By Josef Omorotionmwan
Please, follow today’s piece with sympathy for a country called Nigeria: For stealing N23 billion from the Police Pension Fund, Yusufu walks our streets today in full freedom, having paid the fine of N750, 000 (0.003% of his loot); for allegedly mismanaging (perhaps a clear euphemism for stealing) close to N200 billion of Customs, Immigration and Prisons Pension funds, Maina has been officially provided a safety valve within which to escape to foreign lands to enjoy his loot; and for stealing an old Mitsubishi bus, Citizen Onwe has been admitted to Asaba Prison for 50 years without any option of fine.

Many of the owners of the pension money have died while waiting for their payment. What better proof does anyone need that the labour of our heroes past is already in vain and hopelessly so? For all we know, God is not a Nigerian and He is not given to hypocrisy!

The rest of this piece is dedicated to supplying the meat to the above skeleton. Only those interested in details should proceed further.

When Yakubu Yusufu boldly asserted that he “stole only N23 billion”, he certainly knew what he was talking about. We now have preponderant evidence that N23 billion was a small drop in the bucket. We are not in a hurry to forget the entire imbroglio that surrounded the fuel subsidy removal of January 1, 2012, which enveloped the entire nation in a wild cat strike, leading to the further loss of billions of Naira in man-hour to the national economy.

After all the theatricals around all these thievery, one is tempted to believe the theory currently making the rounds that those engaged in stealing huge sums with impunity may not be the real owners of the loots.     Anyone who heaves an entire treasury may be acting as a mere front for his principal whose duty it is to ensure that the petty agents remain tightly protected.

Why else would we pretend to be fighting corruption and at the same time be seen to be shielding corrupt officials? It happens all the time. We have virtually become a nation of endless probes and inquiries; and a government of committees and panels. These bodies begin at the crest of very popular acclaim but as they progress, men go to work, looking for how to ambush them. The grand design is on how to hijack them, remove all their biting teeth and render them totally impotent. If by accident the probes slip through, there will be enough containment plans to consign their reports to the waste basket.

Without going far into ancient history, we recall the Elumelu-led power probe of the House of Representatives which was apparently progressing smoothly until the principals and their agents moved in and we started engineering the engineer, leaving his engine.

In the case of the oil subsidy probe, a witch cried all night and in the morning, a baby died. We didn’t have to search too far for the cause of the baby’s death.

The 2011 general elections were perhaps highly capital intensive. We realised too late that the money had to come from some extra-budgetary source. In the process, we may have paid oil subsidies to friends and fronts who did not import a single drop of oil. The subsidy probe report revealed that much.

But it is a natural law that a man cannot be washing his own sore and be sobbing aloud. A tsetse fly that perches on a delicate part of the body must be handled with care. Those waiting for the implementation of the probe report may, indeed, be waiting forever; till thy kingdom come.

Agent Yusufu “stole only N 23 billion”. After the open court trial, which we all saw, the case was probably taken to the principal’s inner court, where the “harsh” judgement was arranged: two years imprisonment or N750, 000 fines, which Yusufu immediately pulled out of his pocket while still in the witness box.            The agent/principal relationship came into full focus in the executive/ legislative handling of the Abdulrasheed Abdulahi Maina affair. Maina was Acting Director of Customs, Immigration and Prisons pension office. The National Assembly smelt a rat that all was not well with close to N200 billion in the man’s care.

At first, the matter was before the Senator Aloysius Etok Joint Committee on Public Service and Establishment and State and Local Government Administration. Efforts to get Maina to appear before the Committee were rebuffed to the point where the Senate issued a warrant of arrest on him. At a point, it became clear to the Senate that the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, was foot-dragging on the execution of the warrant.

At the peak of it, when Maina was being expected in the Senate, a   rented crowd was instead, chanting war songs at the entrance of the National Assembly. The Senate bared its fangs over what it saw as undue shielding of the embattled Maina, resulting in his pouring invectives on the National Assembly. By a unanimous Resolution of the Senate with the concurrence of the House of Representatives, the National Assembly asked the President to dismiss Miana from the public service of the federation and that he should be immediately arrested, investigated and prosecuted for the alleged multi-billion Naira fraud in the pension office.

We see a clear case of the principal/agent arrangement at work here. Why else would the executive have dilly-dallied on the issue until Maina finally vamoosed from these coasts? And why else would an Assistant Director who had been declared wanted by the Senate still be moving around with a myriad of police guards?

Paradoxically, the Vanguard of Wednesday, 27 February 2013 reports that Justice C. Ogisi, sitting in Asaba High Court, has sentenced Citizen Ndubuisi Onwe to 50 years imprisonment for stealing an old Mitsubishi bus! Perhaps a clear case of all animals are equal but some are more equal. Which way, Nigeria?