Thread by @RealOlaudah

Everything about the BAT seems to be shrouded in some form of mystery or another.
His place of birth, his biological parents, his marriage(s), the schools he attended, the companies he worked at etc.

His online biography page says he was born in 1952 and left for the US in 1975 for higher education, this would mean that he completed secondary education at the age of 23, this is improbable for a student schooling in Lagos at that time.

Or we assume that he finished secondary school by 18 years but left for the US at 23 years old. So for those 5 years what exactly was he doing?
Learning a trade? Working in an office or factory ?

Unlike other Yoruba legends that spent some time in Lagos like Ebenezer Obey, MKO etc there's hardly anyone that can recant ever spending their childhood with this strange man, either in school or in a factory or in a Quranic school and not even in the market where his "mother"..

sold things. Didn't he have childhood friends, acquaintances and class mates or even teachers that remember him.

Matter of fact his weird online biography does not show he attended secondary school in Nigeria, the biography suggests that the Richard Dailey College Chicago was his secondary school, meaning he started secondary education at the age of 23!

Curiously by 1979, 4 years after he started secondary education in Richard Dailey College he already completed his accounting degree in Chicago State University.

His online Biography claims he returned to Nigeria in 1983 just 4 yrs after he bagged his accounting degree, and from the same biography in just 4 yrs he had worked for 4 American companies! How that happened for someone in a sensitive unit such as accounting is itself a mystery.

Again till date I have not read of any human being that claims to remember working with him in any of those 4 American companies, besides there's not even been a single picture of him working in an office; no picture of his graduation nor of his time in school, probably like...

his leader in Aso rock "his pictures are with the Accountants' Board ".
Another intriguing aspect of his online biography is his married life. Back in those days, a 23 year old Yoruba man would probably be married especially when he had no encumbrances.

So let's assume he left Nigeria unmarried and came back in 1983 at the age of 31 still unmarried, and now as an executive officer in Mobil Nigeria. At what point did he get married? Evidently he was married to another woman before Remi, why is the other woman shrouded in secrecy?

By Islamic standards or Yoruba culture why would a man suppress the memory of his first wife especially one that had children for him? What kind of a man does that? Why is he always hiding something?

Marriages are serious cultural matters in Yoruba culture and no matter how poor or rich you are, the marriage ceremony and tradition is always done with fond memories. It is never a personal thing in Yoruba culture, moreover for a man that was that rich at the point he was...

marrying Remi, and yet you'll find no single description of their meeting, dating or wedding anywhere.

Again unlike other Yoruba leaders like Awolowo, Bola Ige, Lateef Jakande, Olusegun Osoba that you could pick stories about their childhood romance and wedding, and hear them talk about their marriage and political lives, the legend of the BAT is completely shrouded in mystery.

You can do an online run of all the names associated with his nuclear family and you keep seeing unexplainable gaps, incoherent academic progression, variations in age, inconsistencies in job roles or total exclusion of work experience.

Remi's Wikipedia profile offers an interesting experience, on her academic profile. It says she had her WASCE in 1979 and PGD in Theology in 2010, but her NCE in Botany and BSc from University of Ife had no graduation date. The biography contains no single work experience!

How can a woman of such high worth in society have such a loose online bio? Her personal website also contains no such information. And then you have the first daughter whose Wikipedia page describes promptly as Iyaloja, as if she was not in existence before she became Iyaloja.

Obviously she's a child of the first wife that has been kept out of public view. And then she's married to this Ekiti politician who was elected as a representative in Ekiti State in the year 2011.

According to his own profile on the NASS website back then he was born in 1979 even though his wife was born in 1972 meaning he is 7 years younger than his wife. The probability of this happening in Yoruba land is one in a million.

One can go on and on about these fictitious and conflicting information in public space about this family seeking to become Nigeria's First Family in a matter of months.

Should these things continue without questions? Does this exemplify the Omoluabi ideology of the Yoruba heritage, or we should just let it slide because he's the only candidate that can win?

Yoruba Ronu!

© Adewale Abiodun.