Your Excellency Chief Sir: Fraternal greetings to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I hope this letter meets you well. There are so many things to say but I am just going to cut to the chase. Chief Sir, I do not want to be like those foolish Nigerians who fanned across beer parlours and paraga joints to celebrate your incarceration by one renegade Yoruba judge who behaved like a fowl with an appetite for the intestines of a hen. While the foolish Nigerians celebrating your temporary visit to kirikiri – I don’t believe you will spend two years – forget that they are concentrating on your today, I have wisely decided to invest in your tomorrow.
Chief Sir, I am saying in essence that I have decided to give my today for your tomorrow. As I am not a hypocrite like most Nigerians Chief, I will kuku just tell you why I am interested in your tomorrow. It is not an empty tomorrow. It is one of the luckiest tomorrows I have ever encountered in my life. How many Nigerian tomorrows can boast of eighty billion naira? That is the tomorrow you will return to from kirikiri. Eighty billion naira in mint – aganran – condition. You see, in all things, we must give thanks and praises to God for all his promises abideth forever. Although the enemy tried, God defended his own and in the end, you were not asked to return even one kobo of that eighty billion to the commonwealth of the Nigerian people.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
Although I am not saying this to mock him, I cannot but cite the sorrowful case of Chief Lucky Igbinedion who had to refund a crushing amount of almost five million naira out of the thirty million dollars he transferred to his accounts overseas for safe keeping for the people of Edo state. There is also Chief Tafa Balogun who had to return almost two million naira and about five of the more than twenty houses and mansions that he ate. God did not make your own case to be like the cases of these two people. Chief Sir, you did not come to this world with two heads. You have only one head like Lucky Igbinedion and Tafa Balogun. We are not mocking them by comparing your situation with theirs. We are just praising God for his mercies on you. A o fi yo won. Afi n gbe oruko Olorun ga ni.
With eighty billion reasons in my mind sir, and given my firm belief that you are one of the leaders anointed by God to continue to lead this country after your minor tribulation, I am humbly applying, through this medium, to work for you when you get out of jail. Chief, I am applying to become your Senior Special Assistant on Bounce-Back and Re-Integration. Although you are yet to advertise any such position, it is easy to see that you will need somebody to function in that capacity when you get out.
My aptitude for this position is based on my thorough knowledge of the psychology of Nigerians. If you hire me, Chief, our greatest asset will be their memory. It is legendarily short and that is fantastic for the job at hand. All we need do is make it even shorter in order for you to bounce back with the bang that you truly deserve. To this end, I have worked out a number of measures hereunder summarized for you. If hired, I will obviously flesh them out in greater detail and pursue each goal vigorously to fruition.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });
The first thing we will need to arrange upon your release is a grand interdenominational thanksgiving service that will be attended by the proverbial Nigerian ‘dignitaries from all walks of life’. You will have to ride to church on a white horse surrounded by drummers, singers, and a mammoth crowd of aso-ebi supporters. We will need to hold the church service in a football stadium – I suggest Ibadan. We could then rent and bus in supporters from all the states in the southwest and beyond to fill the stadium. I am currently preparing a draft of the testimony you will give during the service. You will basically say that you bear no grudge against anyone and you have forgiven Nigerians. You have accepted your ordeal as one of those personal sacrifices a true leader must make to move Nigeria forward. You will enjoin your enemies and persecutors to join hands with you to make Nigeria great. After the interdenominational service in Ibadan, you will pay a brief courtesy call to Daddy General Overseer on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway for photo-ops and additional spiritual fortification against dominions, powers, and principalities. We will then proceed to Lagos for an all-night owambe party with King Sunny Ade performing. Fashola or no Fashola, we can still close a few roads in Lagos for the party. Not even Fashola will stand in the way of eighty billion naira in Nigeria. Ngbati o ya were! We will need about a billion naira for this phase.
With the Christian phase of the bounce-back strategies complete, we will proceed to the traditional phase. I propose here that we try to expand your already expansive portfolio of Chieftaincy titles. It will be necessary for you to spend a few months crisscrossing Nigeria to gather Chieftaincy titles all over the country. When you have done this, you will return to Yoruba land where we shall have to pay a courtesy visit to every important traditional ruler, reminding them that it is now time to fill Chief M.K.O Abiola’s shoes by electing a new Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yoruba land. Personally, I do not know who fits the bill better than a retired military man with eighty billion naira – excluding assets and what you made as Governor of Ondo state. Chief, we could pull off this Aare Ona Kakanfo thing if we play our cards right. I suggest committing ten billion naira to this project.
Chief, you will also have to start a newspaper for obvious reasons. Fortunately, we could tap into the newspaper-ownership experience of Governor Gbenga Daniel, Chief James Ibori, and even your adversary, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. Pending the takeoff of your newspaper, we will need to buy some plots of land in Abuja and distribute them to the editors of strategically important newspapers. It is also compulsory to invite Dele Momodu to lunch not because we need him to splash your photos in Ovation but because he will devote a three-part panegyric essay to you that will run for three weeks in his column in ThisDay newspaper.
Allied to newspaper ownership, we would need to hire a gaggle of internet rats and plant them in strategic Nigerian chat rooms, discussion boards, listservs, and allied cyber spaces where Nigerians have been sending their restless mouths on all kinds of dirty errands against you. Ah, those people have spoilt your name online sir. Depending on your relationship with Chief Ibori, we could get him to loan us the two extremely experienced internet rats on his payroll, Tony Eluemunor and Areh Sunday. These two fellas could potentially train whoever we hire. Besides, it shouldn’t cost too much to get them on loan since they are already getting their share of the national cake from James Ibori. Your money and Ibori’s money are from the same source – the Nigerian people. No one should be paid twice from the same source if they don’t want to be guilty of double collection.
Chief, you will also need to become a serious godfather to facilitate your bounce back on the one hand and ensure that the eighty billion is constantly replenished on the other hand. Eighty billion naira may sound like a lot of money but Nigeria is a very expensive place. A man of your caliber – and whose reputation is now in tatters – needs to control the treasury of at least one state to remain buoyant. Fortunately, the onshore model of Olusola Saraki (Kwara), Lamidi Adedibu (Oyo), and Bola Tinubu (Lagos) is now outdated. You no longer have to remain in your state to be a godfather and governor-installer in Nigeria. Chief Tony Anenih and Professor Charles Soludo have recently invented the concept of offshore godfathering that enabled Chief Anenih to leave Edo and ply his trade in Anambra.
As I do not see any southwest state where you could immediately overthrow the existing onshore godfather in the circumstances, my idea is to test the waters everywhere from the middlebelt to the far north, from the south-south to the southeast to determine where you could become an offshore godfather. If we don’t find a state where you could become the sole offshore godfather, we could try partnering. Chief Chris Uba is so desperate to keep Soludo and Anenih out of his fief that he won’t mind teaming up with you as offshore godfather. Since all you need is a share of the treasury and will not quarrel with him over appointments – you cannot come from Yoruba land and appoint commissioners in Anambra – he may be favorably disposed to the idea. We can agree to him having 50 % of the state’s monthly Federal allocation, you get 20% and Anambra people will get the remaining 30% to sort out themselves. In fact, I suspect that Anambra will work for us since every politician with a dick in Nigeria now think they can piss generously on that state.
On a more personal level Chief…I don’t even know how to say this… it is delicate. Well, you see, you have a young beautiful bride who got libidinous tongues wagging all over the internet when they saw her photo at your trial. That is a lesson in life Chief. You are still alive and around and Nigerian men were already openly fantasizing about your wife. Anyway, Chief, the young Roline will have to accept an even younger rival. Nothing says bounce back in Nigeria like becoming President Yar’Adua’s son in-law. You may want to consider marrying one more time. The bad news: there is only one Presidential daughter left to dole out and we hear she already has a fiancée. I guess the only thing stopping the marriage is that they are yet to find a state for him, governorship of a state being a non-negotiable conditionality for marrying the President’s daughters. This is why we are still lucky. We may be able to persuade the President and Madam Turai to modify that conditionality and expand it to include former governors.
This is a summarized and considerably condensed version of my road map to your bounce back. The full version is in my laptop sir. If you hire me, I am willing to fly to Nigeria to discuss this with you in Kirikiri. That would be a good time to discuss my salary, inconvenience allowance since I will be relocating home from abroad, and other emoluments.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Makojami Olugbala
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });