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In life one comes across different kinds of people: some grow and rise in fame, others dwindle in...Read the full article.

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I Dont Know What Your Intentions Are But You Are Better Off Not Telling This Story Because You Have Not Said Anything That Confirms His Vast Wealth. There Must Be Someone Who Opened This Door For Him And He Is Probably Reprsenting Their Intrest.......i Beg Make You Play Another Tape, Dont Bore Me With Ur Zillionaire Friend..........aluta

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This is rubbish...highly concentrated and unadulterated drivel...That’s 2 minutes of my life wasted…:mad: :mad:

Yushau Shuaib, I think you have done your avaricious at 40 Pa Jimoh a great disservice. I hope he will be claiming his money back as well as suing you for the worst display of sycophancy I have ever encountered.

The kind of people our society celebrates...?!! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: Very worrying, very very worrying, indeed!! :confused1

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Ibrahim may be prudent in managing resources, but when it comes to competition, he could be daring to a fault. In his desire to ameliorate the suffering of his people, he contested for the governorship of Ondo State under the platform of ANPP in 2003. Apart from having invested in the local communities and donating to worthy causes in all the local government councils, he bought dozens of brand new luxury cars (Bora) and buses which he shared out for his campaign. Yet he lost to Chief Agagu of the PDP. He always laughs over the experience afterwards. But the fortune lost in that expedition was enormous.

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Yushua, u are so right about Jimoh, i remembered his Pastor and members of the Church he attends warning him that it is a wasted effort and that his Party cant win any seat. I was at his church for an annual function when he gave the Testimony about his campaign then, and the fact that if we the educated ones fail to come out and contest becos we are afraid, then we shld not complain when all manner of chalartans take over.

He is sure one hell of a guy. He is a dogged surefooted guy. And that is why Madam Oceanic --Mrs ibru can do business with him. His word is his bond.
He's also got good business acumen and makes use of connections in a good way. He is result oriented etc etc.

Nice write up about Jimoh Ibrahim.......well done Yushua

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E be like say de man wan contest again o. Are you his political consultant. Once a politician always a politician. Just like somebody said you have not written anything that is worth our time with this article. I won't be surprised if in the next dispensation the man is made a minister. A beg nack us better tori ojare.

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I join thousands of well wishers to say big congratulations to Mr. Jimoh Ibrahim on this occasion of 40th birthday.His is a story of a young man who is determined to make a name for himself as a rich and successful businessman offering employment and hope to his countrymen.He is a man who started from a humble beginning.He didn't inherit wealth,his father was a bricklayer. What he has achieved today is a result of his diligence and hardwork.
To those Nigerians in the phd(pull him down) school of thought, where were you when Jimoh as an undergraduate at OAU was busy organizing seminars and conference all across the country for top local government officials,thus making cool money for himself? Where were you when he sponsored himself through Harvard university for his graduate studies in International Tax Law and left with good grade? Where were you when he was consultant to the World Bank on sundry tax issues? Where were you when he was commissioned revenue collector for the Nigerian government? He started awarding scholarships to students of Ondo State origin more than 10 years ago when he was not even up to 30 years of age. Today,thousands of Nigerians are on his payroll as employees,thereby bringing succor to many Nigerian families.His is unlike many other Nigerian millionaires,he has a pedigree.I have no doubt that many of his critics were busy doing aluta in their various universities when Jimoh was busy strategising and making money. I witnessed his campaigns for the Ondo government house in 2003. He ran the most fanciful and issues-based campaigns.Even his rivals in that election,including the incumbent governor,Adefarati were amazed at his intelligence and thorough grasp of issues.He was 36 at that time.He lost not because he was not qualified,but because he was running on the platform of an unpopular party in the state,ANPP. Many Ondo citizens also believed was too young and that he would have another chance later in the future.and besides,the PDP guber candidate in that election,Dr.Olusegun Agagu is from the same local government with him.So also is the deputy governor at that time,Afolabi Iyantan.However,his message to the people was not lost.He left his name on their minds.I believe it his high time Nigerians stopped the act of pulling down fellow compatriots and give tribute to whom it is due.

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We’ve uncovered high level fraud in NICON Insurance – Jimoh Ibrahim

Unlike other billionaires and top business brass who have had wealth bequeathed on them by their lineage and parents, Barrister Jimoh Ibrahim, is the architect and the source of his wealth and fame, built through dint of hard work and the support of the Almighty. From scratch as a seminar organiser, Jimohs’ successes soared, and today he sits on top of a business empire spanning oil and gas, hotels, and recently NICON Insurance. In this exclusive chat with Daily Trust’s Abdulwahab Isa and Anas A. Galadima, the NICON GCEO unearthed details about himself and NICON Insurance as well as his support for General Buhari. Excerpts:
NITEL was eventually sold to Transcorp Plc last Mon day. I do know you were one of those that had indicated interest to acquire NITEL, infact you went as far as teeming with Ericson as technical partner. What made you drop the interest?
Thank you very much. The bid went through a selective process, and the cost of money to participate in such bid process is enormous, so you have to watch the cost. When government announced the intention to sell NITEL, the first thing I did was to write Ericson and they carried out an intelligence survey on me, that is the Ericson group, and they found me fit. When convinced they can partner with me because what I wanted is to take them as technical partner, by that arrangement, they were to supply the NITEL equipment and other installations that would make NITEL efficient. So, having gone through all my requests and proposal, they wrote me back saying it was okay by them. With that, it was good enough for us to win the bid, but after that again I went to England to essentially source funds, and I was to pay a consultant $75,000 to help source for a minimum of half a billion dollars to buy NITEL if we succeed in the bid. There are lots of financial consultants in England who are retired bankers .If you contact them they will charge their fees, and I think the condition the bank gave was that they will do direct remittance of the money to the federal government. But, unfortunately when we came back, Transcorp was already showing interest in buying it. The Transcorp is okay, so we had to withdraw, because if we should continue, the consultant will continue charging us more and more, and this will impact seriously on us.
Transcorp paid $750 million for NITEL, if you had stayed, how much would you have offered?
Actually I was thinking of bidding between $750 million and $800 million.
Do you have any regret for not acquiring NITEL?
No regret at all, no regret over NITEL, because it is just an opportunity for Transcorp to demonstrate their technical knowledge on how they can turn around the near moribund firm. So, I will be here to see how they transform NITEL.
Do you have shares in Transcorp, if yes what is the quantum?
No, no, I don’t have a single share in Transcorp.
But do you have confidence in them?
My confidence cannot change anything, the issue is that they have acquired it now, let them transform it, and let us have NITEL lines all over the 36 states of Nigeria. I am waiting to see that, so that I can study, and gain something very substantial from their expertise.
Do you consider the amount offered by Transcorp as being good enough for NITEL?
Well, in fairness, I don’t want to comment on that, but whether it is reasonable or not, let us forget about the price. The important thing we should be looking at is the transformation. I want to see how they effect it. When they eventually take over, they will discover what they didn’t expect. So, I am waiting to see their transformation, and that is what interests me in the entire process. I really want to see the transformation.
NICON Insurance has just acquired EAS airlines as NICON Airways. Can you throw more light on how the deal was consummated?
Like I said when I took over, we are here to transform NICON, and run it as a group of companies and not just NICON Insurance. We have just demonstrated that. We are not dealing only with insurance, we are dealing with a group. I think that is where we missed the point, which almost came up during the debate with NICON/NAICOM. It is the group thing that I am actually interested in, so now we have an airline (acquired) that I flew from Lagos to Abuja today, and it was a very pleasant flight. The pilot was very dedicated and I really enjoyed it. The important thing now is, we will transform EAS to a status of an international airline that reflects cultural values. I like to see somebody who boards NICON Airways from Kano to Lagos or from Sokoto, to be attended to by air hostesses dressed in Shari’a corporate dress, this is the cultural value I want to introduce. I want to see somebody who flies from Lagos to Abuja to be served by somebody dressed in traditional attires very much associated with those parts, so that these values can be restored. Above all, we want to invest in the safety department, so that Nigerians will begin to appreciate the fact that I can fly with my children, my wife, without any cause to fear. Really we want to start very seriously with the NICON Airways, and you know this is also another huge avenue to generate and create employment. You know we recently advertised for 1,000 vacancies in the NICON Insurance group, about 200 of those to be employed will be redeployed to work in NICON Airways ,either as baggage handling officers or air hostess or ticket officers, or in the marketing department. This, of course, clearly demonstrates that we are not interested in buying government properties alone. We could also buy private properties and turn it around. So, it is not every bid that has to be government, government. We have demonstrated that we are also moving to the private sector to demonstrate acquisition.
You talked of cultural values; do you intend to expand your coverage?
Yes. We are going to cover the entire nation before we embark on international flights. We are going to cover the entire Nigerian spectrum. You see, there is no reason why we should not have a flight going to Sokoto, why? The only reason is that people are taking short-cuts, you are feeling it is not profitable that is why. So, if you combine Lagos – Abuja – Sokoto, people will fly with you, it is a route you can develop. Nobody is doing that right now so we will develop that route. Now, again there is no reason why you cannot fly Ibadan. If you combine Lagos – Abuja – Ibadan, or you take off from Lagos you get passengers in Ibadan, and you take off from Ibadan to Lagos, so it is not a straight flight to Lagos from Abuja, but its a flight from Abuja to Ibadan then Ibadan to Lagos. That is how to develop a route. With that people will decide, that is exactly what we want to do, and we will also do international flights. What I want to do now, I will soon go on leave, and I am going to have meetings with owners of aircrafts around the world,to either do wet lease of aircraft ,and in that case you don’t pay one kobo. Wwe only make a little deposit and the plane comes with the pilot and the crew, which is very good. There is no stress at all in this arrangement, and even in this one we did not borrow to prosecute the deal, so obviously we don’t have any stress for immediate return of our money, so there is no accumulated interest. It is an investment we did within the group (NICON group).. If you have an investment of N10 billion and you have ten companies within the group, each subsidiary can cough out $100, that is that so you don’t have the urge to run to a bank that will demand of you a 50 percent interest rate.
What is the financial commitment from your end in the deal?
You know why I don’t want to disclose the figure, it is not good. The man is on his way to Saudi Arabia on lesser Hajj. It is not advisable or good on moral grounds. If it was before when I had not matured to this level, you know I will jut disclose it, but one grows with maturity everyday.
What is the percentage of your acquisition?
Controlling interest. We control both management and board.
The NICON group of companies, how many are currently in operation, and NICON energy ,I don’t know whether it has come on board?
What we want to do in NICON energy, we just take all the global fleet petrol stations, and convert them to NICON energy, and there are 203 of them scattered across the federation. The Insurance does not need to inject money there. The stations are already there, what we do is just brand them as NICON energy, and it becomes a company on its own.
What is the level of your equity in global oil fleet?
Of course I have almost 99 percent, but for some of the subsidiaries I may not have as much as that.
Since you took over the leadership of NICON Insurance, there are allegations that you shun claim payments of clients like NNPC, customs and INEC. Why are you not honouring your obligation when these firms paid their premium in time?
All these institutions you mentioned now, they don’t have claims. The only body that has claim is NNPC, and the claim is on fire and I met the claim unpaid. When I took over I requested an enquiry to be conducted, and it was discovered that the premium had not been paid at the time the fire incident occurred, and you know the law of insurance which says no premium no cover. But we overlooked that and decided to be friendly, and say let’s still pay them. Also when I came SOSOLISO airlines was insured, but it had crashed before I came, but they did not co-insure it. I still went ahead and paid. Government did not leave any money behind, for me to be using to pay claims. I have to generate the income and ensure I reduce the expenses to save. Now, you talked about INEC. INEC claim is pension. The pension INEC paid, they started paying pension when it was FEDECO . It was those pensions and that of others that they pooled to build this plaza. Now they are asking me to give them the entire pension in our kitty, is it possible? When this place was government controlled they could not collect this pension. It was government to government at that time. We told them that look, we are going to pay you when government remits to us. Go to the ministry of finance, and you will find out what was remitted to us. Infact, we discovered that what we have paid this year is far more than what was remitted to us. Where do you expect us to make the extra income, from the premium? What if claims arise? Why did government sell in the first instance? Government sold because in the first quarter of last year, going by the audited report, the premium raked in was N704 million for three months, salary was N99 million a month ,and times three that gives N360 million plus N300 million that is N660 million, total premium raked in N700 million. How can these continue for the next six months and I will not collapse. So, if we use all the premium income to do expenses and salary, what if claims now come. Somebody suddenly now experiences a crash, how do you pay? I had to personally appeal to one of our reinsurance partners abroad using my reputation and commitment ,that we will do business with them, to make sure they take reinsurance on NNPC after the fire incident had occurred. We got the money into our account that is their reinsurance portion we add our own and took it to NNPC and say this is your money. Unless the money is there you can’t go to NNPC, but the claim if it becomes compulsory that we must pay, NNPC knew that this fire had occurred before we paid to them. In the case of CBN the fire occurred, infact they never paid. They just paid premium just last week, and the fire took place in February. If we go strictly on no premium no cover, there will be a problem. Infact the renewal of insurance had not been completed when the fire occurred. So the insurance company can extinguish liabilities, but we said they are our client for several years, let’s accommodate them within and outside the law, because they are friendly with us. So, we are still going to pay for the fire incident in Ibadan even though the renewal of the insurance was not completed before the fire outbreak, and our premium was never paid until after five months after. But certainly you cannot run insurance business that way, I am sure you know. But if you don’t know you will say why is he not paying INEC. INEC has a pension here, by the time we set-up the Pension Fund Administration (PFA) here, any properties bought with pension money will be transferred to the PFA. Let the PFA sell and use the proceeds to pay the pension ,because we will run very well without it. But what I am doing right now is, if you have any profit you make, you pay the pension. We paid over N400 million recently and we are paying another N800 million very soon. So this is how it is. Where do we find money to pay for these pensions, if we did not invest in subsidiaries to see areas we can leverage. That is where investing in subsidiaries came. You see in developed countries, insurance is done by investing the premium. If the premium is quickly invested, it multiplies severally ,so that when claims arise you dispose off and quickly invest. But if you keep the premium in a bank it could be dangerous. For example somebody insured his car of N2.5 million for N3,000. Armed robbers made away with the car. The claim is N2.5, the premium is N3,000. The N3,000 is even kept in a bank at a ridiculous interest rate of three percent. How then do you pay the claims? You reinsured fine, but you own as pact ,how do you pay your own portion? So, by and large it requires a fair knowledge of enterprises to run such institutions. That is why I pity Transcorp and all they are going to do in NITEL, because NITEL must have land lines throughout the federation. We had our own vision for NITEL then, so I pity Transcorp.
You mean Transcorp has a lot of work to do?
Yes, they have a lot of work to do and then two, they must make significant impact within the next 12 months, otherwise they will be in trouble with Nigerians. If Adenuga can come and his mobile phone is okay, if MTN mobile phone is okay, then you must also work. So, NITEL will have to do something super to have an edge over these already established organisations. So, it must do something and where it should focus is the land line. If you can put landlines across the whole country and people are connected to the internet, so I want to see that commitment, who is going to do it, although they parade very brilliant chaps – Aliko and the rest. I want to see the MD doing something in that regard. Infact I will be the first to pay him a visit.
Let’s go to the in thing in the sector at the moment, recapitalisation. How many insurance firms have approached NICON for merger or acquisition?
It is not easy for the small animal to go to the lion. We did an advert that any firm that wants to be part of NICON Insurance should drop an application somewhere and we discuss it. We are ready.
And how many have responded?
We treated some of them about three of them, but they were not okay. Because one is completely distressed and we cannot even pay N1 for it ,not even 1 kobo. We want to restore the glory of this place. I want to return my shares in this place back to Nigerians. All the efforts I’m putting here by the time I’m selling off my shares, I would have gotten times two of my price, that is enough. I will now leave and return the shares back to Nigerians. I would have gained by selling my own shares times two of the price that I bought, so this place will become a public ownership. As for NICON Airways, two years maximum I am out. The way you plan to come in is the same way you plan your exit. The moment I came in, I am already planning when I am leaving, so when they bring an aircraft, we are doing well, safety is there, everything is fine we take it to the market, and they will have to select their board. You don’t run it as a family property.
Chief, let’s talk about the issue of staff gratuity with BPE. It was confirmed to us that while some staff were cleared, and their cheques released to them by BPE, some top management staff including the MD still have their gratuity cheques trapped in BPE, and that you manipulated and prevailed on BPE not to pay them, why are you involved with that when NICON which you bought excludes liabilities?
Well, I don’t know, they are free to use any language. How do I manipulate BPE not to pay? The money is not in my account, if the money is in my account is it logical to reason that I am earning interest on it. It is in the federal government account. They did governance audit and the outcome indicted some officers. They want the concerned officers to clear themselves before they are paid. I give you an example, some one came here to say he paid N3 million to NICON three years ago, and that one of the affected officers collected it. The officer first claimed he doesn’t know anything about it, but the man now wrote a letter and we confronted the officer with the letter ,and he quickly said, yes, oh I saw the cheque, then we asked him to show us where he paid the cheque to. He is still battling with it now. How do you clear such persons? Now, there was a reversal of a debit note that took out a billion naira in one year ,which put the account into negative, those officers that did that they should not be asked questions? Now somebody bought Oando Plc shares in the company’s name. The company paid for those shares, but the share certificate came in his personal name, he will not explain and reverse the share certificate back to the company’s name? If they go and all these were not collected, there is indemnity under the agreement of purchase that BPE will pay us. That is why BPE is holding them which perhaps is not clear to most of them. So, what happened is this, we said BPE come, you told us NICON has hectares of land in Ipaja area of Lagos state. We have checked through the file and no receipt of purchase for the land, and we went to Ipaja and officers from NICON claimed ignorance about the land, so the person will not account for it? If they cannot account for it then BPE will have to give us a cheque for that land. We have factored and quantified the land into the purchase price. There was a case where a house in Benin was sold off. BPE told us a house is available in Benin, but when we got there they said no house is available. We asked them there who sold? They said we should ask the legal department which said we should ask account, accounts said we should ask property. So, BPE paid us the value of that house. I give you an example, Alhaji Akor who was the DGM (Corporate Affairs), he was the first person I cleared. What is the business of the person issuing press releases to journalists? What has got to do with the governance audit? I did not see anything against him, so, I cleared him. His AGM, I don’t have anything against him I cleared him. Their job is to write releases and what press says about us, so they had been cleared and they are gone. DG of technical who should say something about reversal of debit note has an ED, when we gave him query he said he took instruction from ED as he was directed.The ED is still here, then we cleared him to go since the ED will be able to account for the actions. So, in what way are we holding their monies? If you are in account, how do I clear you? Again there was another case of N165 million deposited in one of the banks that went distressed (Lead bank). BPE was telling them to take the money, NICON Insurance had money there, NICON hotel had money there. When it was six months to the capitalisation deadline, NICON hotel collected their own, NICON Insurance did not collect. When we came in November we told them go and collect this money because this bank may not meet the new capital base, they left it there. So, when it was December and Soludo announced the bank went under, where do we get N160 something million from, because BPE told us that money was intact before we bought the company, we did not see the money, so BPE will pay
Has BPE agreed to pay?
Why won’t they agree to pay, but they said they have to question the officer who put the money there, to come and explain to them, and then you want me to pay their pensions. So, let’s be sincere to ourselves, how would we instigate BPE not to pay their pension. What will I do with their pension? I don’t need them here in the first instance, I advertised for 1,000 younger Nigerians who are coming here to run it, why do we need somebody who had put 28 years in service. Another person to be cleared now is GM marketing. His job is to go and book for business for us, why do you delay his pension. So, I looked at the report and it does not concern him, he is not my best of friends, but he has to be cleared. In any way in the purchase agreement we excluded staff pension liabilities to be strictly that of BPE. What we told BPE is that whatever you told us that were in the book of company before we bought, we must see them on ground.
There is this allegation that the former Legal Adviser of the corporation was a member of the consortium, Assurance acquisition Limited, a vehicle that was floated to bid for NICON. The man, being an insider of NICON Insurance gave you some effective and insider related tips, that aided you in acquiring NICON only for you to sideline him and others, and you even invited EFCC to swoop on him. How true is this?
The case is pending in court, I will not comment, but as for the company secretary, yes he told me of the big consortium that was failing. They put it together, NSITF was there, Afribank and they had started pulling out one by one before I took over the consortium ,and picked it up and injected life into it for the purpose of the bid and we bedded. I won’t go into the details. Now coming to the issue of EFCC, that is wrong. I would have said something about it, but since you asked me I will tell you. When I came, I checked through the files and saw the file of a subsidiary called NICON Hotel, and went to NICON Hotel, and while checking through the file of NICON Hotel I discovered Protea Hotel is a property of NICON, and it is owned by the company secretary. I said what is happening, he said it was true that it is NICON”s Property but he leased it. He hurriedly brought some cheques here which he did not pay for three years ,and he suddenly brought them. He said no, do you know what, after the lease, I bought back the hotel, then I asked where are the papers? Because federal governments still has 30 percent of the company, I don’t know who will come and rule Nigeria tomorrow because I don’t want trouble. I now wrote a letter to the police to investigate, because honestly I am disappointed. If something of such happened he should have confided in me and told me, and let me know instead of allowing me to be going through the file, and had started fingering other management members, only to discover I had a problem here. The police stepped in and wrote a report and referred it to EFCC. The matter was on, the three cheques, he postdated them to 2008. If you leased a hotel and you gave me a cheque postdated to 2007 and the hotel is fully booked, why don’t you pay me from the income you are making there now, must I suffer as the owner, while you are enjoying? After all of these he went to court without us knowing and procured an injunction restraining us from taking over the property. I saw it and respect the judge because the judge did not know the detail. The day we entered the court the injunction was discharged. We supposed to go straight and take over the property instantly but I didn’t, I left the matter to court to decide.
Let’s veer off to something personal. You stormed the business arena from a very obscure background. We would like to share from your experience. How did this journey that now ranks you among the top class in Nigeria start?
No, it is not so, it is just that NICON makes me to be visible. I have been in business for a very long time. When I was an NYSC member I built my four houses in Egbe (Lagos) that was 1991. I was running seminars for local governments in this country during the Ibrahim Babangida regime. Infact, I made my first several millions from organising seminars for local governments. I did 17 of such seminars during the Babangida regime. I was the one spearheading the seminar on Babangida’s reform agenda at the local government level at that time. If you check old copies of National Concord newspapers you will see all of these. I set up the Africa Centre for Policy Studies ,and started training all permanent secretaries in all states of the federation. I was behind it.. I built my first store in Idimu (Lagos). I opened the office of Africa Studies in 1993. This is 2006 but they were not news items that deserved a front page in newspapers at that time. It is just like any other person doing his job. I built my house in my village which today remains the biggest after that of Major General Bayowa in 1992 from the proceeds of the seminar. I bought my house in London in 1994. I bought four houses along the same street. For somebody to buy four houses in one street in London way back 1994, 11 years ago before I went to Harvard is significant. When I was in Harvard it was not in the pages of newspapers. When I came back, I was a consultant on tax to IMF on tax matters. I was in Bangladesh with HIID, Harvard Institute of International Development. But I wasn’t in the news all this while. When I came back to the country I set up my Global Oil Fleet. We are acquiring petrol filling stations. We advertised in newspapers asking who is interested in selling their filling stations, after I lost the election under ANPP as governorship candidate in Ondo. I wanted to set up Ondo oil, but converted that to Global Oil Fleet and gas, after losing that election. I now sold these houses in London, and brought the money back to Nigeria and borrowed N500 million from Oceanic Bank Plc to add to the £2 million (pounds) which was the proceeds of the London houses I sold, which is N1 billion to start the Global Oil and Gas Fleet business.
The Federal government is set to dispose of the refineries, since you are in to oil and gas are you bidding for one of them?
No, no, I am not buying refineries, because of the accompanying problems.
Is it that refineries are not viable?
They are viable, but I want to enjoy my life too, not to work and die as a slave. I told you I came in to business to exit. I don’t want business to kill me, I have five years to retire, and if I have five years to build NICON and retire, how would I build a refinery again. You know a refinery is not something you can take to the market to all its shares and all the four refineries are outdated. They are run on old mechanisms. If you want to do refineries today, do a mobile refinery that is plastic, they can be assembled anywhere.
And which one?
You should know the type of my acquisition. That which brings instant cash.
You contested for the position of governor of your state in 2003 and lost, do you consider that election a credible one, and again are you still eyeing that slot?
I contested for the governorship of Ondo state under the ANPP because I believed in it. Why I went to ANPP is because of General Buhari, the person whom I believe can bring changes and turn Nigeria around. The person that can deliver Nigeria is Buhari, and if he is still going to be in the race, I’m for him. If he said he is not contesting again, then I will not.
But Buhari has signified interest to run again.
Okay, I will support him.
Are you vying for governorship?
No, I am not vying for governor.
Don’t you think it will pitch you against the present administration for supporting Buhari? But the whole world knows Buhari is my candidate. Buhari was in my bedroom for four nights ,you think I will deny him now, it is not possible. I can only deny him in death not when he is alive. He has never visited anybody for four nights. You know he is a highly principled person. He was in my home town for four nights and i took him to the waterside, at a time when O’odua and all these militia said Buhari and Babangida cannot come. I postrated before them and said they should allow me because this one must come, and he came. In my polling booth, Buhari won and that was the booth I control. I believe in the capability of Olusegun Obasanjo to run the economy, and he has done very well, but if given a chance to select a successor for him, you already know, my hands are tied (general laughter).
Could you give a brief background on your family, who are your parents?
I was born into a Muslim family. My father is an Alhaji, he is a bricklayer, not a contractor, he plastered buildings. My mother is a farmer who sells fish by the river-side. I did my primary and secondary education in the village. I did not attend boarding school, and I had opportunity of cooking for my mum so that she can stay longer in the farm. After secondary school, I went for entrance examination for ‘A’ level, then called HSC and I came first. It was at this Federal School for Arts and science that I saw the good food served for those in the boarding house. Those foods, rice, beans were only eaten at home when we were sick (general laughter). I had 10 points in my ‘A’ level and got admission to LASU to study law ,but I was not too comfortable at LASU. I went to the late Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Mohammed Bello that I was not comfortable in LASU, and he gave me a note to Ife and gave me letter to Professor Fagbumi, and I transferred from LASU to Ife, and completed my law degree in Ife. I went to Law School and I returned to Ife for masters in public admin, because I was fully involved then in organising seminars. Then from there I went to Harvard, and when I came back I was consulting on tax matters. The then minister of state for finance Abu Gidado asked me to write a proposal on tax collection, and he is a cousin to Chief Justice Mohammed Bello.
TRUST IS A BURDEN
DAILY
TRUST

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If only the first two commentators on this thread were less personal in their comments about the author and the subject of his article, one might be inclined to take them serious.

Some of us need to polish-up our utterances and learn not to sound so recklessly shallow or irresponsible when we talk. That author did not do anyone any personal damage; he did not insult or attack anybody in any way.

Hence, our critique of his piece need to issues-based - highlighting the content of his article that we disagree with in an intelligent and respectable manner, such that he would have no qualms engaging us intellectually when he responds.

Better that than some blanket shoot-down of his piece by people who most-probably have NEVER contributed an intelligent article to this medium. The Nwadike!s, VillageHeadMasters and Paulos amongst us need to respect themselves and others when they opine in public space.

Auspicious.

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My office is close to Jimoh Ibrahim's head office in Lagos, I mean Global Fleet Head office inside Victoria Garden City and I know a bit about the man.
I know guys working with him, their monthly salary is not regular, then the amount fluctuates each month due to reductions and other unforseen factors, staff moral is extremely low and they don't have job security.
Some of the of his employees do have official cars ( Bora, Polo or Accent), each beneficiary pays about 40k at the end of every month from their salary to offset the car bill, the arrangement is that the car will be theirs after 4/5 yrs and I was told that if any of them resign before the 4/5 yrs period that Jimoh Ibrahim will collect his car back without any refund.
If anybody knows anybody that works with Global Fleet here in Nigeria should call them up to confirm.

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My office is close to Jimoh Ibrahim's head office in Lagos, I mean Global Fleet Head office inside Victoria Garden City and I know a bit about the man.
I know guys working with him, their monthly salary is not regular, then the amount fluctuates each month due to reductions and other unforseen factors, staff moral is extremely low and they don't have job security.
Some of the of his employees do have official cars ( Bora, Polo or Accent), each beneficiary pays about 40k at the end of every month from their salary to offset the car bill, the arrangement is that the car will be theirs after 4/5 yrs and I was told that if any of them resign before the 4/5 yrs period that Jimoh Ibrahim will collect his car back without any refund.
If anybody knows anybody that works with Global Fleet here in Nigeria should call them up to confirm.