By Steve Osuji
A return to viledom: Dear reader, it’s actually reverse recedivism we are grappling with here. Let’s start with the basics. A recedivist is someone who suffers a relapse after a successful therapy. Especially so, a criminal who returns to his bad ways after a corrective process.But the reverse situation which is what we are concerned with here, is someone who transitions from good to bad.
We speak of people renowned and illustrious as exemplars of the best societal values turning 360 degrees to become violently evil. There seems to be a growing clan of such men in Nigeria today
EXPRESSO here profiles just about a dozen of the most notable amongst such public figures who suffer what we want to term REVERSE RECEDIVISM SYNDROME (RRS).
They include – in a weighted order of ignobleness – Bayo Onanuga, Nuhu Rubadu, Festus Keyamo, Reno Omokri, Doyin Okupe, Kenneth Okonkwo, Daniel Bwala, Abdul Oroh, Joe Igbokwe, Femi Fani Kayode, Dele Momodu and my friend, Mohammed Adamu.
PROFILES IN INFAMY:
BAYO ONANUGA, the Special Adviser, Media and Strategy to President Bola Tinubu tops this gang of twelve. He started out as a crusading journalist, a hound dog who watched over the society while everyone else snored.
He won his spurs in the 90s as editor of the African Concord, the newsmagazine in the stables of Moshood Abiola’s Concord media empire. When Bayo and his pack would be a thorn in the flesh of the ruling military junta and a stumbling block to Abiola’s vaulting political ambition, Abiola sacrificed them. Bayo and his gang were to found THENEWS, a rabid newsweekly magazine.
This was in the early 90s, the era of renewed democratic fervour and global resurgimento of civil rule. Dictators were biting the dust and military presidents were being quick-marched back to their barracks.
This was Bayo Onanuga’s age of grace. He and his men at THE NEWS were in the vanguard of hounding the Generals out of Aso Rock. Apparently sponsored by a certain Bola Tinubu and some Western interests, they threw everything in, especially guerrilla tactics. It went beyond journalism, many were hunted down and incarcerated; lives were lost.
The military represented by Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha eventually beat a hasty retreat. Bayo Onanuga stood out among the heroes of that age: cast as a courageous journalist and fighter for justice, democracy and societal norms.
Today, with Onanuga now in the vortex of power in Aso Rock, Babangida and Abacha are looking like saints. In just a little over one year in office, more journalists may have been harassed and detained than in the entire military era. Corruption is certainly at its apogee now: never in Nigeria’s history was the Nigerian state (including the treasury) more totally captured by one man.
General Sani Abacha who got the tag of being Nigeria’s maximum ruler, had a violent press, NGOs and international democratic interests to contend with. Compared to Tinubu today, Abacha was a benign leader, a boy scout!
Here’s just one example of Bayo’s infamy. The Chargoury Brothers have been the scourge of the Nigerian economy for about four decades. These naturalised Nigerians of Lebanese descent were the lynchpins in the well-documented Abacha family kleptocratic epoch. Bayo Onanuga railed at the Chargoury’s, doing a major cover story exposition on their shady dealings with the Abacha family. Let’s say that the Chargourys were Abacha’s money-laundering machine.
Since the demise Sani Abacha, Tinubu seemed to have inherited the rogue Chargoury family for keeps. Hitech, a civil engineering firm is linked to Tinubu and the Chargoury families. This firm has done the biggest jobs and indeed holds the biggest stakes in the largest facilities and projects in Nigeria today.
Apart from Eko Atlantic, the dazzling city on the Lagos Bar Beach, President Tinubu hurriedly handed Hitech the $11b (N15.6 trillion) Lagos-Calabar superhighway. This is probably the largest single construction job in Africa today. No public bids, no EIA, no parliamentary or budgetary approvals. Just by a presidential fiat.
To the new Bayo Onanuga, nothing is wrong with this wholesale treasury capture by Tinubu and the same Chargourys of two decades ago.
Yet today, the Chargourys no longer work by commission or percentages, they heft Nigeria’s sovereign wealth wholesale.
This is the crux of this article and an illustration of the concept of reverse recedivism. Onanuga best captures the concept, he has been exposed for what he truly is: a dubious, two-faced character who must not be trusted with anything of value.
Last word on Bayo: if he wasn’t a journalist, he would be a mercenary, a soldier for fortunes.
MALAM NUHU RIBADU: We all know the current National Security Adviser (NSA). A middle level police officer in the late 90s, President Olusegun Obasanjo was fooled to think Nuhu was an incorruptible officer. He made him the pioneer Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Ribadu kept up the facade of a saint and deceived Nigerians astoundingly for many years.
Nuhu’s turning point as well as his nemesis was a report he presented to President Obasanjo at the end of his presidency in 2007. In a corruption status survey by the EFCC of all the state governors between 1999 to 2007, then Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos State was reported to be the most corrupt of all governors in Nigeria.
However, by 2011, Ribadu had teamed up with the same Tinubu in his party, Action Congress (AC), as a sponsored presidential candidate. The same super corrupt Tinubu becomes Nuhu’s political godfather four years down the line!
Today, Tinubu, the boa constrictor has completely wound itself around Ribadu in a choke-hold. He’s now the NSA, the chief security apparatchik of the same Tinubu’s presidency. How did a fellow adjudged the most corrupt in the land end up to become the president of same land. How did the man who signed off on the report become an aide?
But Nuhu Ribadu in the real sense, is a toothless bulldog looking on impotently as Tinubu binges on Nigeria’s treasury.
Ribadu pretends to be NSA, while in fact, he sits on the cabinet every week with acclaimed brigands like of Atiku Bagudu, Matawalle and company. Ribadu has lost every moral authority to screen appointees or point fingers. The import is that we currently have the most rogue cabinet running Nigeria. Never was a cabinet so odious in Nigeria’s history.
FESTUS KEYAMO: he still holds himself out to the public as a human rights activist and columnist. But in reality, he is rabble, forever rousing the rabble. As you can see, that’s a tricky art but Keyamo mastered it so well that it has brought him to the ‘exotic’ (not exalted, mind you) position he occupies today. By the way, he’s currently Aviation Minister.
As a young lawyer in the late 90s, keyamo, a restless young man would jump on any public cause that would garner some publicity to him and aid him to some quick deals.
He stood for murderous militant, Asari Dokubo; he jumped on the treason case of the opportunistic Biafra separationist, Ralph Uwazurike; he dabbled into the investigation of the killers of Chief Bola Ige only to muddy the waters beyond common sense and reason.
But what remains Keyamo’s achilles hill today was his dragging then Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu (yes, the same) to court over certificate forgery. It is the same but now famous forgery case that lingers till this moment.
Today, Keyamo is a rabid defender of the documents he claimed were forged just a decade ago. He is now an appointee of the fellow he accused to be a criminal forger.
How do they manage it: yesterday you call a man a felon, today you call him father!?
Keyamo is an activist by morning and a wheeler-dealer by afternoon. No prize for guessing what he does in the evening. He had always been bereft of morals or character. Now he’s where he always wanted to be: in a cabinet of curs. If Keyamo wasn’t a lawyer, he would have been operating from the vast Oshodi motor garage. Guess how his Ministry is run?
RENO OMOKRI: This mealy-mouthed chap who has made a public mess of himself is actually from a privileged home. A jurist father and a top civil service mother, one would wonder how come he is lacking in any modicum of fine values.
To cut Reno’s long, woolly story short, he’s an ephemeral man without conviction. He’s a sweet tooth addicted to the vanities of life which he considers to be goodies. He has the temperament of an overgrown child who cannot do without his toys.
He fancies himself a great social media influencer. But in the quest for goodies, he would do nigh anything – no qualms, no scruples. He was bit media aide to former President Goodluck Jonathan ( an assistant to an assistant). He soon cosied up to Mr Peter Obi seeking to con him. That didn’t work. He jumped to the services of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar during the last presidential election campaign. Atiku lost and in a twinkle of an eye, he sidled to the winning Tinubu team.
Reno is always quick to return to his vomit and no matter how stale and ugly it looks, he gobbles it up.
He made personal history a few days ago when he eventually got a photo opportunity with President Tinubu. He was said to have shopped for a special Yoruba danshiki with ab’eti aja cap to matched. A classic popinjay, he beamed broadly in the photo like a suckling.
All he craves is exotic baby food and he would do just anything so salve his appetite…
With his shifty eyes, if he wasn’t from a well heeled family, he would have turned out a pimp!
DOYIN OKUPE: The medical doctor turned a political contractor recently missed the opportunity to earn nary a two-penny relevance in his tainted and meaningless political travels.
He studied medicine but never could practice. Apparently his rich parents pushed him to it. He joined politics; more like a hanger-on milking his family name. Yet he never could make a name of his own or amount to anything. An apathetic life!
He was media aide to President Obasanjo and later to Goodluck Jonathan. Those stints were tainted with scandals and tell tale graft. His case files at the EFCC would probably lead him to the cooler if diligently pursued.
When Labour Party’s candidate, Peter Obi gifted him a bright spot by his side in the last Presidential campaign, people thought Doyin finally got his time in the sun after his dodgy political life. His star got some shine. Though LP was robbed by APC, the political mileage was rich.
Bit no sooner had inauguration taken place than Doyin Okupe showed his colour. He was quitting Labour Party due to some ideological yammer, yammer, yammer!
If he had said he was joining the APC gravy train, some people would at least love him for his candour. He made a spoof of himself trying to talk about ideology and philosophy. What a laugh.
He’s been angling for a seat in the APC bazaar since, with no luck. He’s still out there in the rain, shamelessly chanting Tinubu’s oriki and hoping his voice would be heard.
KENNETH OKONKWO: The Nollywood denizen turned lawyer, turned politician, turned media ‘guru’ sang his political nunc dimitis recently when he left his seat as Peter Obi’s spokesperson. He tries to paint Obi as uncharismatic, bashful and even a weakling.
The irony is that Obi has imbued kenneth with so much clout and credibility in a very short time that he begins to view his butterfly as a big bird.
The truth is that Kenneth is an opportunist who seeks to break bounds (not unlike a thief at night), into an elective political office. For many years, during the Buhari presidency, Okonkwo took to the back page of a national newspaper to write the most idiotic column in aid of an administration that was dead on delivery. But many saw through his ploy, which was to get a governorship ticket through the backdoor.
Let Kenneth be told that verbose eloquence is not always sagacity and opportunism doesn’t always pay. Like Doyin, he threw away the best political opportunity he ever had, or would have. Ken has the demeanour of battering ram. But politics is 99% wisdom and integrity…
DANIEL BWALA: Like Okonkwo, Daniel mistook for his talkative nature for wisdom. He talks well before the mike but he’s shorn of an atom of morals and character. For him, everything he can rationalise is ok. So he can jump from Tinubu to Atiku and back to Tinubu in six months. Yet he thinks he can stand before reasonable people and yak, yak, yak at them like a damaged toy. How does he explain this to his family and friends. His children, especially? Does he lie to them too?
Let’s just conclude that Bwala has become adept at lying to himself he doesn’t know the difference anymore. Call him a moral neutral… and a neutral wire would never give you electricity, would it!?
ABDUL OROH: In the heady 90s of renewed democratic fervour and human rights activism, Abdul was in the forefront of it. He was the media face of the Civil
Liberties Organisation (CLO), rising to be director. A journalist and lawyer, he is today quite comfortable to transit from the military gulag to Tinubu’s CONCENTRATION CAMP. He has morphed into a dyed-in-the wool (APC) party man, warts and all. Party supersedes the society for him today. A seat at the dinner table is more important… for him, all is well that EARNS well.
JOE IGBOKWE: He started out as an fervent letter writer to editors. He would rant about any real and perceived misdemeanour of government and public service. He was writing out of somewhere in the eastern hinterland.
He was to find his way to Lagos – by night bus we learnt. Soon he wangled his way into the Bourdillon band. Sycophancy, blind, servile loyalty and self-abnegation were the entrance tickets.
Joe knows the routine. He would throw his body, soul and spirit into the ring. When it required that he threw more bodies, he dumped his entire ethnic group to keep his slot, or sup if you like.
When next you happen upon Joe, please ask him about the lost tribe of common Nigerians for whom he wrote letters to the editor every day. Tell him also that we still have some of those letters.
FEMI FANI KAYODE, DELE MOMODU AND MOHAMMED ADAMU: FFK as he’s simply known was never really a champion of the cause of the people. Whatever he does is in aid of his own wellbeing. FFK has been gentle and sober for a season. It’s either he’s taking a breather from his incessant rascality or he’s still dizzy from his countless switching of political parties.
It’s on record that FFK has jumped back and forth from parties more than any politician in Nigeria’s history. Today, he seems to have found new passion (he does nothing for nothing, trust me) in the Israeli-Palestinian family affair. He dresses like Yesser Arafat to boot! Know yea that the hidden deal shall be revealed in the fullness of time.
DELE MOMODU has swung back and forth a bit too in pursuit of his personal aggrandisement. He must be counted among the pen pushers of the 90s who removed the junta’s paws from our pot of soup. After that, he has been on the rollercoaster of self aggrandisement. Everyman to himself, the gods for Nigeria. Like Abdul above, his strength is that he cannot tell the difference between good and bad. All is well that brings the bucks! He’s now a politician and PR honcho who fancies himself a journalist… well, didn’t they say anything goes in Nigeria?!
MOHAMMED ADAMU: He was a foot soldier in the fight to reclaim Nigeria from the military. As an impressionable young journalist, he was incarcerated in the famous Abacha swoop. Today, he is comfortable in the Tinubu camp. It’s not about Nigeria or the people after all, it’s about specialised interests for him. In the APC camp, everything is right!
BOTTOMLINE: The twelve profiled above are just a few of the otherwise brilliant Nigerians who have been damaged by the Nigerian conundrum. They now suffer acute reverse recedivism syndrome. They are sound minds no doubt, people who should lead the transition from the sullied old guard to Nigeria’s bright new era in the sun. But they have been mashed in the morass of this age. Sad that hardly any societal good can be expected of this class. These are no longer change agents, all they crave is power and the perquisites therefrom. Who will rescue Nigeria?!
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OSUJISTEVE/14.10.24