Ag. Immigration CG: Stunt man or real deal?

It had all the trappings of the big screen daredevilry. A boss, seeking sainthood, goes hooded to nab daytime robber-subordinates, while filthy fingers are right inside the cookie jar. Last Monday, when the Acting Comptroller General of Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) Idris Isah Jere, disguised as a passport applicant to literally raid Ikoyi passport office in Lagos and celebrated his net-breaking catch of sleazy officers in their usual crimes of hyper-inflating costs, touting, bending rules for lucre and engaging in procedural perfidy for gain, compromising national security in the process, Nigerians, were understandably not excited. Beyond the breaking news, which the new top-man even gave away as pre-arranged, in the course of excitably yapping too much, the rest of the Nigerian media, which naturally sucks to his kind of drama, just shrugged. Well, there was some traction from the stable he personally called to holler he had caught his own, stealing meat from Nigerians’ common soup pot, but his homework to shock a nation that has resigned to fate on public officers’ loyalty to fidelity they vowed as duty-post sacrament, obviously failed him.

Next time, he may want to try the play book of Officer Abba Kyari before the Hushpuppi trap. That was one crime-buster who would have television crew ready for a life-and-death raid on a forest with a thousand deamons. Call him ogboju ode (brave hunter) and you won’t be wrong, at least, before he was hunted down by America. With his tummy content now in full public glare, those fantastic crime-busting televised outings have become debatable. While it is uncharitable to think them film-trick, they now, with the benefit of what we now know, look too fit-for-the-camera. But Kyari was, undoubtedly chasing clout as Twitter street would say and he almost got away.

A colleague was completely off-handed with the Ag. CG’s sting operation. The man is simply chasing confirmation for the top job, my colleague reasoned, possibly like countless Nigerians, who had seen better “performance” from state actors, who became worse than the enemies of the nation they claimed they were chasing, after the ring was tightly fixed on their proverbial priest’s wrist. Ati ki oje bo oloosa lowo, o ku baba eni ti yio bo, is Yoruba way of sealing seeming irreversible action, especially of ascension to power and influence.

If America had not busted Kyari, by now his name would have become a recurring projection for future Inspector Generalship. The Nigerian public is that gullible, but once your secret is out, you become worthless in estimation.

Kyari’s friendship with Ramoni, Cubana and co., stirs sordid memory of DSP George Iyamu’s bromance with Anini and Osunbor. History can be repetitive.

But Yoruba have a way of not completely seeing bad in bad. Oduduwa clan will admonish with “ire wa ninu ibi, ibi wa ninu ire (No situation is absolute). There is another, about bad not completely bad; eni se ohun to dun ni leni, o le se ohun to dun mo eni lola (the one who hurts you today, may make you merry tomorrow). Yes, Kyari farted and defecated on the symbolic chair he held in trust for the Nigerian public, but even him, Nigeria should not abandon. Even God says He doesn’t want the death of sinner, but repentance. He must face justice, but it must be universal justice, not according to Washington’s whim.

Until a month back, Idris was Deputy CG (Finance and Account), a complete establishment person. The valid question would be, when did he become progressive and reformer, in thoughts and deeds, knowing he has always been part of the dem dem (royals of the system)? Apart from sniggering Nigerians, some of his colleagues may even be finding it amusing that he was forming saint, or using subordinates who had been faithful in the payment of their tithes, offerings, commission, isakole, fuel money and oga dey do naming contributions, to catch cruisenow that benevolent spirits are helping him to crack his nuts. They would be right in their mockery, disavowal, and class-action against perceived eye-service to the Nigerian public. Outsiders writing him off, will also be right. You can’t stay inside, shelling the structure with heavy mortal by joining others to circumvent every decency and now forming messiah, because you have been called, to come and chop.

Who doesn’t know Immigration Service? From their offices, to airports, sea ports, borders, to everywhere they show their sleaze-ridden, difficult-to-place-in-colour uniform, practically none, from head to toe has a molecule of credibility. As I write this, my money is still with them; the extra they got from me, processing passports for my family. Someday, somehow, they will cough it.

I personally believe the acting man deliberately staged his sting operation to protect his own. He knows with as much as a fez cap tassel, draping his eyes, he could catch tons of them, touting in uniform and scavenging for customers. They are that dirty. He should have hit them big time, with media flashbulbs, pre-arranged, the Abba style; naming and shaming them, real time. If they can desecrate the uniform without shame as they do, when slaying Nigerians, because of passport, with little global worth, they should be exposed to the watching world. Practically  all the officers in the system today, aren›t deserving of Nigeria and their uniforms and we surely don›t deserve them.

Because the Service, in which Mr. Jere has been a major participant, is a stink-pot, it is easy to dismiss his reform acts and promises as IGG (initial gra, gra) to grab headlines, get confirmed, and continue with the usual business of official sleaze and fleecing of Nigerians. But since he set a two-week target for himself to separate the wolves in Service, from the sheep in public arena, through the launch of appointment platform, like digital booking, expected to eradicate the iru wa, ogiri wa–the current practice of all-comers, which depicts the desperation his men explore, he should be given a chance to tinker with the system he helped cripple.

He should know his men are now like lepers who can›t extract milk, but can upturn it. I won›t preempt the new man and how he would handle ogas at the top, with whom he was pepper-souping, before his elevation. But how he goes about resetting brains and his weapon of choice, in the days ahead, would determine whether he would come out of the black pot of the Service, shimmering, or retain the pot›s colour to wild ululation of cynics, who are certain nothing good can come out of Immigration›s Nazareth.