Dear Dr Saraki,
I have followed, with keen interest, your ongoing trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal on alleged offences bordering on 1) false declaration of assets, 2) illegal acquisition of wealth 3) embezzlement of public funds 4) and other financial and public illegalities. I have also taken the pains to keep abreast the comments, remarks and the exchange between you and Mr Dele Momodu. I find interesting and I wish to address the issues arising therefrom.
Let me state here that as of today, I am not a card carrying member of any political party in Nigeria and certainly, not in other country unlike many of your colleagues in the political and economic class that are more or less political prostitutes. I will come back to that in due course as you alleged that your trail, which is persecution to you, is politically motivated. So I am independent and objective, not out to crucify you. It is also important that you and I agree on some grounds so as to understand each other.
I know for a fact that you are a good disciple of Hobbesian politics and Machiavellian tactics, hence I won’t ask you about honour and integrity, especially where it concerns your ambition and public fund. Am not condemning you, you just a reflection of the average Nigerian politician who can kill, maim and destroy to access power. Your political life from your Kwara days attest to this fact. To drive home this point, why and how come you, through the instrumentality of State House of Assembly, give yourself pension for life, while still drawing salary and allowances, while you are still a senator? What legal, social and political rights do you have to do this? Has it not occurred to you and your kind, including Babatunde Fashola, Akpabio, and Ameachi among others collecting pension while drawing salaries from the same Nigerian State, that you cannot be collecting two or more fat salaries in a country where the minimum wage is less than 20,000 thousand naira? Your tendency to appear benevolent, as many looters of the Nigerian treasury do, after stealing public fund through various means, cannot wash with many in the society as they feel they are getting back their common patrimony from those who stole it in the first place. Of course, it doesn’t occur to you and your kind that your stealing, alleged and real, creates, aggravate and perpetuate poverty and inequality. I just want you to note this as appealing to your morality and conscience is an exercise in futility and an argumentum ad misericordiam. Nigerians do not need any man to steal their wealth and redistribute to a few in the society to appear godly and kind. The State has mechanisms to do this very well.
You will also agree with me that that you have made efforts to thwart and truncate your trial citing several technical issues. Why don’t you just face the trial and disprove those allegations. Why for example, did you not declare those properties? Where and how did you get them and those monies? What work and business did you do to acquire those businesses and monies? Instead of running from pillar to post, why don’t you just explain the sources of your wealth and money? Or is it that you have been trading on the Nigerian State by crude accumulation of its wealth? If a man is bold enough to steal, he should also be bold enough to face the public and the law courts to own up or otherwise prove his innocence.
This brings me to Mr Momodu’s letter and your reply. In your response, your raise several grounds relating to your trial and why you feel you are being persecuted. Dear Dr Saraki, instead of calling names, what is so hard to defend your name and disprove the allegations? On second thought, I sympathise with your sentiments. Heya. Pele. You alleged that you won’t have been on trial if not for the senate presidency and your opposition to muslim muslim ticket that offended the powers that be. Maybe you don’t know or pretend not to know, Nigerians know that most politicians are thieves and hardly do anything in the public interest and that includes your trial. Of course we know that many of you have stolen us blind through various schemes, including Halliburton, Siemens, Governors’ Life Pension, and Lagos Web design and Borehole contract scandals among others. I know how aggrieved you feel considering many of your comrades did the same thing you have done and nobody has brought them to book and commit them to jail. In a sane society where Mr James Ibori lives presently, many of your comrades and perhaps you, would be the guest of the prison warders. No wonder that many of your type including you, even though you have dual citizenship, would rather stay in Nigeria, than in Britain you country of birth. Most of you and your type knows the state is weak in Nigeria and you can steal/do anything and get away with it. For now, your secrets will be blown open and may likely pay a price but a time is coming when Nigeria and Nigerians will demand the source(s) of your wealth. Absence of sanctions has emboldened many of you to steal without compunction. Haba! The fact that many has not been caught due to the pervading poverty of morals, decency, integrity and stomach do not deviate from the fact that the evidence of continuous stealing is staring us all in the face.
To compound your issues Dear Dr Saraki is the fact that you have been mentioned in Panama papers. Your clarification and rebuttal on the issue has not done you any justice. You are a young man. How and where did you come about such slush fund? Which and what work and business has your wife done to possess such huge fund stashed away from prying eyes? If you love Nigeria as you claimed, and the money is not stolen public fund; why did you take the money away from Nigeria to avoid detection and taxation? You will agree with me that your hands have not been clean and you have too many shady deals involving Nigerian public fund.
Lastly, Dr Saraki, is the mob mentality you referred to in your reply. The average is Nigerian is hungry and angry. They are quite aware how their monies is being spent on the least productive segment of the Nigerian society, that is, the National Assembly. They are aware that in the face of grinding poverty, your senate has recently purchased luxurious SUVs inspite that each of you have collected vehicle allowance running into millions of naira. That is, in black and white, official corruption, yet the state and its agencies keep looking the other way. RMAC has become moribund and a puppet and pretends not to notice the parlous state of the Nigerian Economy. Such useless State institutions that has become dysfunctional and serves only interest of the elites should be disbanded. To protect their jobs, those in RMAC would keep mute and appear hapless. So unlike you, many Nigerians are angry that what should translate to them in form of good roads, constant electricity, law and order are absent from their daily lives. So they are aggrieved and angry as many can only dream of such public amenities and your SUVs but cannot buy/ride them as you and your kind have denied them that opportunity by your avarice, which you as the face of the political class represents. If you are looking for sympathy, you are likely to get none. Go and face your trial biko. We need to make this country great. We can’t afford people stealing our money. Nigeria deserves better managers than you.
Best Wishes from me on your trial.
Olugbemiga Afolabi (PHD)
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