Festus Eriye
THERE’S nothing funny about the brutal murder of the Kogi State People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Woman Leader, Mrs. Salome Abuh. The gruesome manner of her death underlines why Nigerian politics would never attract the best of us.
Abuh was murdered and her house razed last Monday by suspected political thugs. The killing happened after the outcome of the governorship election had been known.
Now, miraculously, the Kogi State Police Command says it has arrested six suspects in connection with the killing.
Their apprehension comes barely 24 hours after President Muhammadu Buhari, last Sunday, directed that her killers be brought to justice.
The police say the suspects were apprehended on Friday, which means the breakthrough was accomplished before the presidential order.
I would like to believe this timeline. Unfortunately, Nigeria teaches you to be cynical. Usually, it takes some dramatic order from the top to get things moving. We can only hope that those who have been held are the true perpetrators and not some flotsam and jetsam dragged in to defuse pressure.
Back in July this year, unknown gunmen killed Mrs. Funke Olakunrin, daughter of the Afenifere leader, Pa Reuben Fasoranti, somewhere in Ondo State.
As anger raged across the land over another high-profile murder, the police as usual announced breakthrough arrests of suspects they claimed were involved in the killing. These individuals were never paraded in the usual triumphant manner the Force is used to and nearly six months after, no one has been charged to court. Perhaps they need another of Buhari’s forceful orders to revive what has become a cold case.
Strange and funny things are happening in the land. I was astonished when a colleague drew my attention to the US indictment of Allen Onyema, chairman and CEO of Air Peace for fraud and laundering of funds in excess of $20 million.
Until the shock development Onyema counted as one of the good guys for creating a thriving business that provided jobs for thousands of Nigerians. His stock rocketed after his patriotic intervention to airlift scores of his compatriots who were trapped in xenophobic violence in South Africa.
But good deeds are one thing, an indictment by judicial authorities of another country an entirely different matter. That is why I am amused by certain reactions to the businessman’s troubles.
Some have blamed the media for even reporting the story at all. Others say it is the Yoruba and Fulani-owned newspapers who have launched a campaign to bring down an Igbo businessman. They wonder why other allegations of corruption against some notable politicians didn’t receive the same kind of play.
It makes you wonder what age some Nigerians are living in. The media – new and traditional – as it exists today isn’t some sort of secret society where practitioners can take a collective vow of silence over an unpleasant story. If our newspapers choose to bury their head in the sand, their international counterparts won’t, and the countless social platforms would still amplify the scandal.
While the shock of the indictment may have induced mental paralysis in some quarters, it beggars belief that anyone would choose to view the Onyema matter from the usual tawdry tribal prism.
The indictment wasn’t issued by Nigeria authorities who can then be easily blackmailed with ethnic rubbish. Even if local business rivals or a coalition of Yoruba and Hausa whistleblowers had provided dirt on Onyema, they couldn’t have succeeded in their mission if they didn’t find ammunition.
The indictment is a reality that only those directly affected can deal with. Their ‘sympathisers’ hurling insults on social and print media are idle and emotional noisemakers who are not helping his cause. Their name-calling won’t make the charges against the Air Peace boss disappear. This is only going to be resolved when the man has his day in court.
But in terms of the ludicrous, nothing beats the recent sponsored demonstrations in Abuja, accusing the lawyer and activist, Femi Falana, SAN, of trying to intimidate the Department of State Services (DSS) and other security agencies in the country.
How did the slight-framed Falana manage this grand accomplishment? He simply has been vocally challenging every excuse offered by the DSS for the continued detention of his client, Sahara Reporters publisher, Omoyele Sowore, long after he had satisfied court-imposed conditions for bail.
His actions obviously discomfited the security agencies and their constituency. So some smart individual pops up with the perfect solution: organize a demonstration to browbeat an activist who has spent the bulk of his adult life marching at the barricades!!!
From one notable protester we move another. A letter from former Zamfara State Governor, Abdulaziz Yari, protesting the non-payment of his outstanding allowances and pension has been made public.
Yari is also demanding that his successor, Bello Matawalle, pay his monthly N10 million retirement ‘stipend’ as prescribed by some state law.
His letter stated: “The law provides, among other entitlements of the former governor, a monthly upkeep allowance of N10m only and a pension equivalent to the salary he was receiving while in office.
“Accordingly, you may wish to be informed that since the expiration of my tenure on May 29, 2019, I was only paid the upkeep allowance twice — i.e. for the month of June and July, while my pension for the month of June has not been paid.”
Poor, poor Yari! He probably would have been a senator now if he and his supporters had not thwarted the efforts of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to hold acceptable primaries in the state. He and his rivals ensured that the party couldn’t hold one by the time INEC’s deadline expired. As a result of their actions state and federal elective offices were handed to PDP on a platter.
Today, pan in hand, he’s begging for N10 million when as senator he would have been salting away more than twice that.
While Yari is moaning about two months of unpaid pensions and allowance, I wonder what the salary and pension status of the average worker in the state is.
For a state like Zamfara, it is an obscenity for a former governor to be carting away N10 million a month. For what? His official salary as governor was nowhere near that and not even the president earns that in a month.
But then stranger things have happened in this joke factory called Nigeria. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, heard it all, something new breaks and takes your breath away.
- Note: this column takes a break until the last week in December as I proceed on annual vacation. Thanks for being a part of the discussion.
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