When they were in power, riding the nation like a mustang, Nigerian Army Generals, most of whom never fired a shot in offence or self-defence, liked life on the fast lane. With their potbellies and bullnecks, they were targets of snide remarks at the officers’ mess. Of course, that is where, as Alozie Ogugbuaja, a former police spokesman, once said, booze and peppersoup were never in short supply. So also were gossips.

Even among the Generals, jokes, ranging from the ribald to the serious, were exchanged freely with no more effort than wagging their swagger sticks. The butt of one of such jokes was David Alechenu Bonaventure Mark, a retired General and now the Nigerian Senate President. At the height of his rule as Communications Minister in the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida (retd), the talk then was that whenever Mark complained that he was broke, he had at least N5 million in his bank account!

That such stories did not emanate from brains made ultra-creative by peppersoup and beer at the officers’ watering holes has been confirmed by facts release by a British court about Senator Mark’s past. This is made worse by his other acquisitive tendencies in the areas of slush funds, real estate and breaches of immigration laws, disdain for the masses as demonstrated by his arrogant utterances and his propensity to bend due process.

The cat was let out of the bag on Mark’s unenviable past by a British Appeal Court Judge, Johnson J, who ruled on a divorce case between the Senate President and his estranged wife, Mrs. Victoria Preye Mark. This is contained in one of the Appeal Court documents, Mark vs. Mark (2006) EWCA CIV 1164, where the judge is quoted as giving an order, freezing £6 million belonging to Mark.
In a petition written to President Umar Yar’Adua, entitled “Why Senator David Mark Is Unfit For The Presidency of the Senate,” and dated 4 June 2007, Omoyele Sowore of Saharareporters, an international investigative outfit, complained that Mark is one of the retired Generals who stole the country blind under the Babangida regime.



http://www.thenewsng.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2955


It will be interesting if IBB does not come out of hidding to defend his minister