By Farooq Kperogi
Lai Mohammed’s notoriety as a compulsive and inveterate liar is already secure and unchallengeable, but the normally reticent governor of Kwara State, Abdulrahman Abdulrasaq, told ThisDay newspaper yesterday that Lai is also a common thief.
He said Lai literally stole N100 million donated to the governor by an unnamed Igbo businessman to help with his election in 2019.
That’s a pretty grave allegation against a serving minister by a serving governor, particularly one who isn’t known for flippancy and for hogging the limelight. At the time of writing this, Lai hasn’t denied the allegation even after the Peoples Gazette reached out to him for comment.
As I wrote in a June 10, 2017 column titled “Large Lies of Lying Lai Mohammed,” Lai Mohammed’s entire career as a Minister of Information and Culture has been defined by a bewilderingly extravagant fondness for willful and easily falsifiable lies. His first name doesn’t just share an uncanny phonemic kinship with “lie”; he actually embodies lies in the most audaciously disreputable way imaginable.
Now that we know that in addition to his well-known lies, he is also an unsophisticated and conscienceless thief, I think he should have been named “Lateef,” which would have given cartoonists and comedians the artistic liberty to say that the “La” in his name is “liar” and the “teef” is “thief.” 😂That’s a joke, please! Incidentally, all the Lateefs I know are honest, honorable, hardworking people.
Seriously, though, lies are the parents of all kinds of moral pervasions. My father used to say liars are almost always also thieves—and more.
