A Nigerian online magazine, ThisDayOnline, recently reported that the Chairperson of EFCC, Mrs. Farida Waziri not only bemoans the pronounced indifference, ridicule and disdain with which Nigerians appear to be treating her and the anti-graft apparatus she oversees, she also unwittingly admitted to the abject failure of the organization and its efforts in combating crimes and the criminals who perpetrate them in Nigeria.If there is any truth in ThisDayOnline's reporting, if there is any part of Farida's lamentation in this report that can be incontrovertibly attributed to her, then Mrs. Farida Waziri just unwittingly took a hammer to the last scintilla of of her credibility, and, although, this would otherwise warrant a joyous (nay triumphant) jubilation by anyone who has been watching Mrs. Waziri's naked display of abject ineptitude, gumption and unbridled graft since her assumption of office as the head of EFCC, Mrs. Waziri's admission only engendered a complex mixture of feelings ranging from disbelief, to anger, through disappointment, all the way back to disbelief, in me. Of course, I made several whistle stops in-between, long enough to catch my breath, check my sanity, put my reading glasses back on and re-read the report. Oddly, I also ended up somewhat sympathetic with Mrs. Waziri, and her sorry state of disrepute and ignominy.
Not just sympathetic in the "oh, poor woman" kind of way. No. Yours sincerely does not dabble into the sob-patty-cake-sob-sniffle-sob psychoanalysis territory. My "sympathy" for Mrs. Waziri's predicament is in the "Leave Britney Alone" sort-of, kind-of stratosphere. If you wonder what that is, Google is your friend. You see, my take on this is that I feel very sorry for Mrs. Waziri's boondoggle, but I admire her for being able to publicly admit that she and her anti-graft enterprise are a complete FAIL of epic proportion. That is the way I read her sob story, and that is why I sympathize with her. And my admiration stems from the fact that, in the Nigeria (we hail thee, sing it along) that we know, public officials would rather ingest dog crap than admit to mistakes in public.
You see, in Nigeria, we don't say crazy stuff like:
"We sent a letter to them but they didn’t acknowledge receipt and they didn’t send any representative. They probably didn’t come because they don’t believe in the cause .... We are talking about corruption here; I think it is an event that should concern all Nigerians because we are all involved. We have all admitted that corruption is the problem of Nigeria. This goes to show the attitude of our politicians to an issue of this magnitude. If it were the launch of another issue; they will flood the place and donate money...."
It is said that in some parts of the world, the greatest crime of a politician's life is to be caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy. That is over THERE. In our own good country, our compatriots don't suffer under such undue hardship. Our greatest crime is to be caught admitting FAILURE. We don't admit errors. We are blessed with quantum braggadocio and hardcore ogboju flow in our veins. We don't do failure No, no, no. NoSir!. We thrive in failure. We celebrate failure. We re-brand it, recycle it, refresh it, put it on our "babanriga", carve it on our foreheads, hire a local praise-singer, settle the local "iyaloja", slaughter a cow or two, close the streets, "declare" for everyone within a 10 kilometer radius and dance our failure all over town. THAT is what we do. But this Farida woman? Na something else, o.
My sympathy and admiration ended, however, when Mrs. Waziri would not stop spitting into the Microphone. There is virtue in understanding the elasticity of human patience and tolerance for bull.... It is one thing to pee on a blind man's feet and tell him that you are washing his feet with holy water. But taking the deception so far as to ask him to drink from your cup of piss or eat from your bowl of fried tripe is something else. He is just blind, not devoid of all senses, dammit. IF Mrs. Waziri had just stopped at her admission of failure, one could be forgiven for sympathizing with (and understanding) her and her predicament. But she didn't.
She condemned the practice of stashing away funds in foreign countries instead of investing them in the nation’s economy to boost its growth.
Waziri also accused former state governors being tried for corrupt practices of paying huge sums to lawyers to stall the process.
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The two statements above are (if true as attributed) rather confounding, especially coming from the head of the legal entity charged with stamping out (or somewhat staunching) the pervasive corruption that has been stunting Nigeria's growth since Lord Luggard's wife (or is it concubine?) named the geographical entity known as Nigeria today. It is unfathomable on several levels. No matter which way you look at it, saying that you know that the criminals you are supposedly fighting stash their money overseas and not within the country, and that they hire pricey lawyers who play with your minds is like saying .... oh, how does one put this delicately .... "Look at me, I'm a doofus!" Of course, the criminals who stole (and continue to steal) our monies are THIEVES. Thieves don't take their loots and display it in the village square, Mrs. Waziri. Ask the next elementary school kid you meet on your way to the market next time. He/she would tell you, "duh...that's why they are thieves".In case it hasn't occurred to you, the reason they don't invest their loots in Nigeria is because then it would be easier to get to, and, in a "normal" country, there would have been no need for overpaid buffoons like you to go after them if the loots were just sitting there all on display like an elephant at the circus. The crooks know this, and the crooks are crooks, and they do what crooks do - they peck-and-go. And, that's why YOU have a job, silly. Your job, Ms. Eagle-Eye, is to FIND the goddamn loot wherever the crooks are stashing them and bring them back into the coffers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. That's the ONLY fucking thing you are EXPECTED to do, Mrs. Waziri. THAT is why EFCC exists. Find the freaking money, goddamit and stop telling us what we already know.
OK, so even the small fish, part-time crooks you have corralled are even playing rope-a-dope with you, causing you to so horribly combust in public, wailing that the crooks are outsmarting you by lawyering up and using the law to stymie and your overpaid Googlers Researchers. You whine that the lawyers are doing an end-run around you, using the system to get out of your lazy-ass, completely inept "prosecution"? You want some cheese with your whine? Is this news, or is this your attempt at levity? Because it is just ridiculous that you would expect CROOKS (especially RICH and CONNECTED) to not lawyer up when they are facing prosecution. How did whoever gave you this job describe the requirements and nature of the job to you during the job interview? Were you even interviewed or did you just happen to be at the right place at the right time. Because, you see, Ms. Super-Sleuth, the fact that you and your apparatus would actually have to take people (suspects) to court and have them found guilty BEFORE you can hope to FIGHT CRIME is the mother of all facts that should have been conveyed to you well before your first day on the job.
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They lawyer up, then what? You can't touch them because of that, ehn? Booh-effin-booh. If ever there was a need to validate the accusation of gross negligence and ineptitude leveled against you by your critics, YOU just provided it by admitting that you are so lame, you get a head start on the snail in a 100-yard race. Lawyers scare you. They impede you. You and EFCC can't do your job because lawyers are acting like lawyers. And, you still sit at the head of the organisation? And wonder why nobody takes you seriously anymore? You wonder aloud why no governors shows up at your freak show? Why some send their office cleaners and others just give you the middle finger? You ask why they laugh at you, rather than with you? You wonder about the teetering behind your back when you leave the room, and why others cross to the other side of the street rather pass by you? You wonder why you are now the object of ridicule, the plump girl nobody wants to take to the prom?
Could it be because the head of the Nigerian Anti-Corruption is known to occasionally suffer from foot-in-mouth diseases and making asinine, sophomoric (and, let's be quite frank here, stupid) statements like:
“Those who don’t like my face will say that the EFCC is not working. I can’t be the court and the EFCC. I ensure that witnesses go to court and exhibits are tendered. I can’t do more than I’ve done...”
Mrs. Farida Waziri - EFCC Chair - Epic Failure
Nigeria We Hail Thee.
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