By Dr. Ugoji Egbujo
In Nigeria we have seen it all. Nothing startles us. Recently, Diezani Alison-Madueke who must be homesick, made out time to teach Ijaw youths good citizenship. She said the moral fabric of the country had decayed because youths craved quick ill gotten wealth.
People watched Dieziani and could only hiss.
In the 80’s when we were still human enough for moral outrage , the government arranged the repatriation of one Umaru Dikko. Like Dieziani, Umaru Dikko eloped to London after the regime in which he was a ministering power broker fell.
Unlike Dieziani, who is luxuriating in London, umbra Dikko was kidnapped outside his home, anesthetized and put in a crate. He was already bound for the cargo compartment of a Nigerian Airways plane, sitting on the tarmac of Stansted airport in England, when the bubble burst. The police found a sleeping Umaru Dikko in a Diplomatic baggage.
No one would expect a democratic government to engage in criminal abductions of its wanted citizens living as refugees in foreign lands. Democracy doesn’t permit the recourse to such unconstitutional self help. But the 80’s were when the man died in us.
Dieziani is still innocent. But some of those who received from the millions of dollars the EFCC said she looted from NNPC, money which was used to bribe INEC officials in 2015, have been convicted. Dieziani will remain a saint until she is convicted.
But she is one saint whose jewelry worth billions of naira have been seized by the courts as ill gotten wealth. Dieziani is not a yahoo yahoo minister but she has assets worth billions of naira permanently forfeited to the federal government because they were bought with stolen funds.
The sort of pillaging our national resources have suffered is unnatural. The nation entrusts its oil resources in the hands of its daughter – a well trained executive of one of the biggest oil companies in the world.
This daughter betrays the nation and immerses herself in a singled minded obsessive compulsive acquisition of jewelry, while home state of Bayelsa wallows in wretchedness, with hundreds of communities that have no bridges and no clinics.
It is unnatural. But it’s even more unnatural for such a minister who has run away, out of the reach of the short and weak arms of our laws, to turn around and poke her fingers in our eyes by preaching morality and good conduct to our jobless youths from her haven in London.
Diezani Alison Madueke doesn’t want Ijaw youths to take to crime. What a wise aunty! She despises yahoo-yahoo, internet fraud business. She believes broken homes make broken societies. What a thoughtful aunty!
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Crime is bad. And youths must be discouraged from criminal careers. But there are certain politicians who must not get involved in any youth reformation programs.
Any politician who is wanted by a criminal court in connection with charges bordering on embezzlement of public funds and who has absconded, should stay in hiding. Because when such a politician comes into the open, to teach morality, she makes a caricature of our moral values and criminal justice system.
There is nothing left to see in Nigeria. Days after Dieziani moonlighted as a Sunday school teacher, one funny Ijaw group came out of the shadows to warn those baffled by Diezinai’s effrontery to leave their sister alone.
The argument of the group was simple. Nobody is guilty until proven otherwise; after all , many other thieves are seated in high places in Nigeria; aren’t even those being prosecuted for corruption not taking active part in railing against bad governance? And perhaps as one of my friends would say when he wants to make excuse for evil, “Nobody holy pass!”
This Ijaw group must have learnt so much from the sermons of the former minister.
It is true that governors caught on tape stuffing their agbada with bribe money are masquerading as champions of moral causes. It is true that a governor whose aides made cash withdrawals of over 112 billion naira in a few days, who looted the state treasury, is still marching around as a champion of democracy.
It is unfortunate that brazen corruption lives amongst us. But these are cases that might come to the courts someday. So those lazy youths making excuses for Dieziani should go and fight for the release of all petty thieves languishing in our jails first. So that we will know that they are serious about fighting for the freedom of rogues.
But on a serious note, Dieziani’s case is special. A former minister evading a subsisting bench warrant ! A woman whose multibillion naira assets have been confiscated by competent courts. A woman whose pedigree as a former director of Shell should fetch her exemplary punishment if found guilty for managing our oil resources like an agbero.
Those who understand Nigeria say Dieziani is testing waters. One day she might return a heroine. And she would begin with an NGO and masquerades as an anti corruption crusader. And before we remember whom she was, she would have pocketed the title- ‘Mother of Modern Ijaw’.
After all, her boss, who took money from the national treasury and distributed it to his campaign managers in 2015, is still strutting the country, a hero!
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