Ghosts, exorcists, missing funds and foxy lots

They kicked out the Brits before they answered the question – if we found power, what shall we do with it? We followed suit. Then they staged the first coup before we took the virus, patented it, perfected it and exported it. They returned to one-man-one-vote while we were still dealing with one soldier one […]

They kicked out the Brits before they answered the question – if we found power, what shall we do with it? We followed suit. Then they staged the first coup before we took the virus, patented it, perfected it and exported it. They returned to one-man-one-vote while we were still dealing with one soldier one justice, apology to Fela. Then the Ghanaians found the man they called Junior Jesus – JJ Rawlings. Rawlings kept coming back like a bad coin in a coin-operated phone booth; then he finally stepped aside, heckled and complained like the Wizard of Ota. Finally on his back seat he found a new passion – giving expensive speeches.
The Ghanaians vowed they had turned the page but they need to check with Rawlings’ shrink because last Thursday, Ghanaians trickled out with banners to challenge their government to improve on power supply and to tackle institutionalized corruption. One had thought Ghana had finally crossed the Rubicon as far as electricity and corruption were concerned. Let us hope that Rawlings, who turns 69 in April does not find himself holding the broom attempting to sweep clean his nation like General Buhari is poised to do.
Until elections induced an uncommon dynamism and redefinition of basic terms in Naija’s ruining party, there was only stealing? My president questioned the validity of the professorship of Wole Soyinka, Pius Adesanmi, Farooq Kperogi and Okey Ndibe for not being able to differentiate between common stealing and the C-word? The grammarians defended their degrees to the extent that by the last presidential charade, President Jones had improved on definition of terms. By it, if you found ‘ole’ shout out loud!
Now things are looking up. I mean this week alone, Madam Dankwali our querulous prime minister agreed with Charles Soludo that there is stealing in the evil service. The only departure point is who is doing the stealing. She sees ghosts, but Soludo swears by his designer suits that it is done in high places and under her very nose. To show that she is a ghost-buster, madam prime minister announced in church (as usual) that she has snatched N208.7 billion from the masticating mandibles of the ghosts before they could vanish into Jonestown where they are yet to get the new memo that stealing is corruption.
The difficult part of this yarn is how 63,000 ghosts could pass undetected in an atmosphere sanitized with Ayo Oritsejafor’s Jerusalem holy water. The ruining party must look for another exorcist because this one is not working. In February 2013, the duo of Yerima Ngama and quondam Labaran Maku discovered 45,000 ghosts in the evil service who leaked off N100 billion from the common till. If you do the maths, then you might find it difficult to ignore Soludo. What more, you may disagree with those who asked us to nominate Madam for the 2015 Nobel Prize for Economic Mismanagement because evidently, neither Norton, Kaspersky nor McAfee could tame this recurring ghost virus for three years running. The government introduced GIFMIS the ghosts think it means – give me.
If we were as sharp as Soludo’s suits, we should not be waiting for General Buhari’s brooms to catch at least a few of these ghosts and as scripture commands us – make a public show of them. But then, I tend to forget that Madam had complained that the institutions for fighting corruption are weak. If 108,000 ghosts were blocked in three years, how many are still hiding under the umblera? Like Emir Sanusi before him, it looks like Soludo’s mathematics is wrong, he counted N30 trillion, but Madam found only N308.7 billion in three years. The devil, like Sanusi’s $20 billion and the forensic audit revelation of $1.48 billion is in the details.
Over the weekend, Buhari went to London, which runs ghost-bursting stories on national television with authentic ghost busters. Let us hope he brings back the original antivirus, the kill-and-dry and authentic holy water needed to stop ghosts from feasting on children’s dinners. Who knows, Pastor Osinbajo’s holy water may work better transforming ghosts to purgatory than the invocations of the presidential bishops puking on their N7 billion gift and unfazed about exorcism.
In the meantime, one does not know better than an old soldier that attack is the best form of defence. Having foreknowledge of his impending exorcism from the sinking ship of the ruining party, the wily fox of Ota pre-empted exile in political Siberia by having his membership card torn before cameras. That action redefined the tenuous nature of stomach-infrastructure-induced-loyalty as the vultures in Arsehole Rock descended on the waning reputation of their former boss. These are awesome times to be a passenger in late Bola Ige’s Siddon Look boat.