For Benedict Peters whose craving for money acquisitions was legendarily voracious and went ahead to amass as much as he could while his benefactors held sway as rulers of the nation’s economic and political space, much should be left to desire when he goes on a spending spree that seemingly defies all his known business motives.
Visiting the gesture with suspicion is in order more especially when he is doing so in support of an administration led by a man he had committed huge fortune to ensure his defeat at the poll in 2015. Peters has been making spirited efforts to ensure he is in good books of powers that be since his name came up as one of saboteurs that should be rounded up for grounding Nigerian economy to a halt during the time of the erstwhile Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke. President Muhammadu Buhari had hardly been handed over to when Benedict Peters disappeared into thin air for fear of being arrested and prosecuted.
In what many observers viewed as a twist, Ben Peters warmed its way to the hearts of Nigeria’s football administrators through his company, Aiteo, and launched a masterstroke by signing a lucrative five-year partnership deal with the Nigeria Football Federation. This jolted a lot of people who questioned the morality behind a deal between a government organisation and a company owned by a fugitive who has been running from same government and the law. As if that did not make enough impact, Aiteo has been instrumental to the feverish peak attained for World Cup preparations in Nigeria. The company sponsored the hit theme song done by the Olamide-Phyno duet for Super Eagles at the World Cup presently holding in Russia. To cap the Super Eagles campaign at the Mundial, Aiteo has promised that Eagles would get N18 million for every goal scored and not replied.
While these mouth-watering deals are exciting, critics have not asking to what end has Ben Peters been this generous. It beats one hollow why Peters did not come to the NFF rescue when the football body was suffering from acute paucity and could not pay coaches’ salaries during Jonathan era when Aiteo benefited immensely. In spite of all these generosities, Benedict Peters has been living in secret hideaways running from law enforcement agents who are bent on retrieving billions of Naira with which he was alleged to have corruptly enriched himself. So unsettled was he that he became a peripatetic business mogul with no definite address he could be traced to. If today’s report did not say he was sighted in Ghana, tomorrow would say he was partying with selected few friends in Peru for birthday shindig.
He has not touched the green grass of home, Nigeria, since 2015 when former President Goodluck Jonathan lost the presidential election to which he hugely provided financial oiling. There are reports that he is a major financier of ‘Third Force Movement’, a coalition saddled with the task of ousting President Buhari next year. He has put out denial though; many believe the report is not far from the truth. His company has also been fingered in the renewed hostility of the Niger-Delta protest against the Joint Task Force (JTF) in the area.