E•X•P•R•E•S•S•I•V•E! AUNTY STELLA, ARE YOU AFRAID OF DEATH?

That moment he said he gave no damn about asset declaration, I had since had this premonition that his fight against corruption would amount to zilch or at best a lip service no matter how mellifluous all the concomitant mantra to fight the scourge. Of truth, corruption did not just start today, it is as old as Nigeria as a Republic. From the time of 10%, it has over time metamorphosed into a cankerworm, a hydra-headed menace that has further given birth to children and grand children. There is overtly no sector of our national life that is not gravely corrupt. However, a closer look at President Goodluck’s administration will unequivocally reveal that the country has never had it so egregious and hellacious as this. I have never seen nor read a government so docile and lackadaisical as to cocoon glaring and intimidating corrupt tendencies much as I see in this administration. Never! Jonathan’s ascendancy each day confirms the wastages and financial impropriety that have become the hallmark of his government.

By my calculations, this administration is entering its fourth year, and I don’t seem to have seen any major breakthrough in the cases so far prosecuted by the now-lame Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The political peculators are left off the hook while the Commission goes after the “Yahoo Boiz” whose situations are orchestrated by the systemic failures of several years. The Independent and Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) on its own is as good as moribund. We will rather sentence a teenager who stole a “chinco” phone of #3,000 to 2 or more years imprisonment with hard labour while the BIG thieves continue to frolic with the powers that be. When last did anybody hear of House of Reps member, Farouk Lawal, Mr. Integrity’s case of subsidy fraud? How about Maina of the police pension fraud? The plethora allegations against the Minister for Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alsion-Madueke nko? These are just microscopic miniature of the many mess.

Ours is a very funny country! A wonderfully dysfunctional nation with uncertain and precarious future. A country whose followership is blinded by ethnic jingoism, tribal chauvinism and religious bigotry. I read from the dailies the other day of a group in Lagos from the South East extraction dubbed “Aka Ikenga” justifying the recent sleaze committed by the Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah on the purchase of 2 bulletproof cars at a ridiculous price more than quadrupling the original amount. Who is afraid of death? As if we never had any female Igbo minister in the past. We once had the former Vice-President in World Bank, Oby Ezekwesili holding as two ministers. First as Minister for Education and later as Minister for Solid Minerals. Her car as a Minister for Education was referred to as the “shopping car” of her predecessor while that of Solid Minerals was a well worn jeep called her predecessor’s “political travels jeep”.

Only this morning, it was revealed that those cars were inflated by a whopping #185Million! If a minister can peculate #185M in just one transaction, how much would she have acquired in her over 2 years as the minister with an average of 50 transactions? Yet we have hapless Nigerian students still at home as a corollary of the protracted ASUU strike. That aside, the #225Million expended on frivolous car purchase would have provided up to 1000 Nigerian graduates who are without jobs a start-up business of #225,000 each. And some never-do-wells are out there calling those of us who believe in what the online whistleblower, SaharaReporters wrote about the shoddy deal as idiots. Who is more idiotic than a group who is blinded by ethnic narcissism and political megalomaniac? To think President Jonathan will sanction Oduah is to live in fool’s paradise, like she vehemently opined that she was not going to quit, not matter what people say. Of course, she won’t quit, because her “Oga at the Top” is in charge.

After all The Presidency has spoken! Hear what comes out of The Presidency on the messy situation: “Mr President is satisfied with the good work of the aviation minister and the transformation of the aviation sector”... “the cars are not personal property of the Minister but that of the office of Aviation Minister, no cost is too high to protect public officers who are carrying out desired changes”.
- Ahmed Ali Gulag
Special Assistant to the President on legal and constitutional matters. What then can be more grotesque, barbaric, nonsensical, disillusioned, inhumane, diminutive and deleterious than this gobbledygook, balderdash, bunkum, gibberish coming from the Presidency!

CzaR Wisdom Omógbóláhàn KòKúMó Mofólúwasó Babs Olórí Ębí-CFR