Category: Yomi Odunuga

At different times, Africa’s biggest democratic farce had come to be known as People Deceiving People, Papa Deceiving Pikin and other sundry crowd-sourced emblems of mischief. Presently, there is more to the intriguing drama which played out during and after last Saturday’s Special Convention of the Peoples Democratic Party than the laughable antics of some court jesters battling to outdo one another in the craze to daze President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife with benumbing flattery. Aside the grave injury that was inflicted on protocol by a number of the moderators and those invited to the podium to make one speech or the other, it was refreshing watching the President acknowledging, first, the presence of his loving wife in a gathering where the Vice President, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and his Deputy were officially seated! Well, I guess all this would naturally pale into insignificance on a day the much-talked about implosion of the PDP became manifest with the walkout staged by seven of its governors and other powerful forces. It was a day reality dawned on those who had thought that, as long as it was the PDP, the farcical contraption can always walk away with daylight murder! It was the behemoth’s moment of sobriety after 15 years of political brigandage and sheer arrogance of power.

It’s really pointless asking when and how the PDP came to this point of no return. Every other person saw the looming danger except the gang of its apparatchiks living on delusion of grandeur and a myth that the self-proclaimed Africa’s largest political party is licensed to rule ad-infinitum. In fact, one of its serially deposed chairmen once proclaimed that it would tenaciously hold on to power for 60 years despite the successive electoral heists being systematically perpetrated to force its mostly lacklustre representatives on the nation. With that background in mind, no one should blame its embattled National Chairman, AlhajiBamangaTukur, for celebrating too early at Saturday’s convention that the date, August 31, was significant because it marked the 15th anniversary of the formation of the party. How could Tukur have known that fate was out to play a cruel one on him? In a twist of fate, the epochal date has now turned out to signpost the beginning of the end for the party. For a man who is eminently qualified to be called one of the grandfathers of the PDP, we must pardon him for reading treachery to the walkout that was hatched by one of Nigeria’s leading political warhorse, former Vice President AtikuAbubakar and other party chieftains. For Tukur, it was disrespectful and un-African for these younger elements to disown a grey-haired man in the public.

The irony is that the split came on a day when Jonathan adroitly played the leading role in singing the opposite of what should have been a dirge for the ‘wonderful achievements’ of the party in 15 years. He did not just dwell on the ‘transformational breakthroughs’ that have been recorded by his administration and which one of his loyal governors linked to the rampant cases of mistaken identity where most Nigerians now find it difficult to know the difference between our cities and Washington DC. He also spent ample time to remind the delegates about the principles and democratic ethos that stood the party out of the crowd. He itemised those things as including party cohesion, discipline, party supremacy, internal democratic principles, internal discipline and a fortress of family virtues.

His 37-minute address did not end without firing some darting shots at clueless (yes, clueless) opposition parties that had long fizzled with the wind. Listen to him: “Only the PDP has retained its singular identity and core vision as a political movement till date, while others have imploded along the way or subsumed their identity in search of political direction and relevance. The PDP is one big family and we are here for a family meeting. We must utilise our strength for the benefit of our immense followership and the generality of Nigerians that look up to us for inspiration and guidance. We cannot afford to let them down.”Hmnn!

Well, it turned out that the President’s speech was an ‘inspiring’ epitaph for a party reeling in a bout of self-inflicted crisis. The symbolic umbrella couldn’t just take it anymore. Umbrella don break o! It has been ripped apart. The funny thing is: while the PDP gloated on and on about how other parties had fallen by the way due to a total lack of internal democracy, it woefully failed to look itself in the mirror. And if the truth must be told, the party seems to thrive on treachery right from the time Senator Barnabas Gemade was whisked off the chairmanship chair and supplanted with Chief AuduOgbeh by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. It was at that period that the wily old fox ingeniously created the ‘family affairs resolution mechanism’ which essentially operated at his whim. With a mixture of blackmail, crude deployment of presidential power and a harvest of betrayals, the party became a mere appendage of Aso Rock. He wielded the big stick with crude force. Atiku, who was the leader of the renegades that walked out on Jonathan and Tukur, was hounded out of the party. Many of its founding members were also sent into early retirement from party politics. With intrigues, deadly scheming and a schism of political undercurrents, the much-touted supremacy of the party was subsumed under the power of the President. While every discerning eye was quick in crying blue murder, successive leadership of the party would rather visualise the latent danger as democracy in progress. So much for deceit!

The datelines preceding the imminent implosion last Saturday are too numerous to list on this page. With his experience, Tukur should have known that he was sitting on a keg of gun powder. But, like many others, he was sold to the soporific allure of power. It was his belief that power, which is the commonality of interest that has brought the members together, should be enough inducement to keep everybody on line. That, to my infantile mind, is a neophyte’s approach to politics. He was clearly an outsider to the power game and obviously pushed his luck too far by assuming that, as chairman backed by Jonathan, he could pocket the party’s long over-indulged governors. That, more than anything else, was responsible for the implosion. Even Obasanjo, with all his brashness and hot temperament, knew when to apply the brakes. So, what makes Tukur exceptional? Today, Tukur is reaping the sore fruits of his treachery in connivance with Jonathan. By the way, has he forgotten so soon that he was foisted on the party by the Presidency even when all the governors in his geo-political zone had openly canvassed for someone else?

In a genuine search for peace, the first official that ought to be called to order is Tukur. He is not just part of the problem but the real problem. And, in deference to the wide ranging consultations to patch-up the cracks and bring all aggrieved persons back to the family table, Tukur needs to understand that his riotous outburst can only deepen the crisis. He must be told by his backers, no matter how powerful they may be, that the PDP is not an extension of Tukur&Tukur Nigeria Limited where he assumes full control. If he had not played to the gallery by trying to whip some state chief executives into line and shutting them out, the party wouldn’t have been torn down the middle. His fit of rage is, to say the least, pedestrian. He is merely blowing a hot air that hurts no one but himself. He is not in a position to order the security forces to arrest aggrieved party members or elected lawmakers who are exercising their democratic rights. Or is that his interpretation of internal democracy where the aggrieved is made to swallow his grief with dignified silence?

Instead of huffing and puffing, Tukur should reflect on the grave consequences of children publicly disowning their father. Having spent a major part of his tenure reconciling these forces without much success, what exactly has he been doing wrong that the party keeps being submerged in chaos? That is the question a father should ask himself. With all I have done to train these children and the sacrifices I have made, why should my own blood disown me? Or is he too big a father to retrace his steps to the period when the rain started beating him? In history, it has always been the fate of mighty but decadent empires to fall as a result of implosions within – even, when no external force could assail them. Sadly for Tukur, as they say in Hausa, “Lemayapeche”, the umbrella is broken. Does he have the capacity to mend it?

For long, we have taken her coyness for granted. But for an almost limitless elasticity in absorbing the soft and hard punches, innuendoes, grammatical killer punches and jeers of an unappreciativecrowd of her adopted ‘children’, this patient Dame could have brought the weight of her office to bear on those toying with her patience. She could have, with clinical obduracy, crushed them in one fell swoop. With the way the gang of mischief makers keeps on latching atevery straw to denigrate the highly revered Office of the First Lady of Nigeria, we may not wait that long before we start seeing the other side of this amiable lady. It is really sad that in a country where women are celebrating President Goodluck Jonathan for his commitment to the 30 per cent affirmative action and gender equality, somedunderheads have been busy blaming his wife for all that have gone wrong with governance. Now, that is not how to pay back a woman that is officially recognised as the Mother of the Nation!

 In writing this defence, I have painstakingly dissected what one of the First Lady’s spokespersons, Mr. Ayo Osinlu, said about the outrageous misinterpretation of the kind gestures of aninnocent, hardworking and dutiful ‘grassroots’ mobiliser of support for a dotting husband. As far as Osinlu is concerned, madamis entitled to her riotous rage because the errant ‘chauvinists’ inour midst have succeeded in pushing her over the cliff. They have alsoexhibited nothing but absolute disrespect for her esteemed office as if they did not that know that,  in massively voting for her husbandas President, they have also strengthened the umbilical cord that binds the wife to the Otuoke-born leader. What’s more? Some of the critics, it has been discovered, have developed the habit of using the First Lady as their tooth pick of salacious discourse out of sheer envy. They hardly see anything good in the yeoman’s efforts he has put into empowering women and ensuring peace throughout the nooks and crannies of this Lugardian contraption. Too bad!

More frustrating is the fact that otherwise knowledgeable men of timber, calibre and educational sophistication appear to have joinedthe bandwagon of armchair critics who apparently know next to nothing about the esoteric the workings of government. They have forgotten that the patient Dame was extracted from the rib of her chosen and that she must not only be seen but also be heard. What they seek, Osinlu noted in a recent interview, is a woman with a muffled voice.

How on earth can any sane man be expecting that in this age and time? In any case, these chauvinists should be cautioned) before they turn the Oga at the top against the nation’s matriarch. It is a dangerous proposition which, to my fascinating mind, should not see the light of day. What does the nation stand to gain from turning a meek and gentle President into one that”manipulates his wife according to his whims and caprices all the time?” Osinlu asked.

Hear him:  ”The people saying this are mere chauvinists. They believe the only way a man can be said to control his wife is when he rules her life and her activities with an iron hand. The woman is not entitled to an opinion or view, she must wait for her husband to give directives on all things. To me, if the fact that a man allows his wife to hold her opinion amounts to his being unable to control her, then such persons are taking us back by several decades, when the woman was seen as a little above a slave in her husband’s house.”

Perhaps, there would have been no need to dissipate needless energy on what the First Lady does or fails to do if the mischief makers can spare the time hear her out. We have been told, times without number, to look beyond the individual in that position and accord due respect to the office. Instead of complying withthis simple request, some yamheads, both in high and low cadres of the sociological divide,would rather fire back that the office of the First Lady is not known to the Constitution. How does that concern them? When the lady, in spite of a very tight scheduleboth in the place of the Rock and abroad, decidesto pay a visit to any of the states in continuation of the drive to mobilisegrassroots support for her husband, the same set of alarmists wouldwhine that her entourage disrupted traffic for hours. Pray, should this be an issue in a country where faceless gunmen wreak havoc with little chance of ever being apprehended? Instead of praising hercourage for daring to stage a peace and women empowerment rally at avenue that had become a no-go area for staging national events, including Independence and Democracy Day celebrations in over two years, these irritants are busy lamenting the minor disruptions intraffic and business activities in the nation’s capital for one day.

How disrespectful can a people be? Some even dare infer that a hired crowd was mobilised.So bloody what? Where I had expected members of the opposition to borrow a leaf from her mobilising capacity in floodingthe Federal Capital Territory with thousands of ‘empowered’ women, they had resorted to the old habit of hitting her below the waist.

They accused her of organising and participating in political rally contrary to the Electoral Act just because the women wore speciallydesigned fabrics embossed with the First Family’s pictures. Oh, were they expecting them to adorn themselves in fabrics with the emblems of all the political parties in the country? It is, to say the least, demeaning that the patriotic women that braced the odds to attend therally were being vilified for shamefully dancing naked in the market place while their children are idling away at home due to lecturers’ strike. How does that affect the empowerment fee and thesheer ecstasy of singing the praise of the nation’s anointed mother?Must an impoverished many unduly allow a chance of partaking in the crumbs from Her Imperial Highness to pass, just  like that? Hmnn…what jealousy can do!

It is truly sad that those who love to hate the patient Dame have continued to tar her with the brush of an aggressor in the lingeringcrisis in Rivers State. This, I dare say, cannot be farther from thetruth. As a woman of peace, she has highlighted what should be considered the nuggets for peace in the troubled state. And it is notas if these nuggets are rocket science anyway. All it takesis for some persons to drop their ego jackets in the Rivers Government House and pay due obeisance to the matriarch of the land. It is called respect!

And that must necessarily start with the immediate dispatch of ahigh-powered delegation of who is who in Rivers State to pay a visitto the Presidential Villa, to condole with Dame Patience Jonathan onthe tragic death of her adopted mother, Mrs. Charity Sisi Oba. At least thatwindow of opportunity was left open for Governor Rotimi Amaechi in a statement signed by the Director of Information in the First Lady Office, Mrs. Ayo Adesugba. From the tone of the statement, it is clear that the First Lady bears no serious grudge against Amaechi, his wife and even the Deputy Governor, Mr. Tele Ekuru. What she couldn’t understand is the arrant disrespect of a’son’ who has refused to condole with her in Abuja when “Executive State Governors and their wives from all the political divides; Nigeria’s former Presidents and Heads of State and their wives, captains of industry, female Ambassadors and High Commissioners ofNigeria, other members of the diplomatic corps, royal fathers and traditional leaders” have all taken their turn to do same! Now, are we saying that it is out of place for her to ask salient questions like: who the hell is Amaechi and why should he equate the signing a condolence register by his wife in Madam Oba’s house with packing his troop of disenchanted backers to Abuja to show real “compassion that comes from the heart?”

If the truth must be told, it is fair to say that our patient Dame has unveiled the roadmap to peace. All she craves is for a wayward son to come to his senses; show remorse and subsume his authority to that ofa higher power. He should stop seeing this directive as a violation of his rights and privileges as a state chief executive by a woman who has no constitutional power but as orders coming from an office thatremains the heartbeat of governance at the national level in compliance with the affirmative action! He must, in this firm commitment to show remorse, commence the process of swearing in Mr. Bipi as Speaker of the state house of assembly and ensure that the four other members are elevated to the positions of principal officers. He should also abdicate the seat as Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum and renounce the votes of 18 governors that voted him as a nullity. Or are these demands too difficult for him to fathom as an aggrieved lady’s irreducible minimum for peace? Will he hearken to the voice of wisdom or will he continue to drag the name of this peace-seeking patient Dame into a crisis that she knows next to nothing about? The choice, as they say, lies with this 50-year-old son of a 54-year-old mother. He better act now before he incurs the wrath of a mother figure!

By virtue of his place in President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s administration, Dr. DoyinOkupe’s position in the kitchen cabinet is by no means ‘hefty.’ No matter your physique, whosoever is lucky to be appointed as Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs becomes a ‘big man.’ In the OBJ days, most Nigerians perceive the functions of that office as being “an attack dog with some measure of rabidity”. But that is not necessarily so.Okupe, I must admit, is fit and proper to be called one of the big men of Aso Rock that must be taken seriously. His task is special and it requires breathing down on the populace occasionally with sometimes tortuous logic and a queer force of conviction that rattles! In his own case, he had come into the job with the requisite experience, having worked with the‘Ebora’ of Owu, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, before irreconcilable differences tore the relationship right through the middle.

To be fair, quite a number of Nigerians had expressed concern about the propriety of appointing another presidential mouthpiece to join the already saturated glut of talented, lettered and even voluntary ‘spokespersons’ barking down at a not-so-impressed populace about a government that was fast progressing on a lane of abysmal failings. They had expressed fears that a self-conceited presidential lapdog was about being unveiled, to formally take the role of an attack dog. Someone whose sole job is to return jabs to the growing league of disenchanted Nigerians – critics of what was perceived to be Mr.Jonathan’s clueless steering of the ship of state. It was a coming heralded as that of someone who would bring the humongous weight of his physical presence to weigh down and rein in an exasperated critical mass.

It was a fear that had its justification in the antecedents and records of those who had taken up that role in regimes past. There was Wada Nas during the inglorious years of the dark-goggled one, Gen. Sani Abacha. There was a Walter Ofonagoro under the military presidency of General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida. There was the looming image of Senator ArthurNzeribe who was steadfast in defending the annulment of Nigeria’s widely acknowledged freest and fairest election. There was a Femi Fani-Kayode, a former critic who turned round to brutally take on Obasanjo’s critics, sometimes with a peculiarly unique ‘grinding’ style. Well, that only lasted for a while. Fani-Kayode’s urbane upbringing and exceptionalbrilliance were on display when he was appointed as a Minister. And there was Uba Sani, a young man from Kaduna and close friend of Fani-Kayode who bruised old men from the North with such vitriol on behalf of OBJ. The fear was, therefore, well-grounded if precedents were anything to go by.

But we must give it to Okupe. He took it all in his stride and handled the initial pressures quite well. If we had expected him to be angry at our hasty effusions and a misreading of his latest ‘Voltronic’ journey to Aso Rock, we were dead wrong. He melted the ice with his boldsmile, measured language and textured words. On our assumption that there would be a clash of duties between his job and that of the former populist essayist, Dr. Reuben Abati, the tested political warhorse from Ogun State said nothing could be farther from the truth. He was not only eager to remind us of his amazing relationship with Abati “for over 15 years”but also dissected the role issue thus: “From time to time, what you can only find is a unity of purpose between my good self and my younger brother, (Abati) here. We are going to work together. Like he said, what we share is the passion for President Jonathan.”

Flaying suggestion that his mission was to wag his tail at his employer while unleashing deadly canines against those opposed to the President’s governance style, Okupe came out with what has turned out to be empty sophistry. He whined: “Somebody said Okupe has been hired as an attack dog, if President Jonathan hires a 60-year-old man as attack dog, then he is employing a weak attack dog. I am not an attack dog. My job basically is public advocacy. The opposition in Nigeria is a strong one; we must admit that, very boisterous. We need to engage the public; we need to engage opposition to deepen the understanding of the opposition on what government policies are.”

Now, months into this Okupe’s soothing clarifications, can he be said to have positively engaged the President’s critics and the populace alike? What manner of advocacy style has hebeen employing in his weekly interventions? Is it adversarial or issue-based? Has he been backing his arguments up with hard facts or merely barking at anyone that dares to take his principal to task on governance matters? In reality, has he kept to the terms of reference he so glowingly reeled out as his job schedule? Has he in anyway deepened our knowledge of governance and governance policies? And, if I may ask, what has he done differently to distinguish his office from the assigned duties of the Ministry of Information or even the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President (Media and Publicity) or that of the Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party?

Maybe, just maybe, Okupe has derailed from his assigned responsibilities without even knowing it. If Boko Haram strikes in Maiduguri or any of the troubled states, he is always on hand to offer excuses for the seeming lethargy of the government to quell the menace. If someone raises fundamental questions about the frenetic depletion of our foreign reserves, he will not hesitate to show us why the whistle blower should be ignored for no other reason than the fact that such a person ‘wasted” the country’s resources at one point in time. If the opposition accuses the President of sitting on his hands while the country derails, Okupe willbe the one to employ barefaced threats, innuendos and outright blackmail to justify sheerindolence in high places. Sometimes, you can’t help but wonder if he is the official GeneralOverseer of Federal Government Matters, including PDP affairs!

Just the other day, the All Progressives Congress (APC) incurred the wrath of Okupe’s raging pen, following its eventual registration by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). While the PDP Headquarters had done the needful by congratulating the merging parties for successfully scaling the INEC hurdle and expressing its preparedness to engage the members in a lively debate on politics and policies, Okupe thought that was the best time to predict a death knell for a party that had barely done 24 hours, as a viable alternative to the ruling PDP. That was not all. He would latch on to that opportunity to denigrate some members of the party, labelling them “anarchists, analogue, expired and yesterday’s men.” We saw a vintage Okupe reeling out the names of former chieftains of the PDP who had jumped ship to the APC, grouping them under the tag of “irredentists who pursue political power based purely on ethnic sentiments.”

Well, this is not the forum to discuss those pushing for the continuation of a particular candidate based on the region he comes from. But we do know that some persons have threatened to go back to the creeks and take arms against the nation if their ‘son’ did not make it back to the seat in 2015. We also know how a certain South-South state has been renderedungovernable just because its governor is perceived to be nursing a legitimate ambition that could affect the chances of the chosen ‘son.’ However, we are not unmindful of the reality that, as long as the honey pot stays under the care of this son, it would be difficult not to genuflect before him or venerate him. It is called politics of the stomach and it is a common disease here!

But, in all this, it would be interesting to see if some people are in this race out of self-conviction or they are merely doing this because, as Chief Tom Ikimi puts it, water is merely seeking its level as money dictates the tune they dance to. Like my people say, words are like eggs. Once they are broken, you can never put them back together. My advice: The giggling rank of today’s men ought to be circumspect in tarnishing the image and reputation of anyone that disagrees with their principal. History is replete with the stories of those who swallow their pride and come back to eating from their vomit! They really don’t need to look far for a shocking, classic example for those who now eat from a plate they once spit on!

Beyond its strong condemnation of The Economist’s needless meddlesomeness in what are purely domestic affairs, I believe the National Assembly should, as a matter of national importance, come up with a drastic legislation against the circulation, purchasing, possession or reading of the arrant foreign satanic verses being disseminated by publications like Financial Times and others in our country. If not, these foreign journals will end up corrupting the minds of Nigeria’s laid back, talk-no-evil, see-no-evil, law-abiding citizens — those who have come to accept pervasive corruption and blatant impunity as directive principles of state policy. Come to think of it, these publications are fond of raking up well-interred dirt, crying more than the bereaved. What else must we do to knock it into the empty brains of these neo-colonialists that, as a sovereign nation, we do not need them to tell us how to spend, distribute, preserve or waste our God-given wealth? Shouldn’t they be satisfied that, in our magnanimity, we have embraced democracy and, contrary to their doomsday predictions, all the structures of governance are working at full throttle?

I have often wondered why these foreign journals, whose writers know little or nothing about our customary reverence for political office holders, take delight in writing what they are not paid to write. The fact that they get into the living rooms of our leaders at the snap of the fingers does not mean they have to abuse that privilege. Anyway, I don’t blame them. I blame our leaders who would gladly offer an arm and a leg to grace the pages of these foreign magazines or allow themselves to be asked silly questions by correspondents working with foreign cable television stations in the name of international publicity. If only they would keep faith with the local media and its people-friendly mode of grilling the Oga at the top, an unknown quantity like The Economist would not come up with that scandalous verdict that our ‘most distinguished’ Senators and highly revered ‘honourables’ receive the highest salaries and allowances in the world for doing nothing! In fact, I am utterly disturbed that, some two weeks after the publication of this despicable news, the leadership of the National Assembly has not instructed a team of senior lawyers to file a multi-million dollar suit at the International Court of Justice against the economically-dumb The Economist! How could they sit by and watch these people go away with this criminal breach of trust and callous violation of the oath of secrecy in revealing a pay packet that has been shrouded in secrecy for years?

Okay, a grumpy spokesperson of the Senate, Enyinaya Abaribe, has come out to condemn the publication, describing it as misleading and incorrect. But is that all he could say to these imperialists who are bent on derailing this smooth-running democratic train? Mr. Abaribe’s counterpart in the House of Representatives, Zakari Mohammed, has even gone further to make clarifications between what is actually earned as salaries and the humongous amount being spent as ‘running costs.’ That, I also say, is begging the question. Whether the figures being bandied are exaggerated or not; whether they are sourced from the data obtained from the International Monetary Fund or any of those ubiquitous transparency agencies, it is important to note that these two lawmakers did the nation a great favour by refusing to disclose the real amount that our lawmakers draw from the national till – a reward for obliging us with their largely self-serving services in a nation that a Professor of Economics dubbed the world’s costliest democracy. They have candidly advised those who have no jobs to do other than prying into what our ‘distinguished’ lawmakers earn, to take a stroll to the office of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) where, I assume, a dutiful desk officer would be waiting to hand over copies of the ‘true’ pay package to them with a warm smile etched on her face!

Had it happened in years gone by, the publishers of The Economist could have been charged with treasonable felony and deliberate attempt to incite the people against their patriotic leaders. In fact, they could suffer the pleasure of having their heads shaven with broken bottles!What, for crying out loud, is their business if our legislators earn a basic salary of $189,500 per annum (N30.6m)? How does it affect them if our “highest paid lawmakers in the world” take home approximately 116 times the country’s GDP per person of $1,600? Shouldn’t Nigeria be commended for its generosity to those who are sacrificing their time in the hallowed chambers, just to earn a measly $189,500 annually, which is estimated to be 52 per cent higher than what Kenyan legislators, who are the second highest paid lawmakers, earn? Oh, were they expecting ordinary Kenya to beat us in this race of official extravagance? Never!

If we must spill it out, it is, to say the least, insulting for anyone to demean the office of the Nigerian lawmaker. And if we don’t stop this trend, the time will come when these guys will take up The Presidency, lampooning it for earning in a quarter what President Barack Obama takes home in a year. Have they suddenly forgotten that the circumstances are different and, therefore, there should be no basis for comparison? If they had taken the pains to understudy why political office holders get paid what they termed outrageous salaries, I believe they would have called for an increment in the packages.

It is my considered opinion that our lawmakers are grossly underpaid for obvious reasons. First, Nigeria is not Kenya which depends on mere tourism and coffee production to run its economy. We are a major oil producing country that not only flares multi-billion dollar gas but also loses millions of dollars to daily theft of crude oil. Second, politics is an investment here and those who go into it and succeed have a right to expect huge returns on capital. Third, the political class is expected to conform to a tradition of being limitless liquid in cash, sassy in outlook and very bohemian in nature.

Even the economic juggernauts at The Economist would agree with me that these expectations require loads of money. That’s why we pamper our lawmakers or any other political office holder for that matter. Unlike Obama whose children attend schools in the United States, our lawmakers’ children need to be properly educated in Ivy Leagues schools abroad. Does that come cheap? Unlike the Queen of England and Prime Minister David Cameron who fly commercial British Airways, our lawmakers either fly presidential jets, chartered flight or buy First Class tickets on routine basis. It doesn’t come cheap either! Unlike Mandela who receives medical treatment in a South African hospital, our lawmakers cannot afford to die in a Nigerian hospital.

That demeans their status. If they must die, it has to be in the best hospitals in Germany, United Kingdom or the US. Do the yamheads at The Economist know how important this tradition is? Unlike other leaders who retire to farm houses, our lawmakers must own mansions in, at least, three foreign countries, their states and the Federal Capital Territory! If we don’t close our eyes to the ‘running costs’, oversight functions that come with standard ‘gifts’ and funds budgeted for ‘capacity building courses’ in far flung countries, and a freshly minted life pensions for principal officers that may soon be smuggled into our Constitution, how would they attain the enviable position of being the world’s richest lawmakers? Do these interlopers in our private affairs know how legislatives aides, paramours and numerous jobless citizens who take solace in being hangars-on rely on the crumbs from our legislators’ tables for survival?

Don’t get it twisted. It is not as if we are eternally ungrateful or that we are blind to the yeoman efforts being made by these foreign agencies to open our eyes to the crying rot within. All we are saying is that if official methods cannot take a prize for meeting the needs of the common man, we shouldn’t be prosecuted for coming tops in the area of authorised profligacy. We already have a place in the Guinness Book of World Records! In any case, Naija, as they say in my area, no dey carry last! And so when next The Economist tries meddling in our business, we should ask them: if we don’t take care of our over-pampered fat cats in politics, who will?