Francois Hollande 'shared' his mistress Valerie Trierweiler with Sarkozy minister

Francois Hollande "shared" his mistress Valerie Trierweiler with a minister from Nicolas Sarkozy's government in a Jules et Jim-style relationship, a new biography on France's first lady claims.

Supposedly Mr Devedjian hesitated so much that Trierweiler let herself to be courted by Hollande Photo: REX FEATURES

By Henry Samuel, Paris

6:19PM BST 10 Oct 2012

La Frondeuse (The Troublemaker), claims that Miss Trierweiler, 47, had an affair with Patrick Devedjian, 68, a former economic recovery minister, in the early 2000s, but that the Socialist Mr Hollande, 58, muscled in when the Right-winger failed to commit himself further to the relationship.

There followed a period "a bit like Jules et Jim," said the co-author Christophe Jakubyszyn, a close friend of the first lady, referring to the 1962 François Truffaut film in which Jeanne Moreau is in a love triangle with two men and all three live in the same house.

"Patrick Devedjian hesitated so much that Valérie Trierweiler allowed herself to be courted by a second man of another political persuasion: François Hollande," he said.

"Little by little, the relationship with Hollande took precedence over the other, notably after an ultimatum in 2003 which Devedjian failed to respect. But he suffered a lot from the break-up. It was a bit like Jules et Jim. Both men still have a lot of respect for each other," he said.

All three had other partners at the time.

In another extract of La Frondeuse, out today, Miss Trierweiler is cited as claiming she was "chatted up" by Mr Sarkozy "while he was holding his ex-wife's Cecila's hand" at an Elysée garden party in the same period.
"You are so beautiful," he is said to have whispered to Miss Trierweiler, then a political journalist. She responded with a "withering look".
Clearly annoyed at the rebuff, he is said to have told other journalists: "Who does she think she is? Am I not good enough for her?"
The book says they fell out irrevocably in March over claims that Mr Sarkozy's entourage leaked information to the press that one of her sons had been stopped by police in the street with a banger. Miss Trierweiler alleged that he did so as a damage limitation exercise after his youngest son, Louis, was caught throwing tomatoes at policemen from the Elysée Palace. The revelations about Mr Hollande's romantic life came a day after a French former minister mocked the president, who is about to legalise homosexual unions in France, for wanting "marriage for everyone, except himself".
"It's a little contradiction, I have to smile about it," said Gérard Longuet, a former defence minister. The French government plans to legalise same-sex marriage by the middle of next year.
It was unlikely to help Mr Hollande's popularity, which has sunk to its lowest level since his May election, partly down to annoyance at his inability to keep his complex love life in check.
Mr Hollande has four children from a previous relationship with his Socialist colleague Ségolène Royal, with whom he also lived without marrying.
Miss Royal clashed with Miss Trierweiler over an infamous tweet in June's legislative elections where the French first lady backed Miss Royal's rival. She has recently kept a low profile after one poll found 67 per cent of voters had a negative opinion of her.
Another recent biography squarely blamed Mr Hollande for the war between his current and former girlfriends, claiming he had stoked tensions by considering returning to Miss Royal after her defeat in the 2007 presidential election. Alix Bouilhaguet, the book's other author, said Miss Trierweiler was seeking a rapprochement with Miss Royal to "calm things down". She has not been on speaking terms with Mr Hollande's children since the tweet episode.
Mr Devedjian was indirectly involved in a sex and politics scandal recently when his former head of staff wrote a thinly disguised political fable set in Mr Sarkozy's former fiefdom in the rich western suburbs of Paris.
Le Monarque, Son Fils, Son Fief (The monarch, his son, his fiefdom) by Marie-Célie Guillaume describes a power-mad leader known as "Rocky" who does pelvic floor exercises with his personal trainer on the Élysée lawn and shadow boxes in front of a mirror.
More controversially, the summer best-seller recounts how minutes before a public appearance, "Rocky" demands a sexual favour from a provincial mayor in return for subsidising a medieval history museum.
Mr Sarkozy was said to be livid, calling for Miss Guillaume's dismissal.
A spokesman for the Elysee Palace said President Hollande would not be taking legal action over the book.
Patrick Devedjian said he ‘firmly condemns’ what is written in the book, but has yet to make up his mind about legal action.
The Telegraph

Bakassi: Cross River Lawmakers In Street Protest, Imoke Faults Adoke

Members of the Cross River Assembly on Tuesday protested the refusal of the Federal Government to appeal the ICJ ruling that handed the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula to the Republic of Cameroon.

The peaceful protest on Tuesday was led by the Speaker of the Assembly, Larry Odey, from the State House of Assembly to Government House, Calabar.

But Gov. Liyel Imoke of Cross River assured them that the state was still hopeful on the resolution of the “intractable” Bakassi issue in which it has no locus standing to file an action at the ICJ.

“For us, what is important is the authorities at the Federal Government understanding the passion and the pain that the people of the state feel.

“The consequence of the judgement to the people is significant and I don’t know whether we have done enough to address that.

“There are lots of grievances and lot of pains and emotions that had been expressed.”

The legislators chanted songs like “Bakassi is our birth right and we will never let it go.”

Mr. Odey, who spoke on their behalf during the audience with Imoke, said the preponderance of the opinion with respect to whether the judgement of the ICJ should be reviewed or not was in favour of review.

“I recalled that Mr President said that he requested Speakers of Houses of Assembly of Akwa Ibom and Cross River should be in attendance of meeting last week in Abuja.

“Mr President wanted us to convey back to our people what transpired in the meeting.

“That meeting had the leadership of the Senate and House of Representatives and our sons and daughters from Cross River at both houses of National Assembly in attendance.

“I had reported to the 24 members of the Cross River House of Assembly and the members of the assembly have been waiting.

“My report was that Mr President saw clearly the opinions of those at the meeting and of course the opinions of majority of Nigerians that are in favour of  the review.’’

Odey said the protest was to find out from Imoke the position of the review of the ICJ Judgement.

 ”As I speak to you, we have not heard anything in that respect and so we feel we should come to you to find out whether you have in your position any privileged information on the thinking of the Federal Government on this matter.

“Your Excellency, we will be happy because if we go back with good report and we will convey same to our constituency and will be able to arrest the trend of our anxieties and that of our people.’’

Reacting to the development, Mr. Imoke expressed appreciation for unprecedented action taken by the State House of Assembly.

“It is a spontaneous reaction borne out of concern and out of passion for the 3.2 million Cross Riverians that you represent.

“You have their mandates to come before your authorities and query on issues that affect their well being. Your comments regarding the recent meeting in Abuja are exactly as you stated.

“I was in attendance, there were clear directives from the president and if you recall I even spoke to the press and commended the president’s leadership.

“Our expectation was that as of today, which seems to be the last day for us to put application for the review of the judgement, I have no confirmation that such application is in place.

“I have been informed that a statement had been issued by the office of the Attorney-General on the Federal Government’s seeming position.

“Whether that is the position of the Committee that was set up by Mr President or whether it is the position of the Office of the Attorney-General, I am not clear yet and I am still trying to get clarifications.

“What we know is that about 12 mid night today it will be the last chance that we have to retain or to even have a fitting chance of the review of the very intractable  problem of Bakassi.’’

Mr. Imoke also cautioned that the Bakassi issue should not be politicised because of “a number of humanitarian consideration, security issues and for being a part of a country’’.

“We can only appeal to everyone at this time to remain calm and to understand that they are processes and procedures that are followed in cases of this nature and all hope should never be lost and it won’t be lost.

“We may have reached the end of one stage to this struggle and I believe that there is still an opportunity to address the challenges that the ceding of Bakassi has brought upon the people,’’ he said.

Legitimate Criticism

By ANDREW ROSENTHAL

Stung by the furious response to Mitt Romney’s attack on President Obama over the killings in Libya, some right-wing commentators have defended Mr. Romney’s right to challenge Mr. Obama on foreign policy. Just for instance, Jennifer Rubin wrote in The Washington Post that “Obama has no right to insist he is beyond criticism.” She added: “If [the media] are going to insist that holding a president accountable for his national security is out of bounds, then perhaps journalism is now farce.”

Of course Mr. Obama is not beyond criticism. Of course Mr. Romney has the right to hold the president accountable for his national security. But this story isn’t about that. It’s about the fact that he made something up. He accused the Obama administration of sympathizing with those who waged the attacks, when it did no such thing.

It was the embassy in Cairo, not the White House, that issued a statement condemning “efforts to offend believers of all religions.” And the embassy sent out that statement before the killings in Libya, not after, in a clear attempt to defuse tensions.

If Mr. Romney had criticized the president by drawing a plausible connection between his foreign policies and the riots in Egypt and Libya, that would have been legitimate. But he did not. I think that’s because there is no connection.

Yesterday, Jon Huntsman seemed to have Mr. Romney in mind when he said “This is above all a reminder that politics should end at the water’s edge.”

The “water’s edge” axiom doesn’t mean that foreign policy is out of bounds. It means you shouldn’t swan around the globe damaging a sitting president’s relationships with foreign leaders—as Mr. Romney did when he traveled to Israel, donors in tow, and accused the president, indirectly but unmistakably, of trying to “undermine” Israel.

The Burden of Speech

By TIMOTHY EGAN

A fanatic makes a hate movie, filled with wild claims about the founder of one of the world’s major religions. Fanatics of another sort are inflamed by the crude film, crying blasphemy.
Hatred flares. Mobs attack the embassy in Cairo, shouting there is no God but their God. Another mob attacks the sanctuary in Benghazi, Libya, a military-style assault, using the film as motivational cover. An extraordinary public servant, Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, is killed in the line of duty in a city he had helped to save from a dictator’s last gasp. Three other Americans are killed as well.
Who is to blame? The mobs, the attackers — clearly. Security forces as well, for allowing the fragile wall that separates a diplomat from street thugs to be breached. But what about the filmmaker who launched the first shot?
Beyond that, what to make of Mitt Romney, trying to score cheap political points before the bodies of the murdered American diplomats are even cold and hailing that odious film as an expression of “American values”?

Mohammed Abu Zaid/Associated PressEgyptian protesters, largely ultra-conservative Islamists, climbed the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo, brought down the American flag and replaced it with a black flag with Islamic inscription, in protest of a film deemed offensive of Islam.

What’s more, Romney’s craven attack was fundamentally dishonest, riddled with errors, and premised on notions that a kook would harbor. His response was no more accurate than the film.
Free speech — for all its liberating qualities, this founding virtue of ours imposes huge burdens on the speaker and comes with its own set of civil rules. In the Islamic world, people have no idea how much freedom Americans are given to say pretty much anything, true or not. Many don’t understand that a zealot’s YouTube provocation does not represent a government.
But we do know better in the United States. And so, it falls upon our leaders to educate the rest of the world about unfettered speech, its perils and wonders, by example.
In the case of the cartoonish film on the Prophet Muhammad — depicting him as a child molester, a liar and a buffoon — we still don’t know much about who is behind it. Steve Klein, a California insurance man with a long history of making erroneous claims about Islam, says he’s one of the backers. A Florida preacher, Terry Jones, who inspired deadly riots in Afghanistan by threatening to burn copies of the Koran, has come forth as a promoter of the film.
And when asked whether he bore any responsibility for the violence prompted by the incendiary film, Jones said his conscience was clear.No matter its exact provenance, the film is a hate-bullet, and we’ve had plenty of those in our history. Not long after the witch hunts of the 1950s, a good man in my home state of Washington was accused of being a Communist. Years later, his son’s family — Charles Goldmark, his wife and two kids — was slaughtered by a mentally deranged killer who believed the original libel and though he was doing right by a delusional cause. How much blame did that speaker half a century ago, planting a falsehood that took to the winds over the years, have for the death of an entire family during a Christmas dinner in 1985?

Now to Romney. He had promised not to take political potshots on Sept. 11, that most mournful of anniversaries. But he couldn’t help himself. But before the day was done, he fired off a statement bashing the commander in chief and the American Embassy at a moment of extreme peril. He did not have the dignity to wait for the families of those killed to be properly eulogized or the wisdom to wait for the facts.
This episode is the most revealing moment of the campaign. Remember, earlier this year Romney went after American diplomats just as they were trying — successfully, it turned out — to negotiate the freedom of a Chinese dissident.
But this is worse. A man who wants to control America’s nuclear arsenal can’t wait for the fog of a fatal attack to clear before popping off. He implied that the Cairo embassy, in sensibly releasing a statement condemning the hate film before any rioting had begun, equates to President Obama “sympathizing with mobs.”
He said, “It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn the attacks on our diplomatic mission, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
The Cairo embassy was taking emergency steps to save American lives, a pre-emptive move. “We firmly reject those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others” was the statement. They were educating — in a panic, possibly, knowing the anger in the Arab street — about the perils of free speech. No apology.
And since when is a clumsy, propagandish, inaccurate film an expression of “American values”?
Romney can’t see the facts for what they are because he’s persuaded that Obama’s foreign policy is one long apology tour. Nor does he have the good sense to stand down until he knows what he’s talking about, as did most of official Washington, Republican and Democrat.
Romney was left sputtering in the gutter with the dredges of his party. He was there with Sarah Palin, who used the tragedy to make cringe-worthy fun of and crude jokes about the president. Like Romney, she got her facts wrong, a professional trademark in her case. And he was there with Rush Limbaugh, who lauded him as a statesman.
Free speech, when it’s abused, can lead millions of people to believe a lie. Thus, up to a third or more of Republicans still tell pollsters that they think the president of the United States is not an American citizen. This is little different from ignorant Islamists who think the American government could be behind a blunt attack on their religion.
Don’t expect Romney to say he made a mistake; his last book, after all, is titled “No Apology.” But a man who can’t say he’s sorry abused one of the biggest free speech opportunities in the world. His words were revealing, and in that sense he did voters a favor.

Mideast Turmoil Spreads

By MARGARET COKER and ADAM ENTOUS

Associated Press

A Libyan man on Thursday investigates the inside of the burned-out U.S. consulate in Benghazi after an attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

BENGHAZI, Libya—The Libyan government arrested four people Thursday in connection with the deadly attack on the American consulate Tuesday night as Libyan and U.S. officials mounted a manhunt for others believed to be involved.
Protests spread across the region, breaking out in Yemen and Iran and once again in Cairo, where Egyptian police in riot gear beat back crowds of young men in a street filled with tear gas outside the U.S. Embassy.

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Mohamed al-Sayaghi/Reuters

Protests continued in San'a, Yemen, where demonstrators scaled the U.S. Embassy fence.

In Yemen's capital, San'a, hundreds of young men breached the outer security rings of the fortified U.S. Embassy. Evidently inflamed by a video mocking the Prophet Muhammad, one young man in Yemen shouted, "Troops will not stand in our way in defending the honor of our Prophet.'' Still, there were indications some demonstrators were using the protests to put pressure on their countries' governments as much as to assail the video.

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Reuters

Dhaka, Bangladesh

In the U.S., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced both the anti-Islam video and the violence in Libya that took the life of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans earlier this week. Emphasizing that the U.S. government had no role in the video, she called it "reprehensible" and said "we absolutely reject its content and message." At the same time, she said, there was "no justification—none at all—for responding to this video with violence."
As U.S. officials struggled to gain a clear picture of who was behind the mob attack in Benghazi late Tuesday, U.S. intelligence agencies were increasingly skeptical it was planned in advance, a shift from an initial assessment by some. U.S. officials also were increasingly doubtful the militants had direct ties to al Qaeda.
The information pointing to the possibility of a more spontaneous assault could deflect criticism of both the U.S. and Libyan governments for missing clues to an impending attack. An impromptu attack without clear ties to a major terrorist organization also could ease pressure on U.S. officials to respond aggressively.
The third and fourth Americans killed in the attack on the U.S. consulate were identified by the State Department late Thursday as security personnel Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, both former Navy SEALs. Previously identified, in addition to Mr. Stevens, was State Department information officer Sean Smith.
The events continued to reverberate in the U.S. presidential campaign, in a more muted form than on Wednesday. Republican Mitt Romney didn't repeat his criticism that the Obama administration was "effectively apologizing for the right of free speech" but said in Fairfax, Va., that the Libyan attack showed that "a strong America is essential to shape events."

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Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

Cairo

President Barack Obama, campaigning in Colorado, promised that "no act of terror will go unpunished.'' Mr. Obama also has led a U.S. effort to moderate the reaction to the film in Muslim countries and stem protests in advance of Friday prayers, which often lead to new demonstrations in Muslim lands.

Timeline: Past Attacks

Past attacks on U.S. embassies and consulates around the world.

Third Day of Protests

Reuters

Protesters climbed over the main gate of the U.S. Embassy in San'a on Thursday.

A Libyan official in charge of a task force tracking a militant group whose members led the first wave of attacks said his country was throwing all available resources into the hunt. Wanis al-Sharif, a deputy interior minister, said his team was using telephone taps, among other tools, to follow the group, hoping for a better understanding of its strength and structure.
"There is a group now that is under our custody, but there is a group we're following to know who's connected to them, and [we] are monitoring their phone calls," Mr. Sharif said, declining to provide more details.
The U.S. role in the manhunt has remained low key, in part out of concerns that a heavy overt American role would inflame tensions. But the U.S. has ramped up intelligence collection in the region, using unmanned aerial drones and other sophisticated eavesdropping equipment, officials said.
The distinctive humming motors of drones could be heard in the skies above Benghazi Thursday. The U.S. has used drones and other intelligence-collection efforts since the fall of Col. Moammar Gadhafi to track militant camps and weapons caches in areas east of Benghazi known to be Islamist hotbeds.
The focus of the Libyan probe appears up to this point has been an Islamist rebel brigade called Ansar al Sharia, a group of fundamentalist religious men who banded together in a militia last year in the fight to oust Gadhafi. Members of the group were at the consulate attack and cars belonging to members were found abandoned in the area, according to Mr. Sharif. It isn't known whether the four men arrested are members of the group.
A spokesman for Ansar al Sharia, Hani Mansouri, said at a news conference Thursday that his organization didn't organize or participate in the attack.
U.S. officials said preliminary information suggests the militants saw protests sparked by an anti-Islamic video as an opportunity to wreak havoc on a prominent symbol of the U.S. to make an anti-American statement. "There is no intelligence indicating this was premeditated," a U.S. official said. "It looks like it was an opportunistic attack by a group in the region."
There also are no indications at this point that the attackers knew the ambassador was in the building.
Around Benghazi, Libyan forces made no discernible ramp-up of security. A unit of six lightly armed Libyan defense soldiers stood outside the burned-out consulate complex Thursday afternoon.
The siege began late Tuesday night. New descriptions by Libyan security officials detailed hours of terror in which outgunned consulate security forces tried in vain to battle well-armed assailants.

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Kevin Hagen for the Wall Street

Dilan Samo, right, and Jeje Barwary hold photos during a candlelight vigil in honor and memory of slain American Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens outside the permanent mission to Libya in Manhattan on Thursday.

Mohammed Farraj, a soldier who was part of a four-member Libyan military unit permanently stationed at the facility. said he heard commotion on the dirt road outside the compound about 8:30 p.m. and was told by walkie-talkie of a group of armed, bearded protesters gathering.
There also were four private security guards, all Libyans, who weren't armed and worked inside the compound. Interviews with the Libyans indicated there also were four to eight American security guards around the compound when the attack started.
As trouble began, two Libyans posted on the outside moved inside and alerted the Libyan security forces, said Mr. Farraj, but backup didn't arrive immediately. Mr. Sharif said that he advised the armed security unit not to open fire so as to not inflame the situation.

Stream: Libya Attack

Follow real-time coverage of the attack in Libya against the U.S. embassy and the unfolding unrest.

Fighting erupted at about 9:30 p.m., said Abdulaziz Mezhbury, who works for a Libyan-British security firm called Blue Mountain and was responsible for security around the main villa. Mr. Mezhbury faced a storm of grenades and small-arms fire from militants who had breached the 12-foot wall around the compound. He was shot three times in the leg and suffered shrapnel wounds from grenades.
As the compound was being overrun, the Americans started returning fire, said Mr. Farraj. "But we were totally outgunned. I called more of the brigade to come reinforce us." He said a lull developed around 11 p.m. and the Americans and Libyan military appeared to be back in control. At this point, Mr. Farraj said, he believed that the bulk of the American consulate staff were evacuated. But the ambassador was missing and the villa was on fire.
The security guards made a decision to brave the flames to find the missing ambassador but were beaten back by the fire and couldn't find Mr. Stevens.
—Julian E. Barnes, Siobhan Gorman and Hakim Almasmari contributed to this article.

Nigerian Govt Targets December for Constant Power Supply

POWER outages will be a phenomenon of the past for long-suffering Nigerians by December, if assurances given by the government are anything to go by.
In a chat with journalists in Abuja on Monday, the recently-appointed senior special assistant on public relations to President Jonathan, Dr. Doyin Okupe, said that the government is targeting 5,400 megawatts of electrical power, up from the current level of 4,400 megawatts, to guarantee an uninterrupted regime of power supply.
“When the President assumed office, the energy capacity of the country at that time ranged between 1,900 megawatts to some 2,200 megawatts. The Independent Power Projects, 10 of them were grounded and nearly moribund, but today Nigeria is generating in excess of 4,400 megawatts of electricity,” he said.
The presidential aide said that the additional 1, 000 megawatts will come at the instance of plans made with the National Integrated Power Project, codenamed NIPP.
Okupe pooh-poohed the suggestion from sections of the Nigerian citizenry that the relative stability being witnessed in parts of the country was the result of higher water levels at the iconic Kainji Dam in Niger State, saying such couldn’t be further from facts at his disposal.
“The reason for this additional increase is coming from the NIPP that are now adding between 600 and 800 megawatts to the national grid. That’s what is responsible for this new improvement and between now and December, we are expecting nearly an additional 1,000 megawatts, because of the increase and an arrangement that have been made for purchase and supply of gas to some of these NIPP projects. More areas will enjoy longer hours of electricity supply by December,” he said.
“Some cynics have said this is due to high level of water in the hydro generating plants in Shiroro and Kanji. This isn’t true.
“I can tell you authoritatively that why it is true that every year there is a marginal increase in power supply, because of the increased contribution in the hydro plants, that cannot account for the 15 hours or so that is being currently enjoyed in many parts of the country.”
Dr. Okupe did not miss the opportunity to showcase the current relative stability of power supply, along with the expected milestone in December, as indicative of President Jonathan’s commitment to effect a lasting improvement in the power sector – a promise he made while campaigning for office.

Tinubu Departs US amid Speculation of Possible Investigation over ‘Gold Card’ Invite

FORMER Lagos governor, Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu may have left the United States, hurriedly, at the weekend in order to avoid being questioned by the American authorities for allegedly trumping a false “gold card invitation” to attend the Democratic National Committee’s convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, last week.
Tinubu, a two-term governor of Lagos who was also a senator of the failed third republic, allegedly bolted out of the United States and arrived Nigeria on Saturday in order to avoid being questioned, said our sources, for the claims made by an aide who said that Mr. Tinubu was invited in his capacity as the official leader of “opposition in Nigeria,” a claim that has since been rejected by a DNC source.
Tinubu and the said aide, Mr. Sunday Dare, have been challenged by members of the Nigerian immigrant community, both on social media outlets on Facebook where the topic has taken a life of its own, and at the convention ground, to provide invites signed by President Barack Obama to attend the event.
A response has yet to be issued by Mr. Tinubu to the serious allegations.
Instead, obvious attempts are being orchestrated to discredit sharpedgenews.com as the source of the original report published on Saturday, with claims that the report is being sponsored by Dr. Doyin Okupe, the recently appointed special assistant on publicity to President Jonathan.
Mr. Oladimeji Abitogun, the editor-in-chief of sharpedgenews.com, has strongly dispelled such notion as “ruthless, baseless and ill-conceived,” adding that “no one at sharpedgenews.com has any such contacts” with Mr. Okupe.
“While it is not impossible that certain outlets may have been employed to reproduce our initial report on this matter, we are not aware any such request and it would be foolhardy, if not irresponsible, of anyone to attempt to smear us with the charge that Aso Rock dictates story ideas or editorial contents to us,” Mr. Abitogun said.
The conduct of some of Tinubu’s aides originally triggered the irritation of the Nigerian community at the Charlotte convention. The trip was sold to the Nigerian public under the impression that the“gold card invitation” came from President Obama. It was later obvious that key members of the DNC and President Obama did not enjoy any kind of personal relationship with Mr. Tinubu – contrary to the impression given Nigerians.
The Tinubu delegation also did not enjoy the kind of VIP treatment given to the members of the diplomatic community present at the event.
Sharpedgenews.com had reported in the initial edition of this story that anyone who paid over five thousand dollars received the generic invitation to attend the convention. Exactly how much Mr. Tinubu paid or how much was paid on his behalf is not known.
However, sharpedgenews.com learned that Tinubu’s attendance at the event may have been facilitated by his Chicago contacts, contrary to the impression that a personal invitation was issued to Mr. Tinubu by President Obama.
Sharpedgenews.com further learned that it is the norm for American presidents to “minimize interactions with foreign contacts before and immediately after presidential elections,” which is another proof that it was impossible for Mr. Tinubu to have enjoyed the privilege of a personal, high-level invite from Mr. Obama.
According to sharpedgenews.com investigations, the poor handling of what should have been a private self-improving outing for Mr.Tinubu was bungled by his media team, who tried to employ the opportunity to emotionally and politically hoodwink Nigerians in the mold of what is often referred to as a “been to” in Nigeria.
In Charlotte and in London, Nigerians aware of the development could not help expressing disgust at the manner in which Sunday Dare and the publisher of African Abroad, Alex Kabbah, treated Tinubu like a tribal king.
“If the man coughed, Alex Kabbah and Sunday Dare would near of bring down the roof because someone did not make a cup of water available for Asiwaju at the right time,” one of our citizen reporters volunteered, having been assigned to closely watch the role of the Tinubu team. “Sunday Dare wind-surfed as a big suck-up,” said one of the callers who took umbrage on the initial report.
Sharpedgenews.com also observed that Tinubu was as well present at the convention of the US Republican Party which held the previous week in Tampa, Florida.
Accompanying Mr. Tinubu on the trips was Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi, who was a lot more restrained and less flamboyant than the ACN leader. Mr. Dele Alake, who also attended the event with Tinubu, was also of restrained comport.
The designation of Mr. Tinubu as the official leader of opposition in Nigeria was also one of the reasons why sharpedgenews.com investigaged the so-called “gold card invitation” allegedly issued to Mr. Tinubu.
Nigeria does not operate a parliamentary system of government where an official opposition leader is recognized. How exactly Mr. Tinubu got the description as leader of opposition, when he is not an elected official remains open to debate.