Negative vibes

We have seen all this before. Hopes raised and dashed. Teeth grinding at what might have been if the leader had surrounded himself with a more selfless set of aides. We saw it with Jonathan who we backed unconditionally until he started to derail. When we pointed out the loss of direction at the time, we were like ill willers. But today, if he spares time to trace our trajectory and re-read some of our suggestions, he would probably wish he had listened.

When Duplicity comes to the party with its mother-in-law, Ethnicity, and its cousin, Graft, you can bet that Nepotism will be the master of ceremonies. That was the case during military rule. Now that we are in a socalled democracy we have found our way back to our old iniquitous ways

Anyone who doubted the tenacious resilience of those who live off government coffers in Nigeria should examine the Abdulrasheed Maina saga all over again. A fugitive smuggled himself back into government through a sensitive ministry that ought to have been involved in his interdiction in the first place. Not satisfied with evading justice, what better revenge could he exert on the system than using it against itself and making the president look like a village conspirator?

To think that such a serious case like Maina’s could be dressed in the garb of propriety through a fake letter of recall cast to give the impression that it was from the office of the Head of Service makes one wonder, what else don’t we know? According to the Chairman of the HCSOF chapter of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, ASCSN, Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation Chapter, “Maina’s letter of reinstatement dated September 18, 2017, and signed by one Mustapha L. Sulaiman for the FCSC chairman, was written from the FCSC without any input from the HoS. …even the reference ‘4029’ which is used in the letter is fake and incomplete….” This shameless fakery should not be happening in Nigeria of 2017.

Maina is not your spring chicken by any measure. He has mounted a media offensive to exculpate him as if he was the victim. When a fugitive becomes the offended to whom we must now apologise, does anyone still need to be told that we are fast becoming a basket case?

The Maina exposé casts the Buhari administration in the same blighted mould as past governments who entrenched parochial considerations ahead of national interest. The revelation by Sahara Reporters of another set of scandals involving the Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mr. Mounir Haliru Gwarzo, was equally mind-blowing. How can a man get paid N104.8 million as severance package in respect of the end of his appointment as Executive Commissioner, a position he occupied for two years and four months? No wonder the cocktail of sweetheart deals comprehensively catalogued by the medium read like they were governed by the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not be found out.

To say President Buhari is unaware of all these goings on is to damage his reputation savagely, because the question then arises, “What does he ever know if he is distanced from every backfiring backdoor appointment or corruption in high places?” The buck stops at the table of the president. If there’s a crucial decision the president doesn’t know about, that decision ought not to be. The system of approvals and checks cannot be bypassed if the system was being run as it should be and not as a cabal-controlled bureaucratic machine.

Nobody has a right to turn President Buhari to passenger in a ship he’s supposed to captain. In my humble opinion, the roles played by the Interior Minister, General Abdurahman Dambazau and Attorney General Malami were less than sterling. Whatever be the case, Maina is as guilty as his accomplices in this matter.

I want Buhari to leave a legacy worth celebrating. We have had enough failures. However, I am reminded again and again that in late 2013 and early 2014, I asked questions about how some elements close to President Jonathan were over-reaching themselves in brazen graft and subversion of due process. I wondered at the time if their professed loyalty to the president was enough to place them above the law. I ask the same questions again today. Fair is fair, we must hold President Buhari to the same kind of scrutiny with which we assessed Jonathan.

The large army of treasury looters under investigation/prosecution cannot but celebrate this godsend of a diversion of attention. It is now a contest of whose wardrobe, APC’s or PDP’s, has more hideous skeletons. The more outspoken among them have set social media ablaze, saying: “We are not the only thieves. Hunt down the rogues under your nose!”

Buhari’s signature programme is the anti-corruption war. If he condones negative signals such as big camels passing through the eye of the needle of justice, those of us who supported his ascendancy and want him to succeed for our collective sakes, will be here to remind him of his pledge to chase corruption out of town. While we’re not holding him personally liable for the bad behaviour of errant officials, it is his duty to ensure that they’re brought to justice and removed from circulation.

The ball is in your court, Mr. President.