Eye Bello vs the State – Another pandora drama

One characteristic of the Nigerian ruining class is that, like the cult that they are, they eternally enjoy their own company. Their standards differ from those expected of politicians with vision and mission to bring change. Admittance is strictly by the recommendation of members of the inner sanctum. Those who stray in soon find that the rules are different and that these rules are not to be broken. Those who break the rules never go unpunished, but if they were loyal members, forgiveness and rehabilitation is always guaranteed. Occasionally, errant members are sacrificed to fool the unsuspecting public that these crooks are there for the public good.

Google would crash if it were to record the number of crooks rehabilitated and rebranded as ‘leaders’. A party led by an executhief caught on video stuffing money into every orifice of his garment is only taken seriously in Nigeria. In other lands, people resign their positions when their integrity is questioned. Here, they are promoted.

With very little exceptions, very few people with impeccable character have passed through the system with their garments of integrity intact. Whenever people are invited to join, the motto is not to seek to change the status quo, but to bring something new to preserving the status quo – usually to digitise the stealing and make it look good.

Oga at the top is no different. The chap is so good at his game that he even recruited his former persecutor-in-chief as his chief of staff. It’s like Bill Clinton hiring Keneth Starr as his personal assistant. It would probably not happen in America, but it’s a common and acceptable thing here. The entrance of the anti-corruption czar into a dodgy system is like spraying holy water on pork, it sanctifies it.

If you ask genuine Kogi citizens, an eternal chasm ought to have been created between their former governor and public office. But such dreams are not only a mirage, they would be sacrilegious. In spite of his appalling performance as the youngest governor with conduct demeaning public office, his party’s top brass came out for him. They pleaded; one even knelt for him to be forgiven and granted a mop-up mandate. They aided and abetted the charade that endorsed that second term.

Stupid YouTube, it still had the clip of his female supporters eulogising his capacity for malevolent force – tatatata. He would go ahead and confirm that when the state granted him a helicopter gunship that indiscriminately shot at voters in the Kogi State capital, Lokoja, to enforce a contrived win for him where he is most unpopular for owing workers their salaries.

The level of electoral brigandage openly deployed by this urchin remains a watershed in the history of violent electoral manipulation anywhere in Nigeria. It almost incapacitated his arch-rival Dino Melaye who is noted for his own level of chicanery. A suave but strong female politician, Natasha Akpoti, endured several assassination attempts; arson and worst of all, the excavation of public road leading to her community for daring to stare down this pesky mosquito that parades himself elsewhere as a white lion.

With all that slur on his political resume, it could have been shocking that he handpicked a successor using the same underhand tactics that kept him in office. His profligacy was well known in accounting circles from the alleged diverting of COVID funds to spending a year’s budget within minutes. What is most shocking to those still with functional nerves is that he handed over to his own cousin. Evidently, for all his gym videos, he is afraid of his own shadows.

With the records of misdemeanour attributed to this individual, it is only in Nigeria that he could have been walking free, enjoying the support of like-minded fans and gallivanting all over the place. It is funny how suddenly, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that ought to have been compiling his charge sheet had left him to his antics since he has been stripped of the much-touted immunity for so long. Such slips only happen in unserious societies like ours. It shows our country as a nation where impunity is given to those who ought to be behind bars.

So, this punk managed to absquatulate just when the EFCC declared him wanted with the full coverage of security agents in tow! Drama remains our nation’s best comic relief. As we speak, this imp is hiding in plain sight while the state adds to the drama by announcing the withdrawal of his security aides. His cousin-successor is aiding and abetting his escape with the full support of the same security apparatchik that ought to help us bring him to the EFCC. We were even told to applaud the consideration of the EFCC for not engaging its police counterpart in a shootout as it provided cover for a fugitive to escape the law. Bobrisky must be feeling scapegoated. He could have sought asylum with the American embassy where his acts are not only tolerated but protected by the law.

Nobody in their right mind should take Nigeria’s current anti-corruption or any previous anti-corruption fight seriously. Not with the re-entry of the Chagoury brothers into the business landscape. These guys were well-documented in the now-maligned Abacha regime. Yes, the same one that reportedly forced our president to seek to escape out through NADECO route. They are back in the corridors of Aso Rock and have just won the $11 billion Lagos-Calabar coastal highway that is primed to destroy the livelihoods of many Nigerians in its process.

If this U-turn is not the epic demonstration of the saying that there are no permanent foes in Nigeria’s type of politics but permanent interests, then the sun must be rising from the North. With a person like Abubakar Atiku Bagudu a very close Abacha associate that returned a huge chunk of the so-called ‘Abacha-loot’ rather than stand trial, the Chagoury’s must be in their safest business zone. This is because Saint Bagudu dusted off the charges against him to become, a senator, a governor and now Nigeria’s Minister of Budget and Economic Planning. Little wonder that the god of the economy is having a field day with Nigeria’s national currency – the Naira.

If there are still Nigerians out there, who believe that this house, built of folks of questionable characters would bring change and sanity needed to run down the nation, they must be smeared with the fleas of optimism.

Political drama is our national pastime. We remember with nostalgia how Dino Melaye made social media mileage out of the skits he created with his run with the EFCC. By the time Kogi’s white mosquito has completed his dramatic run with the EFCC, he too would have qualified to aspire to the highest office in the land. For there is no end to the career prospects of any Nigerian politician whose track record of sleaze has permeated the global dramatic landscape. There is one prayer for Yeye Bello’s enemies – may they live long to see what eventually becomes of him.