If you’re presently occupying an appointive public office and President Muhammadu Buhari and his APC government did not appoint you into that office, then you’re a saboteur. This is gospel according to St. John (Odigie-Oyegun).
So, I had wanted to use this space today to give a comprehensive list of other saboteurs to whom PMB should also extend the sack. But I’ll wait a little, until such a time that our president would come visiting the country and be around to read it. As at now, I don’t know if he’s in Qatar, Egypt, Sri Lanka or Mars. Only last week, I learnt that while PMB had visited just four or five states in Nigeria, since his swearing-in, he has visited about 20 countries within the same period. They said he’s looking for foreigners to come and invest in a ‘very corrupt’ Nigeria. Isorait!
After all, Obasanjo did the same thing. At the end, he even got a foreign husband to invest in one of his daughters. At some point during Jonathan’s reign too, I was convinced he also caught the wanderlust disease. We waited for the foreign investors until Jonathan left office. Buhari has started his own. And his aides are telling us the same story.
All the selfish Oyibo people are asking PMB to devalue the Naira. And our president has, justifiably, stuck to his guns about not devaluing. The only painful thing is that the Naira does not really need the president to devalue itself. After all, when did Buhari, Emefiele and the National Assembly approve the about-N400-to-the-Dollar rate we have today. I fear it would get to N500, or even N1000, and we would still not have ‘devalued’. Nonsense! In fact, I’m beginning to think we should brand all these our bankers and voodoo economists, confusing us with dizzying theories, ‘insurgents’, declare them persona non-grata and just deport them to Chad, Niger, Gaza, Afghanistan or wherever.
But jokes apart, does APC really need an explanation (let alone a dumb one) to justify why it sacked appointees of the PDP government it sacked from power? Everyone knows that boards would have to be dissolved and all manner of appointments revoked, to create room for APC members and supporters. That is one of the many ways a victorious party compensates party members, who helped to bring it to power. It is done all over the world. So, I find nothing wrong in Buhari sacking officers he’s constitutionally empowered to hire and fire. But to brand all of them saboteurs? Haba!
If we brand these ones saboteurs, what then would be call those who have (through phoney bureaux de change) been shortchanging the country on her foreign exchange earnings? Terrorists? And there’re still those other ones whom we’re sure to catch with their fingers right inside the pie; what do we call them? Or maybe, we should just tie them to the stake at Bar Beach and shoot all of them outright? But sincerely, I sometimes feel that would be the only punishment fit enough for what they have done. But first of all, we have to catch them. And convict them beyond reasonable doubt. Due process! Yes! I know it can be very annoying, considering that they did not observe due process and rule of law when they were looting our treasury.
And talking of convictions, last week, I had a lengthy telephone conversation with one of the most respected Senior Advocates of Nigeria, Chief Niyi Akintola, who is more of a father figure to me. Several weeks ago, he had had a good laugh at me when media houses were mentioned in Dasukigate (even though he understood the full picture of what was on ground). So, when, last week, it became the turn of lawyers and judges to be insulted by the anti-graft warriors, I felt it was my turn to get a good laugh at “daddy”, even though his name was not mentioned anywhere.
But, like every of our chats, this was another round of eye-opening education – the type that the professors at Harvard, Oxbridge, London School of Economics can never teach you.
I told him that I was afraid that, with the way we’re going about this our Armsgate scandal, we might not be able to get a single conviction – and many of those who have raped us without condoms (in the name running our country and its economy) would manipulate the law and go scot-free.
Chief Akintola was largely in agreement. Like me, he’s pained that people stole so much in the face of so much suffering in the land. Painfully, as a lawyer, he’s bound by professional oath to defend anybody who can afford his fee – because of the principle of presumption of innocence. But ‘Daddy’ also told me how easy it was to get a conviction without compromising the constitution, democracy or the rule of law. The only thing the government needs to do is to look in the right direction and ask the right people for advice. Chief Akintola says there’re less than 10,000 Nigerians stealing the country blind and hold the rest 170 million of us to ransom. And we can conveniently put every one of them behind bars, without the judiciary giving us any headache.
He gave me an instance, which I won’t share on these pages – the government knows how to reach Chief Akintola if it seriously wants to fight corruption. I’m sure they can also afford his fees – if the Chief Akintola that I know would not even be willing to render such service free of charge.
But the example he gave sounded so simple that I began to wonder: If our public prosecutors are too lazy to read, can’t they also ask questions?
Nigerians will not forgive Buhari, APC, EFCC and ICPC if, after all this media blitz, we do not manage to get a few big names behind bars. If we fail at the office of the national security adviser, then we can look at the defence budget itself, the NNPC, Customs, Amnesty office, ministries of Education and Agriculture, Ecological Fund, Immigration, NIMASA, Subsidy, Halliburton, the budget office and, of course, the civil servants, who pad up the budget. We must not fail.
SUN
END
Its only someone of Igbo extraction that can write this piece. So predictable!