David Bonaventure
Alechenu Mark, Nigeria's
Senate President, is one of
those extremely wealthy
rogue soldiers produced by
Ibrahim Babangida's
settlement philosophy.
Fate has blessed him with
an illustrious looting
career.
He has been stealing money
from the Nigerian people for a
very long time. When he got
tired of stealing money, he
graduated to loftier
preoccupations: stealing
elections. Thus, in one of those
only in Nigeria self-destructive
travesties, the occupant of the
third highest office in the land
actually never won any of the
elections that got him to the
National Assembly. Like others,
he is a beneficiary of the PDP's
phenomenal rigging machine.
He is openly pretending not to
eye the presidency in 2015 but,
deep down, he won't mind
adding tenancy in Aso Rock to
his personal legacy of rigged
elections. In the meantime,
David Mark has graduated
from stealing elections to being
lucky.
Luck, for David Mark, is not
about your head auspiciously
making you the number two
man to bosses destined to run
into trouble or die along the
way. Luck, for the Senate
President, comes in the shape
of a succession of
overwhelming national
tragedies which makes the
personal transgressions of
Nigeria's political rapists pass
unnoticed. Such has been the
harvest of corpses lately in
Nigeria, from Baga to Bama to
Nassarawa and counting, that it
would have been politically
incorrect for anybody to pay
attention to the regular but less
violent ways in which the
political class continues to kill
more Nigerians than Boko
Haram or armed robbers
combined.
With Boko Haram, a hundred
lives, two hundred lives, go out
in a bang and photos of
calcified bodies go viral on
social media to remind us of
the tragic errors of our national
rendering. With every billion
looted by a politician,
thousands of lives go but not in
a bang. They go smiling to their
graves. They go
installmentally. For every billion
looted translates to hospitals
and roads not built. There are
no calcified images to show us
that these thousands of slow,
installmental, shuffering and
smiling deaths are directly
linked to the billions looted by a
particular politician.
Hundreds of lives taken weekly
in the blitzkrieg of Boko Haram,
armed robbery, and our other
national demons are more
newsworthy and have more
spectacle value on social media
than the somber reality of
hundreds of thousands walking
deads on our streets, all
candidates for the grave,
because a politician has looted
the money meant for hospitals,
roads, and clean water
provision. This is why luck
shined on David Mark and
another recent evidence of his
brazen looting of our
commonwealth went grossly
under-reported and totally
ignored by Nigerians.
Like most Nigerians, I nearly
missed the news, partly
because only one newspaper
(Nigerian Tribune) considered it
newsworthy and partly
because I was distracted and
anguished by other national
tragedies associated with Boko
Haram. Although, somehow,
the editors of Nigerian Tribune
did not consider it front page
material, they still displayed
enough critical acuity to give it
an appropriately ominous
headline in the Sunday, 12 May
2013 online edition of the
newspaper. "3 Policemen, 5
Others Injured Over Proposed
David Mark University",
screamed Nigerian Tribune.
Now, that caught my attention.
Wait a minute, I thought, David
Mark, a sitting Senate
President, is building his own
private University? How on
earth did Sahara Reporters and
Premium Times miss this story
and the attendant necessity of
investigating how David Mark is
funding his University? The
opening paragraph of the
Tribune story confirmed my
worst fears. Says Tribune: "No
fewer than eight people,
including three policemen,
were said to have been injured
in a clash between youths in
Asa community area of Otukpo
town inOtukpo Local
Government Area of Benue
State over the location of a
private university owned by the
Senate President, Senator
David Mark.
The youth were said to have
converged on the Otukpo-Oju
federal highway mid-week to
protest what they described as
unlawful acquisition of their
land by the Senate President,
while the policemen drafted to
the area were said to have
received stiff resistance from
the youth. Efforts by policemen
to disperse the youth were
rebuffed, which reportedly left
eight people, including three
policemen, injured." Like most
things Nigerian, this piece of
bad news comes in tangled
layers. Tragic trees always fall
on tragic trees in our situation
and it is always a very difficult
task determining which to
remove first. So, we shall
pretend not to notice that
David Mark is also apparently
involved in a messy land grab
that has now caused injury to
fellow Nigerians (poor Benue!
When they are not robbed blind
via contract rackets by Doyin
Okupe, they are robbed silly by
one of their unelected
representatives in the Senate)
and focus on the more sinister
news of a salaried Senator
funding a private University.
There is a sense in which David
Mark's venture into higher
education (my dear brother,
Tade Aina, Program Director of
Higher Education in Africa for
the Carnegie Corporation, must
be gnashing his teeth in agony
over the new meaning that
politicians in his country are
giving to higher education)
reminds me of ace British
colonialist empire builder, Cecil
Rhodes.Starring at the heavens
from his compound in South
Africa onebeautiful evening,
Rhodes famously exclaimed: "I
would annex the planets if I
could." Just as Rhodes wanted
no part of the solar system left
uncolonized by the British, no
part of our national life is left
uncolonized by the loot of the
political class.
For members of Nigeria's
political class, looting the
treasury is no longer just about
stealing money to rival the
material acquisitions of Arab oil
sheikhs in choice locations all
over the world; it is no longer
just about aping the glamorous
lifestyle of Hollywood royalty, it
has now acquired a
psychological dimension with a
tinge of impunity.
Beyond material acquisition,
loot creates the desire in the
rapists of Nigeria to invade and
make their odoriferous
presence felt in those areas of
national life which still provide
some form of psychological
cushion for the people. Thus,
when the Nigerian politician or
government official has
acquired enough property in
Abuja, Lagos, Dubai,
Johannesburg, London,
Washington, and Toronto;
when he has acquired a private
jet; when his fleet of expensive
exotic cars in Nigeria makes his
compound look like a car
dealership; when he boasts a
permanent year-round
reserved room in Sheraton or
Nicon Hilton, agony and
restlessness set in.What to do
next? Ah, yes, let me colonize
other areas of life of Nigerians.
Let me take my loot into other
zones, other spaces that
ordinarily ought to be
inviolable.
This is the point at which they
begin to invade and colonize
faith. Thus far, only the
traditional religions are safe
from their depredations. They
are not building ultramodern
shrines yet forBabalawos and
Dibias. Nigerian Christianity
and Islam, on the other hand,
have been very badly hit as I
indicated in my open letter to
John Cardinal Onaiyekan and
Pastor Tunde Bakare.
The loot of politicians and
government officials has
invaded Nigerian faith. They
build churches (and mosques
but mostly churches) and
donate such glamorous
buildings with fanfare. The
Body of Christ in Nigeria has
learnt that talking while eating
from the hands of corrupt
politicians is bad table
manners. Thus, nobody asks
any questions about the source
of the funds when a politician
builds and donates a church to
a congregation. I am still
waiting for the Nigerian
Anglican Communion,
especially the Anglican clergy,
to ask Deputy Senate
President, Ike Ekweremadu,
where he got the money to
build a flamboyant church for
the Anglican community in his
village.
When they get tired of
colonizing faith with their loot,
they move on to colonize
higher education,
mushrooming private
universities all over the place.
The University idea ought to
sue Nigeria for what we are
doing to it. Just like we
bastardized democracy, we are
bastardizing the University
idea. Every looter, every crook
in Nigeria wants to start a
private University after building
a Church or a Mosque.
Obasanjo built Bells University
and we asked no questions.
Ibrahim Babangidastarted
Heritage University.
His license was withdrawn by
the NUC not because of
questions over his sources of
funds but because he delayed
admitting students. Atiku
Abubakar bought a franchise of
the American University system
while still in office as Vice
President and we asked no
questions about the sources of
his funds. Now, a sitting Senate
President has ventured into the
same terrain and no questions
are asked, no eyebrows raised
anywhere in Nigeria. Next, a
politician will wake up, create,
and privately fund Nigeria's
37th state and there will be no
questions asked.
This is precisely what worries
me: our transition into a society
that no longer sees anything
wrong with the bastardization
of ideals and the violation of
national psychic spaces by the
criminals in the political class.
Bring your loot into faith and
try to buy God and Allah, no
problem, we the clergy will
broker the deal for you. Bring
your loot into higher education
and try to buy inviolable ideals,
no problem, we won't ask any
questions about how and
where you got your money. We
have thus created a society in
which there are no institutions
primed to swing into action the
moment public servants display
expenditure beyond their
determined salaries.
A US Congressman suddenly
buying a Lamborghini or
appearing in Congress in
choice Ferragamo loafers
everyday is asking for swift and
immediate trouble with the IRS;
a Canadian parliamentarian
who suddenly buys the latest
Range Rover in a country
where most of his colleagues
take public transport to work is
asking for immediate and swift
investigation by Canada
Revenue Agency.
If word got out that the
Speaker of the House in
Canada (David Mark's
counterpart in Ottawa) was
privately building and funding a
University in his village, Andrew
Treusch, Commissioner of
Revenue and Chief Executive
Officer, Canada Revenue
Agency, would have a heart
attack.
However, in Nigeria, David
Mark will steal the land he is
busy stealing.
And build his private University.