 Arguably, the most memorable is his January 1966 scoop when he made the tragic discovery of the bodies of the prime minister, Taffar Baleua, and the then finance minister, first also Koti Ebon, not long after the coup that ended the First Republic. But he was also there on the front lines in many sectors of the Civil War that followed, reporting and reporting the horrors and tragedies of a fratricidal war. And he it was, who witnessed the surprise visit of Dr. Namdi Aziqui to Lagos during the Civil War. He was also right there, nine years later, with exclusive reporting during the coup that brought General Murtala Muhammad to power. He also happened to be in the governor's office in Enugu when the commissioner of police, the then commissioner of police, Kafaru Tinubu, sent word of the capture of Lieutenant Colonel Bukatsuka Dimka, the man who assassinated Murtala Muhammad. He was the only journalist to see Dimka in handcuffs in police custody in Enugu. Without his scoops went beyond the political. He exclusively reported the case of the British born Patrick Chadwick, who slapped a Nigerian sales girl Adekunbi Adayte at the Kingsway stores in Lagos. It appears that this despicable business of slapping women seems to have been around for a while. And how some journalists, including the UAC, tried to cover it up, but it became a national issue and the UAC eventually punished the culprit and he resigned. At different times, Chief Oshoba ran two of Nigeria's most influential papers, the Daily Times and Sketch and as we've heard also the Herald, before joining a distinguished cast of journalists who went into and succeeded in politics. And I'm thinking of illustrious names like Dr. Namdia Zikwe, Papa Oba Femiahulo, Anthony Enahoro and of course his brother Peter, Ladukea, Kintola, Bola Ege, Latif Jaccondi, Bisio Nobanjo, and many others. He was there when General Ibrahim Babangida took over and he was also at the center of a Biola's campaign from the just primaries to the anointment. He was in the Nadeko Resistance, along with several others who were here, also was in exile, including the likes of Jagaband Bogu and other fugitives from the law at the time. He was one of those hunted by a batch of strike force. I was the prosecuting attorney general who led Sergeant Rogers in Evidence when he described how they trailed Chief Oshoba all the way to Abekuta from Lagos in a bid to kill him. They failed and so he's here. He was elected governor under the military hierarchy in 1990 to 1992 and under the civilian dispensation in 1999. It was in the opposition in its various iterations for all of 16 years and now is in the ruling party. His life story, and this I think is important, is and always reads like an insider's view of the socio-political history of post-independence Nigeria, but perhaps the most remarkable attribute of this illustrious Nigerian is his pan-Nigerianism, that effortless ability to build bridges and make friends from across various divides, the gift of connecting with people, earning their trust and confidence and being able to get along with a diverse cast of Nigerians from all walks of life and of all ages. This is evidently contributed greatly to the successes that he has not stopped in his twin careers of journalism and politics, but there is a paradox here. The subtext of Oshoba's book, Battle Lines, Adventures in Journalism and Politics, is the tragedy of ethnic and religious jingoism in the life of our nation, in the life of Nigeria. The collapse of our national achievements and attainments at every stage of our history has been that actually's hill, tribal and religious suspicions, the inability at crucial moments to bridge the gaps of ethnic and religious prejudice. So from the execution of the coup of 1966 to the counter coup of 1967 and the Civil War, it is clear that these tragedies occurred because the once united military wing of the Nigerian elite finally gave way to its basest instincts, ethnicity and tribal prejudices. Years later, the scars and the fractures remain. Oshoba's story also tells us how the political elite also played the ethnic card to defeat what would have been a national struggle for democracy, the struggle to restore MKO Abiola's mandate worn by votes enthusiastically given by men and women of all tribes and faiths across the country, including the Kano home state of his opponent. But it wasn't difficult to begin a process of delegitimizing that mandate. The tactic was the same and the consequences devastatingly effective. Ethnicize it and it would work. And so they did. The northern governors of the NRC, the party that lost the election, issued a statement saying that Abiola should be advised to give up his campaign for the restoration of the June 12 Revolution. But any such restoration should begin with the restoration of the sacred mandate given to Shehoshagari and forcefully taken from him in the wake of the 1983 military coup. The eastern governors of the NRC, the same party, had earlier issued a statement threatening secession of the eastern states from the rest of the country if the anormment of the June 12 election was reversed. The military dictatorship took advantage of the ethnic divisions to make it seem like a Southwest struggle for one of its own rather than a struggle for democracy and justice in the process imposing one of the most fearsome repressions of liberties anywhere in the world. Our recent history is the same. The religious or ethnic card is pulled out regularly to win the argument or to win the votes. The problem is that the result to our fault lines is a cover-up for the failure of the vision and a genuine program to address the real concerns of the millions of our countrymen and women. It also inevitably breaks the ranks and prevents the pursuit of our real enemies, poverty and its causes and manifestations, poor education, healthcare, violent extremism, etc. There are, for example, those who for political reasons promoted the point of view that the violent extremism of Boko Haram was the brainchild of the APC and its putative presidential candidate, a plot, they argued, to Islamize Nigeria. This wicked lie was only debunked when General Mohamed Abu Hari was attacked by the same Boko Haram and barely escaped with his life but lost seven close aids and relations. Not long after, the same group attacked the Emmy of Khanu who sustained serious injuries and many believe that those injuries led to his death a few months later. In the lead-up to the 2019 elections, similar accusations of the Boko Haram insurgency fully heard are clashes. The attempts by the political elite to delegitimize the government by suggestions that it promotes this insurgency or that it promotes the dominance of one religion over the other. These are dangerous, mainly because they help not just the insurgents by weakening the opposition to them but that they also divide our people along the lines that make it so difficult to reconcile. But what is the truth? As we've seen, as the threats of Boko Haram has been curtailed, we've seen other threats emerging. Islamic State of West Africa is warped and others in the lake-chart islands and parts of southern Berlin. Radical Islamist terrorism is an evil that must be seen as the common enemy of all fakes, including Islam. As the President said and I paraphrase, anyone who says, allow Akbar and goes on to kill is either insane or dangerously ignorant of the tenets of Islam. The likes of Boko Haram, ISIS, Islamic State of West Africa, is warped and many Salafist jihadist ideologies are expansionist ideologies that feed purely on hate. Hatred of any person or group that does not belong to their particular sect. They have no redressable grievances, so there are no terms of reference for peace. They are fanatics committed to a twisted creed, they exploit the ignorance of the tenets of Islam, they exploit poverty, exclusion and the recruitment of women and use children to perpetuate the most heinous atrocities. They are motivated by a satanic desire to control communities by murder and terror. Whether it is in Iraq or in Bono or in Adama or Syria, their victims are men and women and children, Muslims or Christians. So long as they do not share their Sikh ideology, they target churches, they target mosques, markets and motor parks where people gather, using children as human bombs to kill randomly regardless of tribe or faith. I've seen the child bodies of the dead men, women, children killed by suicide bombers in Gumbay, in Bono, in Kano. The bombs are the ultimate agnostic destroyers, no discrimination in death. The challenge for us is to recognise this extremism for what it is, to recognise crime and evil for what it is and to form alliances across faiths and ethnicities to destroy an evil that confronts us and seeks to destroy our way of life. Every evil that confronts our nation and our people can be defeated by the power of unity, a recognition that we are stronger together than apart. Chief Oshaba's life and times, as contained in this book, Battle Limes, Adventures in Journalism and Politics, speaks most eloquently to the power of building bridges, finding common ground, resisting divisive narratives, especially in a country as diverse as Nigeria, a country where it's extremely easy to find reasons to languish in stereotypes and suspicion, where far too many of us, by default, lapse into our ethnic camps. Virtually every major actor in the Nigerian story over the last six decades shows up on the pages of Chief Oshaba's book. It tells us, and I quote from page 177 of that book, that there was no nightclub I did not visit, with the likes of Babangida, Ike Watyuku, Air Marshal Abbas, Air Marshal Bello, Samamuka, Moses Gohan, Fela Marsh, Alaji Usman Nagogo, Siroma Meena, Alaji Bamangatuko, Isyaku Ibrahim, he didn't mention the name of our chairman. We tagged Isyaku Ibrahim, and I quote continues, as a godfather of our social circle of the era. Well while I do not necessarily recommend nightclubs, we must never underestimate the significance of interaction and a willingness to understand the other point of view. Chief Oshaba, time and time again, not just in this book but in his personal life, has shown the benefit of building bridges, the benefit of creating a united country in so many different ways. That lesson, has taught so many of us that lesson, and that lesson has benefited him and benefited all his endeavors so far. Before I sit, I say just two things to the author. The first is that when Ibrahim turned 90, was when he got a fresh mandate from God. You sir, are only 18, so you have a long way to go, and there is much work to be done. And given your boundless energy at this age, and the very great support of your dear wife, I think that we should be here again in another 40 years. Only those who want to live another 40 years should say amen. Any word of prayer, I pray that as your days so shall your strength be, so shall your wisdom, and so shall your favour with God. Happy birthday sir, God bless you.