When Chief Olusegun Obasanjo became President of Nigeria in May 1999, he promised to exorcise the demon of corruption from Nigeria. In fact, he vowed to step on toes, however big their inner bones.

Less than a year after he left office, however, the cartilage in his toes cannot withstand the weight of embarrassment on it. This is because, the new administration has found a lot of things wrong with the way Obasanjo sold off the nation’s assets. For this reason, some of those transactions are being reversed by the new government.

The Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Mill is one of such national assets, the concessioning of which the new government has reversed. And we predicted it. In our 11 February 2008 edition, we leaked the report of the panel, set up by Steel Minister, Sarafa Isola, to the public.

In that story, entitled, “Nigerians, You’ve Been Defrauded,” this magazine quoted from the report and affirmed that the concession agreement between the Federal Government and GIHL “was purposely skewed against the Federal Government of Nigeria from the beginning, causing unquantifiable losses to the FGN and leaving GIHL with monumental economic leverages.”

Now there seems to be a plague upon Obasanjo’s house, apologies to Williams Shakespeare. A scandal broke out last Wednesday, involving the former President’s daughter, Iyabo Obasanjo, now a Senator of the Federal Republic. The House of Representatives panel probing contracts in the power sector linked Iyabo to a N4.1 billion contract scandal. But it is just one of the many scandals–political, financial and personal–that have turned the former president’s daughter into a headline-generating machine. What are the details of these? We provide the answer in this cover story, written by OLUOKUN AYORINDE, our Abuja Bureau Chief.

********************************

Now this. When we celebrated our 15th anniversary last week, my colleague, Comfort Obi, publisher of The Source, had an urgent engagement which did not allow her to attend. She sent her apologies through our General Editor, Ademola Adegbamigbe, when they ran into each other on Saturday 29 March at OPIC Plaza, Maryland, Lagos.

“Tell Bayo that I am sorry I could not attend,” she told Adegbamigbe. “But I will send something.”
She actually did. She sent a big birthday cake to TheNEWS. We are grateful to this good-natured woman.