I will Start this intervention on
a sober, regretful and apologetic mood
because my prophetic and predictive credentials have failed me woefully; ‘they
just fall my hand’! How can an economist, management consultant,
banker, entrepreneur (who is supposed to be imbued with entrepreneurial
alertness), management expert ( who should readily discern the environment) and a Spirit
who sees here and hereafter fail to see
what happened just a few weeks after my well-received predictions? Who
did this to me? Is it my village people or my fellow spirits? Is it the
witches and wizards who have suddenly populated our climes after they were cast
out from various churches and covens?
Why did I not see the party delegate-ship coming? I apologise to all those who had
rated me highly as a prophet or who were misled by my prophecies!
A few weeks ago, I surveyed the environment
and concluded that the surest way to hammer in 2022 was to join SARS(State Aided Robbery Syndicate), of which
the DISCOs are the quintessence (Ik
Muo; How to hammer in 2022: I will join SARS: BusinssDay; muoigbo.blogspot.com).
That was after I had considered pastorship, masquerading, vintage homes, and even auctioning myself piecemeal.
Later I decided to join the presidential race, for which I have already made some
significant milestones. Somebody had offered to campaign for me free in the
South-South and assured me of 5m votes (Now that I am OBIdient, I have directed
my self-appointed South-South Campaign
Director to transfer my 5m votes to
Peter Obi). The fundraising has been very impressive. However, when I saw some
contestants like the childish one from the Confluence State, the area-boy Governor from Rivers and his saintly brother
who built a rai to Niger without any in the South-South( both of whom have not
done anything beyond being in government in the past 20 years), some shaky grandfathers
and several fresh EFCC alumni (class of
2021/2022), I started having second
thoughts.
cgatehotel@gmail.com |
09138591760
However,
I just realised that I have wasted my 3Ts all along; I should have been a
delegate! This is how I came to this sudden realisation. In 2020, OOU designed an online programme
and I went to school, did the recording
and on my way back, my car engine knocked… Just like that! I think it was the
same people following me from the village. The
cost of a ‘new’ engine was N1m+ and thus I settled for my mechanic who
assured me that it would be done . Sure, he did it but after 2 months, it developed another ‘small fault’,
which another mechanic worked on for almost 2 months and then, the engine
collapsed again. I called the original mechanic who worked on it again a gave
it a certificate of excellence. By then, my spirit had grown cold and following
the increasing difficulty of travelling down East, I decided to sell the car,
use the proceeds to buy another tuke-tuke to be domiciled in the
East so as to avoid the need to drive home always (self-driven or driver-driven).
So, I asked the mechanic to take the car to Lagos because I had started
doubting his competence. The day we went
to Lagos (I went in another car!) I
noticed that he was crawling and when I enquired, he said he was not in a
speedy mood. The following day the seller came to pick-up the car and discovered that the engine was
sounding funny and when we checked, it had knocked again. I started another
process of reclaiming the car, which lasted for months. By the time I finished
working on the car, I had invested more than the cost of a ‘new’ engine and I sold it for far less than what it had cost
me to repair.
Where
the story got interesting was that what I realised from the sale of my good old prestigious 4Runner could barely buy a keke (tricycle) not
to talk of any type and grade of 4-tyred vehicle. The exchange rate of the
Naira and the various charges introduced by the customs people have made it impossible for ANY vehicle to
arrive Nigeria for less than N2m and thus, the cheapest new-old car in the market is about N2.5m. I have combed all the nooks and
crannies of Lagos, from importers to retailers and… no nothing.
In fact, the car-search and haggling got so much that the car-dealer had formed
the habit of disappearing anytime he sighted me approaching his office! You can
then imagine my shock when I saw one
Chief Agworo, whose latest occupation was ‘delegate’, launching a Toyota Camry
Spider in the Delta Axis of Nigeria the other day. The car currently cost about
N5m depending on its age, grade and general neatness! He was being celebrated
by people whose future and fate had sold to the highest bidder at the wholesale
market at Abuja. And here am I haggling form one carshop to another to buy any moving four-tyred contraption!
When
Peter Obi withdrew from the PDP presidential primaries because it was not in
sync with his persona and principles, I did not give it much attention. When Alh Hayatudeen withdrew because the process
was obscenely monetised, I ignored it. Even when somebody sent me
the rantings of Oshiomhole, who declared that the previous primary in PH was
Dollarised, I was non-pulsed. It was when I saw Chief Agwuru’s party that I
decided to take a closer and strategic look at
what Tola Adeniyi referred to as Window Dressing@ Eagle Square
by Abracadabra Patented Crooks
and Provocative Devils Pandemic at Abuja, where election was through high scale gambling
with lottery tickets of N100m apiece;
where the delegates were influenced not by their hearts or brains but by monetised
stomach infrastructure and where winners fate was decided by the fatness or otherwise of their vaults.
Tola Adeniyi revealed that the decoration alone cost N2.5bn but that was not
where my interest was. My interest was
on the Dollargates or Dele-Gates, who are now
competing with Bill-Gates as the richest fellows in town!
Anonymous Dollar-gate
& his suffocating menu and……. And in
the oza room!
It was then that I stumbled on a Sahara Reporters report that Nwike, the Commander General
of 101Waterfront Brigade, PH spent N34bn on his failed presidential quest out
of which he invested N12bn on delegates and N5.5bn on PDP leadership. The
figures per capita for Dollargate
procurement was quoted as between $25k
and $30ks for the Atikulated fellow and $15k-$40k for Nwike.
One delegate claimed to have collected up to $100k (N60m)! It is good to
note that Nwike has been a ‘government pickin’ since 1999 when he
became an LGA Chairman. So, where is the money from?
I won’t trust anyone again retrieved from Delegates Adam Sambo
The
following week, it was reported that the Jagaba paid $25000 per Ogun Dele-Gate but $10,000 for the Adamawa crowd.(Price discrimination!). The
Adamawa delegates were also saintly because they allegedly rejected the $5000
from PYO for being too low! They should have collected both: nothing would have
happened; it is just income redistribution. It was alleged that PYO initially
wanted to play Obi (or his agents wanted to privatise the $) before he changed
his mind and offered the meagre $5000. Even though Naira fell out of favour during
these primary and secondary processes, these figures range from N9m to 24m per ordinary
Dollargate! There were
people who bought the delegates wholesale and then auctioned their votes at the
retail market. You can also imagine the case of the Bourdillonian who brazenly bought both the delegates and
aspirants. Can you imagine how much each aspirant costs? That was why Reno Omokri declared that
the APC delegates ‘will never be
poor in their lives again’; and crowned them the real winners of the
convention.
That
is why I believed that I should just have been a delegate and raked in these humongous
sums without hassles. The International
Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) has estimated that the
$25000 per Dele-gates covered the salary
of a Nigerian Professor for 3 years. I would not have been an ordinary delegate. I
would have started from the state primaries (Lagos delegates received N500,000
to return the oga-at the top), mopped up whatever is available at the NASS
primaries, collected from all the presidential contestants of PDP( due to the
nature of the process, nobody would have taken me to Okija-shrine or forced me to jump-and-pass
a coffin containing dead human-beings,
scorpions and crocodiles or eat bleeding human suya) after which I would
decamp to APC and make the final haul. Surely I will garner up to $200,000 and live
on $4000 monthly until the next primaries. I may rather decide to be frugal and
live on $2000 monthly for the next 8
years, in case I fail to make it in 2027. I will also use this time to wangle
and position myself as a wholesale
delegate-merchant ( WDM) by the
next election. A WDM is the one who
serves as an agent to the political gamblers and lottery-players( aspirants);
who buys the delegates wholesale and then retails to the highest bidder
according to market forces. In al this, I won’t bother with Peter Obi, Sowore or Umeadi and their parties; these
would be bad market!
However,
it is not that straight forward and easy
because the higher the returns, the higher the risks and here, we are talking
of windfall returns. Our people say that a snake does not swallow
another snake and that con-men do not con themselves. But in the just concluded
political bazars, snakes swallowed snakes and the ‘conners’(con-men) were
conned. For instance, we have learnt a new method of public
counting in which the space between 80 and 99 is fallow, and the figures still balanced at the end of
it all. Delegates collected money but failed to vote for the political
gamblers. Some of the political gamblers gave the delegates fake Dollars (more
prevalent in the fattest envelope) while some even received fake alerts. A
woman cursed her party after she spent N8m to procure the delgateship
and received fake Dollars: it was her season of negative double portion! She is like the thief
who complained that people were no longer honest after he was short-changed by his victims! Delegates
collected N2m from Adam Sambo (son of the former VP) with N1.5m in promissory
notes but he came last. He asked for a refund (but what is the source of the
money?) However, one Suleiman who
recently decamped from APC to PDP, gave out
between N3.5m and N4m and… he won! Another failed gambler in Niger State
retrieved his money from the delegates, allegedly with the help of bandits. Senator
Akinyelure, PDP, Ondo State retrieved vehicles from delegates and requested for
a refund of the Dollars. In Anambra, the
APC leader allegedly swallowed about $500000 meant for the delegates, who had to do aluta at Abuja
BAT’s office. May be the leader bought the delegates wholesale and started
retailing at higher prices and the
delegates, seeing the retail price, wanted to eat their cake and have it.
info@jocaro.com | www.jocaro.com | 2348133570528
The
above narratives must be the reasons why Okey Chika Jerry, a former governorship
candidate, BOOT party, described the delegates as worse than terrorists because they are the
reasons why decent people and youths can not be in politics, why ASUU is on
strike and why we have ritual killings and godfatherism. That is why Mazi Ohuabunwa who got only 1 vote (better
than braggadocios Rochas and Bakare, who started with Thus said the lord!)
said that only few men remember their surnames whenever Dollars are
placed on the table. The same
process of delegate procurement was the reason why, as reported by The
Guardian, private businesses have been crowded out of the forex market because
the politicians had mopped out all the Dollars. They have become the CBN which
mops up liquidity! It is also the reason why the Naira/$ rate has been dancing awilo
in recent times because the registered and unregistered BDCs ran out of $.
However,
there is a strange case of a modern-day
‘repentant thief’, (Luke, 23:32-4). who shared his largess in cash and kind
with his constituents. Tanko R Sabo, PDP delegate from Sanga LGA, Kaduna State
shared N7m between the poor(School fees, hospital bills,
clothes) and his support groups. He
brought it cash to the market square! Unlike the woman who spent 8m to procure
her own, there was evidence that Tanko campaigned for it. And EFCC is still using
binoculars to search for evidences of
vote-buying.
But
this is not just a Nigerian affair. Patrick Lumumba of Keny lamented how he campaigned
vigorously, holding 250 townhall meetings while his opponent who was unknown
did not campaign but showed up a day to
the elections, distributed money and won,. That was when he concluded that
Africans are not moved by ideas; they are moved by their stomachs. In January
2020, Kwabena O Aduomi, a former Ghanaian Deputy Minister of Roads and
Highways who was also MP for Ejisu Constituency, paid GHC5000 ( circa N263000
as at 11/6/22)to each of the 600
delegates and still lost . He consoled himself by quipping that politics is a
game( or rather, a gamble) for the brave. Robert A Badiako also paid GHC1000 to
each of the delegates in the recent regional primaries and also lost. So,
procuring delegates or payees voting against the payer, is not limited to
Nigeria
So next
time you see me hanging around Bourdillon
or in one exclusive corner of
Adamawa, know that I am planning for 2027 elections. That is assuming that Obi did not win this
election because as I see him, he will scatter a lot of things. Don’t bother
about my lectures; I will do it online! Or at worse, I will take a sabbatical!
Meanwhile, the latest definition of democracy
is the process of stealing the people’s money to but the people to remain in office or
Government of EFCC alumni by EFCC alumni and for EFCC alumni!!! In both cases,
the people are worse-off!
-
Like| Comment| Share
“Find a great mentor, someone who has already been through the many challenges of being an entrepreneur..” -Jodi Levine
Entrepreneurship in Practice: Cases, Challenges and Lessons By IK, MUO PHD is now available on Amazon, since 14/5/21. Click here to view Available for order +2348033026625 | Delivery : Worldwide
I will be joining you by 2027 as a junior delegate... God's willing
ReplyDeleteOn another matter.... We Move