Monitoring Ben Murray-Bruce’s eyeballs

BEN Murray-Bruce isn’t your regular standout guy. His brother’s name is Guy, but Ben is more of the guy-man, and I mean in every sense, including being personable and well-versed in cunning game of politics. He is right to dub self, common-sense senator, because some kind of sense is required to hold on to depositors’ monies in the guise of bad bank loans and not pay back, to get a president’s wife approve one for a senate seat that should have cost an arm and a leg, to get another president’s wife approve one for a media job that was used to prop one’s private TV station, to participate in N13.5million monthly bazaar without betraying any form of troubling conscience, or to owe workers and still remain chubby enough for suits and native cuts to look dandy on you. For his numerous feats, Ben, should be re-christened an Uncommon-sense human being. Murray’s scion may not perceptively be the great-guy he desperately wanted to be with the public, but philandering had never come up on his sin-list with those seeking without ceasing to make the handsome dude look monstrously ugly. So, it was his wife’s birthday recently and our man wanted to tell the world he wasn’t part of the “Brotherhood”. He gleefully hollered he had always had the hot only for his hottie of a wife and even now she is 60, the bed had remained undefiled and vows untainted. Whao! Oga Bruce deserves a medal for not doing the Lee acrobatics elsewhere with strange women. Without doubt, he isn’t also a cuckold because he has attested to his wife’s faithfulness. What a home of trust. What a marriage of honour. What a man of valour! What a woman of Zion! I love made-in-heaven union. In this age when infidelity has been normalized in the guise of open marriage, especially among elite like Uncle Bruce, faithfulness in marriage, especially on the part of an average African man who isn’t also an acknowledged child of God, should be hailed.

Despite Uncle Bruce unenviable records in other areas, I somewhere find his claim credibility. Not all men are brothers. There are exceptions to the Eve’s rule. You don’t have to be born again, to run from temptations walking on two beautiful legs everywhere. But I must encourage the senator to be closer to God because only His Holy Spirit can help his flesh run the fidelity race to the end. Even now, that he has boasted about it like presidential aspirant Fela Durotoye who delights in introducing self as the husband of one woman, the pit of hell, would be more determined to end his reign as an untainted. The Word of God says the body is the temple of the Most High, which should not and must not be defiled. I commend Uncle Bruce to menfolk, especially guys who want to belong. Like that scribe in Mark 12, who correctly answered Jesus on most important commandment, the senator is not far from the kingdom of God, if the minuses could be addressed, particularly the AMCON issue. The Holy Word condemns denying others their sweat.

• We will probe Alpha Beta’s N150bn scandal if… —EFCC

OBJ’s dangeful silence

For a General seeking to unseat another General in a civilian coup, the booming silence from the recesses of Olusegun Matthew Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo should worry Muhammadu (who knows the president’s middle name) Buhari and his militia. For a naturally ruckus-fellow who is fighting last politician battle, to suddenly grow mute despite not being deaf to the booming bole dogun kodogun (let it be bloody) dirge from the other side which used to be his side before war was declared, those verbally bombing him, including the new kid-on-the-block Yemi Osinbajo, should ordinarily keep checking with their war plans and routes, to forestall running into an ambush. Aremu has even chosen not to do barbs battle with his enemy-from-the-womb and barbster; Wole Soyinka. The closest I ever came to military thing was corper shon drill and grill in the hands of hopelessly skirt-chasing recruits who were more interested in the laps of female corps members than imparting war and self-defense strategies, which makes me a novice of the art of war. But it is commonsensical that a man whose house is on fire, doesn’t go snoring. Buhari would make things happen to Obasanjo if he got a second term and I can safe-keep this with even the Bank of America. You can aggregate Atiku Abubakar with all the ugly under Obasanjo the much you want, but Baba’s head must have also shaken in his presidential sojourn in a way that he may not come out unscathed from probe traps Buhari will likely strewn his path, starting from next year. Should past leaders not be made accountable? Far from it. For an Obasanjo that puffs the air of unassailability, a major polity and policy shift in commendable direction would be a major success of such accountability inquest. The only problem is that Buhari’s soulmate, Sani Abacha framed the dismantling agenda as a grudge match which the Buhari darling lost to posterity. Today, history not only cast Abacha as a blot, his memory is certainly in sealed infamy. Buhari will be clothing his anti-sleaze agenda with flowing robe of sincerity by not waiting for re-election before making Obasanjo’s backside an extension of probity. Instead of raising a deliberate decibel for mere public display over the power sector fraud, Buhari should go the whole hog, getting OBJ to genuinely account for his “sins”. But the main ingredient missing in Buhari’s anti-corruption war is genuineness. At a Lagos parley on Wednesday where yours truly was present, Ibrahim Magu, Buhari’s warhead in the corruption war, was left in no doubt by journalists, the little Nigerians and the rest of the world, think of the significantly-selective war his employer is using him to wage against his selected enemies. The media, which Magu acknowledged as much-needed partner-in-progress, drove the truth home in a way that wrath Magu. It is for him to re-write what is left of his history at EFCC. Obasanjo’s antecedents suggest he would not wait to be taken cheaply even when he isn’t clean. He is likely unto his next agenda after the amorphous intervention group and party. He could return from this silence sabbatical with a devastating venture. My only worry is that, Aremu’s projects, even when altruistically-framed, with very effective binoculars, will always magnify the I and Me agenda at the centre of his nationalistic fervours.