In the beginning was a dream, which they had after attending one of the radical lectures in one of our universities or polytechnics in the 1970s in which the status quo was condemned as reactionary. They vowed that when their turn comes their leadership will be exemplary. This dream was wild, as none of them had the faintest certainty of becoming a governor.

 

They graduated and pursued various care ers in the public and private sectors. Their strength in society grew until they started dining with those in power. Out of their desire to serve better, or their penchant to steal, or, more often than not, a crude combination of both, the ambition to also become a governor was born. This dream was real, and all necessary steps were taken to realise it. They made godfathers and forged numerous connections in preparation for the opportunity that will come one day.

 

And it did come. Abacha died. Abdulsalami eased the political atmosphere and parties were formed. Each of them made his calculation and joined the party that had the best chance of winning in his state. Party nominations came, appeals were made and God was turned to: If You give me this chance, each of them promised Him, I will be just to Your servants… I will do this… I will not do that – a recount of the dream in the university in the 1970s. And God answered them, as He does to ours, daily. They became candidates of their parties.

 

During their campaigns, they promised the electorate in public what they promised God in private. They promised to solve the problems of their states: poor standard of education, poor health care delivery, insufficient supply of potable water, backward state of agriculture, insecurity, widespread unemployment, entrenched poverty, pervasive injustice, and, above all, extensive corruption in government. The electorate believed them, and God again answered their prayers which they did in their bedrooms or even before His Holy Kaaba. Elections came. He fulfilled his own part of the bargain. They won, and were sworn into office.

 

It was difficult in the beginning because their predecessors left nothing. They could barely pay salaries. Things looked bleak. Suddenly, the price of crude oil started rising, until it tripled. Money started rushing in and the treasury started getting fatter by the month. But with every favour, is a trial. So, the petrodollars brought along the opportunity for God and people to test the fidelity of their old egalitarian ideas as undergraduates and the truth of their promise as gubernatorial aspirants.

 

They heard two voices speaking to them. One was from their conscience. It called them to fulfil their promise, to play the game by its rules, to give everyone his due and never to forget the Day of reckoning. The world, it told them, is a trial, little and brief. The future or Hereafter, on the other hand, is infinitely long and certain.

The other voice came from the Devil: he awakened the animal in them, calling them to greed, turning them to the instinct of primitive accumulation and promising them, as he did to those before them, that nothing will happen. He gave them the vista of a splendid living forever, once they can steal as much as possible in office and launder the money in international businesses, property development and so on. Nigeria, he assured them, is a dead case; it cannot be reform; this is their turn and th ey must make the best use of it.

 

Few of them obeyed their conscience and, as a result, they can today stand before the President and express their views. They do not have any case with ICPC, EFCC, or any C for that matter. They do not have foreign accounts; they may not have elaborate properties; and they may not be in the good books of Aso Rock. Nonetheless, they are contented with the two tenures in which they did their best. They are not afraid of arrest, or being stripped of immunity. We pray to God to bless this category, forgive their mistakes and overlook their shortcomings.

 

However, many, according to the current ICPC boss, obeyed the Devil. They coun selled him and he advised them on five areas. Firstly, you must not trust anybody in the public service. So in order to have a firm grip on your state and its finances, the Devil advised, every matter and expenditure must require your approval, regardless of the provision of civil service rules.

 

Secondly, you must determine every contract, from conception to payment; only your ideas deserve implementation, and your projects will be executed.

 

Thirdly, concentrate on supplies and infrastructure, especially electricity and roads, whether necessary or not, the Devil continued. It is here that you can win hundreds of millions in a single contract. These contracts , the Devil pointed out, have the added advantage of catching the attention of the masses and visitors instantly. They will sing your praises. In issuing the contracts, give it to foreigners or people outside your state, in whom you would better confide; doing otherwise will lead to leakage and empowerment of your opponents. Leave the crabs in education, health and other parts of the social sector to those whom you will award their contracts selectively, based on political interest, present or future. Do not make these sectors the focus of your government for they have the capacity to sink huge sums without awarding instant recognition. They will only mature later, during the tenure of another governor.

 

Fourthly, the Devil counselled them, you must realise that you are governors without borders. Form joint accounts wit h local governments to indulge in their allocations, allowing them just enough to pay salaries, allowances and something monthly for their chairmen. Thus, it is important that you use every opportunity to determine who becomes the chairman of every local government in your state; he must swear to grant every bit of your desire.

 

Fifthly, I advise you to maximise the use of security vote, the Devil concluded. You can spend anything under it and later give an alibi that it does not need to be accounted for. In following the above steps, the Devil assured the governors, you must never entertain any fear, for fear leads to mistakes, and mistakes make you vulnerable. You enjoy constitutional immunity, he reminded them. So never will you be called to account for your conduct in office.

 

The governors nodded, bid the Devil farewell and went into action. As a result, we have reports of some of them spending over 70% of their capital expenditure on infrastructure; some even had the temerity of saying that education is not their priority. We have also seen how our population has grown poorer, since in every month at least N30million to N50 million is blocked from reaching each local government monthly; and hundreds of millions are siphoned from each state by non-resident contractors and public servants. We have seen governors purchasing vehicles at three to four times their market rates, including jeeps of N98 million earlier, when their schools are running without textbooks, when their undergraduates live on less than N50 scholarship per day; when they do not even have the conscience of freely providing the sick with a single tablet of Paracetamol. We have heard contracts on infrastructure awarded, and in some cases executed, at criminal rates. Likewise, we have heard of states spending between N120million to N150million on security monthly, that is an average of N4million to N5million daily, even in the absence of any security threat. They are doing these with impunity, as the Devil advised. Any lone voice that preaches caution is regarded misfit. To them, whatever the newspapers write is rubbish. They regard them as toothless dogs that only bark. A dog that bites, they say, does not bark.

 

After seven years, it is now becoming clear that these governors were deceived by the Devil. The law has caught up with some of them. Most of them cannot travel to Europe and America. Even Dubai was avoided by those of them who performed Hajj this year for fear of EFCC. They now know it is just a matter of time that they will be called upon to account for the squander, embezzlement and theft they have been perpetrating in office. And that will be just after 29 May 2007, latest.

 

As we said in a previous article, many of them are blackmailed by these corrupt records to support the President’s bid for a third term. They have protested against the removal of the immunity clause that has all along shielded their corrupt practices. But they must yield to his wishes, their threat not withstanding. They either support him in every aspect of the review or EFCC and ICPC will dust their fil es and pursue them. And whenever the new constitution is signed into law, with the immunity clause expunged, many of them can be arraigned before the court right away and they may be in prison by 29 May 2007. The President can thus choose the governors of his choice.

 

That is the story of governors without borders, who suppressed their conscience and followed the Devil. They destroyed the dream they had of according us a better leadership; they have proved to be worse than their predecessors. They have broken the promise they made to God, at the campaigns and, later, at inception of office. They plundered billions. Their case with the Devil is akin to that of the late Shata and Garba Jikan-Garba.

 

We hope to remain and write about them when they are finally brought to justice before or after 29 May 2007. We also hope that their story will serve as a lesson to those who may come after them in the immediate or distant future.

 

Bauchi,

22 March 2006

 

---