While you were away, Mr President

While you were away Baba Buhari, corruption and corrupt elements had continued to charge at us. There was no let-up in the dreadful campaign of self-destruction by the new face of corruption: the Niger Delta Avengers. These criminal elements of Ijaw extraction have continued to blow up oil wells, gas and crude oil pipelines in […]

While you were away Baba Buhari, corruption and corrupt elements had continued to charge at us. There was no let-up in the dreadful campaign of self-destruction by the new face of corruption: the Niger Delta Avengers. These criminal elements of Ijaw extraction have continued to blow up oil wells, gas and crude oil pipelines in their determined bid to sabotage your government. With every passing day, it has continued to dawn on Nigerians that much as they try to stymie your government, they have also invariably brought suffering on their own people. Their campaign of destruction of national oil assets has worsened the environmental conditions in Niger Delta such that the money that could have been disbursed for some other development purposes will now be used to remediate the fresh new oil pollution that they have brought on their land. Somebody sent me a cartoon that aptly describes the horrible situation. In the cartoon, someone is seen cutting down a tree in his house simply because he doesn’t want his neighbours to pick its fruits. How much more asinine can a reasoning be!
In the bid to widen their wicked acts, last week the avengers claimed responsibility for the explosion of a NNPC pipeline in Akwa Ibom State.  It is remarkable that important voices in both Akwa Ibom and Cross River states have stoutly dissociated themselves from the evil acts of the avengers. An Ijaw man has just served as the country’s President for six years, but his kinsmen are still crying of domination and in their paralysed reasoning, only a Niger Delta Republic can free them. However, they fail to understand that in a multi-ethnic region like theirs, others cannot accept a Niger Delta Republic dominated by the Ijaws. More and more people believe that Government Ekpemuopulo, alias Tompolo, is in bed with the avengers to stave off corruption charges against him and his fellow dealers.
Dr Ibe Kachikwu, MD NNPC and Minister of State, Petroleum, had been making frantic efforts to establish contact with the misguided avengers and even though he was said to have met their representatives in Delta State Government House (just imagine!), the militants said it wasn’t them and that Kachikwu had been conned!
Elsewhere, Magu had been doing a very good job. Erstwhile Governor of Adamawa State, His Excellency James Bala Ngilari had been so grilled by EFCC that he fell sick! Ngilari has reportedly been hospitalised at a hospital in Gombe. Dikko Inde, the ex-Customs Comptroller General has  finally been located and the EFCC is now asking him to explain the kind of hard work that he put up in this life that earned him N2 billion to build the kind of house he allegedly owns at No. 1 Audu Ogbe Street, Jabi,  Abuja. Baba Buhari, obviously, there is something nerve-wracking about your anti-corruption fight because Inde has also fallen sick! He has now joined the long list of alleged yam eaters that are ill; Col Sambo Dasuki (rtd), Dr Bello Haliru Muhammed, Olisa Metuh, Ziakede Patrick Akpobolokemi, etc.
Elsewhere, I suppose there are a few other things the Senate is experimenting with that will not also go down well with you. The Senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria continue to indicate that they can only be led by Dr Olubukola Saraki, no matter how tainted! At a 2-day retreat by the so called Senate Adhoc committee on Constitution Review held in Lagos, the Senators again voted in favour of the strange idea that the Senate President and his deputy be conferred with immunity to help Saraki and Ekweremadu keep their jobs because as the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), must have informed you, the Police have concluded their investigations into the alleged fantastic forgery of the 2011 Senate rules. There is apprehension on the part of the Senate leadership as the federal government gets set to arraign the duo along with former Clerk, Alhaji Salisu Maikasuwa and his deputy, to explain where they came by the rules with which the current Senate leadership was elected.
Also after failing to amend the Code of Conduct Tribunal Act to shield the Senate President from criminal prosecution, the Senate now wants life pension for national assembly leadership. They also want to strip the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of the power of assent over whatever constitutional amendments they make.
Always defending a selfish and sinister motive, Deputy Senate President Ekweremadu supplied the futile and puerile logic:  “This has nothing to do with an individual. It is about the institution. Let us not politicise it. Nobody elected the Chief Justice of Nigeria but he enjoys pension. But if we cheapen our own institution, so be it. Let us not make this a personal thing.”
I know you are not in any way troubled by the bluster coming out of the Senate regarding the case of forgery filed against its leadership; people have been alleged to forge a document, if they say they have not committed forgery, they should go to court and prove it.
It is doubtful if Saraki will be able to surmount all of the legal odds against him, so he badly needs immunity! Thank God, Ibrahim Magu has just disclosed that his commission has concluded investigations into the Nigerian end of the Panama Papers scandal. In all probability, Saraki will have to again put up another legal defence in another court regarding his place in the Panama Papers.
Everywhere, corruption assails us, Mr President. The Senators are not legislating against the suffering of the people of this country; they are legislating for their own gluttony.