Sleeping, snoring, angry governors

Yari in the Yoruba language means angry and strongly disagree. In Japanese, Yari is the spear used in martial arts. There is a governor whose surname is a homograph of that word. He is Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara state.  He is also the chairman of the powerful Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF). Last week he was very angry with the Nigerian media because of money. You know money matters are serious matters. The media carried reports that apparently potentially damaged the soup pot of governors. And so, Yari literally went full blast against the press for reporting President Muhammadu Buhari as wondering how governors could sleep when their workers were hungry. It was a private meeting between the president and the governors. No one else, including the press, was there. The Buhari presidency has its own way with coverage of visits. The media rely, most times, on press statements from the president’s media office. It was the case in this case. But Yari the following day said Buhari wasn’t angry with the governors during their closed-door meeting with him. Buhari, in fact, was pleased that they were asking for more hundreds of millions of dollars to pay state workers. You know there is so much careless billions of dollars in Abuja. All you need is meet the president and convince him to bless your efforts with his signature. Our smart governors know that and Yari said as much: “We had a very fruitful meeting with Mr President and Mr President accepted all our requests,” he said. The governor wondered why the media could trust another source (Femi Adesina) for another briefing after they had “got full briefing” from the governors. Like a school headmaster, he scolded the media: “Please, we have to be serious with our job. We are working for Nigeria; we are working for our people so we shouldn’t misinform the public and should be guided with the things discussed…”

Aare Onakakanfo Kurunmi, in one moment of protective arrogance, said he won’t allow outsiders call his slaves slaves. Governors are Buhari’s personal persons. He protects and serenades them. He gives them anything he is asked to give them. Governors can be sinful in their ways but they cannot be called sinners. So, it is strange that Yari read anger into what the presidency released as Buhari’s words.  Buhari won’t be angry with his governors even if they collect bailouts and refunds fifty times without paying their workers. Workers may be hungry and may even end it like the Kogi director who committed suicide. The president will only beg the powerful governors not to sleep and snore amidst general hunger and misery around them. But Yari was angry last week. And it was not the first time he would be angry over these London-Paris Club loan refunds. At a time the EFCC launched a probe into an alleged diversion of billions of naira from the first tranche of the refunds. Yari fumed and insisted the payments were made to consultants. The EFCC has not said it is done with the probes. Indeed, Nigerians now sit up each time the governors beg the president to give them money for salaries. It has to be because the more the governors get crisp billions from Abuja, the hungrier their workers become.

If Yari were a Yoruba man, he would have been excused for acting his name. You cannot be named Anger and not know how to be angry. Imagine Hawk that can’t rob mother hens of their young ones! Is that one a hawk? A man that fails to live his name is questioning the wisdom of the elders. That name you got on your eighth day is what you use as you journey through life. And if your name happens to be Yari, you would literally be granted the licence to abuse any hater. But Governor Yari is not a Yoruba man and may not know what his name means in Yoruba. And so, he was angry and one should understand why. If you have a soup pot of assorted meat, you would guard it jealously with all weapons, including weapons of mass destruction. This Governor Yari is Hausa and, you know what Yari means in that language? It means Prison. Gidan Yari is actually where this angry governor got the name from. Among the Hausa, the work or profession your family is known with may stick as your name.  If your father was a prison worker, you are likely to bear, Yari, the generic name of his place of work.

So, it happened that Yari, the captain of our state governors, felt journalists were not “serious” with their jobs. Hear him: “You got the full briefing from me and then some of your people went and said they got from another source. I don’t know which source said the president is not happy with the governors. It is very unfortunate,” he fumed. Is it true Yari did not know the other source? It was an open source – the president’s own mouthpiece. Was Yari of APC telling the media to start querying statements from his role model – the president? To the governor, the media couldn’t be serious. If they were serious, they would stick to his own account of what transpired behind the iron door of Buhari’s new, safe office. A “serious” media would trust the powerful governors more than they would their helpless colleagues working for the president. That was the way this governor felt the media should have done their work. It didn’t occur to the governor that the author of that statement, Femi Adesina,  might not be at the meeting but his boss was there. And his report focused on what the boss said: “How can anyone go to bed and sleep soundly when workers have not been paid their salaries for months…I actually wonder how the workers feed their families, pay their rents and even pay school fees for their children…” That was what Femi Adesina reported his boss telling the governors. And it is his job to report his boss. He gets paid for that. If I were Governor Yari, I would not blame the press for doing their work. I would ask myself who could have briefed this presidential spokesman before he issued that statement. And I would tell myself: Who else could have briefed him apart from his boss, the president?

But this governor has been around long enough to know whose word is heavier in the Villa. A very lucky man, Yari, holder of a Diploma in Secretarial Studies from Sokoto Polytechnic, was born on January 1, 1969. By age 30 in 1999, he was in the House of Representatives as a member. He moved from there to be a cabinet member in  Zamfara State, and by 2011, he became governor of the state, defeating his father -in-law, Mahmud Shinkafi. He is today the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF). So, he has the experience to temper and reroute his anger away from the media. But we know that no government (and governor) likes the press. Journalists are almost always scapegoats of political gaffes. You would think the precious time Yari spent lecturing the media on what Buhari said or did not say, should have been used getting the Villa to sing his song. He won’t do that because it doesn’t work that way. The Villa is the Lion. It cannot be cowed by hungry hyenas panting for bailouts and refunds. So, when a governor cannot fight the lion, he faces the press and muddles the issue. He accuses it of misreporting the truth. He tells himself  that the media won’t mind being abused. They are used to it. They will even report the encounter with the horrible words used to describe them. They celebrate personal tragedies with melodious lines. They write whatever you say even if you call them “masters of sick invective,” or “organ grinders” as former US President Richard Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew famously labelled some who interfaced with his government. But journalists ask questions too. And in this Governor Yari case, the questions are many: How many months salaries is Governor Yari owing Zamfara workers? Was he angry because of the imageries of ‘bed’ and ‘sleep’ employed by the president to describe his governors’ reaction to the helplessness of their unpaid people? Is he one of the governors who sleep and snore when their people grapple with long nights of hunger and ulcer?

These refunds are sadly becoming blood money. Governors who steal from poor workers are vultures. And you know what vultures eat? Carrion. What kind of humans eat rotten flesh without vomiting? Paris Club loan refunds is sick money. A few months ago, Buhari released the first and second tranches to the states. His rhetoric then was as it is now. He released those billions so that governors could pay their suffering workers. Yari said he has agreed to release another tranche! Did the first two get to the workers as promised? Did Buhari ask any question when his EFCC discovered billions of the money strolled into alien accounts? How much personal benefit did the governors get from that largesse from Buhari? Who owned the over N1billion (part of the refunds) which a court ordered forfeited to the government two weeks ago? Look! Our culture is guilty: The wise takes care of himself as he takes care of the sick. And the one who feeds the crying child does not feed on stones.