…Nigeria’s Upgraded Absurdity
My late grandmother, Mama Comfort Aina Akinlami, spoiled me with Yoruba proverbs. She taught me that proverbs are not decoration; they are diagnosis.
So when I followed the story of ₦100 million reportedly transferred “in error” from an Anambra State security vote account into the personal account of Victor Egbetokun, son of former IGP Kayode Egbetokun, two proverbs sat up in my mind.
Oríṣiríṣi òbè l’á n rí ni ọjọ́ ikú erin.
On the day the elephant dies, you see all kinds of knives.
Then the second: A ì rìn jìnà l’a rí abùkè òkèrè.
Travel far enough and you will see a hunchbacked squirrel.
Never assume you have reached the limits of absurdity.
Because Nigeria has upgraded its storytelling. It used to be snake swallowing money. Now we are more refined: we do four tranches of ₦25 million into the same account, by “error.” Progress. Give us credit for improvement.
But let us not pretend the real insult is that they think we believe it. No. They don’t think we are that daft. The deeper insult is worse: they don’t think they owe us sense.
It is the posture of power speaking to the powerless: take it or leave it.
If you take it, good.
If you don’t take it, go to hell.
But the joke is that you’re already living in hell, so what exactly is new?
And if you say you’ll go to court, they smile again: go. We are already there. The court has been “covered.”
So whichever direction you choose, hell or court, they have prepared the furniture.
That is the Nigeria we are struggling to describe: a place where the state is not pleading for belief; it is advertising dominance. Not “please understand,” but “we can tell you anything.” Not “we owe you proof,” but “you exist at the pleasure of our insult.”
Because there are things that, even if true you don’t say. Some narratives are so insulting that saying them is evidence that you have written citizens off as irrelevant. It is like being accused of not cleaning yourself in the toilet and being asked to prove you did. Prove to who? With what exhibition?
There are absurdities you don’t dignify with explanation, because explanation itself becomes another insult.
Police spokesperson Benjamin Hundeyin reportedly maintained that the inflow was noticed, treated as suspicious, reversed, that the recipient petitioned the EFCC, and the account was closed.
Fine. Those are claims worth hearing. But they do not bury the real questions.
A security vote is not petty cash. It is already opaque by design.
So even if money was returned, the safeguarding question of public finance remains alive: who was the rightful recipient? who initiated the payment? what controls failed, four times? and why does truth in Nigeria often need leakage before it receives oxygen?
A mistake once can be human. A mistake repeated in tranches begins to look like a method. And when governance keeps answering outrage with grammar, the country is not being governed; it is being managed.
Nigeria must decide what it wants to be: a country of process or a country of press releases. A country where governance is measured by systems, or a country where governance is measured by how quickly a scandal is “contained.”
As our elders say: ọjọ́ kan, ọbọ́ a lọ sí ọjà, kó ni padà, one day the monkey will go to the market and not return.
Not a curse. A reminder. Impunity has an expiry date.
If we are serious about national rebirth, the question is not whether ₦100 million was reversed. The question is whether Nigeria will finally build a culture where such “errors” are structurally impossible, and where public intelligence is not treated as disposable.
Because when the elephant of trust keeps dying, and knives keep appearing, the country eventually runs out of skin to cut.
By Taiwo Akinlami (FB wall).