Let me, straight away, confess: I have been very slack in optimising my potentials and have let billions of Naira fly past me while I idly, like most Nigerians, complain about the Buhari government-induced bad economy. In my laid back state, I have left others to rake in billions of Naira, Dollars and Pounds Sterling. While I and others go low, those others have gone higher; while we complain that there has been an economic casting down of Nigerians, they have experienced a jumbo lifting up. And I am full of envy and regret!
It is very painful. Don’t get it mixed up. I am not talking about those the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, has made overnight Dollar and Pounds Sterling millionaires and billionaires. Yes, it pains me that I have been too blinded by the monumental incompetence of President Muhammadu Buhari and his government to see the ray of light, the many opportunities to be a consultant of high net worth to desperate political juggernauts. Just imagine a competent political consultant in these dire times. There are yawning opportunities only the politically smart are picking up like Asiwaju Tinubu’s agbado and cassava.
Let me just name a few opportunities through which others made hay while the sun of quick thinking shone on them. Take the case of the Jagaban, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu-ordained Bishops. Some smart consultants thought up the idea. Sold it in glossy, alluring and very convincing proposals. He or she got very itchy, listening ears. Pronto, a solution was supposedly found to the high decibel noise of Christians and some Moslems and all haters of the decision of the presidential flag bearer of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to impose a Muslim-Muslim ticket on the hyper-sensitive religious climate in Nigeria. It was a desperately needed proposal. And I failed to see the light!
I should have been the one to suggest to Tinubu and Shettima that for every problem, there is a solution peculiarly Nigerian. This is more so since, like I have predicted over and over again, in the last one year, I knew Tinubu’s mind was firmly made on running with a fellow Muslim, fully prepared to damn the consequences. He knows Nigerians, especially the fickle-minded Christians in the North and South of the country. They will make noise. But they can always be made to see reason. Reason being that it is truly the turn of Emi Lokan 1 of Nigeria! to occupy Aso Rock and nothing, and he means NOTHING, must be allowed to stand in his way.
This, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who is currently engrossed in a rofo rofo fight with Asiwaju Tinubu, has confirmed. He has told us that Tinubu’s desire to pair a fellow Moslem for the highest office in the land dates back to 2007. So as we say in Waffi, nobi today yansh dey for back!
That is why I am surprised that for an ambition that is over 15 years in the making, they started making elementary mistakes in trying to manage the hoopla around the joint Muslim ticket. First goof: the consultants sold a story that Christians in Borno are fully behind the choice of Shettima as he has been very good to them. When this was rebuffed, a photograph surfaced of some notable Bishops in a group photograph with Shettima. This was seriously pushed as a group of reputable Bishops and pastors endorsing the choice of Shettima as Tinubu’s running mate. This lie too was disproved. It was an old photograph, years old, when Shettima was a governor and some clerics paid him a courtesy visit. Next goof: they claimed Tinubu and Adeboye have had a tete-a-tete over the joint Muslim ticket. The Redeemed Church quickly distanced the revered cleric from any such meeting. Another goof was tried: Pastor Tunde Bakare, whose ambition to be the flag bearer of the APC met with a zero vote, we were informed has endorsed the Muslim-Muslim ticket! The man of God came just short of raining ecclesiastical curses on the purveyors of such sacrilege.
All these should have warned Alhaji Tinubu to be wary of the consultants dishing out his disinformation and propaganda material.
But the worst was yet to come as we soon came face to face with the failed Gobbelian attempt to hoodwink the public with a very poor quality lie: the trouping of okada riders, mechanics, daredevil agberos, and their ilks in the tunics of bishops, evangelists and reverend fathers!
But let’s for a moment, forget that the consultants made a bad show of the bishops proposal. Forget that they went for the dregs of the earth, the least convincing of people, including the “Bishop” who went to the venue with his Muslim praying mat. One of several things could have caused this costly kaleidoscope of goofs and errors. For example, the consultants forgot that in this digital age, fakery must be perfected before being sold to the netizens infested social and traditional media. Or could it be they did not know how to charge appropriate execution fees as consultants? Or is it that insiders doctored that the execution funds and underpaid for the execution? Or is it that they simply decided to cut corners and use a paltry part of their fees for the real work? I believe if they have asked for the right kind of funding, which I would have, with over 100,000 pastors and bishops heading their own church empires, known and credible Bishops, General Overseers and even Apostles could have been persuaded to wear believable tunics and hoods to grace the unveiling of the vice presidential candidate of the APC.
But I must take the blame for this. It is entirely my fault. For if I had been proactive and dreamt up the proposal, such infantile errors would never have surfaced. It would have been so perfected that the seed of discord among the Christian community would have worked in my client’s favour. By now, in my expanded proposal, the Christians would have been distracted into a we-versus-they conundrum. And while they self immolate, the Tinubu-Shettima ticket would have been coasting home to, at least a half hearted, acceptance by some Christians. Also by now, at least a N100 million profit would have been resting in my private account. But I failed to be proactive, so charlatans stepped in and cleaned out.
The Tinubu/Shettima ordained fiasco pales into insignificance when my failure in other areas is highlighted. For instance, I should have known that the defeated Governor of Osun State, Oyetola, would need an expanded battalion of lawyers to try and steal victory out of the humiliating defeat. I should have remembered that until the Supreme Court casts its vote, the election is not over. I missed out on this opportunity too. Now some smarter consultant has gathered over 50 senior lawyers to man the defence for the defeated Governor, whose failure has brought so much unnecessary de-marketing to the aspiration of his uncle, the candidate of the APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Nevertheless, the above are just the tip of the iceberg of my business failure. For how do I explain my stupidity in not being the one who is currently consulting for President Muhammadu Buhari? Some smart Nigerian has beaten me to it and I am fully angry with myself. How do I explain it to my wife and children that humongous opportunities are springing up under the bad economic atmosphere in Nigeria and I am not part of the harvesters? Imagine how much I would be paid if I was the one who told the president to lie to Nigerians that before he leaves office in 10 months’ time, the avalanche of security challenges bedevilling Nigeria would be fixed and that medical tourism, the chief proponent of which is President Buhari himself would be a thing of the past as world class hospitals would have sprung up all over the country before May 29, 2023. Imagine if I was the one who sold him the idea that Nigerians are gullible that they would believe him if he told them any lies no matter how preposterous they are.
As one familiar with Peter Bannerman’s quip: let the people be fooled, all the time and knowing that Nigerians are usually afflicted with a very short memory, I would have told him, “tell them you will not only fix the economy before you leave, you will leave Nigeria more united and more prosperous than you met it”. I would have told him to promise to end power problem in the country, once and for all and increase power generation to 100,000 megawatts instead of the between zero and 3400MW currently. I would have made him swear, tongue-in-cheeks, that as a fearsome General, he will wipe out ISWAP, Boko Haram, the government created bandits, kidnappers and sundry terrorists holding Nigeria and Nigerians hostage in the remaining 10 months. In the same vein, I would have made it more believable when President Buhari informed the nation that though some imaginary Nigerians are begging him to go for a third term, he will retire back to Daura, as a great patriot and lover of the people of Nigeria. No one would have doubted it or laughed him to scorn like Nigerians did when the president tried to sell this laughable dummy.
With my avowed consultancy competence, I am here lamenting when l should be composing proposals and selling to desperate politicians and their backers. Nigerians are known for believing incredible lies especially when told on a soft cushion of ethnicity, religion or Naira or Dollars as the case may be. Like Their Excellencies, Godswill Akpabio and Governor Nyesom Wike, would say, what money cannot do, more money can definitely do.
Incompetent consultants are prowling the land and laughing their way into billion dollar scams. And I am all full of envy.