Poor Ike Ekweremadu!
These are desperate times. But the desperation with which his opponents have been pursuing him is excessive even by our own standards.
He has been a marked man since he “emerged,” or since his “emergence,” as Deputy President of the Senate, just one breathless step behind Dr Bukola Saraki, who had with accustomed guile fashioned his own emergence as Senate President.
As Saraki was being ferried to the courtroom day after day to answer charges of falsification of assets, Ike Ekweremadu was always in tow, a study in fraternal solidarity. In their appearance before another court to answer charges of forgery in relation to the documents with which they had allegedly procured their emergence as the leaders of the Senate, each sought to come across as victim rather than perpetrator.
Ekweremadu seemed to play the part with greater conviction.
They say this latter charge has since been withdrawn, without the Attorney-General of the Federation formally entering a nolle prosequi. The consideration seems to have been that if the charge stuck, if it was established that Saraki and Ekweremadu had obtained their positions in the Senate by deception, every act done or purported to have been done by the Senate under their watch would be a nullity, void and of no consequence whatsoever.
The hope in the camp of Ekweremadu’s foes was that some development might move the Attorney-General to reinstate the charges and commence prosecution anew. They had in fact been advised solemnly by a consortium of spiritual consultants in Abuja to expect such a development within weeks.
As weeks passed by without any indication that the Attorney-General was set to re-open the case, Ekweremadu’s determined and envious adversaries could hardly contain their impatience. As far as they were concerned, he was a poseur. He had to be unmasked by all means. And if he was no poseur, make him out to be one.
What, they wondered, was the secret of the glittering career that had seen him through a metamorphosis without parallel from Deputy President of a Senate controlled by his party, the PDP, to the same office in a Senate in which the PDP belongs in the minority Opposition? How had he managed the transition with no apparent loss of credibility and authenticity?
What had he been doing with the N31.5 million he had been taking home every month as “running expenses” since goodness-knows-when, plus other incomes not captured in the official revenue flow?
They tried hacking into his computer to filch vital information with which they could shame him and end his career. They came up short. The yahoo boys could not help them, nor could consultant hackers. By one account, they could not get round the firewall Ekweremadu had built around his private information, digital man for a digital age.
But that setback only re-energized his relentless pursuers. For they saw it as proof positive that he was hiding something – something probably quite damning. Hacking did not work and good old burglarizing was exceedingly fraught, given the battalion of security aides stationed at his office, homes and haunts, not forgetting the armed personnel that always accompany him.
Time, then, to try something different.
They decided to check out the Probate Registry in his home state of Enugu, knowing that he left little to chance and would have in all probability filed his Last Will and Testament. Now, that Registry is one of the most secure depositories in the entire bureaucracy, accessible only to a handful of trusted operatives sworn to the highest level of confidentiality.
But with friends in high places, there are few barriers you cannot breach in Nigeria.
So, without much fuss, they picked their way into the inner sanctum of the Probate Registry where, voila, an unhurried search turned up Ekweremadu’s Last Will and Testament. But their joy was short-lived.
The package was slender, not remotely as hefty as they had expected. They ripped away the seal, only to find within the covers several pages detailing only a few solid assets in Enugu and Abuja and Lagos – nothing that a middling, God-fearing public servant living frugally and availing himself or herself of the usual opportunities could not have acquired in 20 years within the system.
If that slim portfolio was all that Ekweremadu, one of the raiders said with cutting contempt, he must have spent all his time in Abuja and the world capitals he visited in the line of duty gawking at the superb infrastructure, the great monuments, the historic buildings when not shopping eating exquisite meals and drinking choice wines.
“Yeye man,” the raider had said in exasperation, according to a report that cannot be corroborated at this time.
But where one raider saw disappointment, another saw great opportunity.
A week later, the raiders were back at the Probate Registry, carrying a package containing four hefty volumes of what they purported to be the original, authentic Last Will and Testament of the afore-mentioned Ike Ekeweremadu, signed and sealed and delivered with the usual attestations and affirmations.
In due time, the contents of the package were leaked. Ekweremadu was as usual so engrossed in the affairs of state that he had no inkling of what was going on until an estranged relation, acting more out of schadenfreude than solidarity, called his attention to the reports.
The disclosures were nothing if not explosive. Report after report credited Ekweremadu with luxury property on a scale beyond belief in virtually every city of consequence in the world, property of all shapes and descriptions: studios, condos, bungalows, duplexes, triplexes, office suites, apartment blocks, etc., all situated in the most desirable part of town, thus giving a whole new meaning to globalization.
In their desperation to nail Ekweremadu, the raiders overreached. It is simply inconceivable that an individual, even one as influential as the Deputy Senate President, acting from his base in Abuja, could have acquired such a property empire sprawled across the world. To do so, the individual would have to own an exclusive and unregulated licence to print money, and to be driven by a galactic propensity for that pastime.
But as far as we know, Ekweremadu has no such licence. He does not need it because of his modest and contented lifestyle Even his one-time principal in the Senate, no stranger to lavish extravagance, was content to settle for just two golf courses in Europe, plus a mountain of cash and other assets detailed in the Panama Papers and documents of like nature. So why would Ekweremadu reach out for so much?
The whole thing is simply not credible, and would have been so even if Ekweremadu had not disavowed it. He has named two well-placed individuals he believes are behind this gross invasion of his privacy that all patriotic and law-abiding Nigerians must condemn in the most vigorous terms and vowed to bring them to justice.
That is the proper response for a lawmaker.
But there is one option that the distinguished Senate President must not ignore, borrowed from a column Olusegun “The Verdict” Adeniyi wrote for ThisDay a while ago, about a young man who was putting up a building in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital. Each time he raised it several coats higher, he found the whole thing levelled the next day, apparently by some rival claimant to the site.
So, he put up a sign proclaiming that the site belonged to Lamidi Adedibu, persuaded that nobody in the city would dare encroach on a property advertised as belonging to Himself the King of Molete.
To the young man’s astonishment, construction resumed at the site almost immediately and advanced rapidly until the building was almost completed.
The young man went to see Adedibu to explain why he had put the legendary man’s name on his building site. Adedibu expressed appreciation for the great compliment, completed the building, and handed it to the young man.
And now, finally, the Distinguished Senate President’s option: Establish a claim on all the property detailed in your purported Last Will and Testament, and seek a perpetual injunction restraining any individual or body corporate in any jurisdiction, domestic or foreign, from sequestering it or inquiring into how it was acquired.