FAROUK THE MILLION DOLLAR CROOK!

With the surge of moral decadence in the society, the speed with which the pool of men worthy of public and societal trust shrinks by the day, is almost reaching that of light. This poses a daunting challenge to the process of willful selection of credible personnel into positions of trust, like in the case of electing or appointing public officers. The narrative even becomes much worse when it is affiliated with the government—especially of nations, as many officials in this enclave are clearly bereft of the ethos of operation required of them in office, and as such, have remained incongruous with their occupied office to the detriment of the general society. While some of these misfits enjoy the liberties of their underhand operations throughout their tenures without being uncovered, some actually do meet their waterloo while still in office. The latter is the case of Farouk ‘Mr. Integrity’ the son of Lawan.

The story of Honourable Farouk Lawan, a member of the House of Representatives for Bagwai/Shanono Federal Constituency of Kano State, is one that started off pristinely, cruised unblemished—at least to some of us oblivious to the ‘behind-the-scene’ operations of the hallowed Chambers—at some enviable heights, only to crash disastrously without any prior noticeable sign of defects.

While in office, the small-frame gentlemanly Farouk, a four time member of the House of Representatives, was highly revered for his parliamentary experience and the enormous influence he wielded. He remains one of the very few House members who can boast of having worked with five Speakers of the House of Representatives. Many—including my humble self—held him in high esteem, and rated him in the cadre of worthy successors to the fourth highest throne in the land; he stood a chance really. In fact, with the general perception of his persona at the time, one could have won a wager on him becoming the next Governor of Kano State if he threw his hat in the ring. This was the self-styled Mr. Integrity who led the famous Integrity Group of the Green Chamber, an alliance of Representatives which opposed the erstwhile lady Speaker, Honourable Patricia Etteh, during the 2007 corruption scandal.

The scandalous and shameful fall of our acclaimed ‘Mr. Integrity’ forces an inquisition into the revered times of Mr.—not Honourable—Farouk in the Green Chamber. The persona gifted us by Farouk was a complete façade masking the man within the man we knew. Perhaps the immediate absence of a sizable amount of dollar bills commensurate with the threshold of his real self was what kept him leashed to the integrity pole such that he successfully hoodwinked the generality of the people, who had since swallowed his longtime deceit of impersonation hook, line, and sinker.

The perplexing irony however, is how those being referred to as Honourables always choose to desecrate—with ease—the impeccable appellation accorded them, ridiculing the significance and the effect of such appellation on their persons knowing that both the significance and effect of a name on its bearer are too important to be trivialized with such level of ignorance. A name is a symbolic prophecy which carries a message of hope and inspiration; little wonder why a lot of thoughtfulness is invested in choosing the right name for a being—person or business. That said, and in the light of the revelations of his ordeal, there’s no gainsaying the fact that Farouk had always been an absolute flip-side of one worthy to be called an Honourable. Despite claiming integrity as his middle name, and feigning a sacrosanct personality, his integrity failed the ultimate litmus test.

Integrity itself is a virtue clad in nothing but its own nakedness, and therein lays its strength. Farouk’s kind of integrity though, wasn’t genuine. It had a weakness; an antidote—the almighty dollar bills. For an acclaimed Mr. Integrity to allow himself fall flat, face-in-the-mud like we saw, then Farouk’s appetite for the greenback currency must have been insatiable. His rise to glory was in the Green Chamber, and his fall to nothingness, on the greenback currency. What manner of green curse is this? Who cursed him so Green? For all those years in the hallowed Green Chamber, how could we not have seen that our beloved Farouk was a crook?

From this then, it may be correct to assert that my earlier definition of a name can also be applied to implicative names like in the following end-rhymes: ‘Farouk’ and ‘Crook’. Even though in the examination of this, my theory may generally be proven unfounded on grounds of inadequate sample size, especially as it’s most unlikely that ‘Celine’ would end up in a Police ‘cell’, or that ‘Agbakoba’ would always end up experiencing an ágbákò, which is a Yoruba term for misfortune, Farouk's case remains a rare empirical proof of my name theory being valid for implicative names. This was just by the way.

Now, after his epic fall from grace, the long journey to decide Farouk’s fate and final place of abode kick started in 2013. And as with every corruption case in Nigeria, the son of Lawan did not disappoint, he fought back so vehemently to let himself off the hook. Without remorse, he insisted that he was innocent, and kept putting up different antics to stall Court proceedings, which ended up prolonging his legal prosecution for the next 8 years. Between 2013 and 2017, his case had already crossed paths with four different Judges, courtesy of his frivolous antics.

Eventually, in 2018, the case found its way back to the table of Ms. Angela Otaluka, who incidentally was the third Judge to have heard the case initially. She had the honour of finally drawing the curtains on the unnecessarily prolonged bribery-and-corruption case of Farouk the son of Lawan. The tragic implication of this is that Farouk the million dollar crook has legally changed his residential address from his palatial Abuja abode to the Kuje Prison, and any who intended paying him a visit would have to go through the rigorous inconvenience of doing so at the Prison. Even though I’m very much aware it is now being referred to as a Correctional Service, the familiarity of the name, Kuje Prison, is one many Nigerians will not forget in a hurry. Meanwhile, as Farouk the million dollar crook begins his 7-year ordeal at the Kuje Correctional Service, one can only hope that he comes out a corrected version of himself.

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Photo Credit: TELL Magazine