On Page 28 of his very provocative book, The Present Darkness: A history of Nigerian organized crime, (2016), Stephen Ellis, British historian and Africanist, compared Nigerian politics to con artistry. Their practices, he said, were not different from acts of fabulists and fraudsters. Ellis’ take on Nigerian leaders synchronises with Henry Louis Gate’s The New Yorker piece of September 25, 1995. With the title, “Powell and the Black Elite,” the piece quoted ex-American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, as saying, “Nigerians as a group, frankly, are marvellous scammers… I mean, it is in their natural culture.”

As it is done in scholarship, traditional Africa also gives justification for the Ellis comparison. It says, when the shape and size of a peanut’s shell bears striking semblance to the coffin of a species of mouse called Eliri, then a justification is successfully established. Last week, there was an eruption of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth in many homes. Investors in the digital financial platform called CBEX met their financial waterloo. CBEX ultimately unraveled as a Ponzi scheme, with about 600,000 Nigerian victims in tow. It has given critical minds an opportunity to examine whether there is a meeting of minds between Ponzi chancers and Nigerian political leaders. Why do we dwell so much on Nigerian economic scams and scammers, while we sacralise the equally cancerous virus of political scammers?

The genealogy of this crave for quick wealth dates back in time. In 1925, J. K. Magregor, headmaster of Scottish-Presbyterian-founded, Hope Waddell Institute, of which the great Nnamdi Azikiwe was an alumnus, had written the Nigerian governor-general. His complaints were based on a motif of pupils of the school writing incredibly suspicious letters to unknown persons abroad. In the letter, the pupils asked to be sold medicines of esoteric teachings which guaranteed success and happiness. They turned out to be quack. In a single mail delivery, said Ellis, Magregor discovered 125 of such scam letters. One laughable example was a 12-year old pupil who had purchased through post from India a “Mystic Charm” with an instruction to him to send more money so that he could be sent “blessings from the Hindu deity Siddheswari”. The letter also told the boy that the sign he would get to confirm the efficacy of the deity was “by watching the flow of his nasal mucus”

Our visible connect to this pre-colonial crave for mysticism was re-enacted during the First Republic Nigeria. During this period, secret societies played pivotal roles in governance. The barbarism and primitivism of killing people for sacrifice in order to gain ascendancy in political circles became rife. The Ogboni cult held a supremacist place in Western Nigerian politics. It was only the northern part of Nigeria that was saved the barbarity. By the end of the Third Republic, however, military despots like Sani Abacha had reportedly began to seek spiritual interventions of Muslim brotherhoods of Senegal for a mystic buy-in into their infernal rule. Cows were reportedly buried alive in all outposts of Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory by the goggled General. By the Fourth Republic, politicians had fully imported into Nigeria this Islamic mysticism which was spreading in sub-Saharan Africa. The marabouts were Islamic priests who combined Islam with the syncretic practice of local healers, fortune tellers, spiritual guides and diviners. Today, virtually all Nigerian politicians, like that 12-year Hope Waddell old boy, still seek mysticism, either from Islamic mullah, clergies, Babalawo or Senegalese marabouts to guarantee their political happiness and success.

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