MR PATRICE TALON IS PRESIDENT OF REPUBLIC OF BENIN
IS PATRICE TALON A SMUGGLER?
BY ABDULMUMINI ADEKU
At regular meetings with key
public affairs commentator on Africa ,Mr Patrice Talon now Executive President
of the Republic of Benin has been called a smuggler because of the involvement
of most of his key businesses at the Cotonou Ports.
In fact some opinions say that at
least 75 percent of the economy of all the nations surrounding Nigeria with a common
border rests on smuggling and this runs into a mind boggling billions
of dollars annually.
In a world exclusive
investigations with The News office desk of Paedia Express Multimedia in
Lagos,Nigeria a Benin Oise human rights activists resident in Nigeria [names
withheld}he stopped short of calling the
new man at the helms of affairs of his country a smuggler.
He went down to recall the friction
leading to the last elections in his country which pitched Talon against Former
President Yayi Boni’s anointed candidate: Mr Lionel Zinsou who was head hunted
from France for the job of Prime Minister to under study Boni for some months
before taking over as President even if the role of a P.M. was not
constitutional.
He recalled that things were so
ugly while the contest was on that at some point Talon was in exile after been
accused of trying to kill Yayi Boni with
the judge that acquitted him after the case was taken to court bolting as well
as Boni’s hit squad went after him.
He explained that though there
were several accusations levelled against Talon by the state during the polls
but this he saw as some deliberate witch hunt at the time.
He also added that Yayi Boni was
sorely afraid of Patrice Talon because the latter has sponsored his coming to office on at least
two different occasions.
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Talon is of Fon origins and was born in Ouidah. He studied science at the University of
Dakar and transferred to the National School of Civil Aviation in
Paris. With dreams of becoming a pilot, Talon failed a medical test and this
dream became an impossibility.[1]
Known as the "King of
Cotton" for his involvement in the cotton industry, Talon built his empire
due to connections with the Beninese political class.[2] He was a backer of President Thomas Boni Yayi, financing his campaigns for the
2006
and 2011
elections.[3] In 2011, Talon received management of
Cotonou’s imports at the Port of Cotonou. In 2012, he fled to France after he
was accused of embezzling more than 18 million Euros in taxes.[2] He fell out with Boni Yayi and was
accused of involvement in a plot to kill him. He was subsequently pardoned in
2014.[4]
President
Talon ran as an independent
candidate in the March
2016 presidential election. Although he finished second to Prime
Minister Lionel Zinsou of the Cowry
Forces for an Emerging Benin in the first round of voting, he won
the second round with 65% of the vote. Speaking on 25 March 2016, Talon said
that he would "first and foremost tackle constitutional reform",
discussing his plan to limit presidents to a single term of five years in order
to combat "complacency". He also said that he planned to slash the
size of the government from 28 to 16 members.[5]
He was sworn in on 6 April 2016.[6] The composition of his government was
announced later in the day. There was no prime
minister, and two defeated presidential candidates who had backed
Talon in the second round, Pascal Koupaki and Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane,
were appointed to key posts; Koupaki as Secretary-General of the Presidency and
Bio-Tchane as Minister of State for Planning and Development.[7] Talon pledged to increase the fortunes
of Benin in five years and improve its relationship with France.[8] Some of his policy goals are reducing
the power of the executive and reducing presidents to single terms of five
years, an unheard of suggestion in Africa.[1]
Personal
life
He is
married to a woman from Porto-Novo and has two
children.
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