisogun II; Adeyinka Anthony Adeboye, Senior Special Assistant to the President and Commissioner of Police; and CP Usman Musa Shugaba, Chief Personal Security Officer to President Tinubu. Another senior source revealed that President Tinubu initially resisted the nomination of Disu for the top police position.

“The President kicked against it at first. He said there would still be controversy over another ‘illegal IGP’ because Disu is due to retire in April. He said he doesn’t want more pressure from Nigerians,” the source said.

“Disu and Egbetokun were not on good terms. That was why Egbetokun deployed him to Lagos. But within 72 hours, things changed.”

“When Egbetokun realised that the President was about to sack him, he recommended Disu because he believed no one else would be able to clean up his mess. Disu had begun consolidating support and meeting key stakeholders, including the Oba of Lagos.

Disu and Egbetokun were not on good terms. That was why Egbetokun deployed him to Lagos. But within 72 hours, things changed.”

“When Egbetokun realised that the President was about to sack him, he recommended Disu because he believed no one else would be able to clean up his mess. Disu had begun consolidating support and meeting key stakeholders, including the Oba of Lagos. Because Disu is loyal to the Lagos bloc, they pushed him forward ahead of a more highly ranked and qualified officer,” the source said.

The source added, “Disu did not deserve the IGP position; everybody knows that, including the President. But pressure came from his loyalists despite knowing that Disu is retiring next month. The President had settled on former AIG Zone 2, Mustapha Adegoke Fayoade. Oluremi also wanted him. But as of Monday evening, around 6:30 p.m., Disu’s name was hurriedly sent to the DSS (Department of State Services) after overwhelming pressure from Lagos stakeholders who insisted that they have been with the President from day one and that an outsider cannot take the slot.”

Another insider said the President warned of political consequences.

“The President insisted that public opinion will speak and elections are coming. He said Nigerians will fight back if they see it as injustice. But he was overwhelmed with arguments that Fayoade may not bow to political pressure. That weakened his resistance.”

Meanwhile, sources detailed the dramatic exit of Egbetokun, alleging that he recommended Disu as his successor to protect his interests.

According to insiders, he arrived at the Presidential Villa at about 4 a.m. on Monday in a last-minute attempt to retain his position. Egbetokun needed someone to cover up his mess because he knew there would be auditing after his tenure in office, and he did not want to be investigated by the EFCC. So, he hurriedly recommended Disu, whom he trusts to clean up for him,” one of the sources said. 

“He came very early to plead with the President to allow him continue. But the President turned against him and told him to resign,” the source continued.

“He was also humiliated. Recall that some foreign dignitaries visited the President in Aso Rock last week, and around the same period, SaharaReporters published a story about Egbetokun and his son. The matter was tabled before the President, and he felt very embarrassed.”

According to the source, “when Egbetokun tried to explain himself, the President did not give him a listening ear”. DSS officials were signaled, and he was escorted out,” the source added.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I drive Uber. Night shift mostly. Last week picked up an old man at 11 PM. He got in and said: "I need you to drive me to five places tonight. I'll pay you $500. Cash. But you can't ask why until we're done." Handed me five addresses. First stop: a house in the suburbs. He sat in the car. Stared at it for ten minutes. Crying silently. "Okay. Next one." I drove.

Second stop: elementary school. Empty. Dark. He got out. Walked to the playground. Sat on a swing. Stayed there twenty minutes. Came back to the car. "I taught here. 43 years. Best job I ever had." Third stop: diner. He went inside. Ordered coffee. Sat alone in a booth. Didn't drink it. Just sat. Looking around. Fifteen minutes. Came back. "My wife and I had our first date here. 1967." Fourth stop: cemetery.

He got out at the cemetery. Walked to a grave. Stood there. Talking to it. Couldn't hear what he said. Thirty minutes. When he came back his eyes were red. "My wife. Three years today." Fifth stop: hospital. He asked me to park. Wait. "This is the last one." He looked at me. "Now I'll tell you why. I have stage four cancer. Weeks left. Maybe days. Tonight I wanted to see my whole life. One last time. Before I can't anymore."

I started crying. Right there. "The house - that's where I raised my kids. The school - where I found my purpose. The diner - where I fell in love. The cemetery - where I said goodbye. And here. The hospital. Where I'm checking in tonight. Hospice floor. I'm not going home." He handed me $500. "Thank you for driving me through my life. You're the last stranger who'll ever be kind to me. I wanted it to be gentle. You made it gentle."

I refused the money. "I can't take this." He insisted. "Please. I have nobody to leave it to. My kids don't talk to me. I have no friends left. You gave me three hours of kindness. That's worth more than $500 to me." He got out. Grabbed his small suitcase. Turned back. "What's your name?" "Marcus." "Thank you, Marcus. For being the last good thing." He walked into the hospital. I sat in my car. Sobbing. For an hour.

Couldn't stop thinking about him. Went back next day. Asked for him. "Mr. Patterson. Room 412." Brought flowers. Knocked. He was in bed. Smiled when he saw me. "Marcus. You came back." "Couldn't leave it like that. Are you okay?" "Dying. But I got to see my life last night. So yes. I'm okay." We talked for two hours. About his wife. His students. The kids who stopped calling. The life he lived.

I visited every day for two weeks. Brought coffee. Read him the news. Sat in silence sometimes. He told me everything. The regrets. The joys. The moments he'd relive. "I thought I'd die alone," he said one day. "But you're here. A stranger who became family in my last days. That's a gift." I held his hand. "You're not dying alone. Not anymore." He cried. "Thank you for seeing me. When I was invisible."

Mr. Patterson died on a Tuesday. 3:17 AM. I was there. Holding his hand. His last words: "Tell people. Tell them to look at strangers. Really look. Everyone's dying. Some faster than others. But we're all heading somewhere. Be kind on the way. You were kind. You saved my last days." He closed his eyes. Heart monitor flatlined. I stayed another hour. Couldn't let go. He died with someone. That mattered.

His funeral had six people. Me. Three nurses. A lawyer. One former student who saw the obituary. That's it. A man who taught for 43 years. Loved a woman for 52. Lived 81 years. Six people. I spoke. "Mr. Patterson taught me something in his last two weeks.

Every stranger is someone's whole world. Every Uber passenger has a story. Every person you pass is living and dying and hoping someone sees them. He paid me $500 to drive him through his life. But he gave me something worth more. The knowledge that kindness to strangers isn't extra. It's everything. Because we're all strangers. Until someone stops. Looks. Listens. Stays." I keep the $500 in my glove box. Never spent it. It's a reminder.

Every passenger might be taking their last ride. Every stranger might be saying their last goodbye. So I drive different now. I ask questions. I listen. I see people. Because of an old man who needed one last gentle night. And a stranger who stayed. Be that stranger. Please. Someone's taking their last ride tonight. Make it gentle.

 "Quiet Moments, Loud Truths."

A forwarded post but worth sharing...

Reclaiming Africa's Monetary Sovereignty By Odiawa Ai

Imagine the European Union paying its officials in a currency other than the euro, it's almost unthinkable. The euro is more than just money; it's a powerful emblem of European identity and unity. Yet, for the African Union, a different reality prevails: many of its professional and senior employees are predominantly paid in U.S. dollars. This striking contrast is not just a matter of financial policy; it's a glaring symptom of a deeper, more pervasive challenge that Africa must urgently overcome: fragmentation.

Africa, a continent brimming with unparalleled potential, continues to be burdened by the legacy of institutional, political, and economic fragmentation. This isn't merely an academic concern; it's a critical impediment preventing the continent from fully leveraging the catalytic power of monetary integration. The benefits of such integration are profound and far-reaching: lower transaction costs, reduced exchange-rate risks, and a significant boost to cross-border trade and investment. These are not luxuries, but fundamental pillars for sustainable growth and prosperity.

The costs of this fragmentation are immense and undeniable. We've seen its detrimental effects in our inability to present a unified front on the global stage, as evidenced by the lack of a cohesive African response to past international trade disputes. This disunity has not only exacerbated Africa’s formidable development challenges but has also, tragically, fueled political conflict, leading to countless preventable deaths. Furthermore, it has kept intra-continental trade low, leaving individual nations vulnerable to global volatility and external economic shocks. Without a strong, unified economic bloc, Africa struggles to wield the influence that its vast market size and population should command.

Consider the chronic infrastructure deficit that plagues so many African economies. This isn't due to a lack of resources, but rather an inability to effectively pool financial and human capital for large-scale, transformative projects. Sub-Saharan Africa, despite its immense energy potential, suffers from the world’s lowest road-network density and the lowest rate of electricity access globally. A staggering 600 million Africans still lack reliable access to electricity, a basic necessity that underpins economic development and quality of life. This is a direct consequence of a fragmented approach where collective strength is left untapped.

The time has come to transcend these historical divisions. Africa's future prosperity, stability, and global influence hinge on a resolute commitment to integration. Monetary union is not just an economic policy; it is a declaration of shared purpose, a commitment to mutual growth, and a powerful statement of sovereignty. By embracing greater unity, we can unlock unprecedented opportunities, build resilient economies, and ensure that the wealth of Africa benefits all Africans. 

The current reality forces African nations to issue debt in foreign currencies, a practice born from the lack of deep, liquid financial markets within the continent. This reliance on external currencies distorts risk perceptions, artificially inflates borrowing costs, and creates an unsustainable cycle of debt service that drains national treasuries. The tragic consequence? African governments are left with severely limited fiscal space, unable to make the vital investments in productive infrastructure, including crucial cross-border projects that are essential for boosting competitiveness and fostering the growth of labour intensive manufacturing industries. Indeed, a lack of access to financing has become the single most significant constraint on development across Africa today.

But the costs of fragmentation extend far beyond economics. They diminish Africa's geopolitical influence, reducing the continent to an arena of competition for external powers rather than empowering its nations as independent, sovereign actors driving their own destiny. This costly reality is no longer sustainable.

The path to liberation from this cycle is clear and compelling: deepening regional integration. This is not merely an aspirational goal; it is an economic and security imperative that will fundamentally transform Africa's prospects.

Integration offers a powerful antidote to the current challenges. By fostering greater unity, African countries can significantly improve their economic and security outlooks, strengthen their collective resilience, and enhance their capacity for effective coordination on critical issues. This collaborative approach will elevate Africa's position on the global stage, allowing its voice to resonate with greater authority and impact.

Imagine an Africa where resources are pooled efficiently to fund transformative regional projects: vast highway networks connecting bustling trade hubs, modern rail systems facilitating the swift movement of goods and people, and integrated energy systems powering industrial growth and innovation. This collaborative, cross-border approach is not just a dream; it is a practical strategy to reduce unit costs, better manage financial risks, and unlock unprecedented opportunities.

Such integration would ignite industrial production, dramatically boost intra-African trade, and generate high investment returns, making large-scale infrastructure projects not only feasible but economically viable and attractive to investors. It is the key to creating the jobs, wealth, and stability that Africa's vibrant and growing population deserves.

Consider the imperative of shared security. On a continent where threats like terrorism in the Sahel transcend borders, greater integration is not merely an aspiration, but a strategic necessity. Enhanced intelligence-sharing and robust security cooperation between African nations would transform our ability to confront these complex challenges. By treating instability as a common concern, a formidable collective entity could undertake decisive military and diplomatic measures, fostering stability across regions. Crucially, this collaborative approach would not diminish, but rather bolster, the sovereignty of individual nations. By promoting African-led solutions and curtailing external interference, sharing authority and resources to address security challenges empowers our continent to chart its own course.

The economic dividends of integration are equally compelling. Africa currently faces the risk of "diversified dependency," where primary commodities and natural resources continue to dominate exports, even as trade patterns shift towards emerging markets like China and India. Deeper integration offers a powerful antidote. By creating the conditions to attract long-term investment, the continent can diversify its sources of economic growth and trade, moving beyond the volatility of raw material prices. Investors, recognizing the vast potential of a unified market, would leverage economies of scale to sustain high growth rates and returns, fueling innovation and job creation. Furthermore, the development of regional value chains, where production is shared across countries based on comparative advantage, would profoundly deepen cooperation and intra-African trade, knitting our economies closer together.

Despite these undeniable advantages, the journey towards integration has been slow and inconsistent. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which commenced operations in 2021, embodies this paradox. While a monumental achievement in principle, its implementation has been sluggish and uneven. For instance, achieving consensus on the critical rules of origin, vital for catalyzing industrialization and boosting both external and intra-African trade, took four arduous years of negotiations. Such delays underscore the challenges, but they must not overshadow the transformative potential.

The reluctance is understandable, yet debilitating. Governments worry that opening their markets will expose nascent domestic industries to stronger competitors and reduce vital revenue streams. This fear often leads to prioritizing immediate national gains over long-term regional commitments, creating a cycle of missed opportunities. The consequences are stark: in 2024, the then Chair of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, lamented that a staggering 93 percent of resolutions adopted by the organization between 2021 and 2023 remained unimplemented. This deeply troubling statistic underscores a pervasive inability of regional institutions to enforce critical decisions, further deepening the dilemma.

Several factors compound this challenge. Significant economic asymmetries between African economies fuel legitimate fears that integration will not "lift all boats" equally, potentially marginalizing less developed nations. The proliferation of overlapping regional organizations creates conflicting obligations, while weak enforcement mechanisms mean there are few, if any, penalties for breaking commitments. Furthermore, an over reliance on external donors creates incentives that inadvertently work against internal cooperation, transforming crucial integration efforts into what often resemble one-shot games rather than the repeated interactions necessary to build enduring trust and reciprocity.

However, the global landscape is changing rapidly. In a multi-polar world, cooperation is no longer merely an option; it is an absolute imperative for Africa’s continued development, relevance, and sovereignty. The continent’s strength lies in its collective potential, and without genuine integration, its voice and influence will remain fragmented.

But for integration to be truly effective, we must confront a foundational issue: Africa’s institutional credibility gap, a direct legacy of historical monetary fragmentation. It is this legacy that explains why the African Union and similar continental institutions frequently enter into economic agreements and business contracts denominated in foreign currencies, predominantly the US dollar.

This practice must change. Continued reliance on a vehicle currency prevents the AU from fully leveraging the transformative potential of monetary integration to bolster continental unity. More critically, it undermines the AU's very credibility in spearheading the integration agenda. How can an institution champion continental economic unity when its own foundational transactions are denominated in a foreign currency?

The path forward requires a courageous acknowledgment of these deep-seated issues. True integration demands a commitment to overcoming the prisoner’s dilemma, strengthening enforcement mechanisms, and, crucially, reclaiming monetary sovereignty. Only then can Africa truly unlock its collective power and secure its rightful place in the global arena. 

THOSE WHO SPONSORED THE COUP

Security agencies investigating the alleged coup plot to overthrow President Bola Tinubu have identified two persons who allegedly funnelled N835 million through two private companies to bankroll the alleged conspiracy, PREMIUM TIMES can exclusively report.

Former Bayelsa State Governor Timipre Sylva allegedly contributed the largest share of N785 million. Investigators alleged that the funds were transferred through Purple Waves Limited, an Abuja-based construction company. The firm’s secretary, John Ebokpo, has since been arrested by security operatives and remains in detention.

Mr Sylva, who served as Minister of State for Petroleum Resources under former President Muhammadu Buhari, is accused of being the principal financier of the failed plot and remains at large.

PREMIUM TIMES had earlier reported his alleged role, but the exact figures he donated have only now emerged. The former governor, who is still at large, has denied any role in the coup.

Mr Sylva’s precise connection to Purple Waves Limited is not immediately clear. Company records at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) did not list him as a director or shareholder. The firm was registered in March 2009 for construction, building, and maintenance activities.

Efforts to call Mr Sylva on his known telephone line were unsuccessful. Attempts to contact his spokesperson, Julius Bokoru, and other directors of Purple Waves Limited also failed as calls to their known telephone numbers did not connect.

When PREMIUM TIMES visited Purple Waves’ office address in Abuja on Monday, a security guard at the location informed our reporter that the office had been shut down for about “four to five months” — a period that coincides with the wave of arrests made by security operatives in connection with the alleged coup.

The second alleged sponsor, Moses Zakwa, is accused of contributing N50 million through Clay Ring Services Limited, a Lagos-based firm where he is listed as a director. The company is registered for property renovation, development, and management services.

Little is known about Mr Zakwa. A search of his digital footprint yielded nothing. However, in 2014, a man bearing the same name led members of the Kibaku Youth Association in a peaceful protest at the Alausa Secretariat in Ikeja, demanding the release of abducted schoolgirls in Borno State. It is unclear whether that is the same individual now in the custody of security agencies.

PREMIUM TIMES reached out to other directors of Clay Ring Services, but their phone numbers were unreachable. Benjamin Okwumabua, one of the directors listed in the company’s CAC filings, said he is not related to the company.

Last month, the Defence Headquarters announced that investigations had been completed and forwarded to the “appropriate superior authority in line with extant regulations.”

The military disclosed that the findings identified “several officers with allegations of plotting to overthrow the government,” describing such conduct as “inconsistent with the ethics, values, and professional standards required of members of the Armed Forces of Nigeria.”

PREMIUM TIMES reported that 40 suspects are detained, including senior military officers across the armed forces, a police officer, and civilians allegedly involved in reconnaissance, funding, and propaganda operations of the coup.

The suspects were captured in a covert intelligence operation coordinated by the Army Headquarters and the State Security Service (SSS).

An unspecified number of civilians remain in custody, being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the SSS for alleged roles in financing, logistics, and coordination. Others have been granted bail.

The investigation also identified retired Major General Adamu as one of the key figures connected to the network. Mr Adamu remains at large alongside Mr Sylva.

Intelligence sources disclosed that one of the fleeing suspects was tracked to a country in South America, though his exact location has not been officially disclosed for security reasons.

PREMIUM TIMES previously reported that the alleged coup plotters initially planned to disrupt the handover of power from former President Buhari to President Tinubu on 29 May 2023, during the presidential inauguration.

However, the plan was suspended due to insufficient funds and inadequate logistical arrangements. The alleged conspirators reactivated their plans in 2025 after Mr Sylva wired the funds.

Sources said authorities are awaiting presidential approval to formally constitute a court-martial panel to try the soldiers involved.

The failed plot was allegedly masterminded by Alhassan Maaji, a colonel with service number N/10668. Mr Maaji and other military officers allegedly planned a violent takeover in which top government officials were marked for elimination.

Earlier, knowledgeable and reliable sources told this newspaper that the alleged plotters planned to assassinate President Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima, Senate President Godswill Akpabio, Speaker of the House of Representatives Tajudeen Abbas, Service Chiefs, and the Commander of the Guards Brigade, among others.

Some officers were also assigned to take full control of the Presidential Villa, the Niger Barracks, the Armed Forces of Nigeria (AFN) Complex, and the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport.

Investigators have since recovered two gun trucks, anti-aircraft guns, PKT guns, RPG bombs, AK-47 rifles, ammunition, and tactical gear from AA Hayatu, a lieutenant colonel attached to the 130 Battalion Main.

In addition to the weapons cache, investigators seized four Toyota Hilux trucks, one Toyota Prado SUV, two Toyota saloon cars, and 32 Volkswagen Golf vehicles allegedly procured for covert operations.

“All recovered exhibits are in the custody of the DIA,” one source said, adding that “recovered funds have been lodged into the Nigerian Army Corps of Military Police account domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria.”

A SALARY CAN STOP TOMORROW!!!

You wake up every morning confident because an alert hits your phone at month-end.

You call it “security.”

But deep down, it’s just borrowed certainty.

Robert Mugabe once said:

> “When your salary arrives on time, you eat chicken.

As the salary decreases, you eat chicken products (eggs).

Later, you eat chicken food like corn and millet.

And when the salary is over, you become the chicken itself — walking around all day just looking for something to eat.”

That quote hits harder in 2026 than ever before.

Because today, salaries don’t just reduce.

They vanish overnight.

AI replaces roles.

Companies downsize silently.

Governments change policies without warning.

Inflation eats your paycheck before you even touch it.

If your only plan is your salary, you are already in danger.

---

1️⃣ SALARY IS NOT WEALTH 

A salary is not money — it’s permission.

Permission to survive another month.

It is a seed, not a reward.

If you eat all your seeds, don’t cry when nothing grows.

Most men earn…

Very few men build.

In 2026, the man who survives is not the most educated —

It’s the most financially adaptive.

---

2️⃣ EMPLOYMENT IS TEMPORARY

No contract is permanent.

No boss is loyal to your bills.

No company will keep you because you’re “a good guy.”

You are hired to solve a problem.

When the problem changes — you go.

That’s why smart men build income outside their job

while weak men defend their job like it’s a religion.

---

3️⃣ INVESTMENT IS NON-NEGOTIABLE

A wise investment gives you freedom of choice.

Not luxury.

Not flexing.

Choice.

Choice to eat chicken whenever you want.

Choice to walk away from disrespect.

Choice to breathe when life hits hard.

If your money is not working while you sleep,

you will work until your body breaks.

---

4️⃣ INSURANCE IS NOT FEAR — IT’S INTELLIGENCE 

You won’t be young forever.

You won’t be strong forever.

You won’t be healthy forever.

Only fools call protection “wasted money”

until tragedy knocks.

Smart men don’t pray for luck —

they prepare for impact.

---

5️⃣ ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS THE EXIT

A job feeds you today.

A business feeds your future.

Even a small side hustle beats full dependence.

Even daily earnings beat monthly waiting.

In 2026, the most dangerous position is having one income stream.

---

6️⃣ DAILY EARNINGS = DAILY POWER 

Men who earn daily think differently.

They move differently.

They negotiate differently.

Waiting 30 days to eat is slavery with a tie.

Create something.

Sell something.

Invest in something.

But do not sit still.

---

FINAL 2026 TRUTH

Salary alone will humble you.

Loyalty to one income will punish you.

Comfort will bankrupt you.

Think INVESTMENT — because time is not on your side.

Think INSURANCE — because life has no mercy.

Think ENTREPRENEURSHIP — because employment expires.

Think DAILY EARNINGS — because survival is now.

RULES ARE RULES.

PROUDLY NIGERIAN

Nigerian-British Actress Wunmi Mosaku On Ryan Coogler, Michael B ...Nigerian-British actress Wunmi Mosaku stars as Annie in the 2025 thriller Sinners, earning widespread critical acclaim and major award nominations, including BAFTA and Black Reel Awards for Best Supporting Actress. Her performance as a Hoodoo priestess in the Ryan Coogler-directed film is noted for its emotional intensity and connection to her Nigerian roots. 

Key Details About Wunmi Mosaku in Sinners:

Role: Plays the character Annie, a Hoodoo priestess in the vampire thriller.

Background: Born in Nigeria and raised in Manchester, she is a celebrated actor known for His House, Lovecraft Country, and Loki.

Awards & Recognition: Won Best Supporting Actress at the 2026 BAFTAs and 2026 Black Reel Awards, and received an Oscar nomination for her performance.

Performance Impact: Mosaku described the role as a deep, personal connection to her ancestry and "ancestral power".

Background Connection: The role of Annie, a Hoodoo practitioner, allowed her to explore Yoruba traditions, which she connected to her own heritage.

Mosaku's award comes nine years after she won the same category at the TV Baftas for her role in the BBC drama Damilola, Our Loved Boy - about the death of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor, which drew national attention when he was stabbed while walking home from a library in London.

When the programme aired in 2016, she said: "I grew up on an estate in Manchester and people I've known from school have died in gang trouble and I always thought, 'If I'd been on a different estate at a different time, it could have been me'."

Speaking about her victory on Sunday, Mosaku, who is pregnant, said: "I was like, 'That can't be right'. I was really shocked and I lost my breath and couldn't quite believe it."

The actress, who has also appeared in TV dramas Luther and Black Mirror as well as Marvel movies, also thanked her daughter, adding "you are my greatest teacher".

NIGERIA: THE COST OF BOLA AHMED TINUBU 2 BILLION DOLLARS

Nigeria’s debt to the World Bank’s concessional lending arm, the International Development Association, surged by $1.9bn in just one year to reach $18.7bn as of December 31, 2025, new financial data released by the institution show.

According to the IDA Management’s Discussion and Analysis for the period ended December 31, 2025, Nigeria’s exposure to the bank’s loan portfolio rose significantly from $16.8bn at end-2024, marking an 11.3 per cent year-on-year increase.

The sharp rise shows growing reliance on multilateral concessional financing as the Federal Government navigates tightening fiscal space amid global market volatility.

The latest figures place Nigeria as the third-largest borrower in the IDA portfolio, behind Bangladesh ($23.0bn) and Pakistan ($19.4bn), among the top ten countries with the highest exposures.

Together, these 10 countries accounted for 60 per cent of IDA’s total exposure as of December 31, 2025, the report said. A year earlier, the same cohort accounted for 61 per cent of total exposure.

The PUNCH observed that the $1.9bn uptick largely reflects continued project disbursements under Nigeria’s Country Partnership Frameworks and expanded commitments in key sectors such as health, education, and infrastructure.

While IDA financing is highly concessional, with long maturities and grace periods, the growing stock adds to Nigeria’s external debt obligations.

In the report, IDA emphasised the importance of monitoring such exposures in the context of repayment and future disbursement profiles, noting, “Monitoring these exposures relative to the SBL requires consideration of the repayment profiles of existing loans, as well as disbursement profiles and projected new loans and guarantees.”

The surge comes as IDA’s overall portfolio expanded. Net loans outstanding rose to $226.4bn as of December 31, 2025, from $205.8bn a year earlier, reflecting the broader scaling up of concessional resources under the institution’s hybrid financing model that blends member contributions with market borrowings.

IDA describes its mission as providing “loans, grants and guarantees to the poorest and most vulnerable countries to help meet their development needs.”

With Nigeria’s exposure now at $18.7bn, higher than other major African IDA clients such as Ethiopia and Tanzania, the country’s role in the World Bank’s concessional portfolio remains prominent.

Aside from the IDA, there is also the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is another lending arm of the World Bank for middle-income and creditworthy lower-income countries, raising funds on global capital markets through its AAA rating and providing sovereign loans, guarantees, and advisory support aimed at reducing poverty and promoting sustainable development.

While IDA loans offer more favourable terms than market borrowing, the steady accumulation of such debt adds to Nigeria’s overall public debt burden, raising questions about debt sustainability.

As of June 30, 2025, Nigeria’s external debt stood at $46.98bn, according to the Debt Management Office. Of this amount, the World Bank Group accounted for $19.39bn—comprising $18.04bn from the International Development Association and $1.35bn from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

This means the World Bank holds 41.3 per cent of the total, reinforcing its outsized role in funding Nigeria’s development programmes.

Economist and CEO of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, Dr Muda Yusuf, earlier said the rising World Bank commitments to Nigeria should be examined within the context of the country’s Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and annual budgets, which already provide for both domestic and foreign borrowing.

He noted that deficit financing is a common feature of budgets worldwide and is not inherently wrong, as it allows governments to make critical investments without waiting to generate all the required revenue upfront.

However, he stressed that borrowing should always be backed by sound economic reasoning and clear development priorities. Yusuf emphasised that the key issue is debt sustainability, which depends primarily on the country’s revenue capacity to service its obligations.

Without strong cash flow to meet repayment schedules, he warned, Nigeria risks falling into a vicious cycle of borrowing to service existing loans, thereby perpetuating fiscal vulnerability.

He said it is essential that projects funded by loans directly support the economy’s capacity to repay. According to him, Nigeria should be cautious about foreign loans due to the exchange-rate risks they pose, noting that domestic debt is generally easier to manage.

Excessive foreign borrowing, he warned, could put pressure on the country’s reserves and further weaken the exchange rate. He stressed that a disciplined approach to debt sustainability will be crucial for Nigeria to avoid long-term fiscal distress.

SAY NO TO SHARIA

Reports indicate that theses nine Muslims were arrested in Kano State for eating during Ramadan fasting hours by the Islamic police, known as Hisbah. This development raises serious constitutional and moral questions.

First, fasting is a religious obligation, not a civic law. It is an act of worship between an individual and God. When the state begins to police personal religious devotion, it crosses from governance into coercion. Faith loses its meaning when it is enforced by arrest.

Second, Nigeria is constitutionally a secular state. Secularism does not mean hostility to religion; it means neutrality. The state must not elevate one religious practice above another or compel adherence. If someone is fasting, that should be voluntary. If someone is not fasting, whether due to health, personal conviction, or belonging to another faith, that is equally their right.

Third, health and personal circumstances vary. As a former Muslim myself, I know some people are exempt from fasting in Islam itself - the sick, travelers, pregnant women, the elderly. Who determines a person’s medical condition on the street? Religious policing risks public humiliation and abuse of fundamental rights.

Fourth, freedom of religion also includes freedom from religious enforcement. A Christian cannot be compelled to observe Ramadan. A traditionalist cannot be compelled to comply with Islamic codes. Even among Muslims, matters of devotion should be guided by conscience, not force.

Fifth, introducing or expanding Sharia enforcement in a multi-religious country like Nigeria risks deepening division. Nigeria is religiously diverse - Muslims, Christians, traditional believers, and others coexist. The stability of the nation depends on protecting pluralism, not privileging one legal-religious system over others.

Sixth, state involvement in religious matters, including funding pilgrimages or enforcing fasting, blurs the line between governance and doctrine. Government exists to secure lives, property, justice, infrastructure, and welfare, not to regulate personal worship.

True faith is strongest when chosen freely. Compulsion breeds resentment, not righteousness.

A secular Nigeria protects everyone: It protects Muslims to practice Islam freely. It protects Christians to practice Christianity freely. It protects traditional worshippers. It protects those who choose no religion at all. That balance is what keeps a diverse nation stable.

My stand should not be seeing as attacking a religion, but about defending constitutional freedoms and peaceful coexistence.

Southwest should not go this low, please.

ALAAFIN’S ARROGANCE HAD CAUSED HIS DOWN FALL, AS THE PEOPLE OF AGỌ OJA RECLAIMED THEIR ANCESTRAL DOMAIN

We warned all the Ọyọ Atiba bloggers who were doing AI to curse OỌNI and anyone who shares the true history. See where it has landed you now, you have pushed historians to bring out factual history.

I commend you Baba Ìgbìyànjú The - Effort for this factual historical information below:

001 Oba in Oyo Town, Kabiesi Oloja of Ago-Oja Kingdom. Today's Oyo town, it is worth noting, does not belong to Atiba; rather, it is owned by the descendants of Ago Oja. As was characteristic of Atiba, who was known for repaying kindness with wickedness and taking what did not belong to him.

As you are aware, the saying 'an apple doesn't fall far from its tree' holds true meaning, eni bini laajo. Over 90 percent of the Atibas of today still follow the steps of their forefathers. Here is a brief account of Ago Oja before it was taken from them after Atiba sought refuge.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE AGO-OJA PEOPLE AND THEIR TRADITIONAL RULERS

The Ago-Oja people are the earliest known settlers of present-day Oyo Town. Their ancestral origin is traced to Ile-Ife, the cradle of the Yoruba race, through the Obàtálá lineage of the Aládìkún ancestry.

According to oral tradition, Lasílẹ̀ who was a descendant of Aladikun lineage begat Lasílọ̀. Lasílọ̀ was the father of Oja, Elebu, and Ailumo, making all three brothers. The family originally resided at Obate, where successive generations lived as hunters, warriors, and primarily farmers for a considerable period.

Due to unfavorable conditions at Obate—including poor soil fertility, food scarcity, and recurring diseases—Oja, also known as Olaboyede Oja, led his household and followers away from their ancestral settlement in search of a more habitable environment.

Around 1792, Oja established a new settlement through farming and hunting activities. This settlement became known as Ago-Oja, literally meaning “Oja’s settlement,” in recognition of its founder. Olaboyede Oja thus became the first Baalẹ̀ (Baale Ago-Oja) and the acknowledged founder and ruler of Ago-Oja.

TRADITIONAL RULERS OF AGO-OJA (CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

(1). Baale Olaboyede Oja

Founder of Ago-Oja and its first Baale. He established the settlement, instituted chieftaincy titles, and laid the foundation for governance, agriculture, and security.

(2). Baale Elebu

Brother of Olaboyede Oja and successor in leadership, who continued the consolidation and stability of the settlement.

(3). Ailumo (Baale-designate / First Asipa)

Brother of Olaboyede Oja and Elebu, Ailumo served as the first Asipa, representing a transitional phase in the leadership structure.

(4). Asipa Oyeniya

(5). Asipa Lajuori

(6). Asipa Logudu

(7). Asipa Lakojo

(8). Asipa Akanji

(9). Asipa Adisa

(10). Asipa Oyewusi

(11). Asipa Lalookun

(12). Asipa Oyedemi Olokonla

(13). Asipa Bello Oyekola

(14). Asipa Amuda Olorunkosebi

(15). His Majesty Oba Aleyeluwa Abdul Ganiyu Ajiboye Busari (Arogundade II)

(The present and recognized monarch of Ago-Oja, marking the evolution of leadership from Baaleship and Asipa administration to a full traditional kingship institution.)

SETTLEMENT AND REGIONAL RELATIONS

After the establishment of Ago-Oja, Olaboyede Oja became aware that his settlement was surrounded by other towns and villages such as Ojongbodu, Aawe, Iseke,Idode, Akeetan, Iseyin, Ikoyi, Ogbomosho and others. Despite this, Ago-Oja retained its distinct identity, autonomy, and territorial recognition under its leadership.

To ensure effective governance, Olaboyede Oja instituted a chieftaincy system, appointing chiefs to oversee administration, security, farming activities, and communal order—thereby laying the foundation for structured traditional governance.

Oral history further affirms that Olaboyede Oja maintained blood and kinship ties with the Soun of Ogbomoso, reinforcing historical relationships between Ago-Oja and neighboring Yoruba polities.

The Ago-Oja people are a well-organized agrarian and warrior community, firmly rooted in Ile-Ife origin, Obàtálá ancestry, and early settlement history within present-day Oyo Town. Their leadership evolved organically from the founding Baale to successive Asipas and ultimately to a recognized Obaship, reflecting continuity, legitimacy, and enduring cultural identity.

After reading it, wouod you still expect anyone to support the evil wickedness done to the people of AGỌ ỌJA? Nobody would support such.

ỌYỌ ATIBA can bring out their history too, let us know how ATIBA got to AGỌ ỌJA if you have the information. We cannot continue to bury history because we want to oppress some people and enjoy dominance. Do not repay evil for good in life, you will reap the rewards one day. 

Ire ooo

Ajetunmọbi Awolọwọ Ọba-Kọlawọle

THE FINAL GOODBYE: A FATHER'S LOVE IN THE FACE OF DEATH

In 1972, in the quiet town of Ajalli near Awka, in what is now Anambra State, a father made a choice that would be remembered not for defiance, but for love.

Stanley Enekwe, a young man and former Biafran soldier, had been convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to death by firing squad. His community insisted on his innocence, but their pleas were lost amid the harsh realities of a turbulent post-war era. Mercy was not forthcoming.

At the time, public executions were more than punishment—they were spectacles. Families of the condemned often stayed away, choosing silence and distance over association with shame. But Stanley’s father chose a different path. He refused to abandon his son.

On the day of the execution, as Stanley stood facing his fate, his father stood beside him. Not in protest. Not in anger. But in unwavering love. He did not turn away. He did not falter.

As the midday sun pressed down and the air thickened with fear and tension, the father reached for his son. With a trembling hand, he gently wiped the sweat from Stanley’s face—one final act of care, one last expression of fatherly devotion.

Then, in a voice calm and steady with faith, he whispered:

“Fear not. The Lord is waiting to receive you.”

In that moment, death lost its final sting. Love stood taller than fear. A father’s presence became his son’s last refuge, and his final gift was not despair, but the reassurance that he would not face the end alone.

SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT…

The UK just arrested former Prince Andrew on suspicion of misconduct in public office after millions of “Epstein files” were released showing he allegedly shared confidential trade documents with Jeffrey Epstein while acting as a government envoy.

Meanwhile in the United States, our government needed an entire “Epstein Files Transparency Act” just to force the DOJ to release some of the documents. They dragged their feet, blew the legal deadline, and then dumped out heavily redacted files with whole pages blacked out. The DOJ still has not released millions of files.

Across the ocean, a disgraced royal gets a dawn arrest and a full criminal investigation. Over here, the rich and connected mostly get their names buried under black ink, “no comment,” and years of inaction.

Tell me again how “no one is above the law"?

The Bank That Opened on Clay Street

It began in 1903, in Richmond, Virginia.

The charter was legal.

The barriers were not.

Financial power reshaped community confidence.

Maggie Lena Walker was 39 years old when the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank opened its doors on November 2, 1903. She was the daughter of a formerly enslaved mother. She had grown up in post–Civil War Richmond, where Jim Crow laws were tightening and white-owned banks rarely lent to Black customers.

Walker was already a leader inside the Independent Order of St. Luke, a Black fraternal organization founded in 1867 to provide burial insurance and mutual aid. By the late 1890s, the Order was struggling. Membership was falling. Funds were thin. Walker became Right Worthy Grand Secretary in 1899 and began rebuilding the organization’s finances and structure.

She believed the Order needed its own bank.

The logic was practical. Black workers in Richmond were earning wages as domestic laborers, dockhands, teachers, and tradespeople. Many had no safe place to deposit savings. Without access to credit, buying a home or starting a business required navigating institutions that either denied loans outright or charged punishing terms.

A bank would keep deposits inside the community.

Walker proposed the idea to the Order. It was not symbolic. It required a state charter, capital, officers, and compliance with Virginia banking law. In 1903, the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank received its charter. Walker became its president, making her the first Black woman in the United States to charter and serve as president of a bank.

The word “Penny” was intentional. Small deposits were welcome.

On opening day, customers arrived with modest sums. The bank operated out of St. Luke Hall on East Clay Street. Its early deposits were measured in dollars and coins, not large accounts. But each deposit represented trust in an institution controlled by Black leadership during an era when segregation was enforced by law and custom.

The bank extended mortgages. It financed homes in Jackson Ward, a thriving Black neighborhood sometimes called the “Black Wall Street of the East.” It supported businesses that could not secure loans elsewhere. Depositors became property owners. Property ownership translated into voting strength, school funding, and stability.

Walker insisted on careful management. The bank published reports. It required regular audits. It operated within the same regulatory framework as white-owned banks, even as it served customers excluded from them.

There were setbacks. The Panic of 1907 shook banks nationwide. Small institutions were vulnerable. St. Luke Penny Savings Bank survived, in part because depositors continued to support it and because the Order reinforced confidence among its members.

The institution was not only a bank. It was part of a system of Black self-help organizations that included newspapers, insurance companies, and schools. These institutions functioned as parallel infrastructure in a segregated economy.

Walker’s leadership extended beyond finance. She founded the St. Luke Herald newspaper. She advocated for education and civic participation. But the bank remained her most concrete intervention in economic exclusion.

In 1930, during the Great Depression, economic pressure forced consolidation. St. Luke Penny Savings Bank merged with two other Black-owned banks in Richmond to form the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company. Walker served as chair of the board. The merger was a strategy for survival in a period when thousands of American banks failed.

The original name disappeared. The mission did not.

Walker died in 1934 at age 70. By then, the bank she had founded had helped thousands of Black Richmond residents secure savings accounts and home loans. It had demonstrated that Black-led financial institutions could meet regulatory standards and serve communities systematically denied access to capital.

Her achievement was not framed as charity. Depositors were customers. Loans required repayment. The independence it built was contractual, not rhetorical.

In the decades that followed, federal policies like redlining and discriminatory lending would continue to restrict Black homeownership nationwide. The need for community-based financial institutions did not vanish. It adapted.

The building on East Clay Street still stands. It is now part of the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site, preserved by the National Park Service. The bank’s records document ordinary transactions: deposits, withdrawals, mortgages issued and repaid.

History often celebrates speeches.

This story is about ledgers.

In 1903, in a segregated city, a Black woman secured a charter and opened a bank. People walked in with coins and walked out with receipts bearing their own names.

Financial power did not end discrimination.

It gave a community leverage inside it.

#BlackHistoryMonth #AmericanHistory #BlackHistory #World

AMERICAN HISTORY

"At midnight, he found tape on a door. Removed it. Two hours later, the tape was back.

He called police—and brought down a president. Died forgotten and broke.

A president fell because a night shift security guard refused to ignore tape on a door.

June 17, 1972. Frank Wills was working the graveyard shift at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.—a sprawling building that housed offices, apartments, and the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

It was the kind of job people don't notice until something goes wrong. Security guard. Night shift. Minimum wage. The invisible work that keeps buildings secure while everyone else sleeps.

Around midnight, during his routine rounds checking doors and locks, Frank noticed something small but wrong: a piece of tape holding a basement door's lock mechanism open, preventing it from latching.

He removed the tape. Probably kids, he thought. A prank. Something harmless.

He continued his rounds and thought nothing more of it.

Two hours later, around 2 AM, Frank checked the same door again during his second round of the building.

The tape was back.

Someone had replaced it. Someone wanted that door to remain unlocked. Someone was still inside the building, deliberately maintaining unauthorized access.

Frank Wills was not a detective trained to investigate crimes. He was not a politician with connections to power. He was not protected by wealth or status. He was a 24-year-old Black man working security for $80 a week—about $580 in today's dollars—doing a job that most people in positions of power considered invisible.

He could have walked away. Could have decided it wasn't his problem, that getting involved might cause trouble, that whoever was inside the building probably had more power than he did and challenging them could cost him his job.

He could have ignored it, finished his shift quietly, gone home, and collected his meager paycheck.

Instead, Frank Wills picked up the phone and called the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.

That phone call changed American history.

Police arrived and found five men inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters on the sixth floor of the Watergate complex. The men were wearing business suits and surgical gloves. They carried sophisticated bugging equipment, cameras, and large amounts of cash in sequential bills.

Those five arrests led to an investigation that exposed a systematic burglary and wiretapping operation. That investigation revealed connections to President Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). That connection exposed a massive White House cover-up involving destroyed evidence, hush money payments, and obstruction of justice reaching the Oval Office itself.

That cover-up—and Nixon's role in it—ultimately ended Richard Nixon's presidency on August 9, 1974, when he became the first and only U.S. president to resign from office.

The entire Watergate scandal—one of the most significant constitutional crises in American history—began with Frank Wills noticing tape on a door and deciding it mattered enough to investigate.

History remembers Watergate as a political scandal about presidential abuse of power, media investigation, congressional oversight, and the limits of executive authority.

It should also be remembered as the moment one ordinary man, working a job society considered menial, chose integrity over silence and convenience.

For a brief moment after the arrests, Frank Wills became famous. He testified before the Senate Watergate Committee. He appeared on television news. For a few months, the nation knew his name and recognized his face.

He even played himself in the 1976 film ""All the President's Men,"" appearing in the opening scene recreating his discovery of the tape.

Then the cameras moved on, the way they always do. The media circus found new stories. The public's attention shifted. And Frank Wills returned to obscurity.

He lost his security job at Watergate. The exact circumstances are disputed—some accounts say he was laid off, others suggest he quit, still others hint he was pushed out. But the result is undeniable: the man whose vigilance saved American democracy couldn't find steady work afterward.

He struggled financially for years. He took odd jobs—whatever he could find, nothing secure or well-paying. He never received meaningful financial compensation for his role in history. No book deals. No speaking fees. No consulting positions. No pension beyond what any low-wage security guard might expect.

In 2000, Frank Wills died at age 52 in Augusta, Georgia. He died in relative poverty. He died without the recognition, the financial security, the comfortable retirement that others involved in Watergate received.

The journalists who reported the Watergate story—Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein—became legendary figures, bestselling authors, wealthy men celebrated for decades.

The prosecutors who built the criminal case became legal heroes, their careers enhanced by their role in upholding the rule of law.

The politicians who led congressional investigations became statesmen, their reputations burnished by their commitment to constitutional accountability.

The security guard who made the first critical phone call, who noticed what others might have ignored, whose decision set everything else in motion—he was forgotten.

Died broke. Died young. Died without the nation he served even remembering his name.

This is not just Frank Wills' story, though his story deserves to be told and remembered.

This is the story of who gets remembered and who gets erased from history. This is the story of whose heroism gets monuments and museum exhibits and whose gets ignored. This is the story of how power decides which acts of courage matter and which can be safely forgotten.

This is the story of whose contribution to democracy is celebrated and whose is treated as footnote or coincidence.

Frank Wills was not supposed to be important in the power structure of 1970s Washington, D.C. He worked the night shift at a building complex. He carried keys and a flashlight. He checked doors and wrote reports. He was the kind of person that powerful people—politicians, executives, journalists—train themselves not to notice or acknowledge.

He was meant to be invisible.

But he saw what was wrong. A small thing—tape on a door. Easy to ignore. Easy to rationalize away.

And he refused to look away. He refused to decide it wasn't his problem. He did his job with integrity, even though his job paid $80 a week and offered no protection if he made the wrong call.

American democracy held that night in June 1972 not because of eloquent speeches or brilliant strategy or perfectly designed systems of checks and balances.

It held because one ordinary Black man working for poverty wages decided that something as simple as tape on a door mattered enough to investigate. Because he trusted his instincts and did the right thing even though he had no way of knowing how significant that decision would become.

Power collapses when watched closely by people who refuse to be complicit through silence.

History changes when someone—anyone—does the right thing quietly, without expectation of reward or recognition, simply because it's right.

And heroes do not always wear expensive suits or stand at podiums giving speeches or publish bestselling books about their courage.

Sometimes they wear security guard uniforms. Sometimes they carry flashlights and check locks. Sometimes they work the night shift for minimum wage. Sometimes they notice small details that powerful people tried to hide.

Sometimes they make phone calls that bring down presidents.

And sometimes they die forgotten, without monuments or honors or financial security, while the people who built careers on their vigilance become wealthy and famous.

Frank Wills deserves better than history gave him.

He deserves better than dying at 52 in poverty while journalists and prosecutors who benefited from his phone call became millionaires.

He deserves to be remembered not as a footnote to Watergate, but as the person whose integrity made everything else possible.

Remember Frank Wills.

Say his name.

June 17, 1972. A security guard making $80 a week noticed tape on a door, investigated instead of ignoring it, and saved American democracy.

He died broke and forgotten.

That tells you everything about whose heroism we celebrate and whose we erase.

But it doesn't have to stay erased.

Tell this story. Remember this name.

Frank Wills. The night shift security guard who brought down a president by refusing to ignore tape on a door.

Hero."

#AmericanHistory #Watergate

BLACK HISTORY

Following the introduction of cattle into the Caribbean in 1493, during Christopher Columbus’s second voyage, cattle ranching proliferated along a series of frontiers across the grasslands of North and South America. While historians have recognized that Africans and their descendants were involved in the establishment of those ranching frontiers, the emphasis has been on their labor rather than their creative participation. In his recent book, Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500-1900, historian Andrew Sluyter explores their creative contributions. In the article below he describes one such contribution, the balde sin fondo (bottomless bucket) and its role in cattle ranching on the Pampas of Argentina.

Africans did not play a creative role in establishing cattle ranching on the Pampas during colonial times. Yet by the early 1800s the presence of enslaved and free people from Senegambia (present-day Senegal and Gambia) on ranches resulted in the introduction of an African water-lifting device: the bottomless bucket, or balde sin fondo. With victory over Spain in 1818, Argentinean independence, and the opening of new export markets for livestock products, ranching expanded across the vast Pampas grasslands, and new practices dramatically changed the colonial herding ecology. Africans played a particularly creative role in a key aspect of that transformation, the supplying of drinking water to the herds as they expanded into pastures distant from major perennial streams. That challenge was familiar to Senegambian herders who had to supply water during the long drive southward from the fringes of the Sahara to the banks of the Senegal and Gambia rivers as the rains ended and the vegetation of the Sahel turned from green to brown.

The bottomless bucket provided the solution before windmills rendered it obsolete in the early twentieth century. The bottomless bucket lifted water from wells with the labor of a single person, even a child, on a horse. Observers at the time claimed that a single worker with a change of horses could use a bottomless bucket to water two thousand head of cattle in eight hours. It achieved that efficiency with a large, calfskin bucket that was open at both ends and had two ropes attached. A thick rope lifted the bucket and a thin rope held the bottom closed until it had emerged from the mouth of the well and could spill the water into a flume that then discharged into a drinking trough. It thereby had the capacity to raise three times as much water with each lift as the wells dating to the colonial period, which used a small bucket pulled up by hand on a single rope.

The conventional wisdom has long been that in the mid-1820s a Spaniard named Vicente Lanuza invented the original bottomless bucket. That claim was first made by Carlos Pellegrini, the head of Argentina’s Office of Industrial Patents, in 1853, years after Lanuza had died, in an article in the periodical Revista del Plata. Pellegrini based his conclusion on Lanuza’s patent application of November 1826. In his application, Lanuza claimed he had invented the bottomless bucket, and in December 1826 the government recognized his creativity by granting him the exclusive right of manufacture for a period of four years. So many economic, agricultural, and environmental historians have since uncritically repeated Pellegrini’s claim that Lanuza was the inventor of the bottomless bucket that it has become conventional wisdom.

Neither Pellegrini nor the many who subsequently repeated his claim seem to have realized that Africans have used nearly identical water-lifting devices for many centuries. They occur in a broad belt that stretches from India in the east to Morocco in the west and southward into the Sahel. And they date to at least the late seventeenth century, when Engelbert Kaempfer saw them in Iran and published an illustration of what appears remarkably like a bottomless bucket in his Amoenitatum Exoticarum Politico-Physico-Medicarum Fasciculi V.

That striking resemblance raises the possibility that one or more of the many African residents of the Pampas in the early nineteenth century transferred the idea of the bottomless bucket directly from Africa and that Lanuza appropriated rather than invented it. Sources ranging from newspaper advertisements and censuses to probate inventories and account ledgers all demonstrate that the rural Pampas had a substantial African and Afro-descended population from colonial times through the middle of the nineteenth century. An Argentine census of August 1815 provides the earliest detailed enumeration and reveals that Africans and Afro-descendants made up 13.6 percent of the population, 4,316 out of the 31,676 inhabitants of the rural districts that stretched from Buenos Aires southward to the frontier at the Salado River. Of the 1,402 inhabitants of African birth, some 64 percent came from West Africa, principally people of Guinea, Mina, and Hausa origin. Another 19 percent were from West-Central Africa: Angola, Congo, and Gabón. Only 2 percent came from Mozambique and Madagascar, in Southeast Africa. And 15 percent lacked any designation more specific than African.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (http://www.slavevoyages.org) helps to further specify the Senegambian origins of many of the West Africans. That online database tabulates 67,246 disembarkations of enslaved Africans along the Río de la Plata between the 1650s and early 1830s, about half arriving before 1750 and the rest afterwards. Of the 34,280 disembarkations before 1750, 74 percent originated in West-Central Africa, 6 percent in Southeast Africa, and 20 percent in West Africa. That pattern shifted and became less concentrated after 1750, when out of 32,964 disembarkations only 29 percent originated in West-Central Africa, 45 percent in Southeast Africa, and 26 percent in West Africa.

The vast majority of the West Africans, both before and after 1750, were taken from the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), the coast of the Bight of Benin (present day Togo and Benin), and the coast of the Bight of Biafra (present-day Nigeria) rather than Senegambia. Only 2,569 West Africans originated in Senegambia, a mere 3.8 percent of the total. Nonetheless, 85 percent of those Senegambians (2,175) arrived between 1800 and 1806 from fifteen vessels variously flying the Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, and United States flags. The African and Afro-descended population of 1,402 in 1815 therefore included many Senegambians who were brought to Argentina between 1800 and 1806.

The census provides much less information on the occupations of most of those rural Africans and Afro-descendants but does demonstrate that many were involved in ranching. Probate inventories from the late colonial and early national periods show some of them even owning small herds of cattle, awarded to them by wealthy ranchers to discourage escape from enslavement.

One or more of those Senegambians who arrived between 1800 and 1806, might have built a bottomless bucket based on their prior experience herding cattle across the Sahel, between the valleys of the Gambia, Senegal, and Niger rivers into the southern fringes of the Sahara. Impressed by the efficiency of their water hoist, Lanuza used his social power to appropriate the design as his own invention.

Much remains uncertain about the past, but no direct documentary evidence exists that Lanuza independently invented the bottomless bucket other than his own claim in a patent application through which he hoped to derive a financial benefit. Nor, by the same standard of evidence, does any direct documentary evidence exist that one or more of Lanuza’s slaves built the first bottomless bucket on the Pampas and that Lanuza appropriated that African knowledge and labor. The second possibility, however, seems the most likely because of the many Senegambians who worked on the ranches of the Pampas in the early nineteenth century and the likelihood that some were familiar with the nearly identical form of the bottomless bucket so common in the Sahel of West Africa.

Pellegrini’s claim that Lanuza invented the bottomless bucket seems the process that George Reid Andrews and other historians have shown whereby Argentinean elites consciously erased Africans and Afro-descendants from their nation’s history. With political independence from Spain the substantial African presence in Argentina began to decline. Between 1810 and 1887, their number in Buenos Aires fell from 9,615 to 8,005 and their proportion from 30 to less than 2 percent of the total population. Explanations for that decline include abolition, at least in law, of the slave trade in 1813 and the resulting reduction in the number of African arrivals. Parallel legislation emancipated children at birth and adult males through enlistment in the army, resulting in a disproportionately high death rate among enslaved males in the many regional and civil wars of the nineteenth century. Other causes for the decline of the population of African origin include disproportionately high death rates among them due to poverty and the overwhelming influx of European immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Politics played a particular and peculiar role in this decline. Africans and Afro-Argentinians helped form the armies that kept the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas in power from 1829 until 1852. The liberals who ousted Rosas, such as Pellegrini and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, characterized Rosas and his gaucho, black, and indigenous supporters as categorically backwards. They minimized the roles of nonwhites in creating Argentinean culture and society and instead promoted it as a white, European, modern, and progressive nation. White Argentines like Pellegrini were the architects of this nationalist narrative. Thus Pellegrini uncritically attributed the invention of the bottomless bucket to Lanuza and subsequent historians and others have just as uncritically accepted and reiterated that claim for the past century and a half.

By becoming more critical of such received ideas about history, we can revise our understanding of how people of African origin contributed to the establishment of environmental, social, and cultural relations in the Americas. Such efforts to achieve a more accurate rendering of Argentine history as well as the histories of other multiracial societies in the New World, will allow us to understand how actors of African, European, indigenous, and mixed origins jointly participated in a creative process through which the distinct places of the Americas emerged over the colonial and early national periods.

Sources:

Andrew Sluyter, Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).

#BlackHistoryMonth

ABIOLA INVITED ABACHA TO OVERTHROW SHONEKAN IN AGREEMENT TO HANDOVER TO HIM AFTER. - SDP Party Chairman

“I was returning from one of such trips to a prominent Emir one afternoon when I heard from my car radio Chief Abiola calling on General Abacha to come and ease Chief Shonekan as he eased out Babangida, I was shocked.

I called Chief Abiola and asked for an explanation of what I had just heard.

His reply was, “Mr. Chairman, I am very happy to have worked for you. You are a strong-willed man, but you see, if you want to go to Kano by road and you later decide to go to Kano by air, as long as you get to Kano, there is nothing wrong with that”.

At this time, the party did not know and I did not know Chief Abiola was having discussions with General Abacha who had promised him that if Chief Abiola supported, and if he, General Abacha, took over from Chief Shonekan today, he would hand-over the reins of Government to Chief Abiola the next day, and Chief Abiola bought the idea.

We later got to know that there were series of meetings in Ikeja where names of those who would serve in Abacha government were discussed and forwarded. When we found out that things were not moving well and that the interim government was a lame duck, I went to have a meeting with the then Secretary for agriculture, Alhaji Isa Muhammed, and I expressed my disgust at the way the government was being run.

On two occasions, I addressed the Federal Executive Council under Chief Shonekan when the two Chairmen were invited.

On the first occasion, I told Chief Ernest Shonekan that the relationship between the governors and the interim government left much to be desired as there was no discipline. Chief Shonekan picked up a copy of the constitution and said, “Chairman of SDP, I will go by this document. I have to obey this constitution. If any governor has misbehaved report him to the police”.

The second time we were called on an issue in the chambers when the Federal Executive Council was meeting, again I raised the alarm and I again told Chief Shonekan that one day, the military boys will come and drive him out of his seat.

Chief Adelusi Adeluyi (Juli Pharmacy) who was the Secretary for Health got up and told his colleagues that the Chairman of SDP had twice given warning signals and no one seemed to be taking the warnings seriously.

We again left and allowed the Federal Executive Council to continue its meeting. On this very day, I went to the Secretary for Agriculture, Isa Mohammed, and had discussions on the unsatisfactory state of affairs. He was a personal friend and he promised to see Chief Shonekan that evening with a promise to get back to me, no matter how late.

I waited until about 1 a.m. and slept off without hearing from him. In the afternoon the following day, I called him to remind him of our discussion and he said it was not possible to see Chief Shonekan the previous evening as there were too many visitors and friends. He added that they had just been called to the villa for an emergency meeting and that he would stay behind after that meeting to discuss with Chief Shonekan.

Isa Mohammed admitted that he too was also disturbed by the situation.

Immediately we stopped talking on the telephone, the British High Commissioner called me on my mobile and said, “Tony, something is happening”. And I just asked, “What is it?” He replied, “change of government” and just switched off.

I was with the Deputy Senate President, Senator Albert Legogie, when I got the message.

I went back to the house not knowing that General Abacha was taking over from Chief Shonekan which explains why the secretaries (Ministers) were called to the Villa for the emergency meeting. This was the end of the Interim Government.

It must be stated categorically here that when Chief M.K.O Abiola decided to wage war against the Interim National Government so he could take-over against the Government almost immediately Chief Shonekan was removed, he thus broke faith, not only with his party and its leadership, but also with the two political parties (SDP and NRC) which had laboured to set up the ING through effective resistance to the Federal Military Government of General Babangida.

Instead, Chief Abiola recruited “friends and supporters” who were not from the social democratic Party although some of them belonged to that party. This was to further his personal design for realizing that famous metaphor of going to Kano by air instead of road.

Immediately Abacha took over, Chief Abiola led his “friends” to pay a courtesy call on General Abacha to congratulate him. General Abacha took advantage of this and made sure that for the next two week, this courtesy call was aired on NTA Network News, to prove that Abiola had accepted his take-over of government. As stated already, the two parties had agreed in sharing ministerial offices with the reinstatement of Chief Abiola after the interim period. That arrangement, as far as Chief Abiola was concerned, was going to be too slow for his purpose.

His friends and supporters, not the party, were fully aware of the plan to topple Shonekan. They worked for it and canvassed for it. They were apparently not aware that in doing so, they were going to enthrone or ride on the back of a tiger. The long history of military rule in Nigeria and Abacha’s role in announcing most of the military coups would have been sufficient warning that they were parleying witha dangerous customer.

The tragedy of the Interim National Government was that Chief Shonekan never enjoyed the support of Chief M.K.O Abiola, the people of his home state and the people from his geo-political area, or the South-Western part of Nigeria. They did everything to bring Shonekan and his interim administration down from press attacks, to legal judgments, to hijacking of the A310 Air Bus, all in an attempt to create the atmosphere of lawlessness or the breakdown of law and order.

The Interim National Government fell due to the adroit manoeuvres of Chief Abiola, orchestrated attacks from Abiola’s supporters, as well as the lack of political base and support for Chief Ernest Shonekan who had good intentions for the country. In governance and politics, good intentions are not sufficient to sustain any leader in office. These have to be matched by effective control of the situation, ability to monitor the political pendulum to know which wat it swings at any time, as well as intelligent anticipation to develop strategies to confront emerging challenges.

Above all, political base and support are indispensable. Ernest Shonekan did not appear to have mastered the Nigerian situation, and when he was faced with scheming and planned hostility, he could not survive. In fact, his rule can be described as a tragedy of good intentions. Chief Shonekan is a good man but not a politician.

When the Abacha take-over was announced, there was jubilation by all those who knew of the “Agreement” between Chief M.K.O Abiola and General Abacha.

The Nicon Noga Hilton Hotel was in celebration mood as all those senators who had pre-knowledge of this so-called agreement, and who anticipated that Abacha would handover to Chief Abiola the next day or immediately, were shouting “M.K.O.! M.K.O.! Presido! Presido!”. It was for this same reason that, unknown to the party leadership; Chief Abiola led a team of supporters and relations as well as friends on a visit to congratulate General Abacha for a job well done.

It can now be recalled that during the ensuing struggle with Abacha to validate the June 12 election, and in order to prove that Chief Abiola was in full support of what he had done, General Abacha would play the tape of this visit repeatedly on Network News.

Four days before the June 12 election, (i.e. Wednesday), I flew in from Abuja to meet Chief M.K.O. Abiola to tell him that we had no money to pay polling agents as the promise made by government to grant the sum of ₦40 million (forty million naira) to each of the parties had deliberately not been fulfilled.

The government refused to release the money. Chief Abiola said he did not have money. I went to Universal Trust Bank to see Godson Esejele, later Executive Director (Finance), Federal Housing Authority, who was the Assistant General Manager of that bank. He told me that by 10:00 am the next day (Thursday) he would arrange ₦15 million (fifteen million naira) for us. The only condition attached was that if the promised ₦40 million (forty million naira) from the government got to the party, we should open an account with the bank with that amount.

I drove to Ikeja to see Chief Abiola and gave a rundown of the arrangement I was making. He thanked me heartily but added that if he had known, he would have told me to request for ₦20 million (twenty million naira) because of some of his commitments he was unable to meet at the time. The Federal Government was owing him heavily.

I must admit that Chief Abiola spent a great deal of his money. He was all out to win the election little realising that his best friend was going to be his worst enemy. He was a good candidate. There was no where we went to that he did not have something to show that he helped the people of that area. Although he was a Moslem, while building mosques for Moslem communities, he was also building churches for Christians.

He gave out scholarships to both Christians and Moslems; to Yoruba people, Igbos, and Hausa, without discrimination. He was a very good candidate.

I went back to the hotel and met Godson who said that if we wanted ₦20 million (twenty million naira), the money would not be ready by 10:00 am. We would have to wait till about 12:00 noon. By 11:30 am the next morning, Godson called me to say the money was ready. I went to the bank in Victoria Island and two bullion vans were ready with escort.

When I asked for a bond for the amount, the Managing Director dais, “we know you. When you get your cheque, you should open an account here”. I did not sign any document or undertaking that I was taking that money from the bank which illustrates what trust and credibility, or integrity can mean at critical moments.

I telephoned Chief M.K.O. Abiola that I was coming to the private wing of the local airport at Ikeja and that he should meet me there. I met him waiting with Kola and Habib bank manager from Apapa, and we realized that as it was already Thursday and election was just two days away, the “Hope 93” aircraft was insufficient for distributing money country-wide. We decided, therefore to charter an Okada aircraft for distributing money in the Northern states while “Hope 93” was to distribute the money in the Southern states for the payment of polling agents.

That evening, I went by road to Edo state and delivered the money for that State to Chief Odigie-Oyegun because I had to stay in Edo state for the election. I got to Benin City by 10 pm that day. When we eventually got the ₦40 million (forty million naira), we kept our promise and made sure that the ₦40 million (forty million naira) was used to open an account with UTB (Universal Trust Bank).

Air Borne But No Landing

Chief M.K.O Abiola, as indicated earlier, had said that if you want to go to Kano, going by air or by road does not make any difference as long as you get there. 

His interpretation of this was that going by air meant Abacha taking over from Shonekan and he Abiola, being sworn in the next day. Going by road was waiting till March, 1994, when Shonekan would use the National Assembly to hand over to him because he actually had won the presidential election. Unfortunately for Chief Abiola, he was air borne on his way to Kano but could not land.

There was, in fact, no landing, and Kano as the desired destination proved to be a fantasy.

It is a pity indeed, that Chief Abiola kept the leadership of the party away from his arrangement with General Abacha to takeover form Shonekan. If he had brought it to the notice of the leadership of the part, he would have been well advised.

The “Agreement” was phoney and hollow. It was an agreement which was inexplicable and in excusable in its folly and terrible in its consequences. In a similar but not identical set of circumstances, I had advised Chief Abiola against declaring himself the president of this country when arising from Abacha’s refusal to handover to him drove him to that extreme line of thought. 

I spoke to him on the telephone pointing out that the army was not there to back him up. He had no police support, and not even the immigration or customs would back him.

My Advice to M.K.O. Abiola

I advised against his intended line of action. In reply he merely said, “Mr. Chairman, you are a very good man. Anyway, we shall discuss that one later”, and he replaced the telephone.

As I did not want to be blamed later for not advising Chief Abiola correctly, I advertised my advice the following day in some of the daily newspapers.

It was clear to me that the course of action to which Chief M.K.O. Abiola was heading was not only going to be self-destructive but also ruinous. He would play into the hands of the military and offer himself as a sacrificial lamb by delivering himself to those who, for various and obvious reasons, very much wanted him out of the scene.

In addition to giving M.K.O. Abiola specific advice against his intended line of action, I also commented on those calling for a boycott of the election to select candidates to the constitutional conference which the Abacha regime was putting in place to address the various problems confronting the nation and putting out a new Constitution for Nigeria. I was convinced that the conference would achieve a lotfor this country, including setting the timeframe for the military’s exit from Nigerian politics.

Chief Abiola did not listen. The result of his action landed him in jail.

The Escape

While negotiations for the Interim Government were on, I was briefing Chief Abiola from time to time. One day, as we were going in for one of those meetingsat the villa, Chief Abiola told me that he had a message he wanted me to pass on to President Babangida and that he would send it by fax. I never received any fax message for onward transmission to the president because that was the day M.K.O. Abiola left Nigeria for the United Kingdom.

He did not want me to know that he was leaving the country. The following morning, I waited and waited all in vain for that fax message. I never received it till I was almost running late to attend a meeting at the villa. My other party men were waiting and we had to go. The next morning a BBC correspondent from London called me and asked if I was the chairman of SDP. On answering yes, he said, “your candidate is here”. I asked, “Which candidate?” and he answered. “Chief M.K.O. Abiola”. I was forced to ask him, “Where are you speaking from?” He replied, “This is BBC London. Do you want to hear his voice?”.

It was then I knew Chief Abiola had left the country.

Chief Abiola’s absence from the country at this critical time was disastrous to the party and to the party and to his cause. He was the symbol of theJune 12 election and most Nigerians were struggling for him. Escaping from the scene created a vacuum which made the struggle meaningless. It was the climax of the fear he had exhibited right from the time President Babangida nullified the June 12 election.

When Chief Abiola eventually returned, he visited me in Benin in my residence. One of the questions I asked him was, “Presido, I was the last person you spoke to on the day you left and you did not tell me that you were travelling?” Before the full glare of camera lights and press, he replied that “when two birds are on a tree, one does not tell the other that a stone is coming”. So he knew a stone was coming and we were two birds on a tree and he fled without telling me a stone was coming”. It seemed to me and to many Nigerians too, that the parable of birds on a tree was a very loaded and pregnant one. It shows the character of Chief M.K.O. Abiola whose cause many Nigerians were prepared to fight and die for. Today, the result of his action has been extremely unfortunate.

Access Bank - Ijesa Bank - that was snatched by political thieves

Access Bank was started by Ijesas in Lagos in 1988. As seen above, it was licensed to Mr. Abiodun Lawrence Omole, the owner of Trophy Larger beer in Ilesa, and his Ijesa partners. They used one of the partners, Chief Farodoye's business office address at the Western House in Lagos for registration.

Led by Chief Farodoye, it was a small, solid, and well-run bank, like most Ijesa's businesses, that uses the ethos - Omoluabi, in conjunction with the traditions of late Ijesa billionaires like Da Rocha, Ajanaku, SB Bakare, Lawrence Omole and so on.

Suddenly, the Acess Bank's core ownership became diluted by a series of schemes and mandates from CBN.

Tokunbo Aromolaran was the last managing director appointed by the original shareholding group, and at the time, the bank was already listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

Using abracadabra, Aig Imokhuede (Sanusi's Kings College classmate) and Herbert Wigwe, were AGMs at GTBank, yet they formulated a scheme to secretly acquire large shares of the Access Bank without major shareholders knowing.

They borrowed the money from Intercontinental Bank, PLC (They never paid it back). Intercontinental Bank was the foremost bank in Nigeria and was owned by Yorubas, who pioneered Banking in Nigeria.

Upon securing controlling shares, they notified the authorities and took over the Access Bank overnight; thus, the Ijesa Bank was no longer. Once they took it over, it was like a pirate hijacking a ship in the high sea; they quickly changed policies and sidelined the original shareholders. They destroyed Chief Farodoye, who went into Exile in England and ended up working there as a security guard to make ends meet. Another partner, Abiola Ojo, survived the assassination attempt. Access Bank became a mafia bank - the untouchables!

Aig. Imokhuede became the managing director for a decade, and after he retired, Herbert took over. They erased all traces of Ijesas - all Ijesas were forced out from top management positions down to the security guards, all replaced - and it became a bank for the people from the East of River Niger in our land, Lagos (EKo).

In the 1990s and 2000s, I banked with Intercontinental Bank, PLC (IB), a reputable financial institution with banking, investment, and wealth management portfolios—an excellent bank with a solid reputation. My investment portfolio at IB earned higher yields (returns on investments) than my Wall Street portfolio in the USA.

Under Jonathan, banking rules changed. My IB advisor informed me that a small bank had been borrowing large sums of money from IB, and the bank had been unable to say no to this politically connected borrower(s). That IB reserve was getting lower than it should be and advised me to move my investment out of Nigeria because the banking landscape was changing and unpredictable.

I did what he suggested, and shortly after that, they changed the management; they removed 100% of the Yorubas that I had come to know during the years I transacted with IB.

Sanusi of CBN decided to perform a voodoo 'stress test' - on the banks without conducting any loan investigation on the IB books. Sanusi noted that IB reserve was low, and he reflexly declared it insolvent and decided to sell it. Guess who showed up to buy it? It was his friends from Access Bank (the bank that borrowed money from IB). He offered it to them at a meager N50 billion. Imagine offering one of Nigeria's largest banks with 350 branches across West Africa and England for this tiny amount. It was a steal, a giveaway, a daylight open robbery. Check the records; no other bank has been sold so cheaply in Nigeria.

Yoruba will say, Ile taa ba fii Ito mo, Irin lo maa wo. You cannot build something on nothing!

At the time, because Dr. Erastus Akingbola of Intercontinental Bank, PLC, a pioneering professional career banker, did not support PDP, these political thieves descended on him, used their political connections to snatch Intercontinental Bank PLC from him, and sent him into retirement. 

However, nature has a way of paying back; call it karma; check out this real-life list below.

(1). Emir Sanusi Lamido, was dethroned and banished from Kano Emirate. He was the CBN Governor who mastered the Access Bank and IB scheme deal and sealed it.

(2). Dr. Olusola Saraki. The Saraki family Dynasty in Kwara State has crumbled and is in total ruins. He lost large family properties along Glover Road in Ikoyi to the Federal Government. He is now a boy-boy to Nyesom Wike, the PDP strongman.

(3). The Late Herbert Wigwe traveled from California to Las Vegas to watch the Superbowl with his family. This story is not about the dead but about setting history records straight. May his soul rest in peace. Wigwe University is now in limbo.

(4). The ringleader, Aig. Imougkuede had an eye Glaucoma operation on their left eye and is scheduled for surgery in the other eye soon. He is partially blind and can hardly see.

(5). Mr Alabi, the interim managing director, imposed on us by Sanusi Lamido, to confuse us, is down with Stroke in Ilorin. He is in a vegetative state.

Today, Dr. Erastus Akingbola is a 78-year-old, healthy-looking man with a sound mind and spirit, happily living his life, keeping a low profile, and enjoying life with grace and blessings.

In Court, Dr. Akingbola has won his property taken by Access Bank at 999c Danmole Street, in Victoria Island, the IB PLC's former head office, and the Court has ordered Access Bank to vacate the premises for him immediately. The EFCC has also returned with apologies, multiple estates seized by them along Sinari Daranijo Street, also in Victoria Island.

Lastly, God is the only ultimate judge. Do good, and good things shall follow you in the days of your life - Holy Bible.

The information in this article is a compilation of direct accounts and data from staff from the original Access Bank and Intercontinental Bank, as well as my experience as a client when these political thieves struck.

From the IB staff, the only visible error Dr. Erastus Akingbola made was being apolitical and refusing to fund PDP-led Jonathan back then, and he paid the price. But God is favorable to him now.

Yoruba says: "bi iro ba lo logun odun, ododo aaba loojo."

Truth will always prevail, but it takes time for the truth to prevail.

Yoruba Historical Society (February 2024)