News

OPINION: Issues In Adenuga’s ‘Death’ Rumour

Published

11 months ago

November 25, 2024

By Lasisi Olagunju

There is the legend of a newspaper journalist who had an issue with his uncle, an oba in present-day Osun State, and threatened the king with death. The man needed a favour; the oba closed his eyes to the man’s demand. “Kabiyesi, you will die,” he reportedly informed the oba. “Iku boo?” Everyone who heard him gasped and upbraided this man for the sacrilege of speaking ill to a king in the palace. They thought his beer and booze had again taken hold of him. In response to demands of apology, the man stormed out of the palace, and back to his base in Lagos.

We say a tree does not fall in the forest and kill someone at home. I used to believe that proverb would be true at all times until I heard how this man carried out the regicide he promised. He got to Lagos and submitted a report to his editor that his uncle, the oba, had joined his ancestors. Did the editor pass the story for publication? Well, who else could be the best source and authority on the life and times of a king if not his own kin, the king’s man himself? And so, an abnormal tree that fell in Lagos killed the oba at home. The king read his own obituary, courtesy of his own nephew who worked in faraway Lagos.

The event happened in the 1970s, so we were told in the 1990s. And we were warned as newsmen never to build our truth on a foundation laid by only one source. The man got the fake news of the oba published and stood by it. We couldn’t really get hold of the publication but we were told the man’s name. When the second republic came with its opportunities, the man moved to Ibadan. He had to. His ways had made the waters of Lagos too shallow for his shark to swim.

Our man edited an ephemeral newspaper for some politicians in Ibadan in the early 1980s. Then he spiced it with some other extra journalism stuff. I wished he were alive now for me to ask him why he ‘killed’ the oba. But if we did not see what his Ajantala did in the bush, we saw the man’s face as he joined in shredding icons on the streets of Ibadan on days when the metropolis lived its reputation. What reputation? I have beside me here a copy of Ruth Watsons ‘Civil Disorder is the Disease of Ibadan’. Everyone came to this world with a disease which defines their existence. The end came twenty-something years ago for the man who used his pen to kill his uncle, the king. It was not a nice end.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: In Defence Of Nepotism [Monday Lines]

The world was crazy 50 years ago when a newspaper was deployed to ‘kill’ a monarch. It is crazier now with social media and its unhinged tendencies. I remembered the death story of the undead king when some unknown persons with unknown motives used social media to announce the death of Globacom chairman, Dr. Mike Adenuga, Tuesday last week. I also remembered the Zik-is-dead hoax of 1989. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe was in his study in November 1989 working on book manuscripts when he read his own obituary complete with a list of a committee to bury him. It was crazy. One thing is clear, the one who wishes one dead is not a friend. A death wish whether oral or written is an enemy action.

The social media can be rumour pro-max. Rumour, most times, comes false and in unfriendly costumes. While its currency is virality, it easily spins out of the spinner’s control. Robert H. Knapp in his ‘A Psychology of Rumour’ (1944) avers that “if leaflets, newspapers or radio broadcasts are likened to bullets, then rumour must be likened to a torpedo, for, once launched, it travels of its own power.” Social media scholars have at various times raised the alarm that false information is a threat to modern society. Lt Col. Jarred Prier of the United States Airforce in 2017 published a seminal piece that demonstrated how social media had become a tool for all kinds of ‘war’. In his ‘Commanding the Trends: Social Media as Information Warfare’, he mentioned “malicious users” and “malicious actors” creating malicious trends and manipulating internet platforms to spread negative messages, most times fake news. And, fake news he defined as “propaganda composed of false story disguised as news…”

Death rumours rarely have an identifiable source. The one about the Globacom chairman did not appear to have any. What it had were internet rats in desperate grab of trends. Whoever started the fire disappeared soon after lighting the match. I got calls; the first from a colleague in the United Kingdom; another from Benin, yet another from my office in Ibadan. A friend sent the screenshot of a Facebook version of the vile announcement. Everyone who contacted me sounded alarmed and apprehensive. But, why would they be calling me for a confirmation of bad news? Who do we call – or text? My friends suggested names. First a text to a certain number. “Good evening, sir”. No immediate response. Then I placed a call. A laugh; the line went dead. Then a response came in one minute: “Chairman is fine…” That was a text message from the man I called; we call him Bob Dee (Chief Dele Momodu). Two other messages of reassurance soon followed from that channel. Then, the newsroom went calm, and the same social media that created the topic of death scrambled to quench the fire. “Are rumours just rumours?” Rumour theorists, Heng Chen, Yang K. Lu and Wing Suen, once asked themselves. And they answered, yes. They also noted that rumours (that are not rooted in truth) “often disappear quickly without a trace.” I read all that in their ‘The Power of Whispers: A Theory of Rumour’.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: The Shuffle In Abuja [Monday Lines]

I asked one of my callers why he sounded so troubled by the death rumour. He told me what I already knew: You remember that old song by Juju music commander, Ebenezer Obey? Anyone who knows the evil ways of darkness will not wish the moon bad (Èdá tó mò’se òkùnkùn, kó má mà d’Ósùpá l’óró) And, I think I heard a new one from Obey on Friday. He weighed in with a new song, using his music to list the benefits of the moon and why its soft, golden glow must continue to drape the night in ethereal light. It fits this hour. There is so much darkness here, in the public space and in the space we call private. That was why as children, we got sad whenever the full moon was seen reducing in size and getting far gone in distance.

Why were my friends almost hysterical at the virality of Adenuga’s death rumour? I can tell why. You know how many people work in that man’s businesses – telecoms, oil (downstream, upstream, midstream), banking, construction etc? Some trees singularly make a forest. This is one of them – one of the reasons Nigeria is not completely an economic arid zone. Read Martin Williams’s ‘When the Sahara Was Green’ (2021). The Sahara desert was once lush with greenery. It became what it is today because of unconscionable humans, agents of eco destruction. Malicious bush burning joined hands with other vices to tip the land’s moisture balance. Collectively, they degraded the green that made that stretch to breathe. The result is what the Arabs saw and gave the label ‘sahra’ – the meaning of that word is ‘wilderness’. Now, apply that to our economic situation and be alarmed. Foliage is the canopy of the forest. When you remove trees that make forest forest, the forest dies. That is why we say this China shop should not be heady goats’ playground. Mortar, we can roll; pot, we mustn’t. If you roll a pot like you do pounded yam’s mortar, the master potter will roar in angers of lightning and thunder.

When someone of value is pronounced dead and they refuse to die, the Yoruba have a name for such a hard-to-crack nut. They are called Kokumo (This-is-no-longer-dead). Such are moulded into Ìkòkò ribiti (well-rounded pot); they are, in carefulness, protected from wanton eyes of malice. Adenuga’s Conoil struck gold in 1991, the first indigenous oil company to achieve that feat. His Globacom is also the first and has remained the only wholly indigenous telecoms company in Nigeria. The fact of these businesses coming first serves not just the owner; it serves more the country. It has served as a bulwark against the exploitation of foreign waves. That is why we say the man behind it must live and why we say “no time to check time” to his deathwishers. They are a dead horse. Who are they, anyway? And why are they angry?

The invidious, false news of a top entrepreneur’s death should interest the state and its operatives. Howard Wolk, co-author of ‘Launchpad Republic: America’s Entrepreneurial Edge and Why It Matters’ said in a December 2022 interview with Forbes magazine that America is great because it consciously nurtures its businesses and protects their owners even from the state itself. “We limit the ability of incumbents to stifle entrepreneurs,” he declared with an air of pride. Here, the challenge is not a threat of state stifling, it is the menace of bad belle, threats from fake news and the odious bile of idle envy.

His Wikipedia page speaks to where he is coming from: “Adenuga made his first million in 1979, at age 26, selling lace and distributing soft drinks. In 1990, he received an oil drilling licence, and in 1991, his Consolidated Oil struck oil in the shallow waters of Southwestern Ondo State, making it the first indigenous oil company to do so in commercial quantity.” Then, he branched off into telecommunications. He got a conditional GSM licence in 1999. It was revoked. But where he comes from, a man is not allowed to lie supine because a stupid horse flings them off. He must get up and mount the horse again. Which is what the man did. He joined the fray again. He won and received a licence when the government held another GSM auction in 2003. Then the story of telephony changed in Nigeria – for the better, forever.

Nigeria should not be a graveyard of businessmen and their businesses. Great businesses make great economies. A Nigeria without four-star businesses cannot have a five-star leadership. The world has no seat for the poor. We have an environment that is toxic enough for entrepreneurs, we should not add for them rumours of ill-timed setting of their radiant sun. We have lately seen, not one, not two, very big entrepreneurs having issues just for giving Nigeria what Nigeria desperately needed. Now, it is Adenuga. How does that encourage economic growth? And a country and its leadership are as great as their frontline businesses. We see this in America’s political and financial systems which empower entrepreneurs to create and invest capital and compete without the fear of knives of envy being driven into their backs.

We enjoy the ‘rebellion’ of Adenuga’s Glo; it serves our individual and national interests. There is something about that model in the Forbes interview I cited earlier: Howard Wolk said “entrepreneurship is a rebellious act” and that the United States is great because its political and judicial systems encourage that rebellion while spurring the rebellious to rise and seize new opportunities. His claim is correct. The more unconventional a business is, the more it fires up a country’s creative energy. Globacom did this when it came in 2003 and ruptured the tendons of predatory competition it met on the turf. Nigerians enjoyed that patriotic recalcitrance from Glo. They still enjoy it. That is why millions of them are wedded to that network as a duty to Nigeria. And they will remain so even though the house may be on fire and robbers may be on the prowl (Bí ilé ńjó, b’olè ńjà).

News

Why We Expanded Presidential Amnesty Scholarship Scheme — Otuaro

Published

12 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

Otuaro (middle) in a group photograph with the PAP foreign scholarship students in the United Kingdom after an interactive session in London on Saturday, 25 October, 2025.

The Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, Dr Dennis Otuaro, has expressed his unwavering commitment to ensuring that more indigent students and communities of the Niger Delta benefit from the PAP scholarship scheme.

He stated this while explaining what informed his decision to expand the scheme and increase formal education opportunities for poor students, and to build a huge manpower base in the region.

A statement issued by Mr Igoniko Oduma, Special Assistant on Media to the PAP boss said Otuaro spoke during an interactive session in London on Saturday with the beneficiaries of the scholarship initiative deployed for undergraduate and post-graduate programmes in universities across the United Kingdom.

The engagement, which was at the instance of the PAP boss, provided an opportunity for the Office and the scholarship students to discuss issues pertaining to their welfare and challenges with a view to addressing them.

Otuaro said that while in-country scholarship deployment was 3800 in the 2024/2025 academic year, the figure increased to 3900 in the 2025/2026 and foreign scholarships were about 200.

He attributed the increase in deployment to the massive support of President Bola Tinubu and the Office of the National Security Adviser.

Otuaro stressed that he was greatly encouraged by the President and the NSA, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and that he knows how impressed both of them are concerning the PAP initiatives, which align with the Renewed Hope Agenda.

He reiterated his call on the students to justify the huge investment in their education by the Federal Government by studying hard to make good grades.

He also urged them to conduct themselves and be responsible ambassadors of Nigeria while in the U.K, stressing that “you will be adding value to your families and communities when you complete your programmes successfully.”

The PAP helmsman said, “We want the scholarship programme to impact more students and communities in the Niger Delta. That’s why we have expanded it and increased formal education opportunities.

“We want you to take this opportunity very seriously so that the government, too, will be encouraged. I know how much support His Excellency, President Bola Tinubu GCFR, gives to the Presidential Amnesty Programme.

“Mr President and the National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, are very impressed with what we are doing. On your behalf I would like to, once again , thank His Excellency and the NSA for giving you this life-changing opportunity. We are confident that Mr President and the NSA will continue to support us.

“The knowledge you are receiving in your institutions today is to enable you plan yourself and prepare for the future. Whatever knowledge you gain cannot be taken from you.

“So as PAP scholarship students, we expect responsible and good behaviour from you. Government is investing heavily in you and you have the obligation to justify the investment. Be agents of change and avoid acts of mischief while in the U.K.”

News

OPINION: A ‘Crazy’ African Nation, Where Citizens Eat And Drink Football

Published

14 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

By Tony Erha

It was in October, a semi-summer-month and twilight of the year that ushers in the chilling and extreme winter. A nonagenarian woman gave me a friendly smile that revealed cheeky dimples. As I bowed respectfully to her ripened age, she offered a leathery hand for a handshake, which I received warmly, returning her infectious smile. For a youth who prays for longevity shouldn’t deprive the elderly of the walking stick. I had helped her, carrying a furred handbag to our seats on a night-long intercity bus, from Istanbul to Ankara, in Turkey, the Balkan nation, where we stopped over, in year 2004.

She spoke Turkish rapidly, whilst I retorted in a passable and incoherent Turkish language that ‘I don’t speak the official language of the only country of the world that is located on two continents; Europe and Asia. “You American?” She asked in English. It was obvious that my jeans, necklace and a fez cap that I upturned, in the manner of the Yankees, might have portrayed me as one. “No. I am a Nigerian”, I said, dragging the words. “You Nee-jay-rian!” she exclaimed, whilst I nodded confidently. Then she was elated; “Okocha Jay-Jay!” She spoke to others in the bus that clapped and hailed. I wondered why a 91 years-old-woman, was so passionate about football and one of its heroes, as if she was a youth.

At her request, an old video of a football match showed the mesmerising display of Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha, viewed on a television set affixed to the bus. There were instantaneous excitement and catcalls each time Okocha, the great football ‘talisman’ from Nigeria, did his ball flips and dribble-runs that displaced his opponents, earning him one of the few (if not the greatest) football entertainers in football’s history. It was as if the video tape, recorded in his notable plays in Besiktas, a Turkish club side, was a live match. So great was Okocha’s global fame that the old woman relived again; “Jay Jay Okocha is a dangerous footballer, who’s full of tricks on the field of play. The only trick he didn’t do with the ball from his bag of football artistry was to play on top the swimming pool”. In Mustafa Ataturk’s nation, footballers of Nigeria’s decent had and still make their soccer very eventful.

Victor Osimhen, the leggy playmaker and striker with a dye-hair like the white mushroom head, who recently renewed his contract with Galatasaray, a Turkish top team, is also a Nigerian, who has received the applause in the peninsula country and across the globe like Jay Jay Okocha. Candidly, Oshimen, the goal mechine, who is a tonic to the Turks and football fans across the world, also does the unimaginative with the round leather, but certainly not with the same fascinating skills of Jay Jay! But the Turkish fans are readily tilted to football fanaticism.

Victor Osimhen

If it’s ‘fanatic-fans’ in Turkish football, it’s certainly ‘supporters hooliganism’ in the United Kingdom (UK), where association soccer (football) was founded in 1863, with similar kicking games played in Greece, China and Rome since 2,000 years. In UK, football is played with fanfares, pool betting and media vuvuzela. English soccer is a gainful entertainment industry raking in huge gate fees from plays, promotions, television and media razzmatazz, which is often imitated in Nigeria, with passions and ‘occult’ following. So worrisome was the ‘social hype and lawlessness’ youths and others attach to English soccer that security operatives have constant migraine fighting soccer addiction and frequent street brawls.

Jay Jay Okocha, Nwankwo Kanu, Dan Amokachi, Taribo West and other Nigerian stars, that once dominated and currently rule other foreign clubs, opened the floodlight of extremist football following into the country. Once upon a time, the then Prince Charles (now the king of England), was spotted (with young boys) playing the game, inside the Buckingham Palace, all wearing jersey number ’10’ with Jay Jay Okocha’s name inscribed). That the number-one-global-royalty adored soccer by wearing the jersey of a footballer from a third-world African nation, somewhat illustrates that which is often said about soccer being more than a mere sport. ‘Football Tripper’, a British online news porter, describes soccer as “oxygen” to numerous men and women. In Brazil, the South American nation, there is a deity called “Soccer”, as well as it’s a vivacious Reggae, a unique music genre in Jamaica.

Still, it is food and sups in Nigeria. In this Africa’s most populous nation, with plentiful viewing centres and liquor spots, there are live television football tournaments and soccer video games, with consumable food, alcoholics, carbonated drinks and some ‘unlawful substances’ that are at the behest of business owners and ‘intoxicated’ fans.

In what soccer dramatics came to know as ‘the Dammam Miracle’, viewing centres, beer parlours and restaurants were instantly sold out in the country, in 1989, after ‘footbocrazy’ Nigerians, stormed the streets in prolonged wild celebrations. For the Nigerian U-20 football team, at the FIFA World Youth Championship, held in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, came back from a four-goal deficit to level up and defeat the Russian counterpart, making the Nigerian team the first to come back from a semi-final to win a FIFA tournament. Soccer, indeed, is a crazy sport in Nigeria. Once upon a time, a man had shattered the screen of his expensive television, because Austin Jay Jay Okocha, his favourite star, had lost a penalty in a continental match!

It’s said that football, especially when the Nigerian national teams of men and woman play, tends to unite Nigerians than other national blights that turn them apart. Now, the current national fanaticism is for the Victor Osimhen-inspired Super Eagles, to qualify for the 2026 World Cup gala, even though it has to go the extra obstacles of playing more legs, whereas the team had frittered the early opportunities to qualify.

And sensing that most Nigerians care less of the economic woes that plagued them, but for the football fad, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the nation’s President, would cash-in to feed their ago awarding huge cash to high profile football tournaments and wins, like he recently accorded the Super Falcons, the female national team, for achieving a similitude of the Dammam miracle, to bring home a coveted African Cup of Nations (AFCON) trophy!

News

Ex-soldiers Fume Over Lifetime Benefits For Sacked Service Chiefs

Published

19 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

The sacked Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, and two other service chiefs, Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Hasan Abubakar, and Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla, are set to receive generous retirement benefits.

The benefits include bulletproof vehicles, domestic aides, and lifetime medical care.

Their exit follows President Bola Tinubu’s appointment of new service chiefs on Friday.

General Olufemi Oluyede has been named the new Chief of Defence Staff, while Major-General W. Shaibu takes over as Chief of Army Staff.

Air Vice Marshal Sunday Kelvin Aneke becomes the new Chief of Air Staff, and Rear Admiral I. Abbas the Chief of Naval Staff. The Chief of Defence Intelligence, Major-General E.A.P. Undiendeye, retains his position.

The President’s Special Adviser on Media and Public Communication, Sunday Dare, said in a statement on Friday that the removal of the service chiefs was in furtherance of the Federal Government’s ongoing efforts to strengthen Nigeria’s national security architecture.

According to the Harmonised Terms and Conditions of Service for Officers and Enlisted Personnel in the Nigerian Armed Forces, signed by President Tinubu on December 14, 2024, the service chiefs are entitled to substantial retirement packages upon disengagement.

The document stipulates that each retiring service chief will receive a bulletproof SUV or an equivalent vehicle, to be maintained and replaced every four years by the military.

They are also entitled to a Peugeot 508 or an equivalent backup vehicle.

Beyond the vehicles, the package includes five domestic aides — two service cooks, two stewards, and one civilian gardener — along with an aide-de-camp or security officer, and a personal assistant or special assistant.

They will also retain three service drivers, a service orderly, and a standard guard unit comprising nine soldiers.

The benefits extend to free medical treatment both in Nigeria and abroad, as well as the retention of personal firearms to be retrieved upon their demise.

However, while officers of lieutenant-general rank and equivalents are entitled to international and local medical care worth up to $20,000 annually, the benefits for the service chiefs, though not stated in the document, are believed to be considerably higher.

The HTCOS reads, “Retirement benefits for CDS and Service Chiefs: The following benefits shall be applicable: one bulletproof SUV or equivalent vehicle to be maintained by the Service and to be replaced every four years. One Peugeot 508 or equivalent backup vehicle.

‘’Retention of all military uniforms and accoutrement to be worn for appropriate ceremonies; five domestic aides (two service cooks, two stewards, and one civilian gardener); one Aide-de-Camp/security officer; one Special Assistant (Lt/Capt or equivalents) or one Personal Assistant (Warrant Officer or equivalents); standard guard (nine soldiers).

“Three service drivers; one service orderly; escorts (to be provided by appropriate military units/formation as the need arises); retention of personal firearms (on his demise, the personal firearm(s) shall be retrieved by the relevant service); and free medical cover in Nigeria and abroad.”

However, the policy specifies that such entitlements apply only if the retired officers have not accepted any other appointment funded from public resources — except when such an appointment is made by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

In such cases, the officers, according to the document, will only receive allowances commensurate with the new role rather than a full salary.

Retired soldiers protest lavish perks

Reacting, some retired soldiers decried what they described as the luxurious benefits and entitlements reserved for service chiefs and senior military officers.

They lamented that junior personnel continued to suffer neglect and unpaid entitlements despite years of service to the nation.

The retired officers expressed frustration over the disparity in welfare and treatment between senior and junior ranks within the military.

One of the leaders of the discharged soldiers demanding their owed entitlements, Sgt. Zaki Williams, expressed frustration over the entitlements reserved for the service chiefs.

Speaking in an emotional tone, Williams, who claimed to be speaking for more than 700 soldiers in his group, said many retired non-commissioned officers had been abandoned despite dedicating their lives to defending the country.

He said, “I don’t really understand how our people in Nigeria do things. The people at the top always do things to favour only themselves. They don’t care about the poor or the junior ones who sacrificed everything.”

The retired sergeant recalled that government officials had made several promises to improve their welfare, but none had been fulfilled.

“Since the day they made those promises to us, we went back home and didn’t hear anything again. Everything just ended there. We’ve been waiting till now, but nothing has happened,” he added.

Williams said the situation had left many of his colleagues demoralised and divided over whether to continue pressing for their entitlements.

“Some of us said we should protest again, but others refused. We told them that day that we were not going for another protest. If the government wants to help us, they should help us. If not, we’re done,” he said.

He also accused senior military officers of frustrating efforts by the defence ministry to address the concerns of retired personnel.

According to Williams, life after service has been extremely difficult for most of them who retired voluntarily or were discharged without compensation.

“How can someone retire after years of service and still not get their entitlement? Many of us can’t even build a house. The senior officers have houses, cars, and everything good, but the rest of us have nothing,” he said.

He added that the little compensation given to some was not enough to rebuild their lives.

“If they give you N2m today, what can you really start with it in this country? You have children, family, and responsibilities, yet you can’t even afford a plot of land,” he said.

Expressing disappointment, he said most junior officers had lost faith in the system.

“We’ve handed everything over to God,” he said quietly. “We’ve cried and done our best. They promised us, but in the end, it’s still zero. We haven’t seen anything. That’s why many of us are now silent.”

Another retired soldier, Abdul Isiak, lamented that promises made to retired personnel had remained unfulfilled, leaving many struggling to survive.

He said, “All you said they would give to them would be done promptly, and they are more than what we need to sustain our lives. This is very unfair. We have suffered a lot, and they’re yet to give us our entitlements after leaving the service. What is our offence? Is it because we are junior officers?”

The former sergeant said the senior officers continued to enjoy generous retirement packages while lower ranks were denied their due benefits.

“We are preparing for another protest for them to pay us. This is very bad,” he said.

(PUNCH)