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Last week was a very tiring one for many citizens. This opening statement sounds ridiculous. The question that should naturally arise for anyone who has lived in this country for 25 years since the inception, or rather, the return of civilian rule in 1999, is how many weeks in the last two decades have we been spared the debilitating and exhausting drama of the absurd? How many times? And the absurd was carefully engineered and orchestrated by a section of the ruling elite to keep Nigerians chewing their thumb nails in disgust and disbelief. But the joke was always on us even if we didn’t understand it. It seems our mumu (a local term for collective stupidity) is factory-made, or as we say in this climate, just go with it.
If we are honest, this has not always been the case. Citizen activism against repressive governments from colonial times to successive military dictatorships has been a fact of our national life. Student protests in the 1960s helped to derail the vexed Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact in the early days of independent Nigeria. There were the bloody riots of May 1989 that moderated Ibrahim Babangida’s plan to adopt the full force of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) prescription for economic recovery. We have lost our mojo as a nation and the younger elements whose futures are more at stake seem to have no interest in looking where the ball has dropped.
Decades ago, the now-deceased flamboyant journalist Dele Giwa wrote two articles published around the same time. In one of them, he headlined: ‘Adewusi’s men can’t shoot accurately’. Sunday Adewusi, who is also deceased, was the inspector-general of the Nigerian Police Force. Nearly 40 years after that provocative headline, police officers under Adewusi’s successors still cannot shoot accurately unless they are targeting innocent and unarmed protesters. Two recent examples will illustrate the state of the police – the deadly crackdown on the #EndBadGovernance nationwide protests on August 1-10, and the demonstrations staged at the Kogi state government house in Abuja last week. In the August protests, police killed scores of Nigerians in cold blood while the survivors are currently in captivity and facing charges ranging from terrorism, treason, treasonous crimes, subversion and attempting to overthrow the federal government. The charges may sound spurious, and they are, but they are in keeping with the repressive ways of regimes around the world. However, last week, the police/security department of Kogi State Governor Musa Ododo and his predecessor Yahaya Adoza Bello, the White Lions, and the police of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), both federal police, exchanged gunfire in a shootout, shattering the peaceful Asokoro-Abuja night for quite some time.
When the dust settled the following morning, Thursday, there were no deaths; no reports of injuries; and, no arrests. Never mind that there may have been some residents in the neighborhood with heart disease and/or other underlying health conditions whose conditions could have been aggravated by the night’s madness by government security agents. In any sane place, one would expect that there might sometimes be collateral damage in the course of official duties by security agencies. But that was not the case in this Abuja ‘shootout’. The EFCC and the Ododo/Bello police were simply amusing themselves at the expense of Nigerians.
English: Sorom chia (Igbo for comic show) by the EFCC and their ‘prey’ Bello, will be a box office hit any day, and a classic in years to come. Creative Nollywood must have noticed. What is the origin? Bello was the governor of Kogi state for eight years until last January. Allegations of corruption swirled around him even as governor. He had absolute immunity, so nothing could be done to him. We conveniently forget that there is an existing court ruling that a sitting governor can be investigated but not prosecuted while in office, thanks to the efforts and persistence of the late Gain Fawehinmi, a renowned and impeccable anti-corruption crusader. Well, Bello installed his kinsman Ododo as governor. Then the EFCC slapped a N80 billion money laundering/misappropriation charge on Bello. The former melted but tied up the case in court through proxies. He did not appear in court even once. At one point he even insisted that only the courts in Kogi state and the judges he appointed while he was governor had jurisdiction over his case. He took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. And he lost all of his cases.
But he would not respond to the EFCC’s summons for interview or appear in court for arraignment and to prove his innocence. In what has now been exposed as a manufactured frustration, the anti-corruption agency declared Bello wanted and caused his name to be published on the International Police Organization’s (Interpol) Red List of global fugitives. Interpol may have taken the notice seriously. But not Nigerians. And now with last week’s incident even the EFCC is not taking their wanted notice on Bello seriously. Nigerians and the EFCC know that Bello is in the country and enjoys immunity in other ways. In April, the EFCC had surrounded Bello’s residence in Abuja but failed to arrest him, just as it failed again last week. But this time around it was different. It could have been considered funny but for the national implications.
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So what was different this time? Bello, a fugitive, according to the EFCC visited the anti-graft agency’s office with Governor Ododo in broad daylight. They roamed around in the open. They exchanged pleasantries with EFCC operatives and staff. They even allegedly sent a message to the EFCC chairman announcing their presence and the former governor’s desire for questioning. The chief of staff of the helmsman allegedly told the VIP guests that the chairman was busy and had no time for them. The guests were allegedly told that the EFCC would contact them to arrange a meeting at a convenient date and time. After about four hours of roaming around what was supposed to be a security zone, Governor Ododo, former Governor Bello and their team triumphantly left the EFCC compound.
One report even claimed that EFCC staff and agents who met Bello were loud in their praise. Bello the fugitive, Bello the criminal, Bello the alleged plunderer who would become Bello the law, Bello the warrior, Bello the saint, Bello the savior and Bello the persecuted. No doubt the depths to which the country has plunged may still be hard to fathom, but some of the stories of some of the things that have happened here still leave one in disbelief. A fugitive you have sought global assistance to capture walks into your den noisily exchanging pleasantries with your agents, asking for a meeting and you let him go free can only be told in the moonlight. The bigger tragedy is that the man who heads the agency is still sitting pretty in office as we wrote this last weekend. And he has not been sacked by his appointee, Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. But seriously, that the EFCC chairman, Ola Olukoyede, has not been unilaterally suspended in preparation for his removal following this global disgrace should not come as a surprise. This is the case of akwu rere ere nime ikwo puru epu or rot on top of rot equals rot.
By the way, the report we gave above about Bello’s visit to the EFCC office came from the ‘fugitive’ media team. So the natural question is why not balance their claim with the EFCC’s position? Unfortunately, there is nothing to balance or dispute. The EFCC did not deny the story that Bello was in their premises on Wednesday, September 18. The EFCC did not deny that Bello’s company had contact with the EFCC chairman’s office while they were there. The EFCC did not deny that Bello met with some of their staff either at the agency’s car park or elsewhere in the compound. The agency did not deny anything that Bello’s ‘fugitive’ media team was spreading. All that the EFCC said in their shameless and pathetic counter press statement can be summed up in six words – Bello is not in our custody. Read it again. Do not try to digest it because it will cause indigestion.
Hours later that same day, but this time under cover of darkness, the same EFCC allegedly made contact with Bello’s men, established the location of the ‘fugitive’, and then sent a team of police ‘snipers’ to arrest him. Of course, the EFCC failed again. All they managed to do on that fateful Wednesday night was to embarrass themselves, disrupt the peace of Abuja’s upscale neighborhoods, scare residents and passersby, and then run away with their tails behind them.
Memes have gone viral on social media about the magical powers of Bello, the (famous) White Lion, and the immortality of men or his men. A marabou who can perform a feat that rivals the biblical story of Daniel in the lion’s den deserves more than a passing attention. Indeed, some Nigerians have suggested that rather than wasting taxpayers’ money on training EFCC operatives locally and abroad with little or no visible results, it would be more beneficial if the EFCC befriended Bello, pardoned him for his alleged offences, and encouraged him to introduce the agency to men or his men. Empowered with such magical powers, the EFCC would easily arrest corrupt individuals, take them to court, and cast a spell on the judges to quickly render guilty verdicts, and impose long prison sentences. This would also work for plea bargaining. The harvest would be bountiful with corrupt individuals forced to cough up all they stole from the country. Nigeria happens to everyone. It’s a matter of time.
AUTHOR: UGO ONUOHA
Articles published on our Graffiti section are solely the opinions of the authors and do not represent the views of Ripples Nigeria or its editorial stance.
OPINION post: The invincible Bello, his wise men and the pathetic EFCC first appeared on Latest Nigeria News | Headlines from Ripples Nigeria.
