Mr Jaguda, proceed to prison before your beans gets cold

The best place to eat beans is prison. You eat without distractions. The taste is tantalizing. Beans contains protein, which plays a key role in body repair, as well as folate and antioxidants, and is particularly facilitative of heart health. It guarantees reduced risk of cancer, helps with glucose metabolism, and prevents fatty liver. It is my sincere hope that many of the corrupt leaders in this land will eat beans and gari for long behind bars. They need the energy to educate their fellow prisoners, shutting down the arguments of certain bastards who complain that prison beans is watery. Idiots! What if it’s watery? Don’t they say that water is life? And to think that prison beans is professionally peppered by the world’s best cooks! Do not our elders say that the life that eats no pepper is a fickle one? There is no better sight in the world than that of a former leader eating beans in prison, surrounded by anopheles mosquitoes, and serving a long term for his/her crimes. May those who refuse to eat beans that they have duly earned rot away in their den of thieves. May the hiding places collapse on the moral midgets studiously avoiding beans. Sense must be restored to the senseless. You won’t eat beans ke? Like the singer, Yinka Ayefele sang, you will eat to your fill, and even pack plenty home after 27 years. Oloribiruku omo ole Ifo! King of thieves!

Some are born thieves, others become thieves, slowly acquiring the deadly gene. Children of past highway robbers now rule us, robbing us blind while we hail them to the skies. The lawyer, offspring of receivers of stolen goods, deploys the statute books in shielding his bosom friend the robber-ruler, and at night they deposit fury in night birds, the women of waste, drowning in wine and reggae. The lawyer is master of the law which protects thieves while their dying victims writhe in pains. His Lordship, the man who grants frivolous injunctions to protect the rogue, is offspring of the junior robber who ran errands for ogboju ole ages ago, the forebear of the robber-ruler surrounded by fawning aides, loyal offspring of palace courtiers. Pray, what do you call the man who facilitates a robber’s escape? Chief Robber. Little thieves steal palm oil from the rafters; big thieves help to place them on the floor. In March 2015, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said about $20 trillion had been stolen from the treasury by Nigerian leaders between 1960 and 2005. The Economist magazine in its October 10, 2019 edition put the figure at $582bn.

But the former thieves still had a conscience; they left something behind for the owner of the goods. The present ones would sell off the owner of the goods if they had half the chance. They rob with Luciferic rage. They are hyenas who eat both flesh and bone, sucking out the juice nestled within bones with relish. One day, we may all wake up only to discover that these thieves have sold this country, pocketed the money, and fled to other lands with their wives and concubines.  The Economist again: “More than $1bn seized from Mr. Abacha’s bank accounts has been returned. But many African states have not helped their cause, often because thieving politicians are still in charge. When Switzerland returned $500m of Mr Abacha’s money, most of it disappeared again.” These lepers are aided by evil servants who call themselves civil servants: in February, Nigeria sought Interpol’s assistance in apprehending three suspects who stole $6.2 million theft from the CBN using forged signatures, including that of ex-President Muhammadu Buhari. Many civil servants need to spend their retirement years in Kirikiri. What’s civil about treasury looting?

Said the Soviet writer Maxim Gorky: “How wonderful would it be if men were driven by the desire to fertilize the earth, rather than to gather in the harvest.” How true! Dina Boluarte, president of Peru, recently came under fire for wearing luxury Rolex watches. Investigators wanted to know how she acquired jewellery worth $500,000 with her monthly salary of $3,320. The scandal began when La Encerrona, a popular Peruvian news podcast, analysed 10,000 images from her Flickr account and revealed an undisclosed collection of luxury watches and jewellery.  Boluarte’s predecessor, Pedro Castillo, is eating his beans behind bars as we speak. Here in Nigeria, thieves hide in Government House, aided by senior advocates who dust the statute books to save them from their well-earned manacles. The auguries are portentous: there will be no roads in the next century, only waiting cemeteries. There will be no hospitals to succour the sick and dying; no drugs in government hospitals because the money was shared between contractors in government and outsiders carrying briefcases of fraud; there will be no water for the people to drink in this Island of sleaze because state Houses of Assembly chose to applaud robbery, and generations of women shook their bums in honour of thieves, buoyed by a bribe that is barely enough for the next meal.

Instead of leaders, we are ruled by bandits, the people the Yoruba call omo ole Ifo and jaguda pali. We are ruled by jandukus and jegudujeras who rob today as if there will be no tomorrow, people who raid the treasury like pirates on heat. We hail born olosas, gbewiri and alo-koluhun-kigbes as Excellencies. These are the proverbial dog which knows how to feed its own pup, and how to grab the grass cutter’s own for meat. These omo ole Ifos, intent on a secure future for their own offspring, pillage the public till to throw the offspring of other creatures into total wretchedness. The world is going to the place of sleep!

We can only hope that these dogs will be sentenced to long years behind bars, cutting grass till they quench. And that when they return, they will get banished from the company of decent people. This country needs to stop paying thieves pensions!

Instead of answering for his crimes, one Werey is doing press-up, and releasing press statements. Omo ole Ifo, you had better head to prison, your natural home, very quickly. The grass is waiting for action. Remember that we are in the rainy season.

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