Armsgate and the season of baboonery

Monkey dey work, baboon dey chop is a familiar cliché. I have never had any close contact with the baboons despite my many years of experience as a hunter from childhood as to understudy the lazy bone nature of that specie of the primate family. But I am very familiar the workaholic character of the monkeys. As a kid growing up in Ghana, my head used to be full of lies.

Sorry, did I say lies when I meant lice? And monkeys were readily available to dig out the insects, especially the stubborn ones, with their teeth. The services were usually paid for with bananas. Well, those who coined the classical truism must have observed that the baboons are loafers by nature.
Lately, we have been treated to all kinds of baboonery arising from the shocking armsgate. After surfing through all the armsgate accounts so far, I could not but said to myself: So, all along, I had been doing the monkey work while the likes of Chief Olu Falae, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai, Jim Nwobodo, Rasheed Ladoja, Jafaru Isa. Olisa Metu, to name just a few, and the biggest masquerade of them all, Chief Tony Anenih, were the baboons doing the chopping.

Let me explain myself more clearly. You see, at the height of the Boko Haram hostilities in the North-east axis and beyond, I devoted my time and energy proffering solutions to the disaster brought about by the ineptitude of the immediate past administration of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan in its handling of the insurgency. In the past four years (2012 to 2015), hardly did a fortnight pass by without the issues of Boko Haram getting a mention in this (weekly) column, pointing the way forward.
At point, I began to rave like a lunatic when it was discovered that our troops did not only bear arms manufactured about 69 years ago (Automatic Kalashnikov or AK 47) but also had the misfortune of having bullets handed over to them in twos and threes (like groundnuts) and made to face the insurgents that had at their disposal state-of-the-art military hardware. Small wonder, some soldiering monkeys, at a point, either refused to obey orders to do battle with the well-armed criminal elements or resorted to what the military calls tactical manoeuvre – a euphemism for fleeing the war front when confronted by superior fire power.

Pissed off by the disturbing state of affairs, the Borno state Governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, spoke truth to power by raising the alarm that the Boko Haram fighters were better equipped and well motivated. Consequently, the presidency asked for his head. He was isolated for speaking the bitter truth and further punished by locking down the Maiduguri International Airport… the only safe means of getting out of his beleaguered domain whenever the need arose.

The terrifying situation persisted with the insurgents overrunning territories in Borno and the neighbouring Yobe and Adamawa states until a few weeks to the last general elections when it became obvious that the scary scenario might work against Jonathan’s re-election bid. That was when the government stepped up the war against the criminals. But it was a little too late. The eleventh-hour military blitz did not achieve much to stop the Wind of Change that was already banging on the Naija’s gate from pulling it down.
It will be unfair to limit the baboonery to the personalities mentioned above. Other beneficiaries of the blood money included core traditional rulers.

Not to forget the greedy high profile bishops, general overseers and pastors who feasted on the whooping N7bn as exposed by the whistleblower and immediate past governor of Rivers state, Rotimi Amaechi. Then one of their own, Kallamu Musa-Dikwa, a pastor based in Borno, seconded (I nearly wrote Secondus) the whistle-blowing by corroborating Amaechi’s incredible accusation.
My good old buddy, Wole Olaoye, writing on the worrisome scam in his Daily Trust column of Monday, January 11, 2015 described the looting as gang rape.

I agree with him in toto. What, however, baffled me in the whole rape-sleaze is “where did the rapists that are hovering around their mid 70s and late 80s get the strength to do the raping for as many as between N53m and N100m round!” …if you understand what I mean. In fact, I am now convinced by the Awe’s Theory of “The older the bull, the harder the horns”. Awe was my History professor friend at the University of Jos who propounded the theory to me in the 80s. He is late now.
While it is expected that the anti graft agencies will do a thorough job by purging these old baboons of the loot they got, the federal government should be thinking fast about how to handle the direct consequences of these rapists’ action. Today, the entire North-east axis is in total ruins. The socio-economic life of the region will gulp billions of naira to revive. Houses have to be rebuilt and critical infrastructure restored.

The destruction visited on the axis would have been curtailed or minimised if the needed funds meant to prosecute the war were not diverted into Jonathan’s re-election bid. Ex-President Jonathan, the babooneer, by his action and inaction, behaved like Emperor Nero that fiddled with his harp while Rome was burning. Similarly, while the entire North-east was being ravaged and the insurgents were freely detonating bombs in other parts of the country, the beneficiaries of the Dasukigate were savouring their newfound multi-millionaire status.

As at today, over 13m children have been rendered homeless, with more than 70 per cent as victims of the insurgency. These are potential time bombs to be added to those already ticking. It is sad to think that by the time bombs will start exploding, these old crooks might not be around to directly partake in the frightening repercussions of their baboonery.
May God have mercy on this country.