Gbaja gets a reprieve

A few weeks before his assassination on February 13, 1976, one Obarogie Ohanbamu, who was a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Lagos and who also doubled at that time as Editor-in-Chief and publisher of African Spark, a monthly news magazine, published a damning story against the Head of State, General Murtala Mohammed.

A damaging rumour about the integrity of the Head of State was then in circulation. The publication and the rumour said Murtala possessed a row of houses in Kano which he could not have legitimately owned. Ohanbamu’s magazine also editorialized this information, asking how the Commander-in-Chief, as a public servant, could have mobilized such huge capital for the acquisition.

Upon the publication, Ohanbamu was promptly arrested and detained incommunicado. However, a few days after Murtala was assassinated by Buka Suka Dimka, the Attorney-General of the Federation produced Ohanbamu in an open Lagos court. He was accused of slandering the late Head of State. Curiously, the AGF asked the court to caution and discharge the accused, submitting that Ohanbamu had since acknowledged his accusation as an error.

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The error, said the Attorney-General, was that Ohanbamu did not know Murtala had declared his assets to him (the AG) on his accession to office. Subsequently, said the AGF, Murtala also deposed in an affidavit that he had given back all the said Kano properties to the state. However, questions trailed the AG’s submission. No one corroborated his claim, nor did anybody claim to have seen the document with which this deed of transfer was consummated. Even if they did, the fact of the properties’ initial acquisition by Murtala had not been trumped, thus validating Ohanbamu’s original claim. If you look at this story with a thorough eye, substitute Adeniyi for Ohanbamu and Murtala for the Villa and you might not be far from being correct.

That story looks so much like the Gbajabiamila/Adeniyi scandal.

With the huge achievement of the Bola Tinubu government in getting the Oriire victims freed, will the scandal of the disowned Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council cum Presidential Economic Advisory Council now go away?

If you ask me, the greatest beneficiary of the exhilarating news of the release of the abducted pupils and teachers of Oriire in Oyo State is the president’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila. Or, and the Nigerian presidency. In my piece of last week, I wagered a guess that the presidency would soon reach for its scabbard and bring out a dagger to perforate and deconstruct the embarrassing scandal. An alleged impostor penetrating the walls of the Nigerian presidency, revealing the rump of corruption on the presidency’s back, is an issue to ponder on. Aso Rock Villa promptly looked westward. The abducted pupils and teachers of Oriire council of Oyo State might be the answer. In communication studies strategy, it is taught that when a problematic issue like the Gbajabiamila crisis rears its ugly head, strategists should canvass doing one of three things. Or even all three.

The reeking fart can be dissolved, deconstructed, or re-contextualized.