It’s quite interesting and wonderful the way the Abdulrasheed Maina saga and drama unfolds. It further affirms the position of people of my clan. I mean the clan of Nigerians that knew this government was up to grand deception and grandstanding as clean or a departure from the old order we have battled with since 1999 especially.
My argument remains that the deceit sold to Nigerians that President Muhammadu Buhari, then General Buhari, is a saint had always been as bland as it is insipid. It was a political deceit used to gain power.
I argued on many fronts, and especially that since all of us agreed before 2015 that Nigeria’s problem had been bad leadership over the ages, and Buhari had been one of those past leaders, why did we accept that Buhari be canonized overnight as a saint? Today, those facts are getting clearer.
We have gnashed our teeth in this administration that jumps from one dirty outbreak to another. Two weeks ago, it was Maikanti Baru and Ibe Kachikwu of the NNPC.
While we screamed, we never knew the real deal was still on the way. Even now as we discuss Maina, another bigger deal whose stench would outclass that of Maina must be coming.
One more step forward, the Maina saga has further exposed the emptiness of the claims of any anti corruption posture of the government. It’s all lie.
The dimensions of the sinister game played in-house by operators and officers of this administration over Maina’s return are enough to make any reasonable person ashamed.
Today, Maina’s family has done well to speak out against the tricks of this government, and we are getting clearer picture that the same people who deny Maina are the ones who had been behind the scene playing hands in gloves and rocking the deal to make sure their brother returns unhurt, even with double promotion from Assistant Director to full director in acting capacity in the same ministry from where he fouled the air.
A government that didn’t fight corruption, according to this one in charge, arraigned Maina, got police warrant to pick him up, got EFCC to go after him, and the one that fights corruption and very clean exonerated him, brought him back to work from the back door and when they felt the coast had been clear enough and in their ethnic colony called Nigeria where they are all above the law because of their ethnic identity, they made his return public and damned the consequence.
However, the real stink will burst when at last they hang the odour on the neck of Jennifer Oyo-Ita, the Head of Service of the Federal Civil Service, the only person in the Maina circle of doom and calumny that is not from the same ethnic group as the rest.
Wednesday night, The Sun called the Department of State Security (DSS) to react to Maina’s family claims that the agency cleared Maina and DSS lost its voice and said it can’t comment on the matter.
Just some hours later, we got more facts that Maina actually got back at the behest of this government, he got deployed to the DSS where he worked and earned millions before bringing him back to where he left from. Yet, the DSS doesn’t want to react.
Another scene: The powerful and awesome Attorney General of the Federation intentionally falsified the intent and meaning of a court order quashing Maina’s arrest warrant and wrote Oyo-Ita twice in case she forgot, to reinstate his kinsman from the ruling ethnic group. All of a sudden a Senior Advocate of Nigeria lost touch with the meaning and scope of a court order even when the court ordered that Maina should first go clear himself of the police indictment hanging on his neck. Minister Malami ignored all those and kept piling pressure on the HoS to ensure Maina gets back to work. And Maina, who by his origin should eat his cake and have same in double measure was paid in hundreds of millions for being a fugitive of justice. These are the characters that stand up everyday to deceive us singing the national anthem that has no meaning in action.
In fact, the Maina family is unequivocal in its stance that Buhari’s government actually brought Maina back. That settles the matter and the skewed interpretation of the judgment etc all proves the family right. Whereas Malami ensured Maina resumed, he didn’t see the clause in the court order that said Maina must clear himself with the police. The chief law officer of the state deliberately overlooked such weighty issue and insisted Maina must go back to work with double promotion.
Meaning of the whole drama is that it was carefully planned and executed over time to hoodwink all of us as fools.
At this point in time with the litany of mess from this government, its policy of exclusion of some Nigerians is becoming interesting and acceptable. Since they have shut others out to manage the country alone – that is Mr. President and his kinsmen, it is wonderful they have come this far and shown their true colour. We want the exclusion to continue so that by the time they sink Nigeria with their clannish pettiness, they would have none other to blame than themselves. All Nigerians are watching their dance and drama and right now know who to hold responsible for the gross failings.
We have seen a lot of it to also have known if any group is right to claim being better Nigerians because of where they come. Nature is just wonderful and keeps teaching us that the world is like the salt nobody stands its overdose. Since a tiny cabal has decided to hijack a nation that belongs to all, the full weight of it comes down on them alone. Their constant wobble and fumble just add to their undoing and as Maina keeps his words to bare it all. We will wait and hear more.
Now, I go back to an old issue which is about the forensic audit report of Maina’s findings. I had a copy of that document, studied and reported it years ago.
Whereas Maina, from the facts that emerged later, got himself mixed up in the dirty till in an attempt to clean it, his document should not be forgotten or treated like it never existed.
The report I saw was a scathing indictment on a lot of government agencies then.
It revealed and uncovered about 78,000 ghost pensioners list that was drawn up by the government to siphon over N200b into pockets of individuals only God knows.
Then Dr. Tedi Shuaibu was the director in the Pensions Office and eventually became the scapegoat who persuaded the Senate with David Mark supervising the day he appeared to testify that the same Senate should summon then HoS when the pension brouhaha burst, Steve Orasanye.
Shuaibu insisted that everything he was accused of doing was at the instruction of his boss he claimed to be the HoS. But the Senate never heeded his request and Orasanye was never summoned. He was rather appointed as the chairman of the NNPC board subsequently.
The same Maina report uncovered similar pension scam since 1976 he claimed from his findings were in excess of N550b and noted that it had been entrenched means of fraud in the country.
I seriously advocate that Maina should be held tight and pressed tight too, but let nobody act like there was no report that Maina published and submitted to the government that indicted a lot of people.
The government would do so well to act on that document. Let us not throw Maina the baby, away with the bath water because of the mess he made of it.