MY good friend, Jide Akintunde, Managing-Director of Financial Nigeria Limited, is what is known as a football aficionado.

ODuahgate is the latest public scandal that has seized the public sphere in Nigeria in the past two weeks or so. It concerns an allegation that Minister of Aviation, Princess Stella Oduah, colluded with officials of one of the departments in her ministry, the Nigerian Civic Aviation Authority, NCAA, to order from Coscharis Motors, two armoured BMW cars at a cost totaling N255 million (or $1.6) for her use as Minister.

I am one of those who can write authoritatively about our Golden Eaglets. From the very first match they played together as a team in the African Qualifiers in Niger, to their camping in Calabar, African finals in Marakech Morocco……….I have been a disciple of a team I believe promises positive vibes for the future of the game in Nigeria.

In my nearly twenty years of writing on these pages, I had predicted four crashes – two banking and two capital market crashes. The first was in reference to the banking crisis of the 1997/98 financial years. Writing under the titled FUNNY MONEY, I had predicted that Nigerian banks, which at the time were enjoying rave reviews in the media in general, were as a matter of fact deceiving all of us. The high profits and dividends being declared were out of tune with the underlying economy which was in a recession. My query then, as now, was “What sort of investments were banks making to earn the returns they were declaring?” I went further to list seventeen (17) banks which were sure to go under. The list included Alpha Merchant Bank, the darling of ignorant investors, and Commerce Bank headed by two former heads of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, CIBN. Few people believed me until the banks went belly up and bankers changed designer suits for prison uniforms.

The frenzy of opinions, allegations and counter allegations on the NCAA’s ill-advised purchase of two armoured vehicles has been sustained in the media in the last few weeks. The revelations may have foreshadowed erstwhile favourable public perception of the otherwise optically credible reconstruction of several airport terminals nationwide.