Written by Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu, Today.
The answer was 5.3475e9. Around 4am today, I woke up thinking about Nigeria, prodded by a foreign report I read the previous night, of yet another graft case with Diezani Allison-Madueke. The strange figure on my screen was my calculator’s lazy summary of the Naira value of over 11.5 million pounds.
Foolish calculator gasping for breath from only one small equation of theft. What of the 37.5 million dollars for the Banana Island mansion, among other outrageous loots? Some British officials say her total heist approximates 1.2 trillion Naira. Trailed by corruption charges in Nigeria, the U.K., the US, and Italy, Diezani yet mysteriously eludes eventual conviction, stretching patience with the eternity of her prosecution.
I was awake and thinking: just how much money does a human being really need to live a comfortable, even glamorous life? Eat, shit, sleep, dress, fly, drink, fcuk—repeat these tastefully for a lifetime and you have perhaps a very fulfilled life. A former ED of Shell likely placed on salary for life, intelligent Diezani courts the image of a decent professional, often swathed in the prude fashion of an African mother. She spent nearly a decade in government, and was certainly well-oiled by the legitimate obscenities of Nigerian power. Already she was born into old, family wealth, so just how much more money does a 56-year-old careered human need to live well? However you look at it, Diezani Allison-Madueke is just too beautiful and blessed to steal, too elevated to be the face of insane figures purloined from a state in which poverty walks on all fours. A thieving far beyond wickedness, it has reached the realm of medical evaluation.
It reminded me of that udara tree near my primary school, where we went for morning pickings. With all pockets full, we would not let a single fruit lie unpicked: we would turn over our shirts into emergency pouches to carry the excess. So sweeping was our greed that, like rabbits, we went away, each pupil nestling a lump of udara in his mouth.
I thought about how the story of the Ikoyi dollar find has gone away just like that. The APC government, half propaganda, half truth, has shepherded that story out of public focus. Somehow I wanted to be contented that at least looted funds are being retrieved from crevices meant for the lizard, yet I felt deflated and humiliated.
Deflated by the awareness that even recovered funds are, as we speak, probably being relooted! Humiliated to be a citizen of a country in the 21st century, whose system actually makes it possible for public servants to be able to tear down the public vault in hyena fashion. Tear down the booty and rip it apart with fangs and claws, each party clipping their own share between old, rotten teeth, scampering selfishly into the woods to devour, like those animals on NatGeo Wild.
