Nigeria’s younger generation may not know who the man, Alhaji Umaru Dikko is. Therefore, asking if they know what he represents (or at least used to represent) is superfluous. That is the tragedy of a nation whose many pupils do not know who the great sage, the late Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo was. A report, a few years back, indicated that right in Chief Awolowo’s hometown, Ikenne, in Ogun State, the only Obafemi that pupils in a school know is Obafemi Martins! They claimed not to have heard anything about Chief Awolowo. But that is Nigeria’s dysfunctional educational system for you; it is that bad. “A prophet”, they say, “is not without honour but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house”.

Anyway, this write-up is not about Chief Awolowo; it is about Alhaji Dikko, who came into prominence in the Second Republic during the tenure of President Shehu Shagari, his brother-in-law. Ordinarily, many of us had since forgotten about Alhaji Dikko and would have preferred never to be reminded of that dark era that the man represented, but for reports last week to the effect that the 77 year-old man of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN) infamy has been exhumed from wherever he has been hibernating all these years, to head the ruling Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) national disciplinary committee! Did I hear you say ‘disciplinary committee’? Yes, you heard me right; disciplinary committee. Other members of the seven- member committee are; Obanema of Opume Kingdom, Bayelsa State and King A.J Turner as deputy chairman, publisher of Champion Newspaper and member, Board of Trustees (BoT) of the PDP, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, former deputy national chairman and BoT member, Alhaji Shuaibu Oyedokun, Hajiya Nana Aishat Kadiri, Barrister Hussaini Diraki and Senator Emmanuel Agboti.

Those conversant with the story of Alhaji Dikko that we knew would readily say that with a man like him heading the ruling party’s disciplinary committee, then, the result is known even before the committee begins sitting. Unless of course the things the man used to do, he does them no more. I mean unless he has turned a new leaf, as they say.

Just last week, I said something about the dearth of good people in the country. Well, some people will disagree with me and rather say that it is the failure of those in positions of authority to search for such people, or the reluctance of good people to make themselves available for public service because of the quality of people at the very top. What else could have made five governors run to Generals Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida, in search of solutions to democratic challenges if not for any of these aforementioned reasons? What our people versed in Pidgin English would dismiss simply as no more person. What I am saying is that there must be a dearth of people to enforce discipline in the ruling party for the mantle of chairman of a crucial committee as the disciplinary committee to fall on Alhaji Dikko. At least not the Alhaji Dikko that we knew.

It is sad that the Jonathan government, apart from doing business as usual, is also suffocating us with the same spent forces that have had their time in leadership positions but made a mess of it. Alhaji Dikko belonged in that school.

His role in governance in the country dates back to 1967 when he was appointed commissioner in the then North Central State (now Kaduna State). He was later to be secretary of a committee set up by General Hassan Katsina to unite the northerners after a coup in 1966. In 1979, Alhaji Dikko was made Alhaji Shehu Shagari’s campaign manager for the NPN. He was Minister of Transport from 1979-1983; a position he held simultaneously with that of the head of the presidential task force on rice. Interestingly, it was in the latter, rather than the former, that he became a national issue. That rice had to attract presidential attention in that republic showed how terribly bad the country was run because the rice that Alhaji Dikko headed its task force was imported. Again, that is a matter for another day.

Such was the diligence with which he served Nigeria then that General Muhammadu Buhari who became head of state after overthrowing the Shagari government on December 31, 1983, issued a list of former government officials accused of a variety of crimes on his second day in power. Alhaji Dikko, who topped the list, was accused of embezzling several million dollars in oil profits from the national treasury. Despite strenuous efforts to locate him, he simply vanished, leaving no trace of his whereabouts. He was eventually trailed to the United Kingdom where the Buhari government attempted to bring him back home in a crate with 1.2 x 1.2 x 1.5 meters dimension, in what was famously referred to as the ‘Dikko affair’. Thank God the mission failed; otherwise, Alhaji Dikko would have been brought back to Nigeria in a crate like some imported cargo! One had to go this far for our ill-fated younger generation to know that their beloved country has not just started to wobble and fumble; it has been like that for decades. The sad thing is that while many fellow backbenchers like us are finding their way out of the woods, we are getting more and more entrenched in it. Anyhow, fellow Nigerians, this is the man that our ruling party has thrust forward as chair of its national disciplinary committee!

Without doubt, the PDP as it is is highly undisciplined. It therefore needs someone, a strict disciplinarian to knock some discipline into its members’ skulls. But one wonders where to start the discipline from, or what form of discipline the party is thinking of, especially when one considers the action of some of its leading lights, including President Goodluck Jonathan. Or, how else do you capture a president who hosted as winner, someone who lost an election conducted among only 35 people? How many good persons would want to serve in a government in which such illegality thrives? Maybe it is only the PDP that understands its concept of discipline that it wants instilled into its members, because there is discipline and there is discipline. The NPN that Alhaji Dikko was a prominent member of was everything but disciplined. A party that is disciplined would not claim to have landslide victory in an election which was visible even to the blind that it lost. Little wonder that the Shagari government’s ‘landslide’ victory eventually became what someone referrred to as ‘gunslide’, to the delight of millions of Nigerians who had watched with disbelief as the then NPN stole votes in broad daylight, the same way the PDP has done in some places.

The multi-million naira question now is: can Alhaji Umaru Dikko give what he does not have? Unless the aphorism that one cannot give what one does not have is about to be proved wrong, or unless the kind of discipline the PDP envisages is the one associated with the NPN (for which the present ruling party itself has become notorious), then, the ruling party may be on the way to defining discipline in its own image, a thing that eventually led to the collapse of our inglorious Second Republic and ultimately, the ‘Dikko Affair’.

All said, for good or for ill, my dear reader, join me in congratulating Alhaji Dikko over his new appointment and at the same time welcome him, once again, to national limelight, after many years in the cooler. I wish him and their PDP whatever they wish themselves.

http://thenationonlineng.net/new/from-the-dikko-affair-to-the-dikko-committee/