Babasessy:

Bankole, the sin bearer
By Sam Omatseye 13/06/2011 00:00:00
   

His ascent to office was like his fall from grace: sudden.

Dimeji Bankole, former speaker, who brought a boyish poise and juvenile grace to his office, must wonder what God meant by giving him a miracle of a job and taking it away so suddenly.

He is brilliant, well-spoken and apparently well-adjusted. With his frequent white cap and crimped smile, it was hard to look at him as the N10 billion man. But he is. That is how he will be defined. There were other ways to define him, though. Remember the near fisticuff with the ritualist from Ogun State, Gbenga Daniel, over a minor infrastructural triumph around Ota? Remember the Ekiti saga where he turned minstrelsy about sending the army to the rerun election so that Segun Oni, the apostate with the phony Awo cap, could rig the elections? Those and others were important. But who would forget N10 billion, especially if it was on that note that he made his exit?

But his story is a tragedy because it is the tragedy of the Nigerian political class. By implication, of the Nigerian society. Anybody in political office of such significance as president, governor, minister, speaker, senate president, commissioner or director general and so forth is, by definition, a sinner in the eyes of the public. But the sinfulness is not the province of my piece today. I am concerned with the portrait of the politician as sin bearer.

When the matter of N10 billion arose on the floor of the House of Representatives, Bankole reminded his fellow legislators that the loan was taken to fund their recklessness. He knew they were reckless, and he bowed to them. He wanted to be a team player. He wanted to bear their sins on their behalf. From the information available, the speaker and deputy speaker did not really enjoy these allowances. It went to the principal officers and other members of the House. But he acquiesced in order to be in their good books. He did not want the proverbial banana peels to fling him forward in a surge of impeachment. Yet the same banana peels he tried to avert awaited him at the end of the road.

It is not just the issue of the loan alone. There were other purchases padded extravagantly. Whether it was vehicles or television sets or stationeries, it was not Bankole appetite alone that was at stake. He had to cater to a collective greed.

As The Nation’s Yomi Odunuga asked in his column last Saturday, why was he the only one the EFCC had to pick up? It is the way it is. He is the sin bearer. He was the one who carried the sin for these fellow sinners. This is Nigeria where we subvert every noble principle. When someone bears another person’s sin, the aim is redemption. It is usually prompted by the principle of love.

In the case of Jesus Christ, he bore the sins of humanity. In the case of Christ, the Bible tells us that he bore the sin for two things. One, to cleanse them. Two, for him (Christ) to go to glory.

But in Nigeria, the story is a little different. The sin bearer often goes away to material glory, just as spiritual glory is supposed to be the destiny of the sin bearer, sin being a spiritual matter. But the Nigerian leader who goes to material glory has many mansions that he prepares for himself, his wife, children, grandchildren, mother, father, siblings, girlfriends, et al. To an inferior degree, those who benefitted also have others who enjoy. They won’t have the same sort of mansions, or cars or fat-cat bank accounts, but they are pretty happy with what corruption has dealt them.

Most of them are never caught or prosecuted, and their material glory is guaranteed. Even those who are caught, or appear to have been caught, are ruffled. A little blood is squirted from their fat, prosperous biceps, and they and their loots live happily ever after. They are arrested, the media makes a show of their humility and humiliation, the hand cuffs, the bowed head, the degraded fashion sense. They spend some nights in jail, no special wines, no big, sensational beds but flies and mosquitoes instead of the buzz of ADCs and retinue of advisers.

When the saga of Bankole just happened, I said while the case of Jesus as sin bearer took him to heavenly glory, the sin bearer Bankole would go to perdition. On reflection, I am not sure of the perdition part. What it usually indicates is the end of the career of the person. We have a few who went to perdition, like Bode George. Even he sought redemption in an elaborate, false glamour of an after-prison reception. But it was a non-starter.

We must say that the situation is pathetic when you know that the rest of society takes part in this public ritual of crime and punishment. The public is part of the crime. For instance, a minister pays some school fees of former neighbours and friends’ children, medical fees of an old uncle, pays the rent of a former classmate’s aunt, all of which might not have happened if the man did not dip his hand in the till. Sometimes the governor caters to as many as two thousand such cases every other day as well his other responsibilities. A lawmaker said the other day that her traditional ruler wants her to buy him a “jeep” now that she won the election. She asked him where she was supposed to get the money. The traditional ruler was not going to bother about that.

So, thhat Goran Hyden, political theorist, calls the economy of affection. It is a damper on development and progress.

Yet, those in political office sometimes give cynically, not out of mercy but a pragmatic crafting of a base for later victories. Many do it genuinely and see it as a way of helping other people with public money if available jobs and the emots cannot cater to needs of the many poor.

So Bankole funded recklessness to keep his job. He kept his job, but he lost his name. He was a scapegoat of a system built by cynics for cynics.

http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/columnist/monday/sam-omatseye/9174-bankole-the-sin-bearer.html

His ascent to office was like his fall from grace: sudden.

Babasessy:

When the matter of N10 billion arose on the floor of the House of Representatives, Bankole reminded his fellow legislators that the loan was taken to fund their recklessness. He knew they were reckless, and he bowed to them. He wanted to be a team player. He wanted to bear their sins on their behalf. From the information available, the speaker and deputy speaker did not really enjoy these allowances. It went to the principal officers and other members of the House. But he acquiesced in order to be in their good books. He did not want the proverbial banana peels to fling him forward in a surge of impeachment. Yet the same banana peels he tried to avert awaited him at the end of the road.

There were other ways to define him, though. Remember the near fisticuff with the [size=14pt]ritualist from Ogun State, Gbenga Daniel[/size], over a minor infrastructural triumph around Ota? Remember the Ekiti saga where he turned minstrelsy about sending the army to the rerun election so that [size=14pt]Segun Oni, [/size][size=14pt]the apostate with the phony Awo cap,[/size] could rig the elections? Those and others were important. But who would forget N10 billion, especially if it was on that note that he made his exit?

X-factoria:

Good points but the conveyer - Sam Omatseye and his paymaster - Tinubu are hypocritical. They just won't impress me!

Let ACN's ____oh sorry, the Nation's Omatseye write Hon. Abike Dabiri, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, Senator Mamora et al to return the excess over the RMAFC approved emoluments paid to them to the cofers of the National Assembly first. Then I will start recognizing his genuineness when he writes about National ills.

In the wake of the Sanusi Lamido versus the National Assembly tussle, I rcall the righteous Mamora asking "How did our salaries even become public knowledge?". I can't recall any ACN member in the last National Assembly protesting the obnoxious salaries.

X-factoria:

Good points but the conveyer - Sam Omatseye and his paymaster - Tinubu are hypocritical. They just won't impress me!

Let ACN's ____oh sorry, the Nation's Omatseye write Hon. Abike Dabiri, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, Senator Mamora et al to return the excess over the RMAFC approved emoluments paid to them to the cofers of the National Assembly first. Then I will start recognizing his genuineness when he writes about National ills.

In the wake of the Sanusi Lamido versus the National Assembly tussle, I rcall the righteous Mamora asking "How did our salaries even become public knowledge?". I can't recall any ACN member in the last National Assembly protesting the obnoxious salaries.

aribisala0:

nigerians are really quite easy to please. this-a beautiful write up.?

please read it again. without mincing words it would be flattery to call it mediocre. the standards of journalism in nigeria have plunged into abysmal depths.
those old enough to remember newspapers of the late 70s and 80s would cringe to hear the  fawning superlatives being thrown around here. they are misplaced and unmerited. even  a journal club article in my secondary school would supplant  the drivel being celebrated here.
i never read the awolowo article but can say i expected a bit more  flourish from one who generated so much heat. really no one has anything to fear from this guy he is average on an exceptional day