THE enchanter recited the incantation with utmost fury: “River Niger and River Benue, the confluence is in Kogi State. Except say River Niger and River Benue no come meet for Kogi; if River Niger and River Benue come meet for Kogi, dem no go fit arrest Bello… Dem dey use EFCC pursue am, dem no go succeed o. Dem go lay siege for im house for Abuja… Except say I no be born of Igala kingdom… EFCC dey front, you dey back; you dey back, dem dey front; you dey left, dem dey right; you dey right, dem dey left; you dey centre, dem come there, you jump dem pass!…a lion cannot give birth to a goat…”

The repertoire is a typical exchange in African rituals. The target was the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), an organization headed by Ola Olukoyede. Olukoyede is said to be a pastor in Enoch Adeboye’s RCCG. The aim is for the de-escalation of the pursuit of Bello by the EFCC, his alleged theft of Kogi State’s N82 billion notwithstanding. Bello’s matter got escalated towards the end of the week when the EFCC chairman alleged that the ex-governor paid in advance, the sum of $845,852.84 to the Abuja school of his children. Bello has made feeble attempt to denounce this from his hiding hole with the ill-logic that it was paid with his hard-earned sweats. Why the rush to pay school fees till 2034 if where the money was got today would remain permanent?

Former Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello

Yahaya Bello and his apologists have been spurting out bunkum. They allege that the EFCC is hounding him. Let us assume they are right. First, it is shameful for a self-styled Lion to hide inside a hole like a coyote, thereby eating stale food reserved for effeminate animals. Don’t they say that the leopard, and by extension, the lion, does not eat stale food? (Ekun kii je’ran ikasi). It is thus lawless of Yahaya Bello not to honour the anti-graft body’s lawful invitation. Bello’s 8-year reign was notorious for his naked stomping on opposition’s human rights, running a government fittingly described as an orgy of violence. Why are executioners always afraid when swords are flung in their faces? His is reminiscent of the story of an executioner in Old Oyo Kingdom whose specialty was in decapitating his victims with relish. Upon courting the ire of the Alaafin and was sentenced to death, the ex-executioner suddenly became jittery. When the man about to decapitate him began to do the traditional acrobatics pre-cutting off of his head, jittery, the ex-executioner’s voice shaky, he asked what part of his body would be cut off, “my head or feet?” Celebratory townsmen who had gathered to witness his comeuppance were angered and demanded rhetorically what part of his victims’ bodies he relished in cutting off during his reign of terror.

Late University of Leiden scholar, Stephen Ellis, in a 2001 article, “Mystical Efforts: Some evidence from the Liberian war” (Journal of Religion in Africa, XXX1, 2) described how Monrovians were shocked at how soldiers “(disemboweled) the bodies of their victims and (eat) their flesh or internal organs, particularly the heart.” The art of eating human heart is borne of a residue of practices in Africa. The belief is that, a person’s essence is contained in the heart and the blood. So, once the hearts and blood of these warriors are eaten and drunk, “the one who had just eaten them acquires some of the power formerly possessed by his victim.”

Wherever Bello is at the moment, no one needed to be told that he is engrossed with one or a combination of three elements in the bid to confront the coercive power of the Nigerian state. In the tragedy that is Yahaya Bello, these three elements must be making gross harvests from his calamity. They are, on the one hand, the religious combine made up of Pastors, Alfas and African indigenous religious rituals and magic. The second is, lawyers scrambling to profit from what they perceive as the loot from Kogi. Some shameless ones among them gathered in court last week to protest against the EFCC. The third is bloggers/journalists who by now must have offered to defreeze adversarial comments against him in traditional and social media platforms.

Marabouts have become notorious in the incestuous relationship between politics and religion in northern Nigeria. They are traditionally Muslim religious leaders and teachers who functioned historically as chaplains serving in Islamic army of North Africa, the Sahara, and in the Maghreb.

For very many African heads of state, clerics and known spiritualists were their advisors. Kenneth Kaunda was top among them. As president of Zambia, he had an Indian, Dr Ranganathan, as consultant on power matters. So also did President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin. He had a Malian marabout called Mohamed Amadou Cisse, also known as ‘Djine’ or ‘the Devil’ as his spiritual advisor. Cisse once publicly espoused the Devil. He was hitherto advisor to some other African leaders like Mobutu and Omar Bongo of Gabon. Kerekou later appointed Cisse minister of state whose responsibility in the Beninese government was secret services. President Didier Ratsiraka of Madagascar too had a palace that boasted of an extravagant temple dedicated to Rosicrucian god. So also did Paul Biya of Cameroon and Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique.

Marabouts, herbalists, sorcerers and occult chiefs of the Yahaya Bellos of this world and other African leaders become repositories of highly confidential state information. These get them in the process of spiritual interventions for the captive leaders. Feckless and desperate in the bid to attain and cling on to power, they divulge details of innermost governmental secrets to them. A 1998-published journal article written by Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar with the title, “Religion and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa” (The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 175-201) discusses how leading marabouts have pre-knowledge of coups d’e tat and other secrets of power. Amadou Cisse, for instance, knew virtually all the secrets of power in Benin.

The moment the Nigerian state allows Yahaya Bello, for whatever reason, to escape the wrath of the law, its last lever of strength will snap off. Whoever kills the proverbial hunchback, the Abuke Osin, should pay dearly for it.

BY IKE ABONYI

“Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.” — George Bernard Shaw

The lion is unquestionably the king of the jungle. With his divine dominion from creation, when man takes over the tropical forest, the entire wildlife there is subject to his command and control. If at that point the lion still behaves uncontrollably, the human being brings his superiority to bear and he quarantines the beast to the cage in a zoo for proper control. At the point of trying to subdue the lion and relocate it from the forest to the zoo, it’s not going to be easy. Risks are involved, other animals might be harmed, but in the end, man’s supremacy prevails.

Nigerians are not new to the uncanny behaviour of some lionized politicians who get entrapped in the end. The drama around the immediate past Governor of Kogi State Yahaya Bello, otherwise known as “the white lion,” is not the first time Nigerian politicians are into such gimmicks and eye-catching novelty. Recall the former Governor of Delta State, James Onanefe Ibori, who was so powerful in office that he even installed most of the key operatives in EFCC and was so sure of himself when late President Umaru Yar’Adua was in control. He was the de facto Vice President, brought in one of his boys as the Principal Secretary at the Aso Rock Villa, ostensibly to dominate and sideline Vice President Goodluck Jonathan.

Someday, President Yar’Adua suddenly died. Naturally, the tables turned and VP Jonathan was installed executive president [forget the surrounding drama for now]. Both the utility principal secretary in the Villa and Ibori were on the run. Unfortunately, for Ibori, the dirty cupboard he left behind as a youth in England had not been cleaned and the authorities in the UK were looking for him. When they heard he had left his natural habitat in Nigeria as a result of his friend’s death, to Dubai, England quickly activated the non-protection of criminals bilateral pact with the UAE and Ibori was arrested, sent to England, was tried, and jailed. This saved Nigeria the cost of hiring lawyers and feeding him both as a suspect and eventually as a prisoner.

So, the journey the White Lion of Kogi is embarking on in his stratagem with EFCC has some resemblance with the above narration.

The same way Ibori was running from the system controlled by his own political party, the People’s Democratic Party is the same way Bello is running from his own ruling party the All Progressive Congress that made him the white lion in Kogi.

The same way Ibori miscalculated against Jonathan who later became the rejected stone that turned the cornerstone, is how Bello miscalculated in rejecting Bola Ahmed Tinubu who is the man in charge today.

Bello’s anti-Tinubu posturing was very well known. He was among many like the former National Chairman of the APC, Abdullahi Adamu, and others who miscalculated Tinubu and who followed Buhari blindly, thinking he would use his presidential might to install their choice. That never happened because of the monetisation of the system. No one could match Tinubu.

Bello even thought that by installing his brother as his successor in Lokoja his matter would be watered down but his offence was uncovered even while he was still serving and didn’t need any new governor to cover up. The best his brother-successor whose fate is still hanging precariously at the petitions tribunal could do was the abuse of his immunity. That was what he did last week, aiding and abetting a criminal suspect to escape arrest.

The only thing that will make the white lion of Lokoja to be so afraid of a visit to the EFCC is that he has a very bad case and already has the premonition of the outcome. Despite belonging to the club where members’ sins do not count against them, Bello’s case may have gone beyond mitigation. Besides, why is a lion afraid of the zoo where it rightly belongs when outside the jungle?

Yahaya Bello’s ignominious journey to the limelight did not start with his cowardly drama with the EFCC. He is in the history book as the youngest person to govern any state in Nigeria in this political dispensation, having been born in June 1975 and sworn in at age 40. All through his eight-year tenure, he held the precedent of being the youngest.

At his inauguration, he was celebrated for his youthfulness by the younger generations who felt the old brigade was yielding place [Tinubu and Atiku must not hear this!]. Bello was looked up to be a catalyst to propel youths to take over of political power in Kogi and this was to be replicated across the country. What did the youths get? A roundly incompetent and confused youth who went to Kogi to muddle up instead of reform the state. In all indices of good governance, Yahaya Bello was a disaster with nothing tangible to lay hands on as a legacy.

The only conspicuous legacy on the negative side for him was his ability to brutally engage his perceived enemies whether in politics or traditional institutions. His drama with Dino Melaye, Senator Natasha Hadiza Akpoti and the late revered royal father of Ebiraland, the Ohinoyi, Ado Ibrahim, were conspicuous.

The cutting off of a road built by Senator Akpoti for her community still remains the weirdest political fight. All of Bello’s youthful exuberance was misdirected to fighting opponents, not in improving the living standard of his people. How he installed his blood brother as his successor in ensuring that the election never took place left all election observers in shock but Nigerians did not blink because they knew from where he picked his electoral misdemeanour with a coadjutant Mahmoud Yakubu still in the driver’s seat of INEC that conducted the bye-elections.

If not for the record left behind by Governor Peter Obi who was elected Governor of Anambra State as a youth at age 46 and turned out to leave an outstanding legacy, Bello would have been a terribly bad market for the youth agitations for political power.

From another angle to Bello’s contrivance, shouldn’t EFCC and security agencies have saved Nigerians from the shameful drama that is now putting some of their operatives in trouble? Was Yahaya Bello not on the wanted list of the commission and was only waiting for his immunity to elapse? Was it not the same EFCC that trailed and caught up with the former Governor Willie Obiano when he left his handover venue and wanted to sneak out and was arrested at the airport?

Was Yahaya Bello not in Lagos to meet with President Tinubu? Even if the Commission did not want to arrest him as the guest of the President, did he not travel by either road or air to Lagos? Were the operatives attached to him signaled to arrest and bring him to Abuja and they failed?
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Many Nigerians believe that EFCC was waiting for clearance and only got it after Bello met with the President which failed to yield any safe landing for the white lion. This gives credence to the strongly held view that EFCC is shy of official corruption which is their main job and only romances with celebrities and use of naira. Even with all the insults and humiliations faced by the Commission, and the swearing by the EFCC boss Ola Olukayode not a few still believe that Yahaya Bello’s case will end up like the others, dying down with the public kept in the dark when APC reactivates its practice of sin cleansing for its members.
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Why the Kogi White Lion is needed in the zoo for caging is not necessarily because he did what is abhorred in APC, but because in his youthful exuberance, he miscalculated in his political judgment and dived in the wrong direction when the penalty kick was taken in 2023. Nobody is holding his misadventure in governance in Kogi against him or his poor representation of his generation because he dutifully protected the ruling party’s dubious electoral interest which is paramount.
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But from whatever perspectives one may want to assess Bello and his eight years of disastrous tenure in Kogi State and the contemptuousness that is trailing him, it’s clear that in him fits the view clearly expressed by Myanmar’s opposition politician and the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi: “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” The White Lion may be a failure in governance but he is in the den of failures where performance parameters are no factors of reprimand. God help us.
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• ABONYI is a Columnist, former Group Political Editor, THISDAY, former Deputy Managing Director of New Telegraph, and Media Consultant who lives in Abuja.

Money is perhaps a homeless vagrant. It has no nationality or permanent homestead in real terms. It goes and stays only where its masters are wise, prudent and far sighted. But in a world dominated by nations and their interests, real money is first a national asset and tool of governance and sovereign assertion. When money thus becomes a source of power, the nation whose flag the conquering company flies shows up to claim its own. Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Coca Cola are synonymous with America. It is not because every American can walk off with a can of Coke from the supermarket without paying for it but because somewhere along the way, brand and nation have become fused and interchangeable. Every successful Business may aspire to an international identity but when the chips are down, every successful business needs to be anchored first on a specific sense of sovereign belonging. Ultimately, then, the companies to which sovereign wealth is usually ascribed have a final responsibility to that nation or sovereignty in times of trouble or goodness.

Make no mistake about it. Businesses are in business to succeed as businesses. To succeed as a business is to make tons of profit and invest in even more business and wealth creation. Sensible companies do not always overtly toe the government’s line. They instead buy into the hearts and minds of the citizens through the products they  offer and how friendly their prices are.

Two Nigerian brands have recently stepped forward to identify with the citizens of our country in this moment of grave challenge and desperate self -inflicted hardship. Dangote and Air Peace are now on record as having risen to use their products, brand presence and pricing strategies to identify with and ameliorate some of the harrowing difficulties that Nigerians are currently going through.

The worst moments of our present economic travail may not be over just yet. The epidemic of hunger still looms over the land. Innocent people are still being trampled to needless death at palliative food centers. Some are getting squeezed to death while scrambling for tiny free cash. Inflation figures just got even worse at over 33.4%. Those who fled the country in awe of rampaging hardship have not yet started returning or regretting their decisions to flee. Most Nigerians, rich and poor alike, are still needing to be convinced that the curse of recent hopelessness can be reversed any time soon.

Yet out of the darkness and gloom that now pervades our national mood, a tinge of sweetness has begun to seep into the air. The exchange rate of the Naira to major currencies has begun heading south. The dollar, which at the worst moments in recent times exchanged for as low as N2,300 to a US dollar, has climbed up in value. As at the time of this writing, a little over N1,000 can fetch you the same miserable US dollar. That may not sound like paradise yet since it is still worse than the worst of the Daura emperor. Most Nigerians are praying that Tinubu should minimally take us back to the Buhari days in terms of the exchange rate and relative food security. We are still far from there.

What has Dangote got to do with it all? The removal of fuel subsidy had unleashed an astronomical hike in energy and fuel prices. While motorists and transporters wept and wailed at the gas stations, the price of nearly everything else went through the roof. Since public power supply remains as epileptic or absent as in the 1970s or worse, we have been living in a virtual generator republic that is dependent on diesel and petrol generators. The price of diesel in particular jumped through the roof. Industrial production suffered just as transportation and haulage costs became unbearable. Every high cost was passed down to the suffocating hapless citizens.

Fortuitously, the gigantic Dangote refinery complex was coming on stream in a time of great difficulty.  Somehow, the hope was alive that the Dangote refinery would come on stream with a bit of good news on the pricing of gasoline and diesel. But no one knew for sure what Mr. Dangote’s cost accountants had in stock especially with the devilish exchange rate that reigned in the first nine months of the Tinubu tenure.

Energy and fuel prices were off the roof. A liter of diesel went for as high as N1,650 in some places. Gasoline was not any better. Those who wanted to keep their homes powered from generators needed troves of cash to procure diesel whose prices kept going up as the dollar exchange rate escalated. Factories fared worse.

Refreshingly, Mr. Aliko Dangote whose mega billion dollar refinery in Lagos has just started producing petroleum products has a bit of good news for all Nigerians. He has reduced the price of diesel from the mountain pe58% to a more considerate N1,000 per liter, nearly a 58% reduction in price in less than a week. The prospect is good that when his gasoline products begin to flow through the pumps. Mr. Dangote may have even better news at the gas stations. Along with his fellow cement oligarchs had promised to deliver cement to Nigerians at a more friendly price. The full benefit of that promise is still a long way away.

It needs to be said in fairness to Dangote as a brand that more than any other single company in Nigeria, it has invested in the things that touch the lives of the people most immediately. Sugar, salt, fertilizer, tomato puree, fruit juices, cement and now petroleum products. No other single Nigerian brand can boast of a wider and more expansive range of socially relevant products than Dangote.

In direct response to the prevailing hunger and hardship in the land, Mr. Dangote has himself stepped forward to provide millions of bags of rice and other food items to Nigerians across the length and breadth of the country as humanitarian palliatives. In terms of the human face of capitalism, Dangote would seem to have perfected an enlightened self interest above his peers.

Just when life was about to gradually grind to a halt, a bit of good news has come from unusual quarters. In a nation that has grown dependent on a feeding bottle tied to the beast of external suppliers of everything from tooth picks to civilized coffee, the belief persisted that all good news can only come from abroad. Nigerians could only hope to enjoy more friendly prices for the things that make them happy if our foreign partners changed their mind. Not any more.

It requires pointing out that the Nigerian spirit is too expansive to be bottled up within our borders just because air tickets are unaffordable. The urban- based Nigerian wants to go abroad for business, on holidays or just to flex!

At the worst of the recent moments, a return Economy Class ticket to nearby London sold for as much as N3.8m-N4million. Major international airlines insisted that the Central Bank had seized and was sitting on their dollar ticket sales proceeds. They needed to keep the high fares to hedge against the uncertainties that were everywhere in the Nigerian air. Nigerian travellers were being punished for the bad fortunes of their national currency and the untidy book keeping habits of the Central Bank.

Almost from nowhere, Nigeria’s largest international airline, Air Peace, announced a low fare flight into London’s Gatwick Airport. The airport itself is also owned by a Nigerian businessman. The fares were unbelievably low, as low as N1.2 million in some cases against the exploitative fares of all the major foreign airlines plying that route. Unbelievably, Air Peace pulled off the London Gatwick  deal with quite a bit of fanfare and patriotic noise making that set the foreign competitors scampering back to the drawing board. Air Peace floated the Gatwick fare reduction as a patriotic act, more like social responsibility to fellow Nigerians than the plain business sense which is what it really is. It was a drive for volume in a market of low volume driven by high fares.

To drive home the patriotic edge of its revival of international flights, Air Peace rebranded its crew and adorned its senior cabin crew with uniforms that featured the traditional Igbo “Isi Agu” motif. For those who are hard at hearing, the Isi Agu motif on Nigerian traditional outfits is of Igbo ancestry just as the Aso Oke, Adire and Babanriga are South Western Yoruba and Northern Hausa-Fulani respectively. A Nigerian airline intent on striking a recognizable indigenous resonance and identity could adapt any combination of these traditional dress motifs to drive home its original and national identity. The isi Agu features a series of lion heads, obviously severed at a moment of unusual valor. To go on a hunt and successfully kill and decapitate a lion is an undisputed symbol or infact a metaphor for unusual valour and heroism among the Igbo. Therefore the choice of that motif by Air Peace in its new cabin outfit is in fact a modern statement on the unusual heights to which Nigerian enterprise can rise if inspired by a patriotic commitment to national greatness. The Isi Agu is therefore Nigerian national heroism captured in an outfit.

In their recent pricing strategies, neither Dangote nor Air Peace has acted out of pure charity or patriotic feeling. Both are reacting to the pressure of latent demand in a market where the purchasing power has been depressed by economic difficulty brought about by government policy and political exigencies. Yet each of them is intent on being seen as acting out of altruistic patriotic motives. That may be true in the short term.

For every liter of diesel sold, Dangote is saving the Nigerian consumer 60% of the current market price. A savings of 60% is a lot for households and businesses. Similarly, for every Economy Class ticket sold by Air Peace on the London route, the average Nigerian traveller gets to save between N1.3million-N1.6 million. That is an awful lot of relief which travellers can apply to other competing needs in these hard times. No one can deny that these are direct savings and benefits that accrue directly to Nigerian citizens. To that extent, both Dangote and Air Peace can be said to be applying their capital to serve a patriotic end.

It is common capitalist gimmick for companies to apply a percentage of their profit to pursue communally beneficial ends in their territory of operation. Oil companies build schools, hospitals, libraries and other socially beneficial  infrastructure in their catchment localities. In normal corporate parlance, that only qualifies as Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) or targeted social beneficence.

But Dangote and Air Peace are doing something a bit more far reaching. They are shedding handsome percentages of their revenue and therefore profit to fellow Nigerians at a time when such savings are desperately needed and deeply appreciated. That is an instance of capitalism serving a patriotic end over and above its statutory tax obligations to the government. This should be commended.

It does not ,however, make these companies any less rapacious as capitalist ventures than any others. They may in fact be investing in better times and bigger profits when the bad days are over. They are investing in the goodwill of the market and therefore deepening their brand penetration and mass sympathy. These are strategies which are far sighted marketing ploys that dig deep into the hearts and minds of generations of consumers.

Ultimately, every capitalist is like a cat; selfish with nine lives and prone to inherent cunning. But, as former Chinese leader Deng Zao Ping said when embracing the free market for his long standing communist nation: “A cat is a cat. It does not matter whether it is a black cat or a white cat. For as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat.”