As stated two weeks ago, since unlike Abiola he had no issues with Almighty God, the results of the June 12 election would not have been cancelled.
Sina Adedipe
After I had taken the steps disclosed last week to get northern chieftains supporting Chief Moshood Abiola to ensure that their delegates voted for him, in spite of the N150 million General Ibrahim Babangida reportedly sent to undermine him, I then reached out to Yoruba leaders at the convention of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Jos in March 1993. I did this by sending a message on his sinister plot through a staff of Concord Press to Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu, the leader of the delegates from Oyo State supporting Abiola, requesting him to contact his counterparts from Ondo, Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Kwara and Kogi States on the Babangida ploy.
2019 Poll: Atiku is God’s choice, but has to meet conditions
I informed Adedibu of my message to pro-Abiola leaders in the North and that they had started acting on it and that he could send people to them to verify my story. I impressed it on him that given the new situation, the only thing Yoruba leaders could do to make Abiola win the first ballot or come second, was that his supporters from the five states in the South-West and those from Kwara and Kogi States, must not honour the agreement reached with General Shehu Yar’Adua’s group the previous day, by not voting for Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
I told him that if the Yoruba delegates voted for him, he or Kingibe would come either first or second, with Abiola placing third. And that if the winner did not score enough votes and there had to be a second ballot, that it was Abiola who would have to give way to Atiku to challenge Kingibe.
It was because Adedibu acted on my advice and reached out to his colleagues that made pro-Abiola delegates from Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Kwara and Kogi States, not to have picked Atiku as one of the three candidates they voted for during the first ballot. Abiola won with 3, 617 votes, followed by Kingibe with 3, 225 and Atiku 2, 066. Since there was no outright victor, Atiku had to step down for Abiola during the run-off election against Kingibe. Abiola triumphed with 2, 683 votes to Kingibe’s 2, 256 to emerge the party’s candidate. Without Atiku withdrawing for him, Kingibe would have won the SDP primaries.
Just as Abiola won the presidential election on June 12, Atiku too would have defeated Alhaji Bashir Othman Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC) if he was the one who was victorious during the SDP primaries. As stated two weeks ago, since unlike Abiola he had no issues with Almighty God, the results of the June 12 election would not have been cancelled.
So, it is to compensate Atiku for stopping him from becoming president 25 years ago that made the Heavenly Father to choose and send me to him on September 14, 2017 as His candidate for the February 16, 2019 presidential election.
It is instructive that I, whom the Ancient of Days used in preventing Atiku from winning the SDP primaries in 1993 is the person He chose to inform him that his time has come to be the country’s President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Services, if unlike Abiola he does not mishandle his opportunity before or after election.
Next week: My reply to those who say that President Buhari is a cult hero leader in the North and as someone forthrightly fighting corruption that Atiku cannot defeat him in the 2019 election.
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ERRATA
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was born on March 29, 1952, a Saturday, not in 1953, a Sunday, as I had it in last week’s column. The present Deji of Akure, His Royal Majesty Ogunlade Adelusi Aladetoyinbo, Odundun II and High Chief Olusegun Adedipe, the current Elemo of Akure are also not the first cousins in the Deji’s Council.
They were preceded by His Royal Majesty Adebiyi Adegboye Adesida, Afunbiowo II (September 2010 – December 2013) and my immediate younger half-brother, High Chief Adeyemi Olufemi Adedipe, the Aro of Akure (January 2012 – June 10, 2013).
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Ayodele Adedipe, a huge loss to our family
Cousin Ayo who joined the Saints Triumphant on Wednesday, October 31 and was laid to rest last week Friday, December 21 at the Ikoyi cemetery, Lagos was the second – born of the five children of Mr. John Bankole Adedipe (1891 – 1983), but the eldest of his four sons. Pa Bankole or Pa Joseph Street (on Lagos Island) as he was fondly called, a graduate of St. Andrews College, Oyo, a teacher training institution, moved to Lagos in the early 1920s, blazing the trail as the first in the Elemo Adedipe family of Akure to visit and also live in Lagos.
He was first a clerk at the Nigerian Railways and later taught at the Baptist Academy, a secondary school in the Obanikoro area of mainland Lagos. A number of people in our family, the children of his brothers and sisters including myself, lived with him at different times in our youth.
As was seen in the series on our extended family, many members of the Elemo Adedipe dynasty are very brilliant people, producing six professors and more graduate professionals in any calling and a greater number of university degree holders than any other family in Akure. Cousin Ayo was one of the cleverest in the family and one who would have become a professor if he had been interested in reaching such academic heights.
Born on Lagos Island on Tuesday, July 24, 1934 when his dad was living in Tokunbo Street, he went to the best institutions in the city and country starting his primary education at Government School, Epetedo on Lagos Island. He moved over to Kings College, Lagos in 1949 on full boarding scholarship and passed out in 1953 with a Grade One certificate.
He was also on Federal Government scholarship at the Nigerian College of Arts and Science, Ibadan (now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife), where he was admitted in 1954 as a pioneer student in the Department of Pharmacy. It was the only institution where the subject was taught in Nigeria at the time. He graduated with a second class upper degree in 1958.
In 1963, when he was a pharmacist at the General Hospital, Broad Street, Lagos which he joined in 1960, as an exceptionally brilliant person he won a British Commonwealth Scholarship to undergo internship as a production pharmacist for six months with Boots Pure Drugs Company in Beeston, Nottingham, England.
The story continues next Wednesday