Equal Opportunity Embezzlers

Mr. Dimeji Bankole, the speaker of the Nigerian House of Representatives has finally conceded to a probe, over the car purchase contract scandal rocking the lower house at the moment. Prior to this concession, he had dismissed the honest inquiries of a concerned Nigerian citizen, Mr. Festus Keyamo, on the discrepancies in the contract awarded and the job done, as ‘noise-making’.

This latter stance can only obtain in a political climate where politicians fear neither God nor respect man. And that unfortunately is the Nigerian situation. Bankole’s has joined the annals as one of the most stupid utterances a public servant could ever make when the public demand an account of his stewardship, or a clarification on a matter of public interest. His stance stems from the same diseased god-complex afflicting almost all Nigerian politicians and office holders at all levels.

I was not surprised by Bankole’s earlier stand on the issue. Neither was I scandalized by his dismissal of Keyamo’s inquires as noise making. This is because I was never naïve to confer any hopes on a bunch of renegades, who stole mandates and perpetrated electoral frauds to get to the Nigeria’s houses of parliament. No right thinking Nigerian ever reposed confidence on their abilities, which is superlatively non-existent. Most of them are failed histories, whose incompetence disqualified from any other worthy endeavour in the social space, save going into the last refuge of a scoundrel; namely –Nigerian politics. The Nigerian National Assembly has no man of integrity in its ranks. There is absolutely none. This is a house where all the retired misfits, grotesque rogues, and inglorious thugs conglomerate to constitute themselves into our national undertakers as well as the pallbearers of our defunct nation.

Mr. Dimeji Bankole came to the Speakership of the Nigeria’s House of Reps, when Ms. Patricia Etteh, the erstwhile crooked and incompetent speaker abandoned decency and stole herself into disrepute and impeachment. But this house is on the news again. Most of the reasons why Etteh was probed and sacked have assumed other forms and are being mercilessly perpetrated in the same House of filth. Some have even begun to ask why Etteh was sacked in the first place, when other more potent and equal opportunity embezzlers are still on call.

This leads us to the function of probes in Nigeria!

Administrative probes are normally designed to query abuses of office, misappropriation or misapplication of government’s resources to uses other than those for which they were appropriated in the budget. But in Nigeria it is now a circus. Probes are farcical theatres, wherever consolidated corruption reigns. In such arenas, serious administrative investigations simply degenerate into a Machiavellian gimmick deployed to hoodwink the people into swallowing the pretence, that the government is serious about curing the festering malaise that has laid the country lame; marooned in the islands of poverty and underdevelopment. And it is this Machiavellian construction that Bankole had in mind when he conceded to probe on the car contract scandal.

The probe of Bankole will achieve one of two things! It either exposes him to an indictment and consequent impeachment; or it is politically manipulated to keep him in office. If he is impeached, his replacement will be sought from the same corrupt pool! This is because, the Nigerian legislature is a house erected on corruption. That is why what they are doing in the name of probe is simply a circus. Many of those guys there are there on a stolen mandate. This explains their recalcitrance in passing the Freedom of Information Bill. They are aware that the passage of that bill tantamount to self-destruction for them. Nigerians will then be empowered to ask questions and would have the right to access information in relation to their questions. To this end, these guys will never pass that bill. They are ready to wait it out until public opinion dies down, and business continues as usual.

As I am writing, connections are being tugged at to water down the probe of the power sector sleaze, where Obasanjo and his daughter Iyabo are seriously connected to the network of filth that stole Nigeria blind and left Nigerians in unexplainable darkness for 8 years. And it is working. Yar Adua is only playing to the gallery. Grange and his Minister of State are simply fall guys, to confuse the world that Yar Adua is serious. He is not. He is as illegitimate as sin. He knows it. He is a part of this cabal of thieves that will never let Nigeria develop, or maintain some semblance of progress. The trajectory is the same. This dissimulation reminds us of when Obasanjo got to power. He dragged Prof. Fabian Osuji and Adolphus Wabara to the EFCC and had them sacked for offering and soliciting bribes respectively to increase the allocation to the education sector in the budget. Many, including myself, were deceived by Obasanjo’s opening, Machiavellian gambit. We thought that he is serious about fighting corruption, without knowing that this was a ploy to lure our attention to sleep, as he prepares to loot Nigeria into primitive underdevelopment. I was later weaned of my naiveté, when I saw the face of a crook in Obasanjo. He surrounded himself with crooks, as only a robber baron would. Vincent Azie blew the whistle on that. But Nigerians were busy fighting over the bones of ethnicity and tribalism to pay him heed. A guy who told the truth, with facts and figures about the primitive corruption presided over by the Nigerian presidency was sacked; and Obasanjo’s tribal brother was appointed to cover the president’s ass, as he converts Nigeria into his private estate.

Obasanjo created an EFCC, which he intended ab initio to use as the Orwellian Napoleon Dogs. He deceived Nigerians to his intentions. He was good at that. He unleashed Ribadu on his opponents for cosmetic effects, while the real crooks walked. Ribadu was hounding Obasanjo’s critics, while Obasanjo was busy stealing more than all his opponents put together could ever have done. Yar Adua is presently towing the same line. He came to power and sacked the EFCC leadership pursuant to the deal he made with Ibori, his chief financier, and other indicted governors to protect them from the just recompense of their inveterate thievery.

Today, the Ibori case and that of many of his colleagues have been relegated to inattention. And in three years, the courts would quash his indictment and release him for lack of diligent prosecution by the government. And he will be free to enjoy the loot he creamed off the Delta State treasury. The same goes for all other governors, who conspired with Obasanjo to hoist Yar Adua on Nigerians.

If Nigerians think that anything is going to come out of the power sector probe, or the prosecution of Grange and others, they must be seriously dreaming. After all, Tafa Balogun got a deal and bagged a six-month suspended sentence for robbing the Police. Compare that to a common armed robber harassed by hunger and hopelessness, who was sentenced to hang for stealing One thousand naira, which is the equivalent of 10 dollars. But Balogun stole over a 100 million Dollars. Nigerians: who between the two is supposed to hang?

The effects of corruption are every where evident in Nigeria. Terrible roads and communications infrastructure; unnecessary loss of life due to frequent plane crashes consequent on poor or substandard infrastructure; collapsed building with the toll on lives and property of Nigerians; consequent on substandard materials approved by corrupt public official, who were most possibly bribed to shut their eyes to malpractices; collapsed bridges, poor and mangled healthcare system consequent on the embezzlement of the funds mapped thereto, poor and non existent public utilities and so on. These are on the general scale.

Particular instances abound!

About two years ago, Nigerians were forced to go register for national ID cards. Today, no one hears anything any more about that scheme and the billions of naira poured into it. Yet Nigerians have no ID cards till today. The money mapped for that exercise grew wings and flew into private pockets. Probes produced some scapegoats and no convictions. The power sector gulped over $16 billion only to keep on generating darkness. Nigeria recorded three air crashes in one year. And to placate the public, the government urged urgent action. Some funds were mapped out for the updating of the navigations equipment at our major airports. Borishade and his cohorts swallowed the funds. No jobs were done! Yet the money flew. Till today, the airports are yet to be fitted with the necessary landing aids which those funds promised. We are now being treated to the mean-spirited avarice of a federal minister-the eternally incompetent Babalola Borishade, who allowed himself to be bribed with over 100 million dollars, out of the contract sum, by the contracting company. The money was shared among various individuals and the project died. The Austrian engineer must be pleading his innocence because he bribed Nigerian officials. But no one is yet to hang or go to jail for that monumental betrayal! We are waiting for another air crash and another round of noise to map out another round of billions and create another round of embezzlers to that end. The crazy circle run around continues!

The interests that drive corruption in Nigeria are too deeply entrenched to be dislodged by a mere legislative probe. Cancers are not cured by massage. They are ruthlessly rooted out. If not they metastasize with fatal consequences on the patient. That should be the ideal prescription for Nigeria. But that will never materialise because the corruption in Africa is a multi-billion dollar industry and market. This is an alliance of African public officials, foreign companies, interests and governments, as well as the petty thieves at the lowest rung of the ladder. It is a closed market manned by fierce watchdogs, which keep effective measures marshalled against corruption at bay, and neutralize all efforts to tackle this canker. Corruption operates on the economic dynamics of demand and supply. Both are some deeply interconnected dynamic. Without supply, the demand will desiccate. And without the demand, the supply will cease to exist. But both functions in perfect harmony to create an equilibrium that stabilizes this market and keeps it throbbing to the discomfiture of accountability and social development.

This accounts for why the EFCC was established for cosmetic effect and on a very fragile foundation. This flawed birth compromised its effectiveness and efficiency. The agency was dead on arrival. It was made a political fist of those in power. That is why Obasanjo manipulated it at will and deployed it to hound his enemies and opponents like Hitler used the Gestapo and Stalin the Stasi and KGB. Today, Yar Adua has continued the cosmetic and pretence. Ribadu has been replaced by Fadira Waziri, a woman compromised by her tainted liaisons with corrupt and indicted governors like Saraki and Ibori. And this woman has been dancing to the tunes of her patrons. She garnered enough effrontery to tell Nigerians that the files and dossiers collated on the indicted governors were missing from her office! Nigerians protested, and she was forced to eat her words of deception. She told a monumental lie when she told the world that there was no petition against Obasanjo as to warrant a probe of his administration. But unfortunately for her lying tongue, the authors of a petition against Obasanjo were there to refresh her memory and cure her of her wilful amnesia and allergy to truth. Now she is pretending to be probing Obasanjo! We know she is a joke.

Why waste time on probe when the results of other probes have never been implemented in Nigeria? Nigerians should ask: what happened to the Vincent Azie’s (Auditor General’s) Report of 2003! What about the PDTF probe which showed the presidency and vice presidency trading blames on who stole more from the funds? What happened to the Oputa Panel report? Why is the government so indolent in prosecuting Al Mustapha and Bamaiyi?

These guys presume that Nigerians are stupid. And our collective inaction seems to bear them out. The fact remains that the probe of Bankole, like others before it is simply a smokescreen designed to keep us entertained, while high level stealing continue unabated. The simple reason is that these thieves ruling Nigeria are the same people, with different faces. Al Mustapha knew this all along! Mustapha was a very intelligent crook; a thoroughgoing Machiavellian, who in order to retain his head after doing shit in the corridors of power, knew that information is power. He collected very fat dossiers on all the major actors in the Nigerian dance of the naked. This he holds in a trust as insurance for his head. He knows a lot to shoot Obasanjo and his goons out of the sky any day. This guy has real damaging dossier on all the crooked Nigerians you ever know. They struck a deal with him to silence him. He made them realise that he has pay-dirt on all of them and that this shit will hit the fan, any day he looks for his head and cannot find it. He made them realise that if he dies, or if a contract for a hit on him is given out, then the world will know to the tiniest detail, who laid Nigeria prostrate. That explains their angst in killing him and his co-conspirators. It is a win-win situation for all them, but a huge loss for the ordinary Nigerian.

Since 1970, Nigeria has witness a profane desecration of all values we hold dear as a people. The politicians are the greatest culprit here. The electorate cannot be absolved of blame as well. Their eternal timidity empowered one of the most monstrous embezzling enterprise in human history. The Nigerian political elite have defrauded the nation of over 64 trillion since independence. And the looting continues!

From the dawns of the furniture allowance under Okadigbo’s national assembly; through Etteh’s multi-million naira renovation of her residence when so many Nigerians are living on the streets; to Bankole’s latest indiscretions in the car-purchase contract; the national assembly has been befouled by its corruption and complicity in the evisceration of development in Nigeria.

Bankole if found guilty of any wrong doings in the contract scandal should be fired with immediate effect and be made to face the music. The audacious impunity of Nigerian politicians lends steady credence to Chinweizu’s assertion that until we start beheading thieves in power, Nigeria will never know felicity or development. The goings on in the Nigerian power corridors makes it extraordinarily difficult to believe the obverse. Nigerians are getting gradually fed up. And the day that Nigerians will say enough, Ghana’s brand of revolution under Rawlings will be the antics of spoilt kids in relation to what Nigeria will experience. The Tsunami is coming! But our politicians are eternally deaf and blind, until their heads follow!