From Shoulder Pads Fun to Budget Padding Calamity

(Don't start if you can't sustain a long read) I remember her. My aunt, indeed my cousin, but all cousins are called auntie or brother in the homestead I grew up in. I remember her today and especially for the size of her bra. Even as impressionable as a nine-year old, my aunt's frontal statistic was the most variable of the figures. The others stay the same but the size of her bra varied with the newest object caught by her. While we were growing up and I was like eight or nine she would most likely have been a fifteen year old at best. For her body size, my best bet would be that she was a 32B at that time. But we sometime see her suddenly appearing 34C and sometimes 36C.

The bigger boys around the homestead were less helpful than us little children. The bigger male cousins, if asked, would gawk at those melons and the contours. But we were young and couldn't tell. We only assisted to confirm the tits were big enough and that they were bigger today than yesterday. She could ask us to witness how the frontal statistics were enhanced and whether it was better if enhanced right on the cup or by the sides. Don't mind that three years later we too had grown and now realized we had been "brutally" exposed to what might turn us into the famed "ehonno" further down the line in our teenage years. Let's cut the intro short from this point.


 Most men of my age had their teenage years undoubtedly fed with the pads and padding. Breast padding was common in our secondary school days as younger girls wished to have their arrival at the doorstep of becoming "big" fast-tracked. But the most common type of padding was that of the shoulder. Indeed, the only trending stuff of my adolescent years was the irrepressible and ubiquitous "shoulder pad". So resistant to the dynamics of time was this immanent consort of womanhood that I am sure it still reigns today. No young woman of my time would detest this omnipresent chum/buddy on her or as part of her clothing. She was the friend of all women ranging from the CU (christian union), the deeper-life and the been-tos. No dress was deemed "psychedelic" without this feature proudly displayed and turning an otherwise lovely visage into a resemblance of the Calvary cross of Jesus Christ. I will be glad to hear of anyone born before or around 1980 who hasn't helped a lady out of her padded gear or a woman who doesn't know what the shoulder or frontal pad looked or looks like. That will be some discovery worthy of a Nobel prize.

The shoulder pad as an object to describe it's wearer was fun; for its size and placement could range from the alluring to the ridiculous depending on the skills of the "fashion designer" or tailor, the more correct name of a dress-maker without any embellishments. In the university, I remember the cartoon / drawings of Nnimmo Bassey (that remarkably talented school mate of mine in the architecture department) who "shouldered" the responsibility of producing the campus journal we call RELAXX. Relaxx was the magazine every female student dreaded being featured in. Only notoriety brings you into the pages of Relaxx. Such infamy ranges from eating too much food or excessive drinking at a student party, to stealing, to snatching another girl's game, to dating(?) a member of Jim Nwobodo's government. The caricature of anyone caught in its spider's web was bound to not only be hilarious but so good that it was never going to become an issue identifying the individual the next hour at the refectory. Many girls featured would not show up on campus for weeks to escape the unbearable discomfiture if not indignity.

Typically, the shoulder or breast pad played a huge part in the spoof. Such was the fun, humour, and at times indignity that using the pad as object of identity produced in those days.

Today, Nigeria has changed. Pads no longer cause anyone discomfort, at least not for the members of the Nigeria House of Representatives in Abuja. Our (dis)honourable members do not wear the pads on their shoulders and unlike Governor Ayodele Fayose's mother (who was confirmed by her son to still wear pads), they do not even adorn their boxers with it. Their own pads are expenses / project spoofs spirited into the national budget and these buffons are neither ashamed of its obvious illegality nor repentant of their dubious intent. Going by Mr. Yakubu Dogara's affirmation to the press, (budget) padding itself or the public's aversion to this form of corruption was not something to cause them any discomfort. It was their own way of distributing (cornering) our commonwealth. After all, a former president of the red chamber, the late Dr Chuba Okadigbo, once said his mission in Abuja was not to add poverty to his resume.

The epistle according to Dogara and his ilks was that there is no provision in our law statutes that criminalizes the distortion of the yearly budget prepared by the executive arm of government for the selfish benefit of the individual "lawmakers". He further affirmed that it is a tradition or convention in the house to make unauthorised insertions into the budget and move funds to the detriment of the national plan. Now, these 465 guys legally and constitutionally share a whooping N120 billion of our money among and between themselves. In the years past, the amount was N150 billion. This is not enough for them, they need to insert a further N240 billion for projects they will not execute into our budget only to go back to the MDA and collect this amount back under the cover of the so called oversight duties. As if that was not worrying enough, the Presidency has now said it was not implementing a padded budget.

Whether that meant all the pads had been removed or that the presidency now considers the 2016 budget together with the inserted pads as our lawful financial compass for the year, no one knows. What has irked and continues to irritate many is that the same presidency previously sacked the former director-general of budget office for the same offence and moved/retired up to twenty-two others in the wake of corrupted and unlawful insertions into the budget leading many to pose the question to the president if he was shielding anyone. Like Dr. Jibrin said, this calamitous episode would define whether indeed there is an anti-corruption war going on (or if it was all a ruse, a storm in a teacup).

Just to jar your memory as to how many have benefited from this unconscionable act year on year basis, those in the know have said "budget padding" was the source of funding for the former speaker of the house, Dimeji Bankole's, N6 billion acquisition of the former NECOM house in Lagos and how several of our past lawmakers were able to acquire unimaginably expensive properties in Banana Island, Ikoyi, Victoria Island and in and around the Abuja Central Business District. In case Mr. Dogara and the presidency do not know what padding means, other words to describe it are "lining", "stuffing", "dressing". A dictionary describes it as "something added, especially extraneously or fraudulently". The action of the Presidency is as worrisome as that of the ruling party, APC, who now see this as a family affair and therefore, wishes that everyone be gagged about this matter and that it be resolved as a party matter.

The national budget of Nigeria is not the budget of APC and as such it is illegal and irresponsible to treat this as a problem in the APC family. President Buhari will do his personal reputation and that of his administration incalculable harm in allowing this to be hijacked by his party. When a former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, decided that the (2003) capture and kidnap of a sitting governor of Anambra State by one of the Ubas was a family affair he was roundly condemned and lampooned. Nigeria has today not recovered from that state sanctioned constitutional impunity as every administration after his merely continued to build upon the same level of noxious grand larceny.

What PMB promised us on May 29, 2015, is that such acts of impunity were no longer permissible under his watch and that every malfeasance against the Nigerian state would be punished. But when a government that controls the police and EFCC says it is the citizens duty to investigate graft allegations against its top functionaries, the goalpost has been shifted. Perhaps they need reminding that the documents pertaining to the Dasuki-supervised Abuja Yam Festival was not sourced from or by the citizens.

With Buratai under the protection of the presidency, Dambazzau shielded from providing answers to questions that bothered on financial probity while he held sway in the Army, this latest episode will certainly compromise the administration should it endeavour to similarly assist anyone in the NASS escape scrutiny for their role in the PADGATE fiasco. What a responsible government should do without delay is to institute a powerful judicial cum administrative inquiry into the budgeting process and budget implementation in the last ten years and the role of that much derided institution, NASS, in the grand heist of trillions of Naira over the period.

What is clear is that this democracy has been only for the benefit of a few well-oiled people who have found their way into government or into the civil service. Come to think of it, those who have cornered so much resources are not more than 10,000 individuals over the past sixteen years in a country with 170 million citizens. No wonder Nigeria was in the last few years littered with private jets.

  Faseyiku