Category: Sam Omatseye

When Ms. Mmesoma Ejikeme, who pulled a 419 on a country, first burst on the scene, she was a miracle of teenage genius. The social media whirled, the father preened, Anambra State swaggered, Nnewi spun from a stereotype of commerce to a land of a nerd, the nation nodded. This essayist was quietly applauding Innoson Motors for rallying philanthropy for brains as against a nation obsessed with the shallow artifice of Nollywood and comedians. After all, we just witnessed pure academic genius in Lagos State University where Aminat Yusuf, daughter of The Nation’s own journalist, snagged a perfect score. The BOS of Lagos, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, filled her quiver with N10 million.

But the story strayed suddenly. Ishaq Oloyede revealed it was all a hoax. Mmesoma was an impostor. What was she high on? Lies, deceit, delusion of grandeur, 419, in her case ‘fraud one nine’? While Oloyede pinned his point on technology, it became a story of witch-hunt. Oloyede and his JAMB wanted to hunt her down. JAMB sought to make her into a witch. The mob sought to upend technology with sorcery. Conspiracy theories buzzed. They lost patience with exact science, but rather turned into agencies of sentiment. Oh, how the Innoson girl was innocent. After watching her social media act, JAMB must be a terrible institution. Oloyede must be a wicked man.

Read Also : Mmesoma vs JAMB

Others said, it was all about tribe. An Anambra State commissioner almost got caught in the web of persecution. But the governor, a cosmopolitan, made it a procedural affair. My great sister, Oby Ezekwesili, often under the spell of her own sentiment, called for independent inquiry. Fair enough until she wrote that it would be “a learning experience for @JAMBHQ and everyone…” She had cocooned JAMB as the guilty party, Mmesoma the innocent. How about a learning experience for Mmesoma, JAMBHQ and everyone else? The two principal figures were Mmesoma and JAMB. Oby opened herself to a charge of placing kin over conscience. Remember Achebe’s “A kinsman in trouble ought to be saved, not blamed”? Not a good way to tackle a national matter. Great that she accepted the truth after the Anambra State inquiry. Gov. Chukwuma Soludo would not be part of such a perfidy. He checkmated the runaway imagination of some in the state. Kudos to him.

This girl is not 14 or even 17. She has reached the age of majority. She might have voted in the last election. She can wed, be a mother, fight in the army, testify in court. This saga has shown us how innocence can be overrated. There she was online with a soft, feminine voice, a carapace of a white band and unwoven hair over a cherubic face. There is no art to find the 19-year-old’s construction in the face. She was a girl in whom many built an absolute trust. Trust is therefore overrated.

She erred and she knew it. I spoke with Oloyede, just as Ezekwesilii did. The JAMB boss said, “if I interrogate her for 30 minutes, she will confess.” It turned out, Mmesoma did not require that exalted audience to confess. She did not need conscience. She bowed to facts. In The Great Expectation, Charles Dickens says, “Conscience is a terrible thing if it accuses man or boy.” Hers was not about innocence, but naivete. As former Aviation minister Osita Chidoka narrates, Mmesoma presented the outdated name of his exam centre.  The new name bears Ikemefuna, a name familiar in our most popular novel. She lacked the stealth and eye of a forger to update the school’s name, which had changed. It was an illumination from Chidoka in spite of exploiting the moment for partisan drivel. She did not know that JAMB had effected a change of result format. She scooped an ancient template for 2023.

Mmesoma exercised what Joseph Conrad calls a “bravado of guilt.” She walked with effrontery into the office of the state education commissioner to advertise her lie. She relished Innoson’s N3 million largesse with the showy impunity of a photo-op.

Many have not followed Oloyede. He is the public servant of this generation. He has not only turned an agency that gave N50 million as gains for over a decade to N50 billion. He has radicalized probity in education. Many students can no longer fake high scores to gain admissions and become false professionals. Who knows if the persons who misdiagnosed Gani Fawehinmi were products of such shambolic triumphs? Recently, a prominent Journalist had surgery in a big Lagos hospital. When the problem persisted, he tried another big-name hospital that insisted on another surgery. But a United States doctor said he had a mere allergy. The symptoms disappeared on prescribed tablets he used a few times.

We need the same example in WAEC and NECO. Many still score high in school certificate exams by fraud. Mmesoma’s story highlights a victory of institution. But we should not overstate this. It is the genius of one man who purified a system and turned it into an example. Political theorists often bicker whether rational choice supersedes institutionalism. But institutions are what men make them. It calls for vigilance. More applause for Oloyede.

Yet institutions cannot be underrated. Those who called for proper procedure for Mmesoma are calling for mercy. That is why we may not develop. JAMB spared Mmesoma the prospect of a jail term of beans with designer stones and typhoid water. If the DSS follows through, she might rejoice over the three-year ban from UTME. After all, many of her age mates are behind bars. Yet, my heart follows Apostle James, who espouses mercy over judgment and Jesus who would privileges mercy over sacrifice. Shakespeare’s immortal line, “The quality of mercy is not strained,” holds here. Let it drop on her like the gentle rain.

But not long ago, a fellow from Kaduna claimed 380, and the state government, like Anambra, was about to celebrate. Until JAMB exposed him. Some hysteria about North versus south wanted to becloud the facts. A father collaborated with a child in Benin. A few years ago, a fake student hired a SAN to sue JAMB and during interrogation, the lawyer had to beg JAMB to ask NTA not to cover the fraud as the facts leapt out. Syndicates are thriving in Igarra, Edo State and Mowe outside Lagos. Arrests have not deterred them.

The story underlines a world of fakery. If we have fake UTME results, it is because we have fake bread, fake malaria drugs, fake designer bags, fake clerics, fake army officers, fake doctors and lawyers and policemen, fake shoes, fake baby foods, et al. Hence many throng worship centres for miracle rather than faith. JAMB triumph is a triumph of technology, and that is how to save our country. Good persons, good technology, good country. For all its imperfections, we have made strides with technology for our elections. Nothing demonstrates this more than the willingness of the crybabies to agree with INEC where they won and disagree where they lost. We need it in our finances in the centre under President Bola Tinubu. He saved Lagos finances with technology. He should do it in Abuja.

Those who turned Mmesoma saga into tribe had a learning curve. They were chasing a giant rat that was not there. When Amina Yusuf won the LASU perfect score, no one made any bones about her tribe. It was not a tribal triumph. It was an individual shine. The tribalists forget that the real JAMB shero is Precious Nkechi Umeh,  who soared to a 360 score, devouring the 90 percentiles in all science subjects and 66 in English. Innoson should give her the N3 million. After all, Umeh hails from Anambra, although she is a Lagos student of the Deeper Life High School. Where are her parents? I had called The Nation newspaper’s Yusuf as the father of the year for nurturing his daughter to excellence. Umeh’s parents share the honours.

But the saga is about how we make heroes. Mmesoma has seen many who earned praises as murderers, liars, thieves. Russian poet Pushkin wrote, In our time, man, whatever his element, was a liar, murderer or thief. It is from that spectrum of heroes that Mmesoma comes. In his Being There, novelist Jerzy Kosinski tracks a man with no education or rigour rising and being favoured to be the U.S. president. Or Harold Skimpole in Dickens’ Bleak House who lives a glamour life parasitizing on one and all. Or Jay Gatsby in what is one of 20th century’s great stories of a hero without roots.

Mmesoma is a fraud while 19. She deserves our scrutiny more than pity.

When the new Service chiefs’ news broke, some sniffed mischief. Some even yelled foul, saying “This is not fair. Where is the southeast?” They did not see Ogalla as Igbo.  A case of self-unawareness. They met themselves but recognised someone else. They denied themselves in the mirror. Maybe it was an impulse to condemn before praise. Maybe they thought he was a cousin of Tunde Ogala, the ebullient SAN and Tinubu’s lawyer. Was it the double L that transmuted him from a son of a Kaaro Ojire to an Enugu native? Linguists have noted the ties of our languages in what is called the Kwa Group.  Some writers did not figure this out before they whooped and wailed. Some impulsive columnists had gone to town with hubris, alleging bigotry.

Then they realised, that his middle name is Ikechukwu, that he is one of the best and brightest of any personnel, that President Bola Tinubu did his homework, that he is the first naval chief from that part of the country for how long? Folks from that part are jubilant not just for the person but also for its geopolitical endorsement.

Again, Ogalla is such a brilliant man that one wonders why he was in the shadows for so long. He lapped up distinctions in all subjects except English at his school certificate examination. Yet, my reporting shows that he was in a sort of doghouse in the navy’s dockyard. His car was derided as Kabu kabu by those who wondered why a general should suffer such shabby neglect.  His last posting, as Commanding officer of a backyard position titled: Lessons Learned, only comes as a lesson to those who oppress the gifted. His announcement is not only an elevation but a vindication, if a picture of Tinubu’s fairness. Many claps for Ogalla.

The choice of Major General Christopher Musa is also potent. He hails from one of the fraught areas of the North, Zango Kataf. That makes him a native of Southern Kaduna, where kidnaps and barbarous raids have become routine. He is a Christian from the North with empathy for the besieged. Here is a text from Francis Damina, a Southern Kaduna rights activist and commentator on religion and society: “Immediately he was announced, the whole of Southern Kaduna, especially in the market places, were dancing. The social media is awash with videos of how market women danced at various markets…it is a map reading into the heart and mind of the president that he will not tolerate the killings. He has converted a one-time gentile territory to the APC … The message is that the same-faith ticket was only a strategy of winning elections.” Cheers to Musa.

The Chief of Army Staff, Major General Taoreed Lagbaja is a serious man. This Lagbaja will not be an entertainer but a safety Tower. If anyone should sing, it will not be Lagbaja but Nigerians who feel safe under his watch. His appointment, like a few others, breaks some taboo. He has played in theatres but only guns boom, no drum rolls or applauses or laughter. No post is a sacred spot for anybody or tribe. That is a message of his new job. No Yoruba has held that position since the debonair Alani Akinrinade in the military era. Lagbaja is known as a man of war, intrepid spirit, agility, the cunning and inspirational presence of a leader. Applause for him.

The new Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, has elicited praise, and I learned he is a fair-minded person who does not pre-judge people and would make his own assessment of people. He knows the intrigues and cloak and dagger of the police hierarchy. A workaholic who can place a call at 3 am just to sort out a thorny issue, his appointment of Tunji Disu as principal staff officer testifies to his work ethic. When Disu took over from the disgraced Kyari, he was received at the Intelligence unit with resistance and even hostility. The staff had as Display on their phones, “We stand with Kyari” until the law locked the fraud in outer darkness. No longer recoiling, they reconciled with Disu, who gradually turned the staff to his virtues and they, in turn, discarded their phone screen vows. Egbetokum says he feels like a Tiger lurking towards the criminals. A growl for him.

Read Also: Terrorists, bandits, oil thieves our targets, say new Service Chiefs

significant in the list is the national security adviser. Some had wondered if Malam Nuhu Ribadu would earn the respect of the Service chiefs. They forget we have had police in the past in that office, including Gambo. The job of an NSA is strategy and intelligence, and it is essentially an intellectual engagement.  We need facts to fight the enemy. Napoleon noted that, “War is ninety percent information.” We need more inspiration than perspiration to overcome the bandit. That underscores Ribadu’s task. Ribadu has contempt for what many have identified as “tour of duty” corruption in the war against terror. The top brass is believed to enact rosters of personal plunder and enrichment rather than victory over the enemy. The U.S. has had NSA both from military and academic backgrounds from Henry Kissinger to Condoleeza Rice. Ribadu has been in intelligence for most of his career. His job as EFCC chief extended that task of tracking the wicked. He just resumed that endeavour. Plaudits for his epaulets.

Whatever their biographies, their success depends on the commander-in-chief. I recall the howls for Buhari to change Service chiefs. When he did, it did not change the story. The bandits still stalked the streets and home-owners met the morning dew in dens or dead. It is the vision of the president that will change the story. French leader Clemenceau said: “War is too important a matter to be left in the hands of generals.” It is the power of men over institutions. The generals do what they call “probing” when first appointed. It means they want to test the leader’s earnestness. If they laze about, are corrupt, or fail, and the leader looks the other way, everyone becomes delinquent. Hence, the detached and forgetful approach of Buhari led his generals to rest on their oars rather than roar.

Two things are essential. Morale. The armed forces, especially the police, need to walk in high spirits. Napoleon said: “In war, morale is to the physical as three is to one.” I asked a top police officer the other day why the war on terror crawled. I referred to claims in places like Southern Kaduna that accused soldiers and the police of doing nothing when attacks were launched. He said the officers were “soft targets.” They did not have armoured vehicles, bulletproof vests or enough arms to match the hordes.

Second, It shows the Lagos model is required on a large scale. We need the armoured vehicles all around the country as well as strategic areas to monitor movements across the country. Technology exists to monitor every inch in this country. Americans use it. We can. Even now, satellite technology has advanced in this regard. You need arms for war, but better to arm them with vision and loyalty. You need to get the equipment first and the rest is intellectual and moral. As Oscar Wilde quipped: “When I was young, I thought money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know that it is.”

To show that the president shows the way, Abraham Lincoln made a point on the value of generals. “I can make more generals, but horses cost money.” We need to use the budget like a poor man with lots of money, to paraphrase Picasso. That is, spend with wisdom.

Everything, from picking the top soldier to mapping strategy, requires one thing: vision. The real gunman may not be the man who shoots but he who gives the command.

One of the major challenges is oil theft. It rankles all, with billions of Naira lost daily. I visited the U.S. State Department with a top government official over a decade ago, and the assistant secretary of state told the story of how ships wait on high seas waiting to load our oil. We knew the story. But it was odd that a foreign government could know our land and its seedy tale so well. In the Buhari era, U.S. treasury secretary Janet Yellin told top ministers that Nigeria was not poor. We just did nothing to stop subsidy. In oil, there were two subsidies. The president has tackled one, with that of PMS. The other is oil theft. It is a task for Egbetokun, Lagbaja and Ogalla. You can attack Asari Dokubo all you want. Some commentators have prized protocol over plunder and devalued the hemorrhage going on. They are after the messenger when the message is burying us in agony and loss. The fact is the military is supposed to guarantee our crude oil from the predation of shadowy gangsters.  If the military did not steal it, they did not save it. Either way, they have failed. There is enough of that money to turn Nigeria into a thriving homeland but for  some felons who have, in the words of the Bible, “enclosed themselves in their own fat.”

That is the theme, and that is what we should focus on.

“I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing. The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present,” – Abraham Lincoln

It was a pun but they did not see the fun. Yet, I am not writing in jest, but to follow the rhetorical footprints of President Bola Tinubu in his inaugural  speech that echoed another great man, Abraham Lincoln. I write, as this essayist has always done, with “malice towards none.”

When I wrote the piece, Obi-tuary, there was a tempest in the land. I did not even know until half-way through that Monday in early August when my attention was drawn to my phone. It was on silent mode, but the screen flashed like the restless winks of a war zone at night. The cannons unleashed, the night-sky brilliance a bloody omen. An incandescence without sound. It was not only phone calls but text messages. They clashed for living room in my device.

I didn’t pick any of the calls because I had indicated on the column that I only entertained text messages. But when I saw the messages, I gasped. Before I read one sentence, another had entered. It was like this for weeks. The messages said such things as “you and your generation will never know peace.” “Since you wish our candidate death, we shall also kill you.” Amadioha will perish you.” “Sam you think you can rubbish Peter Obi and go free. We go shoot you. That obituary na there we go put you .” “We must kill you.” “We are tracing you.” Many said lines like this, “We know where you live, expect us and say goodbye to your family.” “Tinubu is your slave master”. “Idiot educated slave.” “Your days on earth are numbered.” “You and your principal are in trouble. If we can’t get him, we will get you.”

Read Also: Tinubu off to Paris for global pact signing

These are a few of them. Online, on Facebook and Twitter, it was mayhem. They posted false photos of me. One photo of man holding a goat with a sign, My name is Jonathan, was identified as me attending Goodluck Jonathan’s rally. Several posters of my obituary bloomed darkly.  One of them read the “shameless of a foolish man.” A TV station veered from professional integrity to host a guy who propagated that falsely. Yet, the hosts know who I am, my face and profile. I had to rebut it on TVC. Some wrote press statements that I had been fired. I discarded my phone number and tossed the SIM card. I got calls from well wishers on my other line showing solidarity and praying I survived it. A friend sent a text, saying “this too shall pass.”

It was a hectic time for me and my loved ones. I did not go to the office for four months. I was a hermit, except my trips for TVC Breakfast show, and I had go there in disguise. I attended no parties, no public events, and restaurants. I was as Americans say a home buddy.

But I forgive all. I forgive them who did not understand English enough to know that I was using a figure of speech. In the article, I said it was an electoral obituary. But I pardon their ignorance. If Jesus could ask God to forgive his foes because they knew not what they did, who am I? Ignorance is fatal, and I saw the danger for months. I also wondered, if they could turn Obi into Obidients and get away with mangling the word for their purpose, why did they not see my own wordplay? They make right their impunity to twist Tinubu’s name to all sorts of innuendoes. That is the nature of populism. They are 100 percent right; no other person has a right.

I also forgive their candidate who acted as though nothing happened. I thought he was not online. But he is a man who knows me personally and who I visited in Awka when he was governor. I forgive him because he was in the insular business of sealing minds in his favour as a politician, rallying tribe and church for a personal gain. I feel no pain for him and his “yes daddy” candidacy.

I forgive also those who should belong to an intelligentsia and who know about hyphens and metaphors but who shut their minds from the light. Some I have known for decades. Some I have worked with, played with and wept with over the fragility of a nation. The same wrote as though I was their monster. One of them I just saw a few days earlier. I forgive him for his lack of grace and finesse. One of them said he did me a favour for reviewing my book as though he did not get paid for his effort. Who was encouraging whom? I forgive him. One said I was not a seasoned journalist, referring to a newspaper report that described me as such. He said I was a seasonal journalist. At least, you should have seasoning first before you become seasonal or seasoned. I thank him for the unintended compliment. This same person called once to describe me as the number one columnist in the country. Maybe it was an inebriated moment. One of them had very bad words to say about the LP candidate and he had shared it with passion and sometimes bitterness because he worked with him as governor. But he joined the Obidient rage with such gusto that I wonder whether I was observing schizophrenia. He was not the only one. One other one had written bales and bales of articles over his abysmal stewardship as governor. Suddenly, he scented him as a saint. It was probably loss of memory. A tear for their memory. It is the tragedy of what an author, Eric Hoffer, designated as the true believer.

When I wrote about “closet Biafrans,” it was a hint. My article teased them out of the woodworks. They came hooting and raging. I forgive them for their pharisaic paroxysm, for not making the election about ideas but about tribe and church. My misty eye for them for failing.

I also forgive that man, who will remain anonymous. He called me and said, “Sam, why are you profiling a whole tribe?” I said I did not profile a tribe but a tendency of some within it. Then he said he had not read it. This man is too big to mention without sullying his majesty in Nigerian history. I respect him too much to name him. My tears for him.

Someone said I take my quotes from a book of quotes. I forgive him because he just revealed how he writes. He does not read like me and if it is envy over my cornucopia of learning, I also forgive him. Some of us don’t need to justify our depths. How will he explain my copious allusions to history, plays, novels, poems, philosophy, sociology and the Bible? I must be superhuman to get all of that together within a day. It is another unintended applause. I hail him.

Someone said, he does not read me because I write poor sentences and wrong words? Really? This guy’s column is never read unless by his family and myself occasionally. Maybe he does not know my syntax or my imaginative use of language. I forgive. I must say, no writer is perfect. Nor am I. Even Soyinka’s, Achebe’s and Shakespeare’s flaws are well-known. In his Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote of a person, “You have the strengths of a great writer but none of his weaknesses.” I came upon this line in Kano during my youth service when I read the novel. So, I do not need to be perfect to be a great writer. As humans, we are not perfect either. As essayist William Hazlitt writes, “It is well that there is no one without fault, for he would not have a friend in the world.” Apostle John said, “If we say we have no sin, we make Christ a liar.” As for those critics, I pardon their perfection.

I also forgive my group I have been with for all of 50 years and how they turned against me because of my political stance even though they knew we were on the same WhatsApp group. They are a vital part of my identity today. Their vitriol tested friendship. But I forgive.

I also sought personal security then, and called the commissioner of police in Lagos and seemed to harangue him with my calls. He picked a few times and promised. Then he stopped picking and replying my text messages. It was then I knew I was all alone with God. Maybe he was too busy. I forgive his busyness.

If I forgive, I ought to thank. I thank those colleagues of mine who stuck with me in those trying times. I thank some who called from the southeast and stood by me and understood that I meant no wrong. What I wrote was only confirmed by the fiery waves of reaction. Instant prophecy, instant fulfillment. Some constantly got in touch with me. One of them worked with the LP candidate, and he was miffed by the herd of worshippers.

I thank Reno Omokri for his phone call and for his kind words when the storm came. I recall his words even now and also his stand for me on his platform. I remember getting calls from PDP chieftains. Indeed, one of them, now a PDP senator but then a governor, wondered if I was in my home, and whether it was safe. I told him I had already moved to somewhere anonymous. I thank my uncle, Prof. Nesin Omatseye, for his shout of solidarity in the press. God bless him. Of course, my close family, for standing by me. I thank The Nation newspaper family for understanding.

In all, the essay was about free expression in a democracy. If one has a candidate, it is in the democratic culture to allow others to scream. I had my vision for Nigeria. They would not. They wanted to skewer me because I had a dream. A dream of one country. They skewed it into a dream agency for one part of the country.

How do you pity a man who did not show pity when the world panted in pain? When women wailed on the streets and children squeaked, when bank halls crammed into stampedes. Murder, hunger, hospital emergencies, a whole economy choking on his back. His was policy as bloodletting. Nobody was immune. From plenty, even executives had to scramble for 200 Naira notes. And nothing was immune, not even bananas that rotted in the open sewer of markets because no one had cash to buy.  Food everywhere but not a bite to buy. In the Bible expression, money failed in the land. He presided over the purgatory of a nation. First came flood. That came scarcity. It was like a fulfilling of a Bible prophesy.

He was begged, cajoled, and pampered to show mercy? The quality of his mercy was strained. This essayist pondered this as Godwin Emefiele featured in a short video clip in the hands of his captors, the DSS. He first looked like a northerner in his cap and kaftan, his puny frame ejected from a vehicle as he stepped into an executive jet.

Executive jet? It was a moment in paradox. That is what we associate with snob, the indolence of the plutocrat, the class of contempt, the brigandage of the luxe class. They usually did that when they wanted to attend parties, soar to a conference in Abuja or Lagos to preside over loots, or when they had butchered and shared the choice parts. Or when their families, wives and kids, bored by the Jejune routine of our lives, flew to Dubai or London or California for fresh air. So, the last image of the jet is one of captivity. That may not last, though.

But as one looks at him, we cannot but wonder what triggered Mefi’s errancy. Why did he do it? When Buhari came on board, a few thought he would be fired. He cringed and rolled over in flattery and supine pleas. He was going to be a good boy. He was going to yell yes when the law said no. He was going to fret for them, perfume their farts, kneel with files as they sat cross-legged, stoop to be conquered, nod to the economy as their fiefdoms, play serf to their feudal commands.

So, why was any surprised as the time came for him to fulfil their righteousness? He was a perfect example of how not to be a pawn. First, they conned him to run for president. He took the bait. His posters were everywhere. He teased us with a pyramid of nothing in Abuja, got a media house to evangelise him.  We knew, like a eunuch, his rice could rise. This essayist blasted him on this page and he ran an advertorial to defend himself and attacked him with the flimsiest of logic. When he ran that advert, I knew he was gone. He did not want to resign. But he wanted to run for president. His ego bloated. He was a lord by the lords in Aso Rock. That is the Malvolio complex. He thought he had the master’s permit. The master never gave him nor defended him. He was on his own. He alone did not know it. He puffed on his own fantasy. He was ready for the fight. He had jets, we are told. He had vehicles lined up. He had a media outfit. He had the cabal. And, of course, he had cash. His case reminds one of the IBB years, when the gap-toothed fellow conned some top bureaucrats to run for president. They believed the saint. They went to hell. One of them, colourful Abel Ubeku of Guinness, did not survive it having withered all his wherewithal in that disaster of an ambition.

Who will save him now? Not Buhari, who stood firmly by him when he went full-throttle with his scheme. He knew it was not an economic policy. It was a gang-up against one man. He thought he was the ultimate beneficiary. He is not guiltless without Buhari, who defended him to the end.

Who will save him? Not the cabal. President Bola Tinubu, as a candidate, said it was Buhari’s men. He said they did not know the way to victory. In what I call his Lisabi speech, he mocked that Mefi and his masters poured ink into the money in the name of currency redesign. Stormy Petrel Malam El Rufai corroborated this. The men who did not want Tinubu to win the party nomination – and who lost – also did not want him to win the presidency, and they lost again. They had been losing since they won the second term and took the party structure from him by ousting Adams Oshiomhole. They owned the structure but did not win the party’s soul. Tinubu did. Mefi lusted and Mefi lost.

Read Also: Economists task FG on competence, and professionalism in appointing CBN Governor

Who will save him now? Not the media house he fueled and funneled with his generosity. They knew, too, that it was all a cynical game. He would lose. He would pay them to lose. But he alone would pay for it when time put paid to his ambition. They flattered, made him swell like the rice pyramid, and he too enjoyed the run. They gave him the disease of all megalomaniacs – the delusion of grandeur. They did not believe in him. But he believed them and in them, so much so that he believed in himself. Faith without charisma, faith without resume, faith without structure, faith in a cabal that looked elsewhere. The faith was dead.

Who will save him? Not his kinsmen. Reports tell me that he went on a nepotist spree of job offers. He comes from the Ika part of Delta State, and he binged on giving them jobs at the CBN. The jobs ran close to a thousand, and he deployed them to branches like Delta, Bayelsa, Kaduna, Kano etc.  This sort of practice ought to stop in this country. I attended an awards night by NIMASA a few years back, and it turned out that the awardees reflected the years that their kinsmen were the director general. This is not how to run a federation. From Mefi’s record, he had done the same thing. His kinsmen can only watch in impotence as their patriarch falls from grace.

Who will help him? Not the cash of the CBN. Not the new money no one can see. Not the billions he spent to do the policy. Not the accounts of the jets, or cars, or party funds. Above all, not the public he tormented. He is alone, the sort of tragic island of humans that populate Kafka’s writings, like Gregor Samsa, who turns into a giant insect. No contact with humans anymore. A character in Henry James’ novel, The Ambassadors, captures the life of Mefi in the following words: “I have lived a life for other people.”

But Mefi is a story of the pawn game. He was in the centre of all the plot to throw one man. All of the others, his fellow travelers, are happy in their ornate mansions, smiling to kids, tending their cattle, swaddling their kids, ogling their loot, hugging their wives. He is hugging a jail wall. He recalls a familiar figure in history, this time a cleric, a banker of souls. He served king Henry the Eight of England, who exercised his licence of the flesh to defy Rome and become a Christian nationalist. Cardinal Wilson served him with pharisaic mischief. When he fell, the cleric wept: “If I had served my God the way I had served my king, he would not have forsaken me in my old age.” Mefi is our cardinal of finance who fell, and who must contemplate the vanity of money and status as a hard reckoning opens up in the court. It is a lesson in power for those with an eye on posterity. Mefi followed a cabal like a herd, and now he must realise, as Joseph Conrad says, that “we live as we dream – alone.”

after just four years, his stewardship ends, and he leaves the post of speaker as one of the best players in Nigeria’s legislative history. He has handled the position, sometimes like a professor, sometimes like a technocrat, and sometimes like a man of the people. At one time, he made news by challenging the world on debt cancellation, and he was head of a body of international lawmakers and staked his claim on debt pardon. But on the local level, we also saw how he brokered ASUU into a quiet, challenged Buhari during the Endsars imbroglio to care for the police. Yet as he departs, we cannot forget the following: Petroleum Industry Act, Electoral Act, Omnibus Act, Deep Offshore Act, et al.  These are transformational acts that history will look back to with relish.

Read Also: ‘How Gbajabiamila saved ASUU from proscription’

We can say, Femi Gbajabiamilla, to parody Shakespeare, makes the House of Representatives fairer in the ninth. This is from Shakespeare’s line, fairer in the Night. But his era brought light to lawmaking. A tough act to follow as the tenth senate is set to take over the tent. But Gbaja – as he is fondly called – steps up

Before light made dawn, the heavens opened and touched earth. Abuja earth, that is. It was May 29. From my hotel windows, flashes and furies of rainfall obliterated distance. Cracks of thunder released contours of fiery lights but they were not bright enough to pierce walls of downfall from the sky. To quote Conrad’s preface to his novel, The Secret Agent, “there was a lot of light. But not much to see.” The weather crackled and caked the eye that morning.

The rain, I said, was to wash away an era, debris and all. It would soon peter out, no pun intended. By 8am, the Abuja air was quiet. Birds returned to their morning chirps. Tree boughs nodded in wait. Pedestrian footfalls yielded to the whirs of cars on the streets. Crisp with soft light, Abuja weather set the scene of a new era, a new president. Away from the prophets who saw witches and wizards their angels could not repel. Those who said he would not sit on his presidential chair. Who said the army would whisk him away at the Eagle Square. As this essayist quoted last week, “though there be prophesies, they shall fail.” Now, like Paul said, their tongues shall cease. It was also the end of fantasy.

One week has passed, a few things embossed on the calendar. He met with economic officers, including Mefi. He met with top military brass. He appointed Femi Gbajabiamilla as chief of staff and George Akume as secretary to the government of the federation. But it was a week of audacity that began with the phrase, “fuel subsidy is gone.” I had appeared on the popular radio-tv show, Berekete Family, to which I was invited to talk on the new president and his speech. My first take on his speech was its call to unity, as a nation of the brother’s keeper. The theme was haunted by the Lincoln quote, “with malice towards none, with charity for all.” President Bola Tinubu said, without working as one country, we could not tackle the huge problems bedeviling us.

 No sooner had the day ended than the labour upstarts started to stoke the flame. They forget that the Buhari government had said so before. Marketers, with an eye to profiteering, were hiking pump prices of fuel already subsidized. They were making a harvest from scarcity.

 NLC president Joe Ajaero saw blood and growled like a bush cat. This was the same fellow who hobnobbed with the Labour Party candidate, who is asking for a pre-determined outcome in the presidential cases in the court, who made love to Labour Party. He probably lost his ears when his candidate said he would abolish the subsidy as the first thing at swearing in, if in his fantasy, he won the polls. Suddenly, Ajaero is giving us a taste of his pugnacious hypocrisy. He has acted without a sense of the cooperative unity Tinubu asked for. Ajaero ran away from NLC because he lost out in his presidential bid and formed a parallel body he did not know how to organize. He exposed himself as they project ended up in smoke. It is like his anaemic career as a journalist. He should learn from the history of labour and its interactions with politics. The movements do not follow the coattail of political parties. The labour movement is about workers, and once a political party emerges and even bears the name of a party, it divorces itself from that movement. There can only be marriages in ideas, not in mechanics of operation, not in its hierarchies. British workers voted for conservative Margaret Thatcher and kept her as their prime minister for a decade.

Labour does not have to anoint a Labour party. After all, the Labour Party in Nigeria has been a nest of prostitutes, labouring for the highest bidder. It takes anyone who can pay its way. We have seen all kinds until this Elupee era. This Elupee is a marriage of tribe and church, of yes daddy and accents, not of work. After all, how many times did their candidate visit workers in the course of his campaign?

His call for strike is a call for partisan revolt. It is a strike for a pharisee. Anyway, the president’s abolition of the subsidy is the boldest move in the country in this republic. Maybe, Ajaero and his coven did not want to remove it. Maybe that was what his LP candidate told him. If that is the case, they are not only liars, but cowards. Removing subsidies is bound to, in the words of Vice President Kashim Shettima, come with “the consequences of the unveiling of a masquerade.” It is those masquerades labour should zero in on. Masquerades of cheats, of round-trippers, of vampiric profiteers, of shibboleth and saboteurs. He should look askance at those who make us pay for fuel around the West African sub-region and stretching all the way to Sudan. It costs us close to N400 billion a month. Instead, he is fighting with his liberator. This is the kind of policy that exposes how much excess we buy and how much we need. He reminds of the line from the poet Lord Byron, “he had no objection to true liberty, except that it will set them free.” What Tinubu has done modifies and stylises the echoes from the sometimes ambiguous words of Rousseau: “Force them to be free.”  So, Ajaero and company have become an unforeseen masquerade unveiled in their monstrous cruelty.

It is a moment not in austerity but realism. Why should the poor pay for the extravagance of superrich vermin? Those who have five cars, one for wife, one for school commute, one for self, one for servants, et al, will now realise that it is no way to run a culture or economy. Time to clip excess to cling to prosperity. We are pruning the fat. In the United States, most families do not have two cars. The cost is immense. If they have, they don’t use them every day. In the U.S., people carpool and share the cost. We cannot become rich by pretending to be “aje butter” first. We have to work to deserve to be “aje butter.” Even rich countries sweat at it. We have to turn the tide before riding it.

Again, palliatives are good, and Tinubu is working on it. But it is not even a long-term solution. In the two times we removed subsidy, once under Jonathan and the next under Buhari, the palliatives were a paradox. We replaced corruption with corruption. Those who had the palliative contracts, including labour leaders, saw it as opportunities to enrich themselves. So, we expect that the palliatives will work this time. But the main issue is how the saved money is mobilized for economic prosperity.

The two times under the two previous governments, they lacked the imagination and courage to turn the funds into economic expansion and opportunity.  Even then, they took the funds piecemeal and it gave us no peace. Hence, many objected with cries in the streets to Jonathan’s try because it was an avenue for corruption. We have to navigate a laissez-faire approach with interventionism, combine the strengths of Fredrich Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises on one hand with Keynes and Galbraith on the other, Hayek’s “minimum state” and Keynes’ demand-pull. It takes a man who knows the nexus of culture and economics to do it.

There is no better person to do this than Tinubu. He is the first literate president in Nigerian history. It is not about who can read and write. This is political economy and culture. That is supreme literacy. He understands commerce, having worked as a technocrat for much of his life. He understands law having been a senator. He knows governance and its intricacies since he was governor and the most consequential one in this republic. He understands culture and he is a consumer of it, from music to his growth among poor. He is both earthy and polished. He is immersed in Nigeria’s history. The story is told of his young days following a minstrel on the back of a truck on a tour of the southwest. He is folksy and has empathy for those who do not sound or worship like him. None of his fellow contenders have this experience. Vice President Shettima with a master’s degree from Ibadan and an elite banker in Lagos, Kano and Borno, and his travels and dynamics of his soul, is the most cosmopolitan vice president we have had in this republic and the most exposed in our history since Ekwueme. He too has a sense for the street having founded what we know today as the Civilian JTF.

With this combo, handling an economy like ours is in good hands. President Tinubu knows, like economists Karl Polanyi and Abraham Rotstein, that the economy is too important a matter to be left to economists. He understands the culture. We are seeing evidence already. Someone said with a whiff of exaggeration that within three days, the president has tackled traffic problems in the cities. The pains are there. But the solution has to come gradually.

In his meeting with service chiefs, he gave marching orders on oil theft. That costs us so much that from it alone we can tackle education and transportation in Nigeria. In a meeting with top Buhari officials, the U.S. treasury secretary Janet Yellen said Nigeria was not poor and that we were tying our money in fuel subsidies to an indolent class.

Rather than focus on strikes, Ajaero should, as a labour man, ask why his favourite party is in turmoil. He should follow the money. The “no shishi” party had a bank that rolled out fantastic profits based on the inflows from outside the country. They would not even pay for materials in the tribunal where their submissions and that of the PDP are colliding and making a mess of their so-called “robust” case as a Sunday columnist called it. That same columnist said Tinubu was not man enough to tackle the country. Yet the man who is “not man enough” has done the bravest thing in the republic. The same writer concluded that he can avail himself of an option to either follow the right path or the wrong. What a contradiction. Maybe he does not know human nature. If he does not know what it takes, why is he saying he has an opportunity? Not many who can write are wise and not many who are wise can write.

The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Forty Days and Forty Nights, that chronicles the life of Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong, and the national crisis that erupted in the Obasanjo years when six lawmakers impeached a governor in a gangster fashion. Lalong spent 40 days in OBJ’s gulag and it took the intervention of now President-elect Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu – then Lagos State governor – to plot his escape, underlining their long-drawn duel pitting his progressive forces against OBJ’s fascistic spirit. This excerpt begins in detention in Abuja by EFCC before Lalong ended up in Lagos.

“He gave us tea. We relaxed,” Lalong said. He was referring to himself and his deputy, Musa.

Later, Lamorde’s – EFCC’s operations director – men started interrogating them. But Lamorde said it was a political matter. “It is not us that brought you here,” Lamorde confessed. “It’s your political matter. Relax. Say what you want to say.”

They gave them papers to start writing statements. But they were still not comfortable with them. Magu became another pain in the neck.

“Do you know that at one point this Magu brought a plain sheet of paper for me to sign a specimen signature? Without a statement. That was when I abused him in that place.”

Again, Lamorde intervened when he heard the shouts and quarrels between them.

“I said, Look at this man. He said I should sign plain sheet. For what? I’m still speaker of the House ooo. I’m signing the destiny of Plateau State on a plain sheet for you? He said no, there were certain documents they wanted to verify. I said, bring those documents. If I am the one who signed I would tell you I signed. If it’s my signature, I would tell you it’s my signature. But I cannot sign my specimen signature on plain paper. I don’t know what you want to do with the people of Plateau.”

It was then that Lamorde told Magu, “No, you can’t do that.” Not long after, they played host to a few guests, including Solomon lar and Bishop Hassan Kukah. It was after that, they flew them to Lagos, and the man in charge again was Magu. They took them to the EFCC detention centre on Awolowo Road in Ikoyi, Lagos…

In detention were not only the two of them but at least 14, all members of the state house of assembly. Their mission was straightforward. They wanted Lalong, as speaker, to sign a draft impeachment notice. Who were those who drafted the document?

“A prominent SAN today was one of them. I was there when he did same to Fayose. Gani Fawehinmi was the consultant to the EFCC. So all of them, Gani and this other lawyer, were the ones drafting.”

Lalong said they were working together for their consultancy for the EFCC. He said he met the lawyer there. It was then that we got the information that they wanted to do the same to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who was then the governor of Lagos. We were waiting to see if they would bring the Lagos House of Assembly. But they couldn’t because I think there were threats that if they tried it, they would bring the whole Lagos down. So, at the end of the day, they didn’t arrest anybody from Lagos. That was under Ribadu. Today, all of us are working for Asiwaju.”

Lalong remained there for 40 days because they could not coerce him to sign the impeachment notice.

It was Tinubu, who came to their rescue. The EFCC had said no bail was working because they said the people who brought land documents had fake evidence. So, it was Asiwaju who invited Fashola and Osinbajo. Osinbajo was the Attorney General of Lagos State. Fashola was the Chief of Staff. He asked them to process land documents, and they did in order to bail them out. They could not deny that land documents signed by Lagos State government were authentic.

“Any other person who brought land documents from Lagos, and brought it to us to bail us, they rejected it but accepted for others. They left me and two others. So, the day they came out, the day Lagos brought those documents, they seized the documents from Lagos State government. They now realized there was no way to keep me. Then, they said they’ll release me but bring me back there.”

Lalong was the last person they released. He had already signed to leave the jail. But when he was going downstairs, the EFCC was arranging for the judge to re-arrest him. But some persons, including policemen in the building, alerted him and asked him to take a way out before they got to him.

“They got me out of the place, put me in a taxi. So, when the taxi dropped me out, in less than ten minutes, EFCC came and raided the place for me. They didn’t see me, of course,” he recalled.

He said the fellows who organized his escape were his friends in the police and the SSS.

“They came and said, this thing is not fair and that my offence was that I refused to impeach Dariye,” he said.

They told him that the EFCC wanted to frustrate and leave him alone in detention and coerce him to sign the impeachment draft. They wanted to browbeat him to bow. They did not have the numbers. Out of 24 members, only eight of them signed the document. That was not even up to half of them, and so they did not have the numbers to impeach a governor.

So, before they realized, he entered the taxi. They sold a dummy. The EFCC thought he was heading for the airport, and they ran there to ambush him. The reason was that their wives were going to the airport to fly to Jos.

“So, they went to the airport to arrest us but they did not see us,” he narrated.

Rather the taxi took him to Ibadan through the express, disguised. From there, he kept on changing taxis until he reached Ondo and Akure in the wee hours of the morning. He said they slept in Akure. He recalled they got to Akure at about three in the morning. For food, they bought stuff along the way. They slept for a couple of hours in Akure before heading north by road.  He was with a few others on the trip.

When they got to Lokoja, they (SSS) realised that he had escaped and heading towards Jos. It was then they hurriedly rallied six turncoats in the house from where they hid in Abuja to Jos to impeach Dariye. They pulled it off around 6 am. They entered the house premises and barricaded it. It was a melee that involved shooting, and two persons died from gunshot wounds at the Plateau Hospital. They were patients. People were firing bullets at them. They even shot a policeman in their car.

They came with soldiers as well. They performed the exercise and left.

“By the time we arrived Jos, there was news flash that Dariye had been impeached…by the time they had impeached Dariye, they didn’t look for us again.” Dariye himself had fled. He was in Makurdi for a while and later he went to Lagos and Asiwaju picked him and gave him shelter.”

Lalong mused that it was bad for conscience that the same Asiwaju was running for president, and Dariye was supporting Peter Obi of the Labour Party.