By Abuchi Obiora
“They were not able to make a down payment for a roasted corn for that electricity” – Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu
Perhaps this is the way Nigerians, including myself, must begin to talk – in satires, allegories, metaphors and in cryptic languages to disguise what we must make public for the overall interest of Nigeria.
By the way, an ‘hypothesis’ is an idea or suggestion that is based on known facts and is used as a basis for reasoning or further investigation” (Oxford Advanced Leaners Dictionary, Special Price Edition), while ‘Agbado’ is the Yoruba Language word for ‘corn’ (maize), the seeds of a plant-producing grain that is popular in Nigeria and some African countries as staple food eaten either in whole, mashed or as flour.
The word ‘Agbado” was used several times by the INEC-declared Nigeria’s president-elect in what I will, in pretense regard as metaphorical expression of what only Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu understood, during the APC nationwide presidential campaign sequel to the 2023 controversial elections.
This work is lifted from some of my early life experiences when as young men in our late teens and early twenties, we travelled to Lebanon (Beirut), European countries (Italy, Spain, France, Germany, UK, etc.) Asian countries such as: Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan on business trips. I call those years Nigeria’s dark years of crime because it was easy to commit crimes in Nigeria at that time without being apprehended. Hopefully, the hypothesis explored here will suggest the most probable answers to all the identity questions of the ‘Agbado’ Master. The second reason this work becomes imperative is to prevent the ascendancy of the worst of us to positions of leadership as we work for the rebirth of a new Nigeria built by people of good character who are competent and capable with the capacity and compassion to direct the affairs of the country.
Nigeria’s dark years of crime raised up many of the personalities who presently feature in the APC and the PDP. In those years, many young Nigerians started out as hustlers in private service while others served as public service officers of the lower cadre. The last amongst these were some international businessmen like us, during those years when in June 1979 I could travel to Taiwan and Hong Kong via Karachi (Pakistan) en route Frankfurt Main (West Germany) and Brussels (Belgium) and then to Amsterdam (Holland) on Luftansa German Airline return-ticket to Port Harcourt with N1,760 only. Nigerians will be surprised to know that we exchanged One Dollar for between Twenty Nine Kobo and Thirty Eight Kobo during those years (1977 – 1983).
Nigeria’s dark years of crime was made possible by the social conflicts and distortions caused by the civil war. These social conflicts and distortions brought impunity with a spiraling crime rate across Nigeria in the 70s and early 80s. It was to be checked by Decree Number Four of the Military junta Led by General Mohammadu Buhari. Amongst the people who served in that military junta was Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG), Fidelis Oyakhilome (rtd) who served as the Governor of Rivers State between 1984 and 1986. As an Intelligence officer, DIG Oyakhilome obviously had a first-hand knowledge of the activities of the criminal elements in Nigeria along with a dossier of the personalities behind them. More so, he was chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) (1988–1991).
In a 1990 interview which he granted to the Newbreed Magazine, the super cop had warned that Nigerians must ensure that their future is not determined by drug barons, drug mules and their supporters. Unfortunately for Nigeria, this is what just happened in the country during the 2023 elections as the exercise in some of the States (Lagos and Rivers inclusive) were replicas of what drug wars look like – ‘We against Them.’
Being a part of Generals Muhammadu Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon’s ‘War Against Indiscipline’ and drug war in Nigeria, it is not unlikely that DIG Oyakhilome had some people in mind as he granted the interview. He, most probably had observed those people in 1990 steadily climbing the ladder of power in Nigeria. Now, experience has become our best teacher. True to the warning in 1990 by DIG Oyakhilome, Nigeria is presently assembling a leadership of convicted criminals with people like Ovie Omo-Agege (Deputy Senate Speaker in the 9th Assembly); Femi Gbajabiamila (Speaker of the House of Assembly in the 9th Assembly); Babajide Sanwo-Olu (Governor of Lagos State); and Dapo Abiodun (Governor of Ogun State) among others, as belonging to the unenvied class of people who have been pronounced guilty of some criminal offences in the United States of America. There is a long list of such people in Nigeria locally convicted and these include Senator Orji Uzor Kalu and a host of others.
As a result of the complicity of being joint accessories to crime by keeping quiet as these criminals accessed public offices, Nigerians have been victims of national opprobrium around the world. Shortly after the presidential election result was announced at 4:00am by INEC on March 1, 2023, newspaper headlines around the world screamed negative captions to capture a national disgrace. In Austria, a national newspaper boldly wrote that “A drug baron wins presidential elections in Africa’s biggest economy” while a popular newspaper in Poland beamed out, ‘Nigeria chooses a known drug lord as leader.”
The story was not different in Canada where a highly respected Mass Media house observed that “Depression, anxiety, uncertainty beclouds Nigeria’s political space as a drug kingpin wins election.” The long-founded and equally much respected “Financial Times,” a strong international and public opinion molder, tacitly chose an insightful headline to reflect its disgust of Nigeria’s ‘choice.’ It captured its analysis of the election with the headline: “Nigeria’s electoral process flawed.”
How did Nigeria find itself in this mess? During the period of Nigeria’s dark years of crime, it was easy to have as many International Passports as you wished to have with as many different names as you choose to bear because there was no centralized system and unified date base to guide and control the issuance of International Passports by immigrations offices around Nigeria.
Kakawa Street, near Tinubu Square, where the Immigration and Customs Services Headquarters were situated was a market place in the sense that touts hanging along the street made it easier for people to wait outside and procure their International Passports within one hour of application through touts than from the Immigration Office. The touts, (usually called agents who are well known and respected in the Immigration Office), had the same booklets used in the Immigration Office. As a matter of fact, the touts had their make-shift offices behind Mandilas Building and at the back of Leventis and generally within the Tinubu Square environ. We called them ‘Oluwole’ and they were capable of giving you any document for use either within Nigeria or outside Nigeria. You could get the original thing or a faked one, depending on how much you were ready to pay. At the time I knew ‘Oluwole,’ you could get more sophisticated documents there than the Chicago State University Degree Certificate presently in the news. In ‘Oluwole,’ they had ready-made passports with names and photographs.
Identity change during Nigeria’s dark years of crime was as simple as using a sunction-type, table-top machine to pull out the photograph of the passport owner, insert your own and use a heating device to seal once again. They had all these things ready at ‘Oluwole.’ Additionally, the ‘Oluwole’ doubled as the local drug vendors and the recruiting agents of the couriers, mules (or simply ‘birds’) for the Drug Lords. Cocaine, Heroin, Morphine and all of those were in common sight in that vicinity at that time. Marijuana sales was for the boys in training.
The popular Tinubu Square was a stone throw from the Immigration Office and the operating hub of the ‘Oluwole’ agents. So, it was possible for somebody who needed an identity change to adopt a surname that ‘rings some bells’ as well as confer certain respect to the bearer especially as the person who may decide to choose the surname was well known within the vicinity. One of my elder brothers, Ebere Guy, who stayed over during the civil war as an Afro-beat Musician in Lagos playing with Fela Ramson Kuti and the Africa 70 band at the old Katakuta Republic Idi Oro, Lagos, was our guide in Lagos during the early 70s. An international clothing merchant with outlets around Lagos, he had one of his shops directly opposite Ritz Hotel, at the back of UTC (coming through Marina) and back of Bata (coming through Broad Street). Ritz Hotel was one of the sports that served as rendezvous for the big boys for planning and chilling out. ‘Powder’ was freely arranged and distributed discreetly within the vicinity of the hotel. Is it not possible that somebody very well-known within the environment as a ‘big boy’ would easily familiarize with a woman market leader who will because of the man’s popularity, most gratefully accept the man as her adopted son when the man must have returned from the U.S distressed?
Yes, I still remember the names of some of our friends in those years. They include Jalolo, Pitoto (a Cameroonian), Shonene, etc. As a matter of fact, it took strong family upbringing not to become a criminal during those dark days when criminal activities prospered unhindered in Nigeria. We co-mingled together with the good, the bad and the ugly amongst ourselves without discriminating against each other. Anybody who has been in that community in the last 45 years (some of them are still there) should be able to confirm my hypothesis. Meanwhile, a book was said to have been written by a member of the famous Tinubu family. The writer, Abdul Rafiu Babatunde Tinubu, in his book “The Tinubu’s Dynasty of Kakawa Street, Lagos” perused the family history of the Tinubus to trace nobody in the family line called Bola Ahmed.
In furtherance of our discussion, an identity swap displaces as well as renders useless the previous data of a person and replaces it with a new one as it begins to build new data from the point where the previous one was discarded. Situations where there is a new built-up on the old data would always be discouraged, otherwise, it will negate all the reasons for the identity change. Identity change or swap therefore is made attractive when it becomes the only alternative to wipe out old records especially as it may pattern to an ex-convict.
It surprises me that Nigerians worry about such information as the Primary and Secondary School details of Mr. Yekini Amoda Ogunlere, the University he attended and Degree Certificate he was awarded. It will also be useless to ask for the employment history of somebody who had his identity changed because such intimate details will let the cat out of the bag if he still keeps them available. Those details are naturally destroyed because that is the only way the new identity can survive. As for having any information previously held by a person whose identity has been swapped or adopted (if there be any), it is impossible in the sense that either the person never existed or he/she has been dead.
International Passports of known dead people were also sold at better prices in ‘Oluwole’ in those days because they were safer to have in order to promote an identity change. In those Nigeria’s dark years of crime, if you lose your International Passport, you will be sure that somebody will be travelling with it shortly for some criminal businesses. At that time, if your passport gets lost, it will be sold at a good price in Oluwole. If you lose your passport in Lagos at that time, you can always get it back at Oluwole if you know the kinpins to talk to. From all indications, it seems certain that the identity change of no-more-to-be-located Yekini Amoda Ogunlere happened long before the trending issue of fortitude of $460,000 by a Nigerian to the U.S authorities. The only riddle left unsolved here is to establish a link between the two personalities, if any relationship existed between the two. But like I did say earlier, nobody who contemplates an identity change can deliberately reveal the link between a former and a present identity. The process of such a revelation can only be achieved through a forensic analysis of documentary evidence carefully stored away by a government agency that has an eagle eye.
In those dark days also, some people known to me published obituaries of themselves in National Daily Newspapers and caused their families and lawyers to send same to their creditors in Germany and Taiwan in order to escape payment of huge sums of monies owned to the creditors on imports to Nigeria. Apart from trafficking on marijuana, cocaine and heroin, Nigerians also trafficked on the Naira. The Nigerian Naira was powerful then. Nigerians will find it difficult to believe that I once exchanged N2,000 (Two Thousand Naira) to secure my Business Travel Allowance (BTA) and got $3040 (Three Thousand and Forty Dollar) in this country where the Naira value for that $3040 (Three Thousand and Forty Dollar) has become N2,280,000.00 (Two Million, Two Hundred and Eight Thousand Naira).
Mass faking of American and Western European products in Taiwan started during these dark years with many of the very wealthy Nigerian businessmen presently in politics having made their money at that period. As those years lasted, keeping a gun was an excitement because there were so many young men and women engaged in gun running with Brazil as the major procurement point. One could get a new Baretta 0.38 Calibre pistol the same price and as easily as one could get a small new Thermocool Refrigerator from people known to discreetly deal in guns. Generally speaking, this is the true nature of the society that molded the characters of most Nigerian politicians presently in the saddle.
I believe Nigeria as a country has taken so muchabuse overtime that unless something is urgently done now, the country will soon bleed to death. Herein lies the need for a rescue operation by a new set of politicians who never participated or contributed to the making of the present day Nigeria. Inthe Northernmost parts of Nigeria, the Alhajis (one of them is one of the richest man in Borno State today) and their Southern friends trafficked in petroleum products. Others trafficked in counterfeited Naira printed in Malta, a small European country with advanced printing technology, using the Borno state axis to bring it in concealed in ‘Okirika’ (second hand clothing) bales. Some of them are the criminal politicians who are today the impediments to a good social order in the country with one of them presently seeking for the office of the Senate President in the uncertain 10th Assembly. For this reason, I believe Nigeria as a country has taken so muchabuse overtime that unless something is urgently done now, the country will soon bleed to death. Herein lies the need for a rescue operation by a new set of politicians who never participated or contributed to the making of the present day Nigeria.
The knowledge of what Tinubu Square, Lagos, stood for in those years after the Nigerian civil war may give an idea of why anybody would want to bear the surname, Tinubu. By that time, the ancestral home of the Tinubus in Kakawa Street had shrunk to a compound with houses that did not compare with the aesthetically built high rise offices in the neighborhood. There was a popular ‘Amala’ joint there. The compound adjoined the old CMS Building in Marina, a two floor ancient building. The name ‘Tinubu’ was and still is legendary while the Square with the erected Stature was and still is a landmark known around the international community. Mention Tinubu Square in Beirut or Italo (Italy) and the Lebanese or the Italians, respectively, will pay closer attention to you. Lebanese thronged the shops situated near the Tinubu Square in droves displaying samples of goods to reap from the oil boom. They were ready to grant their goods on negotiated credit terms.
Apart from the shops, there was clusters of business activities that went on around Tinubu Square. These clusters of business stretched down to the adjoining streets that emptied in Tinubu Square. These streets include Broad Street, Kakawa, Igboshere, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Breafruit etc. The make-shift businesses were dominated by women under the control of an ‘Iyaloja.’ The concept of Iyaloja of Lagos obviously gained popularity within and around Tinubu Square where the women gathered to do their businesses. The most popular of the women referred to as Mama Tinubu took charge because of her administrative skills and controlling influence over the rest. She was not required to be a ‘Tinubu’ in order to play this role but leveraged on the popularity of Tinubu Square. Anybody that was conversant with Tinubu Square surely after the civil war knew how the influence of the Square spread down to Balogun Street and all the market hubs scattered within Isale Eko and throughout Lagos mainland.
With the political clout of an intelligent, tenacious and shrewd man who is suspected to have limbed quietly through the ladder of the dark alleys of the underground world to the stardom of political limelight, the specific concept of Iyaloja of Lagos was legalized to yield revenue for both the office holder and the man who reinvented and promoted the office.
Apart from keeping the peace and settling quarrels between women, another function of the Iyaloja of markets is to improve the welfare of and develop women, involving them in some social and thrift schemes. The Iyaloja also collects sundry taxes from women. Most ironically, this improved expanded and organized system of touting within Lagos called the office of the Iyaloja is regarded as one of the achievements of a godfather whose political influence presently traverses the nooks and crannies of Lagos state, holding Lagos and Lagosians in complete hostage.
In conclusion, Tsun Tzu, a Chinese military General, philosopher, war strategist and writer (he authored the popular book on war strategies titled “The Art of War”), who lived during the Eastern Zhou period of inter-tribal and inter-ethnic conflicts (between 771-256 BCE), wrote that “An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes.”
Desolation of ethics and morals in a society and the destruction of the spiritual threads and bonds holding that society together reaches to high heavens when consecutive generations of criminals who should have been serving terms and spending their lives in jails are allowed, not only to be walking the streets free but also to become the leaders, the arrow-heads and the standard bearers of that society. But wait! We are all complicit in the desolation of our society because we kept quiet and allowed a system that negates all our aspirations for a sane and developed nation to tarry for long even after having been warned by a first class Police Intelligence officer, DIG Fidelis Oyakhilome.
To renounce our complicity, we should say NEVER AGAIN and quickly join hands together to save our country from destruction by the dregs of the society, who, without qualms, will be most prepared to rule over a disintegrated Nigeria.
ABUCHI OBIORA
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