No Nigerian newspaper that I read last week failed to
grasp the import of the David Idoko report on the N628
million renovation scandal starring Speaker Patricia
Etteh. Each newspaper’s headline correctly noted that
Etteh was “indicted.”
The nine-member panel returned a devastating verdict.
Fundamentally, it established that the obscene
renovation contract did not follow due process. Etteh,
contrary to the impression she wished to leave, was
deeply involved in generating quotations for the
contracts. Indeed, the memoranda for the award of
contracts were raised before some of the job
quotations were processed. Idoko also revealed that,
contrary to the embattled speaker’s protestations, the
bulk of the contract sum—N238 million—was to be spent
on the main house, not on its “cluster of structures.”
Despite this plain and unambiguous indictment, Etteh
has asked those calling for her resignation to perish
the thought. She persists in proclaiming herself
innocent. Curiously, as soon as Idoko presented his
report, the house tainted by sleaze proceeded on a
two-week recess. Etteh’s sponsors and rescue team,
including Olusegun Obasanjo and Emmanuel Nnamdi Uba,
the ex-president’s factotum, were in New York at an
event where some of Nigeria’s ugly faces “met the
world.”
The two-week recess would buy time. Time to permit
Etteh to press the weird case of her innocence. Time
to enable her godfathers to mobilize in her defence.
Time to embolden her ruling party, the party that
Obasanjo re-engineered, to tell the rest of us to back
off because “this whole renovation thing is now a
family affair.” Time to shop for morally blind members
of the devalued house who would not only shamelessly
declaim the speaker’s innocence but also declare her
deserving of elevation to sainthood. Time for Etteh’s
camp to fine tune the message that she is more sinned
against than sinning, that she is a victim of
persecution by disgruntled elements seized by a sense
of entitlement to plum committee assignments. The real
villains, we would be told, are these sulking
representatives determined to use blackmail and cheap
tricks to undo what the god of Ota had wrought. In two
weeks, Etteh and co would unfurl its new banners:
“Etteh the ethereal speaker!” “Etteh, outstanding as a
hair dresser; a genius of a speaker.” “Etteh, the
woman who saved Nigeria billions of naira by choosing
not to stay in a five-star hotel.” “Etteh, innocence
personified!”
To which the nation should respond: If Etteh is
innocent, if she is a prudent manager of money rather
than a mindless guzzler of public funds, then Nigeria
is not Nigeria but Singapore! For me, if Etteh is
blameless, then I hereby invite all and sundry to my
coronation next week as the last King of Scotland!
That Etteh just doesn’t get speaks volumes about her
wretched ethical funds. It is also a commentary on her
warped understanding of the state of Nigeria. For me,
the Idoko panel was not actually necessary. Even if
the renovation contract had met every criterion of due
process, the speaker would still be guilty. Her sin
lay in approving the expenditure of more than six
million dollars in the renovation of two official
residences—and to spoil her deputy and herself with a
few cars. Even in the richest countries in the world,
that kind of prodigality would have shocked and awed
the citizenry.
What was Etteh thinking? Did she think she was speaker
in Dubai? Did she forget that she holds the fourth
most exalted political office in a country where the
minimum monthly wage is about N10,000? Did she not
know that, driving five or so miles in any direction
from her palatial official abode, she would run into
shanty slums bereft of habitable conditions, where
hope runs as thin as food? Did it escape her that she
is speaker in a country where millions of university
graduates go years without jobs; where crushing
poverty inflicts all manner of indignities on
hardworking citizens; where a growing number scavenge
refuse dumps for their meals; where, as the oft-quoted
(and therefore benumbing) factoid goes, more than 70
percent of the citizens exist on roughly a dollar per
day? Did Etteh not remember that millions of Nigerians
are compelled by dire circumstances to feast on rats
and other unappetizing fare?
Should Etteh elect not to resign, or her sponsors
choose to shield her from a richly deserved fall from
grace, then Nigerians ought to be just as determined
to let her—and her champions—hear about it. An
Obasanjo who punished Nigerians with frequent fuel
price increases should be chased off the square if he,
or his agents, ever attempt to justify Etteh’s
profligacy. Labor leaders ought to serve notice of
their willingness to call a general strike to protest
this impunity. University and polytechnic students,
condemned to living in slummy shacks, ought to stand
up to resist Etteh’s egregious assault on reason.
As the nation braces for the next sordid chapter in
Etteh’s renovation scandal, it is pertinent to admit
that Etteh is far from a unique case. Properly
understood, the scandal is symptomatic of a larger
malaise. Etteh is a synecdoche for what Frantz Fanon
aptly identified as a contemptible elite, a class
fixated on privilege and alienated by its parasitism
and lack of vision from the lives of the vast majority
of Nigerians.
As the first woman in Nigeria’s history to occupy the
seat of speaker, Etteh must be seen, also, in the
context of an excellent principle misapplied. In a lot
of ways, Nigerian women are the heroes of the nation’s
drama. Disproportionately burdened by atrocious public
policies, it often falls to them to devise ingenious
ways of fending for children and husbanding their
families’ disappearing resources. No just Nigerian man
should suggest that the womenfolk are anywhere near
responsible for the nation’s myriad woes as the women.
If the last eight years are anything to judge by, then
it could be argued that the female members of
Obasanjo’s cabinet—among them Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and
Oby Ezekwesili—acquitted themselves most creditably.
It was a sound goal to recruit a woman as a speaker.
If you ask me, the political parties should have
prospected in the pool of women for presidential
candidates. A female speaker is a good thing; Etteh as
that speaker was at once a cynical and tragic choice.
And that poor choice was made, one suspects, with
Obasanjoian spite (and perhaps a little mischief).
Given an opportunity to empower women and showcase
female talent, Obasanjo and the PDP opted for a choice
that disesteemed women and gave misogynists fodder for
lacerating comedic sallies.
As the nation insists on Etteh’s disgraceful vacation
(her defiance has earned her this disgrace), we must
insist that another woman—a more enlightened, morally
astute candidate—ascend to her seat. In fairness to
Etteh, she is far from the only public official
infected by the virus of self-aggrandizement, greed,
ineptitude and visionlessness. Many men—make that most
men—who occupy exalted positions are just as morally
confused and inept. Nigeria’s aspiration to greatness
is bound to remain a hollow dream as long as such
tragic characters with extra-large egos are permitted
to run its affairs. Nigeria has enough talent in every
field not to have to settle for mediocrities and
also-rans. Let us root out the Ettehs in our public
lives, whether they be male or female.
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