OBASANJO, CRONIES: THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
By Clarius Ugwuoha
Barely a year ago, the question: “Who is after OBJ, Iyabo or Bode George?” would have appeared like a deliberate inversion of fact. The castaways of OBJ’s economic wreckage are fed daily to increasingly sordid and sleazy deals of that era and the equally fevered onslaught against the perpetrators, in a way that suggests, in its interpolated sense, a kind of witch-hunt. Obasanjo and his cronies, from facts emerging, appeared to have inserted, in our collective life, the worse form of disingenuous parenthesis of any government since independence in Nigeria.
It is odd that almost every past leader of this country has gained the notoriety of dipping in the collective till while in power and building staggering financial empires which mere existence cast slur on the character of the possessors. Talk of economic callousness and the hubris of power.
OBJ’s conflicting moralities will continue to confound us. His frequent sermonizing of the past that pitched him against predecessor-dictators and even found him in the gulag of one of these, the late General Sani Abacha, from which he emerged with deeper convictions on how not to run a state, vis-୶is the unsavory revelations on his stewardship, is a paradox. It was a great surprise, baked, as he was, in the crucible of misdirected leadership, that he could derail outright and even visit on his charges, the Nigerian state, with greater mis-governance.
There is the overwhelming urge to be skeptical of the certainty of truth in these revelations: that OBJ who ran Alamieyeseigha to earth on charges of money laundering, hounded him out of power in the most disgraceful circumstances and delivered him to British police for post mortem; that OBJ who gave Chief Joshua Dariye the fright and persecuted many more assumed economic saboteurs, could have squandered the tax payers money in the degree oft reported in the media, is dubitable. That the same OBJ suddenly took ill when it was his turn to face the Power probe panel and explain to the Nigerian masses, whose money this unarguably is, how he ran the entire charade, is also baffling. Everyone expected, that OBJ, if indeed he still read our dailies – which he had long dismissed as lacking in substance, but curiously the same medium with which he launched his saintly onslaught against past despots – would turn up to clear his battered image. He would be chaperoned to the venue of the Power probe panel sitting, to expected shouts and handclaps; look the audience straight in the face and intone in military pitch that the finger pointing and hullabaloo were after all a ruse; that he was innocent, that a ghost conceived the idea of and signed the Power Contracts, which were executed without his oversight by spirits; that the National Assembly should look to spiritual solution to the Power matter as culprits were evidently disembodied and the facts on ground overwhelmingly spiritual.
But OBJ never showed up. The National Assembly – the Senate, of course, seemed in the know, in having soft-pedaled on the ultimatum issued the former leader to appear before the Power probe panel. There was the argument that this was in fact a former leader and should be spared the indignity of Senate ultimata and appearances before panels, a precedent set by the Nigerian state in willful acceptance of the disdain of Oputa probe panel by the retired Generals. We have, like in Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, evolved strata of citizens without knowing or admitting it.
And who in the ICPC would dare beam a searchlight on a character as large and spacious as OBJ??Justice Emmanuel Olayinka Ayoola should look at the travails of Mallam Ribadu and take his cue.
That brings us to Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, the chip off the old block. We are dismayed that merely helping herself to a paltry ten million naira only, from a whooping three hundred million naira UNSPENT FUND, the EFCC was on her neck. Is Iyabo the size of Prof. Grange and other co-accused that the EFCC authorities would dare desecrate her impeccable probity? It is open fact that with the redeployment of Lamorde, a debilitating blow was dealt on the Iyabo trial, which has descended from the headlines to the back-pages.
These are great and sobering times indeed. Only a year ago, it would be inconceivable to think of Iyabo scaling a fence to escape the EFCC, a creation of her father’s administration. We do not know these people can be ill at the wrong time, scale fences and hide from mere mortals like Ribadu or Lamorde. Irrespective of our views, a worthy precedent is being set. OBJ can pull resources and clout to stall Iyabo’s trial, but one day, he too would be as powerless as Iyabo before the menacing EFCC, that is, when enough of his fortresses have been pulled to rubble.
Enter Chief Olabode George and Alhaji Aminu Dabo, both of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) with a whooping one hundred billion naira ‘dirty contracts’ on their neck. I am only interested in the theatrics of the unfolding scenario. One has lost count of the number of charges proffered against the once all-powerful PDP chieftain and clique. Count from one and before you reach sixty, every sin in the book has been exhausted. We must be careful here, of course, since charges do not translate to conviction. We are eagerly awaiting the trials, which must not be in camera, to give us room for adequate appraisal of the proceedings. It is becoming easier to make revelations of unsavoury deals than to obtain convictions. As someone has asked, is Bode George’s arrest a window-dressing meant just for the press? Would the trial be stalled will-nilly and Mrs. Waziri hounded out of the EFCC by the mafia? Several permutations have been made in an attempt to characterize the rapid changes of guard at the anti-crime agency. Ribadu, Lamorde and now Mrs. Waziri.
We are watching from the sidelines. Every action and inaction that depletes our collective coffers fraudulently, shields some perpetrators of these economic sabotage, or misdirects justice is being recorded for posterity. History will not spare these.
Chief Clarius Ugwuoha, a Public Affairs Analyst, writes from the Ezeali Palace in Egbema.
