This General Who Killed Three Birds With One Stone!

Stone....
The actual docking of the Senate President as an integral part of his trial in public on allegations of corruption. He is being prosecuted for stealing public funds during his tenure as the governor of Kwara State of Nigeria...a criminal trial....

Bird Number One....
Mr President saw a light-fingered leader of Parliament who doubles as a kingpin of his party...though a latter-day fence-jumper. This fellow played a fast one on the political party on whose platform he got elected into the Parliament, by teaming up with the opposition to sell off the post of vice president of parliament....so long as he covets the post of president for himself....eminently illustrative of a betrayal. His political party...or rather the financiers of the party wish this "former thief" punished but are at their wits ends as to how exactly to go about it.

So, this general facilitates the public prosecution of this betrayer.

Bird Number Two....
Prosecution and public docking of this person also achieves another goal. It shuts up the mouths of committed thieves and friends of thieves who accuse his government of being selective in probing and trying corrupt officials....for he now starts off with his own party men. The coast is now clear for the trial of hordes of proud treasury looters within the ranks of the opposition party!

Bird Number Three....
Successive governments surely seem to have ingrained and institutionalized a culture of unveiled corruption in the citizenry to such a level that such "norm" makes failures of honest persons and, "succeses" of dishonest persons . This is most exemplified by undisguised theft of public funds. This retired general thinks that things have terribly deteriorated since he left office in 1984...at a tangent with his vision and those of our founding fathers.

So, he searches for honest persons to form his cabinet but finds few. As he braces up to forward such few names for parliamentary approval, someone flips open the lid on their can of worms. Understandably, he now seems very reluctant to form a cabinet...as he promises the nation a September date....four solid months after his inauguration....and waits till the very end of the month to hand in his ministerial list to the Senate.

Now the catch... An aggrieved Senate President is not likely to facilitate the approval of such a list in a hurry....his travails at the "Thieves tribunal" still fresh in his mind!

But he would merely be doing The General's wish if he teams up with his colleagues to reject this list.

Buhari doesn't want it passed anyway...at least, not so soon.

He thinks he can run his government without ministers....that he can breathe his vision and policy thrust directly into the Perm Secs...saving funds on minster wages....and thus cut recurrent expenditure.

And has succeeded so far....
Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.