Invited by EFCC

However, the one decampee that upsets ESUP leaders the most is Sabon Shago, the local boxing champion of Tafki State. His decamping infuriated Government House and Goshin Bauna more than that of the other people because he is going to add colour to our rallies. Sabon Shago is so popular with local folks all over […]

However, the one decampee that upsets ESUP leaders the most is Sabon Shago, the local boxing champion of Tafki State. His decamping infuriated Government House and Goshin Bauna more than that of the other people because he is going to add colour to our rallies. Sabon Shago is so popular with local folks all over Tafki State and beyond that the police once asked him to stop going to the market on Fridays lest he causes a stampede.
You can imagine my excitement when I got up very early that morning and began preparing to go to Korama, which is only 30kms away from Birnin Tafki. Unknown to us, ESUP people had arranged a special sabotage for the day. As I stepped out of my house three hefty looking men briskly walked in and handed to me a sheet of paper. They walked in freely because members of my campaign’s Youth Wing had already left for Korama. I looked at the paper they gave me; it was an invitation by EFCC. I asked them what it was all about but they said they did not know, that I should follow them to their office and find out.
When we got to EFCC’s state office, the officer in charge showed me an envelope containing some vouchers and memos. I recognised my signature on some of the memos. The vouchers were more than ten years old, since when I was an assistant director in the Federal Ministry of Works. The officer said they received a complaint from FMOW that the goods paid for by those vouchers were never supplied. I lost my temper and said, “Officer, is it now, after ten years that you discovered that the goods were not supplied? What were the store officer and the auditor doing for ten years that they never reported this until now, when I even rose to become a director in the civil service and retired from service three years ago?”
I realised that this was a ploy by Government House and ESUP to stop me from addressing my rally at Korama and receiving decampees. I said I will not say anything until they bring my lawyer so they took me to one small room and said I should wait for the lawyer’s arrival. When members of my Youth Wing heard that I was in detention they abandoned the rally ground in Korama, jumped into their buses and sped back to Birnin Tafki. They drove so recklessly that they nearly caused an accident. They arrived just when the EFCC agents brought me out to the hallway ostensibly to see my lawyer. Before they brought me out several agents wore red vests with “EFCC” emblazoned on it. The plan was for them to surround me while pressmen take pictures, so that the photos will then be widely circulated to show that I am a crook.
As Maitawaye and his boys approached the EFCC office they saw a Government House Coaster bus marked “Press Crew.” Inside it were reporters from NTA, FRCN, VON, NAN, the state owned Muryar Tafki radio, Tafki Television and a reporter from one rag sheet called Tafki Herald. They surrounded the bus and smashed its glasses. The reporters jumped out through the windows and left their cameras and recorders there, which were later brought to our office. EFCC hurriedly granted me bail on self recognition.
That evening Muryar Tafki radio announced that the police declared five of my key supporters wanted including Maitawaye, Maikahon Karo, Tsinin Kusa, Haruna Anbuga Anbarka and even Sabon Shago. The five of them went into hiding, thus scattering all our last minute campaign plans. Maikahon Karo managed to smuggle a note to me that he took refuge in a brothel and was writing from under a prostitute’s bed. That made his normally illegible writing even less legible.
Tsinin Kusa ran away to Kwankobilo and took refuge with Boka Maikunkeli, the most powerful witch doctor in Tafki State. ESUP spies told the DPO where he was hiding and he sent five detectives to arrest him. When Maikunkeli saw them coming, he put Tsinin Kusa inside a hut made of buffalo bones and roofed with hyena intestines. He said whoever approaches the hut will turn into hyena. The police detectives stopped far away and their leader, an inspector, ordered the corporal to enter. The corporal loudly protested that he has a wife and many children and did not want to become a hyena. Maikunkeli stood up and began chanting incantations and all five detectives took to their heels.
We settled Maikunkeli very well and he solved the whole problem for me. He called a man called Audun Baga, who is his liaison man with Goshin Bauna. The witch doctor told Audun Baga to go and tell Goshin Bauna that if EFCC did not drop the charge against me and if police did not cancel the declaration of my men as wanted, Goshin Bauna will wake up tomorrow and be chased by a hyena. The coward that he is, Goshin Bauna run to Government House in his pyjamas and got His Excellency to stop the cases against me and my men.
The next morning all my top campaign aides reported in my living room. Haruna Anbuga Anbarka turned up with a large bandage on his hand. We were alarmed and asked him what happened. “Did the police beat you?” Anbuga said no, it was his wife who did it. When the wife heard that Anbuga was in hiding, she became suspicious given his record as a chronic womaniser. He told his wife that he was hiding in a mechanic’s garage but she took two of her male cousins at midnight and located his girlfriend’s house. They found Anbuga lying on a large mattress, with food and drinks all around him. The girl was massaging his feet, saying he suffered that day running away from policemen. Anbuga dived from the mattress and tripped over a bucket of water just as the large stick his wife was wielding landed on his shoulder.