Ali Baba and a midnight honour

The celebrated British author, Jeffrey Archer, on July 4, 1993, published a bestseller titled Honour Among Thieves. The novel takes its roots from a phrasal pithy saying. The phrase, honour among thieves’, on the surface, underscores the fact that among dishonest and dishonourable people, there are sets of rules and principles which are considered sacrosanct, and all must respect.

A deeper analysis of the phrase takes us to the level where we understand that members of the underworld or those involved in one despicable act or the other always find a means to project one another in positive ways. This tendency is not limited to individuals or groups. Nations and international bodies on the various politico-economic divides of the world do such too. It is called group solidarity or fraternity in simple language.

Members of such groups or gangs usually find a convenient time to pay back an old favour to any member considered to have contributed to the entrenchment of the groups or gangs’ values. They do this through unmerited favours, national honours or unfettered access to the corridors of power. They are always together because of the values and vices alike they share together. There is a way our cradle minds described such a relationship.

Ornithological specimens of identical plumage invariably conglomerate to the nearest proximity! Pardon the pedantic pomposity of the lexicons. They are not mine, I swear. 

I first stumbled on the pseudo-scientific clause in one of our then secondary school English Language textbooks: “Essentials of English Language” by Olu Oladunjoye (I hope that is the correct author).

In the textbook, the author warns that expressions should be made simple. He says further that most students fail the English Language examination because they think that sounding bombastic impresses the examiners. Foul! What the author failed to realise then was that while those highfalutin jargons might not have impressed the examiners, our female counterparts rated and loved us based on how bombastic we were. Life and its numerous contrasts! Phew!

In my place, when a man speaks grandiloquently in the home of his in-laws, he is compelled to interpret the magniloquence. The simple meaning of the above tumid is birds of a feather flock together. The expression suggests that people with similar values, thisness or characteristics have the tendency to associate with and support one another. In any matter involving them, the sense of identification and solidarity is usually high.

This level of support and solidarity is found mostly among gangsters, the esoteric and men of the underworld, who do everything to watch one another’s back. In the Yoruba worldview of the initiates, members of the group, known as Awo, are more inclined to help people from the same group.

The awos do that so that the Ogberis (non-initiates) will not understand the secrets of the group or expose bona fide members to ridicule. The saying: Awo ní ún gbón awo ní ìgbónwó; tí awo ò bá gbón awo ní ìgbónwó, awo á té, awo á ya (The initiate supports another initiate otherwise, the intimate will be disgraced and the secret open), establishes that group solidarity more than any other aphorism.

Many underdeveloped countries of the world have been found to have done such in the past. For instance, two years ago (2024), the South Asian country of Sri Lanka was reported to have appointed a member of the notoriously criminal Ava Group as a ‘local mobilizer’ for the country’s major political party, the United National Party. By the appointment, the gang was granted unprecedented legitimacy for its criminal activities. This was just as members of the gang won major contracts awarded by the government.

In Indonesia during the New Order era of President Suharto (1966-1998), the concept of the preman (gangster or strongman) was a permanent feature of that era. Then, the line between crime and politics was completely obliterated and criminal gang members were beatified as “protectors of order” and were publicly recognised.

South Africa and Bangladesh have also had their shares of the perfidy through the South African car “spinning” concept; a euphemism for honour done to deceased gang members, and the Bangladesh military providing open cover for men of the underworld as they operate with crass impunity to the chagrin of decent members of the public.  

The Yoruba people have a philosophical expression for that kind of behaviour. They say:  Give me, I give you is what toad says at the riverbank (Bù fún mi, kíi unbùn fún e l’òpòló ún ké lódò). Could that ancient philosophy have informed the decision of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to confer on his Lebanese friend and business partner, Gilbert Chagoury, the second highest honour of Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON)?

President Tinubu, had, in a letter addressed to Chagoury, stated: “In exercise of the powers vested in me under section 1(4) of the National Honours Act, 1, BOLA AHMED TINUBU, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, in recognition of your outstanding virtues and in appreciation of your services to our country, Nigeria, HEREBY award to you to have, and enjoy title, dignity and all the privileges of Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) GIVEN at Abuja under my Hand and the Public Seal of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,”

A lot of questions have been raised about the GCON conferred on the Lebanese. The first of such posers is the secrecy of the conferment. Not a few people have wondered why Tinubu chose the cover of the night to honour his friend and business partner with the nation’s second highest National Honour.

Nigerians have watched either live or on their television sets, the fanfare involved when past honourees were awarded honours. Why the president elected to route this honour through the dark alley, reminiscent of the modus operandi of the nether regions, beats everyone’s imagination.

But more intriguing is the claims by Tinubu that Chagoury deserved the honour because of his “outstanding virtues and….services to our country, Nigeria.” The questions Nigerians are asking are: which values? Which services? When the idea of the honour was conceived, did the President take time to ask if the honouree’s character and personality meet the basic requirement of the National Honours Act No. 5 of 1964, which envisages that the honours will be conferred on Nigerians and other nationals who have rendered service “to the benefit of the nation.” What is the standing of Chagoury in the eyes of the average Nigerians? How beneficial has Chagoury been to Nigeria and its people?

Gilbert Chagoury, in the reckoning of many Nigerians, will be remembered as one man who collaborated with the expired Nigerian military Head of State and dictator, General Sani Abacha. The Lebanese, Nigerians will easily recall, ganged up with Abacha to steal Nigeria dry such that 28 years after the Kano-born soldier died, nations of the world are still repatriating money he stole from our patrimony.

Incidentally, and sadly enough, Chagoury remains one of the conduit pipes through which the late Abacha syphoned from the public till. The empirical evidence of how the Lebanese business partner of Tinubu ripped off this country are too palpable for him not to feel while considering the idea of a GCON honour on him.

Shortly after Abacha died on June 8, 1998, Chagoury returned an estimated $300m to the Nigerian Government. He turned in the huge amount of money to secure a soft-landing from prosecution for the crime of money laundering. Guess that is part of the ‘deserving’ “services” Chagoury rendered to Nigeria in Tinubu’s imagination!

The same Tinubu’s 2026 GCON honouree was, in 2000, prosecuted and convicted by the Swiss authorities in connection with laundering funds tied to Abacha’s regime. After his conviction, the Lebanese entered a plea bargain and agreed to forfeit the sum of $66 million to the Nigerian Government as part of a settlement! Do we ask President Tinubu if that is part of the “values” that qualified Chagoury for the GCON honour?

Again, in 2010, the United States Government Department of Homeland Security, arrested and detained Chagoury at the Teterboro Airport for over four hours, on the account that his name featured on the Department’s “no-fly list”, and later apologised to him. Eight years later, in 2018, the businessman and two other associates had to “resolve” a federal investigation into an alleged conspiracy to violate U.S. federal election laws.

How could President Tinubu, his handlers and members of the National Honours Awards Committee have missed the above negative activities of Chagoury to have honoured him with the national Honour of GCON. The painful aspect of the honour is that by the stroke of his pen, President Tinubu has added the name of Chagoury to those of respectable individuals like Queen Elizabeth II, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. Nothing can be more insulting to the memories of those noble people!

Tinubu is an old Yoruba man. The tradition of the race forbids a younger individual to speak in parables when an elder is involved. Otherwise, I would have loved to ask the President if the saying of his age grade, to wit: Odigba ti o ba fi ore re han mi kii unto mo iri eniyan ti o je (Show me your friend and I will tell you the type of person you are), has no meaning to him. I say this because I find it implausible that despite the public outcry against the unholy alliance between Tinubu and Chagoury, our President carries on as if the people and their feelings don’t matter.

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This is where the problem lies with those defending the unpardonable mistakes of the Tinubu administration. How they will successfully reconcile the fact that, while the people suspect the President of being light-fingered, the same man is always seen playing with a kid in dark places of the village, will be the eight wonder of this epoch. The noise of how Tinubu awarded the controversial Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway contract to Chagoury’s company has not died yet.

The alleged involvement of Seyi Tinubu, the President’s son in the Board of Directors of the Chagoury Group is still raging. The embarrassment that Chagoury chaperoned Tinubu on his ‘official visit’ to France is something that haunts Nigeria to date. Now, the one on whose behalf his aides and hangers-on embark on dry fast relishes tree-square meals daily. Rather than being sober, the President has decided to list a man whom the entire sane comity of nations avoids among the Hall of Honour of Nigeria.

Granted, Chagoury has chains of businesses in Nigeria. Given that he is a long-time business partner and friend of the President, and they run shows together. However, his antecedents, especially, his involvement in money laundering activities in Nigeria, should be enough reasons why Mr. President ought to be more politic in this particular choice.

Conferring the GCON honour on Chagoury leaves us with no option than to conclude that President Tinubu is giving life to the ancient bon mot of our ages to wit: Ìdí igi ni igi ùn wó ewé sí (the leave sheds its leaves by its trunk). It is nothing but fidelity to gangsterism! It stinks, very badly, too!

In case the President is too busy to know: National Honours are given to those who merit them without any blemish. Gilbert Chagoury, by all standards, does not number among them. Like our elders are wont to say: Oníbàjé ò mo’ra, akówó ojú ebo ò mo l’ólè (The badly-behaved lacks discretion, the one who takes the deity money doesn’t consider it theft). I hate to think that our President is a bad combo of the two proverbial individuals!

If President Tinubu does not know, we owe him the responsibility of telling him that Gilbert Chagoury, with his nauseous antecedents, as a holder of the Nigerian honour of the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON), is one insult too many from this administration. Nothing but a reversal of the absurdity will take the edge off the people!