The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Appearances and disappearances

    The way of the gods would eternally remain mysterious. They hoist whom they want to hoist on the totem pole of affluence, power and authority; and they trip whom they disfavor even if he be a behemoth hewn from a rock and he would fall to pieces. The mother of all prayers must be: may your Chi, your personal god, always present you a mirthful visage otherwise, even all the gold in Arabia would not change one’s fortunes.

    Consider the case of Messrs Jimoh Ibrahim. It is taken that this name rings a bell dear reader. Well, he’s the once swashbuckling business mogul of the President Olusegun Obasanjo era. He was sighted recently after a long hiatus. The photo caption describes him as the new honcho of Africa Infrastructure Corporation and that naturally triggered some neuro-signals.

    The 51-year-old who at the height of his fame was a famed corporate raider may be back once again at his natural play ground – big businesses. He seemed to have shot out of the blue and invaded our national psyche at the turn of the millennia. After he contested and lost the guber ticket of Ondo state, he plunged headlong into business. And as if he had a money tree (plantation) he embarked upon a frenzied venture of building a conglomerate.

    And voila, in less than half a decade, he had coupled a superstructure rivaling some century-old family businesses. As Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Global Fleet Group, he had business interests in Banking, insurance, oil & gas, luxury hotels, airlines, transportation, newspapering, schools, name it. He was so voracious in acquiring waning businesses he was dubbed Mr. Turnaround Strategist or the Harvard-trained biz-whiz.

    His empire stretched to Togo, Ghana and Sao – Tome. But like a comet, he seemed to have disappeared as fast as he appeared. In 2016, a Federal High Court in Lagos prompted by AMCON – the Asset Management Company of Nigeria, moved in on Ibrahim and his empire; including a freeze on all bank accounts. He is roiled by a N50 billion debt according to AMCON.

    Since then, it has been quiet on all Jimoh Ibrahim’s fronts until the recent sighting. Jimoh’s meteoric rise must have been case study in business schools then. So must be his crashing fall.

    Consider the Jimoh chronology:  mysterious money, opportunistic grab of quality government assets, vanity acquisitions of assortment of assets from diverse and disconnected sectors of economy; bank loans and more bank loans and huge government bailout fund. The most impulsive management style based on whims and infantile caprices of one man; hardly a light filters in if it’s not through the lenses of one man.

    Indeed, who can trail the mysterious of the gods.

     

     

     

     

  • Overdramatic

    What really happened? Police spokesman Jimoh Moshood, in a statement, said on April 24: “At about 1200Hrs of today Sen. Dino Melaye while in lawful custody of the Nigeria Police Force and being taken for arraignment in Federal High Court, Lokoja from Abuja, escaped from lawful custody when hoodlums and miscreants in two Toyota Hilux vehicles blocked the police vehicle conveying Senator Dino Melaye around Area 1 Roundabout, Abuja.”

    He added: “In the process, the senator jumped out of the police vehicle through the window and was rescued from the policemen by hoodlums and miscreants to an unknown destination. The Police team reinforced and trailed Senator Dino Melaye to Zankli Hospital, Abuja where he was re-arrested.”

    That is one version of what happened. Melaye’s Special Adviser Gideon Ayodele gave the public another version: “Contrary to online reports about jumping out of a moving police vehicle; Nothing could be farther from the truth as such insinuation is practically impossible for a man sandwiched between gun-wielding policemen. Today’s incident was a last resort by Senator Dino Melaye in order to foil attempt to kidnap him and kill him by agents of Kogi State governor in connivance with the police.”

    Did Melaye jump out of the police vehicle? If he did, such a move was unbecoming of a senator.    If he didn’t, what did he do?  Why did he need to get treatment at the private hospital?  After he was re-arrested at the Zankli Hospital, he was moved to the National Hospital, Abuja, where the police reportedly handcuffed him to a bed.

    Melaye had been declared wanted by the police after he allegedly ignored their invitation to answer allegations made against him by two suspected criminals, Kabiru Saidu, aka Osama, and Nuhu Salisu, aka Small.  Saidu and Salisu had allegedly confessed that they had worked as political thugs for Alhaji Mohammed Audu who allegedly invited them to Abuja, where they were introduced to Melaye in December 2017. They also allegedly confessed that Melaye had given them a bag containing one AK47 rifle, two Pump Action guns and N430, 000.

    These allegations against Melaye are weighty, and he should be trying to prove his innocence rather than allegedly trying to run away from the police.  The drama of his alleged attempt to escape from the police has not helped matters. Does he expect the public to believe his story that his life would be in danger if the police took him to Lokoja?  When will he stop being overdramatic?

  • Ajekun Iya 3

    For Dino Melaye, the Kogi West senator but self-promoted master of din in the eighth Senate, the drama never ends — and its name is that rushing, rippling drama: Ajekun Iya!

    Ajekun Iya, in Yoruba and in a certain context, could mean complete and comprehensive mauling; though dramatically transliterated, it could also mean glutton for mauling or punishment.

    It is the traditional crowing of an aggressor set to crush the victim, as mighty man rams his heel on the irritant ant — Ajekun Iya!

    That certainly was the mood when the all-powerful, untouchable and dashing Dino, enforcer-in-chief in Bukola Saraki’s Senate, released his chart busting single and video to boot — Ajekun Iya ni o je!

    It was the grand flourish of an opener to the Ajekun Iya series, now entering part 3.  The message was formidably clear: whoever moved against the Dino senatorial juggernaut asked for nothing but comprehensive mauling — Ajekun Iya!

    Why, even Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, never known to have time for frivolities, recommended the bewitching tempo of Dino’s first single to a cultured society in Lagos.  Have your heard?  He asked: Ajekun Iya ni o je!, sending the house into a fit and clatter of laughter!

    Earlier this year Dino, gripped by new victories, as he galloped from triumph to triumph over his enemies, felt obliged to update his first video with a befitting re-mix.  Enter

    Ajekun Iya part 2.

    Therein was more crowing, more strutting and more bragging, fit only for a sweeping political generalissimo!  Again, the warning was clear in its chilling simplicity: don’t mess with Dino the rock; you want wanna smash your head against the flint!

    But with the Dino-Police see-saw of April 23 and 24, you had better be careful on what you wish.  It might just come to haunt you, and the stalker might just become the stalked!

    Enter, Ajekun Iya, part 3 and its opening flourish.

    Dino made it known that he was on his way to Morocco, on a trip sponsored by the Federal Government, when some Immigration officials made to arrest him, inside the Abuja airport’s VIP lounge.

    The Immigration, said Dino, claimed they had authority from the Police not to allow him to travel.  But initial sources later denied any police involvement. After an initial see-saw, Dino was reportedly released on bail.  But that was later countermanded with the claim the Ajekun Iya exponent just vanished!

    After that was a reported police cordon round the Dino Abuja residence, with Dino reportedly diving into hiding.  But the following day, Dino himself declared he was giving himself up to the Police.  Drama, drama, drama!

    But unlike Ajekun Iya 1 & 2, Dino sounds a beat downbeat on this one.  Hear him: “A man without arm, no security yet you mobilise 150 policemen to invite him. And those who committed Treason are free. We shall not be intimidated or cowed. Struggle continues.”

    What was that — an Ajekun Iya epilogue, after all the crowing of yore?

    Still, the state must bear this in mind.  Citizen or Senator Melaye could feign the bully, with sufficient entertainment value to tickle fellow citizens with laughter, or to shake their heads in pity.

    But the state should never play the bully on a citizen’s right.  If Dino Melaye has committed an offence, arrest him like any other citizen.  The airport-Dino’s home police cordon drama was unnecessary.

    If anything, it only gifts established notoriety with unwarranted popularity.

     

     

     

  • Winning business line

    Want a winning business formula in the new year?  Look no farther than DSTv and its Multichoice content; and Ikeja Electric (IE), the proud dispenser of darkness, in lieu of the electricity it is set up for.

    The formula?  Well, it’s a one-way text traffic to harass for bills, without  any corresponding text line to counter-harass for service.  Blessed are those, the saying goes, that carefully cover their corporate sins!

    Any time your subscription is due, DSTv harasses you with texts — one-way texts — telling you how perilously close you are to being cut off; and tantalising you with its idea of a movie, documentary or even live sports broadcast that you would be sorry to miss, should your subscription lapse, and you’re off the network.

    It’s its own way of goading its subscribers to “good conduct” — resubscribe, or else!

    In fairness to DSTv though, it makes a motion of presenting some exciting fare in its bouquet, even if its most prized premium package is often a repetition of jaded movies; it takes forever for its screen computer to reboot to rejoin programmes when NEPA strikes (lE again!), or it simply, without remorse, projects itself as a corporate shark, which cares only about its pay; but nary about its service.

    But then, such is the hubris of monopolies, that won’t adjust until the market is gone and its too late.

    Still, if DSTv makes a show at some service, IE won’t be bothered by such stupid chores.  It has a winning formula for billing for darkness, and not a few even accuse it of deliberately not metering a segment of its customers, just to push its growth area of billing for darkness, and making hay!

    So, IE would just take off — hours, days or week at times — and there is absolutely no explanation why.  So, there is neither rime or reason to its disappearing act; and there is absolutely no question of carefully planning your electricity consumption.

    But the moment it distributes its bills — which it claims it meters from street transformers — it starts sending texts that by its records you are owing (never mind, most times for darkness); and that you should endeavour to pay before your are disconnected!  Can you imagine such crap?

    Perhaps, it would have been tolerable if it had created a two-way line, through which you could send a complaint about non-service, and receive feedback, but no!  It is one-line harassment for payment for services mostly not rendered.

    The regulators should call IE to order, on this ultra-provocative conduct.  But that would not have been possible in the first instance, if new DISCOs had not shared out, among themselves, the old monopoly of PHCN, albeit whittled down into smaller business territories.

    The sane way to attack this injustice is not only to meter every customer, but also to, in each jurisdiction, bring in a rival player.  Perhaps with intra-territorial business rivalry, IE would sit up, and be less sanguine about its bad corporate conduct.

    DSTv?  Every monopoly, legal or operative, would take its chances.  But as the Yoruba say, you don’t tell the blind the market has closed.  The vanished din would do just that.

    The market eventually teaches every monopoly a hard lesson!

  • Nothing to cheer about

    It was nothing to cheer about, but the police sounded excited.  A statement by the Deputy Force Spokesman, SP Aremu Adeniran,  said: “Sequel to the invasion of the Senate Chambers of the National Assembly, Federal Republic of Nigeria on the 18th April, 2018 by some suspected thugs who disrupted the Senate Plenary Session and carted away the Mace of the Red Chambers, the Inspector General of Police, IGP Ibrahim Idris, immediately instituted a high-powered Police Investigation and Intelligence Team coordinated by the IGP Monitoring Unit of the Force and further directed a total lock-down of the Federal Capital Territory with intense surveillance patrol and thorough Stop and Search operations at various Police check-points with a view to arresting perpetrators and possible recovery of the stolen mace.”

    It was like medicine after death. The invasion of the Senate, the seizure of the mace and the escape of the invaders shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Something worse could have happened. What if the invaders had been suicide bombers, for instance? What if they had been kidnappers?

    The noise about who was responsible for the invasion is nonsensical. The focus should be on whose irresponsibility made the invasion possible. In other words, if those responsible for security at the Senate had been effective, the story would have been different.

    On how the mace was recovered, Adeniran boasted: “The Police teams engaged in massive raids of identified criminal spots/flashpoints, stop and search operations, visibility and confidence building patrols, intelligence gathering which forced the suspected miscreants to abandon the Mace at a point under the flyover before the City Gate, where a patriotic passer-by saw it and alerted the Police.” The police want credit. But do they deserve credit? Credit will be given where credit is due when the so-called discreet police investigation leads to the arrest of the invaders and their prosecution.

    This incident has exposed ineffective security at the Senate, and may encourage others to exploit the weakness. This is not the time to get overenthusiastic about security at the National Assembly. This is not the time to introduce anti-people measures to protect elected representatives of the people.

    What is needed at this time is a sober evaluation of the security arrangement at the National Assembly and a rearrangement that would make it impossible to have a recurrence of the unbelievable drama that happened on the floor of the Senate on April 18.

  • Omo Agege Vs Omo Ilorin

    Ovie Omo-Agege, the Delta senator, is in the eye of the storm; with claims and counter-claims on his alleged involvement in the April 18 grabbing of the Senate mace; sending the senators present gawking and drooling in the mouth!

    It was the Nigerian political equivalent of the American “Operation Shock and Awe”, in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq!  Well, the security agencies would soon fill us in on whodunnit.

    But as the drama rages, Hardball just can’t resist some bathetic symbolism — Omo Agege versus Omo Ilorin , in a senatorial battle royal!

    Omo-Agege is a distinguished Urhobo name, with its peculiar pronunciation.  But given a Yoruba tonal tilt, Omo Agege (and note, without the hyphen) means Agege-native, with all the rights, privileges, swagger and allied stunts.

    On the other hand, Omo Ilorin (also in Yoruba) means Ilorin-native, also with all the rights, privileges and associated cunning, which many locals relish to call mesu jamba.

    So, when Omo Agege, with his audacious derring do, tangles with Omo Ilorin, with his unmatchable cunning, things would never be the same again!

    Now, from bathos to real life — and this has nothing to do with the criminality of the senatorial invasion and mace seizure, and the putative guilty or innocent.

    Let Ovie bear his father’s name, but carry the banner of Omo Agege.  Let Bukola Saraki, senate president, whose assembly suspended Omo-Agege, who nevertheless insists the purported suspension was unknown to law, clamber to carry the banner of Omo Ilorin.

    By attending plenary and taking his seat, shortly before the mace-seizure drama, Omo Agege has called the bluff of Omo Ilorin — and the drama is well and truly riveting!  That is gripping metaphor for Bukola Saraki’s Senate, baiting senatorial fascism.

    In an impunty-driven Senate, it would appear everyone is about bearing his father’s name; and picking his or her camp for the final push.

    For daring to publicly express his dissent with the Senate, over the Electoral Bill of 2018 which re-ordered the sequence of election, and made it a staccato that benefits no one but reelection-seeking senators themselves, Saraki’s Senate slapped Omo-Agege with a 90-day suspension.

    Omo-Agege had told the press the re-arrangement was against presidential interest — and you don’t need any especial acuity to figure that out.

    But justifying its fist of mail, the Senate claimed by going public outside the chamber, Omo-Agege had infringed on the rights and privileges of senators.  Of course, the chief complainant was — who else? — Dino Melaye, Saraki’s unfazed gramophone.

    Melaye prosecuted.  Saraki convicted. Hand of Esau. Voice of Jacob. Case closed?

    Not exactly!  For in Omo-Agege’s challenge, tiny group right (Senate’s rights to discipline its erring members) clashes with citizens’ right to representation in parliament, as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution.

    Omo-Agege said his lawyers told him to disregard the “suspension” because it had no basis in law, and was therefore, as the lawyers would say,  ultra vires, null and void.  Some of his colleagues apparently shared his sentiments, as they ensured he gained access to plenary.

    Beyond the criminality and sensationalism of a stolen mace, the rash of suspensions is the real issue.

    Must the Senate be a democratic bastion, championing the right to free speech and robust debates?  Or should it dip into a reactionary conclave, that flashes umpteenth suspension as a blackmail and suppression tool?

    That is the real tussle between Omo Agege and Omo Ilorin!

     

     

  • Of pulpit and power

    Pulpit and power. Pulpit and politics. Power of the pulpit. Power and the pulpit. When power meets pulpit. This is Hardball at work trying sculpt a fitting headline. An exciting story must be prefaced by a lucid (living, if you like) title/headline otherwise the entire ensemble would seem like a beautiful woman donning a dowdy hat.

    The story is that T.B. Joshua, our Man in the Synagogue (Church Of All Nations) has done it again. He has captured another African state house; he has literally installed another president on the continent.

    News is out that President Juliu Maada Bio visited Prophet T.B. in his Ikotun-Egbe, Lagos sanctuary before the March 31 run-off poll in Sierra Leone. And as we all know, Bio returned from the Synagogue, spiritually equipped to nick it in the re-run. How uncanny can life be! The result suggests that the election could have gone either way, which means we can safely conclude that President Bio may have gotten a little unction – the winning edge from the Ikotun-Egbe grove.

    To think that he beat the ruling party in a run-off poll in a West African country; it can only be divine and the man of God who prayed the power prayers must himself be a man of power.

    So he must be. So he is if you check the antecedents of Prophet T.B. Last October another run-off election candidate, now President George Weah of Liberia took the opportunity of the break to seek out the man in the Synagogue. And voila, he returned to trounce his opponent.

    It must be said that T.B. Joshua has in the past decade or so gradually migrated from another crowd-pulling pastor to something of a deity, an oracle sought after and consulted by many African men and women of power. His synagogue in the dank suburb of Lagos has become Mecca not only for politicians but for top footballers on the slide; fortune hunters and out-of-limelight celebrities.

    No fewer than six other African heads of state have come on pilgrimage to Prophet T.B’s shrine: late President John Atta-Mills of Ghana; late President Fredrick Chiluba of Zambia and former President Joyce Banda of Malawi, among others.

    Apart from drawing power closer to the pulpit in Africa, Prophet T.B. is phenomenal in a lot of ways. Though without a secondary education, his Synagogue probably attracts more foreigners than the entire country attracts tourists. Again, apart from the only other presence in Ghana, SCOAN is a one branch church but boasts more members than most other multiple-branch contemporary.

    But all said this prophet is not hot at home… could it be homeland envy as Christ once said?

  • A paymaster’s game

    With the 2019 general election approaching, the public should expect to see more of the things politicians do because they want power or because they want to remain in powerful positions.

    When Senate President Bukola Saraki reportedly paid 20 months’ unpaid salaries of 220 traditional rulers in his constituency, Kwara Central senatorial district, it was one of those things politicians would do in pursuit of power. The chiefs were mainly district heads from Ilorin East, Ilorin South and Asa Local Government Areas. A report said: “The affected local government areas could not meet their financial obligations to the traditional rulers because of the drastic shortfall in their allocation from the federation account.”

    So, Saraki stepped in to make them happy. He provided N49.4m, which the affected traditional rulers received at a ceremony at the ABS Constituency Office in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, on April 16. The Director- General, ABS Constituency Office, Alhaji Musa Abdullahi, said Saraki had set up a committee to resolve the non-payment of the salaries, and had acted on the committee’s recommendation ?to pay the unpaid salaries.

    Abdullahi was said to have advised the district heads “to continue to support the senate president to enable him attract more dividends of democracy to the state.”  This is the meat of the matter. Saraki wants to be seen as a good politician who wants to serve his constituents and make them happy. Of course, in return for what he does to make them happy, he expects them to continue to support him.

    So, Saraki’s gesture was not simple generosity. It was a move, a political manoeuvre. It was scheming and calculating. It was designed to achieve a design.

    Obviously, there are questions Saraki needs to answer: Where did the money come from? Was it money from his pockets?  The answers to these important questions cannot be left to speculation. Saraki’s answers will lead to further questions, no doubt. This is because a question may be answered and an answer may be questioned. In the end, there may be more questions than answers.

    Now that Saraki has become a paymaster of sorts, it is a sign that he may take on other opportunistic roles towards realising his political ambition in 2019. For politicians looking for ways to manipulate their constituents, Saraki’s latest game is something to consider and perhaps emulate. It all adds to the pre-election fun.

     

     

  • Holy Shehu for governor?

    Holy Shehu, that exposed that scalding senatorial greed in the monthly N13.5 million “running costs”, but escaped the “Omo-Agege treatment”, is reportedly gunning for governor!

    If true, wouldn’t the Kaduna masses be in a rapture — rapture that the Nasir El-Rufai era would soon be ruptured?

    Ah, the holy Shehu Sani, Kaduna Central senator in Bukola Saraki’s ultra-opaque Senate, fanning out from Kaduna Central, in a holy quest, to “capture” the two other Kaduna senatorial districts?  Holiness be praised!

    And very quaint — and brave — too!  Not for him the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC); not for him even the Peoples Democratc Party (PDP), former lords of the manor, now chaffing and screeching and squealing in political Siberia.

    Now Holy Shehu is reportedly eyeing — if he hasn’t reportedly picked — the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which has rechristened itself the “third force”, to align with the vision — or is it fond reverie? — of the Great Narcissus, Himself the Ultra-Holy Pope, Gen. (Chief) Dr. Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR!  Indeed, only the holy can gel with the holy!

    But before a new gubernatorial racket, shouldn’t Holy Shehu bring us to speed on the unfinished senatorial racket?

    Honestly, we enjoyed that shrill whistle-blowing, amidst other financial scandals, in that opaque highest house of the people, which is nevertheless closed to the people.  Or does any open house leave the people gawking and dazed at sheer senatorial luxury, compared to their own grinding penury?  Again, kudos to Holy Shehu for that great patriotic screech!

    But what is the present state of that racket?  Has the pay-out stopped, and every senator now N13.5 million poorer every month?  That would have been nice, for that “poverty” in material greed would have transfigured to rare senatorial wealth in nobility!

    But if the status quo has remained, is Holy Shehu still drawing his own share, despite his shrill anger and pummelled conscience?  The doting masses would love to know!  It is imperative we know, so that we can all mobilize to storm the Kaduna gubernatorial Bastille, see?

    Dirty questions, really, awaiting holy answers!

    Switching from satire to straight talk, it is clear Hardball is not taken in by the theatrics of this Kaduna-central senator: Sani is not impressed by his own party’s corruption war; he is not appalled by the rot of the former ruling party, which made the war such an urgent front burner.  All he cares about is his own prattling superciliousness, arrayed on a self-built moral throne, and passing judgment over others!

    Sani is the classical “activist” in government.  Don’t get Hardball wrong: activism is excellent civic exertion.  It’s all part of a rich democratic lobby, known as pressure groups, to put the rulers on leash.

    But while activism is solo run in its iconoclastic goals, political parties are a collective of shared ideals and goals, with a sheathing of the solo spirit.  The trouble comes when you profit from that shared collectivity but stick to your unbridled individuality, no matter how ruinous for the collective.

    That is the dire lesson from Shehu Sani’s senatorial odyssey.  While the casual, if not the outright gullible, would cheer his theatrics, the introspective should be worried by this disturbing trait.

    If Senator Sani’s gubernatorial push is true, Hardball wishes him the best of luck.  As a lawful Nigerian citizen, it is within his democratic rights.

    Still, he must remember that little question of honour, if indeed, he is seeking the SDP ticket.  He is an APC senator.  So, by his own holy credentials, he must vacate the APC senatorial seat — if only to prove his popularity, re-contest and win back the seat on an SDP ticket.

    But even if he chose the less risky option of just quitting to face his gubernatorial pursuits, that would free him of the moral burden of both critic and beneficiary of the Senate N13.5 million monthly “running costs”.

    At least, he can run for governor with cleaner funds.  That’s what holy people do!

  • The professor of (quaint) desire

    Some things don’t change. Let’s call it the immutability of unchangeable things. From season to season and generation to generation we seem to live under what Hardball would want to term, the monolithic behemoths around man. Boulders each man must lug along his life’s walk.

    Some of these things are: Living. Dying. Death. Spirituality. Procreation. Lucre. Sex. Aha, sex, that effervescent, ever-present fellow – obtrusive, over-arching, restless, cunning, obsessive, ever-present in its coveredness, wholesome in its utter unwholesomeness and vice-versa. What can we not conjecture about this crazy fellow!

    What’s on a man’s mind, a sage once asked? And the entire world seemed to retort in unison: what else? Some insist sex, other than deities, is the very reason for man’s existence and many more wager it’s the cause of his downfall and ruin.

    In Igbo street lore, sex (and sexuality) was long anatomized and off-handedly atomized thus: the mere three-penny meat that’s the bane of the world (the original as usual, is apter and more telling than the translation).

    This proposition gain sustained relevance with every age. The currently blazing story about a university don who is also a clergyman, who may have been completely undone by his libidinal escapade with his female student lends credence to the words of street wags about the little piece of ham that could…

    And we are naturally reminded of The Professor of Desire, that novel by the American writer, Philip Roth. Done over 40 years ago, Roth’s protagonist, David Kepesh walked his canvass of life through youth, university days and adulthood attaining professorship of Literature.

    But Professor Kepesh remains a little boy, sexually speaking: emotionally insecure, sexually immature and terribly conflicted. Not even his endless psychoanalysis seems to help. Intense, if not warped sex drive leads him to often seek to push back the boundaries of his libido.

    Coming back home to our own professor of, shall we say quaint desire? He seems the verisimilitude of Professor Kepesh. Just that he may have brought a little twist to the tale. His anguished carnality mates with his religiosity and high-learning, siring for him a bundle of calamity.

    Allegedly seeking sex in order to award marks to his young student; he would willfully pervert the university’s grading standards in exchange for a serial romp. His case is made soggier by the fact of his dog collar; a clergy primed to mount the pulpit and rile about un-cocked carnality.

    Now his entire empire of learning, calling and standing may have come crashing around him. But then, show me that man who has mastered his libido…

    Again recall what the wag said about the three-penny bacon that would ruin the world?