Every morning as you wake up you are confronted by a myriad of problems concerning your country. They are some very nauseating problems especially when considering the naked reality that every day too human lives are needlessly wasted somewhere. In the process, so many families are made to face some form of most agonizing and degrading life experiences:; their loved ones are daily and brutally killed somewhere, a lot more are made refugees in their home, more are rendered jobless following the ever shrinking economy. Yet, volumes and layers of corruption are revealed every day and, some of these stories of corruption are most ingenious and almost magical. People talk and report such sad stories that have since become everyday and everywhere thing. No ‘change’ has been able to change even the changeable.
The situation gets more painfully nauseating especially when considering gender and age involvement in the issues of corruption. Sometimes, the more you look, the more it seems like everybody’s game. A lot more people seem to point permanent accusing fingers at those who have jobs to do in exposing these unfortunate national maladies. Oftentimes you hear the public scream in exasperation: You guys in the media are taking sides, you no longer report all these crimes in the country! Yet, a lot have been reported. And it ends there, because media workers have neither the powers of arrest nor battalion of ‘soldiers of control’. Most Nigerians not touched or inflicted with the wind equally talk. But nothing seems to happen. Those with deeper pockets still control affairs where it matters.
But sometimes it feels very sad to continue to talk down on one’s country and leaders at any tier. The other day I read President Muhammadu Buhari’s speech with a lot of trepidation, sympathy and pity. It was a speech he gave recently during his meeting with the 19 states northern Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) leaders. As I read the speech I saw a man who desires to be believed. He was profuse in his presentation; he was asking rhetorically and repeatedly, ‘how and why he can turn back as a Fulani man to conspire with his fellow Fulani brothers who have come to acquire an ignoble reputation of ‘killer herdsmen’ to kill the same Nigerians who voted for him. Last week in this column I have asked the same question that the president is now asking. I was not expecting any answer though and I received none. But I have equally thought allowed that dismissing such a possibility either, could amount to being ignoramus.
Please do not misunderstand this drift. It is neither in support nor condemnation. As noted earlier, talking down on one’s country and leaders is a shame on everyone. It is like saying your father’s wives are bad and wicked, and your mother is inclusive. But hard as you may try to lie low about certain issues appearing to paint the nation with unwholesome tar and colours, some others could be so threatening that letting them go is a great disservice to both human and God – that is assuming that God is at all still interested in our affairs. The scripture can never be controverted; It is not in the ability of a man that walks to control his steps. So the bible says. That is what the famous author and playwright, Williams Shakespeare, put differently that there is no art of reading a man’s character on the face.
Kemi Adeosun is a female minister appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari. And she is in charge of one of the most critical ministries and nerve centre ministry in running a nation and her development. Ordinarily, one would think that being a woman and one appointed by Buhari himself – the change driver – Adeosun should be without blemish. But that is only a figment of our human imagination-Madam Kami is tagged with a legion of misdemeanours that are so difficult to disentangle. The alleged improprieties trailed her life from many years or even decades gone by. For our delectable madam finance minister is alleged to have cunningly skipped the mandatory one year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme, having studied abroad.
To escape the prescribed 12 months imprisonment or N2,000 fine, as contained in section 13 of the NYSC law Mrs Adeosun is alleged to have forged an exemption certificate many years after graduation, which she has been using to cover her little crimes over the years. There are many more crimes Mrs Adeosun is alleged to have committed with one lie leading to another: skipping the NYSC scheme is one, forging exemption certificate is another. And subsection 4 of the section 13 also holds ‘giving false information or illegally obtaining the certificate as criminal offences, with up to three years imprisonment for offenders. Assuming all allegations against the minister are true, Mrs Adeosun allegedly graduated from the Polytechnic of East London in 1989 at the age of 22 and had her exemption certificate on account of age forged for her in September 2009.
The Polytechnic, according to Premium Times report, changed its name to University of East London in 1992. Intriguingly, Mrs Adeosun’s certificate supposedly issued many years before the name change still bears the new name. Something is awfully confusing here. Is this another case of “Toronto” or our Oluwale expose’? Perhaps Mrs. Adeosun would not have been so very guilty of her crimes but not for the fact that many other prominent Nigerians and institutions conspired to help her.
Let’s begin from the position of the law. It is like saying that God knew that man would eat from the forbidden fruit in the centre of the Garden and so placed a simple and inevitable penalty of death. If those who crafted the NYSC law expected the scheme to be taken seriously, why were the punishments so minimal? Only 12 months imprisonment and a paltry N2,000 fine. This is ridiculously laughable and could be a story for another day
The above is not so much the problem though, what is the problem is the fact that other Nigerians including the National Assembly that screened Mrs Adeosun for the ministerial appointment allegedly knew of those discrepancies concerning her but chose mum as a norm to serve their pockets- making her an ATM Machine. It would be recalled that Mrs. Adeosun’s appointment was not without bitter public throw-backs. But as customary with Mr President, he stood his ground and insisted it is either Adeosun or no other. And madam minister is today alleged to have spent a fortune running into over N10 billions just to keep her crime covered. Incidentally, no secret remains secret forever. And it is true that every human being has something to hide, but sometimes what we claim to be our secret packaged and hidden away could be fastened in another man’s memory somewhere.
Adeosun may have had the faulty conviction that what money can not hide, more money can hide away forever. But she was wrong and, would soon realize that honesty is a pill whose potency is most often discovered too late. The question to now ask is, so what will happen to Mrs Adeosun and her accomplices now that their secrets are no longer secrets? It is now obvious that in Nigeria laws are made for the commoners – the rich and the powerful straddle and trample them with impunity. As noted earlier, it can be most painful desecrating or vilifying one’s nation to the outside world, except for the fact that trying to hide what is known as open secret can be more shameful and helpless. Most countries of the world have unveiled Nigeria and Nigerians as belonging among countries and people that eat their farm produce in their embryo and so do not need reserves for growth. They believe that if tomorrow comes it will take care of itself.
That’s how the nation has been driven: In the drive to acquire or amass wealth it is made to appear like the outing of a mother hen with its chickens, whichever breaks its leg is left to suffer its fate. That is what corruption has done to us. But those in authority must learn to come to terms with this naked reality, that many facets of the Nigerian society have gone wrong and that the country now requires immediate redirection – a conscious effort for that matter or we forget about having a country anymore.
