Haba, Bode George!
Old man Bode George, retired one-star general of the Nigerian Navy, may be a professed Christian. But he appears hardly sold on the scriptural injunction that man does not live
Old man Bode George, retired one-star general of the Nigerian Navy, may be a professed Christian. But he appears hardly sold on the scriptural injunction that man does not live by bread alone.
Or how does Hardball figure out his plea that First Lady Oluremi Tinubu divert the fund she helped to raise to complete the stalled National Library of Nigeria (NIN) project, to feed the masses? That project was started in 2006 but has since been stalled.
Mrs. Tinubu had, at her 65th birthday, launched the “Oluremi Tinubu @65 Education Trust Fund”. She had directed her friends and well-wishers to put whatever they had budgeted for her birthday gifts, and for newspaper/TV congratulatory adverts into that fund.
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It was to her a scandal – and rightly so – that an NIN Project, started under President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2006, was still stuck. By September 2025, the Trust Fund had raised N20.4 billion. When 2025 ended, it had crested at N25.5 billion. Noble cause!
But see what rtd. Commodore Olabode George is ogling the money for: “I begged the first lady, I am still begging her: turn that money, give it out to the national government and that should be the beginning of welfarism for the poor people, skill acquisition programme and micro-credit for these people.”
He further told “The Legacy Series” – the platform itself is a piquant irony, for George’s diversion of library money to feed the masses is no legacy thinking – that while NIN is a “noble, long-term project”, the immediate focus should be the plight of many Nigerians “who are currently facing severe economic hardship, hunger, and high food costs.”
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Applause! Applause! Applause! – for His Excellency, “Ogagun” – General – George, the latest “Ebi npawon” – they are hungry – Ambassador in town!
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This “Georgian” doctrine? Feed the stomach, starve the mind. But if you don’t feed the mind, how do the beloved masses of Bode George systemically break the chain of poverty and want? What subversive populism!
Still: the nitty-gritty. First, what happened to good, old fidelity? Mrs. Tinubu called for donations for NIN. So, she’s at liberty to just switch the donation; and imperiously pump the cash into stomach infrastructure? Is it some military regime then? No wonder military rule was a catastrophe in Nigeria!
Then, President Obasanjo shoved NIN – under his care – aside: to harvest “donations” to build a private library to milk him fresh coins in retirement. Did George – Obasanjo’s viceroy in the Lagos PDP to subvert the Tinubu governorship – ever tell Obasanjo to abort that selfish project to “feed the masses”?
This suggestion is as hare-brained as they come. But then, it’s an accurate pointer to the confused opposition toward 2027: wild populism and empty bluster from a harried breed that has hardly thought through anything!
