They dragged themselves to the Villa to see Ogbeni Olusegun Obasanjo who promptly made some interesting announcements to the nation. Ehem, see me o Nigerians. Chris Uba and Chris Ngige came to the Villa to see me o. Uba narrated how he rigged the election for Ngige right from the party primaries to the election proper and how he rigged in every member of the House of Assembly. Can you see? Nonsense! I was so angry! I scolded both of them! Mo bawon wi gidi gan ni o! I called them thieves for stealing the election in Anambra. Yes, I called Chris Uba and Chris Ngige thieves right before their very before. You know I don’t tolerate nonsense. Mi o gba gbere rara at all. And I warned them not to do so again. Trust me, they will not repeat the nonsense again.
But Baba Obasanjo even tried. At least he abused and scolded two Nigerians who went to our Presidency – the most solemn address in our country, the space that defines us and embodies who we are – to confess to the crime of electoral fraud in broad daylight. At least Baba warned them not to do so again and they got the consequences of being tongue-lashed in the Villa for the crime of stealing an election! The same cannot be said for so many of the Ebola characters who litter the Nigerian political space, calling themselves leaders. Somebody will jump up today and tell the nation that he knows who the sponsors of Boko Haram are but will not name them because he does not want “to heat the polity”; another one will jump up tomorrow and claim that he knows who and who is behind such and such crime against the Nigerian people but will only name them “at the appropriate time”.
On and on we go, rationalizing and accepting a society in which the President, Ministers, Senators, Governors, political appointees, politicians, etc, go on national TV routinely to announce that they know criminals they will not name and who, therefore, will not suffer any consequences because we need to “move the country forward”. The current bunch of contemptible characters ruling Nigeria cannot even measure up to Obasanjo’s standard of scolding criminals and telling them not to do so anymore o. Only Obasanjo can claim that he got us a little closer to orangutan and meerkat civilization where consequences are concerned. His successors have allowed orangutans and meerkats to increase the gap.
This is how we got Marilyn Ogar. My advice to Ms. Ogar is to increase her stock of carrots. Let her find a cold room to store enough fresh carrots for all the geopolitical zones in Nigeria. I know Nigeria. I know Nigerians. The problem, for us, will not be that she offered carrot and not stick to a bribe giver in Osun. If somebody offers her and the DSS bribe to influence elections tomorrow in Kano or Enugu state and she makes the mistake of rejecting the bribe, naming the criminal, and handing him over to the police for prosecution this time around, yawa go gas o. She will have to explain to Nigerians why the carrot that was good for the Yoruba criminal in Osun state yesterday is not good for the Hausa or Igbo criminal today. Na so we be.
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*Pius Adesanmi is professor of
African Literatures and Cultures,
Department of English Language & Literature, Carleton University, Canada.[eap_ad_3]