In 2010, then Director General of the Nigerian Law School, a professor of Law, Tahir Mamman cancelled the special awards ceremony for best graduating students, following allegations of compromise in the conduct of the examination.
The allegations were raised by some students who failed. Mamman had to set up a panel to probe the allegations, but that was after he had denied the outstanding graduating students their moment of glory, not because they were complicit in any wrongdoing but because the examination process had been tainted, by his men, tasked with the conduct of the assignment.
Today, Mamman is Nigeria’s Minister of Education.
Last Thursday, a panel of the Supreme Court, held that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) robbed the presidential poll that produced President Tinubu of street credibility, yet the outcome of the tainted exercise was upheld.
Maybe not all, but most of the justices of the apex court that sat on the final adjudication of the election dispute, are Life members of the Body of Benchers and certainly aware of the event of 13 years ago. Reasonable members of the public will also stay in Mamman’s corner if a choice is to be made of the two situations.
There is a reason the law doesn’t allow beneficiaries to keep proceeds of crime. During Dasukigate, even media houses were coughed the palliative from then President Goodluck Jonathan, simply because the disgraced National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki disbursed it. Presidential spokesmen like Reuben Abati, did time in EFCC detention, for receiving imprest to run their offices, through ONSA, on the instruction of Jonathan. Traditional rulers, friends of Villa, made embarrassing return of millions of Naira, genuinely gifted, because Dasuki sent the cash.
In 2016, Major General Lawal Jafaru Isah (rtd), an ally of former President Muhammadu Buhari who was calling for the cash return, equally returned N100 million out of the N170 million gift he got from Dasuki, possibly on Jonathan’s instruction. To save his face, his friend, then President, reportedly commandeered a contract for him in the Ministry of Education, to return the “soiled” gift.
Ayo Fayose, expiring Ekiti strongman and practically all the cabinet ministers who served in Jonathan’s failed re-election campaign and were advanced campaign cash, are still being prosecuted over the alleged ONSA scam, despite the money in question being listed as Jonathan’s security vote in the charge sheet.
Olisa Metuh, then ruling party’s spokesman, almost lost his life, defending the campaign cash he got from Dasuki. Even now-late Raymond Dokpesi of AIT and Jonathan’s personal lawyer, Mike Ozekhome, SAN, were put on trial by EFCC.
All because the money gifted them, was deemed tainted, despite practically all beneficiaries knowing nothing about how the fund was generated in the Villa.
Dasuki bungled his assignment and tens of people, were treated as grifters because of gifts they got. But the Supreme Court says Tinubu’s victory can be treated as grifting, despite the tainted process that produced it. The supreme men and woman have spoken. Only the Supreme God can overrule them. Unlike in the US with 50+1 Supreme Courts, there is only one of such supreme institution in Nigeria, despite our claim to federalism and participatory democracy. While the federal Supreme Court in US can overrule states’, as witnessed in the 2000 Florida presidential election recount between Al-Gore and Bush, the existence of the apex courts in states, is a major bolster for their democracy.
Beyond the reprimand, INEC, like Houdini, has escaped with its wanton display in the 2023 poll. The question is, when will the cup of Yakubu and his men, be full?
Betty Aketi Vs Tinubu’s minister
Outspoken Ondo First Lady, Betty Akeredolu’s public conducts and utterances in the last six years of her the couple’s public service, have shown she is a handful, like the governor. It is extraordinary how two vigorously-willed personalities have remained married for 42 years and counting, when same of same are expected to repel. Maybe, one rubbed off on the other. Like a leaf staying too long on soap, becoming soapy. There is also this belief that husband and wife begin to look alike after a long period of marriage. It may even become confusing placing parent-child visage similarities, because you are likely to see so much of the father and the mother, in a child, though science still holds that longevity in marriage won’t make couples share same genes.
No doubt, in electing Aketi in 2017, and re-electing him in 2021, Ondo, without asking, got a gubernatorial discount, taking two governors to Alagbaka for the price of one. Even when Madam Betty is crossing the line in publicly fighting her husband’s battles and embarrassing the man in the process (like revealing she is a cuckquean) it is always radio silence from her man.
Last week, Madam Betty went after the youthful Minister of Interior, Bunmi Tunji-Ojo and his alleged collaborators, undermining her husband’s hold on the state’s political space. One would think that in her trying times of trying to nurture her husband back to health, Madam would mellow and seek more goodwill, instead of engaging in bolekaja succession politics.
If the outburst was an outlier, she could be excused as a woman in grief, seeing her once-dashing husband, reduce to his current state. But from the very beginning, like a couple of her colleagues, Madam Betty had shown she was in the state with her givernor-husband, to govern, and that, includes, politicking. Somehow, the governor, seems fine with her daring politics and rhetoric, making it a double jeopardy for her targets.
I don’t know Tunji-Ojo, but if he has aro and odofin (self-awareness for self-restraint) he would get off the firing line of the couple. The First Lady has every reason to fight wildly now that she is seen to be protecting his ailing husband from political hyenas in the state, and public sympathy would be on her side.
It will be sad if the Minister becomes the next casualty of the succession war. Unlike other dormant Tinubu’s ministers, Tunji-Ojo has been impactful. When he came in with his bullish rebirth rhetoric, my children’s passports and mine, delayed for more than six months, were ready for collection in weeks. When I went for collection, Nigerians were full of praise for him.
His ideas also suggested either a thinking fellow or someone with a tank, thinking for him. Either way, he is getting the job done, maybe alongside rambunctious WIke. Since he is just being accused of trying to be a kingmaker and not Alagbaka king himself, he would do self well, jumping off the fray and focusing on the job attracting him national applause. Even if he is interested in the Alagbaka throne, which is legitimate, he can keep leveraging on his surging national profile, for when the water wont be too murky, except he is a murky fellow, himself.
Yoruba always warn against public brawl with a woman who nobody rebukes at home. Proverbs 21, 25 et al, should be a great guide to the Minister.
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