NIKE ANIMASHAUN RETURNS… How presidency ratified her appointment after she was sacked at Lagos State ministry

Nike Animashaun was enchanting to all and sundry perhaps until she got into trouble with Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. Now, Nike, the beauty whose extraordinariness made you forget her limitations, is back on the grind. While in service, the flamboyant socialite and former Permanent Secretary of Lagos State’s Ministry of Science and Technology strutted about like a bride to a tyrant emperor, brandishing her capacity for graft and vulgar lust for material possessions, to the delight of like minds and consternation of conscientious peer and underlings. Then came Governor Akinwumi Ambode, wielding his spunk and contempt for graft like a surgical blade; Ambode discovered Nike’s complicity in a N5billion shady contract and proceeded to sack her. No sooner did he sack her than she was compensated with a lucrative job as Company Secretary of the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). The 50-year -old who is notable for her boorishness and inordinate lust for expensive dresses, bags, jewelry and shoes,

Whenever she visited her office, she appeared overdressed, like one who is desperate to impress and oppress her colleagues at work. Although she eventually got sacked, contemporaries and underlings of the former permanent secretary were stupefied by the softlanding accorded her. It will be recalled

that Nike had enjoyed a mercurial rise from the position of Junior Magistrate in the Lagos State judiciary to become a permanent secretary and power broker within Lagos Civil Service Commission, where she was jocularly regarded as ‘Queen of Alausa.’ Outside official quarters, Animashaun lives a less -than -exemplary life. Since her marriage to Bankole Animashaun, a famous Lagos socialite and businessman, hit an iceberg, she has remained single. However, immediately she got the appointment, she retreated into her anonymous cocoon. But here is good news for friends and foes alike; Nike is back again in the social whirl. She was a cynosure of all eyes at Otunba Niyi Adebayo daughter’s wedding last weekend. She dressed to the nines.