THese must be uneasy times for public officials.
In Nigeria, nothing succeeds like public service. It transforms those who were only yesterday struggling with the rent or mortgage into owners of choice property in some of the nation’s swankiest neighbouhoods and in the most sought-after sections of the business district.
But now, they can no longer find refuge in the example of the one who “didn’t give a damn” about declaring his assets, acquired for the most part if not wholly through public service.
The new man gives a damn, and has vowed to ensure that everyone on his team gives a damn. If you are already inside and don’t give a damn, start packing up. But remember that you may still be summoned to explain long after you are gone.
If you are outside and looking to go in, you must belong unquestionably in the ranks of those who give a damn. Otherwise, perish the thought. You are much safer where you are, unless some past entanglements of the shady kind that you have long forgotten suddenly bobs up.
In this season of startling disclosures stemming from principle or malevolence and everything in between, propelled by so-called social media that thrive on rumour and gossip and high scandal, who can vouch that such entanglements will not be exhumed and thrust into the public arena?
Few developments are more indicative of these unsettling times than the recent raid on the hallowed premises of the Government House Complex in Uyo, Akwa Ibom, by operatives of the Department of State Security, following a tip-off by disaffected insiders. There, the officials said, they found a quantity of arms and Improvised Explosive Devices — fancy name for dirty roadside bombs.
Not quite a stockpile of munitions, to be sure. But they found something much more tantalising – bundle upon bundle upon bundle of U. S. 100 dollar bills stacked up in one awe-inspiring heap. So overawed were the DSS operatives that they could not immediately find a word for the spectacle. So, they called it a stockpile
Call it whatever you will: the lesson is clear. There is nowhere to hide again. There is no place to hide anymore. No sanctuary even in the Presidential Lodge of a Government House Complex. What is the country coming to?
If you can’t put money away in the banks because of tighter regulations and can’t put stuff in the Governor’s Lodge because of all those aides who won’t mind their own business and you cannot store it in the Presidential Lodge without the intrusive DSS barging in just like that, and all this because you are a so-called public official, you have to ask, pardon the cliché, whether the game is worth the candle.
All this drama was taking place as the former lord of the manor, who has not formally handed it over to his handpicked successor, was fighting for his life in a British hospital, following injuries he suffered when his car collided with a U.S. Embassy car as he was rushing to the airport to catch a flight to visit his family in America.
Instead of wishing him a quick and complete recovery, many of those he served to the best of his ability for eight years – the same people who were forever trumpeting the “uncommon transformation”he wrought in Uyo – unlike his contemporary, former President Goodluck Jonathan, who could not effect transformation of the common kind – were taunting him. Unfeeling ingrates, all.
Why, they are asking, why did he not check into the world-class hospital he said he had built in Uyo – a facility that is at par with, if not superior to, any other anywhere in the world, equipped to handle every ailment and every emergency, one designed to serve as the final destination for medical tourists in Africa and the wider world?
A chopper could have ferried him right to the helipad atop the facility in a fraction of the time and the cost of flying him to the UK, and saved him all the pain and discomfort.
They have been asking: Has he no faith in the world-class hospital that is one of his signature achievements?
Governor Godswill Akpabio deserves the benefit of the doubt on this one. Surely, he must know what works best, unlike his misguided critics.
But these are definitively times out of joint.
So far, only President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo have given the public a glimpse of their assets. And if what I am hearing about the twain in this respect is anything to go by, public office just lost its allure.
Why submit yourself to it when everyone knows your net worth, when you cannot create the illusion of affluence nor feign penury, and when importuning relatives and acquaintances you’ve been fobbing off with disingenuous excuses now have proof you could be much more supportive if you were not such a skinflint?
I have with my own ears heard people ask: What is Buhari doing with 270 cows and four cars and several homes and a bank deposit close to N30 million, given his ascetic lifestyle? He doesn’t need all that stuff, especially now that he has become a ward of the Nigerian state. Why doesn’t he give it all to his adoring talakawa?
Would they have idolised him so much if they knew that, for all practical purposes, he was not one of them, merely one who empathises with them? And now that they know his net worth, would they still hold him in high adoration?
Henceforth, Buhari can expect to be bombarded with requests for financial and material assistance from his personal abundance by supplicants who now believe with growing confidence that he will have to find an excuse other than insolvency for not meeting their requests.
If they cannot get to him directly, they will harass his relations in Daura, who will in turn harass him. If the Daura people cannot get to him directly, they will harass the First Lady, who will pass on the message and perhaps even do a little harassing of her own so as to get them off her back.
I do not envy Osinbajo, in the least. With almost a million dollars, plus close to N100 million in liquid cash, not counting homes in the UK and in the most opulent neighbourhoods in Lagos, his place is now assured, in the popular consciousness at least, in the ranks of persons of great wealth.
Nobody will be fooled by those nondescript suits of which he is so fond, a carryover perhaps from his days as a law professor, nor by the modesty that becomes him so well. He has money in the bank, and he will now be judged by how readily he is willing to share it with those who assert a claim to his estate, rightly or wrongly.
If a relation wants him to help put a marbled roof on an uncompleted bungalow, and another wants him to assume responsibility for tuition and fees for a distant cousin who has just gained admission to the University of Saskatchewan for a Master’s degree in Advanced Eskimo Studies, and yet another relation wants him to foot the bill for hip replacement surgery in Brazil, he cannot now decline without being judged positively heartless, what with all those millions.
You now know why everyone is rooting for public officials to declare their assets publicly – everyone, that is, except those who have something to declare. Those who have nothing to declare are lying in wait with sharpened knives to carve out their own piece of the action.
That is why the embattled Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, has stated for the record that under no circumstance will he make a public declaration of his assets.
Can you blame him?
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