Still on the Farouk-Otedola bribery saga

Nigerians should resist all attempts that are being made now to rubbish the report of the committee that was set up by the House of Representatives to investigate the payments of fuel subsidy claims. That is how I can interpret the on-going Farouk-Otedola game. It is a game because the security agencies that are meant to be talking are very quiet. The Nigeria Police, State Security Service and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) are not saying much.How can you be a judge in your own case? If these agencies are truly talking, the duo of Farouk Lawan and Femi Otedola should be very quiet by now. So far, the public has become a pendulum that swings to the left and right. Initially, the police said it would not release the audio tapes, and up till now the police have not acknowledged that it released the tapes to the public. Then, who released the audio tapes? Could it be that the official that acted as the mole against Farouk when the bribery conversation was on-going equally acted against the police to get the audio tapes out?

If we analyse the pitch of the released tapes, there are evident contradictions in the characters of Farouk Lawan as a cool-headed person in the first audio tape who only listened while Otedola did most of the talking, and as a belligerent personality who would not allow Otedola to say much in the second audio tape. This raises some suspicion because it was the same conversation.

What provoked the change of attitude? Why are they interested in playing the tape in bits and not at once? Those orchestrating this drama want us to lose confidence in the main report such that the longer the on-going drama lasted the better for them. Now, everyone is anxious to know when the third, fourth and other phases of the audio tapes will come out. Subsequent phases will be programmed to cover the weaknesses of the past tapes. This is my own summary of the phase release of the purported bribery deal.

Let us cast our mind back to the events that preceded the invasion of Iraq by America and allied forces in 2003. At the United Nations Assembly on February 5, 2003, the then Secretary of State of the USA, Collin Powel, played a tape to back his war plan on Iraq. Few years later, he admitted that it was a ruse. “I’m the one who presented it to the world, and (it) will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It is painful now,” he opened up in an interview he granted to Barbara Walters on ABC-News, which is available on www.usatoday.com.

He that comes to equity must come with clean hands. That is why I want to believe that the current abracadabra has more to do with persuading Nigerians to call for the non-implementation of most of the findings of the committee, or call for its outright abandonment. Ordinarily, since Otedola knew his hands were clean, one would have expected him to stand his ground and allow Farouk to make good his threat by wrongfully including the name of his company in the report. Thereafter, he would seek redress in the law court.

He did not do this, but ‘played along’ to offer the money. In fact, if he had waited for that opportunity and approached a court of competent jurisdiction to prove his innocence, the entire report would have lost its credibility. This is because every company that is indicted in the report will ride on the fact that a segment of it has been declared inaccurate by a law court to ask for a revisit of its own case.

To me, they just want to be in the news, which is another diversionary tactic. That is why Femi Otedola refused to make any statement before the House Committee on Ethics. In what way is the closed door session of the House of Representatives different from the one he had with the police? Why must he make the same revelations in secrecy to the police and now demanding for open session from the honourable members?

An adage says that he who soars like an eagle should expect hunters. The enormity of the task before the dissolved committee that investigated the subsidy claim should have made them understand that beneficiaries of the subsidy claims would surely fight back. If proved to be true that Farouk actually initiated the bribery move, he may as well say final goodbye to politics, because I doubt if he will survive it.

Since the return to democratic governance, Nigerians have called for a sharp reduction in the bogus salaries and emoluments of lawmakers. From local to federal level, they all turn deaf ears to our call. That tendency to unjustly appropriate too much money to themselves amidst abject poverty in the country is now pushing them beyond limit.

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