I wake up in the morning and I wonder
Why everything’s the same as it was
I don’t understand
Why life goes on the way it does
Why does my heart go on beating?
Why does the sun shine above?
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

Do you remember those lines? Do they sound familiar? Have you felt like that before? That feeling of aloneness even when you are in the midst of a crowd. Everybody is going about their chores and life, happy, oblivious of your pain, a pain so private and deep you cannot understand why the birds could still sing in the trees and fly across the bright blue sky.

You get on your balcony and see your neighbour whistling while mowing his lawn and you can’t imagine why the grass is still green when you feel raw and burnt up inside. How could this have happened to me? God, where are you, you ask for the hundredth time? Why is life so resolutely unfair, so absurdly pointless?
Unfortunately, we have no power over certain hands fate deals us. While we reel in pain, we just try to make sense of it all.

Nobody can truly know the pain of another but I have a fair idea of what Professor Adenike Grange is going through now. Was she sacked or forced to resign? It really does not matter now, does it? The harsh fact is that she is no longer the Minister of Health. Her words as she quit that office on Tuesday said it all:

“I am leaving this cabinet because I consider my dignity, reputation and legacy, values that I have worked hard for and hold dearly. I am returning to my unblemished career which I have assiduously laboured over the years…saving the lives of mothers and children across Nigeria and the world in general.”

I do not know Professor Grange any better than the next man. I have never met her. My closest contact with her is her photographs in the newspapers and visuals on television. That little digression was for the purpose of educating one-track minded mischief makers who I’m sure are getting set to call, text or flash me for collecting money to do this piece. Actually, Prof Grange’s current travails are just a peg for this piece, a ladder to peep into a festering, spreading rot in our public institutions.

When the story of unreturned, unspent funds in the Federal Ministry of Health broke, I knew if the sh-t hit the fan, the buck would stop on Grange’s table. I also knew that almighty civil servants had done once again what only they had perfected as an art. Anybody who knows anything about the workings of the civil service knows that at the end of the year bazaars are a tradition. It is at that time of the year that civil servants redistribute the nation’s wealth, going home with huge chunks of the national cake.

Have you ever wondered why a man who is paid N45,000 monthly will refuse to go get a better job but wait patiently for two decades to become a Director or a Principal Officer in his department? Ever asked yourself why that your townsman arrives the village on December 24 but dashes back to his desk by 28th?

You thought it was because he was dutiful? No, he must be there during the sharing season or he would not get his share. And why do we end up with unspent funds at the end of the year anyway? Considering that there is so much to fix in every sector of our socio-political life. how do civil servants always manage to leave something for the sharing season?

Like I said, the end of the year bazaar is an art in the public service. Civil servants are the only people I know who can effectively spend N1tr in one hour without leaving their desks or using more than a sheet of paper. And if it is money they have spent illegally, the sharing season is when it is all retired. Tickets of every airline within and without Nigeria would surface to retire millions of naira on trips that were never taken on the 27th.

Some millions will be retired as estacode. On that same day, the ministry will take delivery of 100KVA generator and multi million naira computers and accessories. On December 29, Close Circuit Television will be installed by German experts who would be flown into the country at the expense of the ministry. It is on December 30 that you see contract papers for the furnishing, carpeting and repainting of the boardroom and the sixth and seven floors. On that same day all accidented vehicles of the ministry will be towed in from all over the country for ‘proper audit’. And on December 31, television sets, air-conditioners, rugs, toilet seats, new sets of cutleries and other consumables will be purchased.

In the Federal Ministry of Health last December, the suspended Chief Accountant allegedly got N433,000 as his share of the unspent budget while Donald Ekanem allegedly confessed that one Oyedepo instructed him to ‘ think of jobs with contractors’. See how the brains of our civil servants get into overdrive at the end of the year? They are such great thinkers. Ekanem got N400,000 for his thinking prowess.

In the last minute bazaar, Itex Furniture Limited was awarded a contract to supply office furniture for N10m, Cyrolom Nigerian Enterprises got N18m to supply and install 35KVA generators to power the elevator, Jola Olubunmi Intergrated Ventures got N12m to carpet offices on the 6th and 7th floors of the ministry. A good company that it is, the same company got another N12.9m to do general printing, redecoration of offices, towers and podia.

Does anybody still think there are better geniuses than civil servants? They deserve national honours for being such great thinkers especially at the end of the year. But where does that leave Professor Grange and others like her? What are the lessons in this lesson that Grange has learnt the hard way? Don’t accept political positions unless you are ready to play politics. You must admit that civil servants are cunning.

Some of them are reliable but in that rat pack are Nigeria’s most wanted criminals and any appointee who loses sight of that little fact will eventually be served for dinner. And if you have built a career up to a point, you must as a matter of life and death be wary of political position and the horrors that come with the territory. Never be too excited about the glamour of political office as to let down your guard or forget the principles that took you to the point where you became attractive to those who nominated you.

While I am not holding brief for Prof Grange, I have this gut feeling that she was just out of her depth. She let down her guard. She joined the sharing season and forgot all the hard years and consistent streaming sweat that made her. It’s a sad end. And since it happened on her watch, she must carry the can.

Like I said earlier on, this is not about Grange. It is really about the certain breed of thieves in public service and the art of the end of the year looting. They are the one big reason Nigeria isn’t working. And the lawmakers who received stolen goods are thieves too. I hope their daddies taught them that much while they were growing up.