DANFO LETTERS
Egbon Alex,
My dear Belarusian, zip your lips. I go lie for you? Journalists are circling like ants on spilled sugar, all smiles but with sinister pens. Your job now is to protect the integrity of our beloved president, your supposed school mate. They will nose for gossip and dirt. What both of you did or didn’t do in Chicago is not the problem of Africa . I beg you in the name of God, run from them. They want to ridicule our great president .
An old man is entitled to some forgetfulness and confabulation. Old people have quirks. I’m sure this is true in Belarus too. It’s natural for an old man to fib once in a while, to entertain his audience, to cover gaps in his life journey, to photoshop his biography. It’s all part of the elderly charm. If Tinubu, not as president but as an average uncle, spun a yarn about a certain Belarusian girl he mingled with in his youth in Chicago, wouldn’t we lap up the story with a smile? But no, they won’t let this man drink and drop his cup in peace. Little wonder the man lamented aloud recently, saying, “they hate me like hell.” That wax touching. But if the man knows he has enemies, why can’t he avoid poking the public with Chicago stories?
Alex, the president introduced you to Nigerians with a nostalgic flourish and invited this scrutiny. Bonded neighbours in Chicago. Schoolmates at Chicago State University with shared fond memories. Tinubu beamed as he said that your old school would be proud of your shared triumph. Alex, the president thinks you are a businessman of great repute. Clearly, he steers clear of Google. Many saw the way you bobbed repeatedly like an agama lizard and figured you were trying to hide your embarrassment. No worries, Alex. This is Nigeria. The president is the father of the nation. Whatever he says is gospel. And do you know the real gospel? You have landed one of the juiciest contracts in town. You must protect your schoolmate and benefactor at all costs
But there’s a snag, Alex. You were barely ten when the president was admitted into the Chicago State university. Weren’t you? You were probably running around your village in Belarus, kicking cans and defacing walls with watercolor paint when Tinubu was strutting through Chicago State university in the 70s high platforms and bongo trousers. Regrettably Atiku and his crew now refer to you as a ‘fake neighbour’ of the president. Ignore them, Alex. The president has been haunted by a curious lack of schoolmates. If you engage them you will feed the rumour mill. Let stubborn silence be your shield. I’m not doing this for you to cut me some soap.
There is just no need to cover a lie with a lie. Nigerians have the attention span of a TikTok video. They will forget in a week . Your CV betrays the president , Alex. What can be done? You didn’t attend Chicago State University at all. If only you knew. Some postgraduate certificate course in Chicago State would have sufficed. But please don’t doctor anything now. It’s too late, Nigerians have already captured it. By the time you got admitted into the university of Illinois in 1991, the president was already a big shot in Nigerian politics. He had resigned from Mobil. You have to ride the storm .
Some now whisper that you are also a ‘fake schoolmate’. It hurts. I learnt your president and friend , Lukashenko gave some scholarships to Nigerians before the contract was awarded to you. You can just give more scholarships and palliatives to Renewed Hope people. That’s how the system works here. The president has been bedeviled by endless school and certificate scandals. From Toronto to Ibadan . You are the first schoolmate the mam has managed to introduce to the country. Alex, you must at least keep them guessing. I agree the president shouldn’t have pulled that stunt on national television. But he is an old man . And these folks have pestered him for ages . All the same, he could have found an obscure Eastern European without conspicuous digital footprints , not a Belarusian who has been everywhere in Africa doing things and defending himself against allegations of shady dealings.
Stay strong and calm, Alex. The opponents of the president dredging up old Congolese videos of a certain man being dragged by security agencies in Congo. A man tangled in an arms-dealing scandal . Your lawyer at the time called it political persecution, swearing you were squeaky clean. But these folks won’t let sleeping dogs to lie. They keep stirring the pot, saying birds of the same feathers flock together, painting our president as shady by association. For obvious reasons, we can’t quite call it character assassination. Alex, just let it blow past like an ugly wind . The important thing is that Tinubu’s government has favoured you and your family just as it has favored the other man handling the Lagos -Calabar coastal road. You guys have hit the jackpot. You got trillion naira contracts without due process. That’s why it’s good to know somebody. Connection is everything.
Alex, the president said you would help to make our agriculture more sexy. That line must be yours. You got the contract to supply tractors to Zimbabwe. Has their agriculture become more sexy? If you fed Tinubu that line, tell him to keep your private conversations away from the public. Loose lips sink ships. You know Pandora papers, don’t you? Once beaten, twice shy. Don’t allow them to spill more beans. Who knows? You might decide to make mining more sexy in Zamfara soon. Then you can go quietly like the Chinese to clean out. After all, nobody knew the other thing in Zimbabawe until Pandora papers published it . Somethings must be kept secret.
That brings me to this point Alex. One last tip: coach the president on optics. Tell him that even if he is too big to be subject to the reforms he claims he is driving , he should at least be mindful of how the masses perceive his actions. A brazen display of cronyism might fit his stature as a Jagaban, but it paints his schoolmates and partners as conspiring treasury looters. Suggest a sham public bidding process. Tell him to always organize some hollow ritual before awarding mega-contracts to his friends and neighbours. To tick the due process box. It’s all about the show.
Because tomorrow is pregnant and our creditors are watching . And while he is chanting ‘Made in Nigeria’ as an anthem of his reforms, nudge him to toss a few tractor deals to local manufacturers. That’s the right vibe. So that some Nigerian truck manufactures can supply a few tractors and join the queue to sing ‘On Your Mandate’. After all , Belarusian tractors do not possess a monopoly of the capacity to make farming sexy. Tinubu is an innocent old man, sure, but remind him that manifest and flagrant disregard for conflict of interest is corruption with a capital C. I no go lie for you, Alex Zingman. Some Nigerians will call it ‘Hard Core Corruption’.
Egbon mii. Stay mute. Stay safe. And keep cashing out. You are now the Zing thing .
Yours in pure cruise ,
The Danfo Driver
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