4th October, 2023
By JESUTEGA ONOKPASA
Back in our secondary school days in Delta (then Bendel) we had this phantom character called “Okubenjy” that seniors deployed in pranking new students.
A senior would tell a new student something of this sort: “please go to that senior over there and tell them you are looking for Okubenjy, that I want him to come over here to discuss something with me.”
The new student would, of course, very _obediently_ hurry off to the other senior he had been directed to and quite _usefully_ relay the message.
That senior, immediately aware the prank was underway, would then redirect the new student to yet another senior for the whereabouts of the said “Okubenjy”.
This rigmarole, indeed, a wild goose chase, might continue for a while with the clueless new student being redirected from one senior to another until a senior would be kind enough to reveal to him that “Okubenjy” is effectively a ghost and that he’d been pranked.
I am saddened by the highly embarrassing fact that former Vice President Atiku Abubarkar’s mission to Chicago ended up with him shooting himself in the foot, apparently because he had not taken his weapons handling courses while in the Customs as seriously as President Bola Tinubu took his academics at Chicago State University.
But there is hope because even more relevant facts that could be easily loaded by a petty trader from Agulu onto a container from China and unloaded before the Supreme Court of Nigeria, have in the past few hours suddenly come to light.
I’m reliably informed that the font on Alhaja Abibat Mogaji’s baptismal certificate from Holy Cross Cathedral, Mission Street, Lagos Island, is manifestly different from that on the baptismal certificate of Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Yemi Cardoso’s father and that our national hero, Father Slattery, of blessed memory, is available to be subpoenaed to repudiate the documents even though he neither baptized either of them nor issued the said certificates.
Moreover, I have discovered that President Tinubu presented more than the required number of cola nuts when he went to marry Senator Remi Tinubu, something that quite perplexed his ancestor, Efunroye Tinubu, when she read about it in “Igbotimesmagazine”, only to then also see it in a tweet, though full of grammatical errors, by a little schoolgirl – sorry, schoolboy – called Rufai Oseni.
Furthermore, I can confirm that Bayo Onanuga committed an unforgivable infraction by once referring to one Francis Shuaibu as “Francis Shuaibu” instead of as “Phrank Shuaibu”, quite apart from referencing one Daniel Melaye as “Daniel Melaye” instead of properly recognizing his superior status as an Italian indigene of Kogi State called “Dino”!
All of the foregoing have been most resourcefully ascertained by a certain Osita Chidoka, whose only ascertainable achievement in his entire life is to have made a lot of money by rendering motor vehicle license plates in Nigeria less legible than he met them.
In short, they represent incontrovertible facts that must shiver the timbers of their Lordships on the Supreme Court Bench, especially now that all eyes are fully on the Judiciary with Oby Ezekwesili and Chimamanda Adichie taking notes for Her Lordship, Christiane Amanpour, who, from London Town, sits in appellate jurisdiction over the apex court of the most populous black nation on Earth!
While I must confess I wouldn’t know how quite well to maneuver a Special Purpose Vehicle, SPV, I hear that Atiku Abubarkar, who regularly abandoned his duty post at the border to operate commercial taxis, is quite adept at controlling such controversial utilities.
A friend of mine recently intimated me about something a Yoruba mother might do with a child that is becoming quite uncontrollable.
She might send the child to a friend of hers to go and get something Yorubas call _Arodan_ .
Similar to the “Okubenjy” circus above, the mother’s friend would immediately get with the program, instruct the child to sit and comport themselves while she procures _Arodan_ for them to take back to their parent.
The youngster would be effectively detained there for several hours, at the end of which, they are instructed to return and tell their mother that the friend could not retrieve _Arodan_ from where she’d kept it!
But I really don’t think President Tinubu could have done anything that wicked to Atiku, certainly not to the point of sending the Waziri from his Dubai hideout on a spectacularly pointless circumnavigation all the way to Chicago, of all places.
Indeed, knowing Tinubu for who he is, he would simply be way too busy trying to make Nigeria work for Nigerians to be able to find that much time to devote to any Cameroonians, much less one resident all the way in faraway Dubai.
I would say I suspect that those who sent Atiku on an errand to “Okubenjy” might be best known to the likes of Chris Uche, SAN, and the famed legions of _babalawos_ and _marabouts_ that former President Olusegun Obasanjo informed us the Waziri is rather addicted to.
Unfortunately, unlike the new student who suffers an “Okubenjy” prank, uses their head, quickly learns their lesson, never falls for the prank again, and, in fact, might similarly prank subsequent new students when they, themselves, become seniors, I project that Alhaji Atiku’s _masters_ will keep steadily cashing out from their regular _mugu_ for quite a while to come.
Onokpasa, a lawyer, was a member of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential Campaign Council, and writes from Abuja.