By Rotimi Fasan
MRS. OKONJO-IWEALA may want Nigerians to believe that her father, a respected professor turned monarch, is a trustee of ASUU as her spokesman seems keen to advert.

She may indeed add that her sister, Chikwenye-Okonjo Ogunyemi, a respected feminist professor in the United States- Okonjo-Iweala may wish to tell the rest of us who may not know that her own sister is also a teacher in addition to her two relatives she claims are students in Nigerian universities- she may flaunt these familial connections as evidence of her sympathy with the cause of ASUU.

But they add up to nothing in the overall scheme of the current problems confronting our educational system. The fact is that Mrs. Iweala has no child of her own in a Nigerian university and it would be interesting to know if she ever had one who went through one of our universities. So she can only understand what it means to be a student or lecturer in any of these universities the same way a man could understand the pains of a woman in labour.

But the case of Okonjo-Iweala is pardonable (doesn’t she try or appear to empathize with the situation many Nigerians find themselves even if only by words of mouth?) when placed by that of Diezeani Allison-Madueke, the second of the bloated troika collectively playing the prima donna of the Jonathan cabinet circus. While Okonjo-Iweala affects some sensitivity to criticisms thrown at her, Allison-Madueke simply throws her nose up at Nigerians in the manner of a noble anxious to escape the suffocating presence of begrimed farm hands.

Ever since her time as Works Minister when she responded to calls to help end the human carnage on the death-trap that was the Ore-Benin road with tears of her own, Mrs. Allison-Madueke has conducted herself in the haughty fashion of a hired hand that has become more powerful than her employer.

Confident of her immunity in the Jonathan presidency, she ignores the ‘ranting of an ant’ as she must consider complaints of Nigerians who seem to have moral issues about her headship of the Petroleum Ministry. With charges of alleged profligacy and corruption hanging on her like foul wind, she appears wrapped in the skin of a hippopotamus with her studied and arrogant silence which is only possible where only lip service is paid to the question of corruption.

While Mrs. Allison-Madueke may relish her alleged jet-flying lifestyle and the sense that she works for a principal clearly awed by his own recruit, she should remember that the proverbial voice of the people, the ultimate sovereign and her employer in the final analysis (isn’t she supposed to be a public servant?), is still the voice of God. She should remember too, as Achebe warns, that nobody ever wins a war against their own people.

The overweening arrogance and hubristic silence that is the hallmark of her response to public angst and criticism of her very unremarkable tenure, sans the unremitting charge of corruption at the Petroleum Ministry, might well become the epitaph on the headstone of her ministerial years.

She is only one step away, then, from the ‘sister-in-law’ of President Jonathan (she seems to share a lot with Patience, including physical resemblance) and the ultimate leader from the rear of the group of women that have practically spooked the presidency of the former shoeless boy from Otuoke and have got him snared in a maze entirely of his own making: Stella Oduah.

Oduah has been dogged by allegations of corruption, ethnic bias and highhandedness among other unenviable attributes of public office holders long before her present ‘travails’. She denied all these allegations while going on in her accustomed way, apparently. Until she bit off more than she could chew, putting her act of impunity on national display with her alleged purchase of at least two armour-plated luxury vehicles among several others that have been linked to her.

Oduah in her appearance before the House of Representatives has admitted she gave approval for the purchase of the vehicles but had, she said, asked her subordinates to ‘do the needful’. What this Aviation Minister that is an expert in ground travels, freighting foreign ‘dignitaries’ in leisurely cars- what she means by ‘the needful’ is a ridiculous conundrum only she, the hacks at the Aviation Ministry and the irresponsible parastatals under her watch can unravel. She was so innocent of the charges against her, so apprised of the matter for which she was summoned before the House that the best she could do was read a prepared script in response to questions posed.

President Jonathan’s body language since this scandal broke shows he has no problem with Oduah or any of the trio that rule the roost of his government. He has mandated an investigative panel he knows would go nowhere. And his apparent unwillingness to ‘do the needful’ has only strengthened the cause of the hired crowds that have been supporting Stella Oduah and bandying claims of a gang-up against her.

President Jonathan is morally-speaking, though, between a rock and a hard place with the Oduah case. This is not to say he is bothered as he knows only too well that questions of corruption in his government to say nothing of Nigeria is exaggerated. Yet from Nigerians’ comments on Stella Oduah, President Jonathan must have got a glimpse of history’s verdict on his presidency.