By Louis Odion, FNGE
So, a decade after bequeathing Sharia to Yobe
and a quarter century political career during which he served thrice as
Governor, Bukar Abba Ibrahim would end up the new face of pornography in
Nigeria.
What makes this feat quite extra-ordinary is not just
that it was performed by a presumably vigorous sexagenarian in a threesome;
more startling, if not ominous, is its timing.
One, at a time when the nation is convulsing under a
separatist storm, when his native Yobe State remains prostrate under the Boko
Haram yoke, it is something of a grave concern that all the senator
seemed to care about was arranging downtown motel for his ménage a
trois.
Two, with the sex tape leaked by SaharaReporters barely
a week after Sallah, there is bound to be a potentially explosive debate in the
times ahead as to whether the senator succumbed to the temptation during the
holy fasting month when the highest form of piety and chastity is expected of
the faithful. Well, we refuse to be drawn into the other side talk as to whether buratashi (aphrodisiac) was involved.
While proclaiming Sharia in August 2000 in Yobe as
governor amid solemn songs and dance after collaring the state assembly to pass
the executive bill, Ibrahim rhapsodized that his vision was to evolve a new
society with zero tolerance for vices like production/consumption of alcohol,
gambling and prostitution.
Before he bowed out of office in 2007, not a few men
and women had been mercilessly dealt with for living short of the new high
ethical standards so prescribed under Ibrahim's watch. It was the season when
the contagion of Sharia was spreading in the north. Jangebe, for instance,
famously got his right arm chopped off for petty stealing in Zamfara State.
The puzzle then is where adultery - the sin under which
Ibrahim's could be classified - is exempted under Sharia. In the case of either
adultery or fornication, framers of that religious code of conduct obviously
envisaged the iniquity between a sample of male and female.
Odion |
To imagine that Ibrahim this time went extra mile to
procure two ladies! Worse still, it remains for Ibrahim to deny whether the two
ladies recruited for his threesome were not prostitutes.
Before the great expose of last weekend, nothing in
Ibrahim's customarily dour countenance, absolutely nothing in his medium frame,
would have suggested someone that adventurous or prolific.
Truly, as Shakespeare tells us, there is no art to read
a mind's construct on the face. Even footages of the 2-minute video now in the
public domain are certainly far less mosaic of physical attributes expected of
a stud. Other than the detumescent look on his face after the act, we only saw
Bukka's saggy belly - instead of the archetypal six-packs - as he fumbles with
his pants.
Interestingly, no sooner had the 2-minute video gone
viral online last weekend than one Ifeanyi Emeka, purporting to be writing from
Lokoja, mounted a spirited rejoinder attacking the publisher, dismissing it as
as "a compendium of lies, hatred, character assassination and fraudulent
news reportage whose collaborators are sons and daughters of Satan".
He came close to narrowing it down to the handiwork of
political adversaries envious of Ibrahim's "rising profile" ahead of
the 2019 polls.
But Emeka's sophistry was soon shredded and exposed as
weeping louder than the bereaved following Ibrahim's reported chat with Premium
Times. True, caught in similar circumstance, the average Nigerian
adulterer or fornicator would have simply lied with a straight face. But not a
candid Ibrahim. In a rare show of candour, he chose not deny herding two ladies
to the tryst.
The senator representing Yobe East defended his action
as something done within his right to privacy: “If they say I raped, that’s a
different matter altogether. Is it because I am a public official then I am not
supposed to be entitled to private life? This is a personal, private
matter."
He continued: “What does my having been with a girl
have to do with the public? You know the normal thing. People ask for
unreasonable things, and if you deny them, they try to blackmail you if they
have a way."
All said, what seems to make Ibrahim's misadventure all
the more abominable is his poor sense of judgement. For a man
once entrusted with people's fate as governor for a cumulative ten years and
would therefore be expected to take definitive decision in a moment of peril,
it is quite troubling that Ibrahim only looked on sheepishly while one of the
two ladies filmed him naked with a cell phone.
Hear his kindergarten rationale: "They just
mentioned it to me as a joke and I took it as nothing really serious... This is
something that happened between two adults.”
Or, maybe this should merely be seen as symptomatic of
the virus of impunity now commonly believed to be ravaging our political class.
For, only that could embolden a cheat to be that nonchalant while being
video-taped in a most compromising position.A sensible man should be able to
tell when the proverbial handshake begins to transcend the elbow.
Added to Ibrahim's folly is the lack of shame or
contrition after being exposed. Making a bold face when his head ought to be
bowed in remorse, he even had the temerity to add: "I have
commenced investigations to find out why it is circulating... But from all
indications, it is a blackmail.”
Pray, assuming the senator is able to establish a case
of blackmail, what does he intend to do next? Raise it as "a matter of
urgent national importance" on the senate floor? Or enjoin the police to
press charges?
Perhaps because he inhabits a dark space devoid
ethical scruples, Ibrahim could not be bothered about how others feel. With a
good number of his colleagues in the Red Chamber already neck-deep with their
own dingy canoes in the cesspit of murk, we can understand if he does not show
concern how this might further impact the dignity and integrity of the very
institution whose insignia he currently flaunts.
From his haughty tone in the interview with Premium
Times, he seemed to have foreclosed any possibility of apology of any
kind to the Senate Ethics and Privilege Committee.
But he should know that the scandalous story will
add to the untold trauma of members of his constituency savaged beyond words by
Boko Haram, tens of thousands of whom are presently marooned in IDP camps
across the North-East.
Even if he does not appear to care how the video of
shame would affect the self-esteem of his wives, one of whom is no other than
the foreign minister of Federal Republic of Nigeria. The memory is certainly
not the kind a diplomat would proudly associate with abroad.
When next he finds himself in the company of his
daughters, will Ibrahim still have the moral courage to demand of them purity
or seek to hold them by the high standards he himself fails to keep? Will
he smile or frown if his sons report being mocked in school as offspring of a
super stud?
When a governor in India found himself in similar moral
puddle in January this year, he did not wait to be told before tendering his
resignation, prefacing it with a public apology.
Incidentally, Shanmuganathan is 67-year-old like
Ibrahim and was the chief executive of India’s north-eastern state of
Meghalaya. He threw in the towel following allegation of sexual misconduct, of
turning his high office into a "young ladies club".
Estimated 100 members of his staff wrote in the
petition that he had "compromised the dignity" of the governor's
office by making it a place where “young ladies come and go at will with
direct orders from the Governor’’.
Note, Shanmuganathan was swept out of office by the
wave of mere allegation/perception. No one caught him red-handed in the act or
had a sex video of him.
But this is almighty Senator Ibrahim, the prince of
impunity.
Incredible, it was is well with our country Nigeria
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