100 DAYS? HOW TIME FLIES!

Time does fly! It is already a hundred days since PMB made his second entry after almost thirty years! 100 days! But this is period equal to half the entire time the late General Murtala Muhammad took (remember 200 Days to Eternity?) to transform, overhaul and revolutionise this nation forty years ago. Each one of […]

Time does fly! It is already a hundred days since PMB made his second entry after almost thirty years! 100 days! But this is period equal to half the entire time the late General Murtala Muhammad took (remember 200 Days to Eternity?) to transform, overhaul and revolutionise this nation forty years ago. Each one of us may have their memorable mementos in these one hundred days, but allow me to share mine:
KAI! PMB A MILLIONAIRE?: Unbelievable! Unfathomable! Incredible! I’ve always suspected that lawyers, especially the SANs among them, do take more than their fair share of the private cake! Kai Pastor! Fifty percent of those declared assets (you pledged to take fifty percent cut of everything, no?) should go to Charity, the poor girl. You know her, don’t you? If you don’t, I do. Ehm! And PMB is a millionaire? Eyes wide open! After all the poverty we broadcast on these pages? Congrats Sire! Now that the cows are out, Generals Emeriti IBB and AbdusSalami should also do same. And the Abacha family too! Gander sauce! And talking about cows, I have ethnic affinity. Willing to take half of them for Charity, as next-of-kin!
NA DEM HE KNOWS: Back in 2000 when I “joined” the Villa from the BBC, I was surprised, indeed shocked, that almost everywhere I looked were Yorubas (and I love them Yoruba people, especially their Bata Drum and more). How would Yorubas fill the Villa, I wondered then, when they had said Obasanjo was not theirs, and was in fact a leper’s son as far as they were concerned. In no time, Bola Ige and co. were all over everybody. A certain outsider journalist (whom I know very well) was said to have felt the same way and, when the opportunity availed itself to ask that of the president, he did. After the usual tongue-lashing, the One-Who-Never-Wanted-A-Third-Term was said to have said: “Na dem I know!”
SO “IBE” AIN’T “IGBO”!: I had no idea an “Ibe” or a Kachikwu is not Igbo! I love Igbos, they of the Always-Move-The-Goalpost-Further Syndrome! They say no one has been appointed from the South East. By implication, anybody from the Ibo-speaking part of Delta State is NOT theirs. Perhaps they should also disown current Delta State Governor Ifeanyi Okowa and even Madam Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. In fact, they should disown Asaba, the capital of “the sixth state for the Igbos” which IBB ‘dashed’ them. And then they shall move the goalpost some further place. And yes, have they ANY business discussing Dr. Chris Ngige or Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, or even Owelle Rochas Okorocha? Are those three not the Osu, the outcasts who sold their conscience to the Hausa/Fulani-Yoruba marriage?
THE ESCAPE OF ABOBAKU: Kai! This Great Escape is perhaps the best thing that has happened in the 100 Days of the Buhari Presidency. If he, she or it truly existed, and was dedicated to ‘escorting the dead Ooni alive’, and did escape, Abobaku should be awarded Member of the Order of the Great Escape, MOGE, as I don’t think the Niger River flows through Ife. No matter, call him/her/it a coward or no, Abobaku has chosen transient life to eternal death! And the Oyos are laughing I hear? That Ife is no longer the Cradle or the Source? Let them laugh all they want; we shall siddon look whether Kakanfo would be awarded Order of the Kwara!
LET SLEEPING MINISTERS LIE: Nigerians and their bad belle. It is NOT ministers they want appointed, it is ministers they can approach that they want appointed. Each one of the complainants – those that say PMB is running a one-man-show – is hoping that one of their own becomes minister, so they can start name-dropping and influence-peddling. If not, don’t we all know ‘agbero’ is never concerned with overload? If PMB plus PYO can do it for these 100 days, who says they can’t do it for 1000? Or the about 1500 days of their mandate? And who says there is no minister? Isn’t the Vice President a ‘minister’ of the Church? What of the new SGF? Must you pressurise PMB to anger some more people apart from the Goalpost-Pushers? Haba!
LET PERM SEC SHINE!: Meanwhile the Perm Sec has come into his/her own! They are now honourable, very much so. They are swiveling in their chairs. Left, right, and look left again. For any Director who is not kowtowing low enough! When last did Perm Secs see, let alone address, the Chief Executive directly one-on-one, sometimes one-on-two-or-three. We must all say congrats to Perm Secs. The ‘permanent’ is really kicking in, Oronsaye or no. Who said that prescient saying “make hay while the sun shines”? The sun of Abuja is really shining for Hon. Perm Secs. I hear contractors were wary of cutting deals with them; now that they see them with Villa Entry Badges dangling on their necks (even when they travel to, say, Lokoja), THEY are the ones to deal with, so they don’t deal with you.
BOKO SOON BE HALAL:  Over to the North East, the 100 Days news is getting better by the day, and by the next 100 Days, or less, we should be singing Boko Halal!  Wasn’t it fortuitous, courageous and convenient that the advance party of the whole Chief of Army Staff was ambushed? Some called it foolhardy, some said propaganda, but I say “zalika ma kunna nabgh!” (This is exactly what we always wanted) – that top brass lead from the front! We congratulate our military but we remind them of two things – those Chibok girls whose Principal waka-alone-come-Abuja have now spent more than 500 days in captivity; and NNPC is going to use drones to fight oil stealing. Drones. You get my drift.
JUSTICE A LA NDJAMENA: Meanwhile, over in Chad, justice was swift in coming. While many terror suspects languish in Nigerian holding pens without being charged, the Chadians were either too efficient or too rash. Bombs went off in Ndjamena and elsewhere, and many people were killed. Not long after, ten suspects were apprehended. In no time, the suspects were tried, convicted, shot. All within less than 100 Days. Finito! And really, who would fault Idris Deby for dispatching people to a destination they so eagerly want to go?
FOR ELECTRICITY THANK KEDCO: Unbelievable! Incredible! I finished N10,000 electricity in less than 30 Days, not 100 Days! The same house which, at one time, could not consume N5,000 electricity in ONE WHOLE YEAR, because it was just not available. Yes, there is improvement in power. So while the PDP and APC are brick-a-batting who takes the credit, I will leave them to it and thank my Kano Electricity Distribution Company (KEDCO) kawai! They brought one Gombe chap – Dr. Jamilu Gwamna – to be their MD in Kano, and he is doing wonderfully, as far as I am concerned! Hope he will not go looking to be Gwamna again!
WHERE I GO? GERMANY: And within these 100 Days, the sad, tragic picture of the drowned three year old boy in the red tee shirt. Very sad! Over in Budapest, the protesters sang, in heavy Arabic accents, “Wherrrrre I go? Gerrrrrrmany!” And who would blame Hungarian leader Victor Orban for blaming Germany for the whole crisis? Migrants saying, without an iota of political correctness, that “we don’t want to stay in Hungary! We don’t like Hungary!” Many of them think the name is Hungry! Meanwhile, the more tragic fallout is that everyone seems to be forgetting our own Edo-Libya-Europe Great Trek (and Oshiomhole is such a nice fellow too). The migration where an obvious Okafor would call himself Mohammed, and a Cecilia Halima, just to help us count 100 Days!
Kai! Time does fly! We shall revisit all these in 200 Days!