Chief Olu Falae is a veteran of many past battles, most of which he won. Now in the evening of his remarkable career as a public figure, he is facing the battle of a life time. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has accused Falae of taken N100 million from the bazar that was declared by the ancient regime of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan during its closing days when it was struggling desperately to cling to power. Now that is past, but it is this past that has brought Falae his present nightmare.

I don’t know how the romance between Falae and Jonathan started. However, it was consummated on the bed of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, a new party which is a nostalgic throwback to those great days when Chief Moshood Abiola was on the march for the Presidency. Falae was one of the leaders of the old SDP, one of the two parties formed by the military government of General Ibrahim Babangida, the ruler of Nigeria for eight giddy years. The other party was the National Republican Convention, NRC. The two parties were distinguishable by one being “a little to the right” and the other “a little to the left.” Ultimately Abiola became the presidential candidate of the SDP and he won the June 12, 1993 presidential election, defeating the candidate of the NRC, Alhaji Bashir Tofa. Abiola’s victory was later annulled by General Babangida.

Ironically, it was Babangida who brought Falae to public glare. Falae was a star in the Federal Civil Service where he rose to become a permanent secretary at 39. He was an outstanding student during his days at the Yale University in the United States. He later became the managing director of NAL (Merchant Bankers) and became a leading figure in the banking sector. When Babangida seized power in 1985, Falae became the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF. He brought into that office an unseal muscularity, infusing its substance with real power. Along with the magisterial Kalu Idika Kalu and some other egg heads, he built the Babangida team that sold to us the disputatious theology of SAP (Structural Adjustment Programme).

It was a theology that was to put him in trouble. General Olusegun Obasanjo, retired military ruler and then (and now) Africa’s most famous farmer, said it was necessary for SAP to have a “human face,” chiding government for reckless rigidity. The most acerbic comment was to come from Professor Sam Aluko, pre-eminent economist and retired university teacher. According to him, SAP was really “a financial mal-adjustment programme.” He said further: “A political contrivance that has no alternatives is not an economic contrivance. It is a chimera, magic or mystery. There is an alternative even to death, which is living. SAP is a kiss of death.”

Nigeria survived SAP and so did Falae. When Babangida banned all the old politicians, the Awoist vanguard, later to be more famously known as Afenifere, led by the late Chief Michael Adekunle Ajasin, adopted him as its presidential candidate. For him, it must have been an exhilarating experience. He created a powerful electoral machine, but in the party primary to produce the flag bearer of the SDP, Falae was worsted by the newbreed military muscle of Major-General Sheu Musa Yar’Adua who was Obasanjo’s deputy during the military regime of 1976 to ’79. Since then, Falae has remained a part of the political elite.

He was one of the leaders of Afenifere detained for many months during the gory regime of General Sani Abacha. Since 1999 he has tried valiantly to be our president and has failed spectacularly. He was the presidential candidate of the All Peoples Party, APP and the Alliance for Democracy, AD, in 1999. His running mate then was Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi, the influential former director-general of the Nigerian Security Organisation, NSO, now known as the Department of State Security, DSS. That team was defeated by the PDP team of Olusegun Obasanjo and Atiku Abubakar.

Failing at the poll, Falae may have decided to invest his considerable talent and clout in a Jonathan presidential adventure using the vehicle of his old nightmare, the PDP. But by the time he was coming into fold last year, the Jonathan presidency was in trouble, bedeviled by fissiparous rebellion within the ruling PDP, troubled by societal upheaval typified by the Boko-Haram insurgency and burdened by its reputation for comprehensive incompetence. It was into this wagon that Falae believed he could make a difference. He may have suspected that Jonathan, in his quest for power, may have decided to look the other way when suspected robbers were admitted into the national strong room.

Despite all the evidence that the Jonathan Presidency was about to quit the stage, Falae could not see this clearly. He was in love with Jonathan and real love has a blinding effect. To help the then President, Falae decided to float the SDP again. Jonathan was interested in the almost new party. The big man at the villa may have authorised another big man at the Villa to give the big man in Benin who may have been instructed to give a certain amount of money to the big man in Akure. The instruction was clear. Collect the money, deliver whatever you can to ensure that the SDP collaborate with the PDP for the success of President Jonathan at the poll. Chief Falae, noted for his capacity and competence, may have worked hard, but the result was still the same. Jonathan lost because Nigerians were tired of him and his party.

It is indeed surprising, in the light new revelations, that the PDP high command concluded that Chief Falae and his SDP were not worth more than N100 million considering that the big man who went in search of imams and sundry spiritual merchants allegedly got a princely sum in billions. It is estimation of what has happened to Chief Falae since he almost became our President in 1999 that he was rated to be far less important to the success of the PDP than the spiritual merchants.

Falae has said that the EFCC has not invited him to refund the money or face trial. They know perhaps how he spent the money for his partymen and those women in tee-shirts who make all the difference at rallies.

This episode brings into focus the other side of SAP. In the post SAP era, it was decided by the military junta that the government should form and fund parties. All the offices of the SDP and the NRC were built by the government in all the local government headquarters across Nigeria. Party officers became as important as government officials and sometimes they rode good cars. When Abacha came to power, he simply instructed politicians to form parties and five were dutifully formed. Chief Bola Ige, in an unforgettable jibe dismissed the parties as the “five fingers of a leprous hand.”

We are now in a new dawn beyond those days of the five fingers. Gone are the days when party members contribute money and pay monthly dues to fund their parties. Now everyone expects the government, through its cronies, the contractors, the appointed officers and the aspirants, to fund parties. Now we have reached the nadir of funding parties when we spend money meant to protect our dear country and buy arms to defend ourselves to dispense on funding political rallies and elections. So great was the greed for power that some people concluded that it can be bought with money. How else can you explain the re-looting of the Abacha loot?

The Falae saga is a lesson for the Nigerian political elite of all the parties. We need to rethink the cost and the methods of funding elections in Nigeria. It is simply too prohibitive and gives room for temptations and unholy thoughts. More disturbing is the incapacity of the federal bureaucracy, including the Budget Monitoring Office, the oversight functions of the National Assembly and other bodies, to detect and arrest the horrible revelations of the past few weeks. All these allegedly happened and if Jonathan had been re-elected we would still have been dancing to the same sordid music. Why were all these bodies so helpless?

For Chief Falae, this must be a singularly disturbing experience. He may have learnt the lesson now that there is nothing hidden under the sun. All his years of experience as a Yale graduate and star bureaucrat came up very short against the wiles of determined power mongers. Henceforth, he would spend a considerable amount of time and energy explaining this Greek-gift of N100 million. He may have thought he had good intentions. But at least many of his old admirers would believe he is guilt of bad judgment.