The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Malabu: A stench that won’t stop smelling

    It is the real peculiar mess; a stench that won’t stop smelling. It has been on for 19 years going on to 20. A peculiarly Nigerian caper, Hardball may well be suffering a fixation syndrome here for the more he reports Malabu, the more anxious he grows.

    Could this be because Malabu is the very metaphor for corruption in the Black world? Could it be because this grand sleaze has undermined five previous governments and now on to the sixth? Is it something to do with the fact that government officials and indeed presidents partook in the mess of porridge? Not forgetting that Shell and ENI, key International Oil Corporations (IOCs) are neck-deep in the sludge? Malabu indeed presents as an eternally fervid story; a dynamic and savagely intricate tale.

    For those not in the loop, Malabu is the story of an oil prospecting licence (OPL 245) which reportedly holds about nine billion barrels of crude oil. As Nigeria’s Minister of Petroleum Resources in 1998, a certain Dan Etete, apparently aware of the stupendous riches OPL 245 contains, chose to appropriate it.

    Working in cahoots with the son of the junta head of state, Gen. Sani Abacha, he soon transferred the steal to two IOCs, Shell of Britain and ENI of Italy. OPL 245 being an elephant, a game never able to be managed by one hunter, a consortium soon emerged. A confederation of rogues.

    What is to be done? Shell/ENI chose to buy out one criminal collective, throwing in a whopping $1.1 billion. Then enters Mr. Mohammed Adoke the smartass Minister of Justice and Attorney-General in former President Goodluck Jonathan’s government.

    What did he do? He deployed the facilities of the Federal Government to ware-house the hot cash (making it seem like legitimate transaction) then proceeded to dissipate the haul through intricate conduits and labyrinthine networks. The cash merely did roundtrips and returned to the rogues.

    Etete and members of his gang as well as the government officials up to the presidency, all got their juicy chunks.

    Today, all the actors are being called upon to account for their role, but Shell and ENI still strut and puff in presumed innocence. However, there is no hiding place for these IOCs. Dubiety had always been their stock in trade in dealing with less developed countries. They relish juicy underhand deals with rogue governments.

    Hardball wagers that if Shell and ENI (call them SHENI) were American or French firms, many of their officials will be in jail now. Recall Siemens and Halliburton. To think that SHENI are going to court shamelessly seeking to claim the prize of crime.

    Finally, just in case there was an iota of doubt about the criminality of Etete’s original sin, hear former President Olusegun Obasanjo: “What Etete did is the height of corruption. He appropriated the assets to himself illegally, illegitimately and immorally.”

    Shame on SHENI!

  • Senate revolution consuming own children?

    Perhaps it was Nigeria’s first parliamentary coup: Bukola Saraki’s emergence as president of the Senate, against his own party’s official choice. Those were halcyon days, when the spoils of war were sweet and mushy!

    Saraki got his coveted prize. Ike Ekweremadu, of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), got festooned as deputy Senate president — again, another first in parliamentary opportunism: a minority party clinching the Senate deputy presidency.  Well, good old Aik is still enjoying his lolly!

    Not so, Mohammed Ali Ndume, erstwhile Senate Majority Leader — or Senate Leader, for short.  In the APC rapprochement, he became the sacrificial lamb for Saraki to retain his seat, no matter what.  He gave way to Ahmed Lawan,  the original APC choice for Senate president. Well, lollies are not forever!

    But did Ndume take it in good faith?  It would appear so, though some growl from his corner suggested he didn’t exactly like the idea of use-and-dump.  Still, nothing serious; just some verbal skirmish.

    But the real revolution, of the Senate power royals consuming their own, appears breaking out: and all of the “big boys”, Saraki, his growling side-kick, Dino Melaye, out-of-favour Ndume and even, still-in-favour Ekweremadu, are bang in the vortex!  It all has to do with the hoopla over Col. Hameed Ali (retd), Comptroller-General of Customs, over his uniform or non-uniform.

    Somewhat along the way Ndume drew the Senate’s attention to media allegations that the Ali brouhaha ensued because Saraki allegedly imported a Range Rover sport utility vehicle  that the Customs impounded for allegedly dodging import duty.  That, Ndume suggested, triggered the Ali-must-appear-in-uniform drama, in a if-you-Tarka-me-I-Daboh-you fashion!

    On Melaye, Ndume referred to a media report alleging his Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) was a fakery, with the report dragging Melaye into a bribe-for-certificate scandal.

    As it happened, Saraki was out, in the dock, at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT).  Ekweremadu, presiding, referred the matter to the Senate Ethics and Privileges Committee, asking the body to investigate and revert in four weeks.

    A brave Melaye first said Ekweremadu acted right, since no one was above the law. Besides, he recused himself from the committee, rightly reasoning that he would only attend if called upon, since the allegation involved him.  Beautiful!

    But later events are revealing a “rofo-rofo” (dirty) warfare, teeming with crude and rude name-calling.

    By insisting on the probe, Ndume cited precedences of former Senate presidents, accused of misdemeanours being probed.  Still, who knows — is Ndume having his own back at Saraki that used and dumped him to clinch to the Senate presidency?

    And Melaye?  He hasn’t quite disappointed in his rude and crude histrionics, dubbing Ndume as “Boko Haram” senator.

    Ekweremadu?  So far, all quiet on his front.  But Saraki might accuse him of ingratitude or even worse, perfidy — for trotting him off for a probe, when he was supposed to have his back?

    It’s early days yet. But the rising fireworks may well suggest a Senate power cabal set to fall upon itself.

    Hardball has booked a ringside seat.  Should  hostilities break out, reports, hot, fresh and smoking, would come from that vantage site.

  • El-Rufai suffers ADS

    Let us call it the ultimate dissonance or something like that. But the point is that if you are a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), you must feel a bit squirmy in the belly now. In the small, quiet corner of your mind, you are bound to keep wondering what went wrong with your dear party.

    APC swept into power with a glorious hurray in May, 2015. It was a big moment for numerous reasons. For the first time, the ruling party was dismantled; a rag-tag coalition seized the centre with a tenacious candidate who had gunned for the number one spot three consecutive times. More remarkable, he was considered by all to possess the elixir against all ills of the nation.

    Now, one and a half years gone by and there is so much dissonance in the polity that even party chieftains are engaged in so much self-laceration that they don’t need the help of the opposition party any longer. Everything seems to have gone awry that it may well be Awry Progressives Congress.

    Now enters Nasir el-Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State and a live-wire – so to speak – of APC. Touted to have the ear of the president as well as being a notable member of the kitchen cabinet, a few days ago, Nasir took the nation by the scruff when a scathing letter he wrote to the president last September burst into the public sphere.

    He said all the things critics would wish they had said. About seven points stand out in Nasir’s treatise and it would serve our purpose to highlight them.

    First, he speaks of the president’s frosty relationship with the APC leadership and the near-zero support for the party structure. Second, he said ministers lacked access to the president; three, there is a cold relationship between the president and the legislature and judiciary; lack of coherent response to action plans.

    Other issues include a feared hijack of the government by a cabal; skewed appointments; inattention to 2019 presidential election and a persistent economic crisis, to say the least.

    Though it may be embarrassing that a private missive to the president has turned out a matter of public discourse, Hardball can feel el-Rufai’s pain and frustration. It was bad enough that he apparently lost his ‘direct pass’ to the president, but it must have been ‘killing’ not to get any response whatsoever to his letter.

    And things kept getting progressively retrogressive to the point that Nasir had no choice but make the world hear his yelping.

    Hardball sympathises with Nasir and understands his plight perfectly. Nasir suffers a condition Hardball takes liberty to term ADS: Acute Disillusionment Syndrome.

    Hardball should know for it is a well-worn path.

  • Their Fani has gone mad again

    Patriotism, goes the saying, is the last bastion of the scoundrel.  You can trust the Brits, they of the stiff upper lip — and quick, laconic wit to boot — to cut to the chase and summarily dismiss any grandstanding posturer, even before he forms the posturing in his mind.

    Not here.  That is why a fellow like Femi Fani-Kayode would always luxuriate in explosive mischief, cock sure he would get away with it:  the dense, trapped by his enchanting mischief; the state, yielding to blackmail, instead of nipping in the bud a growing clear and present danger.

    Meanwhile, the human rights orchestra are funereally mute — until cranked to life, when the lunatic fringe get their due comeuppance, from a thoroughly exasperated state.

    This bloke, with his penchant for ethnic chauvinism, devilish baiting and hate-mouthing may well be baiting the country towards the road to Kigali.

    Some Rwandans, in Fani-Kayode’s image, started the Rwandan hatred pyre.  But when the hideous flame and putrid smell of the big funeral fire hit the global eye and nostril, the whole world reclined in sheer horror.

    A violence, indescribable and condemnable, just hit Ife, the cradle of the Yoruba.  From reports, that was no organised mayhem between two ethnics  in the  Sabo neighbourhood of downtown Ife.  It was rather  miscreants from both divides that took the law into their hands and embarked on free arson, stealing and murder.

    It therefore behoves any right-thinking member of the elite, to which Fani-Kayode belongs, to approach the crisis with utmost sensitivity.  But no.  He must throw  ethnic bigotry into the fray.

    From his hate-infested eyes, nothing mattered: not the arson, not the murder, not the rupturing of the peace, for something that started as a quarrel between two people.  What mattered was the ethnic colour of the arsonist, of the murderer, of the anarchist.

    In this Fani-Kayodesque mischief, which eerily teems with a Kafkaesque  distortion of the original, this bloke, in a diseased piece two-part serial for a newspaper, weaves a sickening tale of ethnic combat, and practically goaded his own ethnic saints to go crush the virtual infidels polluting their geographical space — and this in a country of law!

    He demonised everyone involved in the post-mayhem peace-building.  Osun Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, he dismissed as a “coward”; Kano’s former Governor, Rabiu Kwankwanso, invited to soothe the ruffled nerves of his hurting people, he dismissed as some illicit viceroy, of some phantom imperialists in Fani-Kayode’s hateful mind.

    And the security agencies, who must work at justice for everybody.  He claimed, without any hard evidence, that they were skewed partisans in the matter!

    In his bid to court chaos, Fani-Kayode may well be beyond redemption.  The state should therefore do something before he turns this space into another Rwanda or Somalia.

    As for news media lending their space to Fani-Kayode’s strange fulminations, well, Rwanda is yet another golden example.  If he ever gets his comeuppance, they would — and justly too — partake of that bitter but due pill.

    If you doubt, ask the managers of, and presenters on, the hate-blaring  Kigali Radio, now in the International Criminal Court (ICC) slammer.

  • Ali, Baba and the NASS mob

    It must be a sobering time for Col. Hameed Ali (retd), the Comptroller-General of the Customs who has been riding gaily in his own self-made whirlwinds. Talk of enfant terrible, talk of in-your-face-defiance and talk of haughty go-to-hell ripostes and Ali is a master of that ancient art.

    Unable to bear the stench in the Nigeria Customs Service, President Muhammadu Buhari had drafted Ali to exorcise that honeypot of its infernal quick-fingered gnomes. The old soldier came riding in gallantly, wielding long swords – an old saying suggests that a son sent on a night mission by his father knocks down doors with impunity (well, not unlike our DSS). Ali, a sole administrator of sort, had let fly numerous heads in the service since he got on board and he is still harvesting scalps.

    But he may have backed up a wrong tree when he recently encountered the National Assembly (NASS) mob. Here is the story: Ali loves his agbada and danshiki and he also thinks it’s rather infra-dig for an army officer to climb down to donning any other yeye uniform. So he would not commit such class hara-kiri. But the Senate recently got on his case and insists he must love the service plus its uniform, or leave her.

    The hell with you, Ali had shot back, at least in body language. But then Baba returned in the middle of this eyeball-to-eyeball hold out. Now, Hardball can only wager that Baba must have told Ali: Oldboy what is this fuss about donning your khaki now? Even Fela said uniform na cloth, na tailor de sew am. Do you want to quarrel about uniform or do you want to do the job I sent you, Baba must have admonished.

    Ali sure got the message and immediately embarked on nocturnal peregrinations, to lobby the Senate and probably do a dress rehearsal. It is likely that Ali would don his khaki CGC regalia soon. That would be the photo of the age and it should go viral instantly.

    Ali has also returned to earth now promising to suspend and review the vexatious customs duty on vehicles saga. While at it, it may also serve him well to get his men off the streets and markets. There are probably more armed customs men in town today than soldiers and police combined. These men should be redeployed to the borders – every nook, every cranny, every footpath, every inch of our borders should be locked down – that is where the action is.

    Finally, and by way of lesson:  governance is always by consensus, always.

  • Mighty network, puny subscriber

    Today, it is a tale of brazen corporate theft.

    Telephone Subscriber, 08023596231  (an Airtel line), on March 15, at around 8:30 am, had replied to a text, from a Glo line, 09099879033.  The phone indicated it was an MMS (multi-media service), which would normally attract a higher charge, though the text’s length seemed within the normal SMS (short message service), which costs N4.  The phone’s Airtel account balPronto, the government magic — pardon, telco magic — began!  With a buzz, the network removed the first N4, though the message was still in transit.  After some two-minute interval, buzz — and off went another N4.  The message was still transiting.

    Two more buzzes, and N4, in two instalments, vanished again.  That left a balance of N1 and some coins.  Still, the message was as stationary as the sun, rooted to the same spot.

    But then, came the clincher: there isn’t enough money to fund the transaction.  So Subscriber 08023596231 must borrow some credit!  And if he didn’t?  Well, his N16 was gone, but his transaction remained uncompleted, though the mighty Airtel had paid itself for service not rendered.  Mighty network, puny subscriber!

    Pray, what sort of voodoo business is this, when networks fall over themselves to steal from their subscribers — systemically (it’s “pay as you go”: so you pay in advance, and your account is at the network’s mercy); and systematically (it is routinely programmed stealing).

    As at the time Hardball was telling this outrageous tale, Airtel had paid itself. In the cold anonymity of cyber space, the money was gone, leaving the subscriber with the cold carcass of un-rendered service — and an impotent rage!

    The artificial intelligence of Airtel’s machine was smart enough to know the service charge, and to snap it up.  But it became dumb and obtuse, when it came to rendering service for money earned — more of swindled!

    This thievery has become so routine, among all of the networks, one but wonders if earnings-by-programmed- stealing is not, for them, a deliberate line of income.

    And in all of these grand heists, the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), the supposed regulators, snoozes and snores, while these corporate robbers feed, with manic zeal, on their subscriber-victims!  From declaring you had subscribed to services you never demanded, in the worse tradition of the corporate Hobson’s choice, to deducting from your account at will, it’s a thieving bazaar in Nigeria’s telecoms sector.

    Well, though the level of theft from 0802359623 is puny (N16), Hardball calls for NCC investigation; and ensure Airtel reimburses the subscriber, since it never rendered any service.

    Talk of corporate spiritual poverty!

  • Pregnant with IEDs

    It’s yet another twist in what Hardball would like to christen the Northeast debacle. Of course we all know the narrative: a horrific decade-long ogre, a terror scourge that is at once a blood festival and a sustained human tragedy.

    A grim episode that has littered the savannah landscape of our minds with gruesome icons like Nyanya Motor Park bombing; Abuja Police Headquarters bombings; UN building bombing; the Christmas eve 2011 desecration of St. Theresa Catholic  Church, Madalla; Chibok Girls abduction;  Sambisa Forest; and the dire IDPs to name just a few..Though the blood-thirsty Boko Haram has since been technically defeated, the ghoul is yet to be rested and buried.

    It’s little, evil off springs still roam the sprawling semi-arid landscape intent on gore. Unyielding, remnant of the BH have scurried into little rat holes from whence they continue to plot and prey on simple minds.They had started with dozens of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) strapped on teenage boys.

    When that no longer worked, they deployed damsels, imbued with feminine wiles. Then innocent but brainwashed little boys and girls. All this dark machinations to kill and destroy continue to fail. But they won’t give up.

    Their latest infamy: they zombified a pregnant young lady, and strapped IEDs on her and set her on a journey to Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. Evil has a long, live tail, it is said; which is to say that we have only scorched the BH snake, we have not exterminated it.

    And in closing the war, we must not miss the opportunity presented by the moment to explore the ‘good’ in BH: and that is the opportunity to build a formidable military, security and intelligence corps to be among the best in Africa and beyond. What is left of BH is largely a warfare of the mind. A horde of intelligence personnel must be unleashed on the Northeast and beyond to sniff out the rest of the miscreants from their holdouts and hiding holes.

    And what about the master plan to turn around the entire social-economic architecture of the Boko Haram country and the entire North. There must be a medium to long term plan to remake the Northeast zone into a manned and managed territory with local governance piercing into the vast landscape and touching every man and woman therein wherever he or she may be.

    A total and urgent approach to finding that ‘good’ in BH will quickly flush out the remnant of little men clustered in dark places making tin cans of death. Never should any pregnant teenage girl bear additional burden of strapping on IEDs and getting annihilated in the process. Never should we witness another fetal fatality.

  • Danfo o siere!  

    “Danfo o siere!”, the title of this piece, is a throwback to the innocent Lagos of the early 1970s, when the menace that has come to metastasize, as Yellow Buses on Lagos roads, made a tentative debut.

    Compared with the current bedlam, that near-pristine era belonged to respectable shuttle brands, starting with Zarpas, ironically the yellow-colour, Greek-owned Lagos town transport fleet, to the Lagos Municipal Town Service (LMTS), the re-branded red buses run by the Lagos Town Council, but bought off the departing Zarpas investors.

    Later, that became the Lagos City Transport Service (LCTS); and later, the Lagos State Transport Corporation (LSTC), a state-wide utility, after the Lagos State government had taken over its running, from the Lagos City Council (LCC).

    Later, competition like Benson Transport Services, Osinowo Transport and a few others joined  to feast on the expanding Lagos shuttle pie.  But all competitors, with long buses, had their shuttle routes, designated bus stops, uniformed conductors, checkers that happened, mid-shuttle, to ferret out and punish rogues that rode but hoped to evade payment, and drivers whose road etiquettes were second to none!

    But Danfo (Lagos street generic lingo for minibuses) came and tore off that paradise.  Enter then, the murderous iconoclasts on the road!

    “Danfo o siere!” was the Lagos laconic alarm atainst these new plague of drivers, “eni t’onwa lo nsiwin” (Yoruba for: “The minibus is no lunatic, but its driver is raven mad!”).  Back then, the Danfo came in all colours, operated no charted route, and reserved the right to spurn any traffic rule, no matter how brazen!  Danfo o siere!

    Over the years, the Danfo road lunacy has so metastasized that you could hardly know which is madder: the jerky, ramshackle, smoke-puffing van, or its drug-crazed driver, or even its rude-and-crude, often topless conductor, with the drug-crusted voice!  It’s a total package in raven road lunacy!

    Phasing out this plague of yellow buses, and allied clans of tricycles and Okada shuttle bikes, therefore, is no reinventing the wheel.  It is just regaining the Lagos paradise, lost to a booming population, by past governments that lost their nerves, particularly during the jungle of military rule.

    Paradise regained, on Lagos roads, is the sane way to go.  Let those to be affected retrain and fit into the new system — or find other jobs.

    Any other is the sentimental wide and merry way, nothing short of self-imposed mega-perdition, for a mega-city!

  • Lagos civil war

    A civil war looms in Lagos, though the reverberations are nationwide!

    Cold comfort, though: it’s not a fight-to-the-finish to share money, as you-know-who were notorious for.  It’s rather a raucous, kindred war to serve. That, to be sure, is comforting, for it could be worse!  Still, that comfort is icy cold.

    Hardball talks of no other than the fracas over the Lagos International Airport access road, which just broke out between former Lagos Governor and now Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, SAN, and sitting Lagos Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode. Now, is the Lagos revolution of excellence about to consume its own?

    Governor Ambode, at a news conference, had accused the Federal Works Ministry, under Fashola, of allegedly stalling the Lagos effort to expand the Oshodi-Murtala Muhammed International Airport access road into a 10-laner, befitting of the first point of contact, to foreigners arriving Nigeria. This, he claimed, was despite having a prior agreement, an agreed design and the cash to swing the project — which, he said, could be delivered in six months.

    But Fashola has charged back, accusing Ambode of bad faith and saying the process for the final approval of the project was outside his ministry’s powers. Only the Federal Executive Council (FEC) has the final say. But that body is yet to complete the process on the matter.

    The Yoruba say that no two parties can be chummy again, after dragging themselves to court.  But now that Ambode has dragged Fashola before the court of public opinion, what happens?

    This is a most unnecessary controversy between two young Lagosians, who are happy gifts to Nigeria, in focus and modern governance.  After proving his worth in Lagos, Fashola has moved to the federal plain, doing what he loves best — quality work.

    Ambode too, in Lagos, is busy taking the Fashola legacy to higher heights, just as Fashola built on the solid foundation Asiwaju Bola Tinubu (Lagos governor from 1999-2007) laid. Lagos has been the splendid winner.

    So, why are these two snapping at each other?  That is most unfortunate, for men of ideas seldom have time to row. They are too busy thinking and conceptualising and implementing to have time for such idle and plebeian stuff. Yet, these two are proven men of ideas!

    Well, both should quit this needless fight. It is scandalous to believe that Fashola (“Eko o ni baje!”) would harbour any anti-Lagos agenda. It is even more inconceivable that Ambode (“Itesiwaju Eko lo je wa logun”) would just kick-start a storm, that could well derail the lofty plans he has for a federal patch within his territory.

    Whatever is between them, the duo should sit and iron out. Lagos won’t forgive either, if petty bickering torpedoes any developmental agenda for Lagos.  From “Eko o ni baje” to “Itesiwaju Eko lo je wa logun”, it is time to vigorously walk the talk.

    And after the Lagos Airport project, the two should deliberate and collaborate on fixing the Apapa Expressway eyesore. Apapa cannot be the national goose with the golden egg, and yet remains a national eyesore.

    Lagos must take maximum advantage of its two bright sons: one, as innovative governor; the other, as visionary minister.  Anything less is absolute bunk.

  • Fayose the tailor

    The Nigerian Television Authority, the octopus NTA, used to serve its 20 million viewers “Sura the Tailor”, a fictive tele-comedy.

    But NTA was in indecent haste. Had it waited a few years, even decades, it would have served its happy and titillated viewers with real-life stuff, with gubernatorial clout to boot: Fayose the Tailor!

    Perhaps to herald the 2017 International Women’s Day (IWD) in Ekiti, His Excellency, the “Irunmale to nje jollof rice” (self-named demon wolfing down jollof rice) hopped into a neighbouring Ado-Ekiti seamstress’ shop, full security in tow, to show the locals the real stuff of which gubernatorial tailoring was made.

    And boy! Didn’t the tape rule, and the machine-in-full-sewing motion, and the profile of the governor as executive tailor sit rather well on the august visitor in March?  It’s the making of Fayose the Tailor.

    O, was the governor-tailor sewing the special IWD “aso ebi”, thus assuring the Ekiti womenfolk that their day this year would be a day to remember? Nothing less, really, was expected from the gubernatorial man of the people!

    Until, of course, the John Kayode Fayemi (JKF) Centre — to be sure, no love lost between that axis and Fayose’s gubernatorial axis — hinted at some unconscionable racketeering allegedly tailored (that word again!) at a gubernatorial but crafty parasite virtually sucking the last pint of blood off the women hosts he claims to so much love.

    JFK Centre alleges the “aso-ebi”, priced at N500, was a soulless scam to fleece these long-suffering Ekiti women, in times of salary backlogs and harsh taxation, even when businesses are wilting in Ekiti.  Well, that’s JKF Centre’s allegations.  Let the Osoko and his people speak up for themselves.

    Still, it is amazing how far Fayose would go to drag the governorship to the height of the Pigmy, just because he seems well and truly incapable of vaulting its heights, by petty stunts and cheap derring-do.

    If Fayose is not combing Abuja for some bukateria to push the image of the Fela jeun kooku (eat and expire), he is scoring Ekiti to price pepper, fish and meat like some idle housewife — or more aptly, house husband! — or even visiting the “happening” joint for the latest and most potent agbo jedi (local herbs for pile) in town!

    Of course, a people so swayed by spectacle are thrilled; and they roar!  It is true, as the Yoruba quip: a lunatic show is high fun.  But whoever wishes his son or daughter pulls that show?

    Each time he puts up these stupid stunts, Ekiti regresses. But who knows what geometrical backwardness these wilful present regresses would translate to in future?

    In five years (1954-1959), the great Chief Obafemi Awolowo built a free education legacy that gifted Ekiti its cutting edge of professors, which earned it the due accolade of the land of the learned and the cultured. Would it take just four years of empty Fayose stunt-pulling to condemn its future generation to avoidable ruin?

    Ekiti thought they elected a governor.  Now, all they have is a prankster, whose latest empty stunt is Ayo the Tailor!

     

    Ekiti Kete!