What does a man drowning in deep ocean do? He clutches all the straws? He gaggles water, reels in utmost fear with eyes all hazy; he attempts to shout for help, but the water would muffle his voice. He becomes helpless, confused and surrender.
The worse that can happen to a drowning man, therefore, like Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti state, for every straw he tries to hold on to for safety is filled with snakes and scorpions. And, for that matter, he tries to drag anyone he sees along with him into the water.
For Fayose, the first salvo was fired by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) when it froze his account at Zenith Bank after discovering that over a billion Naira part of which was used to execute Ekiti electoral fraud was still lying in such account. The money was traced to the looting network, with headquarters at the domain of the former National Security Adviser, retired Colonel Sambo Dasuki.
When EFCC searchlight beamed at his questionable account in a state where toiling workers go hungry for lack of payment of their miserable salaries, Fayose first attempted to drag Zenith bank along with him into the water. He said it was the bank that begged him to finance his election, as if he was such an angel; the only one in Ekiti state to which a bank would have to kneel down for, to allow it to finance the fraud called election.
Just as the Zenith bank was gasping for air in the foul air emitted by the governor, he, the drowning Fayose clutched at the leg of Mrs. Aisha, the wife of President Muhammadu Buhari. He inferred that before the EFCC would go for him, it should first arrest and prosecute Aisha for her alleged role in the Jefferson saga, a united States law maker who was involved in some kind of shady deals, a couple of years ago.
Fayose was just admitting that he actually was guilty of stealing Nigerian money to buy and do other unspeakable things to get into power via questionable election, and that Aisha should be made to join him.
Aisha did not only wriggle herself from the grips of a drowning man, she was also able to scare a hell out of Fayose with threat of legal action.
Just as Fayose was struggling to get at out of the troubled water, hungry and angry workers in his state, whose salaries and allowances he had refused to pay for many months started protest against him.
Things really went so awry that he had to slip into a kind of seclusion. He engaged his usual ‘babalawo to embark on spiritual cleansing; to do their incantations as a way of quenching the EFCC fire; to save him from the water that was trying to consume him.
He, like his brothers in the National Assembly, went for the usual shop-worn-trash, saying that EFCC was sent after him. And that the discovery of what his fast fingers and jaundiced brain had brought forth which the EFCC is legitimately exposing was a threat to Nigerian democracy! Ha!
I wonder what suspected looters who are being asked to return what they stole, or liars who are being asked to strengthen the facts of the matter has to do with democratic Nigerans of over 170 million people.
In any case, I hear that Fayose had hired a lawyer or lawyers to defend his looting of the nation’s fund; that his bank account which EFCC has frozen should be di-frozen so that the business as usual would go on as if nothing has happened.
That is in a Nigeria that is gradually changing from unruly stealing to orderly conduct of public, and even private service. [myad]
