Lucky but shameless

Lucky Igbinedion’s insulting crows in the media of late clearly shows the evil of
legal technicality and the dysfunction of plea bargaining in the face of worsening
sleaze and corruption.
Igbinedion, convict and best forgotten former governor of Edo State, has suddenly
found his voice. He is no thief, he brazenly says in a new media campaign swing,
simply because the state he allegedly raped was too poor to be stolen from!
Disingenuous, isn’t it?
But it is not Igbinedion’s fault. It is the fault of the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC). EFCC abandoned a 191-count charge of alleged sleaze to
hastily settle for Igbinedion’s guilty plea for not declaring the cash in an account
no: 4124013983110, with an unnamed new generation bank, contrary to the
provision of Section 27 (3) of the EFCC Act 2008. In exchange, Igbinedion plea-
bargained to forfeit the N3.5 million in that account.
So, by that stroke of what looked like legal legerdemain, Igbinedion escaped gaol
on December 17, 2008, in Justice Abdul Kafarati’s court, even if the convict was
a pitiful sight in the dock before the great escape.
Six years on, the convict has suddenly found his voice! In decent societies, even
lucky outcasts should know when and how not to talk. Igbinedion may have been
lucky to escape the monumental gaol his alleged humongous sleaze, if proven,
should have fetched him.
But he is still a convict. So, he should not delude himself that he could go on a
media binge to say whatever he likes, within the ambit of the law. That is the
confine of spotless citizens, which Igbinedion is not.
Indeed, what Igbinedion said and how he said it were most insulting and
unconscionable. Even the matter of his conviction: if his motives were pure, why
did he, like a petty criminal, try to hide that he had N3.5 million in an account in
his name? Selective amnesia? Or petty but stupid lying?
And the scandalous evocation of the Zairean Mobutu in the local Edo economy!
Like Mobutu, the monumental thief who loaned his country money from the trove
he had looted from it, Lucky claimed he borrowed money from certain individuals
to run his bankrupt state!
Are these individuals then richer than a state with monthly allocations from the
Federation Account, aside from locally raised revenue? By the way, were these
loans receipted? What interest rates were paid on them — or were they interest-
free, coming from super-benevolent patriots to a failed and banana state? And
how did the patriotic prodigal repay the debt, after eight useless years in office —
or was there patriotic debt forgiveness?
Whatever direction, Igbinedion’s claims stink — and he ought to be thoroughly
ashamed of himself.
Curiously enough, after Igbinedion’s tenure of infamy and the sorry bid of his
party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to rig in a successor to cover his
notorious tracks collapsed, new Governor Adams Oshiomhole suddenly found the
golden pot the prodigal Igbinedion could not find in eight years!
Now, how does the scion of Edo feel driving on the enhanced roads and other
renewed infrastructure of Benin, his hometown — like some useless child who,
with contempt, points at his ancestral home with his left index finger?
Indeed, the alleged sleaze from which Igbinedion is trying childish pranks to
distance himself, simply because he escaped gaol, is not unlike what the Jewish
would call chutzpah: a child commits parricide by killing both of his parents. Yet,
he has the satanic nerves to plead with the court to please set him free, simply
because he is an orphan!
It was clear to anyone that the Igbinedion gubernatorial era was a disaster. He
neither had the temper nor the gravity to be a governor of legacy. Indeed, a tale
made the round after his first term about his father, the Esama, reportedly pleading
that even if his son had not done well — which was so clear he hadn’t — at least
he should earn a chance for a re-sit, like a failed university student! It was
probably an apocryphal tale. But it did capture the spirit of Lucky Igbinedion’s
unlucky era of waste and purposelessness.
Of course, Igbinedion is well established in the infamous class of the PDP era in
several states: Anambra, Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo, Osun — worthless governors who
claimed there was no money to deliver services, only to be proved wrong by their
immediate successors.
Between Igbinedion and Oshiomhole, the Edo people know who has raped and who
has served them. Igbinedion should find other ways to exhibit his guilt complex,
when his conscience tells him he should be in gaol. He should stop insulting the
rest of us with his tales by the moonlight.