It is always annoying and contemptuous when other countries choose to expose Nigeria’s national secrets the way the Chinese just did. Before the Chinese Communist Party comes for me, I have nothing against the Chinese state, but its proxies. A largely unknown firm by the curious name of Zhongshan Fucheng Industrial Investment Co. Limited, ostensibly borrowed the failed script used by another innocuous firm, Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID), to embarrass Nigeria. Hiring some charge and bail lawyers, it sought and obtained a $70 million judgement debt against the government of Ogun State and seized federal assets in its bid to reap where it sowed but failed to water.
The case in question arose from an export-free-zone business deal that this Chinese firm reportedly entered with the Ogun government 17 years ago. Zhongshan and its parent company accused the Ogun State government of terminating its contract before it had reached fruition. The firm knows the state secret that when it comes to signing off common patrimony, Nigerian officials are usually too occupied with taking care of their estacodes and the cuts that come than reading the fine print.
The big question any reasonable person would ask is how a state government signs a contract that leaves it in a hole. If we had shame, this would have been shameful. The governors involved in this saga have the audacity to ask the federal government not to give in to the firm’s judgment debt. They sound like prodigals that willfully damaged their neighbour’s property arguing with papa not to pay damages.
It has emerged that two of the so-called old presidential planes that the government planned to auction were sent to Paris. That is no longer news. What is news is that it also has purchased a brand-new jet to add to the ever-burgeoning presidential fleet. It is this shocking fact of a nation subsumed in material and human wealth but whose citizens are named among the poorest in the world that became a well-guarded state secret unveiled.
A lot of Nigerians have long parked their Tokunbo cars since its maintenance meant the abnegation of family responsibilities. If they expect their brand-new government to adopt that frugality, they’ve got a different thing coming.
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The last time Nigerians heard that their president needed another jet, they murmured louder than the Israelis did with Moses on their way to the Promised Land. Unfortunately, the government had an old superscript to deal with these kinds of issues. It was the script that Ibrahim Babangida used as a military dictator. It advises government never to try to stifle harmless opposition to any misanthropic policy; to let Nigerians dissipate their energy murmuring knowing that government would always have its way.
Many Nigerians would have preferred that the Chinese company laid ambush for high-flying former and current Ogun State governors rather than dragging the federal government into the fray. If they had done that, they would have made a big catch like the British did grabbing Ike Ekweremadu and his gang trying to steal a poor man’s kidney.
If the Chinese firm had picked Gbenga Daniel, Ibikunle Amosun or Dapo Abiodun, the current Eleyi of Ogun State, Ogun citizens wouldn’t have shed a tear. The trio probably have enough in assets to liquidate the debt without feeling a pinch.
Nigeria has enough shady deals coming that starting an offshore bounty-hunting business would make Duane Chapman green with envy. After all, it was months ago that P&ID embarrassed the Nigerian government with a similar judgement debt over a federal transaction before Abubakar Malami rescued the situation.
For Nigerians, the current shock is not that Nigeria’s air assets were seized in France, it was discovering that a new plane had entered the inventory. Presidential planes do not come cheap. They are often packed with luxuries to rival the Gulf’s oil Sheikhs. The difference is that Gulf State leaders have more brains and plans for the prosperity of their nations than Nigerian elected officials rolled together. Those who purchase for Nigeria usually cross over the poverty lane. This is why the cost of this new jet should remain a guarded secret for the sanity of those fond of taking Panadol for Nigeria’s headache.
This issue has armed Tinubu’s enemies who are now dragging him over other luxury goods just at a time when the president was about to take another well-deserved holiday to Paris.
Our presidents are known to spare no expenses when it comes to their own comfort. They need the comfort to ensure that they inflict maximum stress and strain on the population. Not only are the budgets for the feeding of the occupants of Arsehole Rock mind-boggling, so too the cost of regularly evacuating their waste. It follows that those who eat well also defecate sumptuously.
There is a verifiable fake news making the viral rounds on the internet that President Tinubu has broken the age-old protocol of riding a Mercedes Benz Maybach for a classier American-made Cadillac Escalade. What is most disturbing is how the president did not launch this new ride. It breaks the owambe protocol popular among Lagosians. We are waiting for the official launch.
In the meantime, enemies are angry that in these austere times, the presidency sourced nearly a billion naira for the purchase. It must be a conservative estimation made before the naira finally succumbed to its presumed fight against the US dollar. This is because, according to the usually unreliable Internet, depending on the specs of an Escalade, the price ranges between $80,000 to $150,000.
We all know that government purchases are usually done with a little butter of sleaze and that state-of-the-art specs must be added to a presidential vehicle, taxpayers should steer clear of making enquiries about the cost.
The Nigerian system runs on the age-old maxim of the state creating distraction whenever it needs to shock the system. The second is for all the organs of state to operate on the principle of you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours.
While making these purchases, the presidency did not waste time approving a new minimum wage. It also endured the stupidity of a so-called end to bad governance protest. Then it went further to increase the earnings of judicial officers by about 300 per cent. Beneficiaries of these perks have never had it so good.
While it was doing this, it did not fail to send the name of a pro-president nominee to the rubberstamp National Assembly to replace the outgoing chief justice of the federation. Who would raise a voice against having a female chief justice at such a time like this without wearing the toga of chauvinism?
While all this was going on at the presidency, the highly overpaid and grossly underperforming members of the federal legislature were busy padding their own salaries and emoluments as well as their running costs.
At the ‘official’ age of 72, President Tinubu deserves all the luxuries of a septuagenarian. He is also perfecting the nepotistic script left by Muhammadu Buhari with virtually all his appointments. Two terms or not, Tinubu would continue his stranglehold on Nigeria for as long as he lived. That is an unbeatable legacy.
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