Professor Yemi Osinbajo has been presiding over
the affairs of the most populous black nation on
earth following President Buhari's illness. Pius
Adesanmi, in this piece, offers words of advice to
the acting president.
Yemi Osinbajo
Now that a world-acclaimed professor of Law is
running the show in the land, you’d expect him to
use this window to inject some strange notions
into the system.
Strange notions such as actions and
consequences, especially legal consequences
a.k.a the sort of legal consequences that can land
you in jail after due process.
Professor Osinbajo has been presiding over the
distribution of tranches of the Paris Club Refund.
As I opined recently, the elephant is dead and all
kinds of carnivorous state governors are out with
glittering carving knives of various shapes and
sizes.
Democracy, even a kwashiokored, emaciated
pretext to democracy such as obtains in Nigeria,
can be so inconvenient. Otherwise, it should even
be a crime to give another tranche of the Paris
Club Refund to ANY state governor in this
country, given their antecedents with earlier
tranches.
What ought to be happening is a very busy EFCC
and the federal attorney-general preparing
dossiers against all these current governors so
that they can all be arrested and made to face
charges of criminal diversion of the Paris Club
Refunds as soon as their term is over and they
lose immunity.
None of them hasn’t stolen from the funds. The
difference is in the scale and manner of the
stealing. The polished ones among them have
stolen the funds with some finesse; the ponmo
and eja shawa ones among them have stolen it
with palm oil stains all over their chest. You
cannot really argue with your background.
But I was talking about consequences and what
Osinbajo ought to be doing by now. That part of
my reflection has nothing to do with the
governors. Academic curiosity should make
Professor Osinbajo want to know and understand
how we got into a situation of Paris and London
Club Refunds in the first instance.
He ought to be interested in the history and
sinews of criminal negligence, corruption, and
racketeering that led to the over-deductions in the
first place. You dig and dig and dig and they say
the problem started with the Debt Management
Office and moved along the paths of Nigerian
corruption to CBN and other places.
People were running the system in all those
places. To this day, not a single explanation has
been given to Nigerian citizens. I know that not
many citizens understand that they are in fact
owed explanations so not too many of them are
asking for explanations.
I am.
I am also asking Professor Osinbajo: How do you
live with a system that is never curious about
criminality or really interested in finding the
political will to prosecute it? Sir, how do you wake
up every morning, look in the mirror, and not feel
uncomfortable that the man looking back at you
has not deemed it necessary to begin a process
to make somebody or some people accountable
for the over-deductions that got us here in the
first place?
Nnamdi Kanu calls Nigeria a Zoo. Senator Shehu
Sani and Mrs. Aisha Buhari are in agreement that
Nigeria is metaphorically littered with lions,
hyenas, and weaker animals. President Buhari
also once metaphorically thought that there may
be dogs and baboons all over the place.
Professor Osinbajo, your folks in the elite are
wrong about all these animals they are throwing
around. There are actions and consequences in
the animal kingdom. In a pride of lions, among
hyenas, baboons, meerkats, zebras, etc, there are
always consequences if your actions are
deleterious to the common interest of the group.
Depending on the nature of the animals in
question, you could get banished or killed for
endangering the collective good and interest.
In essence, Professor Osinbajo, the only place
where there are actions and consequences in
Nigeria is among the residents of the Yankari
Game Reserve.
You will recall that your boss promised to
transfer the elementary values of the Yankari
Game Reserve to governance so that we, the
human owners of the animals in that park, can at
least learn something. Then people padded his
first budget. He promised consequences and
shuffled them around in offices in Abuja.
Till date, nobody has been punished for budget
padding.
When you started distributing the Paris Club
Funds, I said to myself, now, this is apProfessor
of Law. He is going to understand that things
need to be done beyond mere distribution and
sending Kemi Adeosun to howl for greater
accountability. We need to understand how the
over-deductions happened. People need to be
investigated and punished.
Above all, the Nigerian citizen needs full
explanations in a detailed national press
conference by the concerned authorities.
Professor Osinbajo, unlike majority of the ignorant
and half-illiterate people in government, I am sure
you fully understand that explaining these things
to the Nigerian citizen is not a privilege you are
bestowing on him and her?
It is your duty to explain.
It is their right to be explained to.
***
Pius Adesanmi, a professor of English, is Director
of the Institute of African Studies, Carleton
University, Canada.
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