Five years ago...

By FUNKE Egbemode (Sunday Editor, The Sun Newspaper)

Five years ago, a group of self-righteous men and women came together and named themselves the Integrity Group. They met at noon and at night. They drew daggers at dawn and conspired at dusk.

They told Nigerians nobody was cleaner than them and that the nation should not look any further for national saints. They worked hard, recited a list of lies over and again until they not only convinced unsuspecting, easily entertained Nigerians but also started believing their own pack of lies.

They strutted the hallowed green chambers like it was their personal turf. They walked like they had halos on their heads. They took a knife to the truth and while those who knew the real true story watched them act out their ungodly script, they dismembered years of reputation, traumatised someone who thought she was saving her country from unnecessary expenses.

The Integrity Group. How can I ever forget them? They were my nightmare, the shadows of my day. I was raised by two teachers. I read English. Yet, I had never come across the brand of integrity I saw in seven short months, the months and experience that has shaped my views of the average Nigerian politician and how he can redefine everything his mother taught him and confuse everybody, as long as it advances his cause.

As the Special Adviser, Media, to Hon Patricia Olubunmi Etteh, Nigeria’s first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, I saw at close range what a few angry people could do to manufacture a special edition of a different brand of truth. It was bewildering, demonic, the way those men and women carried on as if there was no tomorrow.

The Integrity Group spoke at the top of their voices and there was no room for any other voice. I shouted myself hoarse but even my close friends said they didn’t hear a word.

I can never forget the week that I drank only tea for seven days as I moved from Lagos to Abuja to Kaduna and back to Abuja. Until a friend told me to add water melon to my tea-only diet. I hope the media handlers of Mallam Lawan are screaming and shoring up their energy with tea and water melon. It is a wonderful diet.

I watched ‘eminent’ Nigerians my society raised me to respect talk about what they knew little or nothing about. I watched old men with gray hair on their head called my principal all kinds of names. I have since concluded that gray hair has nothing to do with wisdom. And then there are just a handful activists in Nigeria. You don’t want to know how many ‘respected’ activists in this country asked to be paid upfront before they would say the truth. Every morning they were on television and radio and on the pages of newspaper talking authoritatively about things they had not the faintest idea about.

At some point I disconnected from local and foreign news channels and watched only movies to keep my sanity. I saw mob mentality at its most cruel. Everybody condemned Etteh even when they couldn’t swear by anything that she had done something wrong. They called her a thief even when they couldn’t swear that anything was missing.

Like a typical Lagos mob scene where all it takes to kill an innocent man was for another to shout ‘ thief, thief, ole, ole’ and even if all the man had done was ask for direction to Oshodi, Nigerians brought out cudgels, machetes, AK47 shouting missing N628m. As I watched the ‘ integrity’ women clutching their designer bags as they laughed down the corridors, I wondered if they had blood in their veins.

The ‘integrity’ men wore their designer suits and behaved like they were bigger than God. They were not pacified until Etteh stepped down from the podium. The Integrity Group had its way. They installed one of their and went on to spend triple more than Etteh did not spend but was brutalised for. She wanted to buy less than 10 cars for principal officers but the integrity people bought almost 400 cars at inflated prices.

They bought fans, equipment to check their blood sugar and blood pressure at mind boggling cost to you and I. Funny, all the professors and activists who lynched Etteh said nothing. Cat got their tongues. Shameless men.

In the middle of all that heat and noise, a day came when it became too much for me. Like a Christian whose back was against the wall, I asked for the God of Elijah to show up. It was a very bright hot afternoon. I prayed, with tears streaming down my cheeks, sweat rolling down my back, that He should let everybody involved in the mob action to taste the shame of defeat. I begged God of vengeance that no matter how long they lived, every member of the mob must be made to feel the pain they inflicted.

Unless they were right. After that prayer, I felt a calmness in my heart, peace that I still can’t explain. On Thursday, one of my colleagues in Speaker Etteh’s media office called to ask how I felt about the bribery scandal involving Honourable Farouk Lawan. I told him I was still confused and shocked. He then went to reel out the names of other members of the Integrity Group who had fallen between 2007 and now.

God, He is still God, trust me and the currently showing movie gives me confidence that the remaining members of the Integrity Group will fall, no matter how long they stand. They will sit in-between EFCC officers and ride in the agency’s nice Boxer Peugeot. Unless they repent.

This is not a gloating party, however. In fact, there is nothing to celebrate with the fall of Farouk Lawan from grace. The whole stuff leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It shows the sorry state of our national integrity. Yes, Lawan was the poster boy of the Integrity Group, the face of incorruptibility.

I remember clapping and giving him thumbs up from my office as he dissected issues of the subsidy regime. He sounded like he had been in the oil industry all his life. I admired him for the long hours the committee sat. I even asked my colleagues if they noticed that ‘these guys didn’t go to the loo or got up to go and eat.’ It was a job meticulously done in public view.

Nigerians watched as marketers fidgeted, doodled and parried questions. We discovered all that nonsense about mother boat and daughter ship. We knew this nation had suffered incalculable losses in the hands of ungodly profiteers. The Farouk Lawan Committee did a good job. We cannot and should not throw away the baby with the bath water.

We should not forget what we watched on live television because of what Mr Femi Otedola’s film company recorded. His private movie must have a message but we will not let his three-cast movie upstage the one millions of Nigerians saw. Yes, Otedola’s hot arrow has burst Lawan’s bubble but we should not be distracted from the real stuff. That Farouk allegedly took money for himself does not mean our missing money has been found.

We admit that Angel Farouk has lost his halo but that does not give the halos to the oil thieves. That report will not go away. It is the nightmare those who have been gang-raping Nigerians will go into their shameful graves with. Even if we discover that that panel took more bribe, we must still sink our teeth into the jugular of those who have made it their duty to impoverish up.

Yes, Otedola has driven Farouk’s once holy face into this oily mess, on this report we stand. Like late MKO once said, you cannot abort a pregnancy that has produced a baby. If you see 100 policemen running after one thief, leaving 100 thieves to have a party, it is either those policemen are either mad or thieves too.

Just imagine the rhyme in the phantom N628m and the confirmed $620,000. Even if a lie gets a 20-year head start, the truth will catch up with it in a day. The chicken has come home to roost. May the fall and shame of Nigeria’s plunderers continue to take place in the market square. And hey, this is not a PDP affair in any way.