Lesson from Birnin Kebbi, by Clem Oluwole
Most folks in the corridors of power are hedonic by nature. Once sucked in by the vortex of power where free bucks are at their beck and call or are always surplus to requirements, they go on overdrive behind the wheel of hedonism. And sexual pleasure is a branch of hedonism that is of concern today.
The latest victim of this branch is the Special Adviser on Youths to the Kebbi state Governor, Babangida Sarki Idris who was fired for taking pleasure in indecent postings on his WhatsApp status. His enraged principal and Governor, Dr. Nasiru Idris, put him on the firing line because, according to him, his aide’s action trampled on “the moral and social ethos of the Kebbi society, which is largely Islamic.”
Governor Idris who is also the Kauran Gwandu vowed that his administration would not condone any of such acts that denigrate the morality and integrity of the people of the state. He warned other public officers with hedonistic inclinations against making such heinous postings in their social media handles and other public fora.
Ex-Special Adviser Babangida is a letdown for advocates of not-too-young-to-run or those in the vanguard of appointing young folks into government. Babangida fell out of office barely one month on his seat. The sacked aide did not keep the visuals to his eyes only. Pray, what gave him the audacity to preach the indecent gospel to the innocent ones out there like a Nigerian lawmaker did at the 2012 London Olympics?
The lawmaker who was in London for the Games was caught in the vortex of pornography. Rather than being at the venues to support his compatriots, he placed himself under house arrest. He spent most of the time in the hotel room, pleasuring himself with adult movies. What was not known to us was whether he was feasting his eyes all by himself or with prostitutes or Nigerian female athletes. But you will be too naïve to think that he was feeding his eyes alone.
The embarrassment came to light when he asked for his bill to be prepared at the end of his stay. His eyes nearly leapt out of their sockets when he was handed a fat bill. He demanded a breakdown of the bill for payment from the hotel management. His knees began to jerk when they showed him the number of hours he accumulated watching the blue movies which he thought was a free show… an incentive from the management of the hotel!
Another hedonistic embarrassment involving our lawmakers occurred in faraway United States four years after the London drama. On June 9, 2016, the United States ambassador to Nigeria at the time, Mr James Entwistle, petitioned the former speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, accusing three lawmakers – Mohammed Garba Gololo, Mark Gbillahs, and Samuel Ikon – of improper conduct, attempted rape and soliciting prostitutes during the trip to the US.
According to Mr. Entwistle, Mr. Gololo in particular grabbed a hotel chambermaid and solicited sex, while the other two solicited the services of prostitutes through car park attendants during their visit to Cleveland, United States, for the International Visitor Leadership Programme (IVLP) on good governance. But Gololo, a first-timer in the House, denied the allegation in a letter addressed to the American Embassy in Nigeria dated June 13, 2016.
The other two musketeers also denied the allegations. They asked for hard proofs of the accusations… like video evidence, failing which an apology should follow. They also threatened to sue the ambassador and the US government for character assassination if an unreserved apology did not follow.
Pray, which hotel would plant video cameras in its rooms to capture a scene of a guest pouncing on a chambermaid like a cat on a rat?
The House of Representatives set up a panel to unravel the alleged sex scandal involving the trio. When it comes to hedonism, most men throw their sense of discipline and self-control to the dog. Hedonism is not an exclusive preserve of Nigerian men. One international figure fed his self-control mechanism to the (sexy) dog a few years ago when he grabbed a housekeeper, armed with $3,000 as a bait but it backfired.
Not many men can resist the temptation of pouncing on a pretty housekeeper that walks into their hotel room tidying up things alone with them. That was the temptation that the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, could not resist when a New York hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo, a black, emerged in his room on a fateful day in May 2011.
Strauss-Kahn wrestled for six minutes with Nafissatou for sex. The wrestling ended in a scandal that led to Strauss-Kahn’s fall from the Olympian height of the world’s most powerful financial cartel. The groundswell of that indiscretion ultimately ruined his marriage and shattered his dreams of becoming a French president.
However, Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, the irresistible Guinean Nafissatou, became a proud owner of a restaurant, Chez Amina, established in the Bronx, New York, serving up African, American and Spanish cuisines. She was able to achieve the feat with the windfall ($1.5m) that fell on her laps without opening her legs as an inducement to drop the attempted rape case her lawyer pressed against the hedonist.
Even men of God are not immune to the temptation of wanting to hedonise, so to speak. There was this Nigerian pastor who was posted to the headquarters of his church in the United States. Upon arriving at the hotel which was booked for him, he freshened up and sauntered into the lobby where his roving eyes fell on a pretty African-American lady. Momentarily, he forgot a line in the Lord’s Prayer that says “lead us not into temptation” and to ask to be delivered from the evil that the devil had packaged for him.
He fell for the apple and slept with the strange lady. As it turned out, the lady was a member of the choir of his church. When the pastor was introduced to the congregation the following day, the lady shot to her feet and spilled the beans, in disgust. To shorten a long story, the pastor was bundled into the next available flight back to Nigeria. He missed a lifetime opportunity of a good life for himself and his family that would have joined him later.
As for the three musketeers, nobody knew how their matter ended. My guess is that it was swept under the rug of the Green Chamber. I also believe that Babangida has learnt his lesson the hard way and his ilk will not propagate the lewd gospel beyond the confines of their bedrooms if they cannot repent.
Clem Oluwole is the Managing Editor of Blueprint Newspapers in Abuja.