Questions for renaissance professionals

While not holding brief for either the CBN governor or Governor Saraki, it will be an assault on our collective intelligence to ignore a shouting flaw in Renaissance Professionals’ allegation. First, Renaissance Professionals made us know that Shongai farms, the company Lai Alabi once chaired, was Saraki’s private company. The activities of Shongai farms as […]

While not holding brief for either the CBN governor or Governor Saraki, it will be an assault on our collective intelligence to ignore a shouting flaw in Renaissance Professionals’ allegation.

First, Renaissance Professionals made us know that Shongai farms, the company Lai Alabi once chaired, was Saraki’s private company. The activities of Shongai farms as a Kwara State government project have never been hidden from the public. The company is Kwara State government-owned and not Bukola Saraki’s private company. Their activities are well reported in the media. Many Nigerian media have, times without number, reviewed Governor Saraki’s agricultural revolution in Kwara State, a feat that has fetched him many awards.

Renaissance Professionals would have saved themselves a lot of embarrassment if they had spared the time to do a little research on the man Lai Alabi, but their inordinate desire to pull down the CBN governor did not allow them to do so. I am an indigene of Kwara State like Lai Alabi and Bukola Saraki, even though I have never met any of them. With the unceremonious exit of Femi Adekanye years back, and with the likes of G.O Afolayan, Samuel Ereola Kolawole and Aliyu Kola Belgore gradually bowing out of the Nigerian financial system, Lai Alabi, an astute banker of national repute and a former Executive Director of Union Bank, is arguably Kwara’s most senior citizen in the financial sector. Choosing such an experienced professional to come and assist in the economic development of his state by piloting the state government’s agricultural project, the Shongai farms, is therefore only reasonable. Renaissance professionals did not bother to crosscheck their facts before sending them to the newspapers.

The Ikeja group also shot themselves in the feet by reminding us that Lai Alabi did similar job for Wema and Spring banks, in a bid to label him an ‘expert undertaker’ rather than a turn-around expert that he is. Pray, was Soludo also acting Bukola Saraki’s  script when he appointed Alabi the turn-around MD of Wema bank? Is that not an indication that Soludo, like Sanusi, also recognized Alabi’s turn-around expertise?  Was Bukola Saraki the one that introduced Lai Alabi to Soludo too?

I don’t have any problem with Renaissance Professionals’ fault-finding mission  as a fight back for one(or more) of their own that has gone with Hurricane Sanusi, at least it will keep the CBN governor on his toes and make him carefully watch his subsequent actions, but they should remember that the people reading them are not fools. We are people that also follow events independently and some of us cannot fold our arms and swallow their half-truths.  If we must criticize, then we must do so with undistorted facts.

Suraj Oyewale, Dideolu Estate, off Ligali Ayorinde Street, Victoria Island, Lagos