After the reggae, play the blues

AREN’T street beggars in Nigeria, about switching over to POS, for alms through ATM cards? You consider this monstrously preposterous? Then, consider the Lagos NURTW murder drama, playing out before our very eyes. So, this guy who reeked everything owo ita (living by the street) despite his “forming”–let’s call him tush agbero–walked into the office the day after Ade lawyer, the self-confessed serial assassin and a former NURTW boss, Akanni Olorunwa, jointly shared lavish media mention as co-merchants of death. Better still, the garage-called lawyer, had implicated Olorunwa, as the baba-eto (coordinator) of a hit-list that has seen the union always crimson for years, once it’s election time. This time, the stake is higher. NURTW has reportedly zoned the presidency which the North has clung to for decades, to the South, and Olorunwa is reportedly a front-runner alongside incumbent Lagos chair, Tajudeen Agbede, who is allegedly the anointed. This wannabe Olorunwa image-maker, shashayed around plenty conspiracy theories regarding the union’s politics, then delivered a bombshell; Olorunwa would soon be back home as a free man and Ade lawyer who implicated him, would recant.

A week after the media razzmatazz and police exhibitionism, the NURTW Jugune is heroically back in Lagos as a free man and to this fellow’s eternal predictive credit, Ade Lawyer claimed he met Christ in detention and confessed to implicating Olorunwa to settle emotional hurt. Since this fellow already got two out of two, maybe I share the rest of his predictions and stories about NURTW and 2019.

He confessed to a deal between Olorunwa and Ade Lawyer and it wasn’t legal. According to him, a South-West state governor hired the former NURTW boss for a senatorial election job–whatever that means. Olorunwa decided to sub the contract to Ade and his boys. The story teller said something about ballot-protection and well, maybe, snatching, if things weren’t going the governor’s party way. Things went the opponents’ way and governor refused to pay contract balance, since the hirelings couldn’t stop the drubbing. Olorunwa couldn’t pay Ade’s balance. Ade isn’t the one to be owed. He went for his oga’s car and threw murder complications into the bargain.

The question here is, does this governor have anything to do with this Part 2 of a murder probe that is performing poorly than Dejo Tunfulu’s badly-shot, no-story, low-budget comedy? Did the governor move in to ensure that his sub-theme in the movie isn’t aired in court, which could be, if Olorunwa had been charged? Why the hurry in letting Olorunwa off the hook, merely on the strength of a so-called recant by a serial killer and without doubt, a serial-liar?

It won’t be right to incarcerate an innocent fellow. The question is, on whose testimony is such freedom founded? I bet there are Awaiting Trial inmates who had more credible innocence testifiers and still being held for alleged crimes not anywhere near serial murder.

What if Ade woke up tomorrow and changed his story, would police be seeking Olorunwa again? What if he decided to go on medical tourism now and do the Adoke style of acquiring Cambridge diploma certificate in garage management before returning next year to seek the union presidency?

Ok, one can say that at least Ade, the trigger-puller is still corked. That he met Christ, the Unchangeable Changer, in detention, should be the sweetest conclusion to a story like this that keeps and leaves you between raucous laughter and cheeky sorrow for the mess the entire system has become. I truly pray he is a changed man, even if he’s going to prison or gallows. At least, he is spared hell. Did someone just shout impossible, with all he confessed to? That is the mystery of God’s mercy.

But Ade isn’t also likely to remain too long “inside” and I’m taking the Olorunwa’s stunt-man words for it. He predicted that once the crime-shaker is out of our collective consciousness, he would also be far away from our sight before we know it. And in a nation of every minute comical skits, including making the very serious look jejune, the scenario he painted isn’t only plausible but looks imminent. Once someone disappears from the front page in Nigeria, he/she is out of public scrutiny and the Nigerian media; God have mercy. Ade confessed to murdering about 100 Nigerians. It is likely less than 20 are documented because the rest were considered nobodies.

The coming 2019 elections, both in February for Nigeria’s presidency and November for NURTW, possibly triggered the massive media interest in the killing of the PA to Kunle Poly, the Lagos Island motor-garage strongman who is the suspected anointed of Agbede as state successor  if the incumbent eventually made it to Abuja. Since all of the actors in the murdermania have political backing in the polity, is it much wonder both high and low-profile consistent killings in the last few years, always end in the lower rung of the nation’s unending list of unresolved assassination cases?

Police arrest Pastor for armed robbery in Ogun

Why won’t the NURTW fat-cats enjoy such immunity everywhere, including the Northern side, where I learnt, the garage-business is greener, since they have transformed into the most potent election-rigging machine for politicians whose manual for electoral victory is mainly founded on vote-buying, system-compromise, thuggery, killings and ballot snatching. Is anyone better qualified as an instrument for all these negatives than the motor-boys?

Ade Lawyer, Kunle Poly, Olorunwa, Agbede, MC Oluomo and other garage roughnecks are mere meme of a swamp of a nation, with broken politics and fractured justice system. Unfortunately, there appears no end in sight. Politics in Nigeria, whether National or Road, answers to the instruments of terror and oppression, and will always be dominated by our worst eleven. Third, Fourth or Fifth force holds no salvation, because the springing Movements are just ordinary moving around by same rotten hands. The national psyche isn’t also right for the so-called peoples’ revolution. The work to walk the nation out of sac is both celestial and human but those claiming to be handling it for us now, may be doing things but it doesn’t mean they are getting things done.