Dear Madam: Fraternal greetings to you from the Elders Committee and the Chieftains and Stakeholders Caucus of the National Association of Nigerian Looters (NALOOTER for short). These are not the best of times for members of NALOOTER, all respected elder statesmen and women and winners of various national honors. From Halliburton to Siemens, too many of our members have been needlessly embarrassed in recent times, what with their names and bank account details splashed all over the internet as well as local and international media. In fact, but for President Yar’Adua’s commendable sense of loyalty to his friends and authors of his landslide selection in the last presidential election, things would have taken an unsavory turn for some of our most respected members. As if this embarrassment wasn’t enough, a new list of looters purportedly authored by you is now circulating in the internet.
Upon reception of that list, we at NALOOTER set up a high-powered panel of inquiry into the immediate, intermediate, and remote causes of the composition and release of that list by the EFCC. While the committee is doing its work, the General Assembly of NALOOTER has mandated the Elders Committee and the Chieftains and Stakeholders Caucus to open up channels of fruitful dialogue with you in order to facilitate our collective quest to move Nigeria forward. A quick glance at your list reveals the inadvertent omission of three of the most devoted foundation members of our organization: former President Olusegun Obasanjo, His Excellency Elder Chieftain Stakeholder James Ibori, and His Excellency Chieftain Stakeholder Bukola Saraki of the Societe Generale Bank fame. We humbly wish to state our opinion that you may have left out these three respected members of our association because you are under the impression that they alone made your appointment possible.
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Madam Chairman Ma, we feel constrained to remind you that every member of NALOOTER contributed in one way or the other to your selection, appointment, and subsequent confirmation by the Senate. May we also categorically state that the composition and release of this list is in direct violation of the unwritten gentleman’s agreement you reached with our Body Language Committee before we authorized Chieftains Ibori and Saraki to forward your name to Mr. President? We also cannot reconcile your latest move with the guarantees given us by our trusted friend, Barrister I-Don’t-Care, the Honorable Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice. We believe you still remember why your predecessor, Nuhu Ribadu, had to go…
Madam Chairman Ma, in these times of global recession when even the world’s richest people, from Bill Gates to Richard Branson, are watching their money and adopting various measures to cut spending, your list has exposed our members to undue pressure to spend and this is what most of our members find so unpardonable. We all know that Nigeria is a primitive rent society where members of the public expect people like us to eat the national cake and distribute the crumbs therefrom to the dregs of society through donations, charities, foundations and sundry people-oriented initiatives. This explains why communities fall over one another to give us chieftaincy titles, Universities scramble to award us honorary doctorates, organizations of every hue try to make us patrons. Every segment of society scrambles to make us chief launchers at their events.
In these times of recession, we cope with these demands by claiming to be broke. Only last week, one of our respected members donated only N100, 000 as chief launcher at a fund raising ceremony for a proposed cottage hospital his home town. He told the happy villagers to “manage” the widow’s mite he donated because times are hard. Now, those villagers know that he looted more than N10 billion. You have painted this elder statesman as a hypocrite and liar in the eyes of his people. One of our female members has a more embarrassing story. She had been approached by the parents of a desperate baby with a hole in the heart. The baby needed an urgent operation that would cost almost N5 million. She gave them a check of N20, 000 naira, citing financial difficulty in these turbulent times. Now, your list says she stole millions! If the baby dies, what do you expect people to think of her?
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You have also put us in a very tight spot with the Pentecostal industry. As we all know, the Pentecostal industry is the most vibrant sector of our economy, coming second only to the oil sector. The endless fight between President Yar’Adua and his militants in the Niger Delta means that Pentecostalism is the only sector that is currently sustaining Nigeria’s economy. Madam Chairman Ma, you cannot claim to be unaware of the fact that the working relationship between NALOOTER and the Lagos-Ibadan Express Way Pentecostal Development Association is central to the health of Nigeria’s economy. After all you visited the Dean of this Pentecostal Association with every staff attached to your office. NALOOTER’s relationship with Pentecostal leaders is based entirely on trust. We pay our tithe and make regular donations by declaring what it has pleased the lord to add unto us and our inheritance.
Last week, one of our most respected members went to Daddy General Overseer to complain of financial trouble. He said he was so broke, his inheritance so depleted, that he could only donate one million naira this time around to advance the work of God. Sensing that powers, principalities, and dominions were at work to deplete the man’s inheritance and make poor bank accounts his portion, Daddy G.O went to the Lord on his behalf. Only for your list to appear this week and put him in the bracket of those who stole between thirty to a hundred billion naira! You have disgraced this respected elder statesman. How is he now to look Daddy G.O. in the eyes? What kind of testimony do you expect him to give next Sunday? Already, members of the congregation’s disciplinary committee are advising the poor man to sow ten percent of the total loot you announced as seed in the vine yard of the lord. That is the only way, they assure him, to redeem himself in the eyes of the Lord.
But that is not even the most troubling part of this unfortunate saga. Most of our members have been avoiding the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway churches since you published your list. All those churches now know what they have and no one really wants to be made to cough out ten percent of that money as seed. In essence, you may have irreparably damaged the long-standing and mutually-beneficial relationship between NALOOTER and the nation’s Pentecostal industry. At a time when President Yar’Adua considers Pentecostalism one of the critical sectors that could inch us closer to meeting the Millennium Development Goals, you action, Madam Chairman, amounts to economic sabotage.
Ma, you are giving disturbing signals. We know you are still one of us. We know you must appear to be doing something about corruption. We know you will ensure that cases against our members drag on and on and on. We know you will find favorable judges ready to sell slap-on-the-wrist judgments at a discount – we are grateful for your excellent handling of Chieftain Stakeholder Lucky Igbinedion’s case. But we cannot be too sure. You see, Nuhu Ribadu fooled us. At first we thought his gra-gra was all appearances. By the time we realized that the foolish boy was indeed serious about fighting corruption, too much damage had been done. So we cannot take chances with you. Just to assure us that you are not gyrating towards the Nuhu Ribadu philosophy, would you be disposed to meeting with our Class Interests Assurance Committee at your convenience?
Warm Regards,
Elders Committee of NALOOTER
Chieftains and Stakeholders Committee of NALOOTER
Cc:
President Yar’Adua
Barrister I-Don’t-Care
Distinguished Senator David Mark
Honourable Dimeji Bankole
Chief Vincent Ogbulafor
All PDP Governors
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