TRIBUNE
SAM NWAOKO
Betta Edu, Sadiya Umar-Farouq and Halima Shehu are the reigning women in our confused faces today. They, however, have an Okanlawon – what the Ibeku people of Umuahia call Odawai. His name is Mr. Olubunmi Tunji Ojo. They remind one of St. Augustine. The great scholar and doctor of the Church advises: “Take care of your body as if you will live forever. Take care of your soul as if you will die tomorrow.” This timeless suasion from a man who graciously escaped from the vale of debauchery, gives each reader their differing vibes. However, it is used here to drive home the point that in the end, there is nothing more important than one’s soul. From their available public photographs, our today’s queens are all fair in complexion and they have also been adjudged as not being fair and upright. They are neither fair to Nigeria nor to Nigerians in their official financial dealings.
By most current public estimations about them, these women have rather concentrated so much on their bodies and their aesthetics that they have forgotten that they have souls. Because of the financial scandals that have soiled their hands and smeared their names, they have suddenly turned to abhorrable objects through which dutiful, hardworking, beautiful but fair women are judged. When the hunter lumps his games together, the squirrel can enjoy the privilege of placing his leg on the antelope. Indeed, these women have made many to drag the contentions in the financial scandals rocking the Nigerian Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation to so jejune a level that they are even calling fair women names! My grandmother was a fair woman indeed, I was told. She was a hardworking farmer that celebrated Uju Edè. She was among the few who achieved that farming feat in Ikwuano in her era. Beyond this, she was said to be a member of the inner caucus of the team which planned the 1929 Aba Women Riots. She was fair and wanted a fair deal for the womenfolk. This is unlike what Madam Edu, Hajia Farouq and Hajia Shehu have turned fairness to.
The pouring rain has forced the pigeon and the chicken to roost in the same shelter and for these unfair ones; we have relegated the efforts of our heroes past who were women of good repute. For a moment, it is easy to forget the valiance of my grandmother’s boss, Mrs. Margaret Ekpo and Chief Funmilayo Ransom Kuti in our society-economic. In our anger, we seem to have also relegated the thought that women like Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Dr. Amina Muhammed, Professor Dora Akunyili, Obiageli Ezekwesili all served as ministers in this nation not long ago. The blitz now is around the women of the Humanitarian Ministry, and it’s so very uncomfortable now. The women have become some sort of social pariahs and their friends now look askance at them.
These women would have their days in court hopefully. For Edu, who, so far is the face of the whole saga, some gurus, who have the power to identify the pregnancy of a snail in its shell, have been arguing that she actually did nothing wrong. It is their contention that Edu only committed the error of paying money into a private bank account. We await the arguments of the wise men in the camp of Farouq and Shehu and the others, including the performing Minister of Interior, Mr. Olubunmi Tunji Ojo, the okanlawon of the current saga.
Ojo is said to be a paddy-paddy with the embattled Betta Edu. However, not many might be able to pin point when the ‘consultancy’ interactions that resulted in the N438million payment took root. Tunji Ojo is not far from our memory because of the “Honourable it’s okay, off your mic!” saga that involved the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio. Our effervescent ‘pastor’ Godswill Akpabio was the Minister of the Niger Delta who was seemingly trapped and was at the mercy of the House Committee on Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) headed by Tunji Ojo. Akpabio was in the eye of the storm but he seized the moment and turned the tables against the Ojo-led committee. He did it so well that the committee beat a hasty retreat.
Akpabio was simply like Courtney Hadwin or Faith Ifil or even Malakai Bayoh – contestants at the America/British Got Talent shows who simply turned up at their auditions. Akpabio knew that the committee probing the finances of the Niger Delta Ministry under which we have the NDDC might throw him under the bus. He also didn’t want to end up like Professor Daniel Pondei who ‘collapsed’ at the hearing in a most dramatic manner. So, like the contestants at the big stage, he took his chance. Akpabio fingered chairmen of committees in the National Assembly as being among those that got favours (more like his new era “prayers”) from the NDDC. He was ready to call names but the House committee literally begged him to say no more and switch off his microphone (“off you mic”). We have tucked that incident away in our memories and have refused to look at where the rain started to beat us.
Tunji Ojo appears in the same mould and of that man who got the UK media abuzz in February last year whe it was reported that he was out to pay £90 million to buy Sheffield United Football Club. His name is Dozy Mmobuosi. He came smooth and suave, but it’s all like the traditional mattress… The Timutimu they say Timutimu k’egbin da s’inu – the mattress is stuffed by all manners of rubbish.
Tunji Ojo as a minister has put up a performance. He showed up at the ministry and his magic at the passport section of the Ministry of Interior has placed his ahead of his peers in the Tinubu cabinet. Nigerians, who have been suffering untold hardship in that aspect of our national life since Buhari and Aregbesola, have felt a sweet relief. He became a hero and a star member of federal government. Would it not occur to some of us that Tunji Ojo and the heap of accolades could be a source of envy and jealousy among his colleagues in the cabinet? From the way we had been praising Tunji Ojo it’s not out of place for the other ministers to now be laughing really very hard at our collective ignorance.
While we fret, jostle and shuffle, we must ask ourselves where Bridget Mojisola Oniyelu is in the whole saga. Her bank account received the Betta Edu money and every relevant stakeholder has said this was a wrong move. What has been said in her defence is that she is the leader of the funds disbursement department of the ministry and could receive such amount by hand. Okay. But this should be made official through her appearance and formal explanations. Where are the other concerned civil servants in the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation? The Permanent Secretary in that sleazy Ministry, Abel Olumuyiwa Enitan, is still there after he allegedly wanted to leave the ministry? Mr. Enitan must have miraculously swum through the river without getting drenched. He has been isolated like an island and is now given the keys to the ministry to continue as its overseer.
All the necessary people must be made to tell Nigerians what happened, and this should not be the Edu gang alone. The suspension of N-Power, the Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, the Conditional Cash Transfer and the other debased schemes designed for the poor in the country is not enough. President Bola Tinubu must follow through with the probe of how these schemes ran. This probe must also help Nigerians to know what really happened in 2020 when the government fed school children who were not going to school due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The probe must also go as far as assuaging those hugely disappointed Nigerians , especially youths, whose hopes in the N-Power programme fell flat from the height of expectation.
THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN TRIBUNE
