Robin Hoods, Ali Babas, Chibok girls and the largesse at midnight
Some people are seriously bending down to work as we gather here today trying to poke-nose into what is going on in our country. Yes, bloody indulgees that we are, we only know how to gather to crack jokes and laugh until our ribs painfully crack (no pun intended). After we have cracked our ribs, we then saunter home to have all manner of people help us nurse our wounds and pains! While we are doing that, people are seriously doing real work – including researching how to solve problems!
And it’s not long before an indulgee jumps in, feeling particularly concerned that this Chief Indulgee is putting the boot in on his co-travellers.
“What do you mean, Phillip Isakpa? Are you saying we are lazy lay-abouts who hug our couches, then come here to rabble-rouse at the square table, while some other people are doing serious work?”
That’s exactly what I was trying to say. He just helped me to express myself better. And for that I owe him one, trust me. But I guess you can now see how some people make clearer what is implied but not fully expressed. And that’s because they know themselves better – it’s called better self-awareness or we know ourselves better.
So, my fellow indulgees, in case you want to know what serious work those “other people” are doing, read this! Serious people have been running back all of this past week to research libraries and their personal studies to find answers to a new question that someone with a high but messenger-like political position as a senior special assistant on special duties has just allowed to emerge. And here’s the question people are trying to find answers to: At what time of the day do you think it is most appropriate to distribute the content of an Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves or Robin Hood-style bag of money to disconsolate parents of kidnap victims, kidnap escapees and community leaders after a meeting with the person who occupies the highest office in the land? This is the sort of question of which you can expect thousands, if not millions, of Master’s dissertations and PhD theses to emerge from. You need to now keep your eyes open and your mind ready to receive the wisdom that will truly emerge as the question takes root and begins to really trouble the minds of very inquisitive, serious-minded but busy-body intellectuals!
The matter is even more serious than to just leave it in the hands of researchers. Can you see why people in the western world always associate our country and our leaders with corruption? What is a special assistant, whether special duties or no special duty, doing going about at midnight knocking on the hotel rooms of people who had visited and had a meeting with the president, behaving as if he is a modern-day Robin Hood distributing money, giving some N200,000, yet some others N100,000? Beyond the question of propriety or otherwise of this action, can indulgees please ask who could have doctored the figures? Who has pocketed something from this so-called ‘token’? Didn’t they plan this visit at least one week ahead? And didn’t they know the number of people that were coming to meet with the president? Pray, what was the criteria used to determine who got N200,000 or N100,000? There’s something fishy about this distribution pattern? And the Presidency needs to set up a probe panel. After all, wasn’t there once the story of an erstwhile spokesman to a former president who lost his job because he shortchanged some people on estacodes?
In case you are not familiar with the story of the visit by some of the abducted Chibok girls’ parents and those that escaped to the president and the controversy surrounding the sharing of money, take a reading of this. Speculation had been that the special visitors from Chibok got N100 million from the Presidency. In order to set the record straight, the community leaders said this: “On the night of the 22nd July, 2014 at about midnight, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Special Duties who had been coordinating the visit on the side of the Presidency, visited the hotel and told the 51 escaped girls who came that the president sent them a token of N100,000 each and accordingly gave them the said sum without prior discussion with any KADA [Kibaku Area Development Association] official or any other person in the community.
“He equally gave the sum of N200,000 each to 61 parents out of the 122 parents that came on the visit. 51 parents were given N100,000 each on the basis that the money given to him was not enough to go round at N200,000. The remaining 10 parents were not given any amount of money.”
The whole world must have read this with amazement! The Nigerian president sent a ‘token’ at midnight through an SSA who went about knocking on the doors of these hapless visitors to come out and collect their ‘token’. Chai! Dia riz God o! But we learnt that the money finished midway and so couldn’t go round at N200,000 each. I am just sitting here and laughing as I imagine how the SSA would have put it to the people: “Mo gbe! Owo yi ti tan (and then quickly realised he was standing in front of Chibok people). The money has finished. Please manage N100,000 each.” Did it not come with a promise that they will be ‘seen’ later with the balance? Researchers will have to tell us in their findings. And is it not also possible that this SSA played Robin Hood, carrying the type of bags associated with the 40 thieves in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves? Recall that Robin Hood and his men went about robbing English soldiers and convoys that passed through the forest, then distributed the stolen wealth among the poor. And where did the stash of money come from?
Well, there’s another story that we can look to for answers. Remember Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves? Well, the forty thieves and their captain were the ones who had a den where they kept their stash of stolen articles, including gold, among others. Ali Baba was the poor woodcutter who discovered the secret of these thieves’ den, and entered with the phrase “Open Sesame” to help himself to the stash. Aha! Now, you can make the connection.
PHILLIP ISAKPA