Jolly man, jolly mood

Another pageant of sleaze has just played out on national canvass and warrants our re-interrogation of society’s morals. An adulatory crowd massed onto the grounds of Danbaba Suntai Airport in Jalingo, the Taraba State capital, penultimate Saturday to accord a hero’s welcome to their own. It didn’t matter one jot that it was an errant ‘son’ returning. They revelled as the private jet that brought him came to a halt and the gangway opened for him to confer a benevolent wave on the ecstatic kinsmen. Welcome back! Welcome back! The crowd jubilantly cheered – in effect, that is. The snow-white babanriga (flowing gown) of the returnee was a perfect dissemblance of the coal-black morality that took him away and kept him four years behind prison walls. As he alighted onto the tarmac and the crowd crushed on him, he perhaps felt invaded and craved some breathing space. But  it was an ironic charade that he couldn’t have wished otherwise in the circumstance. So, he lived it down. Enter ex-Taraba Governor Jolly Nyame from the cold into the warm embrace of his kinsfolk.

Even if he’d wanted immediate privacy with close family and friends, it wasn’t yet time – after all, he’s had all the privacy anyone could get in four solitary years behind bars. And so, he was effectively hostage to fawning adoration of the crowd as they herded him to the city stadium, incidentally named after him, for what they called a grand reception. The route from the airport to Jolly Nyame Stadium was lined by people cheering in welcome of the native. At the stadium, everyone was in jolly mod for the jolly man, who happens to be named Jolly. Everything na jolly, jolly, as they would say in pidgin English that it was all-round merriment. When it was time for speeches, no one assayed to be truthful to the facts of history by acknowledging the returnee as an ex-convict. No, like that was an egregious taboo! The state House of Assembly Speaker on behalf of the absent state governor eulogised him, even appellated him as “Your Excellency,” described him as “iconic” and the homecoming as “epoch-making.” He concluded with an allusion to the imperative of forgiveness by the returnee.

When it came to his turn to take the podium, the ex-governor assumed the full air of a benefactor. “From what I am seeing on your faces, I understand the pains you are passing through in these current times, I am back and back for good. And now that I am back, I want to be a pathfinder,” he told the adoring crowd. He as well vibed with pseudo-vindication and rallied his religious reputation; after all, he’s a professing Christian and Reverend gentleman at that! “I hold no grudge against anybody. I have forgiven all those that were behind my incineration. All I know is that God used them for a purpose. I am more refined now to reshape the activities of the state,” Nyame said. Unlike his admirers, though, he apparently couldn’t live in complete denial, hence he acknowledged being at that reception by grace of presidential clemency. “I appreciate President Muhammadu Buhari and the Council of State for making my freedom possible. My four years in jail had a divine purpose. When the time comes, we will all come together to look into our problems and how to solve them,” he serenaded. 

“For Nyame, just like the others, it is pardon without penitence.” 

Let’s just say it was slightly redeeming that the ex-governor acknowledged, albeit tangentially, that he is out on the basis of presidential pardon, because the fact is that he didn’t return with vindicated innocence but as a pardoned convict. True, he holds the niche as the longest serving Taraba governor because he belongs in the exclusive club of having won the governorship three times: first in 1992, a tenure that was cut short with the abortion of the Third Republic by the 1993 military coup; then, six years later in 1999 upon the advent of the present republic; and again in 2003 for a second term under the same dispensation. But upon leaving office in 2007, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) swooped on him for diversion of N1.6billion from Taraba treasury. After protracted litigation, a Federal Capital Territory (FCT)  high court in 2018 convicted him of the charges and handed him a 14-year jail term. Nyame  headed to the Court of Appeal and lost, although his jail time was shaved to 12 years. Still dissatisfied, he approached the Supreme Court which in 2020 affirmed the appeal court verdict. It was only in April, this year, that the Council of State, acting on a report by a presidential panel on prerogative of mercy, granted him pardon along with 158 other prison inmates including former Plateau State Governor Joshua Dariye of Plateau State, who like Nyame was in office from 1999 to 2007. Dariye was convicted of laundering N1.16billion of Plateau funds and handed a 14-year jail term, which at the appellate level was reduced to 10 years. The clemency deal had elicited fierce criticism from members of the public who argued that it undermined the Buhari presidency’s avowed crusade against corruption. But government defended the pardon as having been based on deteriorating health, age and good behaviour of inmates concerned during the time they’ve served out of their prison sentences. Both Nyame and Dariye, who were held at Kuje correctional facility in the FCT, however didn’t breathe the air of freedom until August when the Custodial Services said it was in receipt of letters from government effecting their pardon.

By reason of the presidential gesture, Nyame got released from jail eight years earlier than due – but to be clear: not on account of vindication of innocence but for reason of gratuitous clemency. Government had said it offered the deal on account of poor health  of the convicts. That didn’t look much like the case when Nyame made his triumphal return to Taraba penultimate Saturday, but it’s no matter. It was the same people he stole from that thronged out to fete him anyway, almost like they were retorting: ‘If you say he’s a thief, then he is OUR thief and it’s shouldn’t have been any of your business that he stole from us.’ Put in other words, it was egg in the face of justice and frontal insult to the judicial system. But that is what you get with primordial sentiment of kinship that lives in willful denial of circumstantial facts, thereby promoting radicalisation of corruption. People see their kinsmen who were convicted of corruption as no worse off than corrupt persons elsewhere; they pout the ‘our son’ connection to welcome back the wayward member and set kinship at higher stock than the moral flaw that got him into jail. It is a crooked sense of morality whereby affected communities do not see stealing public funds as a crime; the crime would rather be that their ‘son’ was in power and did not seize the opportunity to better his own lot and that of the immediate circle of kin, among other cronystic benefits.

Of course, the perceived political value of the returnee plays a large motivating role in the effusive welcome of the returnee, especially in the ‘silly season’ of electioneering. That is why it is politically exposed persons who usually get such feting. The Taraba grand reception was by no means peculiar. In 2007, a similar event was staged for former Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha in his Amassoma hometown after returning from jail time for looting Bayelsa treasury; and in 2017, former Delta State Governor James Ibori got feted in his native Oghara after serving five and half years of a 13-year prison sentence in British jail for laundering swathes of the state’s commonwealth in the United Kingdom economy. Meanwhile, you can watch out for similar outing for ex-Plateau governor, Dariye, who just got freed from jail along with Nyame.

For Nyame, just like the others, it is pardon without penitence. Rather than retreat shamefacedly into a quiet life after being proven guilty of corruption, these returnees take the grandstand to be celebrated as misunderstood heroes; and they tout the offer of forgiveness of detractors when it is they who owe their respective community and the entire nation an apology for abusing public trust. Such affront on societal morality!