By Igbotako Nowinta
[dropcap]U[/dropcap]narguably, the scourge of corruption is the single most ruthless disease ravaging and tormenting the health of the Nigerian nation since October 1st 1960 when the British colonialists reluctantly left the political scene.
The damage that corruption has caused Nigeria is not only horrific and pathetic but unquantifiable. A first class country at independence has been retarded and branded a fourth class society in terms of development.
Rulers after rulers have had to destroy the nation in such reckless manner via gigantic corruption, mindless misgovernance and unbridled wastages, while the mass of the people were dumped into the pitiable ocean of impoverishment until the people of Nigeria rose in March 2015, to execute what many have described as the common sense democratic revolution that marvelously threw President Muhammadu Buhari into the Presidential Palace.
The re-emergence of Muhammadu Buhari after his brief stay as Head of State between 1983 and 1985 became a stunning reality because he sang and danced to the music of anti-corruption during the campaigns for the 2015 Presidential Elections.
Also it is worthy of mentioning that Muhammadu Buhari tried unsuccessfully for three consecutive times ( 2003,2007,2011) to snatch the Nigerian Presidency, as entrenched forces stood on his way like a mountain.
Therefore, today, of all the intriguing news or development that came to the fore in the year 2017 as a result of the frontal approach taken by the Buhari civilian administration to tackle corruption, the case involving Alhaji Abdulrasheed Maina, the man who was appointed by ex-President Goodluck Jonathan to reform the Presidential Pension Task Force Scheme as its Chairman, appears to be the most brazen, unfortunate and revolting, given the perceived posture of the present government in the anti-corruption war.
Abdulrasheed Maina first shot his name into the consciousness of the people of Nigeria during the dying days of the last regime when he was involved in the embezzlement of several billions of naira as Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms in Nigeria.
The heat that was turned on Maina was so hot that he was forced to disappear from public glare while the hunt for him continued unabated by the relevant anti-graft federal authorities in Nigeria.
While many Nigerians cried stridently for Maina to be fished out in order for him to account for his horrendous sins, he was never heard of again for many months.
As Maina hid himself away he succeeded quietly to perfect his readmission into the federal civil service in Nigeria as a Director in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Most shockingly, in spite of his heinous crime against pensioners in Nigeria, Maina had the effrontery to spit on the faces of those calling for his prosecution.
More shockingly and nauseatingly, Maina, the ‘celebrated bandit’ even ensured that he was promoted during the period he was supposed to be behind the four walls of a prison cell!
Abdulrasheed Maina’s saga has led to the coining of a strange word –re looting of loots in the Nigerian scene. His brazen attempt to dare the system even as anti-corruption is the mantra of the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led government at the center in the country has qualified him as the negative man-of-the –year-2017 in my column today.
If anyone thinks that Maina succeeded in placing himself on such unenviable notorious scale as the story is being unfolded before our very eyes, that fellow must be living in the fool’s paradise of political maneuverings in the Federal Republic of Nigeria?
Then how did Abdurasheed Maina achieved such staggering feats in the midst of the so called ‘ferocious anti-corruption war’ being fought by the Muhammadu Buhari civilian administration?
This is how he did it. We must recollect quickly that the 2015 Presidential Election in Nigeria was easily one of the most fiercely contested since the military top brass in Nigeria artificially left the political scene in May 1999.
Given the kind of merger that threw the All Progressives Congress (APC) on the political consciousness of Nigerian voters in 2015, a situation where all kinds of strange political bed fellows hurriedly left the then ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to catch the next available cum popular political train in town (in the name of progressives bandwagon), we knew that it was going to be a tall order for the Buhari presidency to turn things around speedily.
The point l am trying to push here is that many politicians that flocked to the APC’s train of political redemption were nothing but fair weather progressives whose political ideology is to flirt with Any Government in Power AGIP).
For a character like Muhammadu Buhari, who really meant well to battle corruption to a standstill, he had no choice than to swim along in the then populist political current which the likes of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu perfectly complimented from the Southwestern axis of Nigeria.
As soon as President Buhari started his campaigns against corruption, his greatest undoing was his decision to compensate those who bankrolled his election by making some of them members of the National Executive Council as cabinet ministers, and placing others in charge of plump and sensitive jobs close to the presidency.
Buhari’s ‘undoing’ because most of these men have soiled their hands before as a result of their political involvement with past administrations in the country.
Honestly, if President Buhari had neglected the APC hawks that made his election possible by their financial contributions, when constituting his cabinet ministers, the story would have been different somehow today?
How do I mean? As President and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Buhari would have made history by putting those party sentiment/pressures aside, by gunning for a pan Nigerian dream team of worthy, stainless, technocratic and cerebral individuals that cut across party divides in Nigeria (as it was widely speculated in the media that accounted for the President’s delay in appointing his first political eleven).
If President Buhari had really damned the consequences as things stood in 2015 when searching for the round pegs for the round holes, nothing would have happened to him politically.
He would have emerged as the greatest leader in contemporary Nigeria, given the mood of the nation after the 2015 Presidential Election? Many well-meaning Nigerians would have scored him so highly and rated him to the zenith if he had jettisoned party interest for national interest and survival then; by now looking at the 2019 Presidential Elections that is around the corner, it would have been an easy situation for him.
Coming back to Abdulrasheed Maina! Maina is a product of the political ‘yesterday men’ in Nigeria, who do not care a hoot or give a damn about what President Muhammadu Buhari is doing assiduously about corruption in the polity today.
Maina is like a chunk of those that surrounds the seat of power in Abuja, what I will call sunshine patriots. If not how did Maina succeed in doing the damage he had cost the anti-corruption war in Nigeria?
Maina is a product of a ruthless and menacing cabal! This cabal found itself at the receiving end of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration; ganged up and constituted themselves into a desperate, criminal and vindictive group.
This cabal, heavily wounded, spoiling for war and vendetta, most especially after they have been messed up as a result of the huge and scandalous defeats in the hands of the Muhammadu Buhari-led APC in March 2015, waited patiently for an opportunity to strike.
They saw one in Abdulrasheed Maina; smuggled the demented bandit back to the system in a carefully planned and well-calculated operation to ultimately cripple President Muhammadu Buhari’s fight against corruption. This is the fact of the matter!
Abdulrasheed Maina as my notorious man of the year is a wonderful tonic for President Buhari to revive his administration with fresher brains and absolutely committed hands.
The point being made is that those tired brains (severally recycled old men) should be thrown out without delay, in a cabinet reshuffle that should be carried out in the first quarter of 2019.That is the way to go if President Buhari will go far in his present war against corruption in the land.
There is nothing wrong if President Buhari now introduces what he failed to do in 2015, by bringing in a team of non-partisan element and professionals that will help him to uncompromisingly drive home the vehicle of social, political and economic change to the ultimate destination before 2019 Presidential Election in Nigeria.
Above all, President Buhari should courageously hunt down the Mainas of this world trying to undermine his government (including those that have positioned themselves as a parallel government, according to the wife of the President, Aisha Buhari) and quickly root them out.
Without sentiments all those that collaborated with or supported Abdulrasheed Maina in his brazen saga so far must be fished out, and made to face the full wrath of the law, to serve as a deterrent to others, no matter how highly positioned they are or close to the number one citizen of Nigeria today.
