Kinsmen of former Plateau State Governor Joshua Dariye and his Taraba State counterpart, Rev. Jolly Nyame, are reported to be planning grand receptions for the men following their release from jail terms to which they were sentenced for grand corruption. Dariye and Nyame were the most notable names among 159 convicts recently granted state pardon by the Muhammadu Buhari presidency.
Dariye, who was Plateau State governor from 1999 to 2007, was convicted for laundering N1.16billion of public funds and sentenced to 14 years in jail, which was later reduced to 10 years at the appellate level while Nyame, Taraba State governor (1999-2007), was also jailed 14 years for misappropriating N1.6billion of public funds – a sentence that was reduced to 12 years at the appellate level. Both former governors had barely served three years of their respective jail terms when reprieve came for them by way of the controversial state pardon.
Sunday PUNCH last week reported that indigenes of Bokkos council area of Plateau State had concluded plans to stage a grand reception in honour of Dariye, who contested the Plateau Central senatorial seat election in 2011 and got elected as senator. According to the report, Bokkos council chairman, Joseph Guluwa, confirmed having raised a committee to organise the welcome party, adding that the people were exultant about the imminent release of their ‘son’ and were eagerly awaiting his return from Abuja into their warm embrace.
The paper also reported that the kinsmen of Nyame under the aegis of Mumuye Cultural Development Association were planning a lavish reception for him in Jalingo, the Taraba State capital. It cited the national president of the association, Dr. Abraham Makoso, as saying: “Nyame, our son, leader and former governor deserves a grand reception and we won’t do anything short of that upon his final release. Jolly is a political figure and he will continue to be our leader. He deserves a heroic welcome to give him psychological balance to serve humanity better.” Already, certain groups have reportedly printed and displayed all over Jalingo T-shirts, banners and posters celebrating Nyame’s release and welcoming him back, and as well hailing President Buhari for the pardon that everywhere else elicited fierce criticism for perceivably undermining government’s anti-graft crusade.
Those planned receptions echo similar ones staged 2007 in honour of former Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha in his Amassoma hometown after he returned from jail time for looting Bayelsa State treasury blind, and in 2017 for former Delta State Governor James Ibori in his native Oghara after serving five and half years of a 13-year prison sentence in British jail for laundering huge piles of Delta’s common wealth in the United Kingdom economy.
Events as these are typically inspired by a primordial sentiment of kinship that lives in willful denial of circumstantial facts and promotes the overall effect of radicalising corruption. People see their kinsmen convicted of corruption as no worse off in the universal equation of the malaise. And so, touting the ‘our son’ connection, communities stage heroic welcome for errant members who were called to account for abusing the trust of those very communities. Leaders of those communities tend to rate kinship of higher importance than the moral flaw that got their ‘sons’ into jail, thereby betraying a crooked sense of communal morality. That crookedness is entailed in a shared mentality of corruption whereby affected communities do not see stealing public funds as a crime, the crime would rather be that their ‘son’ was in power and did not seize the opportunity for betterment of his own lot and immediate circle of kin as well as other cronyistic benefits. As such, thanksgiving services are held and priests even cast the returning convicts as persons divinely rescued from gross acts of injustice! It is suspected that crowds with which the reception parties are staged are largely rented, meaning they are neither genuine nor spontaneous. Even then, those people who yield themselves to being used for such effect deserve strong censure for being gullible and complicit in whitewashing corruption. Or how do you explain people deprived of basic developmental benefits because resources that should have been used for the common good were stolen, coming out to celebrate the same actors who had robbed them?
It is a stronger censure that must be reserved for the returning ‘sons’ who, rather than retreat shamefacedly into a quiet life after being proven guilty of corruption, take the grandstand to be celebrated as misunderstood heroes. The planned receptions are as odious as the very presidential pardon that left the former governors off the hook barely a few years into their jail terms. Dariye and Nyame owe their respective community and entire Nigeria apology for abusing public trust, and no magnitude of reception upon their return from jail can efface that.