LITTLE ENDS: Some cold geles in Farida Waziri's cupboard

I once opined in a piece entitled "The Gelefication of Corruption" that one observable dividend of our democracy is that it has delivered a modicum of gender inclusiveness in the province of corruption. Whereas corruption almost exclusively wore fila (cap) in the past, it now also adorns gele whenever the occasion arises. And the harvest has been quite rich: Mobolaji Osomo, Iyabo Obasanjo, Patience Jonathan,

Patricia Etteh, and Adenike Grange. Nigerians on the ground can add more geles to this list. Iyabo Obasanjo and Patience Jonathan have demonstrated that the gele can be just as viciously acquisitive as the fila. What a man can do, a woman can do even better, goes the elementary school cliché in Nigeria. Some Nigerian women are even more adept at pissing in the bottle of corruption than their husbands.

The aforementioned women are divas in Nigeria's graftscape. Some have files in Farida Waziri's cupboard that have mysteriously gone cold. We haven't heard anything about their cases in a long time. We need to know what is going on. And let Mrs.

Waziri not give us the usual crap that she does not conduct her cases on the pages of newspapers like Nuhu Ribadu. That is how she routinely explains away the mysterious cold case files in her filing cabinet. That escapist explanation will not be satisfactory in the case of these female looters, especially Iyabo Obasanjo and Patience Jonathan.

Iyabo Obasanjo's looting spree has been very "in your face" as Americans would put it. Nigerians would call that a "do your worst" kind of looting. I don't know what hurts my harried psyche as an ordinary Nigerian the most: that our rulers are irredeemable thieves, from the president down to the local government chairman, or that they practice do your worst stealing.

Iyabo Obasanjo's looting wasn't even just Naija-based. She was everywhere from Austria to Germany to Indonesia, ripping off Nigeria in one international contract scam after the other, and using fake names where and when necessary.

The EFCC went after her and she disappeared for weeks. She finally made a dramatic reappearance and was sensationally arraigned. Then silence. Since then, she has been rearranging here gele in the Senate in a very provocative, in your face manner. Worse, she is still wearing that comical descriptor of Nigerian Senators: Distinguished!

If care is not taken, as we say in Nigeria, she may even look in the direction of Government House in Abeokuta. Apart from her contract scams, what I have found particularly irksome are little questions that Nigerians have never asked. When Iyabo went underground while fleeing justice, her full salary was still running in the Senate for almost six weeks.

That is not how things work in civilised climes. Her salary ought to be divided into hours and the total number of hours she was absent from work deducted from her pay package and returned to the Nigerian people for unexcused absence from work. Even if that comes to only ten thousand naira, I am in fact more interested in that in principle than the millions she got from those Oyinbo Siemens thieves.

She must refund whatever she was paid for work not done and services not rendered to the Nigerian people when she went underground. That is how we start a gradual ethical revolution.

Enter Patience Jonathan who, as first lady of Bayelsa state, was also quite busy on the money laundering front. Can Mrs. Waziri dust that file please? Mrs. Jonathan does not have immunity like Goodluck Jonathan so what exactly is the problem?

I am actually interested in Patience Jonathan's case largely because of the hypocrisy of the Vice President. He it was who went to a church sometime this year to preach against corruption, greed, and unbridled acquisitiveness! Nothing wey man no go see for Nigeria!

A man who shares his matrimonial bed with somebody who has a thick EFCC corruption file has the temerity to wax puritanical about corruption! And in a church to boot! Mrs. Jonathan has not helped matters by being a very visible, active Second Lady of the Federation! You would think that she'd be humbled by the fact that she has an EFCC file.

In the overall context of logic Nigeriana, Patricia Etteh, Mobolaji Osomo, and Adenike Grange even tried, as we say. At least they have not been caught swishing their corrupt geles flamboyantly in the face of justice like the other two. Mrs. Waziri, we are waiting o!