El Rufai, Tunde Bakare and the groove from Timex Social Club By Reno Omokri

I never thought I would live to see the day that Sahara Reporters would publish a story alleging, together with supporting documents, that a person reputed to be one of its benefactors, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, the under-performing Governor of Kaduna State, has been systematically engaging in acts of corruption by way of awarding over-invoices contracts to his fronts, family, friends and cronies, without passing these contracts through the due process of tendering and public advertising.


Not only did I never think I would see such a day, I also did not believe that El-Rufai would turn around and accuse the website he had celebrated of lying and practising gutter journalism. Wonders shall never cease to happen!

But I have issues with El-Rufai’s contretemps with Sahara Reporters after his many long years of nuptial bliss with the notorious site.

My issue is not that El-Rufai spoke, tweeted and Facebooked against former President Jonathan and even my humble self during those times like a parrot that swallowed a dictionary of curse words!

Both Dr Jonathan and I have since moved on. Jonathan to international statesman status, I to a bestselling book. No, my issue is that having used and promoted many slanderous Sahara Reporters’ stories against the former President and me, this mischievous and femininely vindictive character now wants the world to join him in his unholy crusade to delegitimise that medium.

El-Rufai’s actions are pitiable. Obviously, he has never read the words of Nabi Suleiman (King Solomon in Christendom) which says “Whoever digs a pit will fall into it”-Proverbs 26:27.

That El-Rufai, the notorious disseminator of false information who has said false things about almost every noteworthy Nigerian that has held influence in the federal government at one time or the other, should call Sahara Reporters liars is rich, very rich indeed.

El-Rufai seems to think that you can sleep with a prostitute at night and deny her in the morning. That will be a very difficult venture for El-Rufai seeing as his fondness for the prostitute led to sweet and carnal moaning from their love nest which was so loud that all Nigerians could hear.

There are also some dots we can connect in this whole saga. Sahara Reporters’s exposition of El-Rufai’s alleged sordid corruption and his labyrinthine scheme (according to Sahara Reporters, not me) is coming as news that a major telecommunications firm is facing serious money troubles became public knowledge.

One can only hope that those who may or may not have lost huge sums of money in this telecommunications firm are not desperate to recover their lost monies from whatever avenues they can find.

I do not know who is or was behind a certain failed newspaper or this telecommunications outfit that is failing right before our very eyes, but assuming I was behind both ventures, I would not be in a position to boast about having any managerial or business acumen. Especially if I have made a mess of my present office and turned a once peaceful enclave into the most murderous place on planet earth.

Of course, I have been speaking hypothetically. Do not let your imaginations run wild!

And while we are on the subject of El-Rufai, I would like to talk about his very close friend, Tunde Bakare’s recent not-so-subtle attacks on the acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, who he accused of trying to outdo his ‘benefactor’.

Said Bakare, “The King may be cold, the king may need warmth, but the final authority is still in his hands. All the actors in the corridors of power can keep acting, but the residual power is still in the man who is cold.”

Not content,  he also said Adonijahs confuse birthright with leadership rights, and “assume that the next in line is automatically the next king, whenever the current king is no more”.

He then concluded by warning that Adonijah is more strategic than Absalom, that he connects himself with “Emirs, Kabiyesis, Obis…the chief of army staff,” but often has a hole in his armour, adding that the next in line is a “show-off”.

For those not familiar with Tunde Bakare, let me introduce you to him. He is the man who famously prophesied that the prophetic axe would fall on former President Olusegun Obasanjo before his swearing-in on May 29, 1999.

His exact words on March 7, 1999 were:

“Rejoice not oh land, or your joy will be temporary. For I am bringing the nation – Nigeria, the rulers, the priests and the prophets there to my threshing floor. I will judge Saul and his comrades, and after I have finished my purging, then I will restore to you permanent joy” Obasanjo is not your messiah. He is King Agag and the prophetic axe will fall upon his head before May 29.

It is not my place to question Mr Bakare’s prophecies. Romans 14:4 says, “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.”

However, my response to Tunde Bakare on his shading of acting President Osinbajo is this: If Osinbajo’s ‘show off’ is leading to the appreciation of the Naira, the reduction in the price of diesel, the availability of petrol and the prompt payment of salaries, then not only Osinbajo but every elected politician should show off.

By the way, Muhammadu Buhari ran with Tunde Bakare and lost, then he ran with Osinbajo and won. Maybe if Tunde Bakare had “shown off” he would not have lost the election for Buhari!

Tunde Bakare perhaps can now see that he may not have been wrong when he said in The Punch Newspapers of Monday, October 2, 2006 that “Let me tell you the truth by the Spirit of God, neither OBJ, Atiku, IBB and this tall one, Buhari are part of the new. They are part of the old that is decaying. That old one is passing away. The new is emerging and these ones are not part of that new.”

Bakare himself confessed with his mouth that President Muhammadu Buhari is not “part of the new”. He says the Holy Spirit told him this. If what he said in 2006 was indeed given to him by the Holy Spirit, as he claims, then why is he in 2017 fighting for the man that the Holy Spirit, according to him, revealed was part of Nigeria’s “decaying” past? Why is he fighting against a new political blood like the acting President?

When you marry what Tunde Bakare said in 2006 with what he said last Sunday (June 18, 2017), there is a disconnect, there are discrepancies, there are contradictions. And what does the word of God say in 1 Corinthians 14:33? “God is not the author of confusion.”

How can the Holy Spirit reveal Muhammadu Buhari to you as part of Nigeria’s decaying past and you, the vehicle through whom The Holy Spirit gave us this message, are trying to shove the decaying matter (according to Bakare not Mr) down our throats?

Is Tunde Bakare in the habit of feeding his own children food that is rotten, “old” and “decaying”? I am guessing no. Then why does he want us to eat what he does not feed his children?

When I was a boy, there was a major hit song titled ‘Rumors’ performed by a group known as ‘Timex Social Club’.

Some of the lyrics of the song went thus:

‘How do rumours get started, they’re started by the jealous people and they get mad seein’ somethin’ they had and somebody else is holdin’

I highly recommend this song to Tunde Bakare. It was tailor-made for him. He is starting a rumour about the acting President wanting to usurp the Presidency by outperforming his boss and “benefactor”.

Why is he doing it? Because he wanted to be Vice President to Muhammadu Buhari but unfortunately their joint ticket lost in 2011.

Why is he jealous? Because the acting President has something he wanted but did not get.

Thank you, Timex Social Club for simplifying what would have been very difficult for some to understand.

The funniest thing to me is that had it been that the acting President had not done all the consultations he has been and is still doing in the wake of the quit notice given to the Igbo, it is precisely characters like Tunde Bakare that would have criticised him for being inept and letting down his ‘benefactor’, but now that he has shown that he is up to the task of leadership, he is being accused of outshining his boss. Let me, however, assure Tunde Bakare et al that it is not hard to ‘outperform’ President Buhari. I have a 12-year-old daughter. I bet she can also outperform him.

Now, I am a known admirer of the acting President, but I must say this to him. When Professor Yemi Osinbajo warns that the Federal Government will deal with those making hate speeches, I hope the acting President knows his boss and “benefactor” is guilty?

President Muhammadu Buhari’s 5% versus 97% D.C. speech marked the beginning of hate speeches in this dispensation.  Before that, he was guilty of hate speech when he threatened that both the “baboon and the dog will be soaked in blood”.

Fish starts to get rotten from the head. When a nation is led by a hate speaker, should anyone be surprised when the led begin to act like him?

And let me close this piece with the way I began, with Sahara Reporters.

Lai Mohammed says President  Muhammadu Buhari talks to acting President Professor Yemi Osinbajo everyday,  meanwhile Sahara Reporters, once Lai Mohammed and the All Progressives Congress’ favourite news medium, reported recently that President Buhari has not spoken to Osinbajo since he left Nigeria for London, U.K. on the 7th of May, 2017.

Who do Nigerians now believe between Lai and Sahara Reporters? I would like to believe Lai, but my mind finds it hard to believe a man who said that President Buhari has fulfilled his campaign promises or that the Whistle-Blower policy has generated $8 billion within two months or that the President is ‘hale and hearty’ or that dressing up a single masquerade can provide a thousand jobs or that the herdsmen killing Nigerians are from Mauritius. The truth is that even when I want to believe Lai, he makes it hard for me to do so.

And yes, you read me right. Lai Mohammed actually claimed that the Whistle-Blower policy has generated $8 billion within two months.

In fact, his exact words were, “Within two months of our whistle-blower policy, we retrieved $8 billion”.

Lai, easy with these lies, remember YOU ARE FASTING! If not that The Bible established that Satan is the father of lies, I would have thought that Lai was Lie’s father and wished him a happy Father’s Day yesterday! I think it is high time we did a DNA testing on lies to determine who is their real biological father between Lai Mohammed and Satan.

My readers would be pleased to know that the hardback edition of my book, Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years, Chibok, 2015 and the Conspiracies, is out. And Amazon has put a certificate on the front cover certifying the book as a #1 Amazon Bestseller! Thank you! You made it happen. You can purchase the book directly from Amazon or from my website renoomokri dot org.