Buhari and Atiku Lest we forget

As kids growing up in Warri, we dreaded a certain ant called Okurubas, a sly and nimble irritant. Its sting not only tumefied the skin but threw anyone, no matter how big, off balance in an instant. The victim could go down as though a softie of a wrestling match. We called the sting “site,” a pidgin verb to reflect the onomatopoeic effect of the assault.

Atiku Abubakar suffered the Okurubas effect last week. It came in the way of a story published by world renowned news agency Reuters. It published a story that illumined his recent United States trip, and affirmed that Atiku paid lobbyists to get a “temporary reprieve” to visit the country.

Atiku travelled with a retinue of glamour acolytes like Bukola ‘Eleyinmi’ Saraki and Senator Ben Murray Bruce of the common sense policy now turned awry. The report said Atiku paid a lobby firm, Holland and Knight, $80,000 and had paid another such firm $90,000 a month. The idea was to waive any infractions he might have committed against the law, and allow him a short stay, a whirlwind visit.

With a gleeful picture of a young lady handing him a bouquet, his publicists presented Atiku as a colourful triumph over his critics who pelted him with accusations of corrupt dealings. They said he had avoided the United States like a malignant disease because he awaited prosecution. He even lodged in President Trump’s hotel in Washington D.C. as though to emphasize a subtle meeting of the minds with a U.S. president known not to know the difference between public property and private gain. Being the president’s customer came across as a sort of sop.

Atiku intended to cancel two big lies with one small one. When he launched his whirlwind trip to the United States, we did not know it was a lie until Reuters told us. But the travel was the small lie, but it was the sort of small lie with large consequences, like an Okurubas sting.

He joined hands with one of the conduits of American corruption, the lobbyists. Lobbying is an important American feature, and it can be used for good and evil. Many a scandal in U.S. history have had their roots in it, including an ongoing one with President Trump involving a meeting with conniving Russians in Trump Tower in New York. Lobbyists are not necessarily actuated by noble impulses. “I know what my client wants,” confessed an anonymous lobbyist. “No one knows the common good.”

The word is believed to have originated from or popularised by President Grant’s lips to characterise men who visited him at the lobby of the famous Willard Hotel in Washington, and lobbyists can advocate anything from smoking rights to gun rights to gay rights. But they are for hire. “The lobby is the army of the plutocracy,” said American sociologist William Graham Sumner on the value of the rich in American political engineering. Poor people cannot lobby in the US, unless backed by some moneyed interest.

The two big lies are Siemens bribery scandal where he was named and led to 13-year jail term for an alleged fellow accomplice Congressman Jefferson who hid his loot in his Louisiana refrigerator. Even Siemens pleaded guilty and paid $1.6 million. The other involved his fourth wife Jennifer Douglas in an alleged $40 million money laundering. The Reuters story shows if he wants to visit again, he has to knock on a lobbyist’s door with plenty of dollars in his hands. Secondly, we know that the charges against him still stand and he cannot just hop on a flight to Washington without consequences.

This story puts in context Atiku’s assertion that he will give amnesty to corrupt people, an official surrender to corruption as policy and it would also disentangle him from his sundry iniquities. One of such was his exploiting his position as vice president to enrich his company Intels by making it fatten on oil and gas shipments. His deputy, Peter Obi, saw nothing wrong with investing billions of Anambra State money in his family business and banks in which he had interest. He said he benefited Anambra and his fellow PDP men eulogised him with claptrap and claps. But he did not say how much he and his family stowed away in the sweetheart deals.

It only shows that the Atiku candidacy is corruption fighting back. Yet we cannot say the Buhari era has a holy writ. I have noted its contradiction, and even hypocrisies, including the $25 billion NNPC saga and the Ganduje show. Ganduje has immunity but a scathing condemnation and effort of the party not to give another ticket would have helped. Also chief of army staff did not convince anyone when he tried to justify his Dubai property against the background of his lifetime earnings.

Yet Buhari can be accused of not systemising the corruption war. But what he has done is a beginning. He has convicted two ex-governors, terrified many who steal, and saved a lot of money. It is not a thing to condemn but to build upon.

Politics is like a mud fight. There are no pretty people in the ring. We strive but we don’t get swamped in idealism. Hence Theodore Roosevelt wrote his famous lines on the Man In the Arena: “it is not the critic who counts…The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…”

Buhari’s great sin is his lack of sensitivity in social sector of governance. Skewed appointments, although his main critics were silent, sometimes raucous beneficiaries of the same thing in the Jonathan era. If he wins, and it seems likely, Buhari must turn the corner to social justice, and that is perhaps one of the reasons why some believe without reflection that he has not performed.

Here is a list of some of what he has done. Some major infrastructure work, including major roads in the Southeast and Niger Delta, some with Sukuk money. Lagos-Ibadan expressway in good speed with little allocation from Saraki’s men. Ibaka seaport with procurements completed to ease Lagos. Arrested the Jonathan-era Naira freefall. Lagos-Ibadan railway and Itakpe-Warri railway ready. Second Niger Bridge with 12-storey building of work underwater. Series of N projects, including agriculture, with loans made available in what may be the beginning of a genuine welfare programme. School feeding for over 9 million children. Pension payment for Biafra, railway, Nigeria Airways retirees. Adoption of made-in-Aba localised fabric for police and army, including locally made vehicles for government use. Mambilla Plateau hydro-power project for 3,050 megawatts after 40 years of abandonment and it will trigger a city and a new economy on its own, including a tea plantation boom. Power rose from about 3000 megawatts to 7000, with some problems with distribution, including gas and transmission woes. It’s work in the making. And more.

Buhari worked with plummetted oil price and earned the lowest revenue of any regime. Jonathan earned the highest with over $380 billion while Buhari earned about $93 billion. Reports say two weeks to election, Jonathan pulled over $290 million from the coffers. You can see why the economy could not sing. One of the great problems of the Buhari administration is messaging, both in tackling its crisis and in celebrating its triumphs.

We have quite a few candidates, but only two have a chance to win. The idealists may pooh-pooh both, but election is about realism, and you choose what you can use. Realism is not foolishness. Buhari may not be a great candidate, it is the better option today. I would rather make the best of what is available if I cannot make the best available.

Good Samaritan

Some might say he was playing politics. But those who now live because he showed love are not complaining. Death knows no politics. Its hands are cold. The warmth of Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi banished the icy hands from the two citizens, an okada rider and female passenger knocked down by vehicle. Onlookers were wary.

Ajimobi

The governor could have driven by, or cynically and mechanically ordered a staff to attend to them. But he was a genuine Good Samaritan who personally took them to the University College, Ibadan and ensured the best care available. Those who know Ajimobi’s biography will not be surprised as a man who grew up in a communal family compound of about 25 rooms in Oja-Oba, Ibadan, where cousins were as close brothers and sisters.  They received people with warmth from east and west and lived in empathy with their neighbours. That is the root of that day of Ajimobi’s hospitality. The governor’s heart of flesh made the difference between life and death of fellow citizens.

If it was not charity, whatever it was enhanced Oyo State and the human family. The residents hailed him and the world is better for it.