At age 60, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, Alams for short, is no longer a young man. Indeed, going by the conventional opinion on life expectancy of the average Nigerian, put at about 40, Alams has been 20 years in the "departure lounge" of this world, to borrow from the popular self-deprecating joke among our politicians.

If you run into Alamieyeseigha, say at the departure lounge of Lagos or Abuja airport, as I once did, you are bound to mistake him for a priest from the monastery or a lost sojourner from Mars - gentle, quiet, and lost.

But no mien could be more deceptive. Wily and mean, Diepreye was lord and master of his Bayelsa State as governor from 1999 to 2005 and given the appellation Governor-General (of the creeks). In return for the obeisance of his people, Alams raised a private army of militants (thugs) to ensure his word was law; he turned the state treasury into his private purse, doling out millions of dollars as patronage, and siphoning billions out of the country to extend his "empire" beyond our shores while the state remained undeveloped and despoiled.

Before long however, Alams fell out with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, then president of the country, who in his selective witch-hunting anti-corruption campaign turned the dreaded Economic and Financial Crimes Commission loose on Alams until he was literarily driven out of the country.

Not assuaged, the Nuhu Ribadu-led EFCC pursued Alams to his England redoubt until the irreverent British police nabbed and charged him to court on many counts of stealing his Bayelsa State blind, money laundering, and sundry other crimes which could earn him many years in jail. But neither the EFCC nor the British police reckoned with the wiles and capability of the "governor-general." Reportedly dressed as a woman - shaven, boobs and all - Alams escaped and fled the UK and its law back to Nigeria and its lawlessness and impunity.

Back to the beginning, one of those who benefitted (by some stroke of luck) from the whim and largesse of former Governor Alamieyeseigha was one schoolteacher named Goodluck Jonathan, who was plucked from the classroom to run as his deputy. Goodluck's stroke of luck did not end there. With Obasanjo's EFCC not relenting, a thoroughly harassed and dazed Alams soon got impeached, prosecuted, convicted and jailed to the benefit of his weakling stooge who stepped in to act out their term.

And the story did not end there and has not ended yet. Through a succession of luck and machination of that same Obasanjo, that same Jonathan became President of Nigeria and here we are!

Jonathan is human; and only a villain of the most rotten kind would not remember whom he owes his ascendance to.

Not long ago, and as if preparing us for what was to come later, our President Jonathan made it known publicly and to all Nigerians that his benefactor and rock is Alamieyeseigha, who the rumour mill says has transferred his abode to the President's Villa in Abuja.

Still Nigerians did not expect what was to follow. How could we? President Jonathan has granted "state pardon" to Alams! State pardon to a rogue and fugitive who is still wanted by the British police and would step unto the English soil at his peril or under yet another wily disguise.

President Jonathan gave the cover of night, literarily, to his devious deed by mixing a number of other state ex-convicts within the prerogative. Clever? Not nearly so. These others are almost all victims of military governments and politics.

Why would president Jonathan who though had once said he doesn't give a damn throw this in our face? Why is it not enough for Alams to live quietly and luxuriate in the billions he has stolen and would still have coming to him by virtue of being a kingpin of the Niger Delta and a benefactor of a sitting President who cares little about the market noise on corruption that is about to kill Nigeria?

Why, why, why?

Of course it is clear that the stage is only being set for worse "in your face" to come when Alams will run for Senate and (not to be ruled out) even President of Nigeria.

Oh dear! Jonathan can do anything he wants in his privacy and to his private estate, but to assault the conscience of the nation in this most disdainful manner is the unkindest cut of all! Yet for anyone to assume this is how the country will always be run is to live in a fool's paradise. One day, and soon enough, a Pharaoh will come who will not know Joseph. Nigeria shall rise!

http://odili.net/news/source/2013/mar/17/827.html

Op, good piece.