One of the key symptoms of
a failed state is cutting deals with criminals instead of punishing them.
The Offa robbery of 2018 and the irresponsible way Nigeria has handled the aftermath is one more good reason why those criticising former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Nobel
Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka that Nigeria is tottering towards state failure should shut their traps.The Offa robbery was a bloody one during which the criminal gang killed 17 policemen and some civilians. One of the ringleaders of the operation is connected to a person who launched a vicious attack against me on behalf of his sponsors. I knew he wanted to use me to ingratiate himself to power wielders in the country so as to negotiate justice for the felons. I refused to swallow his bait. I just dismissed him.
There are claims that he approached former Lagos State Governor, Senator Bola Tinubu, to assist when I was sick in 1999. He was somebody I had access to and would have reached directly if I was comfortable asking people for money. It was our lovely leader and father, Senator Abraham Adesanya, who called him and asked my wife to go and see him. It is not that I am an unfeeling and uncaring man who was taking credit for all I was doing even under illness.
My wife said, in fairness to Tinubu, that he abandoned his food and lamented: “How can Yinka be going through this without letting me know.” He called the Heath Commissioner to arrange what I needed for medical trip. May Pa Adesanya rest in peace. Prof. Akin Onigbinde tells the story of how he physically led him and his wife to see a doctor when his wife was ill. There was a colleague of ours; he observed his wife was waiting for a child; he wrote some herbs for him to buy from a shop in London.
The woman became pregnant in a month. Good old man! I saw you in your dirtiest with money that I couldn’t ask you for a penny even as I saw you rolling in sudden unearned dough. You were like king of Edom to me of whom Abraham said: “I will not take a hoof, lest he says I made Abraham.” I recall how you were camping two daughters of your late friend with baits of sacks of money. And you thought such would never have consequence? The young man you were trying to use me to cover his crimes obviously had some inheritance from a dad who allegedly did time in Minna Prison over stolen clothes in a laundry outfit where he worked.
A senior advocate friend of
mine sent me the lies you concocted a few days back which he said was sent to
him. I did not ask him the person as my spirit told me immediately who it was.
And like Apostle Paul said:
“Alexander, the coppersmith who did me great harm”, I have to come back for you as five of the Offa robbers were arraigned in court a few days ago and your son was not among them. It was clear the Nigerian state had fallen for pranks when Offa robbery became part of the “O to ge” weapons against Senator Bukola Saraki.
Instead of going after the criminals, spirited efforts were made to link the crime to the former Senate President whom they wanted out at all cost. Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State was in Kwara State in June 2018 to commend the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris, on the manner he had been handling the investigation of Offa bank robbery, saying he was doing an excellent job. El-Rufai made the commendation in Oro town at the annual Ramadan lecture organised by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who is a native of the town.
Recall that the National
Assembly had just passed a vote of no confidence on the police boss whose
actions and inactions they considered antithetical to democracy; but El-Rufai
praised the police boss on the occasion and thanked the Chief Imam of Oro,
Mikhail Onisan, for praying for the nation and leaders.
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