It was Alaba a.k.a Troublesome, SA to Mr. Dafida Trouble who pointed out Dogara must now be living in a virtual reality world. The goggles he wears sees the dancer and the dance as a seperate entity from the dance! If only the ‘Dance’ could plaster Nairn on the brows of the singers and drummers! Troublesome’s statement from the office of Trouble emanated from a sprawling interview, which he seemed to have granted to all soundly. And in the nature of such spurious and self-serving interviews, it is a loose verbiage in which the Dogara is allowed to go large without any intelligent questioned placed against his position. The Speaker of the Lower house (with Senate as the Lower house) said that he was amazed at the amount of stealing going on in government. He continued by saying that he had never encountered such impunity in stealing. As far as his great intelligence could carry him, this was a case of “stealing for the sake of stealing,” like the famous “art for art’s sake,” which our own Chinua Achebe called deodorised shit, if you forgive Achebe’s French!!! With this addition to the intellectual appreciation of the academic field of Corruptionology Dogara adds a new dimension.

For students of the subject, at least two important reasons have always been given for stealing and other aspects of corruption. The first of them is the Devil. In the news media and in our churches, mosques and places of worship we get to know that the Devil makes people do stuff. But for the Devil there would be no evil. According to a self-confessed felon, who in preparation for his felony sought the assistance of the babalawo, begged the help of a pastor and did not forget to get ‘tirah’ from the itinerant mallam, it was the Devil that made him do it. If the police let him go he promised them that he would never let the Devil direct him in these felonious byways and footpaths. It is not unusual for ordinary people to believe this explanation of the cause of evil in society. According to these people we need to invest in forgiveness. This infrastructure of forgiveness would allow the evil doer, (not his prime sponsor the Devil, unless there is evidence that he gave what he stole to the Devil – and here we must avoid pronouns) the infrastructure of forgiveness would get the thief to return all that he has stolen and then be forgiven in a ritual of casting out the devil in him and he would go away to sin no more. Amen and aleluyah!

The second explanation for felony such as stealing from government coffers, is political persecution. The contestant ion for political positions is, as it says, a contestation. It is a conflict. It is a fight. In fact, it is war. And in war any instrument is welcome including persecution by accusation of wrong doing especially stealing. This explanation includes first step of denying the accusation before stating the matter of political persecution. Then of course, there are little matters of “envy and jealousy”. “You don’t know their problem? They are jealousing me, that’s all.” This particular explanation does not have any arrangement for the return of the loot or part thereof.

The third reason is Dogara’s art for art’s sake formula applied to crime especially stealing. Dogara claims that someone or some ones he knows planted billions of Nairn in some farmlands around Abuja. Stupendous impunity, according to the Speaker. Now, organisations responsible for such activities have begun harvesting the loot. This process seems to favour those who steal for stealing sake. What remains is the determination of what form of appreciation should be showered on the thief, as in the case of art. Here, there is no question of doing wrong. Stealing here is an art. Should we also appreciate ‘beating for the sake of beating’, ‘injuring others for the sake of injuring’, ‘murdering for the sake of murdering’?

In the light of ‘Nothing Follows’ kind of interviews that we see these days, where the journalist simply lists what the personality says without follow-up questions we need new questions, not new answers. Dogara’s is a non-sequitur type of answer. Here are two examples from recent interviews: when Mugabe was asked when he was going to say goodbye to the people of Zimbabwe where he had been president since 1980, he wanted to know where they were going.

He also wondered why they did not ask Queen Elizabeth II the same question. Was it too much to ask Mugabe if he was a monarch in Zimbabwe who inherited his power from his father? The second example had to do with a member of the APC government saying that the reason why they were not prosecuting members of the party is because they were not the ones who have been in power since 1999. The person who interviewed this man could have helped our understanding of the processes of prosecution by asking if it was the government that was now prosecuting criminals or the justice system. Also he or she could have pointed out that some members of this government had migrated from the party that ruled for 16 years. The most dramatic migration into the new ruling party was of five former governors of the party that ruled from 1999.

With Dogara’s stealing for the sake of stealing excuse we come to the era of suffering for the sake of suffering, starving for the sake of starving, bribing for the sake of bribing, road accidents for the sake of road accidents, dying for the sake of dying! Boko Haram for the sake of Boko Haram, Avengers for the sake of Avenging, dying uselessly for the sake of dying uselessly. Every criminality we commit, we do it for the sake of the art of criminality: fake drugs, violence against children and women, 419s. Between the ‘Do’ and the ‘Doer’ no connection to the ‘Deed’. A blameless society where crimes does not exit except as an art form. Appreciate!!!