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For three consecutive years, and now into the fourth, Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu [BAT], has been busy working furiously at creating another country out of Nigeria. It is not what you may be thinking, certainly not the trending alleged plans to regionalise Nigeria in the next three months. The entity he is working on, and he is virtually succeeding in it, is a YoruBAT country. It’s turning out to have an ugly and dangerous face. YoruBAT is derived from the Yoruba nation of Nigeria and the acronym from the president’s allegedly assumed name, Bola Ahmed Tinubu [BAT]. As in many things around this president, his name has also been a lingering subject of intense controversies and heated disputations.
Many other names, not aliases, not pet, and not fond names, have been associated with him in his long life of either 74 or 84 years, depending on who is speaking. As with his name, Tinubu’s age is also a subject of public disputations. Some years ago, the now president granted a national newspaper an interview. His age was given when that interview was published. There was no record that he at the time or even subsequently disputed the age that was published. But the last time, which was March, that the president was celebrated during his 74th birthday events, there was a challenge in matching the age that was given about 30 years ago of him and his new age. No matter the arithmetrical method that was adopted, the figures refused to tally. The figures would just not add up, in spite the creativity applied by inquisitive countrymen.
Yinka Odumakin, now late, was an activist and a politician, and other things in-between. He was a friend and later a foe of Tinubu. He claimed to have known this president from his younger, swaggering, wine-bibbing, and cigarette-smoking days in Iragbiji, said to be his home community in Osun State. He challenged Tinubu publicly to swear to a court affidavit that Bola Ahmed Tinubu were the names given to him by his parents at birth, at the risk of perjury. Of course, Tinubu did not accept the challenge. It was as well that he didn’t otherwise, another case of possible perjury similar to the one that trailed him in the alleged false information that he gave on oath on the documents he had submitted to the ‘’Independent’’ National Electoral Commission [INEC] in pursuit of his governorship ambition in Lagos state in 1999. Senator Tokunbo Afikuyomi took the fall for that crime. Talking about parents, Odumakin alleged that the parent [because Tinubu never referred to parents, just mother] Tinubu was flaunting was bogus.
The other names associated with the president included Amoda Ogunlere and Amuda Sangodele. It could be the handiwork of his political enemies. And they are many. But one thing that has been instructive is that no other politician of his stature and standing has been trailed by multiple controversies of bearing different names at different times, and parading shadowy academic records. None. Certainly not at the level of Tinubu’s.
That this president logs a baggage is a settled matter, including the forfeiture in the 1990s to a foreign government of $US460,000 suspected to be proceeds of a crime – cocaine trafficking in Chicago in the United States of America. The details of that suspected perfidy which should be a disqualifying criterium for anybody aspiring to the highest political office in any country, are still buried in the archival files of the United States national intelligence agencies. One of that country’s intelligence agencies had, not too long ago, told a court in the US that the Nigerian president was their asset. And there was no whimper of a denial from Nigeria’s presidency. In 2023, Festus Keyamo, a senior advocate of Nigeria and a member of the All Progressives Congress [APC] presidential campaign team looked Nigerians in the eyes while speaking on a national television interview and said that it was the bank accounts of Tinubu that were indicted in connection with drug trafficking in Chicago in 1993, and not the man who owned the account. Apparently, the presidential election petition tribunal bought the bogus claim, and the Supreme [Cult] Court [in]justices concurred and awarded Nigeria’s presidency to a challenged Tinubu.
Probably, on account of that vigorous lawyering Keyamo was rewarded with the position of minister of aviation and aerospace. As unfolded recently part of the brief of the loquacious minister may have been to publicly assert that his ministry would accept a third party payment for a discredited parking infraction allegedly committed by the car of Mr. Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Nigerian Democratic Congress [NDC] for the January 2027 election, at an airport. You can draw a parallel between Obi’s bogus car crime [not Obi himself committing an alleged parking lot infraction], and Tinubu’s bank accounts committing a crime of warehousing drug trafficking proceeds but not Tinubu himself. Keyamo is being clever by half.
Thirty years down the line counting from the Chicago episode, Tinubu stirred up the hornet’s nest again during his campaign for the presidency which he had earlier described as his ‘’lifelong ambition’’. In Abeokuta, Ogun state while speaking at an event with the admixture of Yoruba and English languages, said to the effect that it was his personal turn to be coronated as the president of the country, willy nilly. That marked the birth of ‘’emi lo kan’’ in the lexicon of contemporary politics. Many Nigerians were astounded. A prominent Yoruba personage loudly expressed concerns that the slogan was clothed with fraud that would do Nigeria no good if Tinubu eventually acceded to the presidency on the basis of ‘’emi lo kan’’ [Yoruba for it’s my sole and personal turn]. How prescient that Yoruba man has turned out to be.
From day one of Tinubu’s presidency on May 29, 2023, ‘’emi lo kan’’ has undergirded his governing philosophy. He set out from the get-go to create a YoruBAT [Bola Ahmed Tinubu Yoruba] country from Nigeria. The deleterious effects of that corrupt slogan are beginning to manifest in all sectors of the Nigerian life. The ongoing saga about Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, the presidency, the chief of staff to the president, the allegations of bribery with N400million allegedly paid upfront for an appointment and N200million outstanding, the so-called ghost presidential agency and its ‘’impostor’’ director-general, the N1.3 billion provision in the 2026 national budget for a ‘’non-existent’’ presidential parastatal, the office space alloocation in the heart of the federal secretariat in Abuja, the secondment of over 300 civil servants including directors to a supposedly ‘’ghost’’ agency, the alleged opening of accounts including domiciliary accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria [CBN], the allocation of a government domain signature slot/name, among others, were the products and manifestations of the philosophy of ‘’emi lo kan’’. That analysts have refused to acknowledge this does not make it any less true. And egregious.
The Adeyemi saga may also have its roots elsewhere, but it has to be acknowledged that the pattern of Tinubu’s appointments to critical offices and the headships of sensitive arms of the public sector helped alleged dubious persons like Adeyemi to blossom, and to flourish. Take a roll call and you will find out that the agencies that facilitated the rise and operations of the man who was said to also be masquerading as a prince with blue blood, are headed by ethnic YoruBATs or YoruBATs by association or YoruBATs by, in some cases, affected or pretentious fealty to the leader of the emergent YoruBAT country, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Perhaps, the only agencies and their heads who either facilitated or looked away or were complicit by their sheer act of negligence while Adeyemi perpetrated his alleged heist on the rest of us were those of the secretary to the government of the federation and the national security adviser.
The office of the chief of staff to the president, which is the hub of the presidency’s bureaucracy, and which is enmeshed in the raging controversy of the ‘ghost’ presidential parastatal is headed by a rabid YoruBAT, the Rt. Hon. Olufemi Hakeem Gbajabiamila, the immediate past speaker of the federal House of Representatives. He was alleged to have issued a letter of appointment as the director-general of the fake FPIPC to the ‘impostor’ Prince Adeyemi. Gbajamiabila has since denied any involvement and wrongdoing, and has instituted a case in court where he is seeking N15 billion in damages from Adeyemi if the court finds in his favour. Gbajabiamila can only file this type of suit in Nigeria. In the State of Georgia, US, where he once allegedly practiced law before his reported disbarment, he probably would not try it. Otherwise, he would be subjected to Discovery on oath and the findings could be injurious to his case. A man who was alleged to have stolen his client’s money running into tens of thousands of dollars could not brazenly lay claim to any damage to his reputation. Not in that jurisdiction. He actually may not have a reputation. But this is Nigeria where the courts have now become appendages of the executive arm of government which gifts mansions to judges as official residences. The widely held perception is that the judiciary is a parastatal of the presidency.
As with the office of the president’s chief of staff, the CBN was alleged to be complicit in the saga. The central bank is also headed by a YoruBAT. He has lieutenants who parade the title of deputy governors. If any of the deputy governors is a YoruBAT, it could only be by association or loyalty to Tinubu, and not by ethnicity. The ‘ghost’ agency was alleged to have opened accounts with the CBN, including foreign currency accounts. The claim of the agency operating accounts with the CBN has been denied, though it was acknowledged that the process for opening and operating such accounts was in progress before the crime blew open allegedly over sharing formula for the imminent staggering loot of about N27 billion.
Some of the other offices through which some of the documentations that were used to legitimize a supposedly ‘ghost’ presidential parastatal and second staff to it were allegedly the office of the accountant-general of the federation, that of the head of the civil service of the federation, among others. They were headed at the time, and in some cases up till now, by die-hard YoruBATs, or associate YoruBATs or non-ethnic YoruBATs with demonstrable fealty to the Dear Leader. Keyamo qualifies as an associate YoruBAT. Though from Edo state, he claims to have family roots in Ogun state. However, while the fraud lasted, the ‘’imposter’’, Prince Adeyemi, routinely travelled abroad on government missions and at public expense, sometimes in the company high-ranking presidency officials including allegedly the vice president, the now teniously rehabilitated orphan of this regime; hobnobbed with the executive chairman of the economic and financial crimes commission [EFCC], a YoruBAT; paid a courtesy visit to the deputy speaker of the federal House of Representatives, an Igbo but a YoruBAT by fealty to the Dear Leader; and other high profile activities which were attended by media blitz.
If the current federal government bureaucracy is corrupt, and it is, it’s because it was designed to be so by being populated with YoruBATs, a sprinkling of the president’s loyalists from elsewhere, and badly compromised politically exposed persons [PEPs]. The latter group can be put on a short leech and their loyalty coerced by the dangling of the of the swords of anti-graft agencies over their heads. The senate president is said to belong to this category. There is no record of his conviction by any court of law but it was publicly known that he had a fat file of alleged grand corruption while he was a governor. People like that enjoy favourable consideration for [s]election to critical offices by President Tinubu. ‘’E get why’’, to use a street language in Nigeria. It has to be acknowledged that there’s a marked distinction between the Yoruba and YoruBATs. Some of the fiercest critics and opponents of the presidency of Tinubu are of the Yoruba stock. To them Tinubu neither represents nor approximates an ‘’Omoluabi’’ [a person of honour, integrity, discipline, humility, respect, truthfulness, and responsibility] ethos of the Yoruba nation.
The making of a YoruBAT country has been in full display especially in the finance sector of the country under Tinubu. Let’s attempt a roll call. CBN, minister of petroleum resources, minister of finance/cordinating minister of the economy, interior minister, minister of solid minerals, minister of marine/blue economy, accountant general of the federation, national revenue service [FIRS], Nigerian upstream petroleum regulatory commission, DG of the Nigerian maritime administration and safety agency, MD/CEO. Asset management corporation etc are headed by YoruBATs. This roll call is a tip of the iceberg. The list of these nepotistic appointments is almost inexhaustible. It was intentional on the part of Tinubu and it cannot be divorced from a plot to cover up malfeasance through ethnic – YoruBATS’ – solidarity. So far, it is working. And therein lies the danger of the ongoing destruction of the social fabrics of this country. But something will give. If it doesn’t and soon enough, it could be said of Nigeria that ‘’There Was A Country’’.
