Aims Bori was alone outside his mansion in O’hara. The crowd had since gone. Some relatives and personal aides were inside — sleeping. The cloud was dark, really dark. It was like the moonlight was on vacation. He could hear birds chirping. And frogs croaking. The dogs of O’hara had since gone to bed. None was barking.
Before leaving the main sitting room, he had planned to go to the water fountain area and feed his eyes with the water cascading up and down. But he changed his mind and stayed at the balcony outside the main door to the sitting room.
The private security guards guarding the house, which some people preferred to call militants, were in their shed, most probably deep at sleep. He could see the cars, some of them still new. He had from London ordered that the old ones be given away. One of the cars in the garage was a Bentley Continental GT, which cost him £120,000. There was also a Mercedes-Benz Maybach 62, which set him back by €407,000.
He noticed that the house was wearing new painting. His associates saw to it that everything was in order for his return to the place where he had fanatical followings. It was here his life began under excruciating circumstances some 58 years ago and here he returned to build his biggest house when he made money.
Until three hours ago, his compound was the scene of a huge celebration. The celebration actually started weeks back when news started making round that he was now a free man. But his return to O’hara turned everything upside down. Everybody wanted to catch a glimpse of the man they loved to call Ogbogbongbo. From governors to ministers to senators and the man on the street, all wanted to see this man who once ruled them before going to mark time in a British prison for stealing them blind.
They were all angry when the British jailed him for stealing their money. They wondered what business of the British it was that their leader stole their money.
“Did he steal Britain’s money?” many of them had asked.
“The money they claimed he stole is our money and as our leader he is entitled to it and he used it to empower many of us. That is why we can die for him. The man did not ‘chop’ alone. He lived and let live. These British people don’t just understand Africa. Here our leaders are kings and kings have dominion over everything,” some had argued.
Aims Bori read about the position of his people on the charges the British brought against him and he was happy his people were behind him but sad they could not save him.
Now back home and basking in the euphoria of his people’s celebration of his life emotion took over him and made sleep impossible. It was an opportunity for him to reflect. As he stood there staring at the cloud, his mind wandered way back into the past, the dark past that only he knew the full details of. He grabbed a seat and tucked his buttocks into it before the past fully took hold of his senses.
His mind first went to that day in London some thirty years ago when he was working in a store. He had left Nigeria for the United Kingdom after his first degree in Economics and Statistics. He got married in London and to make ends meet, he and his wife Loretta devised a means. Loretta was to come to the store where he worked to buy stuffs regularly and walked through the till he was manned without paying. They succeeded many a time until the closed circuit television in the Middlesex-based store caught them. They were fined £300. That was in 1990.
Not long after that he was again caught with a credit card that was not his. Again, he faced the music for credit card fraud.
It did not take long before it dawned on him he could make more money back home from the rogue regime which had imposed itself on the people and was contemplating transmuting to a civilian administration. He had earlier tried his hand at being a member of the House of Representatives but he returned to London when he was defeated.
Aims Bori made his moves to get the ears of the evil regime’s head and when he got the green light, he returned home and became an agent of the regime. He was designated a consultant, but the truth was that he was just helping the thief in power to launder money and he was getting his cut. He was caught abroad once for having so much foreign currency but he was left off the hook when he was able to prove he got it from jobs done for the evil regime.
With the huge money he was making from the evil regime, he decided to take out a mortgage on a property in London, which he was to fully pay for years later when he became governor. He knew his past conviction for handling a stolen credit card could be a hindrance, so he became another person by changing his passport and assuming a date of birth which gave the impression he was miraculously born a month after his elder sister.
As part of his support for the evil regime, he started a newspaper and attracted some of the best brains in the industry who did not know his sole objective. They thought they had seen another MKO Abiola who was out to make money and also better the lot of journalists. It did not take time before he discovered that the editor of the paper was not in sync with him. The professional in the editor refused to toe the path he wanted and he was sacrificed to the gods of Abuja. He spent years in jail and only got out when General Idoti, who had hoped to become President Idoti, suddenly died after some steamy sessions with imported prostitutes.
General Idoti’s death brought in a new democratic order. Aims Bori would not miss out of it. He returned to his home state, where a group he earlier started became the backbone for the party of choice and soon he was governor. He remembered how he lied under oath to be governor. A form from the Electoral Commission expected him to declare he had twice been caught and convicted in the UK for stealing but he perjured and used the fake birth certificate — which showed his elder sister from the same mother and father — was only a month older than him!
It was in an era when oil money was gushing in torrentially and he found himself in wealth he could not believe. It almost made him mad and made him take decisions he would never be able to explain. In his wildest imagination, he never dreamt he would ever control that kind of money.
With that kind of money, his problem was how to spend it and he spent it on women, champagne and houses. In Hampstead, north London, he bought a house for £2.2m. In Sandton, South Africa, he sunk £3.2m on a mansion. He also lavished £600,000 on a fleet of armoured Range Rovers. And in Nigeria, he acquired property as though they were going out of fashion.
It crossed his mind now that then it did not prick his conscience he was acquiring riches at the expense of some of the poorest people in the world.
The eight years he was governor were the best time of his life. Life was simply good. His arrivals and departures from events were heralded by sirens. The state paid for everything, including his women. One of them was later to go to jail for money laundering.
Standing out there in his country home, he remembered how his trouble started after he left power. He had helped install a new president and was always in and out of the Presidential Villa and assumed nothing would go wrong. But the president he helped install died and the vice president, who he thought had taken his rightful slot, became president.
He remembered that day when an elder from his state colluded with some people to write a petition against him. The petition was sent to the Financial Crimes Agency. He was accused of embezzling N40 billion. He was also accused of using his state as collateral for a N40 billion personal loan when he was governor. He was accused also of cornering proceeds of sale of state assets, including shares in a mobile telephone operator and crude oil yields.
He was eventually tried but nothing came out of it. He was charged for theft of public funds, abuse of office and money laundering. Corruption ensured the case was bungled until the British came to the rescue. He had gone to Dubai when the Interpol grabbed him and dragged him to the UK, where the Metropolitan Police had raided the London office of his lawyer where they found computer hard drives containing details of Aims Bori’s off-shore companies. The firms were run for him by three men who were later jailed for 30 years. His sister, associate and mistress also went to jail for laundering cash for him.
The conviction of Aims Bori’s men led to the freezing of his assets valued at about £17 million.
When his mind wandered to the conviction of his wife, tears welled up in his eyes. He knew he was the one who put her in trouble and yet was not faithful to her. He ran inside and made for his bedroom. The room was still as grand as he had left it. His stewards ensured it was spick and span. He never owed them salary for a single month while he was away. The men holding his money in trust ensured such never happened.
He tried sleeping but the softness of the bed was not enough to guarantee him a good time. He touched the pillows and the softness testified to the amount of money he had to cough out to get them. He looked around the room and opulence was written everywhere. Everything there, he admitted to himself, was a product of stealing from the people he was elected to lead and he was baffled that despite the fact that they knew he stole them blind, their loyalty was still unwavering!
“What a people!” he said to himself but loud enough for anyone awake in a nearby room to hear.
As he lay on the bed looking for sleep, he remembered his exploits in prison. Though billions had been seized from him, he still had plenty of money in the hands of different men in Nigeria who dared not steal the loot in their care. He remembered how he asked one of them to make millions of cash available for a newspaper he started after he became governor. He also remembered how—even in jail— he was still determining who became what in his state. He would always remember how— even in jail— he was still the go-to man for people who wanted many a thing in Nigeria.
His mind soon wandered to his meeting with the boss of the Secret Service. He had read versions of what transpired in the meeting. Some said the meeting was about a soft-landing which would see him joining the new ruling party at the national level. They added that it was a condition for him not to face a fresh trial.
One of the reports even quoted the Secret Service chief as saying: “You must join our party. That is the only guarantee for you to have peace. If you work against us, we will revive your case and you will go down finally.”
As he laughed and wondered whether the writer of the report was at the meeting and recorded the proceedings, his mind went to an article by a popular columnist arguing that making him face a fresh trial back home was like killing an ant with a sledge hammer. He also remembered those saying the ruling of a three-man Appeal Court panel of justices, which set aside his acquittal by a High Court, meant he should face a fresh trial on returning from London. He smiled at this level of interest in his life and wondered if life would ever be normal again.
As it appeared as though sleep was coming, he saw a silhouette which looked like a cross. On looking further, he saw a man carrying the cross. A deeper look revealed he was the man carrying the cross. It dawned on him shortly before sleep eventually knocked him off that his life had become one big cross he would have to bear till death.
