Nigeria: Ribadu Report - Orchestrating Chaos

AllAfrica
Daily Trust [05/11/12]

OPINION
Forget the parody of a banana republic led by an insatiable troop of monkeys. Nigeria is fast sliding to be worse than that because it is transforming into the kind of theatrical absurdity portrayed in the classic "Our husband has gone mad again".

Nuhu Ribadu  (Photo: François Gouahinga/allAfrica.com)
If the recently well stage managed and deliberately planned chaos of the Ribadu Committee report submission is anything to go by, our leadership but ruining class are on the fast track to self-destruction but unfortunately taking the country along the path of a national perdition and international scorn. Governance is about credibility and when incredibility is systematically engineered at its highest levels there is no telling how such perfidy will play out in multiplier effects at the various strata and tiers of government.

It is an indisputable fact of history that the members of the ruling classes that refuse to make voluntary individual sacrifices for their country will inevitably commit involuntary class suicide on its behalf.

Any country subsisting under the kind of the prevalent throes its slum-dog millionaire kind of political leadership has subjected it to is on the certain voyage of a titanic disaster waiting to happen. Our country deserves a better leadership and its citizens must insist on it.

The burden of leadership is so intense that it encompasses being good and effective.

Losing your cool while responding to a routine question on the provision of asset declaration in a media chat broadcast nationally, is neither good nor effective leadership.

Affirming to an august gathering at the UN General Assembly that you would abide by an ICJ judgement against your national interests at the disputed Bakassi Peninsula only to in an apparent afterthought constitute a committee to explore an appeal process just a couple of days before the expiration of a 10 year hiatus to do so is neither good nor effective leadership. Not to concertedly respond for weeks to a flooding of huge swaths of your national constituency until your immediate locale is inundated is neither good nor effective leadership.

And now this Ribadu Committee report debacle that can best be described as "Fuji Garbage" in full glare and what John Cardinal Onaiyekan would refer to as "the violence of bad government".

The idea behind constituting the Ribadu Committee with outsiders to the oil sector was on the onset planned to hoodwink the oil industry watchers. To select a duo from that same committee and "reward" them with appointments in the same organization they are chiefly investigating is tantamount to conceding to a wily fox the guardianship of a poultry house. Unfortunately the said gentlemen so appointed disappointed their mentors because they grossly underestimated the new razor sharp cop in Malam Nuhu Ribadu who also is Nigeria's nearest equivalent to FBI's Edgar Hoover. Whatever were Ribadu's shortcomings during his chairmanship of EFCC and his premature foray into the murky waters of Nigeria's partisan politics; he has by his principled stance over the oil sector probe fully redeemed his goodself.
To handle the barrage of outcry over the Ribadu committee report media aides and overzealous attack dogs will soon starting falling among themselves in a bid to reinvent what actually transpired. But now that the questionable anti-corruption credentials of Transformation Agenda have been stripped bare, the federal government has unfortunately exposed itself to more wild speculation about its inner workings. This coming at the heels of Dino Melaye's specific allegations and the ill timing of the minor cabinet reshuffle in the affected ministry will only serve to further oil the hyperactive rumour mills across the country since government has left much to the imagination by its poorly executed antics.

An international review of Ola Rotimi's "Our husband has gone mad again" described the award winning theatrical production as "a comic swipe at the ideological misfits and opportunists in the ever accommodating Nigerian political landscape driven by vanity other than patriotism". What happened at the Ribadu Committee report submission seamlessly fits that description.

Yahaya-Joe wrote from Fagge, Kano State

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