Before Harmattan, There Was Cold

Why all Nigerian politicians are necessarily criminals

In a recent Channels interview, Super-Minister Wike was asked how he came about a Rolls-Royce, given his salary as a minister. His answer was simple: "Before Harmattan, there was cold." You see, there is no poor man in Nigerian politics, and Super-Minister Wike is the perfect example of this. In the same interview, he lets us know that his father was a general manager of many companies. Do these companies have names? They may or they may not. What is it to you? Is your father looking for his lost company?

He then goes on to tell us how wealthy he was before entering politics. For example, we now know that Super-Minister Wike drove a Mercedes Benz as a student. A car that you, a working man, cannot even afford today. Who cares how he got the money for the Benz? Didn’t you just hear his father was a general manager in many companies? Don’t you know general managers usually buy expensive vehicles for their children in university? How dare you question his ability to buy a Rolls-Royce? Were you there when he bought his Mercedes Benz? Did you buy it from him? Why are you such a busybody?

But our dear Super-Minister isn’t the only one who is asked this annoying question by Nigerian journalists. And the answer is always the same: you see, there is no poor man in Nigerian politics. Everyone made their money before politics. If that is so, a wise fellow might wonder, why are Nigerian politicians so corrupt? If they made their money before politics, why do they steal so much? Or is the corruption we witness merely a figment of our imagination?

No, it is not, dear reader. I have a perfectly sane and also perfectly Nigerian explanation for it.

When Nigerian politicians say they made their money before politics, you need to understand that it is the truth. In fact, it is as truthful a statement as you are ever going to wrestle from any of them. But the subtext is where issues get dicey. These men are usually wealthy before politics, but the question of how they made their wealth is the more important one.

For someone like Femi Gbajabiamila, the answer—according to the bar of the state of Georgia—is fraud. For someone like Dapo Abiodun, the governor of Ogun State, the answer seems to be some kind of fraud, considering his conviction abroad and the friends he now keeps. For someone like the dear late Buruji Kashamu, a former senator, the answer is the sale of narcotics. For even our dear president, the answer seems to be something along that line. What of Atiku “Bag Man” Bagudu? There are many other cases too, and you would be hard-pressed to find a Nigerian politician with clean hands before politics.

The reason why there is no poor man in Nigerian politics isn’t because our rich people are gripped by a passion for service, but because Nigerian politics is extremely expensive. To become even a councilor in your area, you need to spend close to ten million naira. The councilorship form for the APC alone in Lagos is over a million naira. And where will you write expenses like paying for the naming ceremony of a leader, or paying for their kid’s wedding, or contributing for their marriage costs? What about the few constituency projects you have to run to show that you are “on ground”? These numbers vary for different states, of course, but it only goes to show how expensive just a councilorship position can be—without absolutely no guarantee of winning.

You would think this is an easily solvable problem. A sufficiently popular candidate would find it easy to raise money from donors, right? Wrong. No smart Nigerian will give a Nigerian politician a cent of their naira to run elections. The first reason is that Nigerians are poor, and they don’t have the disposable income to play retail politics with their hard-earned Naira. The second reason is even if they do have the money, Nigerian politicians are often reincarnated demons from hell who do not deserve even your one naira. It is an intractable position.

Now, we have a situation where Nigerians look for actual Messiahs who have a “passion to serve,” bottomless pockets, and absolutely no sense of financial self-preservation. This fellow is also supposed to endure endless insults from people who didn’t vote for him, or even if they did, didn’t contribute a naira to his election. That isn’t all; this fellow is also supposed to be accountable to them because they blessed him with a thumbprint on paper. A thumbprint that would be absolutely worthless if he didn’t gamble with bankruptcy and lifelong penury to be in that position.

In total, Nigerians believe in angels. And whenever they find that a non-angel is who they voted for, they crash out. There are many ways to describe this behavior, but I will go with the most polite of them all: it is simply illogical. You cannot beat a child and expect them not to cry.

It happens that the only sort of people capable of taking on this risk are people who earned money playing this sort of game. A criminal who gambles with his life or his law license would find it trivial to gamble the same on far more uncertain grounds. This situation inevitably leads to a place where we have rich men in politics who turn out to have made all their money via unscrupulous means. Why would anyone expect something else?

When rich Nigerians spend half their wealth on politics, they do so because there is a reasonable expectation that money will be paid back. Even in ordinary financial dealings amongst poor Nigerians, people tend to be cutthroat and near maniacal in their pursuit of profits. Imagine how much worse this problem is when it comes to political horsetrading, which is entirely another animal.

A man who invests ten billion naira of his own money isn’t just expecting to recoup that money; a bank that borrows you ten billion doesn’t expect you to pay just ten billion back. You have to pay back with interest, and in an inflationary environment, you can expect things to be even worse.

Not only do politicians seek to recoup their investments with interest, they also seek to create a war chest that helps fund future elections and elections of allies. And seriously, who can blame them? It isn’t like the average Nigerian is going to say no to money on election day. It isn’t like the average Nigerian will fund their campaign either. In order to stay politically relevant, they have to steal. Elections are really expensive, and no one really cares about your ambitions other than your family members. The same crowd that calls you the best thing after sliced bread today will call you different names when the tap of government funds stops running. It is the Nigerian way.

God so good, even the average Nigerian understands it, regardless of their many protestations to the contrary. No serious APC member believes that Tinubu isn’t a criminal. No serious “Atikulate” believes the man isn’t as corrupt as the day is long. It is a beautiful country we have built here, where the criminal and the victim are in tacit agreement about the method of theft.

These days, there are a new crop of naive Nigerians who believe this isn’t the case. These young people have fallen into the (hilarious) trap of believing the sweet words and aura (because that is all there is to it) of a certain generation of Nigerian politicians. God so good, the Nigerian politician never leaves Nigerians to their stupid devices for long. He always finds a way to put sand in their mouths.

Last month, the hitherto super-governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde, made an interesting decision. He would be renovating the Oyo State government house with 65 billion naira. This is a government house that a long line of governors do not even reside in. Seyi is extremely popular in his state, so his people took this blatant robbery on the chin. They understood that you cannot beat a child and expect it not to cry; you cannot start crying in the casino; and whosoever bi omo, must tor. They understood that Seyi necessarily had other interests, including his political future and past, and kept mum. After all, Seyi is working. Whoever works must eat.

But many Nigerians, many of whom do not live in the country, found this fantastic situation alarming. Make no mistake, it is alarming. However, Nigerians have shown that this is precisely how they want their country to run. If the person with body pains says he is feeling nothing, then why are bystanders insistent on telling him sorry?

The new crop of naive Nigerians who weren’t wise to the Nigerian political social contract could not believe it. Seyi Makinde, a young, vibrant, and smart leader, was their vision of everything a Nigerian politician could be. And yet he also had to pay the bills. What do they want him to do? Open his mouth to breeze?

But it gets worse. In the last week, Peter Obi, the newfound Messiah of Nigerian politics, joined a structure of criminality (his words, not mine) to further his political ambition. His supporters couldn’t believe it. They had actually paid their own hard-earned naira this time to fund his campaign. Instead of this buying his loyalty, they (for now at least) merely became a chip he used to bargain as a leader of the new party.

And again, they found this situation alarming. How could he? It must be for the greater good, they think. But one can only swim in such delusions if they do not understand what Nigerian politicians are. This is someone who was a two-term governor, who played (at least according to people present at the time) tribal and religious politics, and still had to win an election outright at least once (his first win was gotten at the courts). How do they think he won? Do they seriously believe cash for votes was invented in 2019?

As if that wasn’t enough, the same person lobbied heavily to be Atiku’s vice presidential candidate. Does anyone seriously think Atiku would pick anyone without the financial muscle to hold his own during a campaign? Does anyone seriously think someone would spend that sort of his money and not expect returns with interest? Besides, where would the money come from? Do you believe in angels?

For the naive, the money to do this must have dropped from the sky. For the Nigerian knower, the answer is obvious. After all, you cannot expect a man to open his mouth to breeze. So when Super-Minister Wike tells you that "Before Harmattan, there was cold," he understands what he is saying. Better take note of the cold now, before the Harmattan catches you unawares.