By Dr. Ugoji Egbujo

At the peak of the campaigns, just before the elections, on one bright day, the OPC laid siege on Ikorodu road. They brandished their guns, their characteristic lawlessness, and their new fatness. They tried to force the people into knowing that president Jonathan enjoyed their support and therefore had the southwest. Many mouths were not left agape by the nakedness of that which was utterly sordid. Because ethnic militias now fight for their pockets while fighting for freedom. Pipeline contracts that had been awarded them were pragmatic for more than security reasons. After all billions were shared yet the pipelines received no respite.

But the brashness written on their faces that day and the defiance they imagined they had put up was a response to a more immediate and particularly serious stimulus. We may never know the exact figures. That procession and the intimidation they travelled with was the work of minds fed up with any pretensions to being principled. With the OPC we always knew that their services could be bought for ‘maiguard’ roles but we didn’t know they could run these other errands. While ‘maiguard’ activities can foster Yoruba culture which abhors stealing, that Ikorodu road carnival told of the rot that has blighted buds, even buds of sacredness which the OPC once meant to many. Tomorrow, they will go catching petty thieves , spelling out moral justice and claiming moral high ground.

When the wise men of the new SDP , who wear integrity as cloaks and pride themselves in being principled talked about vetting the two main presidential candidates before endorsing any , only a few thought that money could play such a decisive role. The money which was given and collected behind us, we are now told , had nothing to do with their very objective and methodical arrival at the decision to adopt Jonathan as presidential candidate. The money, they insist, was used for post endorsement mobilization of supporters.

This is the reason voters are increasingly disenchanted with any campaigning that doesn’t incorporate the ideals of “stomach infrastructure”. These monies never get to their destinations. Well, perhaps no one really cared where the money ended, it bought the endorsement and the little noise that came with it. People never have to render accounts. The loser is too sore and perhaps too powerless to ask for an audit, the winner is too excited to care about details.

The ignominy they now face isn’t just because they got paid , after all that just makes them political prostitutes which most others are, but because the fee paid them by political pimps was money allegedly stolen from the treasury. If it were money meant for irrigation or fertilizer then they would not need to cover themselves in so much ash, the poor are now well acquainted such mischiefs and with hunger. The ecological fund , since time immemorial, has been used roguishly to fund political parties.

But if money meant for arms was stolen and received , then rather than this puffing they should show some sobriety. If not from remorse then from pity, the country was been bled into a coma. It’s unlikely they knew how the money came about but anyone who collects money from those with certain odd reputations must entertain ugly possibilities. They say it was their expectation that a party that has been in power for 16 years would have the capacity for such great gifts without recourse to theft. But the transfer of a stolen item doesn’t not extinguish the rights of the real owner. The argument that they provided some electoral consideration can’t settle this moral mess.

Ordinarily, since the money has been dissipated the owner (the common man) is in a difficult position but that doesn’t mean the beneficiary of such an illegitimate gift shouldn’t strive to restitute. What about the moral matter of small parties being turned into the houseboys of big parties because their leaders are greedy? If they haven’t thrown away their wisdom with their integrity, they should leave legality , borrow and return that money.

There were rumours that traditional rulers in the southwest queued up and collected handshakes for three consecutive weekends from the one who was told that the southwest stood between him and a re election. Dollars can be given very secretly but the mallams whom it will fall on to effect currency exchange cannot not be kept in the dark for too long. Lagos Island was a beehive of currency activities then. But these kings are perhaps lucky because it would appear that when the big man himself did the sharing no paper trails were left. And even if any was left the apparent immunity he seems to enjoy may exonerate these fortunate partakers from the consequences of that dark communion. What else can explain the inability of the EFCC’s radar to pick up the names of those who got their share and offered prayers with long sticks?

In the south east Jonathan, their brother , was told he didn’t need to trouble himself campaigning. He didn’t bother to fulfill his campaign promises to the region and making new promises was perhaps useless. That’s logical. The people were told that the anger caused by the misdeed of a brother must not reach the bones and that in any case the alternative,

The APC , was an Islamic party – boko haram party , as the latter-day Fani Kayode would call it. The manner in which they went about it, the zeal with which they disseminated falsehood, even by their decrepit standards, was baffling. It is true this particular crop, who never lay any claims to moral uprightness and never pretends to selflessness or integrity , for whom politics is essentially ‘smash and grab’ in perpetuity , will always go with the highest bidder. But it was their selfishness complicated by shortsightedness that prevented a more widespread distribution of the dollars as it happened in the other regions.

Many traditional rulers and small time political landlords in the east now bemoan their fate. In the southeast a few people short circuited the boko haram dollars . Many of those who turned evangelists of hate, feeding the fears of the people with their mischief, telling them whom their eternal enemies were had only their pockets in mind. But they didn’t play even their own game well. Enugu- Onitsha express way was not important. But they should have put the southeast in play. How did they lose their commercial instincts when they mattered most?

You know, create a small confusion and send out the impression that without the help of huge money the God’s anointed may fall. Servility didn’t help them. They went about talking about the ‘hand of God’ and the inevitability of the anointed one. The APC , they sermonized, was formed by enemies to finish what they started with the civil war. They lost on all fronts. And who would have thought that they would with pomp and ceremony, without shame and remorse, just a few months later, begin a mass exodus into the Islamic party, headed by a Fulani man , their supposed nemesis? And some of them, male and female, do not even want to spend time in the back pews. They are jostling for the pulpit!

When Jonathan’s boys sniffed treachery and asked the PDP national working committee to render accounts of the monies they received for the presidential elections some of us thought they were seeking scapegoats for their disastrous performance. We didn’t listen because they tell too many tales. However, stories of monies meant for buying of votes but ended up buying houses were everywhere. Then Metuh the spokesman of the party told all who cared to hear that Jonathan’s boys , sidelined the party, left them in the cold, collected and wasted billions released for the elections’ ‘work’ . He then wondered why those looking for missing and lost monies and traitors didn’t know where to look. Metuh possessed by what appeared as righteous anger told Jonathan to render accounts of the billions of dollars Nigeria earned during his tenure. Yes, same Metuh. Angry men , like drunkards , sometimes , find the boldness or carelessness to ask the right questions.

We didn’t listen closely , we thought it was post election wrangling that losers go through while mourning. But since the EFCC started asking Metuh their own questions, it would appear that no group was actually left out . But since the monies they got now seem to have been same that wandered from state treasury, if the EFCC is to be believed, then the accounts they once demanded from themselves must now be rendered to poor Nigerians. We are now told Metuh says Jonathan, not Dasuki gave him some money after all , nobody wants to be associated with Dasuki now. When they collect money for politics they use the bank accounts of obscure private companies to receive them. Please don’t ask me why. Fani Kayode struggles with his own woes but one wonders if he still thinks Metuh and co should render any accounts. Does Metuh still think Jonathan has some accounting to do? What has happened to our Ambassadors of Transformation (TAN)?

You remember the lion that Mama Peace once claimed used to be her cub? The one that a certain police commissioner once claimed he tamed? That lion once talked about some congregation of bishops getting as much as 6 billion naira for a certain kind of worldly evangelism. And some screamed “Ah, he that is given to hallucinations has come again!” Many dismissed what they considered a malicious fabrication not because bishops could not be bought and sold like ‘kulikuli’ but because even by the PDP’s prodigal standards then a group of bishops weren’t worth that much.

Now that we know that several expired politicians were dusted and given hundreds of millions of naira, then the bishops didn’t really fetch much, if the lion is to be believed. The Bishops denied receiving anything but my prayer for them now is that nothing is traced to them , not even ‘transport fares’. Because if money instigated or has any association with those ferocious prayers , and the pronounced certainty they left on those prophesies which didn’t come to pass, then Christianity will be in for a season of mockery. Jesu!

It’s my prayer that when we laugh at the follies of the past we learn lessons for the present and the future