Lately, I have been thinking of exotic things.
Please, don’t get me wrong,
My mind has not been on vacation spots in the South Pacific and South Atlantic and the Caribbean and the Adriatic, gourmet foods, costumes, pets, birds — like the ones roaming the grounds of the Presidential Villa in Abuja with majestic guilelessness — music, objets d’arts, dance, artistic performance – the whole shebang.
I have been thinking of exotic cars, but not out of a craving for one. At home, the ten-year-old Toyota Camry still gets me there in comfort and quiet style. Abroad, the 1997 Volvo, downsized from an earlier model that was for all practical purposes a miniature armoured tank but with no loss in its storied ruggedness, does the job reassuringly in every weather condition.
I date this concern with things exotic from the time the Senate decided that locally-assembled motor cars would not do justice to the delicate anatomies of its distinguished members and chose instead to order bulletproof American-specification SUVs and limousines they consider de rigueur for the exceedingly hazardous task of making good laws for the governance of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and its unruly tribes.
The media called them “exotic cars” and the term stuck, much to the annoyance of the distinguished senators. To be fair, not much was exotic about the cars. They were just loaded models of the kind of Japanese and German automobiles you will find on the streets in the cramped, open-air, roadside stalls of emergency car dealers in Lagos and Abuja.
A good many of the senators have in their personal fleet automobiles that would make them look as if they had fallen on hard times and become déclassé if they were to be found riding in those so-called exotic cars.
Take as an example my senator.
You don’ know him? Let’s just say that he is much better known for his pugilism, for his utter lack of refinement, than for his legislative skills. Nevertheless, he numbers in his fleet a Lamborghini that can accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour (or 96.6 km per hour) in just 10 seconds.
The so-called exotic cars were, in sum, a disappointment.
When it was announced that EFCC operatives acting on a tip-off had found 17 exotic cars parked in a warehouse in Kaduna allegedly belonging to a former ranking official in the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), my earlier disappointment was more than slaked. Now the attentive audience would get a chance to see what an exotic car really looks like, These Customs chaps don’t deal in half- measures; it’s the full Monty or nothing.
Some two decades ago a UNILAG contemporary whom I had not seen since we left Akoka came to see me at Rutam House. Much to my embarrassment, some six months after that visit, his cologne still hung thick in the air. There was nothing I could do to dispel it. I called Inno for help. He laughed, then hung up.
So, if the 17 cars truly belonged to a Customs man who must be presumed to know his onions, it might actually be understating the matter to call them exotic. Ultra-exotic might be the more appropriate term. The media in particular, and the public in general, were about to get a lesson from an authoritative source on what qualifies a motor car to be designated “exotic.”
When Alhaji Dikko Abdullahi Inde, a former Comptroller General of the Customs Service credited with ownership of the fleet, I took it as an indication that we were set, finally, to see the real thing. That was the personage, of whom Mohammed Haruna had written in a column for this newspaper (September 10, 2014) that he reminded him of the boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who matched high bombast with stunning delivery.
In the event, there was no such lesson, only fresh disappointment.
When it was finally unveiled, there was nothing exotic about the fleet. A striking car there, a remarkable one there, but otherwise ordinary through and through.
A 2009 Porsche Cayenne, the closest thing to an exotic vehicle; three BMWs, the highest being in the 525 series, one of them looking as if it came straight out of a salvage yard; five SUVs manufactured between 2003 and 2014; a 2013 Honda Accord; a 2013 Toyota Avensis; a 2010 Toyota Hiace, a 2009 Nissan Bus, a 2002 Peugeot 406, and a1996 Nissan Urban bus: there you have it, more or less.
Altogether a desultory assemblage and proof, were any still required, that the recession is still with us.
True, the vehicles all originated in or are characteristic of a distant foreign country, which is the meaning of “exotic” at one level. In that sense, practically every motor vehicle in Nigeria would have to be called “exotic.” None of the cars in the warehouse is excitingly or mysteriously different or unusual, the sense in which that term is employed in this piece.
Where in the fleet is the Ferrari California? The Aston Martin? The Bentley Continental? The Bugatti? The Rolls-Royce Phantom? The Toyota 2000GT? The Lexus Nürburgring? The Maybach? To climb down several rungs, where is the Maserati? The E-Class Mercedes-Benz? The Cadillac Escalade?
Where, for that matter, is the sense of discrimination of those who call the desultory assemblage found in the Kaduna warehouse “exotic”?
Many of our compatriots have already jumped to the conclusion that the vehicles must have been acquired illegally, for self-enrichment or personal aggrandizement. It is of course the province of the courts to determine whether the acquisition followed proper procedure. But it is gradually emerging that the vehicles might have been acquired for overarching public purposes.
One such purpose, I gather, is to offer young Nigerians free advanced training in automotive technology and thus prepare them for the world of productive and remunerative work.
If the scheme falls through, Plan B kicks in immediately. It calls for establishing a motor vehicle museum in Nigeria that would be the first of its kind in Africa, and a tourist attraction withal. No admission fees will be charged,
Who can quarrel with that?
In whatever case, we have not heard the last about the so-called exotic motor cars. These days, they seem to be everywhere. Only yesterday, the papers reported that state security operatives searching an Abuja property allegedly owned by former Governor Gabriel Susan of Benue State had seized the keys to 45 exotic cars they said they found in two exotic vehicles recovered from the scene.
It remains to locate the 45 exotic vehicles. You hear that, Whistleblowers United?
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