(At the hallowed chambers of the Senate, with Fela’s classic, “Uniform na cloth, na Tailor de sew am,” playing in the background … enter the embattled Customs Comptroller-General, a platoon of senior officers, men and women of the department, surrounded by the Senate Cabal, at the rear is the G.O.C. his top brass and officers and men of the Combat Regiment)
Brigadier One leg Atamuna: GSO, give me the Sitrep.
Col. Tongue Cutter Biko Haram: Col. Hammerhead Hameed Ali dismissed from the Senate. The Senate Cabal had ordered he appear before them in Customs uniform.
Major Olajide Olakankpo: Beni … What’s wrong with that? The theatre was a clear case of indiscipline from day one. Col. Hammerhead Hameed Ali should have donned the Customs uniform as per the convention.
Col. Tongue Cutter Biko Haram: Major, shut up your teeth. Dead or alive, on retirement or on a special posting, the Col. belongs to the Nigerian Army. He cannot be ordered by bloody civilians to don the uniform of a junior para-military unit just because he came there to serve. If he dies as in the case of any other Nigerian Army officer, whether a Federalist or a Biafran, and he is enlisted with the Nigerian Army numbers, the Army would take over his burial and responsibilities from his family.
Brigadier One Leg Atamuna: Hold your fire, officers. We retreat to our own headquarters and I hereby convene a military trial to resolve the Col. Hameed Ali case against the Senators of Rome.
Sergeant Okon Bassey: Ah! Army don spoil! Imagine bloody civilians, Senate Cabal with questionable certificates from all over the place, ordering a whole Col. to wear uniform. Walahi! Army don spoil!
Col. Tongue Cutter Biko Haram: (Now secured at the Combat Headquarters) Sir, the military trial of Col. Hammerhead Hameed Ali is constituted. We have a surprise amicus curie … a friend of the court.
Brigadier One Leg Atamuna: Announce him!
Major 419 Utueke: He is the Balogun of Ife, Atakata Agbuo, the Anu ana agba egbe ona ta nni… the animal that takes his time enjoying his meal in the face of hail fire! … former minister of the air and the sea. Always in his pockets is the talisman that gives him the power to evaporate when attacked on land! … the man with the nib of a Cassius, and the tongue of the desert bee. Gentlemen, permit me to welcome to this military trial a man who has been tested, tried and burnt, but is still sailing and climbing to the mountains. Our own man of the letters and the law, Oloregun Fani KK Ayode.
Col. Tongue Cutter Biko Haram: Sir, what is going on? The regiment, since inception, conducts its business without these lawyers and all the G.O.C. resolutions are beyond appeal.
Brigadier One Leg Atamuna: Col., we are now in a democracy, we are restrained and by and large we shall run into these black-uniformed “learned people” with funny white wigs on their heads to guide us and to interpret even military law.
Major Olajide Olakankpo: In that case, if the Prosecution has Fani KK Ayode, the Defence is presenting as its amicus curie the rightful heir to the late leader and senior advocate for the masses, Egbemi Femi Falana.
Brigadier One Leg Atamuna: (After two days of seating) Let the attorneys deliver their concluding statements.
Fani KK Ayode: This your Col. is truly a hammerhead, stubborn, otherwise why would he not wear the uniform of a service that has paid his bills? How does he maintain discipline where junior officers wear the same uniform he has rejected? Finally, it is the representation of the people, the body of the Senate, that asked him to wear the uniform; he gave spite to the Nigerian people when he ignored the Senators. It is clear that he is not part of this political democratic generation.
Falana: The G.O.C., Sir, officers and men of the Combat Regiment. Look at the Comptroller of the Nigeria Customs. Please, look at him closely from head to toe, check out his neck and his tummy, compare what you have seen with the protruding stomachs of all the other service chiefs, including those in charge of the Navy, the Army, Air Force, Police, NYSC, Road Safety, NEMA, etc., compare this man’s lifestyle with all these new appointees and those who have worn the various uniforms of these departments. After all, the same Senate had a petition against the present acting EFCC head, citing that the chairman of that anti-corruption agency was corruption himself and ….
Major 419 Utueke: Oh, yes, the EFCC, from the first Gestapo chairman to the last suit-wearing helmsman, would attack my brothers’ 419 houses and carry away our wives’ gold and diamond shoes, our gold watches and steal all our Brazilian and Euro dollars. The money we used our brains to obtain outside Nigeria; we don’t belong to the looting Nigerian Political Company Limited.
G.O.C.: (Before the attorneys sit down, beckoning at Sergeant Okon Bassey and the men moving in tons of various uniforms from a trailer vehicle into the trial room…) These are uniforms from the armed forces, various para-military units like Immigration, Customs, Prison Warders, Forestry, Okowa Asaba Police, Lagos Demolition Squad, Yellow Fever; some from secret societies and cults, Pirate Fraternities, the Ogboni, some freedom fighters like the Bakassi, OPC, IPOB, dressed like forgotten Jews, and even religious groups like the White Garment followers.  (In a Solomonic gesture, the G.O.C approaches the uniforms and beckons on the officers to go separately to choose the uniforms they cherish in their order of choice. One by one, the officers choose more of the Naval white uniform, the Air Force, the Army, especially the Brigade of Guards ceremonial parade uniform. Nobody touches the Yellow Fever, the Customs, the Warder, the Lagos State demolition uniforms.)
Sergeant Okon Bassey: G.O.C., you are a Solomon indeed. The case has judged itself.
G.O.C.: The trial of Hammerhead Hameed Ali is in many ways a satire on the Nigerian society. The Senate claims that they represent the people but we know that majority of the Senators were not elected by our people. The Col. is a proud, fine officer of the Nigerian Army and in all the services the officers have their own grading and rivalries. The Nigeria Customs, over the years, had built a reputation that does not attract the best sublime mind. Those officers who accompanied their Comptroller-General to the Senate hearing present sycophantic complexity to the whole case. None of them have taken up the courage to resign in view of the so-called disregard their Chief had shown to their department. Those, former Generals, former Chiefs who wore the uniform of their new posting have nothing to show as far as restoring prestige and accountability to the Customs. Col. Hameed Ali is very well known to me, he has not enriched himself or constituted himself as a corrupt czar. At the end of the day, a new Nigerian Customs with Ali as the Comptroller will materialise. There is nothing very imperative in uniform for according to the great Nigerian philosopher, King, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, “uniform na cloth, na tailor dey sew am.”

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