Sutracide
Cameron Duodu : Letter from the North
Nigeria’s political lexicography is one of the most colourful in the world. This is because Nigerian politicians delight in showing off during public speeches what they consider to be the English “grammar” they learned at school. But since this grammar was taught to them by people who were often only a wee bit more literate than their students, such a resort to grammar usually produces sniggers rather than cheers.
I am quoting from memory, so don’t be too harsh on me if I’m wrong, but I think it was Chief Kola Balogun who described members of his party as “men of timber and calibre”.
After the late General Sani Abacha had hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other eight Ogonis in November 1995, Nigerians re- christened Abacha as “A-butcher”. And since “A-butcher” died in June, a veritable lexicographical industry has sprouted into being around him and members of his entourage.
First, when it was bruited about that Abacha had expired while endeavouring to exhale after respiring enormously upon being worked over by a pair of Indian beauties, the men and women of Nigerian lexicography came up with this: Abacha committed Kama Sutricide!
Now has come the coup de grce. It has been discovered, from revelations made by “A- butcher’s” chief security adviser, Ismaila Gwarzo, that “A-butcher’s” family and close entourage kept stupendous sums of money in their homes. At last count, $750-million in cash had been recovered from them!
This is not rumour. It is not journalistic speculation. I am talking past participle now – the money has been recovered and physically carted into the vaults of the Central Bank of Nigeria. One presumes in articulated trucks!
Mohammed Haruna, Chief Press Secretary to the new Nigerian head of state, even gave the denominations: US dollars – $650- million; pounds sterling – 75-million. In cash.
Part of the money was recovered from Mrs Maryam Abacha, who was stopped, at Kano airport, trying to leave the country with 38 suitcases. She told airport officials that she was going to Saudi Arabia to rest and recuperate from the shock of her husband’s death. But someone thought that it was a bit rich to be dressing oneself from 38 suitcases while “resting”, and phoned State House. Maryam Abacha was prevented from travelling by the goons who, only a few weeks previously, would have swooned fatally if she had asked, “Where are the Indian women?”
When the 38 suitcases were examined, they were found to be full of foreign currency of all types. Maryam Abacha has been “resting” at home in Kano ever since, spending naira, instead of Saudi riyals.
Then her son, Mohammed “A-butcher”, was found with about $100-million. Nigerians of Mohammed’s age group had been pissed off that he solved his traffic-jam problems by driving around town in two differently coloured Ferraris. But it had never occurred to them that he might be in possession of $100-million in cash.
To cut a long story short: money retrieved from the “A-butcher” gang so far is said to come to $1,3-billion. And this does not include money that the gang hid in foreign accounts through Lebanese frontmen and other business cronies. “A-butcher’s” finance minister, Chief Anthony Ani, who was the respected president of the Nigerian Association of Chartered Accountants before joining “A-butcher’s” government, has become a casualty of the affair.
Without being prompted, he held a news conference to claim that the security vote used by Gwarzo and others was not operated through his office but directly through the Central Bank.
Ani said he had once protested to “A- butcher” about this, and since then he had been by-passed on the security vote transactions. Ani added that he had told the new head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, what he knew, and that through his efforts a substantial sum had been retrieved from foreign banks and brought back to Nigeria. The ink was hardly dry on Ani’s statement when the chief press secretary to Abubakar contradicted Ani. “No money had been retrieved through any information provided by Ani as Ani claimed,” he said.
Efforts by journalists to get Ani to “uncontradict” himself have failed. Calls to his home have been met with the snotty rebuff familiar to anyone who has ever tried to do business in Nigeria: “He is not on seat!”
The modus operandi that enabled the “A- butcher” gang to be so liquid is gradually becoming clear. What they did was to ruthlessly manipulate the country’s dual exchange rate system. They would go to the Central Bank, receive millions of naira from the security vote and change it at the “official business transaction” rate of 22 naira to the dollar. They would then go to the commercial banks and request to change the foreign exchange at 86 naira to the dollar. This would immediately almost quadruple the local currency value of the money. They would then go back to the Central Bank and buy foreign exchange at the “official rate”.
And take the naira back to the commercial banks. Because of who they were, no one dared ask any questions. Under “A-butcher”, if you heard the words “state security”. You scurried away to hide underground.
So guess what the new word for this system of looting the Nigerian treasury is being called. Not kleptocracy. That word was monopolised by the late Mobutu Sese Seko and Nigerians are nothing if not original. No, the in word is “lootocracy”. Beat that if you can.
It should all be a fantabulous exercise in hilarity were one not painfully aware that this wanton greed took place in a country in which hundreds of children die every dry season from preventable diseases like cerebrospinal meningitis, and where river blindness, guinea worm and other calamities associated with the lack of good drinking water are prevalent, especially in Abacha’s home state, Kano.
And most of the country’s hospitals are viewed with suspicion by the populace, who regard them as “living mortuaries”.
Oh, God help Africa.