Maurice Chukwu
The hullabaloo being generated by a recent interview former president Obasanjo granted Zero Tolerance, a magazine published by the EFCC takes my mind back to a novel I read a very long time ago - Cyprian Ekwensi’s The Drummer Boy. The story revolved around Akin, a talented blind boy who entertained people with wonderful drumming skill and melodious voice. Given the irresistible nature of the rhythm that flowed from his tambourine and the melody of his songs, the drummer boy becomes a focus for all each time he performs.
Just like Akin the drummer boy, Chief Obasanjo is a master-verbal-drummer. His calculated vocalizations are imbued with the sensual feel and hypnotism of Akin’s drumbeats. Each time he speaks, or rather drums, the earth stands up and listens. Those experienced at the spellbinding power of his drumbeats and melodious songs dance briefly and retrieve. The inexperienced continue dancing unabashedly till they are left stark naked.
Obasanjo, whose administration established the EFCC, in the said interview, displayed another masterstroke at drumming. The rhythm flowing from OBJ’s tambourine as he beat his drum in the course of the interview was world class. He accused former vice president Atiku Abubakar of being corrupt. His melodious lyrics further indicate that Atiku risks a jail sentence should he travel to the United States.
Of course, Atiku has heard the sound of the enchanting drums many a times. Being an experienced dancer, he dances gingerly and, as the tempo of the drumbeats reaches feverish high and to the point of entrapment, he retrieves. And, perceiving the drumming and singing as mere peevishness, Atiku elects to dance through a proxy. After all, he who does something through another does it himself. So, Atiku details his media aide, Mallam Garba Shehu to lead the dance.
Hear the sound of Atiku’s calculated dance steps: “President Obasanjo’s repeated jokes about Turaki not being able to go to America has become a cliché, tiresome and not true, so we are used to those taunts”. Cliché. Jokes. Taunts. Those mere words describe how Atiku saw OBJ’s salvo. He stopped at that. He dares not engaged the master drummer in a war of words, or rather, drumbeats. He appreciates the suicidal repercussion of dancing to the gallery to OBJ’s alluring tunes. No. Not this time that 2015 election is almost around the corner and perennial presidential candidates like himself and General Buhari are re-strategizing. Besides, a child who has been stung by a bee is afraid of a giant housefly.
In the same interview, Chief Obasanjo also said that former EFCC boss, Mrs. Farida Waziri, was a disaster to Nigeria’s effort against corruption, questioning her qualification for the appointment in the first place, and accusing her of having been appointed on the recommendation of convicted former governor of Delta State, James Ibori. Further concordant tunes flowing from OBJ’s drum suggested that Mrs. Waziri, a retired police officer, did so much during her tenure to reverse Nuhu Ribadu’s achievement in the war against corruption. Mrs. Waziri had succeeded the delightsome Mallam Nuhu Ribadu as the EFCC boss in 2008. She was removed from the position almost two years ago by President Jonathan.
Unlike Atiku, who took OBJ’s drumbeats for a mere joke, Mrs. Waziri was seduced out of retirement and into public glare by the drumbeats. Ensnared and mesmerized and, with the agility of an athletic atilogwu dancer, she swiftly jumps into the dance arena and begins to rotate to the old school ‘iche-na mmadu-bu-ewu’ drum beats.
She viewed OBJ’s taunts as ‘the height of mischief’. She accused OBJ of altering the EFCC Act so that he could appoint Nuhu Ribadu whom she succeeded as the EFCC boss and of manipulating the EFCC with Mr. Ribadu as his tool, to seek a third term in office. She defended her competence for the job by citing a string of academic and professional qualifications, amongst which she claimed to have supervised Mr. Ribadu and the current EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde, when they all served in the Nigeria Police. She insisted that OBJ’s memory has being ‘blurred by his real age’. She then committed sacrilege as she retorts that she “will like to warn that those who live in glass house don’t throw stones and as such Obasanjo should not allow me open up on him”
Now, let’s take a sharp detour back to Cyprian Ekwensi’s The Drummer Boy. I am sure if Ekwensi were to be a modern-day Nollywood movies director, he would have flavoured the story with the concoction that a certain market woman who was entrapped by the allure and magnetism of Akin’s drumbeats danced and danced, oblivious of the fact that her wrapper has fallen off her waist even as she continues gyrating non-stop for many days, naked in the marketplace - to the snare of Akin’s work of genius. The last scene of the movie would have probably been when the charmed woman regains consciousness after a powerful jujuman engaged by her humiliated husband had exorcised seven strong spirits (which had entered her from drums-land) off her deluded head.
Such is the spellbinding effect of Obasanjo’s sonorous drumbeats that Mrs. Waziri had sent the Twittering and Facebooking community viral with her Lady Gaga-esque naked dance steps! Mallam Nuhu Ribadu took to Twitter to state that ‘inasmuch as I try not to comment on EFCC after my tenure, I found Mrs Waziri's utter lies totally unsafe to let pass. In fact it was I that actually lectured her and others, on fraud investigation and prosecution’. Femi Fani-Kayode further attacked Waziri on Facebook with more venomous spleen. He screamed that ‘I am glad that President Olusegun Obasanjo has finally described the former Chairman of the EFCC, Farida Waziri, for the beast that she has always been’.
Almost immediately, a letter surfaced from drums-land and starts circulating widely online. In the letter, printed on a purported EFCC official headed paper, Mrs. Waziri allegedly promised to reward Obasanjo by turning the EFCC against his opponents and critics if he would prevail on President Jonathan to approve a fresh term for her. Expectedly, Mrs. Waziri, still hypnotized on the dance floor, quickly issues another press statement disassociating herself from the letter, describing same as ‘a total forgery’ and threatened legal action against those involved in its invention.
Even as I watch Farida, now totally unclad, still dancing spiritedly to Obasanjo’s drumbeats, a thousand thoughts swirled in my head: Is it not sacrilegious for Madam Waziri, who occupied the position of Nigeria’s foremost corruption fighter for three solid years, to know some misdeeds by Obasanjo and fail to make it public during the subsistence of her tenure? Should she not have gone forward and opened up on Obasanjo a long time ago? If she does know something sinister about Obasanjo, why did she not approach any court of law to prosecute him? Is it not a shame that she never bothered to flip open Obasanjo’s file until she left office? Is it not sheer impiousness on her part to have waited until Obasanjo spoke against her? Why now, after almost two years of leaving the EFCC that she is recounting what she ought to have done while in office? As these thoughts battled in my head, the words of blogger Jude Egbas came to my rescue: ‘Let Madam Farida spare us the drivel and can of worms on Obasanjo. It is already too late in the day to crow. We’ll rather lick our wounds in peace and bemoan our luck…..yet again’.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the distance, the sound of Obasanjo’s drumbeats and songs continue to reverberate. Madam Farida continues dancing. If only she has employed the sagacity of Atiku, and considered Obasanjo’s drumbeats as mere cliché, jokes, taunts, there would have been no need for the desperate search for exorcists to deliver her from the ensnarement of Obasanjo’s drumbeats.
*Maurice Chukwu, legal practitioner, Dr Olu Onagoruwa Chambers, 77 Olonode Street, Alagomeji, Yaba, Lagos. mauricechukwu@gmail.com, 08032332734
No comments:
Post a Comment