Unpopular side with Thomas Oti
Email: thomasoti@qed.ng
My father worked hard all his life. He is a hardworking man who has spent most of his life working hard for the little luxuries we can afford today. He worked extremely hard in the civil service and successfully retired after so long in service. He saved enough to send me and my brothers and sisters to the best schools in the world. I went to Harvard. My brother Imperial College. My sister to Yale. My half-sister to Cambridge. My half-brother to Oxford. We lacked for nothing. We lived well in school. Actually, quite well. Daddy didn’t hold out on us. He made sure we lived well. He was such a good and caring father. And oh, we also never ever flew economy or even premium economy to anywhere. The least class we ever flew was Business. Whenever we were very “well behaved”, we got First. My father is not a thief. My father was not corrupt.
Feeding had now become a problem. Both my parents had not been paid for 6 and 4 months. My father was 6. My mother was 4. My father had been living off friends who also had nothing. He had exhausted his credibility with all possible creditors. My mother couldn’t get credit again at the local market. From the garri seller to the tomato seller; the ogi seller to the ogiri seller. We were no longer credit worthy. No food. No light. No water. No nothing. Life was hard. We had a “good meal” as lunch on Sundays. Good here meaning rice and stew. No meat. Except we could catch and kill a rat from the neighbourhood. We were now so poor that the area rats avoided our house. Because anytime we saw a rat in the house, we would lock up all the doors and board up every single whole and then methodically search out the rodent. We would inevitably kill it and roast it as protein. We loved meat. Chicken? No one even had the mind to rear those again in our area. After a while, rats refused to venture near our door mouth. We were never sick of malaria though. We used to kill mosquitoes and eat them. Why waste blood?
How could a country he had served to diligently all his life treat him so disdainfully? Cuffs on his hands? Chains on his legs? This is unbelievable. How can they parade my daddy on national television as a thief and corrupt public officer? My daddy was an honourable man who lived a good life and was extremely benevolent, kind and generous. But if you listen to all the monies his detractors say he stole, you would condemn him too. But I know it’s all lies! Mind boggling sums. $20billion. $5billion. $2.5billion. N200billion. €900million. £10billion. The person they are describing cannot be my saintly and kind father for sure. They say he developed a scheme while in office as a junior accountant in the Ministry where salaries of staff must pass through a proxy account he created before staff got paid. 20% thank you on oil contract in his ministry too even as a mid-level staff. And when he became a Junior Minister? I can’t even deal. What are these stories I hear about his time in the Money Ministry? How can they so cruelly claim that he wilfully routed contractor payments through his own personal account before paying them? They said he used to owe contractors for months! Sometimes even years! How on earth is all these possible??? It’s all lies! This isn’t my daddy!
The latest corruption case was the most criminal I had ever heard of in my life. This “big man” had been stealing the country blind for years! His activities in government had caused the death of thousands of civilians and soldiers. He had been stealing for a long time too. Right from when he began civil service. From his time at the Ministry of Movement through the oil ministry to when he became Minister. He had cruelly and masterfully stole the country blind. His stint at the War Ministry was one of the most brutal. He created a war so he could award arms contracts to deal with the problems. He then bought sub-standard arms and ammunitions and sent thousands of fine young men to their untimely deaths. In his stint at the Movement Department, my parents suffered unpaid salaries for years. I’m looking through the books now and I can see why. This man was evil. He lived large. Yet everywhere he worked, he stole money in massive scales. He sent his children to the best schools abroad and wasn’t stingy with his female liaisons. He was in fact “generous” to a fault. Who can blame him when he was stealing so much money! He ended up looking after the country’s monies. He was the President’s Chief Hatchet Man. At the last selections, he had the key to the vaults. And he threw them open. Large volumes of cash moved personally through him to top politrickcians across the nation. He kept a very significant amount of course but who was counting? He took funds meant for security too and placed in his personal accounts scattered across the world. I am investigating if he truly was a citizen of this country. I mean no one would send his fellow citizens to certain death in the hands of enemies with more sophisticated equipment just because they wanted to make a quick buck. Or wouldn’t anyone? This guy did that and even more. He is the face of evil itself. I have a chance to ensure he gets the punishment he deserves. And a chance to ensure my parents can rest in peace by bringing the man who killed them with his thievery to justice. I won’t stop until he’s made to pay it all back. And his children and concubines made to vomit all they had swallowed. This is it.
