₦airaland Forum

Him handwriting no even fine, him signature too no fine.

Na people like ajepako get dis kind message

The King of Round Tripping. He swallowed Yoruba bank Intercontinental Bank and he sacked top Yoruba officials. Innocent Yoruba Chartered Accountants were pushed into the labour market in the afternoon (Osan gangan).. . . . ayo

Onovo Agbo David wrote:

The Weight Of 106 Houses

The dead cannot speak. But numbers can. And the numbers surrounding the late Herbert Wigwe, former Group CEO of Access Holdings Plc, are speaking with a thunder that no amount of posthumous hagiography can silence.

A bombshell investigation by The Londoner, the British publication, has linked Wigwe to 106 properties in London, one of the most expensive real estate markets on earth. Based on newly released data compiled by Tax Policy Associates' Dan Neidle, and made possible by a 2022 UK law compelling overseas entities to declare their beneficial owners, the report places Wigwe seventh among London's biggest overseas property owners. He ranks above royals, industrialists, and foreign oligarchs.

One Nigerian banker.
One hundred and six London properties.
Let that settle.

These properties were not held in Wigwe's name. They were registered through shell companies — entities incorporated in secrecy jurisdictions like Jersey, Guernsey, and the British Virgin Islands. Many of the beneficial owners are listed as unnamed. Unnamed persons. This is not an accident of paperwork. This is architecture. The deliberate construction of financial opacity so that the true owner, or the true beneficiary, need never surface. In Nigeria's political economy, 'unnamed persons' is a phrase that does the heaviest lifting.

UK company records had already linked Wigwe to an address on The Bishops Avenue in north London, one of the city's most storied billionaire streets, where he was listed in 2012 as a director of Carmel Gate Ltd. But 106 properties dwarfs that single address. The Londoner's investigation exposes the full iceberg, not just the tip.

When Wigwe died in a helicopter crash near the California-Nevada border on February 9, 2024, alongside his wife Chizoba, his son Chizi, and NGX Group former chairman Abimbola Ogunbanjo, Nigeria mourned. Dirges played. Tributes poured. The man was celebrated as a titan who turned the Access Bank into West Africa's largest financial institution. But there is a question that the elegies refused to ask: where did the money come from? And more crucially, where did it go?

Wigwe held 2.59 billion shares in Access Holdings, worth ₦65.3 billion at the time of his death. He held 1.26 billion of those shares indirectly through Coronation Trustees Tengen Mauritius, an entity domiciled in Mauritius, another African tax haven. Tengen Family Office, based in Ikoyi, Lagos, managed his wealth alongside that of his long-time partner Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede. The money flowed, but it flowed outward. Into shell companies. Into offshore accounts. Into 106 houses in London.

I had raised concerns, at the time of his death, about Nigeria's forex round-trippers and market manipulators who were making life unbearable for ordinary Nigerians. The revelations now unfolding suggest that the rot went far deeper than currency speculation. Properties held in trust for unnamed persons smells, unmistakably, of wealth laundried on behalf of Nigerian public office holders; the ones who cannot appear on any register but still need their London addresses.

In December 2023, barely six weeks before his death, Wigwe moved into his sprawling ₦15 billion mansion. He died on February 9, 2024. He never fully unpacked. This is not poetic irony; it is a blunt reminder that the accumulation game, no matter how well-played, always terminates at the same address.

The family battles that erupted after his death are equally telling. His father, Pastor Shyngle Wigwe, and his cousin Christian Wigwe filed legal challenges against his children, disputing the estate the late banker left behind. A Lagos High Court granted his eldest daughter Tochi guardianship of her minor siblings, only for the grandfather to appeal. The siblings accused Aig-Imoukhuede of withholding financial details. Courts have been summoned. PwC and KPMG auditors have been deployed. The empire is now a battlefield.

The charity schools, the Wigwe University built in his hometown of Isiokpo, the donations and civic gestures — these are not now erased. But neither do they erase the questions. A man who moves ₦65 billion in shares through Mauritius entities and holds 106 houses in London through British Virgin Islands shell companies is not simply a 'successful banker.' He is a man who understood, deeply, how to move money across jurisdictions so that it leaves no fingerprints.

Wigwe is gone. He cannot be prosecuted, cross-examined, or compelled to answer. But the structures he built remain: and the unnamed beneficiaries of those 106 London properties are, presumably, still very much alive, still very much in Nigeria, and still very much in office.

The reckoning does not always come in a courtroom. Sometimes it comes quietly: in a British newspaper, in a dataset, in a 2022 law that simply required people to say who they really are.

Everyone who has made life further unbearable for Nigerians in one way or another will face their date with truth. In the end, no one leaves this earth with a single pin.

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BEING THE TEXT OF THE WORLD PRESS CONFERENCE ADDRESSED BY SENATOR DAVID MARK, CHAIRMAN OF AFRICAN DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS (ADC) ON APRIL 2, 2026, AT THE SHEHU YAR’ADUA CENTRE, ABUJA.

THIS ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY WILL NOT STAND

On behalf of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), and lovers of democracy, I welcome you all to this world press conference.

Since 1999, Nigeria has been under democratic rule. After 27 years, we thought we could proudly celebrate the entrenchment of democracy, believing that the country’s dictatorial past has receded into history.

Our experience in the past three years or so since President Bola Tinubu came to power has however confirmed otherwise. Democracy is only sustained by the quality of freedom that it offers and guarantees, especially the freedom to choose, the freedom to participate, and the freedom to associate. These freedoms are so critical to democracy that without them, democracy dies.

Yet, in the past three years, we have witnessed a relentless assault on these very freedoms. The agenda is very clear, to create a situation where, in 2027, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu emerges as the only option left for the people, despite the widespread suffering and wanton killings going on across the country. The twin challenge of deepening poverty, and worsening security situation in the country did not just happen. They are direct consequences of the failure of this government. They know that Nigerians will not want this to continue. They know Nigerians will vote them out. This is why they would do anything to hang on to power by hook or crook.

Background to the Coalition

The coalition of opposition parties came about as a result of a collective search for democratic freedom and the desire to resist what was clearly a relentless assault on opposition political parties. The coalition leaders decided to come together under ADC to save multi-party democracy in Nigeria and rescue Nigeria from what was clearly an emerging dictatorship.

We did not come to the ADC by chance. We did our due diligence. We fulfilled all the party’s constitutional requirements, as well as all wider requirements under the laws that guide the management and operation of political parties.

In furtherance of this process, a NEC meeting was convened on July 29th, 2025, monitored by INEC officials. One of the conclusions of that NEC meeting was the dissolution of the National Working Committee of the party, and the ratification of a caretaker committee to take over the affairs of the party, with my humble self, David Mark, as the National Chairman; Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola as the National Secretary; as well as others who have since been serving as officers of the party.

In addition to witnessing this process that brought in the new leadership of the party, a formal report of these resolutions was subsequently communicated to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). On September 9th, 2025, INEC then uploaded the names of the relevant NWC members of the party, based on the NEC resolutions.

One of the officials in the dissolved NWC was Nafiu Bala, who was one of the Deputy National Chairmen of the party. It is on record that Gombe resigned this position on 17th May, 2025. His resignation was also duly transmitted to INEC on the 12th of August, 2025. Regardless of his resignation, he decided to approach the courts on September 2nd, 2025, four clear months after his resignation, seeking to be recognised as the Chairman of the ADC.

What this means is that by the 2nd of September, when he approached the courts, INEC was already aware that Secretary Aregbesola and I had been inaugurated on the 29th of July in a process monitored by INEC. INEC was also aware that Gombe had resigned his position before the said inauguration on the 29th of July.

While this matter was in court, our team of lawyers approached the Court of Appeal, challenging the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court. In rejecting the appeal, the Court of Appeal ordered the parties including INEC to maintain the status quo ante bellum.

After this ruling on March 12th, 2026, we noticed a flurry of activities by lawyers associated with Nafiu Bala, requesting INEC to recognise him as the new chairman, or to de-recognise Aregbesola and I as the secretary and chairman respectively, in a curious interpretation of what constitutes status quo ante bellum. But we knew all along that Nafiu Bala and his lawyers were not acting on their own volition. They had become willing tools in the hands of a ruling party that had lost all support and goodwill of the Nigerian people; a government that had become desperate to cling on to power by all means even if it meant throwing the country into avoidable crisis.

In the past couple of months, ADC has become the only viable opposition party left in Nigeria. But this APC government does not want any opposition. While we were fully aware of all their desperate plans, we remained confident that no level of desperation would have driven the government and the INEC to take a direct action against the ruling of the court. But we were wrong.

It was therefore to our surprise, yesterday, 1st of April, that INEC issued a press statement after the close of business hours, announcing that it had decided to withdraw recognition for both the ADC leadership, which I head, and the fictitious one purportedly led by Nafiu Bala, thereby creating a false equivalence between the parties.

By purporting to recognizing Nafiu Bala as a faction, INEC seems to have conveniently forgotten that this individual had resigned his position, to the knowledge of INEC itself.

The Legal Position

The crux of the matter is the interpretation of what constitutes status quo ante bellum, which the Court of Appeal directed should be maintained. From all authoritative counsel at our disposal, there is no legal interpretation or precedent that could possibly lead to the outcome that INEC seeks to foist on our party.

Based on its press statement of yesterday, INEC is pretending to be confused as to what constitutes the status quo ante bellum. If this was so, under the circumstances, what one would have expected was for INEC to approach the Court of Appeal to request a judicial interpretation of what truly represents the status quo under the circumstances. But it did not do this. While posturing to be neutral, its actions confirm that it has become irredeemably partisan, working, as it were, towards a preconceived agenda. With its action, this INEC has left no one in doubt that it has chosen the path of dishonour and has become complicit in undermining Nigeria’s democracy. It therefore can no longer be trusted.

What we say in essence is this: INEC cannot choose to fix the status quo from the day it took the administrative action to upload the names of the new ADC officials on its website, because INEC does not have the power to determine for any political party who its leaders should be. That decision was taken on July 29th, not on September 9th. With its press release yesterday, INEC has invented a status quo that never existed, because there was no time that the African Democratic Congress (ADC) did not have a duly constituted leadership. What INEC has done is to create a situation that, by its own curious logic, leaves the ADC without leadership. This certainly cannot be the status quo that the Court of Appeal directed should be preserved. It is an INEC invention that is not known to any Nigerian law.

There is only one conclusion that Nigerians can draw from the April 1st action taken by INEC: THE ELECTORAL UMPIRE HAS TAKEN SIDES. IT CAN NO LONGER BE TRUSTED. As a matter of fact, INEC has acted in contempt of the Court of Appeal and has therefore acted unlawfully.

My fellow democrats, distinguished ladies and gentlemen. It is not the ADC that is under attack. This is a direct assault on Nigeria’s democracy and the right of Nigerians to choose, participate, and exercise their rights as free citizens. We have witnessed how the APC-led Federal Government has undermined, compromised, and coerced other opposition political parties. The ADC has risen as the last bastion between Nigeria’s democracy and full-blown dictatorship. And this is what worries them.

What is now unfolding is a concerted effort to dismantle that last bulwark. If we allow this to happen, it could signal the end of our democracy as we know it. If we yield to it, we would have become complicit by our inaction. We therefore hold it a duty to our democracy and the Nigerian people to say “no”.

Right now, I speak to Nigerians at home and in diaspora. I also speak directly to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu: with 90% of the National Assembly and over 30 of Nigeria’s 36 Governors in the APC, President Tinubu, what are you afraid of? If you are convinced that you have done well for the people who voted for you, why are you afraid of a free, fair, and transparent electoral contest? If you are indeed the democrat that you claim to be, why are you bent on destroying all opposition political parties?

Let me reiterate for the record; there are no competing claims on the leadership of the ADC. Nafiu Bala has no locus whatsoever. INEC should have waited for the Court of Appeal to decide this matter. Instead, INEC went ahead to do the bidding of the ruling party. But let us be clear: the role of INEC over political parties is not administrative: it is not managerial: It is simply supervisory.

For the avoidance of doubt, the leadership of ADC inaugurated at the 29th July 2025, NEC meeting remains the lawful leaders of the party. Party members and all Nigerians should therefore remain calm as there is no cause for alarm whatsoever.

It is important to state the net implications of this decision taken by INEC, in case they had not thought of it, or they just do not care:

First, by attempting to subvert the leadership of the ADC, INEC has already undermined our participation in the Osun and Ekiti elections taking place later this year.

Secondly, we have our congresses starting on the 9th of April, 2026, ending with our convention on the 14th April, 2026. We have given due notice to INEC, and they have acknowledged receipt of that notice. This is what the law requires of us.

Let us sound a note of warning. This INEC under Professor Joash Amupitan will be held directly responsible for whatever actions or reactions that follow this criminal path that it has chosen to take.

Our demand is therefore clear:

We demand the immediate resignation or sack of the INEC Chairman, Professor Amupitan, and all the National Commissioners. We no longer have confidence in them. We are convinced that they are incapable of conducting any credible election.

Let us also make it clear: we are proceeding with our party programmes, because there is nothing under the law that makes INEC’s attendance, a mandatory requirement. We have duly served INEC notice, and we will proceed accordingly.

We also call on the international community to take note of INEC’s actions of April 1st, and of the restraint we are exercising today. We urge them to recognise the clear threat to Nigeria’s democracy and stability, and to hold accountable those who are undermining the integrity of the electoral process.

We call on Nigerians to defend our democracy. This is a defining moment. Stand firm. Speak out. Participate. Resist any attempt to impose a one-party state on Nigeria. Nigeria belongs to all of us, and together, we must protect it.

It is often said, that the arc of history does not bend towards tyranny. It bends towards freedom.

And no matter how long the night may seem, the morning will come.

Nigeria will not be silenced. Nigeria will not be conquered.

Nigeria is rising, ADC is rising.

Sen. David Mark
National Chairman
African Democratic Congress
April 2, 2026.

Good better parents be dat. Unlike portable's parents.

Who cares? Dat one na una problem.

Tinubu told the governor of Plateau State to bring the families of the Angwan Rukuba attack that happened on Palm Sunday to the airport on Thursday.

He landed at Yakubu Gowon Airport, walked down to the airport waiting hall used for the event, gave a less than 10-minute uninspiring speech, offered no assurance to arrest the perpetrators, shook hands with few members of the family, and walked back to his jet to go enjoy his Easter holiday in Lagos.

It's hard to believe.

The condolence meeting wasn’t held at the State House or in Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State, where the incident happened, but at the airport.

I mean, the AIRPORT.😭😭😭😭

Tinubu is a big disaster!!!


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What kind of rubbish is dis? Just becourse he is the sun of the late president who was a complete failure.

The thing don sweet am like sey na only him dey the area. Abeg shift make Mynd44 enter jo.

Trump self too dey waste time on dis matter. Let him leave Iran for now and face Nigeria. Our problems should be his priority.

Trump self too dey waste time on dis matter. Let him leave Iran for now and face Nigeria.

goslowgoslow:
Eye service...

We die here.

Please take a moment to write a quality post with at least 20 characters.
This will make the forum more interesting for everyone

He would be held in captivity until after the elections. One down, more to go.

The thing don dey load small small. My belle just dey sweet me.

They've started trading their futures already against 2027. Nigerians will never learn. I do not pity them. They deserve to suffer and kpai.

Sensiblerealist:
Nigeria really messed this up. Such a pity that in an expanded world cup format, we are missing. Playing draws with Zimbabwe and Lesotho and losing to Benin. Nawa oooo

the thing sweet me die. We no deserve to be at the World Cup with the current players in the super eagles. They're too full of themselves.

Mynd44:
But they can still change their minds later. The president's deadline isn't contitutionaly binding on these people

na true you talk

Dead on arrival. You go arrest tire. All nairalanders please be informed that I'm now to be called Doctor Enemyofprogress Sunmonu Ajanlekoko

Excellent93:
Omo massive unemployment
First time to comment
God did
Happy new month everyone

you got cut small for me when nairaland pay you o

Ajepako you and dis your wayo sense

Axis313:

Is it a must to wear tight corset when you know you are very blessed in the upper region?
Some women sef.
And na some men she is trying to impress.
But see as those things be like mountains sef.

no be sey she even fine. She come be like toad.

We die here.

Please take a moment to write a quality post with at least 20 characters.
This will make the forum more interesting for everyone

A big for nothing fool that has sold his Conscience for mere gratifications. Coursed is the day you were borned, Cubana chief priest.

People wey die for Iran and Israeli war never reach the number of people wey die for Jos. Tinubu shame on you.

I just don't understand what I read, somebody should please help me to translate it to my language.

Dis one go dey inside until after the election. One down, more to go.

Errand boy. Big for nothing. Your parents and family members should be ashamed of you.

Kai! They finally got this guy. I swear Tinubu no try at all.

Who said love can't be bought? If I hear dat rubbish talk again we go fight o.

I pray they succeed. I wan see wetin obidients go do.

Op please remove married women from the list. You don’t know what you're missing. Married women are the salt of the world and they keep the world going.
Dis overseas wey I dey for Ghana na married woman brought me in o and I'm enjoining it.

Seyi Tinubu too wan be Governor. Is Lagos State meant for their family alone? Na which kind greed be dat?