This country needs to start afresh with defined goals on how to succeed; that cannot be achieved by spending N10 billion out of public fund

In our land right now, poverty is on the increase, and this is because we’ve failed to understand that poverty arises as a result of the mismanagement and failure to properly harness our God-given natural resources and the insensitivity of any government to the welfare of its people.

In this concluding part of the interview with Professor Omo Omoruyi of the then Centre for Democratic Studies, CDS, you would read about what General Ibrahim Babangida told Olu Falae and Papa Adekunle Ajasin when they met. You would also read about how Prof. Omo Omoruyi escaped assassination. But who were those behind the attempt on his life? Why is Omoruyi still carrying eight pellets of bullets in his body since 1994? How did Omoruyi survive cancer? He is a survivor and you only need to read his story and then understand and, perhaps, convince yourself about values and virtues of being a public office holder in a country where anything can happen.

Simply put, Professor Omo Omoruyi, is Mr. June 12. He was the Director General, Centre for Democratic Studies, CDS, Abuja at the height of the Ibrahim Babangida transition programme. Omoruyi and some egg heads ploughed everything they had into the last leg of that programme but were as he put it “fooled in the end”. He attempts to properly situate the crisis the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential elections threw up and concludes that the British design of a permanent rulership in the north and a permanent followership in the south was not going to be reversed by a mere electoral process or an election.

Adekunle started saying there were too many Yoruba in the headquarters. Too many Yoruba? Was it an ethnic war? We were not fighting Igbos. We were fighting Biafrans. He did not want to hear Biafrans. All the Igbos were not Biafrans. There were many of them in the Lagos area and in other parts of Nigeria.

Chief Ayo Adebanjo is an Afenifere leader and remains one of the most consistent leaders in Yoruba land. You may not agree with his views but he is consistent. As Nigeria marks the 17th anniversary of the June 12, 1993 Presidential elections, Adebanjo makes some revelations. He told Sunday Vanguard that on the day of the annulment, he, Adebanjo, “could not believe that such an election had been annulled”. “When I met Duro Onabule the following day or was it on that day of the annulment, I asked him if it is true that the election had been annulled and he also said it can not be true that the election had been annulled”, he told Sunday Vanguard..
Adebanjo insists that Nigerians have not learnt anything from the experiences of the June 12 presidential elections.

One of the projects set aside for my tenure is the gift of sight. My executives and I have decided to conduct a free eye screening exercise and then provide free glasses to those who will need them. We will also do a campaign on breast and cervical cancer awareness because it has been discovered that early diagnosis is the sole remedy to breast cancer.

When you end up with a leadership that sees things in a very narrow way, you will end up with the type of situation that happened and you have all types of troubles on your hands

Traffic along the Ikeja-Oshodi road was moving at snail’s speed as is usually the case in the morning hours. Then came this trailer driver, usually called ‘kill and go,’blaring the horn every five seconds, disturbing everyone in the process.

Chief Dapo Sarumi is a typical Lagos politician. But beyond that he shook this nation between 1991 and 1992 when he sought the governorship ticket in Lagos. The contest arguably remains the fiercest yet in the history of gubernatorial primaries in Nigeria.
At the end of the day, both Sarumi and his competitor, Professor Femi Agbalajobi, were disqualified from further contesting, not because they did anything bad but because it was a No-Retreat, No-Surrender scenario.

Before Jonathan Presidency, I am already a relevant person. so, I don’t need this book to be relevant. The point is that I have been in this struggle, the struggle is me, and I am also the struggle. Of course, we did a lot of things before Jonathan became the President, even though God concluded it for us. So, the moment you get to one step, you are looking beyond that step; the moment Jonathan became the President, of course ordinarily, people will look at the next step.

Last Sunday, we served you the first part of what Chief Bisi Akande, former Osun State governor and National Chairman of the Action Congress, AC, said on some burning national issues.Today, we bring the concluding part, the highlights of which are the perceived offence of the late Chief Bola Ige, SAN, and his assassination; the way the case was allegedly bungled and who to hold responsible.

Leadership in any democracy is dependent on the internal structure of the political parties and their ability to gather and marshal opinions. So, the leadership role is played by organisations, the political parties essentially who must present candidates and of course the opinions of the media and the civil society all matter in leadership.

The truth is that no nation worth its salt would stand idly and watch as a group or groups of people under whatever guise, plunder, ruin, destroy and kill its sources of survival or threaten to bring it down simply because they were agitating against marginalization or because they feel they must take what rightly belongs to them by force.

When you conduct an interview with an angry former state governor who was “conned” by a former President of Nigeria, a fellow Yoruba, what do you expect?
Bisi Akande, the former Osun State governor between 1999 and 2003 on the platform of an atrophying Alliance for Democracy, AD, but who today is National Chairman of the Action Congress, AC, can talk. But how do you stop a man who continues to provide invaluable never-before-heard information?