That presidential kolanut gift to chibok girls parents

When it happened, it was like a rumbling below the ground surface, a kind of earthly tremor which causes movement of molten lava, however, what truly occurred was only an emission of poisonous gases, which unlike the usual earthquake activity, not much physical infrastructural destruction was caused, rather, the harmful reactive agents escaped into the lungs of the proximate human population abound and slowly destroys the heart and soul of the general mass of inhabitants. Actually, the event took place immediately after the extra constitutional Doctrine of Necessity came into effect, which brought into life the administration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, a reality brought into existence due to the patriotic activities of the Save Nigeria Group. As expected, one of the first to visit the presidential villa was the convener of group, thus when Pastor Tunde Bakare and his delegation sat with the new Nigerian leader, his demands were firm, resolute and selfless, which is that the president must restructure the country, to prevent the kind of criminal cronyism perpetuated by lieutenants of the Late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua, when a sick man was hijacked to act a part he is unable to perform.

However, after the intensive bilateral session and as the fiery Lagos preacher and his group were about to take their leave, they were immediately accosted by one the presidential aides in the person of Mr. Godsday Orubebe and handed a brown envelope containing the princely sum of fifty thousand dollars as token of appreciation, for identifying with the new Nigerian leader with such an august visit. To say that the incorruptible man of God was shocked is to understate an obvious fact, thus, upon his enquiry as to what the action portends, the swift response was that it is nothing but the giving of Kolanut to a visitor, a known African tradition of honoring an important guest, which nearly put him in a quandary as to how to react, to such seemingly genuine act of kindness. In the end, what tilted the balance and caused the rejection was the quantity of the sum given, which is just too large to be gifted away at the expense of the Nigerian public, especially, as it could be a mere blackmail that serves as settlement, against future demands on the authorities, which is the enforcement of every citizen’s essential duty of demanding for accountable governance, a kind of shutting the mouth of a belligerent activist and an insurance for conformist acceptable behavior.

Thus, when a few days ago, deep and low murmurings that crystallized into a loud chatter, began within and amongst the representatives of the Chibok community in Abuja, I was not surprised, indeed, I even suspected it must have had something to do with the Malala extracted presidential agreement, in which the Nigerian government acceded to her request to receive the guardians of the abducted Chibok girls. However, what the parents were fighting about was the seeming unjust sharing formula of the presidential gift of a hundred million naira, akin to a Kolanut token given to an honored guest, the problem though is while some are getting huge sums of money, others were only receiving mere pittance. Unfortunately, rather than the officials and aides of the president, who must have distributed the brown envelop, to enter the fray and ensure justice was done in the sharing of the presidential largesse, the dual spokespersons of the government, in the persons of Drs Doyin Okupe and Reuben Abati rejected the story as a mischievous mischief, by the opponents of the current democratic regime.

It seems, the fact that were the claims to be totally untrue and patently false, as alluded by the duo, then, it must have been premeditatively concocted to embarrass the presidency, thus the charge of intentional slander immediately suffices, though, since the allegation was not just against an individual but directed at the office and person of the Nigerian Head of State, it has assumed the much weighty charge of seditious libel, as such, requiring the attention and interest of at the very least, the Nigerian Department of State Security. Who had before now, have been engaged in the Chibok matter, albeit, at the detriment of other pressing state security matters, indeed, what is more a higher national threat, than causing a discomfiture to the person of the Nigerian president, in fact, it has been steeped in the investigation of the //BringBackOurGirls movement, over the allegation that the group was assuming a subversive dimension and at best, engaging in corrupt exploitation of a national tragedy, by receiving and collecting donor funds from countries and entities, who have had negative intentions towards the Nigerian state, in fact, the primary goal of those nations is seeing to the dismemberment of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Having had unfettered access to the group’s accounts and having exhausted the evidential investigations and found that the activist could have been engaging in any illegality, it is enormously important and pertinent to also interdict those who are literally trying to attack the nation, by bringing the office of its chief executive into disrepute. Especially as a certain negative mindset has already been created, that the administration does not see corruption as a stealing, indeed, while the former is even accepted in our culture as giving out of Kolanut to an honored guest, while real criminality lie in the latter, who are those who scale our walls in the dead of the night and steal our household items. Let those ungrateful fathers of Chiboks, who have not acted the way they should be arrested, appropriately, they should have been defending the government’s rescue efforts after the visit, yet they are not, notably, it was they who initially made the allegations of corrupt withholding, why should a man wail of being deprived for a due not earned.