In those days, when you gathered children, of between two and six years, in the late evening to narrate some folklore to them, it was called “tales by the moonlight.” This is because the sessions were often held in front of the family compound or under a tree near the huts in the cool brightness of the moon.
But just yesterday, former governor of Kano state and the immediate past minister of education, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau gathered some news men, or were they the ones that gathered around him, where he narrated a tale on how the N950 Million Presidential campaign fund was shared in his house in Kano with him not being part of it.
Malam Shekarau said that the former foreign affairs minister, Aminu Bashir Wali begged him to share the money in his house and that when it was eventually being shared, he was not there and did not see the money.
Speaking through his media aide, Malam Ghali Sadiq, the former minister said: “Wali approached me on the day he collected the money and said because of security (reasons) he wanted to share the N950 Million in my residence and I obliged.
“He brought the money to my house around 2am. I was at my room upstairs when they came in and I remained there up till the time they finished the sharing. Wali and some other party members shared the money according to the directives given to them. So I did not even see the money with my eyes.”
Ha!
After the laughable tale, brief as it were, surprised reporters asked if he collected his share out of the N950 Million, but Shekarau’s man said: “Malam Shekarau did not tell me anything about that, at all.”

How e go tell you?
When my inquisitive five-year-old grandson, Abdullahi, read it, he ran to me and asked: “grand dad (I had warned him severally to stop adding ‘grand’ to the daddy because I’m still young and kicking), how is it possible for a big man like Shekarau to remain in a house where such huge money was being shared without his participation?”
The question from my grandson may appear childish, but the truth is that Shekarau, as at the time N950 Million was shared in his house, was the key leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) not only in Kano state but in Nigeria.
Not even a kindergarten kids would believe therefore that Shekarau would be somewhere else when a whooping N950 Million was being shared anywhere, not even in his house in Kano, for the purpose of campaigning for the second-term Presidential ambition of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. His status in the party and in the scheme of things in the state demanded that he presided over, or took full part in anything about the party in the state, and even at national level.
What was it that Shekarau was trying to prove? That he had nothing to do with the money? Or that he was not even part of the Presidential campaign in Kano state or that he was schemed out?
Why would our leaders tell broad-day-light lie simply to escape the public anger?
Of course, there was nothing wrong in sharing money by any political party to boost campaigns for political contest, but what has been discovered to be wrong in the case of the PDP in the 2014/15 campaign was the diversion of money meant to buy modern weapons to fight Boko Haram for PDP’s campaign.
As a matter of fact, the facts coming out have also showed another form of fraud that played out in the PDP Presidential campaign that calls for analysis too. It is the Presidential campaign fund raising that was launched in the third week of December 2014. At the end of the fund raising, a total of N21.27 Billion was announced as the final collections. Big oil companies, GSM service providers, governors, ministers and numerous stakeholders and even the onlookers were said to have contributed hugely to the campaign fund.
The question is what happened to that N21.27 Billion and why the former National Security Adviser (NSA), retired Colonel Sambo Dasuki suddenly appeared on the scene as the alpha and omega in the disbursement of money meant for the security of all of us? Why has the huge money realized at the campaing fund launch never been mentioned anywhere since the great search for the nation’s looted funds began?
Is Shekarau telling us that, as at the time the N950 Million was being shared in his house, he already knew the source of the money: that it was from NSA and that it was meant to procure arms and ammunitions for the soldiers in the Boko Haram’s war front?
Indeed, Shekarau owes the right thinking Nigerians an explanation why he stayed away from the crucial moment in the campaign for the PDP Presidency in December 2014. Does it mean that he did not want Jonathan to win the election?

This lie, this tale told under the sunlight, this infantile thinking raises more questions.
Shekarau, today, is just a tale teller by the sunlight. The tale is a clear fiction. [myad]