HONORABLE DEGREES, FORGIVENESS AND REPATRIATIONS

Because I Care #43

Last year during one of my campaign messages I called on Nigerians to forgive Stella Oduah for her armoured sins. Today I am justified in my assertion that she sorely needs our forgiveness. Premium Times broke the story, first about her nonexistent Masters’ degree, then her fake honorary PhD. It is all well and good to uncover scandal but discovering the sins of another person will not take you to heaven. And knowing the Premium Times, they seem like people who want to make heaven. 

Let us leave her fake PhD aside for a minute and consider reasons why our forgiveness from last year should still be in effect. Think of a child that you have caught stealing say a kilo of goat meat. You sit the child down, subject her to hours of oral torture and shaming using Bible verses and words from our ancestors, and perhaps finally to balance the discipline, twelve lashes with a horse whip. If one week later you discover that in addition to that goat meat, the child had on the same day stolen tooth picks, barbecue sauce, and a few sachets of kunu or zobo, all of which was supposed to accompany the goat meat, would you beat the child afresh? Certainly not. In my heart I have forgiven Ms. Oduah. Did we even know that her birthday was  January 5^th? Everyone forgot. If your child offends you a few days to her birthday, will you refuse to give them birthday presents? As one good turn deserves another so one bad turn deserves forgiveness. I might have published a belated birthday message, but I am not quite sure if that date is accurate or if it was a typo on her CV. All I will say is whatever it is that she is doing to make the president keep her in office, that thing must be very good.  

I compared two documents from Stella Oduah. The CV she sent to the Senate and her profile on the Minstry for Aviation website. Whereas the CV says she is “happily married” with children, her new updated profile on the Ministry of aviation website simply states that she is “married”. I don’t know what to make of this. I just thought I should put it out there. She needs us.

With all this uncovering of fake degrees up and down by nosy underpaid journalists, I just want to say I am happy with the way I have been writing my bios. All my bios begin with Elnathan John is a writer and lawyer who trained in Nigeria. Simple. No fancy university name. It is the desperation to be exact that puts politicians in trouble. Can’t you just say, I trained in North America, instead of telling a lie so exact that one can do a Google search and discover the truth? In fact to make my bio more nebulous I will edit it to read: Elnathan John is a professional whose work has endeared him to many humans. No one can claim I forged anything with that kind of bio. Because Nigerians (excepting my supporters-good people) can be wicked. When God starts to bless your hustle your jealous ex-classmates will swear that they never knew you and you did not attend the university you claim to have attended. In fact they will find a local girl from the neighbourhood you grew up in to swear by Jesus that you dated twenty years ago at exactly the period you claim to have gone to university and she is sure you were then only a commercial okada rider. She will claim that was how you met: she was selling abacha and fish near your okada junction and you fell in love. The Nigerian world is a scary place. May God protect me and my supporters from those trying to truncate our hustle.

So despite the heated quarrel Mr. Sanusi had with Jonathan, the CBN governor managed to keep his job until June 1. My informant tells me that he overheard Sanusi shouting things like: do your worst, only the Senate can remove me. Ok, maybe not those exact words but something to that effect. That almost made me rethink this campaign. It is like being CBN governor is cooler than being president. You can quarrel with the president and make him look bad and still keep your job. And citizens wont blame you if the economy crashes. They will blame the president. Everything is the presidents fault. No electricity, Mr President. No healthcare, Mr President. You buy a bottle of beer that is flat, Mr. President. You get erectile dysfunction, Mr. President was involved. But I have already come too far in this race to not become president come 2015. 

On Thursday this week, Nigeria and the UK signed a Prisoners’ Transfer Agreement (PTA) that would see citizens serving jail terms in the two countries repatriated home to serve out their sentences. I know only one of the 512 Nigerians doing time in UK prisons who will want to come back here. Only one British citizen is documented as being in a Nigerian prison. I am sure that Brit will be more than happy to go back home. I am only wondering why this exchange is taking place. Will it not be cheaper to export foodstuff from Nigeria to make the prisoners feel at home? Or jackets, if cold is their problem? As president I will start a program of ensuring that at least once a week Nigerian prisoners across the globe (I hear there are Nigerian prisoners in Afghan jails) have access to whatever native soup they were used to back home. Because I care.