The Americans have a rather funny way of demonstrating their penchant for spoiling the party for everyone. Here is a recent evidence of their reckless use of the tar brush.
A few days after the Nigerian nation through its president, Goodluck Jonathan, duly recognised the late head of state, General Sani Abacha, as one of the 100 heroes of the centenary of its creation as one indivisible country fated to be in permanent dispute with itself, the Americans quite indelicately told the world they were about to seize $458 million stolen by the famous goggled one. Mythili Raman, head of the criminal division of the Justice Department, described Abacha as “one of the most notorious kleptocrats in memory, who embezzled billions from the people of Nigeria while millions lived in poverty.”
Strong words. I can hardly put this too strongly. Only the Americans, famous for their lack of diplomacy, would so strongly and so negatively portray another nation’s hero as a kleptocrat, meaning a common criminal whose fingers badly itched at the sight of money, at a time like this. Mama!
They threw ashes in the mouth of the Abacha family who have been celebrating the national heroic status accorded the late general over the protests of Professor Wole Soyinka. And, it may be said by way of a quiet whisper, that the timing of their action against Abacha points to one inescapable but troubling fact: their faith in Jonathan as the commander-in-chief of the anti-corruption forces in the never-ending national war against corruption must have been badly shaken by the president’s post-humous garland for the late general.
I refuse to believe the Americans did this to register their objection to honouring Abacha because they believe it might give the wrong impression that while our anti-corruption forces are battling the scourge, the nation is celebrating those who made the people poor indeed.
The Americans most probably do not think that Abacha and others who stole so much from our national coffers while millions of people searched dustbins for honest livelihood deserved the national honour. I have a sneaky feeling they believe the decision to honour him smacks of both perverse and cynical judgment on the part of the Nigerian authorities.
I think the Americans are wrong.
There is a way, and it is not in any shape or form cynical or perverse, that a man like Abacha, in a nation like Nigeria, ought to be duly acknowledged as one of the heroic architects of nation-building. The naked theft of our common wealth and the impunity that goes with it did not begin with Abacha and did not end with his sudden death in 1998. He too, like everyone of our past and present leaders, was God sent to save the nation from itself. And he played his part.
He created six states. Bayelsa, the president’s home state, was one of them. Without putting too fine a point on it, it is a given that if he did not, Bayelsa would not be and the chances of a former shoeless boy becoming its deputy governor, governor and thence to the national stage as vice-president and now president, would be more remote than anyone could imagine. And to be fair, the man was the best manager of our national economy so far. It counts for something his favour.
Abacha, as a metaphor for corruption in our country, has become a dead horse.
The joy of flogging him decreases with the mounting daily evidence of greater malfeasance in federal, state and local governments. You might say his pikins are doing well, what with the impunity and the compromised judiciary and the agents of the law that now fully protect thieves in high places. These thieves too are being given national honours. So, being accused to stealing alone does not disqualify Abacha from taking his place among the heroes of our nation.
Our nation has grown weary of the so-called anti-corruption war. No one should drag that dead fish across the path of our centenary celebrations.
We have been one country now for 100 years. Let no one tell you that it is not a feat worth celebrating. It is. We have seen some other countries in Africa and elsewhere that faced less complicated national problems than ours and crumbled into either anarchy or separate countries. And Abacha, like the Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and his fellow four majors, had a hand in not letting the work of the late Lord Frederick Lugard come to grief. I have not seen the list of the centenary honorees but I hope someone remembered the five majors. They, more than anyone else, helped to reshape Nigeria into what it is today, warts and all.
Everyone who was honoured deserved our gratitude as a nation. Each did his part. It is just so sad that all the gallant efforts by our gallant heroes, past and present, to turn this mere geographical expression into a nation appear to be a long distance race. But not to worry.
A country that talks to itself, as in national conferences, is a country desirous of making the leap from being a mere geographical expression into a nation, even if its very blood is poisoned with some strange ailment known as corruption to some and smartness to others. We shall overcome.
Happy centenary.
