A funny publication by online magazine, Daily Post, got me thinking how lawless the Nigerian society is. Ours is a society in which every out of business crook can re-invent himself using nothing but the dangerous tolerance of most political office holders. Only in Nigeria people would concoct dangerous lies, publish same, hold press conferences to spread the lies and still get away with it without as much as a slap on the wrist.
On this particular occasion, it’s another dangerous effort by the so called “Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), to drag the names of the entire members of the lower chamber of the National Assembly in the mud. According to CUPP, it has in its possession “credible information” indicating American Billionaire, Bill Gates has doled out $10 million to compromise members of the lower for easy passage of a bill. CUPP, in a statement published by Daily Post, alleged that a sum of $10 million was offered by the American Computer Czar to influence the speedy passage of the Control of Infectious Diseases Bill 2020 without recourse to legislative public hearing.
Let’s begin by defining CUPP, the purpose of its creation along with its movers and shakers. CUPP is an amalgam of inconsequential and clearly clownish briefcase political parties desperately created in 2018 for the single purpose of dislodging President Buhari out of office. If you call CUPP a butterfly pretending to be a bird, you are right! At inception, it has the following parties as members: rAPC, GPN, DPN, AA, CAC, NCP, PPA, ADC, PDA, GPN , C4C, DPC, PPN, MATA, PDC, NGP, ADP, PENDEL, UDP, BMPP, YDP, DPC, AGA, GDPN, AD, MMM, RNP, UNUP, NGCP, NIP, REL, UPL, KOWA PARTY, NIM and few others I cannot readily recall.
Back then, rumors were, CUPP was an innovative trick (well, not so innovative) to create a noisy group which only duty was to be as much a nuisance as required to distract the APC and possibly send it into a wild goose chase for PDP to exploit its gaffes and sail to victory. This is an agreeable theory given the presence of PDP’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and his man Friday, Buba Galadima, at the inauguration of the clownish coalition. In any case, not long after the inauguration, on June 7th 2019, TVC News reported the pulling out of 35 political parties out of the coalition living CUPP with a “single digit” support base among what many could say was countless Nigeria’s political parties. With the recent deletion of many briefcase political parties by INEC, it’s left for readers to calculate and make sense of them time they allocate for CUPP’s regular irritating press briefings.
Done with the background of CUPP, let me say a bit about Barrister Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, the most visible official of CUPP who releases regula flamboyant “Notice me” press statements with the same air of importance as the spokesperson of a real and consequential political pressure group rather than a cheap crook basking in the carelessness of Nigeria’s everything goes political system. This is a street smart kid with hands in every controversial pie in Nigeria. I first knew him when I served as the Chief of Staff to the immediate past Minister of Youth & Sports, Barr. Solomon Dalung.
Problem begins when he (Ikenga) organised a sham election in a church and declared himself President of the National Youth Council of Nigeria. The Minister wouldn’t have any of such nonsense and a considerable time was wasted by Barr. Dalung throwing sand into Ikenga’s gari. In the end, Ikenga threw in the towel and pretended to resign, in his words (as published by This Day of 26/5/19) “to focus fully on his duties as the National Chairman of Action People’s Party (APP) and Spokesperson of Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP)”, which was clearly a lie from the the pit of hell. He simply lost out and was off to another lucrative misadventure.
Today Ikenga is a “big man” holding flamboyant press conferences and pretending to be an important personality thanks to the Nigerian media whose efficiencyfor creating something out of nothing is as unbelievable as it’s constant. This is the small time crook telling Nigerians he’s in possession of “credible information” about a top deal involving millions of dollars bribe money sent from USA to compromise members of the lower chamber of the National Assembly and have them assist a foreigner kill their fellow Nigerians. What could be more nonsensical!
The truth is, if there’s such a multi-million dollar deal and Ikenga is in possession of such a dangerously hot intelligence, the trio of Pharaoh Tutenkhamun, Queen Nafetiti and Alexander The Great stand a better chance of knowing (if the dead could hear) than any Nigerian alive because Ikenga would use the information to find a way to plug into such a huge pie. It’s our bane that there will always be crooks like Ikenga willing to create chaos where there’s none. Ditto, there will always be bigger bigger crooks willing to employ their services to do their dirty jobs. The laxity of the system and tolerance of public officials allows it’s a good thing though, that Speaker Gbajabiamila has indicated interest to judicial clear the names of members of the lower chamber on this allegation. It’s a step in the right direction as it will teach adventurous crooks when not to lower the esteem of the revered institution.
It’s neither accidental nor coincidental that another clown, Dino Melaye, is in court to challenge the bill. Melaye is just a more successful and richer version of Ikenga but no less clownish and desperate. His case is more sympathetic. Having wasted precious terms for his constituency in the two chambers of the National Assembly masquerading as a lawmaker, I expect him to be enlightened enough about the rudiments of the two chambers; enough to know such a bill could never be processed to completion without public hearing. If anything, this proved, beyond reasonable doubt, the picture many of us painted of Melaye while he was a member of the National Assembly — the picture of a glorified “Tokumboh” car salesman with zero awareness of the purpose of his presence in the National Assembly.
Worse, Melaye is wounded and will do anything to take his pound of flesh on the National Assembly. He’s till angry with most members either for the assumed role they played in demoting him back to rightful place in the society or for just sitting back and enjoying the drama. Those who know the two characters closely and have little experience with Abuja slum politics would know it’s highly probable Melaye and Ikenga are in a synchronized mischief to embarrass the leadership of the two chambers. Knowing their tricks, one could say it’s a joint effort for one to remain relevant and the other to be relevant. The sum of it, this is a very libelous allegation that the lower chamber shouldn’t allow to go unpunished! And yes, this is another proof that the National Assembly need to do anything within its powers to sanitize the media and push these charlatans out of business. Nigeria is bigger than any idiot with poor sense of the law.