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General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, military Head of State from Tuesday, August 27, 1985 – Thursday, August 26, 1993 and a favourite of Almighty God was the one He wanted to be the country’s elected President to be sworn in on Thursday, May 29, 2003. The Lord did not want President Olusegun Obasanjo back for a second term.
Indeed, He made him to win the 1999 election because his opponent, His Royal Highness Olu Falae, a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (March 1986 – January 1991) and a paternal cousin of mine, was someone the Ancient of Days had in 1992 said that He would never allow to be the country’s president. This followed his rejection of the Lord’s offer to use the 41 Muslim clerics He would raise in Ado – Ekiti to fast and pray for 41 days for him to win the primaries of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the presidential election in 1992.
It was a nephew of ours whom Oba Falae had never met that took his matter to the Lord and conveyed His message to him in 1992 and I think that and the fact that as a Christian he was told to use Muslim clerics were responsible for his negative response. By then the Heavenly Father had not called me back after I strayed from Him in 1972 for 20 years because He did not fulfill the promise He made to me in 1969.
Being a cousin who had been very close to him for 40 years, I might have been able to persuade Oba Falae to honour the Lord’s message. But the opportunity to try never arose as the Ancient of Days rejected my appeal to give him another chance when in 1998 he emerged the candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) which was in partnership with his Alliance for Democracy party.
The Lord said he had given Falae an opportunity and he had missed his chance. But the good thing that day was that He told me He would help me save him from an imminent death. Four days later it was reported in the newspaper that my cousin escaped a plane crash at the Maiduguri Airport.
It was because of Oba Falae that the King of kings caused the results of the primaries of the SDP and the National Republican Convention (NRC), the two political parties then in existence, to be cancelled. It was also why all the 13 candidates of the SDP and NRC who took part in the 1992 primaries were banned from contesting the 1993 presidential election.
The Ancient of Days had to do this because if they had not been excluded from the 1993 election, Brigadier Shehu Yar’Adua who came first in the SDP primaries would have chosen Oba Falae who was second as his running – mate. They would have won the 1992 poll because they were more popular and viewed as more competent than their NRC opponents. For the reason that Yar’Adua had been Deputy Military Head of State to General Olusegun Obasanjo (February 1976 – September 30, 1979) while Oba Falae who is a graduate economist had been a Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Government of the Federation and later a Bank Manager.
As would be seen and realized later in this essay, Babangida is the one the Heavenly Father loves most of Nigerian political leaders, civilians and former retired military officers, on the scene since 1998. This explains why he was the third person the Lord gave the opportunity to be president under His 1992 project to make Nigeria a great country. After Oba Falae the second person was Chief Moshood Abiola in whose Concord Press of Nigeria I worked for 14 years (March 1, 1980 – April 8, 1994 and who was very nice to me and whom I recommended to the Most High.
He accepted the Lord’s message and used the 41 Ado – Ekiti Muslim clerics and won the SDP primaries and the June 12 presidential poll. As long – time readers of this column know, the Lord on Saturday, September 24, 1994 told Dr. Ore Falomo, the personal physician of Abiola that He caused the June 12 election to be annulled because his patient failed to reward the clerics on June 14 as He had ordered. Chief Abiola did so the next day and sent the little amount of fifty thousand naira to them, which came down to one thousand, two hundred naira per person and which was not acceptable to the Lord. I wrote on this four times from 2010 – 18, but Dr. Falomo never refuted my story until he died in November last year.
Now to General Babangida being someone the Lord loves so much. Unlike Oba Falae who was recommended by our nephew and Chief Abiola by me, it was the Heavenly Father Himself who chose and sent me to Babangida in 2001 as His candidate for the 2003 presidential poll. And while the Lord did not give Falae a second chance, He did for Babangida twice, in 2005 for the 2007 presidential election and in 2010 for the 2011 voting exercise.
To be continued next Wednesday
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Oba Gbadebo, an exemplary modern monarch (4)
As a result of space problem, only the first paragraph of the script I sent in was published last week. This is why today I have decided to republish the whole article. Without doubt, it was the dynamic leadership and pleasant character of Oba Adedotun Gbadebo, that made Senator Ibikunle Amosun when he was the Governor of Ogun State (May 29, 2011 – May 28, 2019) to have chosen to construct an amphitheatre (a round theatre) to sit seven thousand people in the Alake’s palace. This is an oval circular unroofed structure with tiers of seat surrounding a central space. Work was still ongoing when I was in the Alake’s palace last month.
From the commendation the incumbent Governor of Ogun State, Prince Dapo Abiodun, gave Oba Gbadebo during the service for his 15th coronation anniversary at the St. Peter’s Anglican Cathedral, Ake, on Thursday, November 19, it is also apparent that the monarch has been influential in the rapid development and modernization of Abeokuta by the Ogun State Government since his enthronement in 2005.
An Egba chief once told me that since Oba Gbadebo assumed office he has been travelling abroad virtually every year to Europe or the United States and that during the visits he meets with Egba men and women urging them to come home to build houses and establish businesses. The response to his appeal is said to have contributed a lot to the many constructions and fast development witnessed in the town since his reign began 15 years ago.
Oba Gbadebo is also said to have conferred honorary chieftaincy titles on some of such Egbas abroad to encourage others in the Diaspora to emulate them. He is further credited with awarding scholarships to some students in secondary schools and in universities in Nigeria and overseas.
Oba Gbadebo’s birth name Adedotun means the crown (Ade) turns things around or brings lofty changes. In other words, the huge transformation in Abeokuta and the Alake’s palace in the last 15 years is the reflection of the monarch’s name and personality having effect on the town’s fantastic and unprecedented turn around. Long live the King! And may God’s blessings continue to be the lot of Oba Gbadebo unto the end at a very old age and in good health. The Egbas and Abeokuta have never had a king like him and it may take generations before they would have another monarch like him. The End
Sunday Times sold 355,000 – 400,000 copies weekly under Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, not one million
The figure of three hundred and fifty – five thousand for the copies sold weekly by the Sunday Times when Gbolabo Ogunsawo was the Editor of the paper (1972 – 75), was given by Alhaji Ismail Babatunde Jose (Sunday, December 13, 1925 – Saturday, August 2, 2008), the all – time icon, most inspirational and greatest legend of Nigerian journalism. He was in three capacities the first Nigerian Editor of the Daily Times (December 13, 1957 – 1962), the Managing Director and Editor – in – Chief of the company (1962) and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Daily Times Nigeria Limited (1968 – March 1976).
Alhaji Jose, who appointed Gbolabo Ogunsanwo as the Editor of the Sunday Times in 1972, gave the weekly sales figure of the newspaper and that of the Daily Times in the 1970s in an interview he granted two managers of the Sun Publishing Limited 17 years ago and which was carried in the Saturday Sun of May 10, 2003.
More to come next week
