By Alade Rotimi-John 

Fiction and pseudo-reality have combined to present the Tinubu presidency as a Frankenstein monster – a fictional character composed of body parts from various corpses attached and brought back to life by a half-mad scientist.  

The forged outcome is undoubtedly a creation that is apparently strong but unable to speak coherently, clearly or intelligibly as exemplified in Tinubu’s patented Balabloo or Bulaba idiolect. Unfortunately for Nigeria, these are times for sober reflections rather than for a Charlie Chaplin-type amusement. 

The Nigerian condition can ill-afford silly jokes or programmes and events which are positioned to entertain a people who are  emotionally accustomed to whimsical, iniquitous or do-nothing administrations.  

Today, a blanket of shock, disbelief and anger has been woven round an otherwise benign people. Perhaps no report as the emergence of a coterie of persons masquerading as officials of government but who in truth are its pall bearers has shaken the people to their marrows more than a raging story of the cavalier infiltration of the hallowed portals of the institutions of government by an alleged impostor. As a matter of fact, Nigeria has since the beginning not been immune to scandals of volcanic dimensions particularly in her governmental operations. But this one non pareil. 

A feverisly-disowned Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) has boisterously roared its way into our lexicography as an agency of government that is both mysterious and uncanny.  

Government has disowned the agency like an unwanted baby even as the baby loudly proclaims its legitimacy as the manifestation of its parents’ coital escapade. A Prince of some little-known pedigree, Adeniyi Adeyemi, may well be the nemesis of his fecund creators. Government has accused him of running a criminal enterprise. But unlike the standard attitude of government even to a private infraction of the law, Adeyemi has been permitted the luxury of a daring challenge of the law. 

A putative 8-count charge has been reportedly filed against him in court even as the alleged offender is yet to learn his day in court. His challengers have become understandably lilly-livered. They ought to be afraid of the evidence that may blow the lid off the government’s Pandora’s box. There are many clear issues that are being clothed as mysteries in this back and forth contest. 

Adeyemi insists that the PFIPC is real and was established in 2024. Government counters that it never founded an agency like that. But its conduct in providing office space for the “impostor” agency, in having official dealings with it, and in enacting a lavish budgetary provision for it in the 2026 budget estimates belie the government’s strident denunciation. 

Some cynical or sardonic description of government is that of a man wearing a mask to becloud his identity so the people do not know who is behind the litany of their griefs. This government eloquently fits that explanation. Its opacity looms large. 

Adeyemi’s PFIPC, on the other hand, find its feet firmly in logical reasoning or in reasoned explanation. Its offices occupy official quarters, it holds official meetings, is mentioned in official budget estimates, receives in audience officials of government, and members of the diplomatic corps, etc. The weight of this proof of evidence is decidedly in favour of a reasoned position that the government’s denial is an unmitigated afterthought and is consistent with its proverbial carriage. 

Beyond government’s tepid denials, preliminary research will have to settle with such questions as those of the chronology of events, authenticity of the parties or lack of it, authorship, and external evidence for establishing the truth-value of the claims inter se. Chronological details are particularly important for tracing the stage-by-stage development of this contrived conundrum. The authorship of the various correspondences may have to be scrupulously scrutinised as there is today a large body of pseudonimous and anonymous documents flying around as deriving from supposed statutory or authorised author. Some apocrypha may be uncovered or called to question. Our search for the authenticity of forgeries may lead to further investigations or may stimulate an intensified study of the all-pervasive violations of bona fide documents. We must not be scared or put off by the very elaborate problems of evidence that this PFIPC scandal will call forth. 

Aesop’s fables captured in Penguin Classics: The Complete Fables tells a story that is particularly relevant to our present predicament. In The Fisherman and the Large and Small Fish: “A fisherman drew in his net from the sea. He could catch big fish which he spread out in the sun but the small fish slipped through the mesh escaping into the sea.”    

Aesop’s all-time warning is to the effect that people of mediocre fortune escape danger but one rarely sees a man of great note escape when there is danger. Aesop’s seemingly-universal rule however has a Nigerian version or variant. An alleged dramatis persona in the PFIPC saga has been rewarded with a top appointment as Tinubu has damned public outcry on this matter of a questioned integrity of government. He may have escaped Aesop’s sense of danger.   

Among those who foisted the present uneasy situation upon Nigeria are persons of great note – the proverbial Nigerian big men. Thankfully, history knows them too well and will not spare them an escape from this present and real danger. All over the country, there is a general sense of restiveness regarding livelihood even as there are plaintive or mournful pleas for the government to play its role as government.

The militant agitations in many parts of the country must be understood, in the main, as natural human responses to an objective or perceived unfair or unjust political or social order. They are a stark reflection of how remiss government has been regarding the requirement to resolve the contradictions in the Nigerian contrivance. The off-handed, emotional or maudlin responses of government to the Nigerian question have combined to produce a strategic reaction to the country’s debilitating status quo. 

It is a tragic irony that some of those who were in the forefront of the struggle for the political reconfiguration of the country have either taken a back seat or are implacably opposed to their erstwhile catechism. The promised return of the country to the cherished ethos and values of a true federal state through the agency of a strategic political and socio-economic engineering has become a hollow trough. The chicanery and private purpose of many of the earlier campaigners for Nigeria’s political restructuring has been exposed. 

The gory issues of insecurity have officially taken the back seat respecting governance even as toddlers, children and their handlers in form of teachers and minders have been locked away in bandits’  camp these 58 days or so under severe environmental and unhygienic conditions. It is a shame that our national conscience spirit is not sufficiently pricked or aroused to resolve to bring the ugly situation to an immediate end. 

We are yet waiting for a palpably insincere contraption in the guise of a government that has not found a place in the throbbing heart of the common people or that is not worthy of their confidence and respect to help us reverse our situation in the direction of avowed social contract imperatives namely, the safety and security of lives and property. 
We are waiting for godot. 

Rotimi-John, a lawyer and commentator on public affairs, is the Deputy Secretary-General of Afenifere. He can be reached, via: [email protected]