Dr Doyin Okupe, erstwhile Director-General of the Labour Party’s 2023 presidential campaign, should understand what has hit him. In Ibadan, nay Western Nigerian street parlance, the speed and suddenness of his recent court experience and conviction, and the reportage of same would be translated to mean that “his own has hit him.” The whole episode also brings to memory the first stanza of that popular poem by the late Gambian surgeon who was arguably more known by his pen than the stethoscope, Dr Lenrie Peters:
We have come home
From the bloodless wars
With sunken hearts
Our booths full of pride-
From the true massacre of the soul
When we have asked
‘What does it cost
To be loved and left alone’
As Adedoyin Ajibike, the son of Okupe, rode home that day after the judgement, which many considered to be ‘a slap on the wrist’, he would have a long, deep phew. He went home instead of jail from a bloodless war with sunken heart because he was able to pay the stipulated N13 million fine, the option he was given. The N13million was a sum total of N500,000 on each of the 26-count charges for which he was found guilty. He would reminisce and thoroughly chew over the activities which brought him to that pass. If he has conscience and shame, what would be racing through his mind would be better imagined.
Dr Okupe’s state of mind could be likened to that of a man whose hilarious, but instructive, story was told at a recent gathering where otherwise very serious people really let their hair down. The man’s conscience was said to have convicted him as he went home from his usual romantic trips to a woman referred to as ‘his favourite concubine’.
According to the story, which is an anecdote in accurate terms, the man while on his long trip home from a female consort had some time to himself and he ruminated over the cost of the illicit affair. He was a man of means but he came to the conviction that his type of promiscuity is an expensive venture. Yes, he achieved his lustful desire with the woman but it came at a cost that detracted from his finances, his integrity, his pedigree, his own name and his future. It also affected his plans. While weighing the frolic on a scale and its momentous injuries, he got very angry with himself. He reached for his telephone and called the woman. Although gobsmacked, the woman too had some not-too-nice words for the man. It was not just a furtherance of the man’s emotional damage — it was a denigration of his ordinarily esteemed person. Whatever pleasant memories of the otherwise pleasurable adventure he had became a thought of a distant, regrettable past.
The story went on about his co-travellers on the flight but to the man in the middle of it all, it was described as the fart by a masquerader in his own costume. It is a story of both debauchery and repentance from unbridled adultery. But the man concerned, the story said, was displeased about just one of his affairs.
Like Dr Lenrie Peters is known more for his literary works than medical practice, Dr Doyin Okupe also is known more as a player on the Nigerian political turf than as a qualified physician, who co-founded a hospital. However, he is not a poet like Peters but a politician who has a long track record of political participation and patronage.
Okupe had served as an assistant to former President Olusegun Obasanjo and was a senior assistant to former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. He was working as the director-general of Obi-Datti presidential campaign when he was stopped on his tracks by the trial for money laundering, fraud, breach of trust and collecting money from illegal sources “without doing anything with the money.” He was also charged for collecting money in cash by individuals in excess of N5million threshold permissible by law without going through financial institutions. Okupe and the other defendants, after the trial by the court, were discharged and acquitted of the charges of money laundering, fraud and breach of trust.
This must be because the man from whom they were said to have got the money is not in the same type of soup. One of the charges brought against Okupe by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), according to Tolu Babaleye, who said he is one of Okupe’s lawyers since 2018, is the wonderful “collecting money from illegal sources without doing anything with the money.” EFCC charged a suspect for collecting money from illegal sources that could not be named but Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu of the Federal High Court found Okupe guilty of receiving N200million cash from former National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (rtd).
Interestingly, the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) to the president is not in the picture here. That high office in the Nigerian presidency is the one referred to as “illegal sources” in the charge against Okupe. The former National Security Adviser who supposedly disbursed the money for which Okupe was charged is curiously also not having his day in court. Nigerians remember the euphoria that marked the naming of Sambo Dasuki when it was announced that he had stolen nearly every penny Nigeria had. So, the matter is like the effectively baited mouse trap. The trapped rat is there for the taking while the trap remains with its bait and the man who set the trap chills somewhere unaffected by the vagaries of the unfortunate mouse.
Among those who were dragged to court for receiving from the Dasuki money are Chief Olisa Metu, Dr Raymond Dokpesi, Mr Femi Fani-Kayode, and Dr Okupe.
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In May this year, there were reports that the N23.3billion case brought against Col. Dasuki started afresh. This means that the case started all over again after the country’s time and resources had been wasted by the powers that be for over seven years, because the matter was first instituted against Col. Dasuki in December 2015 when he was first arraigned. The EFCC, including the forces behind it have also had their own shenanigans which led to the inglorious ouster of Ibrahim Magu as the chairman of the anti-graft agency — and one would be left wondering what has happened to Magu since he was forced off the driver’s seat of the EFCC on account of allegations of corruption. Dasuki, who ‘distributed money’, is not in court but those to whom he ‘distributed money’ have been having their necks roughened so very often in courts. The irony and lopsidedness of the entire set up is not just confusing, it is annoying and throws abject insincerity in our faces as a people. I do not think that this is unknown to Okupe that was in the dock and all the others involved in the Sambo Dasuki money-sharing drama. They know but we are all helpless.
Perhaps, if the son of Okupe was as shameless as some of the others accused of the same thing, he might be elsewhere today being hailed as a senior citizen of the country. There, he would not be doing any running with his feet — he would only be running his mouth to promote one political party and upbraid another. He would be laundering the image of a presidential candidate no matter how idiotic and lampooning another. He would be on the social media, rolling out mellifluous insults and churning out beautiful words to tell of his pedigree. He would not have even been in court yet!
But now, we wait to see how he would continue in the ongoing political battle for the soul of Nigeria which climaxes in 2023. Okupe would now recoil like a rattled snail and watch and act from his ensconce and await a new dispensation. Then, he might get a reprieve — his name and his reputation might receive some laundering. But right now, again going to the street parlance, they have “broken the coconut with his head.”
Dr Doyin Okupe, merry Christmas sir; and let your day be merry indeed because you will not spend it in jail like someone you should know very well — Senator Ike Ekweremadu.
Merry Christmas dear esteemed reader, and do have a great new election year.
