OPINION : Who Is The Real Thief? A Rejoinder To A Desperate Poster & Three Years Of Unaccounted CDA Funds – By Otunba Chimag

The audacity of this poster confirms exactly what many constituents have suspected all along, that some hands hold power without holding shame. To parade handcuffs and EFCC insignia against a man who has merely been arraigned, who has pleaded not guilty, and who remains presumed innocent under the very constitution the Assembly their principal claims to uphold, is not journalism, it is desperation dressed as morality.

Section 36(5) of the 1999 Constitution is not a suggestion, it is the law, and any Rep member’s handle that tramples on it for cheap political theatre only proves it has nothing credible to say about performance, projects, or three years of silence in the green chamber.

It takes a peculiar kind of shamelessness to reach for another man’s pending court matter as a campaign strategy while your own principal cannot point to a single completed project after more than three years in office.

This is not opposition, this is deflection, and constituents are wise enough to know the difference. When a lawmaker’s only weapon against scrutiny is to smear an opponent with an unproven allegation, it tells the whole constituency that there is nothing on the ground to defend, no road, no borehole, no scholarship scheme, nothing but empty posters designed by aides who mistake noise for achievement.

But since the poster insists that “all thief na thief,” let that logic cut both ways without mercy.

If receiving public trust and delivering nothing makes a man a thief, then what do we call a lawmaker who has drawn Constituency Development Area allocations for over three years running, with not one signpost, not one borehole, not one empty classroom filled, not one kobo accounted for before the people who voted him in? Corruption indeed has no federal constituency, but it clearly has an address, and constituents are not so foolish as to be distracted by another man’s court date while their own representative’s CDA ledger gathers dust.

The scripture is clear on this matter, for Ezekiel 34:2 rebukes the shepherds of Israel who fed themselves rather than the flock, asking should not shepherds feed the flock. That is precisely the question every constituent in this federal constituency must now ask their own representative. Where is the flock’s own harvest from three years of CDA releases? Where are the empty envelopes of accountability that should have matched the envelopes of allocation?

A leader who cannot answer for the resources placed in his hands has no moral standing to accuse another man who has not even been tried, let alone convicted.

Proverbs 29:2 reminds us that when the righteous are in authority the people rejoice, but when the wicked beareth rule the people mourn.

Three years of mourning in silence, three years of watching allocations disappear into thin air without a single verifiable project to show for it, is not leadership, it is quiet plunder dressed in agbada and parliamentary privilege.

The poster wants constituents to be outraged over an unproven allegation against an opponent, yet says nothing about the proven and ongoing absence of development under their own principal’s watch. That is not strategy, that is insult layered upon injury.

Let it be said plainly that this poster and the aides behind it have exposed a low level of intelligence, mistaking distraction for defense and mockery for messaging. Constituents are not children to be pacified with handcuff graphics while their roads remain untarred and their CDA funds remain unaccounted for.

The true measure of a representative is not how loudly he can point fingers at an opponent facing due process, but how honestly he can present receipts for the trust and resources given to him.

Until that accounting is made public, every poster of this nature will only serve as a mirror reflecting back the very theft it claims to condemn.