PUNCH
Anti-graft agency Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is taunting us with another emotional roller-coaster. They are asking us to join them in navel-gazing over another sensational case of thievery by a politician. We will do that for weeks (or months) and nothing else. Meanwhile, the said politician will be rehabilitated—probably appointed to a crucial position—in contempt of their ongoing case with the EFCC. One needs not be clairvoyant to say the latest graft case, involving ex-Kogi governor Yahaya Bello, is another ploy by the EFCC to titillate a public that still allows itself to be amused by jokes that lack a punchline. We have been here before (many times) and we know how this ruse ends: they will siphon emotion out of the public and eventually leave everyone hanging. No closure, nothing!
The most sensational of the allegations against Bello says he grifted almost a million dollars of public funds to pay his children’s school fees. Virtually every commentator has made this revelation the focus of their outrage. Bello, of course, stridently denies the accusation. What he failed to explain was how he managed to procure that much money and why he felt the urgency to pay for the length of his children’s school years. Who does that if not a man who wanted to exploit an unaccountable source of funds while he still had access to it?
Like other Nigerian politicians who dish out photos of their children graduating from schools abroad for poor Nigerians to gawk at, Bello also took his children out of the disaster zone called the Kogi State public schools and tucked them where the Nigerian decay has not touched. Despite claiming to be a poor herdsman with a mere 150 cows, former President Muhammadu Buhari too educated his children abroad. His mendacious yet witless aide, Femi Adesina, claimed Buhari sold his houses to afford the expense. Those children will grow up holding up their noses at the poor Nigerian masses, conveniently forgetting those were the same people their parasitic parents robbed to give them their lives.
That said, I struggled to understand the sensation around Bello’s case. Why did his case excite anyone, given that his actions are pretty standard? What is the difference between what he allegedly did and the “Bola Tinubu model” of using the state legislature to pass a bill that will pay an ex-governor humongous pension? Tinubu was the first governor who got the state legislature to grant him hefty amounts of money as pension, effectively tying the state’s destiny to his pockets. That model has been replicated by other greedy ex-governors without intentions of weaning themselves from the public purse. Bello too could have used the state Assembly to pass a bill paying his children’s school fees but he chose to be savage. The cynical part of me thinks that is the only sin he committed. If, after all these years, he did not learn to eat public funds with the finesse with which the old masters do it, he deserves to be disgraced.
The difference between Bello’s alleged crime and his ex-governor counterparts who granted themselves stupendous pension is the gap between eating oily yam with your fingers and using silverware. One makes you look primitive, while the other allows you the illusion of being civilised. I am sincerely confused by the morality of Tinubu’s supporters yelling at Bello. Would your opinion of him have been any different if he had instead set up a company called AlphaDelta Gamma and used it to achieve the same purpose? Sincerely, Bello’s only sin is his barbarity.
