Joseph Edgar

It’s beginning to look like my quip on Reno Omokhiri the loose mouthed Social media warrior in my Colunm today in Thisday was easily the most popular.

The Colunm contained about 9 stories. Cardoso the CBN Governor and his brother the Finance Minister Wale Edun was the lead, It also carried some equally beautiful write ups on the controversial Pastor Tobi of London and also the story of Pastor Adefarasin who allegedly attacked a commercial bus for daring to scratch his car according to reports.

But it seemed the Reno one carried the candle. I have received feedback from all over the world thanking me for a job welldone. Some feedback came with avowed tiredness from his continuing hatchet job and gratitude for standing up to the bully.

I have tried to ignore Reno as I do not see him as a serious commentator. I see him as a verbal mercenary who will jump on any issue as long as he is well compensated and people like this only just cause confusion as they plod along for a morsel.

I still remember his anti tinubu stance at the early stage of the campaign and how he stormed London dressed like SIMON Templer and calling Tinubu ‘Ole’ amongst other derogatory names.

How he got his Paul of Tarsus moment where he suddenly saw the light beats me. Today he is more loyal than Remi Tinubu who warms the Presidents bed.

His attack on MTN riled me. It annoyed millions of Nigerians at the crass ignorance he displayed. Not understanding the issues or choosing to ignore them as he pranced about making very infantile assertions hoping to sway public opinion against the grain of facts

How would u say that Nigeria shd protect a debtor firm against a foreign firm just for nationalistic purposes. This assertion is as stupid as stupid can be.

A debt that I have heard is in excess of N10b? Reno now wants us to ignore that for patriotic reasons cos according to him South Africa would have done so?

The firm he is siding is not even as Nigerian as MTN. The facts are stated in my Thisday Colunm. MTN has paid trillions into state coffers as tax, employed thousands of Nigerians and much more importantly is owned 30% by Nigerians as against his preferred Nigerian entity with just one man ownership without any credible financial reports ever released.

Reno now wants us to ignore the N10b so that when next President Tinubu is on his marketing jaunts abroad looking for investors, they will remind him of MTNs N10b which has not been paid.

Instead of Reno to plead with his principal to go offset the debt so as to shore up his credibility, he is now trying to guilt trip MTN that has invested so much on infrastructure amongst others in an environment where other foreign investors are running from.

Reno is dangerous for the country’s continued stability. People like him who earn a living by selling falsehood shd really be exposed for what they are – intellectual barbarians and wicked vultures who wish us all dead so they can feed on our corpses

We must begin to enlighten our people so that they will be able to discern issues thereby building a bulwark against charlatans like Reno.

This is a must, if we must retain any hope of rebuilding this country because sadly, Reno is not alone in this develish work.

Pharaohs like him abound the firmament and only truth and enlightenment can eradicate their vile odour. We must scatter them the way insecticides scatter rodents in our kitchen so that they do not poison our food and leave us sick.

Reno to me is a cockroach, a very ugly one for that matter

Thanks

Duke of Shomolu

I have just come out of an interesting session with a very brilliant team from the Pan African University. I dont know how they know me o but found me a worthy subject of a very seminal research paper.

They wanted to gauge the role of social media in combating corruption or something along those lines. I didn’t take them seriously simply because these people come at me and I tell them my mind and they find it very odious and end up not using my thoughts .

But Dr Odoh was very persistent, as all my attempts at dodging including pretending that the network was not working fell on deaf ears. She pushed and pushed and pushed and finally she got me.

Edgar, what is your take on corruption she fired.. I responded, my sister we are all thieves. She smiled and looked towards her colleague who was struggling with his ear piece.

I continued, every Nigerian is a thief simple. The problem is that we tend to play the ostrich game and say ohh it’s Government and it’s officials that are corrupt.

Big fat lie. All 200m of us are thieves and are corrupt. Corruption is the most democratised and universally spread ethos in Nigeria today.

Blaming Government alone is just a very terrible sign of a national collective push towards denial. The society is corrupt and it is from this pool of corruption that we select our leaders.

I always laugh when we rail against corruption in government and the next minute rush to your Senator and expect him to pay your children’s school fees or pay the maternity bill of your thrid wife or help u cure ur venral disease.

It is this pressure that leads to them stealing cos if they don’t settle their constituents, their career is gone.. So it is only the very stupid ones from us and we are plenty, that will stand and be shouting-war against corruption.

Can you wage a war against yourself,,? Corruption is now more than ever before ingrained in our psyche, systems, institions , ethos and our culture.

Corruption is Nigerian and we must accept it for what it is, a part of our lives, a mainstay and the only thing that welds us together as a people.

Corruption is a unifying factor. It brings all tribes together in unity as we pilfer and steal. Did you see the tribes that were involved in the Betty Edu malfeasance? Almost every tribe and tongue was represented.

I told them that corruption was OK but that the issue was that it conveyed undue advantage to those who either by status, stature and financial position where positioned for it.

Once that advantage is removed everything will be perfect. It is in this guise that we would need to regulate and manage it.

It is a cancer, it has no cure all we can do is to learn to live with it. Give everybody access to corruption. Don’t do different rules for everybody, let all of us have the ability to bribe police, beat up a judge for a funny ruling and settle referee in a football match and you will see how everything will calm down.

They now asked me what role I thought social media would play in all these and I shouted.

Social media in the hands of a barely literate population is the worse thing that has ever happened to this country since Dimka killed Murtala Mohammed.

When people who cannot dimension issues are given power by virtue of N100 data, what you see is chaos and anarchy. I asked them to go to the comment sections of any major blog and they will see madness.

What we now have are virtual mobs roaming the cyber world, bullying people and weakening institutions. You begin to see court judgements leaning towards social media pressure, Government officials reacting or creating policies to either abate or curry social media to the point that an actress with no real experience in governance or a firm grasp of issues attempting to parley her huge following into power.

My people, at the end, I told these egg heads from this great university, that their questioning was wrong and would not achieve any purpose if they began like d rest of society to hold out Government as the citadel of corruption with an exclusive monopoly.

I told them that we must begin to reorientate society so that we will all agree that we are all corrupt and then begin to push in education and enlightenment so that self regulation will kick in.

I added dt we may not see results in our lifetime but we must start and it behoves on schools like the Pan African University to lead the push and come down from its high horses and lead the push for self enlightenment of the people with the hope that just may be we would be able to begin to change the narrative ever so slowly

But for now, I assured them that we are all corrupt including them interviewing me and the sooner we all agree to this fact the better for us.

Thank you

Duke of Shomolu

Last night the king assembled his people and we all answered. From captains of industry, to celebrities down to normal people we all filled up the giant bowl of the Eko Convention Centre dressed in our fineries to pay homage to the longest reigning king of anything in the entertainment industry.

He had a full schedule and as usual started late. While we were waiting for the show to start, I started walking the room as I am want to be.

Everybody was there, from my brother retired Air Marshall Makinde who came with all of his family, to my other egbon President of Naccima Dele Oye and his brother and my brother Olumide Aju SAN dressed like an NBA Basketballer out on the night.

The celebrities were too much, I lost count. Okey Bakassi, RMD, Shola Shobowale, hilda Dokubo, Dayo D One, AY to name a few.

As I walked the room, I saw Jim Ovia the founder of giant Zenith, my brother Yemi Odusanya ED at Keystone, Emma Onokpasa ED at Nova who just got a new MD the brilliant Wale Oyedeji who was my primary and secondary school colleague and a host of big bankers.

I chatted with the celestially brilliant Dr Tope Fasoranti ED at Zenith who was in front and laughed and bantered with Ade Adefeko Director at massive Olams and his beautiful wife on the table.

This concert was huge, one could only imagine it’s budget. The big jeep giveaway standing in the full glare of the public and a vast array of wannabe comedians battling for the full prize.

The show started with a very beautiful and jazzy rendition of the National Anthem which made us all very proud to be Nigerians and we all stood up with mouth open unlike how the Americans would do with their own. You know those ones will stand with hands on their chest and be doing like they will beat you if u interfere.

We, we stood with mouth open, some people with hands on their heads all in awe with the way these four youths were belting out the anthem in a manner that even Awo would wake up from his grave if he had assurances that he would not be kidnapped if he came.

The economics of Alibaba’s Jan 1 show should really be studied.. The job opportunities to the many direct and indirect workforce, the galvanisation of resources, it’s impact on hospitality, media, logistics, the beverage industry, Fashion, equipment hiring amongst others can only be imagined.

I have made it a point of note to sit down with him to look at the figures. I only hope that the authorities would also perfect a way of measuring the economic impact of huge shows like this to the economy so that they can better align with it and use it to project economic growth.

This December, it was as if the whole world assembled in Lagos. Huge concerts, carnivals and even churches joined in the jamboree.

The Lagos State Government and the NBS should come up with a way of quantitively measure its impact on strategic sectors of the economy for easy alignment to its economic goals.

The massive movement of people, leading to the full utilisation of the about 2,000 hotel rooms in Lagos throwing up a gross inadequacy in that sector

Back to Alibaba’s show, looking around me and hazarding a guess, I would say that show would have generated at least N100m in spend and collections.

This is not for the tax man to chase him and even if they did, that would be wonderful but it’s to show the depth of impact to the economy the show and indeed all other shows would have made.

The quantum of drinks sold, the quantums of hotel rooms taken, the quantums of fuel bought to power the cars that came, the quantums spent on uber and other taxis, the quantum spent on diesel to power the hall, the quantums spent on fashion for those who attended and performed, the quantums spent on logistics to ferry the artists to and from their destination?

One can only imagine. The hall took all 6,000 of us and more and you can imagine the impact on the visibility of the sponsors which were plenty and which made me green with envy.

Sponsors must also be able to quantify their benefits at the end of the day. Hopefully many bottles of beverages were moved, how many bank accounts where opened, how many airline tickets were sold so that conversations around sponsorships would move from – man know man to very serious transactional levels.

Alibabas show of yesterday if carefully curated would have delivered at least 5% 0f that days sales on each of the sponsors figures judging by the quantums moved.

The show itself was better than last year although it still had its flat moments. One still felt that Ali in some instances designed a show he would personally love and not what the audience really wanted

The cowboy singer although was magic was Ali forcing his personal choices on us but then again he is the king.

The spontaneity part of it is also a problem. Much as I understand it’s vision which is to groom replacements and give them a platform, wrapping such a huge show around it may spell doom for it.

One of the Bank Directors lamented very seriously about the ‘dryness’ of that part of the show and I want to agree. Eko Convention centre is the Premiership, that venue cannot be for amateurs.

I think Ali should have done them at the Muson like he normally does and brings only the very best to perform well rehearsed routines and not the spontaneous thing that saw them belting out very flat jokes to a premium audience.

80% of the renditions were flat and more experienced comedians like Koffi da Guru, Tee A and the rest were left to just compere. I slept off and must have missed the black comedian who I heard was the highlight.

Apart for this glitch, I give the organisers a 4 star rating. It was well organised, although started a bit late, everything afterwards went smoothly.

Acts were fluidly interchanged on stage, ticketing was perfect outside, tables were well arranged making it very easy to identify your spot, light food and drinks were efficiently distributed without disruptions to the show and the sound did it for me.

The sound was world class. The mics amplified the performances to the point that when the man was doing the R. Kelly medley, I wept.

Alibaba with this show has extended his reign as king of comedy but he must begin not to take the market for granted less the market reacts negatively.

He must begin to redesign his show to reflect the current tastes and appetite of his audience. He must also
begin to redesign this show to stay true to its calling – a mecca for comedy and not a training school for budding comedians

The Muson Centre can be their jamb classes but the January 1st show is the world cup final.. It’s the show that sets up the year and it must be respected and treated as such–the mecca for comedy.

I give this one 4 stars.

Thank you

Duke of Shomolu

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