By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
July 1, 2014
I tend to have a good, retentive long-term memory of significant historical and political events in postcolonial Africa, especially when it comes to events dating from the mid-1970s to the present. And so when I came across the two-sentence flash-obituary on Mr. Umaru Dikko on the website of The Nigerian Voice, I was not the least bit amused (See "Former Transport Minister, Umaru Dikko Dies At 78" 7/1/14).
I suppose The Nigerian Voice is the sister-website of Modernghana.com, a rather resplendent website on which I regularly have my articles posted. The designs of both websites are strikingly similar; and my articles and "quotable quotes" have been known to appear on The Nigerian Voice's website on occasion. At least several friends have called to apprise me of the same.
Anyway, I was quite annoyingly surprised by the two-sentence announcement of the passing of Chief Umaru Dikko, because the man was unarguably the most notorious newsmaker in the Nigeria of the 1970s and early 1980s. The webmaster and the editors and publishers of The Nigerian Voice got it dead-on accurate that Chief Dikko was a cabinet member of the democratically elected but shortlived and checkered government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari.
Well, I loved the name "Shagari" because it felicitously rhymed with the almighty farinated cassava diet of garri/gari, nicknamed the staunchest dietary supplement for the boarding student, both at the secondary and tertiary levels of academia. Some of my schoolmates even nicknamed garri "The Great Students' Companion." Of course, that was a delightful and light-hearted take on the real Student's Companion, which was a Thesaurus-like supplemental textbook that the most serious among us language-arts students kept handy to improve our mastery and/or command of the Queen's English.
And then, of course, there was the "Eveready Shito," a delicious and spicy preparation of sauce made to go with water-sprinkled garri. Sometimes, one switched to "Soakings," a porridge-like preparation of garri mixed with canned evaporated milk and sugar, either the hard-cubed St. Louis Brand or plain granulated sugar.
Anyway, for me, then resident just 300 miles to the west in neighboring Ghana and one avidly hooked onto news and events emanating from oil-rich Nigeria (Ghana had yet to strike the proverbial "black gold" in commercial quantities), the name of Chief Umaru Dikko was not first and foremost associated with the cabinet portfolio of Transport Minister. Rather, it was criminally associated with the squirreling out of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the humongous sum of $100 million from the public till.
And to be certain, so scandalous was this allegedly one-man heist that for quite a long while it overshadowed all other news events and items coming from the West African sub-region. In short, the oil-rich Nigeria of the early 1980s became synonymous with the name of Chief Umaru Dikko. And just as the name of the Nile river has been said to be historically interchangeable with Egypt - both ancient and modern - the Nigeria of the 1980s was nominally interchangeable with the name of Chief Umaru Dikko.
Legend also had it that Mr. Dikko was able to so easily abscond with the $100 million belonging to the Nigerian people because the mega-thief was also the brother-in-law of then-Vice-President Felix Ekwueme. This, of course, was in no way to suggest that President Shagari's widely known-to-be-clean-and-honest deputy had anything, whatsoever, to do with the high-end shenanigans of his conjugal relative; just that such relationship had enabled Chief Dikko to get unusually close to the people's money and thus heightened his sense of kleptocratic temptation.
What else I know about the Dikko Heist (as his super-grand larceny widely came to be known) is that the leaders of the military junta that ousted President Shagari - a mild-mannered patrician personality of urbane demeanor, for the most part - had attempted to use the world-renowned Israeli intelligence agency, the MOSSAD, to abduct and return Chief Dikko to Nigeria to dance to the sullen music of justice and had, reportedly, almost succeeded.
Well, the thrilling story is told of Chief Umaru Dikko's having been bundled up into a diplomatic sack by agents of the MOSSAD, only to be opportunely discovered and rescued by some British intelligence officials at London's Heathrow Airport, or perhaps even Gatwick, I forget which. Time has long been observed to have a treacherous way of fuzzying up things. Had the MOSSAD succeeded, some commentators have opined, Chief Dikko would almost certainly have been summarily executed by firing squad.
That was the last time that I heard about Chief Umaru Dikko. I also don't know whether, indeed, such a globally notorious nation-wrecker deserves any peaceful repose in the land of the gone-ahead, having himself given his compatriots nothing but white-hot hell-fire and nightmares. At any rate, whether Chief Dikko gets to repose peacefully or not is a palaver between the soul of the man and his destiny.
I am also certain that Chief Dikko must have meant a lot of positive things to a remarkable number of people, both Nigerian and non-Nigerian alike. For as we Akan-Ghanaians are wont to say: "Even the deuce has his day of our fond memories."
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