There is a long-held view of mine I wish to revise. I no longer believe that the average Nigerian politician was absent the day intelligence was created and distributed. I used to attribute their embarrassing lack of depth, their shallowness, as evidenced in their conduct and utterances, to the absence of intelligence.

My new position is that they just do not believe that the Nigerian is worth any effort on their part to demonstrate a modicum of intelligence. Intelligence is a valuable commodity. If you can get away with leading people without having to use it or even having to demonstrate that you are in possession of it, why bother?

Consider the case of this Okun buffoon called Smart Adeyemi. He’s been out of “government”, hence out of Nigeria’s orbit of eating, patronage, and prebendal irresponsibility, for just under a year and he has defected from PDP to APC, citing his new-found love for President Buhari. He praises President Buhari to high heavens.

Two years ago, I was in Ilorin. You will recall that I wrote on this Wall about my tour of the dividends of Smart Adeyemi’s time in the Nigerian Senate: massive properties, hotels, investments everywhere. The driver who took me on the tour kept “thanking God” for Smart Adeyemi:

“Prof, shey e ri hoteli yi? Senator na lotun ni o. In fact, he is expanding this one and renovating it completely. God has helped that man o.”

I am too used to this philosophy of downtrodden Nigerians thanking God for the loot of their politicians that I no longer lift a finger or raise my voice when I am among them in real life Nigeria. I just listen and pity them. Only those unfortunate enough to carry that philosophy to my Wall get their coconut heads cracked for them.

If they are lucky and Buhari realizes the value of a revamped National Orientation Agency and puts Lola Shoneyin or Oluwakayode Olumide Ogundamisi or Kadaria Ahmed there, they will go there and panel-beat that kwashiokor philosophy that is so skin-deep among our people that you nearly think the situation is hopeless.

So I listened to my tour guide and driver go on and on about Senator Adeyemi’s blessings. That evening, in my room in Kwara Hotel, Senator Adeyemi was on TV. He and some other useless Ministers and Senators in the Jonathan dispensation had gathered themselves for the “groundbreaking” of the Kabba-Isanlu-Egbe-Ilorin road.

That is the road which effectively disqualifies my Okun land from membership of Nigeria’s life in the 17th century, placing Okun roughly in the 14th century, what with her roads only slightly better than than the 13th-century road situation in Benue state and eastern Nigeria.

Of course I knew that after the photo-ops and the fanfare, nothing would come of all the gragra that Adeyemi and the Jonathan administration were doing about that road. This was 2014. Elections were ahead in 2015…

What caught my attention was Senator Smart Adeyemi’s interview with Channels TV at the venue of the event. He was all over President Jonathan: the visionary, the this, the that! Smart Adeyemi crooned that President Jonathan was ready to develop every part of Nigeria, hence his investment in that horrible Okun road.

I find it remarkable that what this foolish man has to say about President Buhari today is a verbatim regurgitation of what he had to say about President Jonathan during that ceremony that I watched on TV in 2014. No attempt to display intelligence by even editing it a little bit or varying it. Rote reproduction because, like I said, these guys no longer believe that the Nigerian is worth the effort on their part to appear intelligent.

Just one year out of living large on Nigeria and this wicked man is desperately looking for new inroads back into the source of his food. And this brings me to another problem I have with these guys. Even when they have stolen handsomely and invested in income generating ventures, the thought of spending sisi out of their own money to sustain their rotten lives is anathema to them.

You have all these hotels and other properties in Ilorin. God forbid that you should live on income from that source. Your livelihood sha must come from our public purse. Hence, Buhari is the best thing since sliced bread. Ole alainitiju Senator.

What do you think Buhari is going to offer you now that you have withdrawn your praise from Jonathan and rained it on him? He has no fuel to offer you. He has no light to offer you. The Executive Council meetings he operates are no longer the contract bazaars of the past where Ministers step out of Council Chambers every week reeling out billions in contracts for their friends and paddies.

So what exactly do you think Buhari can or will offer you, Ogbeni Smart Adeyemi? I’m afraid you are wasting your praise. The only thing that President Buhari has in abundance now are Presidential jets. He won’t give you one of them.

Stop running after Buhari. Nothing for you for that side my Okun brother. Go and live on the proceeds of your hotels in Ilorin and thank God that you did not take your loot offshore to Panama like Bukola Saraki.

And, while you are at it, also thank God that you openly have such properties in a country where you will most likely never be asked any questions about them.