Reuben Abati: The Monkey Business They Call Governance

“Have you gone to visit your brother in Ekiti?”

“Who is that? I have many brothers from Ekiti state”

“The Governor. Osokomole himself, ekun oko oke, the dainty irunmole who eats jollof rice.”

“No. I don’t go about visiting Governors.”

“I am referring to the fact that he recently escaped death. His G-Wagon suddenly went up in flames and it got completely burnt down.”

“What is a G-Wagon to a Fayose who started his public career as a car dealer?”

“Don’t be mean. That car is about N20 million. And Femi Fani-Kayode has said that the fire incident was a spiritual bomb. It was a mystery fire. Only the carcass of the car was retrieved. The Governor was on his way to the airport in Lagos. They thought he was in the car.”

“What do you mean they?”

“His enemies”

“It could just have been an electrical fault.”

“What nonsense electrical fault is that in a brand new chassis, tear rubber, G-Wagon? I keep telling you, politics in Nigeria, in fact in Africa, is not an easy business. Everything is spiritual. Have you not seen George Weah visiting Pastor Temitope Joshua? What do you think he is looking for?”

“So, has Fayose identified some suspects?”

“For where? In fact after that fire incident, and the loss of his G-Wagon, he has been very, very quiet.”

“He doesn’t need to be quiet. He should just blame the accident on the APC. He should make it clear that it is the handiwork of his enemies in the APC, and that the APC cannot stop him from becoming Nigeria’s next President, even if they send 1,000 spiritual bombs.”

“I don’t get it.”

“What don’t you get? Can’t you see that the new system of governance in Nigeria is to blame the opposition or alleged witchcraft and sabotage? When things go wrong, nobody looks for probable reasons, they look for witches, spiritual bombs and wizards.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You never get anything. You think if the vehicle that got burnt had belonged to an APC Governor, he’d try to look for mechanical reasons, he will simply blame the PDP and its agents. The position of the Buhari government for example is that the administration has not been able to function for more than two years because of the PDP and former President Goodluck Jonathan”

“I am beginning to flow with you now.”

“When the country’s economy went into recession, instead of blaming their own lack of policy clarity, they said it was the Jonathan administration that sowed the seeds of recession.”

“Well, may be they have a point there.”

“What useless point? Look at the recent case involving the ex-pensions boss. A complete mess: They claimed that Maina was brought back to government and reinstated by Jonathan’s people within the system. How?”

“I am a Buhari man, but I also actually thought that was a new high in the monkey business going on since these guys took over power.”

“To add insult to injury, the current Customs boss says the Buhari administration has derailed and is not making progress because 50% of its members belong to the PDP, the opposition party. He says the government has been hijacked by persons who were never part of the party or the campaign.”

“I was shocked that the retired colonel would say that with his own mouth.”

“Should he have used your mouth?”

“I am trying to say that this is a government of own goals and unforced errors.  They shoot themselves in the foot with their own guns. They blame the PDP. And yet the PDP is to all intents and purposes as at this moment, a confused and disorganized party.”

“What of the former President?”

“I don’t see any evidence that he is fighting them in any way.  But if cats should displace the rats in the President’s abandoned office today, they will say it is the Jonathan administration at work.”

“Somebody has said that the President is a good man but he is surrounded by bad people. Only last week, Senator Dino Melaye said the President is surrounded by cankerworms and caterpillars.”

“It’s getting worse, then. Lions, jackals, hyenas, now cankerworms and caterpillars, before 2019, we’d get to the lowest level in the animal chain.”

“I wonder if the President is even aware of these things.”

“What they tell us is that the President is not aware.”

“What is that? The President reads newspapers everyday and he watches television.”

“One of his spokesmen told us he only likes to read cartoons and laugh. And you know the thing about cartoons and laughter.”

“But the same President has ordered investigations and reports on the various monkey businesses around his administration.”

“What do you expect him to do? They tell him it is the PDP throwing a monkey wrench in the works and that the PDP monkeys must be dealt with. That way the monkeys in-house go scot-free”

“But he just sacked two persons for your information. Yesterday. ”

“Na cinema. I won’t be surprised if the various reports are presented to him in form of cartoons, and he just laughs it all off. Only two? The way things are going, very soon, there will be monkey pox all over this government.”

“I want to assure you that won’t happen. For example, are you not aware that the Buhari Support Organisation has already announced that they are determined to rescue the government from the PDP saboteurs in the APC? Or that they are saying Baba must have a second term to correct the damage caused by the monkeys within?”

“I am aware of that. I am aware of everything. But is Baba aware?”

“Baba is aware of this one. He met with the leaders of the BSO. The Organisation has about 198 constituent groups. And he has acted by sacking two persons.”

“Wait a moment, with all the visible errors, some people are already talking of second term?”

“Yes”

“Second term with which party?”

“The APC of course”

“Is there still an APC?”

“I will think so”

“I don’t think so. If the Buhari Support Organization can come out publicly and declare that the new PDP wing of the party is undesirable, and that there are monkeys within, I imagine that by the time they deal with that particular problem, there will be no APC left as a party.”

“Nobody mentioned names.”

“But one of the Ministers at that event said that the 2019 election will be nothing but war.”

“What does that one know about war? President Buhari’s Ministers talk too glibly. It is time he dissolved his cabinet and sent all the moonlighters out. Too many persons moonlighting and hiding under his cover.”

“The Minister who spoke at the BSO meeting…”

“He was preparing a likely script. If care is not taken, these people will derail the 2019 election and claim it is the PDP and agents of the Jonathan administration…”

“I don’t think so. Nigerians don’t believe that tale anymore. Have you not seen the level of opposition in the social media? This government is being de-popularized everyday. Some people even want to apologize to former President Jonathan.”

“Let them keep their monkey apology, ah-beg.”

“But let’s be fair, there are people still standing by President Buhari. People like me.  I trekked for him. Even if I have since developed arthritis for doing so, I don’t mind. A man must stand for something. I believed in the change project because the PDP and Jonathan were just not it.”

“And now you have been short-changed.”

“Yes. But it is okay. We still have time.”

“With these Governors?”

“They are all with Baba. Like the Kogi Governor. He is loyal.”

‘That is a Governor who has not paid staff salaries for 12 months, and one civil servant had to commit suicide.”

“The Kogi State Head of Service has said that the man who committed suicide is a cheat. His salary was withheld because he falsified his age records.”

“They even speak ill of the dead. So, is that why the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) had to publicly appeal to all Nigerians to donate relief materials to the civil servants in Kogi state to rescue them from hunger and neglect?”

“I don’t know”

“And you say we are out of recession? Answer me.”

“If you keep talking like this, they will end up putting a monkey on your back oh. These people don’t like this kind of talk.”

“What else don’t they like? The Kogi Governor is denying the truth but are you aware that the Senate took a decision to rescue Kogi state with relief materials, and many Senators pledged to donate certain numbers of bags of rice.”

“Those Senators are stingy. They should stay in their monkey house and stop playing politics with everything. With all that money they get, some of them were so shameless they donated 20 bags of rice.”

“In a proper situation, government workers should not become beggars in their own country, receiving bags of rice from overpaid Senators. I must say though that those Senators are still better than the Kogi Governor who I was told is determined to stop the bags of rice and other relief materials from entering Kogi state.”

“Yes, because he knows Dino Melaye, his political rival is behind it, using the Senate and bags of rice to intimidate him and play politics.”

“Then, let him pay the workers their salaries, and stop blaming others. It is simple. Why do these people make every simple thing look so complicated?”

“You have a point there. But I know one Governor who is very simple and he keeps it simple.”

“And who is that?”

“The Governor of Ondo State.”

“Governor Akeredolu.”

“Point of correction. Arakunrin Akeredolu.”

“That is a monkey title. Get to your point.”

“Arakunrin the other day, commissioned a billboard on hand-washing: wash your hands with soap and water. Solid ceremony, well–attended.”

“And that is governance?”

“It is good to wash hands in these days of ebola and monkey pox.”

“I have heard of Governors commissioning toilets and boreholes, but billboards?”

“It is better to keep things simple. In my view, yes.”

“Yes. Oh yes.”

“At least Arakunrin is better than the Ogbeni in Osun, and that other one in Owerri. In Osun, the Comrade Governor Aregbesola wants to build an MKO Abiola International Airport worth N69 billion, even if he is owing civil servants salaries. He says he is not happy to owe salaries, but at the same time he doesn’t see anything wrong in building an airport that will be of no use to the people.”

“Please, can we discuss something else?”

“What?”

“Anything but nothing to do with their monkey business”

“Trust our boys. Nigeria no dey carry last. You know one Nigerian recently impregnated another man’s wife in South Africa and when the man complained, the Naija guy negotiated with the South African and gave him a gift of a G-Wagon. The South African is so happy he has agreed that the Nigerian has done nothing wrong and his wife can carry the pregnancy to full term.”

“True story?”

“True life story. Google has it.”

“These South Africans. But can you blame the man? His President Jacob Zuma got a whole statue in Nigeria. What stops him from grabbing a G-Wagon?”

“Cossy Orjiakor has also grabbed something.”

“Who is Cossy Orjiakor?”

“The lady with the iconic headlamps on her chest”

“Will you stop? I am an intellectual. I don’t descend that low.”

“Go and sit down. Na me and you, oh. We know ourselves, bros. No be you dey talk about one small girl breast the other day?”

“Today, I am discussing elevated matters.”

“This one is also elevated. Cossy Orjiakor just went through surgery to elevate her buttocks and she has informed the entire nation. The gradience between her chest and her derriere is now perpendicular, proportional and graduated. I will like to see and touch that.”

“I don’t deal with bottom matters. The only bottom I am worried about is how Nigeria is now at the bottom.”

“Oil is now $60 a barrel, bros. No oil, no bottom, no monkey business…Tinubu and Baba are now re-strategizing. Level wan change… Eruku, No shaking.”

“People and vehicles are jumping into the Lagoon in Lagos every month.”

“That one no concern Baba. Ask the Oba of Lagos. Since him say anybody wey no vote for Ambode go perish for Lagoon, people and vehicles have actually been jumping into the Lagoon. These traditional rulers, me I dey fear them oh…”