If you want to raise compliant citizens, keep them least educated and block the education of travelling. Those who think that patriotic dinosaur Sai Baba is infallible are right. I would never be caught dead criticising my president. Allah’s choice makes no mistakes, criticism is treason and age comes with incontrovertible wisdom. Don’t ask Methuselah who got only one sentence in the Scriptures for living longest while young King Solomon littered our sacraments with bites of wisdom in all his acts.
I bring you corruption tales from Canada, a country that; Insha Allah would re-evaluate its luck when Naija citizens return to queuing for ‘essential commodities’ as Sai Baba’s cutting of foreign exchange cuts to the bone. The era of people who did not vote for Sai Baba just walking into neighbourhood supermarkets to buy what they need is dated. No more indiscriminate foreign imports and that include foreign medical trips. El-Zakzaky wasted the last voucher.
Canadians are spoilt rotten! They have a handsome prime minister that they insult daily. Early this year, a minister appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused gestures to be lobbied to give a judicial soft-landing to a Canadian company – SNC-Lavalin, accused of bribing corrupt officials to do business in Libya. The Minister in question, 48-year old Jody Wilson-Raybould leaked the gesture and later resigned. Ingrate eh? I thought so too. She flatly told the man who appointed her that she felt uncomfortable carrying out her boss’s orders. Just negodu the insolence!
The prime minister denied anything is wrong and tried to paper over the cracks. The woman continued to grant press interviews and even honoured an open bi-partisan parliamentary hearing. Rather than get dropped into the bottomless pit of political oblivion, she continued to attend caucus meetings until someone had the balls to fire her.
Canadians have no EFCC and the RCMP does not take executive instructions to hunt and hound quondam friends of a ruling party. Caveat! No Naija party official should ever be allowed to visit Canada as they could be infected with this virus to treat presidential body language with disdain. Nobody who has attended Canadian law school should ever be appointed Attorney General as their refusal to enter a nolle prosequi could bring the office of the president and any cabal in control to disrepute. Nobody who has lived or schooled in Canada should ever be appointed into public office as they could reward those who nominated them with the plague of conscientious objection.
Anyway, Wilson-Raybould resigned and one of her friends followed her on principle. The prime minister had to accept the resignation of some of his closest fixers. In February, the Ethics Commissioner, our equivalence of Ibrahim Magu announced an official investigation! Imagine Magu investigating and indicting Buhari. If Sai Baba asks Magu to jump, he would do a tsalle that’s higher than a Masai doing the adumu.
August 14 Canada’s privacy commissioner, Mario Dion released a damning verdict indicting the Prime Minister and vindicating Wilson-Raybould exactly ten weeks to new federal elections. Conservative and liberal talk show hosts have been on the overdrive, inciting Canadians to reject the Liberals and embrace regime change, alleging that Trudeau has changed the change he promised.
Methinks somebody should send the profile of these talk show guys to Lanre Kawu of the NBC to be AIT-ed! I mean, state-owned CBC, Canada’s version of NTA and FRCN, gleefully calls this one scandal too many! Insolence writ large you would say. I strongly recommend that Canada’s Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, CRTTC should be retrained and refocused by our NBC officials to avoid civil war. If they refuse, then Buhari should send evacuation planes to Ottawa and other Canadian cities to bring all of us back before we are corrupted. Naija cannot afford to breed independent-minded malcontents who support people that insult and abuse their elected leaders on air without repercussions. Sowore is learning the hard way that democracy is not about that.
Justin Trudeau says he was only saving Canadian jobs. If SNC-Lavalin had been indicted, it might have closed shop and sacked over 9,000 workers, half of them in Trudeau’s home riding of Quebec. Imagine that. Trudeau says he vowed to protect Canadian jobs and has nothing to apologize for, but his critics say he should. Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu have urgent consultancy contracts here.
We could do with a Trudeau as president whenever Sai Baba returns to London to rest. That way Trudeau might realize that being leader elected by the people is not something to toy with. The fastest route to jail is to openly oppose President Buhari. IG Wala only wanted to test Buhari’s anti-corruption stance by announcing alleged corruption in a parastatal headed by a Saint Buhari when he earned 11 years in jail. It was okay for Lai Mohammed to call for a revolution, but in the mouth of Omoyele Sowore, that is a 45-day treason holiday in reformation camp. Abubakar Idris got ‘kidnapped’ for writing against ineptitude, double standard and corruption in government. Tinubu could park bullion vans in his house on Election Day sans reproach, but Atiku’s lawyer and son-in-law are facing money-laundering charges for not running $2 million through a ‘financial institution. This is how we fight corruption.
Sai Baba has lessons in governance to teach Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. As a consultant, I’ll waive my consultancy fees to make the connection. I’m patriotic like that. Good bosses need a wand in authoritarianism.
This piece was first published by Daily Trust on August 18, 2019. Tunde Asaju is a multi-lingual award-winning international journalist based in Ottawa. He was head, press and public affairs at the British High Commission, Abuja for years. He was a producer with the BBC World Service.
