Daniel Amokachi was a former Nigerian international football star who is of the Idoma stock of Benue State. MC Tagwaye, whose real name is Simon Obinna, is a stand-up comic of the Igbo tribe who until just recently was a long-term resident of Bauchi State.
There is something that connects this duo and that something is that both these fellows have found great favour with President Muhammadu Buhari and it is whispered that these young men have also cultivated what passes as personal relationships with the president. It is the oddity in this situation that is striking; Buhari befriending an Idoma man and an Igbo man in the current dispensation when the Idoma and the Igbo tribes decry Buhari’s weak leadership. This sure would raise an eyebrow. But it is no mystery anymore when one recalls that Daniel Amokachi and Simon Obinna are reported to be Muslim converts who have turned their backs on Christianity.
Amokachi just got rewarded with a special assistantship at the presidential level whilst Obinna just got rewarded with a Muslim wife who is the daughter of a federal official in charge of disbursing billions of naira to “indigent” Nigerians. No wonder Buhari loves them so.
Sunday Adole Jonah, Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State
