] ] The modesty of President Jones
The problem with those of us who have no luck either prefixed or suffixed to our names is that we know nothing about modesty. When Tuface rebased his marriage to the mother of some of his children with a honeymoon trip to Dubai, nobody raised an eyebrow. Except of course, those of us who missed the SUV aka Jeep that Governor Akpabio presented along with the return ticket for the 28 very lucky citizens who went to witness the honeymoon in Dubai. Grumblers were aptly described as meddlesome interlopers. One writer asked me to declare my affinity with Akwa Ibom to gauge my asking rights the Raji Fashola is querying the right for the freedom of information request on education funding in Lagos.
I am shocked that nobody asked me to go to Obajana Junction or ask to see the shopping list of my accident-prone governor instead of poking my nose in other people’s affairs. They all know that there are no back roads to my part of Kogi a state noted for bathing handsome faces with raw acid without repercussion.
Here’s my excuse for saying nothing about events in Lokoja and beyond, the last time I looked at the DMO website; compared to Akwa Ibom, Kogi’s debts is not beyond redemption. Except Dangote stops paying taxes. Governor Wada knows that surviving road accidents cannot be compared with plane crashes. He is a pilot, and so, he should be commended for not indulging in his passion within the state. Of course, not having a jetset governor denies you of your bragging rights in the comity of states, but small price to pay for turning the volatile state into another Taraba.
So, I pretended not to see presidential dreamer, Atiku Abubakar shipping his friends to Dubai for his son’s wedding. Even for a Fulani man, all roads do not safely lead to Jada, when you do not have the links to put boots and tanks on every stretch of the road leading there. That could happen if you were not trying to push President Jones from his comfortable chair in Hassle Rock. Go and drink pepper-soup, all you who question Atiku’s Atiku, the only grouse I have is that somehow, my name was missing on the guest list.
If anyone thinks that what Atiku did was unpatriotic, then they are still using the old map. President Jones uses the new GPS. Weeks earlier, he closed the National Conference, sorry, I meant he moved it to Otuoke, in his capacity as Presido. After all, don’t we all live in Chike Obi’s country where 16 votes is more than 19? Are we not proud citizens of a country in which a state budget was presented and passed in one day? Have we not witnessed the mace of the Irrational Assembly taken to the shrine of Ogbunike for safe keeping? Have state assemblies not met under the mango tree and passed laws with less than two-thirds of members in attendance? What laurel is there in the Guinness Book of Absurdity that our noble country has not clinched?
We have witnessed a head of state surrender the keys of a presidential jet to his son to ferry party goers and expended national budget to grief the national loss. Then a presidential aide used a helicopter as kabu-kabu for his father’s burial and again crashed it and kept his job. I can cope with anything, but hypocrisy is bitter than melted chloroquine on my tongue.
This is why I refused to pay attention to those who showed pictures of the gold-plated phones allegedly distributed at President Jones’ daughter’s wedding and linked it to the celebrated diamond phones being made by a Dubai designer. It is hypocrisy of the highest order. In recent past, vice president Nnamdi distributed iPhones to guests at his daughter’s wedding. That was long before the iPhone combined the functions of phones with office and video. I am inclined to commend the modesty of my president for not creating and naming a state after his daughter and making the husband the governor before ordering the Irrational Assembly to gazette it. This shows that all things said, this president is a modest ruler of a pacifist nation. After all, petrol, our cash cow belongs to NaijaDeltans and the resources thereof, the people and all who live in it.