There is no way a Tinubu or any other genuine democrat will be in a position to help Benin Republic and he will not do it, it is unthinkable and impossible.Benin Republic has saved many living democrats in Nigeria today.
People like TINUBU, SOYINKA etc would have ended up in the belly of Sani Abacha but for the timely protection of Benin! Although, the famous NADECO route which served as the Progressives escape route from the marauding Nigerian Military Junta started from a bush in the Nigerian Border but it ended at Cotonou, Benin Republic. This route was the only life jacket for our leaders who escaped from the titanic of Abacha in the mid-90s.
Benin also provided a temporary refugee camp to people like Tinubu and others who escaped from Nigeria without their international passport. Benin was the place where they stayed while negotiating their ways out of Africa to Europe and America so they can escape the bullets of Abacha.While Tinubu was talking to the West for Assylum, Abacha’s plain cloth assassins located his abode in a Benin motel and they visited him. Fortunately for him, Tinubu had gone out with a friend to a local market in Cotonou looking for Amala and Ewedu, a delicacy he had missed so much. While returning to the Motel, Jagaban, at a distance, saw strange looking men at the reception talking to a receptionist. The Chicago boy sensed trouble.
A staff of the motel walked to him and said “Don’t stop, run”! Tinubu threw away the amala and ewedu and jumped back on the commercial motorbike, straight to nowhere! And when he located a phone booth, he called Soyinka in SA, “Oga, dem don find me reach here”.
Soyinka asked him to head straight to the UK embassy in Benin. Soyinka then begged Nelson Mandela and other world leaders to prevail on the UK to allow Tinubu get asylum in London and most importantly allow him to leave Benin immediately without his Passport. The UK obliged and the rest is history!Also, when Buhari wanted to send Igboho out of Nigeria to save him from being treated as a terrorist, he paved a way for his safe arrival in Cotonou where he was briefly imprisoned before heading to Germany! Today, Igboho no longer causes problem in the SW, Nigeria.
Therefore, allowing Benin Republic to become another Niger, Mali or Sahell is not in the best interest of Nigerian Progressives and fortunately, when that trouble occurred in Benin, a Progressive is the President of NIGERIA and he acted swiftly. What a confidence
