Why Drag Mike Adenuga Into This?

FACTFILE with Lanre Alfred Yes, one can understand why a man under siege would talk too much. Pressure has a way of loosening the tongue; sometimes, in the desperate search for vindication, a man begins to spend not only his own secrets but other people’s discretion. That, I fear, is the curious mistake Prophet Itunu Onadeko made while attempting to explain himself amid the controversy surrounding the death of his late fiancée, actress Temitope Osoba. His revelation that Globacom Chairman, Dr. Mike Adenuga, had offered the late actress a cheque while she battled cancer did little to clarify the questions surrounding her final days. Instead, it enlarged the conversation, supplying another tantalising detail for entertainers, gossip merchants and social media commentators to obsess over. The questions surrounding Tope Osoba’s final days are already uncomfortable enough. There have been claims and counterclaims about money raised for her cancer treatment, questions over who controlled what, rumours about what happened shortly before her death, and Onadeko’s extraordinary account that he learnt, around midnight, from an unidentified caller that his fiancée had died at a police station in Ikorodu, Lagos. Onadeko says he subsequently went to a nearby police station to report himself. He has also rejected suggestions that she died from cancer complications, that she was poisoned or that she was maltreated. All of that is combustible enough. Then, somewhere in the middle of trying to put out the fire, the prophet reached for the name of Mike Adenuga. Why?That is the part I find difficult to understand.Onadeko was answering allegations about himself. He was defending himself against claims concerning money raised for Tope’s treatment. He was explaining the church, its finances and the chronology of its construction. He was insisting that money raised for the actress’s surgery was not paid into his account. All perfectly legitimate territory for a man defending his reputation. But then he volunteered that “people gave her money including Mike Adenuga who offered her a cheque.” And there it was.A name that had no reason to enter the room was suddenly sitting at the table. If you know anything about the way Dr. Adenuga has traditionally conducted himself, you begin to wonder whether Onadeko understood the peculiar weight of what he had just disclosed. Adenuga is not one of those Nigerian billionaires who appears to require every act of kindness to be converted into a ceremonial photograph. There is an entire culture among the wealthy in which philanthropy increasingly resembles an extension of public relations: the cheque, beneficiary, photographer and caption all arriving together, as though generosity itself requires a press kit. Give somebody a scholarship and there must be a photograph. Build something for a community and there must be a plaque large enough to identify the donor from a moving vehicle. Pay somebody’s medical bill and, somehow, the story eventually finds its way onto social media. Adenuga has generally operated with considerably less noise.His businesses are enormous enough to make him permanently newsworthy. His wealth has acquired its own mythology. His footprints in telecommunications, oil and other sectors are substantial enough that his name does not require a charity photograph to establish its significance. He can afford that increasingly rare luxury: doing something good without standing beside it while the public applauds.Indeed, there are wealthy men who might be offended if you forgot to mention their donation.Adenuga does not belong to that school. Read that again! His name carries sufficient weight without somebody having to remind us that he once offered a cheque to an actress battling cancer. In fact, the more interesting thing about the reported gesture is precisely its apparent lack of publicity.That is what makes it human. And that is precisely why I believe his name should have been left out of this quarrel. If Adenuga helped Tope, he helped Tope. The beauty of such an intervention lies partly in the fact that it apparently required no audience. A cheque offered to somebody fighting cancer is an intimate act of human concern. Once it is dragged into an argument involving allegations, rumours and reputational damage, however, the nature of the gesture changes. Suddenly, questions begin to multiply. How much was the cheque? When was it offered? Who received it? Was it paid directly to Tope? Was it connected to the money raised publicly? Was it cashed? What became of it? Questions that may never have arisen suddenly become irresistible because somebody has opened a door that perhaps ought to have remained closed. A private act of assistance, which might otherwise have

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