Nigerians are angry. For close to two weeks, they have agonized over Ahmed Farouk, ex MD of NNPCL and Abubakar Malami, the immediate past Attorney General and Minister of Justice’s alleged betrayal of sacred trust entrusted on them as public servants by the nation. The former was challenged over indiscriminate issuance of licences for PMS importation – an act, they said, could derail the government current drive towards energy self-sufficiency. He was also alleged to have spent about $5m school fees on his four primary school children in Switzerland. Such money, many have argued must be a product of corruption.
The latter was accused of hiding under Buhari’s presidency to serve other tendencies. As a ‘charge and bail’ lawyer before joining Buhari’s crew of ‘loyal gatekeepers’, many are asking for the sources of his alleged stupendous wealth.
For their ‘treachery’, the battle cry at home, on the street, in the social media and even in the hallow chambers of our National Assembly is “hang them”.
But the problem is that we know that “hang them” is a language of those shut out of the system or those driven by greed. And since everyone seems to be angry with the Nigerian state, it can be said that there is a bit of Farouk and Malami in all of us.
We rail at PENGASAN, IPMAN and DAPPMAN only because we don’t have the opportunity of becoming part of them. From ethnic nationalities, the owners of our society, whose arrogant spokespersons insist no one gets what they cannot get, to our political leaders who see Abuja as place for securing their own fair share of the national cake, and the governed, who swear at the politicians for not stealing enough monies from Abuja which they claim belong to no one, we have all betrayed the nation.
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If you are in doubt, let us again take a short journey through memory. At the 1957 London Independence Constitutional Conference, two of the dominant ethnic groups, the Igbo and the Fulani, betrayed the minorities over creation of states. In 1962, they again removed one of the legs of a tripod holding Nigeria together. Between the census crisis of 1962/63 and massively rigged 1964 election, the remaining two wobbling legs of the tripod finally collapsed. With each group insisting no one gets what the other could not get, our politically naïve military was dragged into politicians’ battle for supremacy. The result was a civil war driven by greed but fraudulent fought in our name.
In 1993, a jolly good fellow and a generous giver, MKO Abiola, a man without any ideological orientation made billions through Nigerian state and ITT. (We all remember Fela Anikulapo’s famous lyric “ITT: International thief thief”). But as a generous giver, he shared the fortune so cheaply acquired among Nigerians, building mosques, churches, hospitals, schools, sport centres across towns and villages in Nigeria. Many analysts believe it was the secret of his landslide victory in 1993, defeating Bashir Tofa round and square even in his Kano stronghold.
But the ruling Fulani hegemonic class in the north according to Babangida’s rain doctors did not want a Yoruba presidency. Arthur Nzeribe placed a paid newspaper advertisement declaring “Igbo will not accept a Yoruba presidency”, Evans Enwerem, who later became a senate president during OBJ presidency, issued a press statement declaring “Igbo will go to war if Abiola’s election is de-annulled”. Odumegwu Ojukwu’s opposition to Yoruba presidency was reported by the PM News of October 17, 1994 with a howling headline “Hang MKO Abiola, Ojukwu tells Abacha”. Ojukwu later became Abacha’s ambassador to Europe to de-market MKO Abiola.
If the federating ethnic nationalities have no faith in their country, it should not surprise anyone why their political representatives only think of what they can get out of Nigeria and not what they could do for Nigeria.
For instance, all through the military era and up to 1999, there was a general consensus among Nigerians that NNPC had become a cesspool of corruption. Sanitising NNPC required our leaders political will, a virtue in deficit among our successive leaders.
When the former CBN governor, Lamido Sanusi Lamido reported a possible disappearance of $20b not paid by NNPC into the federation account, during the leadership of Diezani Alison-Madueke as Minister of Petroleum Resources, who has since been indicted by both Britain and the US for money laundering, it was Sanusi that got fired by President Jonathan and replaced by an unqualified and incompetent Godwin Emefiele, a choice many argued was informed by ethnic consideration.
As for the new breed politicians and new inheritors of power in Abuja, they made it clear it was time to recoup their expenses on the 1999 electoral battle. The PPPRA, with a staff strength of 249, supervised by an unwieldy board of 49, earning a whopping salaries and allowances of N57 billion per annum became an instrument through which N1.7 trillion was stolen according to a House of Representatives probe report.
As for the governed, the policy was ‘if we cannot beat them, we join them”. As fortune seekers in a world of the survival of the fittest, we try to bribe our way into getting our children employed by NNPC which pays salaries that will make our doctors and university lecturers green with envy. And once we get our children into NNPC or the CBN, we keep quiet in order not to get choked.
When it comes to treachery against Nigeria, we are all tarred with the same brush. That a part of a whole cannot be holier than the whole was clearly demonstrated during President Tinubu’s inaugural speech. The address brought out the Farouk in all of us in bold relief. He had hardly finished saying “subsidy is gone” when PMS disappeared from filling stations across the nation. And where they were available, PMS procured at less than N200 per litre was going for N700. Retail prices for pepper, tomatoes, beans, corn went up as much as 500% within two days. In agrarian Ekiti State where farmers had abandoned farming and waited for pepper and tomato to come from the north, chiefs had to go to the open market to chide market women for their greed.
The difference between Farouk’s case and Abubakar Malami is that having seduced Buhari by adding his divorced daughter, a mother of four to his harem, Malami was beyond reproach. And this was despite his efforts to confer constitutional rights meant for Nigerians on cows and mischievous attempt to equate criminal Fulani herdsmen who forcefully took over reserve forests in the south with documented legitimate Igbo traders and urban immigrants in the north.
Malami’s current travail stemmed from the Cable’s December 22, 2017 publication of his attempt to appoint two Nigerian lawyers, Oladipo Okpeseyi, a senior advocate, and Temitope Isaac Adebayo, lawyers to the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) at a cost of $16m to work on a job already completed by another lawyer. It was for this reason, it was claimed, Kemi Adeosun, in April 2018 as minister of finance, refused to approve the payment of $16.9 million in fees to the two lawyers for the “recovery”.
Besides recovery of assets, the current investigation is said to also cover probe of several bank accounts allegedly linked to the former minister, as well as his multi-billion-naira investments in Kebbi State.
I think this is important because Junaid Mohammed once described Malami as “Kano charge and bail lawyer” who opted to handle Buhari’s judicial cases, pro bono, at a time Buhari had no money to pay lawyers.
But today there is a trending video of Rayhaan Group of companies described as the biggest private conglomerate in Nigeria, consisting of a string of luxury hotels, largest rice milling factory in Africa, Rayhaan Academy and newly approved Rayhaan University and Security Companies, all managed by 29 years old Malami’s son.
While we all agree Nigeria has become an orphan repeatedly pillaged by leaders of ethnic nationalities, politicians, pastors, Imams etc., I think the ongoing search for sponsors of terrorism should not spare the likes of Abubakar Malami. He might have one or two things to say about sympathisers and sponsors of terrorism in view of his defence of their activities not just in the north but also in the ‘reserved forest’ of the south. In retrospect, when one looks back at Malami’s endless war with Rotimi Akeredolu, the late governor of Ondo State over the illegal take-over of his state’s reserved forest by criminal herdsmen. It will appear Malami was determined to export northern tragedy to the south.
