DOES anybody remember it is Christmas?
I almost did not – for good reasons. The Boko Haram insurgency remains a bad sore, partly a self-inflicted injury, as we are beginning to find out – courtesy of the $2b arms contracts probe. Politicians have refused to learn a lesson on why the people’s will should be allowed to prevail, our roads keep taking lives, power supply remains everything but stable and rights abuses are yet to abate. The economy is like a barber’s chair, rolling and rocking but going nowhere. Senators are struggling to enact a law that will criminalise free speech – as if they never swore to make laws for the benefit of the citizenry.
In the stifling environment, isn’t it easy to forget the Yuletide? The reality of it hit me when a cousin of mine showed up with a gift. Besides, harmattan is here, dry, dusty and nasty. Visibility is poor; it is cloudy and a bit smoggy. No excuses; the season of goodwill is here. So, as I do every year, I have begun a compilation of gifts for some prominent Nigerians – just before the authorities declare the Yuletide inconclusive.
On top of my mailing list is President Muhammmadu Buhari. I have refused to join critics of his frequent travels, which an aide insists are not for fun. Consider those friends we have lost over the years; won’t we woo them back? How do we announce that the giant of Africa is truly back when our President is not seen at major seminars where world leaders discuss such life-and-death matters as climate change, ISIS, small arms trafficking, human trafficking and others.
For the President, I have ordered a copy of Jonathan Swift’s classic, “Gulliver’s Travels”. He will get also several packs of Vitamin C tablets.
Some of his friends are telling Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) detectives all they know about the $2b arms cash bonanza at the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA). The EFCC is contemplating how to handle the matter; should it take in Dr Jonathan for questioning or leave him out of it all? Should he be sent questions to answer or simply be allowed to decide how to clear his name? The “armsgate” cash is huge, bigger in reality and in imagination than what the late Justice Victor Ovie-Whiskey, chairman of the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO), the forerunner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), said could send him fainting.
I bet Dr Jonathan would like to address this and other matters in his memoirs, which will surely be a best-seller whenever he decides to write it. But, a source told me he is yet to start writing. From me to the former President is a hard copy of Curtis Bisel’s “How to write an autobiography: The secret tips to finally get started”.
Talking about the “$2b armsgate”, former National Security Adviser (NSA) Sambo Dasuki seems to be at the centre of it all, with people, such as controversial businessman Raymond Anthony Aleogho Dokpesi confessing that he got N2.1b from his office – we understand that the AIT/Ray Power chair actually has N10b (incredible) to account for – and the accountant Shaibu Salisu giving an account of how the cash was funneled. Former Sokoto Governor Attahiru Bafarawa was said to have got N100m for –wait for this – “spiritual purposes”.
Well, we’ll get to know more now that the matter is in the open court. Before then, I have ordered for Dasuki an ATM, the Automated Teller Machine that dispenses cash at the touch of some buttons after the insertion of a personalised and coded card. It keeps records of who gets what and actually issues receipts. All this after a courteous greeting, which in this case will run like “Welcome to ONSA. Please, enter your secret number.”
Dokpesi has issued a statement that the cash he got was for “media and publicity”. But the EFCC, which is said to be unable to fathom what the ONSA could possibly have to do with publicity contracts, has asked the high chief to tender some documents –letter of award, certificate of no objection from the Bureau of Public Procurement, certificate of completion and all that. Dokpesi’s family has said he submitted a proposal to Dr Jonathan in the presence of the then Vice President, Namadi Sambo (where in the world is he?) and that the proposal was thoroughly scrutinised. What due process could have been better than this, Dokpesi was said to have told the incredulous officers, who were amazed and dazed at the depth of his proficiency.
I have briefed a young lawyer with an incredible zealotry – you missed it if you thought Mike Ozekhome (SAN) got my brief – to file an application for a copyright on a yet to be published work that will change the face of Commercial Law for ever. “How to sign multi-billion naira contracts”, by Dr R.A. Dokpesi.
Where is Olisa Metuh? This is the question many have been asking on account of the unusual silence of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman. I have got Metuh a bottle of Cognac. Besides, he will get a basket of farm-fresh okro to keep his mouth ever-smooth and ever-running as in the days when his party revelled in the illusion that it was going to rule for 60 years – in the first instance.
The other day in the newsroom, somebody was talking about Dr Doyin Okupe – remember him; one of Dr Jonathan’s spokesmen, the one who swore that Buhari would never be president? – and his prediction that the All Progressives Congress (APC) would find it difficult to manage its success in the general election. Now, said the fellow, rather than defend its victory in Kogi State, the party’s leadership flunked a single test of integrity and principle– Haba Chief John Odigie-Oyegun – agreed to a supplementary election and abused the memory of its candidate, Abubakar Audu, by dumping his running mate, Abiodun Faleke, for a man who never cared for the party after losing its primary. Now, let’s be fair. Isn’t Okupe right?
Okupe will get from me a week’s supply of Italian pizza from the best restaurant in town for what the fellow called his precision. By the way, has the prince executed that Benue State contract, the one on which he reportedly got a hefty mobilisation fee? Or has he been restrained by a court of competent jurisdiction from executing it?
Faleke too deserves a gift. I have ordered “The proverbs of MKO Abiola”, a pamphlet compiled by the former crime writer who is now a security consultant, Ben Okezie. Abiola, frontline businessman, philanthropist and sport enthusiast, won the June 12,1993 presidential election, but his friend, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, annulled the poll for no reason. Abiola died in a desperate battle to reclaim his mandate. Before then he had quipped in reply to a reporter’s question: “With a friend like IBB, nobody needs an enemy.” Faleke should note particularly such instructive proverbs as “You don’t abort a pregnancy after the baby is born” and “You can’t shave a man’s head in his absence”.
Dino Melaye has been hyperactive since he became a senator. Vaulted from street activism to the Senate, Melaye, in the view of many, has never really got over his dramatic transformation. Not for him the sobriety that is the hallmark of a lawmaker. When he is not playing Senate President Bukola Saraki’s bodyguard, he is busy screaming – without facts but with fake figures – that an innocent company has creamed off N25b of the national revenue in three months.
I won’t join those condemning what they have described as Melaye’s incivility, describing him as an empty barrel making the loudest noise and an irritant who thrives on peddling salacious rumours. No. From me, the distinguished senator will get a bottle of the herbal medication “Kalms”, which will assure him of a good night’s sleep and put him in a calm, reflective mood all day.
Before governors begin to feel neglected, let me quickly announce the package for a worthy member of that exclusive club, Mr Ayodele Fayose, the grandiloquent “architect of modern Ekiti”, the one who recently corralled the honourable members of the House of Assembly to crown him the “leader of the opposition”, a title that has refused to stick despite his “Balottelian” stunts.
Fayose, you may wish to recall, just before the general election, practically laid bare in public, his mother’s private infelicitous circumstances, saying the old woman had been condemned by her health status to wearing pampers, like a baby. This being a family paper, I would not like to write the other things he said in denigration of then candidate Buhari, using his innocent mother as a symbol.
I have asked a photographer to glaze a bold copy of the popular Yoruba song celebrating motherhood for His Excellency. Here it goes:
Iya ni wura iyebiye, ti a ko le f’owora
O lo yun mi fo su mesan,
O pon mi fodun meta
Iya ni wura iyebiye ti a ko le f’owora
“Mother is the priceless gold that money can’t buy. “She bore me in her womb for nine months. “She carried me on her back for three years. “Mother is the priceless diamond that
money can’t buy.”
Sunday Oliseh is hanging in there as coach of the Super Eagles, a team that has embarrassed its fans in spectacular ways since it won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2013 under the pompous Stephen ‘Big Boss’ Keshi. Since he got the top job some five months ago, Oliseh has played eight games, winning four, drawing three and losing one. He has been tongue- lashed for lacking attackers who have the skill of scoring goals and for engaging in needless squabbles with goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama.
For Oliseh, the honeymoon may soon be over. I have got him an M2 Basic Automatic Blood Pressure Monitor, the OMRON brand. He will surely read it.
My mailing list remains open and inconclusive – in the spirit of these days of inconclusiveness– all through the Yuletide. Should anybody feel left out, he or she should feel free to contact me. After all, this is the season of goodwill. Merry Christmas!
NATION
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