Oduah: In the Eye of the Storm

Ihave no difficulty, whatsoever, in joining discerning minds on our land in the business of rebuking and denouncing graft, scandalous roguery or any and all kinds of corruption that have come to define and characterize public conduct, especially among the privileged elite among us. And so, the outrage building up around the purchase of two bullet proof cars for the use of the Honourable Minister of Aviation, Stellah Oduah, at the equally outrageous price of N255 million ( or $ 1.4m/ 870,000 Euros) deserves to be critically probed and if guilt is established, punished. Having said this, I find the dramatic manner in which this alleged crime ( it is an allegation until guilt is established and proven in full measure) is being played out requiring being de- contextualized.

Investigation is on- going— or should be on- going— by the National Assembly and the EFCC. The President has set up a probe panel. There is a wave of red- herring on the matter. Positions have been taken. One. Mrs. Oduah should have resigned instead of proceeding on a pilgrimage ( in the company of ) with the President. Two. Mr President ought not to have had her on board to the Holy Land while a charge of impropriety of a financial nature surrounds her person and office. Three. The alleged crime is already being generously granted the status of a Gate— a la, Watergate! No crime is small. All crimes should be punished, in accordance with the law. This particular allegation has been raised to the level of a scandalous rage! I have a sneaky disquiet about the proportion of alarm quantum allocated to this purchase. There must be some other matters than meet the eye than these two armoured cars bought at ballooned rates! Usual impunity? I- don’t- care- ness? Whatever. In a country where billions of dollars get cornered in the most uncouth and primitive manner— pension funds, the Ibori proverbial laundering, the Alamiseighea jail and pardon, the Tafa Balogun light let- off, the Farouk Lawan’s unsettled bribe- taking from Otedola on the subsidy scam and all other unsettled subsidy fraud, the ladies at the ladies Stock Exchange and Security… There were no Gates erected about any and all of these. Indeed, given our capacity for memorial amnesia on such matters of galloping corruption, kleptomania, frightening fraud and their perpetrators, most of these crimes and their perpetrators have been practically let- off the hook and are reclining comfortably in their positions or occupying higher once. What is all the hue and cry about two bullet proof cars bought too expensively to secure and protect the life of a cabinet officer in dire danger of elimination for allegedly stepping on powerful toes of contractocrats and their powerful beneficiaries/ accomplices?

The President is being carpeted for not dropping from his pilgrimage entourage a woman who most of us believe need spiritual atonement and propitiation best obtainable in the Holy Land. I find a lot amiss with this il/ logic. The nomination to go to Jerusalem among other Ministers must have come before the scandal burst open. Won’t the act of withdrawing Ms Oduah from the trip be pre- emptive of the outcome of the probe— which the President himself had set up? Is it not sufficiently remarkable that the President was said to have put all barriers in her way to deny her access to him? Some imaginative satirist has recently commended the President for not exposing himself to the seductive potential of this exquisite lady of alluring charm, especially the power of eye contact! On a very serious note, why must Ms Stella Oduah be denied the opportunity of spiritual propitiation and expiation best obtainable in the Christian Holy place? Who knows? The humility and deep contrition anticipated in her conduct could best be acquired after supplication and atonement during the pilgrimage. Who else should go to pilgrimages other than sinners who can afford it? Is that not why our obscenely opulent compatriots go to Mecca and Jerusalem at least once in a year? Is that not why our Governments at all tiers spare no badly needed fund for development to sponsor the less endowed in the thousands on pilgrimage through Pilgrims Boards with ill- defined budgets? And when some of us cry out against such mindless waste of public funds, don’t we get labelled either as agnostics, atheists or even heretics? Ms Oduah may return from Jerusalem chaste, sober, humble and contrite— a pilgrimage which many so badly wanted to cause President Goodluck Jonathan to deprive her of. The same people would have condemned him for engaging in an over- kill ( which, by the way, the episodic drama about this alleged undue- processed, overbloated purchase amounts to) had he dropped her name from the list of pilgrims accompanying him to Jerusalem. This is more so when we also understand that there is an official assignment for the Minister in Jerusalem relating to signing of an Agreement. Until Stella Oduah, embattled as she is presently is, should be, is found guilty of the allegation and removed from office, it would be prejudicial to punish her through the back- door. Indeed, it would be uncharacteristic of our governing elite who had perennially failed to muster the political will to punish proven and investigated crimes in high places and thus set a moral tone for justice and responsible leadership in our country to bring reprisals to bear before guilt is firmly established. The thing to do is ensure credible investigation.

Adieu, Baba Omojola

I believe it is a factor of his legendary humility, selfeffacement in the midst of towering achievement in the domain of anti- imperialist and anti- colonial struggles that most Nigerians engaged in documenting the pioneers of revolutionary struggle in Nigeria and Africa are not familiar with the name, Baba Omojola. While we can easily recount and narrate the Marxian exploits both at the theoretical/ discourse and vanguard planes of engagement of heroic personages like Ola Oni, Pa Imuoudu, Mokwugo Okoye, Alao Aka Bashorun, Tunji Otegbeye and their immediate successors like Segun Osoba, Bade Onimode, Bala Usman, Mahmud Tukur, Biodun Jeyifo, Edwin Madunagu, among others, only those whom Baba Omojola had toiled with in the trenches ( including Marxist scholars and student activists) grasp and extol the great contribution of this great revolutionary practitioner to the cause of social justice, equality and equity on the Nigerian and African landscape.

A man endowed with inimitable agelessness ( his name, not his physique, betrays his age), disarming humility and simplicity, Baba Omojola at seventy- five remained always at the ready for the beckoning of struggle at all levels. He was a veritable pioneer of the leftist struggle in this country and his death is certainly a terrible deprivation to public intellectualism, revolutionary ideals and movements in a country like ours in the throes of ideological vacuity and in the critical need of progressive discourse and change vanguardism. Baba, may your enduring youth rejuvenate the generation of your inheritors.