I just read the statement issued by Bayo Onanuga on behalf of the Presidency, which supposedly trying to put a defence for the Chief of staff, Gbajabiamila.
However, I think the Presidency's statement was clearly intended to shut down public scrutiny. Ironically, it has achieved the exact opposite. It answered some questions, but in doing so, it exposed even bigger ones.
Let us assume, for a moment, that every allegation against Prince Adeyemi is true. Even then, the statement leaves glaring gaps that no amount of rhetoric can paper over.
You are asking Nigerians to believe that one private citizen woke up one morning, invented a presidential agency, forged his own appointment, secured office space inside the Federal Secretariat, recruited staff, held meetings with diplomats, corresponded with government institutions, allegedly opened a CBN account through official channels, and if the official budget documents are anything to go by, the same "non-existent" agency found its way into the Appropriation Act with an allocation running into billions.
If that is truly what happened, then this is no longer just the story of an alleged fraudster. It is also the story of spectacular institutional failure. Either government systems were astonishingly easy to deceive, or there are questions that still have not been answered.
The statement conveniently glosses over the budget issue. That silence is deafening.
How does a fictitious agency appear in the national budget? Budget allocations do not descend from heaven. They pass through ministries, the Budget Office, executive review and legislative approval. Who introduced the line item? Who processed it? Who signed off on it? Who failed to ask whether the agency even existed?
Those are not political questions. They are governance questions.
Then there is the issue of the Federal Secretariat office. Offices inside government complexes are not roadside kiosks. How was the space obtained? Under whose authority? How long did it operate? Who interacted with the occupants? Who looked the other way?
Again, silence.
Then comes the most curious part of the story.
The Presidency says the very person allegedly identified as the link between Adeyemi and the purported appointment, Dolapo Babatunde Tanimola, had died in a hotel fire just five days before Adeyemi's arrest.
That is an extraordinary detail. Yet we are given almost nothing beyond it.
Was there an autopsy? Was there a coroner's inquest? What did investigators conclude about the fire? Were his electronic devices, communications and financial records examined? If he was central enough to be named in the statement, why is the public expected not to ask what became of the investigation into his death?
These are not conspiracy theories. They are the obvious questions any serious investigator would ask.
The Presidency wants Nigerians to focus exclusively on whether Adeyemi is an impostor. Fair enough. The courts will determine that.
But the Presidency cannot ask the public to ignore the conduct of government institutions in the same breath.
This is bigger than one man.
If the council was fake, explain how it entered the budget.
If the appointment was forged, explain how government systems repeatedly interacted with the supposed beneficiary.
If official channels were deceived, explain where the safeguards failed.
If there was no insider involvement, show the documentary trail that proves it.
Accountability does not begin and end with charging one individual. It also requires explaining how the machinery of government appeared to validate, accommodate or fail to detect what is now described as a complete fabrication.
The public deserves more than a carefully written press statement. It deserves answers backed by records, timelines and evidence.
Until those answers are provided, this matter is far from settled.
*Barr. Solomon Dalung*
Ex Minister of Youths & Sports
You need to have balls of steel to drive "intellectual" conversations in today's Nigeria social media space.
As for the congregation of the uprisen olodos, in the conversation of the Olodo uprising - I have decided to share my own think piece.
@Blue_Footy I'm I overreacting if I say Lacroix is just a French Chaloba? To me he's just a steady head. And we have that in abundance at the back. What we need is someone experienced and elite.
@JacobsBen The way I see it
Chelsea are the one forcing this move because they've dug a financial grave and need to sell a top asset they feel the fans won't object to. The interview thing is already resolved on the player side he obviously wants to stay judging by performance.
That photo costs about $17. The premium version, where the tiger’s head rests in your lap, goes for around $140. Selling these poses made Thailand’s Tiger Temple roughly $3 million a year, until police raided it in 2016 and pulled 40 dead tiger cubs out of a freezer.
Thailand has about 1,960 tigers locked in cages right now. Almost all of them are at places that sell tourist photos. The most recent Thai government count of wild tigers came back at 179 to 223. There are eight to ten times more tigers in the photo business than tigers out there hunting deer in the forest.
Police forced their way into the Tiger Temple in May 2016 and walked out with 137 live tigers. They also found 40 frozen cubs in a kitchen freezer. Twenty more cubs were floating in jars of preserving fluid. Authorities stopped a temple staff member trying to drive off the property with two whole tiger pelts, ten tiger fangs, and around 1,500 small good-luck charms made from tiger skin.
Speed breeding is what keeps the supply going. Mothers get their cubs taken at two to three weeks old. The females come back into heat much sooner and pop out another litter long before nature would let them. World Animal Protection investigators walked through Thai tiger parks and found half the cats they saw in cages smaller than a one-car garage. A wild tiger covers 10 to 20 miles in a single night.
Cubs work the photo line for a few months. They get passed from tourist to tourist hundreds of times a day. Most are declawed, which is exactly what it sounds like: amputating part of each toe so they cannot scratch a paying customer. Once a cub grows too big or starts pushing back, it is finished with the photo business and too expensive to feed.
The same animals start a second life as product. In 2007, Thailand signed an international treaty banning the sale of tiger parts. Other tiger countries signed too. Authorities still seized 641 tigers, dead or alive, in smuggling busts across Southeast Asia between 2000 and 2011. DNA tests traced 275 of those straight back to the same kind of farms that sell tourist photos. China and Vietnam are the destination, where the parts are sold as tiger bone wine, tiger skin rugs, and traditional medicine.
After the 2016 raid, the government took custody of all 147 rescued tigers. Eighty-six died within three years. Decades of speed breeding had inbred their bloodlines so badly that their immune systems were already gone by the time anyone tried to save them.
This video deserves a place in this timeline, it deserves to be viewed by those that follow me and it deserves the prompt attention of IGP @TunjiDisu1. So many questions.
@tier_1st @stillbighuncho Exactly
Cundy works for the club and so is Kwesku. Ans you can see they are steadily towing the party line. It's no news the club is looking to push him out because they are in dept. Those two are just there to push the narrative. Thank God for @matissearmani being objective.