OP-ED Opinions 

Graves Of Gold! By Gbenro Olajuyigbe

Should we cry or just laugh? My initial thought was to act like a dog that sees a bone-like plank that seemed a great delicacy. It got close, smelled it, disappointed that it wasn’t bone; it urinated on it and moved on. A nation stuck in forest of demons produces several mysteries. Unlike dog, we can’t just move on without engaging the mysteries and their lessons. There are many graves here with each, its capacity to generate own wands of magic – graves of gold!

Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s Head of State, died and burred in 1998. He did not only die as a Head of State, he died as a tyrant and as a thief too! Many Nigerians knew this fact. Nevertheless, Abacha was canonized by those who felt they knew him more than others Nigerians. They defended him with all the bows and arrows in their arsenal. They defended him even in the grave! One said ‘Abacha never stole!’.  

He swore on his grave! Abacha, a faithful mentor, loyal to mentees, unknowingly made the back dressers, his next of kin. Today, his mentee who vouched for his piety has the inglorious honour of receiving proceeds oozing out from the grave of gold where the money minting remains of his benefactor lies! Abacha just sent another $311m. He has done it again. Again and again, he continues to shower his beloved country with dollars and pounds, surprising his enemies and disgracing his allies! Abacha was dead man who saved for raining day, all for the love of his beloved country.

He was an unusual man who after 22 years in grave of gold continues to hold the key to his country social security funding. He is, a dominant donor of palliatives, even in emergencies. Richer in death and generous in kindness to a country he ignobly cherished. A mentee’s saint, staggering in synthesis of release and rescue – a dramatic project he controls from his grave of gold! A man that died to ‘save’ his country is not dead. Abacha is a working ancestor; the most productive among the ancestors too! He is a mechanical casualty of ‘apple’ who is now more useful in death than being alive.

It is not ingenious to wish that you rest in peace. If you do, how then do you rescue your beloved that is always run aground in Forest of demons? How then do you continue to reject the white crown of honour that your next of kin is trying to force on you? How then do you continue to justify your enemies that continue to appreciate your predictable and endless generosity? Abacha, don’t rest in peace! Nigeria needs a working ancestor like you. It will help us to escape the suffocating fragrance of paint of your allies that are bent on painting you a ‘Father Theresa’! As in the days of Abacha, so it is now. Powerful people abound in our sphere turning their positions to goldmines. They are also digging their own graves, laden with gold. They are in government.

They are in the media. They are in all sectors of our polity, callously frustrating decency, beheading accountability and racing swiftly in competition of grafts. They are milking every cow on sight without sparing the bleating horses that ploughed the ground. In COVID or out of COVID, they want to give Abacha a run for his dollars. They found opportunity for lucre in everything. He does not matter to them if blood be shed or lives are lost as long as gold can be mined. He does not even matter to them if they perish themselves in the process. In recent times, nothing has brought them out for view like COVID. Every tragedy, to them is business.
Have you asked yourself why media captured the comet that shone on the remains of prominent Kano persons but could not zoom on dwarfed hills of dunes that hid the carcasses of tens of hewers, whose songs, none raised?

COVID has brought out ugly kings and ugly praise mongers – king who does not care if his people perish as long as he can’t get a dash of N15bn? I mean kings who recklessly and callously incurred bills and turned it to national debt but also launched obnoxious infectious disease bill in the midst of global pandemic. Kings who knew how to buy exotic cars for themselves in a twinkle of an eye but don’t know how to get ventilators for patients of COVID. International plagiarists incurring illegal mega bills only to end up copying Singaporean vaccination law as bill for another republic. Ethically unvaccinated National Assembly which does not know that nothing is left of humanity, religion and rights if science is wrapped with law that takes choices away. People must be entitled to their own fear and faith. Instead of promoting local research that extract medical hope and help from local herbs that people can relate with they are busy building legal edges around vaccine made in another countries and whose compositions and contra-indications we are ignorant of. Enough of national stupidity!

These are kings the bootlickers love to hate us for. Lagos governor summoned the courage to echo our position that prevention is better than cure on CNN few days ago. He gave fillip to our position on the shallow preparedness, snail speed response and the belated commitment of central government in responding to a forewarned disaster. As we heralded, Sanwo-Olu point blankly nailed it. COVID overwhelmed Nigeria because the Federal Government refused to close borders timeously. Simple! Invading virus had its way before the foot dragging effort happened. Poor coordination marred national response. Accountability was issue for concerns. Despite the monumental failure, praise mongers flooded the streets to wear crown of gold on king of incompetence that buried dead dog and covered the sepulchre with glittering gold. Manipulation and propaganda were deployed. Truth triumphed. Moment of truth is here! Dubiously controlled data now exploding in their faces shamelessly helpless! Where are the hailing scoundrels? The ‘patriotic’ lucre loving media men of fortune who deliberately churned out paid propaganda of preparedness, hiding their fakery under the cover of foul nationalism? The COVID-powered nouve riche? The happy slaves who made imperial kingship out of supposedly accountable democratic presidential-ism? Cruel characters who bend the back of poor and vulnerable as stool for food and chair for their Nebuchadnezzar to seat on!

The moment of truth is here. Your sin has found you out! Your king is ugly. You are too! Like Abacha, even in graves of gold, you will be uglier!

Gbenro Olajuyigbe is the Executive Director of Emergency and Risk Alert Initiative

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