THE ALTERNATIVE
By Reno Omokri
On Monday, February 14, 2022, while the rest of us were either expressing or receiving words and gifts of love, being that it was Valentine’s Day, the disgraced so-called super cop, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari, was being caught in a sting operation, and was exposed as a member of a drug cartel. Well, well, well, you might say. And you would be right to say that.
But, when you look at it, Abba Kyari was a bottom feeder in the drug cartel that he was caught working for. He was a corrupt policeman. A muscle. He was far from being the cartel boss. At best, he was a small fry. A foot soldier. No. A food soldier.
But now, compare him to Bola Tinubu. Just like Abba Kyari, Bola Tinubu was exposed during a sting operation on a white heroin drug cartel in Chicago.
On November 28, 1990, a member of that cartel, by name Abiodun Agbele, was nabbed in a federal sting operation wherein he sold $7000 worth of heroin to an undercover FBI agent. His testimony led to a federal case against multiple Nigerian members of his cartel, of whom Bola Tinubu’s name was mentioned.
It has now been judicially established beyond all reasonable doubt that Bola Tinubu was indicted as a co-defendant in a federal case involving white heroin drug cartel.
Not only was he indicted, he was fingered as the bag man (read money man) for a drug cartel. And rather than fight those charges, Tinubu agreed to forfeit $460,000 to the US government in 1993. A colossal sum today, and a king’s ransom at the material time.
As anyone with prosecutorial knowledge of the law would tell you, forfeiture is equivalent to a conviction, in the sense that you are not fighting the charges against you on their merits, and have rather reached a plea bargain.
So, I ask, how is Tinubu better than Abba Kyari?
In fact, if anyone is better, it will be Abba Kyari, who was not directly linked to drug cartels, other than as an outsider. Bola Tinubu, according to court documents, opened an account and named a known drug baron as someone with whom he shared an address.
How do we explain that Abba Kyari was exposed as a member of a drug cartel, and Nigerians turned on him? The police suspended him. He is currently facing trial. But Tinubu has been exposed as a KNOWN DRUG LORD. Instead of facing prosecution, APC is asking Nigerians to vote him. My people, no be juju be that?
Who is worse? A member of the cartel or the drug lord himself? If Abba Kyari belongs in jail, then why should Tinubu belong in Aso Rock?
In fact, Tinubu should have just made Abba Kyari his running mate, and let us all know that Nigeria is now a drug haven! After all, Abba Kyari is Kanuri, like Kashim Shettima, and comes from the same Borno state.
We as citizens should not turn our beloved country into the butt of jokes in the international community by electing a person with such a history as our President. As the Igbo man says, Tufiakwa!
The cartel lifestyle that Tinubu lived in the late eighties and early nineties is so ingrained in him that it has permeated Lagos and the Southwest.
Kofoworola Bucknor, deputy Governor under Tinubu between 1999 and 2003 has described working with Tinubu as working with the mafia. Those were her words. She is still alive. She worked closely with Tinubu and understands him better than most.
Listen to what Tinubu himself told Raji Fashola, after he had installed him as Governor.
At the 4th annual Bola Tinubu Colloquium, Raji Fashola, the then Governor of Lagos, had the temerity to speak on merit as a means of getting into office in the public sector, to which Bola Tinubu responded publicly as follows:
“If there’s no partiality, you cannot be governor yourself.”
Tinubu would not have so publicly and brazenly rebuked the Governor, if he did not still control the government behind the scenes. And when he installed a Governor who refused to be a puppet, Tinubu promptly ensured he was not re-elected as he did to former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode
He replaced him with his mini-me, Jide Sanwo-olu, who is so sycophantic that he even publicly mimics Tinubu’s physical posture and gestures!
And Nigerians may want to ask Bola Tinubu who is Olufunke Philips and how she was able to get a cushy job in Sanwo-olu’s government.
So while Tinubu may think he has fooled Nigerians with his glad-handing around the nation, he should remember the immortal words of the late Bob Marley:
“You can fool some people sometimes.
But you can’t fool all the people all the time.”
We will still visit the bullion van issue. Why is the EFCC prosecuting the former Accountant General of Federation, Ahmed Idris, and not Bola Tinubu? We provided evidence of Tinubu’s corruption to the EFCC, including photos of bullion vans going into his house on Election Day, contrary to The Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2011. Why Idris and not Tinubu?
And what is true for the EFCC is also true for the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency. Why are Buba Marwa and his NDLEA agents prosecuting Abba Kyari, but have not invited Bola Tinubu for questioning since it has been established that he had links with a white heroin drug cartel? Tinubu should be dealing with NDLEA, and not the Independent National Electoral Commission!
I thought Marwa declared that he would have zero tolerance for drugs? Is this how to show zero tolerance?
I am not playing politics here. I am being patriotic. Having a man with judicially established links to a white heroin drug cartel, such as Bola Tinubu, as President, is a serious national security risk. He will be vulnerable to blackmail from foreign intelligence agencies.
On Atiku’s AriseTV Interview
The major issue that some people, especially those who describe themselves as Obidients, appear to have with Waziri Atiku Abubakar’s AriseTV interview (because the interview was so good, they had nothing else to hold on to) was the fact that Alhaji Abubakar said, “In the north, 90 percent of our people are not tuned to social media.”
Was the former Vice President of Nigeria wrong?
Let us focus on what cannot lie. Let us focus on the facts, not sentiments.
Almost every working-class Northerner in the Northwest has a small portable transistor radio. It is their essential life tool. They get their news from BBC Hausa.
Research this. BBC Hausa has 18 million unique listeners every week. VOA Hausa service reaches a combined weekly audience of 21 million. Another 10 million a week listen to DW Hausa. That is more than the number of Nigerians on Twitter and Instagram combined. A lot of these folk who have issues with the ‘90%’ assertion live in a social media echo chamber and think there is no life outside Twitter.
You trend on Twitter and it gets to your head, you begin to insult Waziri Atiku Abubakar. You boast that your candidate will win on February 25, 2023. Do you know how many Nigerians are not on Twitter? 190 million. You saw those humongous crowds that came to see Buhari in Kano? They listen to BBC, VOA and DW Hausa service!
This does not mean they are not on the Internet. This does not also mean that they are not educated. You can be educated and have access to the Internet, without being on social media. They are not mutually exclusive. Take time to understand the North, because they understand you!
The average core Northerner, rightly or wrongly, sees social media as an indecent place. A place of much haram, where their mind will be corrupted by ungodly tendencies. So they tend to avoid social media, in preference for radios. However, it does not make you and I more informed than them!
Twitter is a platform that Northerners tend to shy away from, because of its very high level of toxicity. But that is not to say they do not use the Internet. They do.
They are big on TikTok. They also have taken to Facebook ever since that platform adopted Hausa as one of its domesticated languages. They use the Internet for online banking. To watch tafsir on YouTube and even to read the Al-Quran online. They buy mobile phone credit on the Internet. They are Internet savvy, but social media shy. They may not show up on social media, but they will definitely show up at the polling unit on February 25, 2023.
#BBNaija began last week. Southern Nigeria was completely focused on it to the point of fixation. But observe the North. Big Brother is not big over there. We have different values. What Northerners come to do on social media and TV is VERY different from what Southerners come to do!
Now that #BBNaija has started, I am experiencing less insults and threats from Obidients than usual. Now, do you see this Southern fixation with Big Brother? It is seasonal. But in Northern Nigeria, they have the same zeal, but for radio. And it is a daily fixation, not a seasonal one!
Many of us inaccurately see them as ignorant folk, but they are largely more informed than us as a people. Many Northerners choose to filter out social media. The vast majority of them elect to ignore BBNaija. They largely consider these things haram. But they follow political and other social events the way BBNaija enthusiasts follow naked yeyebrities!
This is the basis for the assertion by Waziri Atiku Abubakar that 90% of Northerners are not on social media, even if they are online. A lot of us in the South are too wrapped up in ourselves to notice that there are others who think and behave differently from us.
#TableShaker
