Maina: Mess, messiah or menace?

Buhari needed to replace his compromised officials, whom he must have known within minutes, or by the following day when he received the official report of the probe. It was far more important to have those men removed, Maina being only a symptom of the d

You know a government is cornered when there is a fresh crisis with every passing day, and chaos appears to run the government. In Nigeria the government of President Muhammadu Buhari fits this description as it appears to be floundering, grasping at straws, and gasping for air as it lurches from one awful revelation to another,

Last week came yet another story: came the thunderous exposure of one Abdulrasheed Maina, whose story is so thrilling he may have stepped out of a James Hadley Chase novel.

Maina, the former chairman of the Presidential Task Team on Pension Reforms, was dismissed from the civil service in 2013 for allegedly heading a-(hood)wink! (hood) wink!!-a N195 billion pension fraud scheme. He was subsequently declared wanted by the police.

Prior to that, the brash Mr. Maina had sued the Senate and the Inspector-General of Police after the Upper House, at the conclusion of an investigation during which Maina ignored all summons, issued a warrant of arrest against him.

He vanished. It appears the former assistant director in the Ministry of the Interior, using powerful connections, had slipped out of the country into Dubai, where he lived a life of luxury. In 2015, the EFCC also declared him wanted.

The pension reform boss by day, who was by night ripping off the pension scheme by the hundreds of billions, was never found. Well, not by the police or by the authorities, and certainly not in four years.

Until last weekend, when he was unearthed by a journalist. Found in the same Abuja playpen where he had previously played the government for a fool before being fired by the executive branch led by Mr. Goodluck Jonathan.

Apparently, four years later, Maina had simply slipped past Interpol, and skipped past Nigeria’s immigration officials, local police and Area Boys-as well as a battery of so-called security agencies-back into the playpen and again into the payroll of the federal government and the Abuja banking network. The game was easy! The game was good!!

And it then emerged that the game was even easier and better than all of that: between 2011 and 2012, while Maina was still an employee of the government, the Department of State Security (DSS), paid over N150m into a bank account with which he was associated.

The government did not deny it re-engaged Mr. Maina. Last week, Interior Minister Abdulrahman Dambazau, under whose charge the man got a new job and higher title, threw the blame at the Office of the Head of Service and the Federal Civil Service Commission, as they are responsible for “Discipline, Employment, Re-engagement, Posting, Promotion and Retirements of Federal Civil Servants.” He did not identify exactly how that fact may have cleared Maina for re-engagement, or for the swashbuckling small army put together to protect him.

And then, in stepped Mr. Maina’s family. In a statement in Kaduna, it affirmed that the Buhari government had invited the man back to the country to drive its so-called “change” agenda.

Spokesman Aliyu Maina called him a “messiah,” drawing attention to the massive security given his brother by DSS as evidence the arrangement was official, and wondered why government officials were denying him.

“He succumbed to the present administration and came back to Nigeria,” Aliyu declared, adding that Maina had been “working with the DSS for quite some time and he was given necessary security.”

That testimony, which nobody has yet controverted, is not only riveting, it makes sense. Remember: Maina was enjoying better personal protection than Ministers of the Federal Republic, which is confirmation he was acknowledged in the playpen at the highest levels.

Reports said the deal had been for Maina to return, and-on the platform of the APC “change” thingy, of course-to run for governor in his home state. That harmonizes with the statement by his family. The man is said to have negotiated with such high-ups as the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, DSS Director-General Lawan Daura, and Mr. Dambazau, with whom he is alleged to have held a strategy session in Dubai.

According to reports, these men facilitated Maina’s audacious return, and were responsible for the round-the-clock security fortress around him, the principal mission of which was to guarantee he was not arrested by the EFCC.

And then, the scandal exposed last week, President Buhari “fired” Maina, ordering his arrest. But again, and just as in 2013 in Abuja-and like former Delta State Governor James Ibori several years ago on his way into the hands of the British in Dubai-Maina skipped through Nigeria’s ramshackle and compromised security apparatuses, and disappeared.

In other words: given the profile of his return to Nigeria, he was swiftly evacuated by the same powerful forces to the safety of a foreign safe house where he can again live in luxury at Nigeria’s expense, and travel the world.

It was tragic last week to hear members of the APC blaming the Peoples Democratic Party for the Maina debacle. To me, that is the spelling of desperation.

What was more hilarious was the suggestion being bandied about that Buhari’s offensive against corruption is being betrayed by people other than the president.

The truth is simpler: Maina demonstrates what I continue to say: the so-called war is a ruse. Were this a true war, the commander would have acknowledged that his generals are weak and compromised. His first order of business would have been to remove those generals in favour of stronger and more professionals.

That is, Buhari needed to replace his compromised officials, whom he must have known within minutes, or by the following day when he received the official report of the probe. It was far more important to have those men removed, Maina being only a symptom of the disease. They were an insult to his leadership, and a prime embarrassment to the character of his administration.

But Buhari retained the disease, an “investigation” put into play as usual. The problem with these probes is that they have the same predictable pattern: the buck returns to President Buhari’s desk.

According to the constitution, that is the final desk. It is the one where the most important decisions are, and must be made in the interest of the entire nation. For two and a half years, President Buhari has failed to make them, demonstrating uncommon indecisiveness and lack of leadership.

Buhari holding back continues to hold Nigeria down, and whatever else he may broadcast as his achievements, unless he can find the courage to assert himself he will be remembered principally as a man of words. He will go down in history as the general who lost the war not to the enemy, but to his own soldiers; as a man who was exposed by high office.

“He proclaimed change,” one citation might read, “but shortchanged his people.”