Stop trying Canada corruption can’t grow on ice

By now most readers know that I squat in Canada. That means, as Sai Baba would’ve put it in 1983, I have no other country I could call my own except Naija. I wear my citizenship badge with utmost pride and honour. As a good guest, I tend not to criticise my hosts needlessly as […]

By now most readers know that I squat in Canada. That means, as Sai Baba would’ve put it in 1983, I have no other country I could call my own except Naija. I wear my citizenship badge with utmost pride and honour. As a good guest, I tend not to criticise my hosts needlessly as I would my own leaders. If a host’s manners offend you, courtesy demands that you leave their shores before reproving them. It’s pure table manners. Maybe someday if Canada treats me nasty and I leave, I might pluck up the needed courage to say what I really think of working in minus 40 degrees with the wind chill!  
Canada, a developed nation doesn’t flaunt it’s status with the skyscrapers associated with New York City or Chicago, except of course you’re in downtown Toronto. Its politicians have no sense of self-importance. They debase political office by travelling on public transport. I have sat on the same seat with uniformed army generals on OcTranspo observing that they have no armed ADC! It tells me it’s better to be a rover scout with whip-wielding cubs than be a Canadian general.
Canada’s prime minister rolls his sleeve to welcome refugees, bumps into people at parks and walking trails. Pretty much like catching Mark Zuckerberg jogging on Lekki Bridge. How could anyone debase political office like that? Nobody should ever ask a Naija politician to start behaving like that. Our rulers and ruiners need protection from the social and environmental dangers that their official nonchalance has created. They need to be insulated from the vicissitudes of the life reserved for us, the Joneses. 
Canadian politicians have no immunity from prosecution. They are so dumb they cannot even arrogate to themselves the Naija concept of impunity. Not long ago, a serving Senator Mike Duffy was accused of false claims. He ‘borrowed’ to pay back the money, yet he was promptly suspended from office as his trial began. At his trial not a single colleague went to court in solidarity. No member of his immediate or associated constituency protested. No youths threatened to blow up the Alberta pipeline in solidarity retaliation, none carried a placard shouting ‘live our sinnator alone’. Today, Duffy is cleared, but his reputation is in tatters. Canadian politicians have no clue about how to raise their political profile using scandals as a ladder. 
Justin Trudeau is barely one year in office but a scandal is threatening to wrinkle his baby face. He hit the ground running after elections appointing a lean cabinet of equal males and females. To wailers squealing haram, he had a ready answer – because it is 2015! Now it’s turned out he hired a female Chief of Staff. I used to think that one needed a Hulk Hogan frame to be COS until bulldozer Nasir el-Rufai broke the rules in Kaduna and earned the nickname, Bishop. Alhamdulillah, Sai Baba relieved him of that tag.
It so happened that two of Trudeau’s official staff was ‘recruited’ from Toronto to work in Ottawa, a distance of 450 kilometers by road. The duo was paid $200,000 as moving expenses according to laid-down rules. This is less than what it would have cost Sai Baba’s entourage to shop after the last UN outing until Garba Shehu proves otherwise. Somehow someone ratted on them and public opinion tried to plant the seed of a scandal on ice. Mind you, these guys simply collected legitimate entitlements, but Canadians felt scandalized that anybody would accept such payments. They argued that Trudeau promised to change the way things were done in Ottawa and that his aides should first embrace the change.
To an amused guest like me, whose psyche is fed to mortal obesity by political sleaze, I was amused. But these poor chaps have offered to pay back nearly $50,000 in ‘personal cash pay-outs and incidentals’. Read part of their statement: “We know that some people will think that any amount for relocation is unreasonable, and that there never should have been such a policy in the first place. For our part, we want to make sure that our friends and families know we followed a policy that has been in place for decades, and will only be reimbursed for the hard costs of our families making the move. We take full responsibility for this having happened and because of that, we are sorry.”
Canadian parliamentarians had badgered their PM on the issue, arguing, “With so many Canadians struggling for work, how can the prime minister possibly justify these incredible pay-outs?” The PM apologised and promised to review the old rules, which gave the said officials their ‘bloated’ entitlements.
Poor Trudeau, he couldn’t hire a Garba Shehu or a Femi Adesina. Naija shouted hoarse when it learnt its indolent sinnators with uncommon conscience were to be given brand-new SUVs. My Supreme Court-appointed governor recently took a loan to buy Kogi lawmakers’ brand new ‘jeeps’. Oh Sai Baba, please tell Canadians to stop attempting to grow corruption on snow, soil experts say it won’t germinate!