OpinionOPINION: JOE IGBOKWE, THE ‘ABOBAKU’ OF LAGOS ON THE LOOSE AGAIN

OPINION: JOE IGBOKWE, THE ‘ABOBAKU’ OF LAGOS ON THE LOOSE AGAIN

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The Yoruba concept of the _Abobaku_ is a Yoruba phrase that translatesliterally as: One who dies with the King. This is derived from theculture of burying dead monarchs with trusted and most sycophanticaide(s). It is therefore save to say that an Abobaku is the one thatthough enjoys all the trappings in the king’s backyard while it lasts,but eventually ends up being buried with the king!

The concept of the _Abobaku_ has come in handy with the behaviour of Mr.Joe Igbokwe, the Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress(APC) in Lagos State.

Recently, Mr. Joe Igbokwe wrote an op-ed article titled – What is onSenator Saraki’s Mind? In the article, he had wondered what is givingthe Senate President the confidence that he will stand tall after histrial and wished that friends, family members and associates persuadethe Senate President to resign from office.

The writer is free to continually wish and hallucinate. He is notstanding alone. Recently, other minions have taken to the airwaves torant and agonise too. They are all familiar faces and voices that are,like rabid dogs, always set loose on any real or perceived enemy of theLagos Mafia. Nigerians will recall that the mafia once mobilised one ofthese groups, it a‎cronym sounds like charcoal, to attack and rubbishformer Governor RajiFashola. The sponsored group did a good job atrubbishing its target by pointing out series of alleged wrongdoings.However, after the mafia publicly dissociated himself from the mediabashings suffered by his estranged godson and subtly ordered ceasefire,the group retired into its shell and has since maintained a deadsilence. The question is; has the position of the group changed on thealleged wrongdoings of its former target? Your guess is as good as mine!

And this why it is necessary to put issues in proper perspectives. ForIgbokwe, ‎he did a poor job. He was so much in hurry to deliver thehatchet job that he had to lie against President MuhammaduBuhari. Thewriter aked, “Did Saraki get the signal when President Buhari said hewould have left the stage if he is Saraki?” For the information ofunsuspecting Nigerians who might have been hoodwinked by the lies of thewriter, Mr President made no such admonition. Attributing what thepresident never said to him smacks of dishonesty and desperation on thepart of the writer. It was Senator FataiBuhari, the senatorrepresenting Oyo North, that made the reckless and unsolicitedadmonition not President MuhammaduBuhari.

There is nothing that can be appropriately referred as overwhelmingweight of evidence ‎when you charge a personality for alleged falseassets declaration and all the prosecutor had done in the court room isnothing but acting drama and telling folk tales about how thepersonality acquired loan from commercial bank or how money wasallegedly deposited into his bank account. ‎Is it not curious that thesame set of people that orchestrated Saraki’s trial with ‘overwhelmingevidence’ are the ones now gording him to resign?

Also, the issue of getting salaries after leaving office as governordoes not arise again. The insinuation is ‎dead on arrival. Attemptingto raise a dead issue is like a physician thinking of injecting lifeinto a dead body. It is about pensions, not salaries. The Kwara StateGovernment has confirmed that the pension for ex-governor is N1.2m‎monthly. And what the heck is the writer’s headache when ‎his sponsorgets over N2.5million monthly pension from t‎he state he oncegoverned. In basic arithmetic, N2.5m is more than twice what Kwara StateGovernment pays ex-governors. As a matter of truth, the pensionsreceived by the Senate President was not used for personal needs butrather disbursed to fund bursaries and scholarships for students.Nigerians should ask the man who gets N2.5m monthly pension how hespends his?

In the past, I have had reasons to react to some of the unreasonablecomments and undeserved attacks fired by the writer at the personalityof the Senate President and his office. I reacted because I wasconvinced that most comments and insinuations of the writer wereseriously affected by either ignorance or mischief or both. He hasconsistently told and repeated the same layers of lies about Dr. BukolaSaraki. Although a friend and fellow party man, but it seems that he haslost his soul to the Lagos Mafia and he would write and speak anythingto keep his job. ‎Now that the writer has decided to go dirty, I amnot willing to wrestle with him. The reason is that I am not good in thegutter. And since Igbokwe seems to have a good expertise in the piggygames, I can only leave him to his conscience, while also helping torefresh his memory about who, in fact, is the true convicted criminal.

No matter what the writer is sponsored to write about Saraki, it was notSaraki who claimed to have attended ‎a primary school that neverexisted. It was not Saraki who claimed to have attended a college whichthe authority of the said college had denied as false. It was not Saraki‎that was dragged to court over certificate forgery. It is not Sarakithat is the well-known biggest landlord in the state he once governed.‎It is not Saraki whose paternity is still subject of publiccontroversies. It was not Saraki who made a plea to forfeit all proceedsfrom his drug deals to the government of the United States of America.It was not Saraki who had to forfeit over $450,000 being proceeds ofdrug trafficking to the American government. It was not Saraki who wastried for drug trafficking in the USA. It was not Saraki who coordinatedthe white heroin trafficking ring. It was not Saraki who sold his partyto the presidential candidate of another party in 2011. It was notSaraki who bargained for softlanding and snatched errorfuljudgementafter running foul of the laws of the land. It is not Saraki that is adrug baron. The list of what can not be said of Saraki is endless.

Igbokwe and his sponsors are victims of acute megalomania and delusionalfantasies. They believe they have the exclusive right to determine whogets what in this country. They believe they have the exclusive right todetermine who sits as Senate President and how the job is done. They areutterly stainted and tainted with filth and impurity yet they seek toportray Saraki as tainted. They epitomise corruption while they deployproceeds of corruption to paint perceived political enemies as corrupt.Anyone who is capable of selling his party to another party, few days toelection, can be said to aptly represent the face of party disloyalty inNigeria. ‎The mafia has failed many times, the mafia will fail again.

The lying writer is advised to stop hecking and wailing as the SenatePresident is not contemplating resignation. He will not resign. Contraryto the writer’s advice, the Senate President has the backing of his‎friends, family members and associates to soldier on as SenatePresident. Nigeria belongs to everyone. So, however they try, Sarakiwill exhaust the remedies available to him at law. Quoting him verbatim,“the underlining philosophy of our legal system is that an accusedperson is presumed innocent until ‎found guilty. Those who arecontemplating calls for resignation want to circumvent the judicialsystem. They are obviously being sponsored by some politicians.‎ I amnot contemplating any resignation. I will surely have my day in court”.I cannot but agree with this statement.

Written by SulymanBuhari, the Publicity Secretary of All ProgressivesCongress in Kwara State.

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