Koko: I think we should start seriously considering making uniforms for our Senators.
Kaka: Is everything all right? It’s only 9a.m. you can’t possibly be drunk this early? Uniforms for Senators? Are you on anti-malaria drugs?
Koko: I’m actually very fine and thinking straight. You should have asked me where the idea came from instead of concluding that I’m spirit-filled.
Kaka: Okay, out with it, Koko the tailor.
Koko: Have you not been following the fixation of the Senate on Customs Service uniform? They have refused to have anything to do with the Comptroller-General of Customs unless he appears in his regalia as CG, complete with all his stars and eagles and shining shoes.
Kaka: Oh that?
Koko: Yes that. They would not even let him say anything wearing brocade.
Kaka: I do not think the Senate is asking for too much or something extraordinary.
Koko: I think they are just fixated.
Kaka: Or the CG is allergic to Customs uniform.
Koko: Oh no, he is the CG, isn’t he? How can he be allergic to his uniform? Don’t forget the old man is a retired army colonel. Wearing a uniform is not new to him.
Kaka: So, tell me why he doesn’t want to wear this one. Why is he daring the Senate?
Koko: Why is the Senate harassing an old man like Colonel Hameed Ali? Can’t they see his white hair?
Kaka: Ehn ehn, are there no old men in the Senate or a few who are as old or even older than the CG? A-beg, let the man go and do as he is told. How many minutes will it take to put on the uniform or did they tell him he can’t remove it when he gets home?
Koko: I don’t trust those Senators, they can tell the poor man to start going to his office in full uniform every day.
Kaka: You mean the poor old man had not been going to the office in his uniform as CG all this while? What has he been wearing, babanriga?
Koko: What is wrong with babanriga? Is it not a Nigerian wear being worn by a Nigerian to a Nigerian office?
Kaka: The problem is Col. Hameed Ali is Comptroller-General of Customs and he has to dress the part.
That is all the Senate is asking him to do. Why are you making it sound like they asked him to do human sacrifice? Wearing a uniform shouldn’t become a matter of urgent national importance or is there more to this than you are telling me?
Koko: The hood does not make the monk…
Kaka: And the hood does not also unmake the monk.
Koko: Why are the Senators behaving like it is that uniform that will make the CG do a better job?
Kaka: Maybe they have a point. Is it not this same CG that signed a circular on March 9, 2017, giving a one-month ultimatum – from March 13 to April 12, 2017 to owners of all vehicles within the country, whose correct customs duties had not been fully paid, to do so?
Koko: Which was a good thing. People should pay customs duties in full to the Nigerian Customs Service. Not half duties or duties in instalments.
Kaka: Are you listening to yourself? Who are the people who paid half or incomplete customs duties? Who received and issued customs papers for incomplete payment? How did we end up with millions of cars in the country being driven by people who did not pay full duties?
Koko: Well, there are bad eggs who do deals at the ports and so on…
Kaka: Well, when will the CG go after the deals-men and women racketeering our national wealth into private pockets? If I was supposed to pay N50,000 to get my documents and a customs officer brings the papers to me in my office and collected N20,000 and the papers are genuine ones, how is it my fault? Why should someone start chasing me down the highway two years later?
Koko: That makes you an accomplice, a racketeer, that’s why.
Kaka: You can’t prove it. My papers are cool and I paid cool cash to a cool customs officer.
Koko: Meaning you are a crooked crook.
Kaka: Nay, cool dude who knows what to do. Mr CG should clean his house and stop harassing cool Nigerians.
Koko: So, the CG issued a circular to help Nigerians retrieve their money in wrong pockets, is that reason enough to start harassing him to wear uniform? He was just doing his job.
Kaka: The Senate, I think, believes that if the CG didn’t know that punishing vehicle owners for the rackets his men are running, his uniform will remind him.
Koko: What kind of logic is that? Please give me another reason.
Kaka: Okay. The CG also wrote a letter to the Senate, got an Assistant Comptroller-General to sign it and told the Senators he was busy and would not be honouring their invitation.
Koko: Ah ah, ordinary signature?
Kaka: Against protocol, my friend. The Senate is an institution, a very powerful institution as we have seen in the last seven days. You disrespect it at your own peril.
Koko: Those guys are just being mean to a hardworking old man.
Kaka: You still have not told me why the old man thinks it is cool to be addressed as Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Customs Service but finds the uniform and rank irritating.
Koko: It is not that he finds it irritating…
Kaka: Or could it be that being a former soldier…
Koko: There are no former soldiers. Once a soldier, always a soldier.
Kaka: Fine, so he was a colonel in the army who finds a Customs Service uniform beneath him?
Koko: Kaaaaka! It’s not like that o. The Senate is just being mischievous and vindictive because the old man said he was busy and wanted to collect stolen customs duties. Some of those Senators are probably tokunbo car dealers or have fleets of tokunbo cars that were racketeered through the borders and ports.
Kaka: You may have a point but you must also admit that a colonel refusing to wear the rank and uniform of Customs Service is suspicious.
Koko: Let’s go home before we are summoned for engaging in disrespectful pre-legislative activities and testing the integrity of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Kaka: We will appear in our secondary school blue shirt and khaki shorts for good measure if we are summoned.
Credit: Funke Egbemode, Sunday Sun