'Mainagate'And The Hypocrisy Of The Buhari Regime

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

The hypocrisy of the General Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) government is nauseating. The behaviour of some of its officials is childish, to say the least. They probably think Nigerians are idiots who don't have the capacity to reason.

*Buhari 

Take for instance this Abdulrasheed Maina fiasco. The Ibrahim Magu-led Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is now jumping up and down claiming to be seizing Maina's properties in Kaduna and Abuja and they have journalists to video it and write the stories and create the impression that, indeed, Magu, like his Oga, Buhari, is an anti-corruption czar. And you ask, why now?

EFCC records show that Maina's Abuja mansion which they claimed to have seized two days was bought with a whopping $2m cash in 2012 while he was still an Assistant Director in the civil service and pensions reform boss. So, why was no effort made to seize the property in the last two years that Maina was a fugitive? Did they just realise that those houses were bought with illicit funds?

EFCC says it is on a manhunt for Maina. They are searching for him everywhere.

Really?

In the two years that Maina was said to be a fugitive, it is on record that he was visiting home through our airports with his Nigerian passport. He never travelled incognito. Why did the EFCC not arrest him? Can Magu swear with the Koran that he never knew Maina was visiting Nigeria whenever he wanted in the last two years he was a "wanted" man?

Ok, assuming he never knew Maina's movement then, it is also on record that since he came back and officially resumed work, he has been moving about with a truckload of security men, mainly DSS operatives and policemen. Are the DSS boss, Lawal Daura, and IGP Ibrahim dris, also claiming they didn't know Maina was on the EFCC wanted list? Didn't Magu know that the man he claimed to be looking for was now in town?

So, why are they prancing all over the place now making noise?

APC leadership said they are embarrassed.

Really? How? Why?

Can any of them swear with the Bible or Koran that he or she didn't know that Maina was a benefactor to the APC in 2015? How much did Maina contribute to the APC campaign funds?

Everybody claims to be outraged at what happened. But is it possible that the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, can wake up one morning to take such a monumental decision without the buy-in of the highest reaches of government?

If he can, doesn't that confirm the allegation by the First Lady Aisha Buhari that a cabal is running rings around the president, a claim for which she was brutally put down by no less a person than her husband himself.

The worst lie is the one you tell yourself. We don't only lie to ourselves in this country, as a people, we collectively live a lie. We play the axiomatic ostrich, burying our head in the sand, believing no one is seeing our body.