Corruption Gets A Boost At Dino Melaye’s Book Launch, By Joe Igbokwe

On Monday, 15 May 2017, Mr. Dino Melaye gathered birds of identical plumage in Abuja to launch his book titled: Antidotes for Corruption. Among his crowd of invitees is Mrs. Patience Jonathan, who represents corruption from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. Of course the President of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki who is facing charges at CCT graced the occasion. Remove some few guests that graced the occasion simply because Dino is their friend, majority of the people in that hall that day came to mock President Buhari’s anti-corruption war. They resorted to mocking just because all the antics they have employed to rubbish the war had failed.

The choice of the date was deliberate because the President was not in town. I was wondering if such inanity and affront would have been displayed if the President had been in town. The impunity, body language and gross pettiness displayed by Dino and his gang of reprobates suggest that they think that the war against corruption is a joke. To Saraki, the war on corruption is a circus show that is working on the surface instead of dealing with the symptoms. Perhaps, dealing with the symptoms amounts to allowing Saraki to walk away with the many cases of corruption that he drags about.

From my understanding of what transpired on that Monday, it seems to me that these characters came together to put funny words on paper together in a book form, and put Dino Melaye’s name as an Author to give it an identity but the purpose is to reduce President Buhari’s war on corruption to a joke. The purpose of that gathering of the corrupt was to malign and defame the present war of corruption because they have not succeeded so far with many other methods they have adopted to stop it. Sure, corruption must fight for itself and Dino’s comic show was one form of that fightback.

But can we in all honesty agree with these unrepentant jokers that the war against corruption is a fluke? Can we believe these characters? Are they really serious? Did they convince anybody? Is the world taking them serious? I do not think so. What happened on Monday was a non-event. It was a meeting of clowns and jesters, all noise and no substance, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing. This book Melaye ‘wrote’ is not worth the paper on which it was written. The economic saboteurs and enemies of the nation met to mock themselves judging from the feedback since that mock rally on Monday. They came on stage to try to convince us with their watery book and scurrilous drivel but they ended up ridiculing themselves. The book is no book. It is an exercise in futility.

The war on corruption in Nigeria is now a movement. I have just read that the Federal Government is working on 2, 500 tips from whistle blowers, that could lead to loot recovery and blocking of leakages within the system. Do these characters know this? Hear the Minster of Finance: “Note that not all the whistle-blowers are looking for rewards. Some are just patriotic citizens. Now that everyone has embraced the policy, this has become a national fight against corruption.” Now,what does this imply? The war on corruption is now a national project and one million Dino Melayes and the Sarakis of this world cannot stop an idea whose time has come. This is the kind of development that worry corrupt characters like Dino Melaye and his band of jesters for they are scared that soon and very soon, the dragnet will catch up with them. Theirs is therefore a preemptive strike but I know that with such a dodged fighter like Buhari, they are struggling in vain.

Let nobody deceive himself. President Buhari has recorded unprecedented success in his determined war against corruption. I only pity those who are yet to come to terms that it is not business as usual. I pity more characters like Dino Melaye, Bukola Saraki, Patience Jonathan and their ilk who think they will use their sly antics to prevent the anti-corruption war from catching up with them. Corruption in Nig