Come On Bode, Wear Your Uniform!

BODE GEORGE IN COURT.

This piece is not designed to humiliate Navy Commodore (rtd) Olabode George whom I know fleetingly but who I have enormous admiration for. I assure you, this is not designed to add insult to injury as I believe that apart from greed, political corruption in Africa need to be well understood beyond the anecdotal so that we can all try to find a solution to it. In any case, no one is perfect and all those who point accusing fingers may have more fingers pointed at them, if only they are caught.

Fela in one of his songs (Beast of No Nation) had asked somewhat rhetorically why petty thieves are lynched while those who steal millions get only two years or often receive the light touch for misappropriation. This is a very pertinent question but the reasons are obvious. One is that the poor don't have the publicity machine of say a Fela or a Bode George nor the advantage of being a 'VIP prisoner'. Another reason why the poor get short shrift from the justice and equity system is that they do not have the wherewithal to get justice. First they need to hire a 'charge and bail lawyer' which is all they can afford but apart from the late Gani Fawehinmi who would handle human rights cases gratis, hiring a senior lawyer (SAN) is simply out of the question! Sometimes, you also need to even pay a security deposit in the High Court before proceeding with a case.

Another issue is the time it takes for adjudication and some poor victims simply die off while awaiting trial. The stakes are simply stacked too high against the poor! For the rich and famous, the scales of justice are sometimes tilted in their favour for practical and political reasons. In the latest case, imagine the discomfiture of the Nobel Laureate, President Barack Obama who came to Africa preaching democracy but who had to quickly swallow his words by endorsing the election of President Ahmed Karzai of Afghanistan. Karzai used unorthodox methods to win but he has now been slammed on the wrist and merely admonished to clean up his act after the fact. The botched election in Afghanistan and the fact that President Karzai remains in office is proof that sometimes the practicality of political expediency overcomes our own better judgement of fairness and justice. Part of the solution to corruption is the public exposure and the punishment of the corrupt but another part of the solution is to understand the root cause of the problem and try to solve it.

While we tend to do the former with all the accompanying problems of delivering justice and equity, we hardly handle the question of understanding to provide solutions well. It cannot simply be bad leadership or greed that leads to corruption. Think about the society too - a society that turns the other face - when policemen collect money on the street or a society which readily offers bribes to get justice is equally guilty. Why did the Jewish public choose a thief for release over Jesus Christ at the behest of Pontius Pilate? Why do anti-corruption crusaders like Nuhu Ribadu of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) not last too long in office when other public officials with their hands dripping with loot stay longer in office?

I am really digressing .The aforementioned issues have very little to do with Bode George's refusal to wear his prison uniform but it may be related. Should Bode George dorn the prison uniform after conviction? First, let me declare my personal interest in the Bode George saga. I first met then Commodore Olabode George as the head of the War College team to my office in 1994 (at the tail end of my Deanship of the Postgraduate School at Ibadan). He had led a team of National War College Officers to the university to explore possibilities of establishing a Masters degree in Policy and Strategic Studies in our Department of Political Science, which was then headed by Professor Tunde Adeniran (our erstwhile Ambassador to the USA). He struck me then as quite intelligent, suave and knowledgeable and it is to the credit of all of us that that Masters programme is still running at Ibadan today. As head of the team, he directed discussions and was a good listener as I tried to steer him through the labyrinth of university committee and regulations, which the new programme had to pass through before approval.

As I discussed with him and his team, I was also looking for telltale signs of Alex Ogugbuaja's 'pepper soup' generals. Alas, some members of his team did not disappoint with their uncouthness - picking their noses, uniform buttons undone while making silly jokes. They were not my idea of a General and I was amazed at the youthfulness and easy-going ways of these Nigerian Generals. Perhaps my expectations were high. However, Commodore Bode George towered above his peers in intellect.

The next time I saw him was nearly 20 years later, he had become a PDP stalwart, had ballooned nearly five times his earlier size and had just flown-in to Ota in the company of the then Head of State, Gen Olusegun Obasanjo who had invited me and the Vice-Chancellor of his Bell University, Prof. Adeyemi for lunch. Bode George was exuding confidence and power and clearly did not or could not remember our earlier academic encounter.

In 2001, I had also met his former first lady, the ever-radiant Feyi George in my office in South Africa when I was Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Wits. I had seen her picture in newspaper pages before when her husband was then known as 'Boy George', the dashing Governor of Ondo State. This time Feyi had changed not physically but emotionally. I was amazed at the bitterness of Feyi George - something which oozed out of every statement she made although she had become even more religious joining a sect on the fringes of Lagos , to which she invited me.

I have given you this background to let you know that, even from a distance, it is impossible not to admire Bode George's personality and intelligence. But that is where it ends because in trying to admire his personal qualities, we sometimes overlook his foibles.

 I hear that in trying to mellow the burden of guilt, he or his followers had compared his incarceration to that of the other continental greats, the 'famous political prisoners' - Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Obafemi Awolowo etc saying jail was nothing but an alternative political college of education. The comparison is not only an insult to history but also rings hollow to what we know about political prisoners. No Sir! The aforementioned heroes did not go to prison for crass opportunism. Rather they went to prison fighting for our political freedom. They had no qualms about prison and were even proud of their imprisonment. They wore the prison uniform proudly - as a badge of honour. They came out wearing the same uniform out of prison.

I remember Awo's meeting with General Gowon in prison uniform detailed in a book My march through prison, Nelson Mandela's prison number (46664), his prison diary detailed in the best-seller Long Walk to Freedom and the privations of his prison cell remain a draw for tourists till this day.

If Bode George were to admit the errors of his ways (if any), and ask for forgiveness, perhaps he could rise to the same level. But equally, were he to be freed in the appellate process, perhaps he would rise to the level of a rehabilitated national icon.

Until then, Bode George must conform to the rules of the prison - he should eat prison food, dorn prison uniform, initiate reforms in the prison, be a model prisoner, write his memoirs and make all of us learn from his prison experiences. He should also reduce the number of his visitors, which are bound to peter out anyway. Friends are few during adversity! The events of life break all of us down but some people are stronger for it!

Professor Adelani Ogunrinade is a resident of the Kingdom of Lesotho.