The uniformed fraternity play by the rules. When they encounter each other, they simply say ‘esprit de corps’ and their comrades understand.
Robbers have a similar code. I have heard it said that they give each other ranks that are used instead of names.
Years ago when this writer was robbed in Karu, the robbers used a fraternity code – if you move I move you.
Sad that the man who benefitted most from the NDDC billions meant to integrate the Niger-Delta area into the status of humans of 2020 agreed to chair a committee conducting a public hearing into its activities. That there, is the audacity of sleaze; because in law the maxim – nemo judet in causa sua, requires that you cannot be a judge in your own cause. Normal people recuse themselves in such instances. In Nigeria, they could count on grand subterfuge.
This clown sat in his resplendent bottom of the box garment presiding over an inglorious chapter of a painfully familiar national charade. A sham carnival that exposes the counterfeit toga of integrity that earned this regime its anti-corruption turare or incense.
Apart from its job of deodorizing putrescence turares are fashion and religious accessory. Corruption is the palm oil with which governance is debased. Sai Baba’s turare bleaches and deodorizes the crimson stains of political converts.
Timipre Silva was being ‘investigated’ until he jumped ship and landed in the ruling party. His probe turned to ‘not guilty’. Godswill Akpabio was looking at joining Joshua Dariye and his fellow coons as a ‘suspect’ until he bailed into the ruling party and was ‘absolved’ of all suspicion. Both men met the ruling party’s eligibility criterion to be named ‘honourable minister’. In Nigeria, words take the opposite of what they mean.
Akpabio proves that dogs truly eat their own kind. In one moment of playing nice, the narrative seemed to be turning against him, but on the return leg, he spun the tide. Now, even the words that came from his mouth are being baptized as deep fake mirabilia.
Recommendation one –in a game where robbers sentence thieves, committee chairmen must take control of every microphone in the room. That way when the shout ‘enough, honourable minister, its okay’, they don’t need to ask their guests to switch anything off; instantaneously the gadget reads the mind of its controller and does the needful.
Shall we thank the 9th Assembly for theatrical effects? Under Olusegun Obasanjo; speaker Ghali Umar Na’Abba emptied the dirtiest wads of cash on the mace as evidence that the presidency wants to corrupt the legislature. That incident happened after he and Anyim Pius Anyim, then president of the Senate had worked together to alter a bill already passed by the National Assembly to please Obasanjo. Believe it, a wonderful Nigeria later found Anyim qualified to be the Secretary to the Government of the federation.
We have heard Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai accuse some senators of demanding N54 million to ‘bow and go’ as a ministerial nominee. The accidental civil servant refused to play ball and still had his way but the stain remained and the investigation – inconclusive.
Weeks back, Festus Keyamo appeared before a different committee to defend a controversial government youth employment project. While global lawmakers were working hard to pull their countries out of Covid-19 recession, ours got brand new SUVs for their indolence as their constituents were literally dying of hunger. When Keyamo came with a project, they saw an attempt to save face. Problem was, it was a public hearing. Once they knew this could be an opportunity to burnish legislative mileage, they demanded a closed hearing. Keyamo refused. Imagine what they would have done if they had control of his microphone!
Keyamo rightly accused them of trying to arm-wrestle a government programme to cover their overinflated egos. He invoked the name above names, that of Muhammadu Buhari. Suddenly, the legislature realised that Keyamo’s portfolio is unknown to the constitution and that his pet project could have been handled better by the NDE. We had forgotten about NDE. If it took Raw Materials 33 years to invent beef jerky or kilishi, there’s hope that one day NDE would eradicate joblessness, just don’t count on it.
We are a great nation. We spend incredible amounts of our national earnings feeding the cancers that destroy us. Pray, what is the advantage of the national assembly? What is their contribution to national development apart from the jumbo benefits they corner for themselves? They skirt round laws with little or no bearing to national entente and development as achievements.
At every electoral cycle, these people show up with bags of rice, gari, kulikuli and pure water. They throw a few notes from the stash pen-robbed off us. We kiss their behinds and take bullets for them. We acquire their ‘enemies’ as ours and would even kill for their inordinate ambitions. Then we stamp our thumbs on their ballots authorizing them to rape democracy.
Empowered, they suck on the dry tits of our national economy. The only bills they pass are padded budgets that enable them to stash money into ministries and agencies where they return to cash in.
On the road, they run us off with sirens. When they are sick, we say the nation is sick and if they die, the nation mourns. Our wives die at childbirth, while they fly theirs across the globe to acquire foreign nationality. While they loot, we clown around. We, the suffering masses have greeted shouts of ‘issokay honourable minister, off the mike’ with hilarious memes and entertaining skits. They have no capacity for shame and we have lost our sense of national outrage.
This is why it is safe to say sorry Nigeria; you cannot be all right like this.
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