These are hard times for most
Nigerians. A little over a year ago,
Nigerians trooped out in their millions to vote for change and change they
got. The All Progressives Congress (APC)
campaigned on the “change” mantra and from the results of last year’s elections,
the generality of Nigerians seemed to have bought into it. The problem is that we have failed to
key-into it. Most of us were only
thinking of personnel changes and not attitudinal and this is where our
problems arises. We were thinking of only
changing Diezani and bringing in Nchokoh for him to start where she stopped –
business as usual.
This misconception of change is not
only by the poor and the wretched but by almost all our elected officials bar
the President. We are today treated to
stories of crass theft, euphemistically called “budget padding”. The forty thieves who, in the cover of the
night, shared our commonweal among them are now dragging each other in the
public square as to who is the saint and who is the devil. The media is making too much fuss about
Abdulmumini Jibrin’s new found vocation of fighting corruption. I am not quite sure both Jibrin and the media
are aware of what the whole thing is all about.
Fighting corruption, I mean.
Being honest and possessing the ability to live aboard board. To vie for political office because one wants
to serve, have the ability to serve and has something to offer and not just to
be close to the cookie jar.
It took ages of living a Spartan
life by people like President Buhari to be regarded as perpendicular; this was
not achieved on the pages of newspapers or screens of smartphones and
tablets. There is a deliberate pattern
and rhythm to such a lifestyle. It
doesn’t happen overnight or when one lost an office and feel it is convenient
to become a whistle blower. We had the
likes of Dr. Usman Bugaje and Dr. Haruna Yerima in the same House of
Representative. These were people who
went to the House of Assembly with the intention of reforming the system but
what did we do with them? We voted them
out after just one term and replaced them with the likes of Jibrin.
Jibrin knew he was going down from
the moment the President refused to assent to the Appropriation Bill transmitted
to him by the national assembly in April.
He had known quite well when he sent text messages to all Chairmen and
Deputy Chairmen of Standing Committees asking them to remain steadfast in “justifying”
their reports, especially in the media.
This was after he made additional “insertions”, as he called it, to the
budget without the knowledge of the same standing Committees. So he knew he was going down; what he cannot
stomach is his removal as Chairman of the Appropriation Committee. What his pride and greed cannot take is the
lack of another opportunity to “insert” projects not meant to be executed in
next year’s budget.
His unrelenting media war against
those he accused of being corrupt is a sign that he knows he is finished as a
lawmaker. That is the ought to, anyway
and so it ought to be. He is part of a system
which he is now trying to destroy just because the system appears to have
jettisoned him and not for any altruistic reasons. Such a vicious system hardly forgives any of
its beneficiaries who choose to expose its sleazy activities. It is therefore a matter of life and death
for Jibrin to continue to live the persona he is striving to create for
himself. He needs a prestige he don’t
deserve; an achievement he didn’t accomplish; to save a name he never had or
earned the right to bear. I am of the
firm believe that the things he is now preaching are farthest from his mind.
It is my humble opinion that Jibrin
and Dogara et al, are superficially varied manifestation of the same
thing. Of the same intentions ab initio. Selfishness is their only guiding moral
principle. They have worked together in
harmony through all the paddings and “insertions”, each giving-in to the
other’s selfish demand, though Jibrin was the one who pushed himself forward
and hogged the limelight when the President refused to sign the budget.
The culprits are the people. I failed to see any hint of rationality in
what they now respond to. I have given
up all hope of understanding them. I am
very convinced that Jibrin and his co-travellers in politics represent so
impertinent, so vicious a fraud that to suspend the evidence of my eyes is
beyond my elastic capacity. To canonise
Jibrin as an anti-corruption crusader will be sacrilege.
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