IGP: Trapped in Gongosu and Edidare kingdom -By Festus Adedayo

Last week, President Muhammadu Buhari extended the tenure of office of the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu by three months. He also nominated erstwhile service chiefs to the Senate as non-career ambassadors-designate. The nominees are: Gen Abayomi G. Olonisakin (rtd), Lt Gen Tukur Y. Buratai (Rtd), Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (rtd), Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar (rtd), and Air Vice Marshal Mohammed S. Usman (rtd).

The extension of the IG’s tenure was announced by the Minister of Police Affairs, Mohammad Dingyadi. He said Buhari found the elongation of the IGP’s tenure necessary so as to ensure a robust and efficient process of the appointment of a new IG. “This is not unconnected to the desire of Mr. President to, not only have a smooth handover but to also ensure the right officer is appointed into that position. Mr President is extending by three months to allow him to get into the process of appointing a new one.” The extension didn’t create any systemic lacuna, said Dingyadi and he reminded every dissenting voice that the extension was within the President’s constitutional prerogative to so do.

The president’s twin actions took me on an immediate shuttle into D.O. Fagunwa’s classic, Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmole (brave hunter in a forest of a thousand daemons) where Yoruba’s own Charles Dickens told the story of a town inhabited by fools called Edidare and where a sophisticatedly talented fool was their king. Rotimi Ogunjobi, in his Edidare, an epic poem, even took the Fagunwa epic a notch further. In the poem, Ogunjobi carved the burlesque of a deteriorating country of Edidare, with Omugodimeta (triply idiotic man) as their king. The country of Èdìdàré carved by Ogunjobi’s pen reeks of indescribable filth and its inhabitants’ suffering and hopeless existence under a dynasty of idiotic kings and gluttonous parliamentarians are mind-boggling. The vices of their kings are of epidemic proportion and they govern with unchivalrous stupidity.

After reading the story of government’s two decisions last week, I was transfixed. I wasn’t sure that I had not, all of a sudden, gone on a visit to the country of Edidare. I began to commune with Fagunwa and Ogunjobi’s fictive Gongosu and Omugodimeji characters, seeking who exactly was the exact replica here. Do the people in authority not believe that Nigerians are inhabitants of Edidare and that we are a coterie of idiots who have no propensity to think for ourselves?

How did Buhari, with a presidential history of being decidedly laid back and who drawls in presidential policies like okra soup, suddenly take on the hubris of a cheetah, when it came to Buratai and co? A man who didn’t nominate ministers for six months, who has found his nominees to be cousins of Angel Gabriel, so much that none of them has been found wanting in almost six years of being in office, suddenly nominated service chiefs he removed as ambassadors, all taking place in less than 78 hours! If Nigeria was not Edidare, why would his police chief, who had served for 35 years and whose date of retirement didn’t just happen, need three more months “to allow him to get into the process of appointing a new one?” In a country not Edidare, shouldn’t notice of Adamu’s retirement not be on the president’s table with an alarm buzzing, a year before the date?

Again, what could have got the Nigerian okra presidency to nominate service chiefs who overstayed in office for about five years apiece, spending 36-40 years in office, 78 hours after their sack, as ambassadors? If we were not a country of Edidare, the jigsaw puzzle of why this cheetah speed nomination had to come should by now have unraveled. Same with why Buhari embarrassingly delayed their removal, years more than the norm. The fear of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is the beginning of Buhari’s wisdom! Only Edidare people would not know that by giving Buratai and others diplomatic duvet to cover their heads against trial for alleged crimes against humanity, the king hoped that they would not be tried in Hague.

But how does Buratai, who earlier called the bluff of ICC, hope to live outside the country? In October last year, he had said: “Criminal elements are threatening us with travel ban but we are not worried because we must remain in this country to make it better. The first time I travelled outside of this country, I was already 50 years and a General, so I don’t mind if I live the rest of my life here.”

So, the General didn’t also go to Dubai, his Dubai, all these years? Archivists have however put a lie to the Buratai claim. If you ask me, I think the joke of the king is actually on us. If we are not a people living in Edidare, we should tell the king that we know the contours of his lies.