Before embarking on a crucial exegesis of Nigeria’s hall of infamy, mostly populated by politicians and public servants of different hues, let us explain the red herring in the title. In the simplest terms, a synecdoche is a figure of speech which uses a part to represent a whole. When a Nigerian is apprehended abroad in a criminal act, the world can say, Nigerians are criminals. Also, when a Nigerian performs well in an academic or other endeavours abroad, the world can say, Nigerians are intelligent. Therefore, the two sets of people have been used to represent the country in different ways. Hushpuppy, Nigeria’s notorious internet fraudster, was used several times to represent the country’s army of youths steeped in internet fraud, decked in glitz and glamour. Today, Nigeria’s FCT minister, Mr. Nyesom Wike, is infamously representing the country’s political class. In Wike, one can easily identify the totalizing apparatus for a determined scrutiny of Nigeria’s political class. Their only known industry and career enterprise is politics. Not that it is a crime to be a career politician, but it becomes a crime against Mother Earth to be a career politician and become richer than most states across the country.
Nigeria’s hall of infamy is teeming with career politicians. They are class acts in embezzling public funds, appropriating the commonwealth, and recklessly plunging their immediate society into the depths of desolation. A typical Nigerian politician, especially those without any known career besides politics, is irredeemably unconscionable and established in infinite avarice. It defies human cognition. Of course, there are distinguished people in Nigeria’s politics whose motivation is to selflessly contribute to social development. They commit to delivering the people from the excruciating complexities of material privation. But they are not many, yet they exist and we know them. The popular mantra in Nigeria today is ‘join politics and become a billionaire’, especially in a country with a prostrate, selective crime-fighting agency like EFCC. Surely, Nigeria’s political industries, with outposts and centres across the country, are responsible for the country’s crippled economic fortunes. Unfortunately, Nigerians are divided by ethnicity, religion, and politics to maintain a common front to dislodge the political edifices that have bludgeoned the country to damnation. We defend political criminals who share the same political affiliation as us. We defend political criminals who have stolen and plundered the exchequer as long as they share the same ethnicity with us. That is the story of Nigeria; therefore, the country’s political hall of infamy continues to admit new members every day.
Recently, Omoyele Sowore, a human rights activist and African Action Congress (AAC) presidential candidate, made a revelation about the FCT minister Mr. Nyesom Wike. According to Sowore, the FCT minister stole public funds and bought houses in the US worth over $6,000,000 (six million US dollars) in Florida, United States. Sowore has, since, through his lawyer Deji Adeyanju, petitioned the Attorney General of Florida, James Uthmeier, demanding that the minister be prosecuted for money laundering and made to forfeit the multimillion-dollar properties he acquired unlawfully. The petition outlined how Wike dubiously transferred ownership of the properties to his wife and children through quitclaim deeds which perfectly concealed his identity as the original owner of the properties. Many Nigerians were flummoxed when the news broke out, while many laughed it off as a drop of water in the ocean for Wike. I was one of those who laughed it off as a minor thing for the FCT minister. To be sure, Nyesom Wike is undoubtedly Nigeria’s most hated politician and the reasons are obvious. That is not my concern in this essay. My concern is to x-ray Nigeria’s political class using Wike as a guide. I am minded to examine how the political class has crippled the country by amassing incredible wealth through mindless larceny and primitive burglary of the public purse.
In saner climes, Nyesom Wike would have resigned 24 hours after the damning evidence of his abuse of office through the purchase of houses in Florida was released. However, this is Nigeria, where resignation is an alien concept. On the other hand, one would have expected Mr Bola Tinubu, who swore to fight corruption during his campaign, to dismiss Nyesom Wike summarily. But that is a tall order since both of them drink from the same trough of inscrutable political misdemeanour. The relationship between Wike and Bola Tinubu is beyond sublunary minds. Both are joined in political matrimony by Kakia, the Greek goddess of vice and immorality. Their political ideologies are intertwined and exude the same putrid aura which mostly leaves our political spaces contaminated. Wike serves Tinubu and Tinubu in turn, protects him. It is a reciprocal alignment where both deserve and need each other. But men have come and gone and men will come and go. Wike and Tinubu have come and one day, they will go. I have always encouraged my students to redefine most of William Shakespeare’s iconic submissions to suit contemporary reality. One of them is Mark Anthony’s timeless line – “the evil that men do lives after them”. These days, the evil that men do must live with them, not after them. So, let it be with Nigeria’s greedy political class.
With the Omoyele Sowore revelations about the FCT minister, Nigerians must look inwards and realise that Wike is a synecdoche for his fellow ex-governors, current governors, ministers, former ministers, the presidency, directors of parastatals, senators, members of the House of Representatives, senior civil servants and many more. Most of these people are richer than some Nigerian states. They are worth billions of dollars. They have mind-boggling amounts of money in foreign bank accounts. They have houses in the most expensive Islands and choice places across the world. Their children attend the most expensive schools in the US, Canada, and the UK. They fly abroad to the most expensive hospitals to treat minor ailments like headaches and mild fever. Yet Nigeria, their country of origin, is mired in misery and wretchedness. Infrastructure is in total disrepair. The healthcare system is a crying necropolis, and the education sector struggles with devastating dereliction. Many Nigerians would be shocked if, by a stroke of fate, a vindictive phenomenon that roars with implacable fury, the wealth and riches of our politicians and public servants in the category I mentioned above were revealed. Many of them will dwarf Sanni Abacha in material covetousness and ignominy. No one knew the late dictator was that rich until Lady Fate struck. Is Lady Fate near or far away from our political and public service corridors? No one knows or perhaps some people know. I do not know.
There are many reasons Tinubu cannot sack Wike. The FCT minister is privy to so many things hidden from the public and given his loquacious antecedent, he will gladly spill the beans if he is made the scapegoat. I read a report online that Wike owns what can be termed the best hotel in Nigeria, called J’s Signature, an imposing, grand, castle-like structure located at Old GRA Phase 1, Port Harcourt, Rivers State. According to the report, the least room costs N300,000 per night. According to the report, hotels like Radisson Blu, Transcorp Hilton, Marriott Hotels and Sheraton Hotels are way below the standard of this hotel. Yet Nyesom Wike is a public servant who has not done anything in his life apart from politics. In the current dispensation, the Nigerian system protects political criminals and thieves as long as they identify with the power protocol at the centre or they promise to serve and be useful to the power at the centre in some disguised, pretentious way. Today, Yaya Bello, the former Kogi State governor, is having fun and issuing instructions to members of the Kogi State House of Assembly while the castrated EFCC is still looking for him.
The woes of this country are traceable to current and past politicians. They populate the country’s hall of infamy. Nigerians must unite to dislodge the political structure of criminality ravaging and holding the country down. Sadly, there is an open invitation for everyone willing to serve the power at the centre to come to the table and be filled. In that case, anyone who identifies with the party at the centre can go away with blue murder. Except for a few of them, former governors destroyed their states and some present governors have graduated in pillaging state resources. If the pension packages of some ex-governors are made public, Nigerians will weep. These past governors collect these fat cheques every month while their states struggle to pay civil servants. It is up to Nigerians to decide what they want to do. If the people’s collective angst stops on social media, many Wikes will go scot free and the country will continue to bleed.
