It’s corruption, stupid. Dr Reuben Abati is a public intellectual. Love him or not, his mind is first rate and he has operated in Nigeria’s publicshere over the past three decades as editorial writer, columnist and currently, television pundit/celebrity of the intellectual kind. He has all this while, been immersed in public affairs both as an outsider and a participant observer in government.
If anyone has a fair understanding of Nigeria and the workings of her government, Reuben would be one. But sadly, he is increasingly becoming something of a disembler. It’s our reality that Nigeria happens to us all and indeed, and the more Nigerians get close to government, the more they become swept away by the torrents of misdemeanour and vile that abound in the land. Having been marinated in the system for quite a while, has Reuben become so fish-in-water that he can’t analyse Nigeria’s situation with some acuity anymore? Can’t he see graft and corruption crawling all over Nigeria’s institutions and loci of power at every level? Why does Reuben seem to deflect and blame Nigeria’s woes on some supernatural powers? It’s corruption stupid!
CORRUPTION AS EVIL SPIRIT. When Reuben left office in May 2015, having served as a Special Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan, in the Presidential Villa, he had penned an article suggesting that Aso Rock, Nigeria’s very seat of power, must have been infiltrated by ghouls and wayward and spirits; including the marabout kinds.
Being a weaver bird in his own rights, the article seemed like the tale of a gallant hunter who just returned from the land of the spirits. It went viral and trended for a long time. But discerning readers knew it was a fine piece deployed to make excuses for and deflect the debacle that was the Jonathan administration. In a manner of speaking, Reuben got away with murder then.
But what’s he up to this time giving us the utterly annoying and regressive yearn about evil spirits and supernatural powers in Nigeria’s seat of power.
In his latest monograph, albeit a dubious one, Reuben tries to convince Nigerians that Aso Rock Villa is under some evil spell. Here: “Working in the Villa, I eventually became convinced that there must be something supernatural about power and closeness to it.”
THE FINE ART OF SUPERSTITION: Why is Reuben, a distinguished academic is front-burnering witches, wizards and superstitious jargons as the problem of Nigerians! It smacks of pure academic adventurism if not mischief for Reuben to contemplate this line of thought, not to mention articulating and disseminating it. If the first time was literary licence, the second time seems like a sinister joke on a gullible populace.
SUPERNATURAL CORRUPTION: Is Reuben trying to make excuses for President Bola Tinubu’s calamitous outing so far? As has been stated by this column umpteenth time, CORRUPTION, (in capital letters), is the supernatural spell cast on Nigeria all round by her leaders.
One is shocked that Reuben would miss for a second, the deleterious impact of the ogre called corruption in Nigeria’s national life. How can he miss the fact that it grows everyday and it’s now a Leviathan by itself.
Twice, one has had call to duty in state government house. The trend looms large and the methods are similar in government settings across the land.
Upon the inauguration of a president or governor, the first glaring sign of graft is government house renovation. Billions of naira are immediately allocated for a mere makeover of offices and residences of the president/governor. By a stroke of the pen, the new leader becomes richer by billions of naira. By the end of the first term, he’s most likely richer than the state.
Second, the indeterminate SECURITY VOTE, usually at the discretion of the president/governor is never enough. The greedy type would immediately activate streams of slush money flowing into the high office. With such sudden rush of cash (adrenalin), a rapacious leader is already under a spell. From thence on, he is more concerned about managing his rising heap of loot than governance. Sometimes, to amass illicit funds may be easier than managing it and keeping it away from public scrutiny.
BETWEEN JONATHAN, BUHARI AND TINUBU, IT’S A CONTINUUM OF RISING CORRUPTION: No president or governor can function from under the heaps of filthy lucre. He would of course lose touch with reality as one under a spell. He would have lost the moral authority of his office, most people around him knowing he’s a thieving president/governor. As he helps himself to the national till, his subordinates also help themselves. It becomes a looting spree. He loses the authority to sanction. And when the people, who bear the brunt of the pillage cry out, it falls on the deaf ears of people held spellbound by the god of mammon.
I challenge Reuben to speak to the fact of Jonathan’s aides looting the treasury right under his nose without a whimper from him. How did Diezani Allison-Madueke as oil minister, purloin and kept for herself, enough money to build new refineries yet didn’t as much as repair the old ones for over five years. Jonathan never uttered a word against her?
How did Mrs Patience Jonathan almost become the alternate federal treasury stashing tonnes of illicit fund with impunity?
Reuben should tell Nigerians Whatever happened to President Muhammadu Buhari and his anti-corruption war. Many of his aides ought to have been in jail before the end of his tenure.
But Buhari’s anti-corruption war ended only a few days after inauguration when he had to appoint ministers to juicy portfolios like transport and works to recoup their election campaign spend. He ceased to be mai gaskia!
Hadi Sirika, cash madam Umar Farouq and Abba Kyari and Co were rampant in their brigandage! That’s common knowledge. Did the EFCC as much as look up?
Reuben, why did First Lady, Aisha Buhari’s aide and her husband’s nephew and personal secretary, Sabiu ‘Tunde’ Yusuf engage in a deathly gun duel in Aso Rock? You were out of the Villa then but your guess is as good as mine. For most of eight years, Aisha was busy siphoning Nigeria’s fund to Dubai where she lived full time.
The situation is worse with Tinubu. His wife, sons, cronies from Lagos and his Indian collaborators are on a rampage. The only things they haven’t hefted are immovable assets.
So my dear Reuben, as Yoruba would say, don’t sell us a dummy; don’t tell us that your mangy dog is a monkey. It ain’t. Or at least we know the difference!
During my tour of duty in government house, a colleague had told me reprimandingly that he had come to make money in government, not to work. That’s the ethos, brother. Nigh every Nigerian in Aso Rock down to the smallest MDA, is a dung beetle frantically trying to roll a piece of the rock…
You know as I know that many wouldn’t think twice to torch their offices if it’s a sure way to make a killing. Many will gladly do murder for the money. So don’t tell us about fires and deaths in Aso Rock, they are mainly in aid of the mad rush for state cake.
BOTTOMLINE: There’s no evil spirit in Aso Rock my brother, there are only evil leaders! Our hope is that someday, a leader shorn of graft and corruptive tendencies would walk into Aso Rock and exorcise it of thieving spirits plaguing the place.
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