There is a very familiar pattern here to be seen, I think, one that most people could see from the start. All that is different with Arik is the size of the thing, a scam run with really huge numbers since it was supposed to be a major airline.
You had such as Boeing on board with Arik, or am I the only one who can remember the big news about the order for a whole fleet of new Boeings? I do not expect such a company would look very closely at the source of the money for this huge order but just say, "Thanks so very, very much!" and then rush the
PR people in to put the item in the news. If it turns out later that this was just a figment of someone's imagination, well... that is not a big surprise in this business.
On the local level this was only going to work as long as Arik's
ogah still had fellow
raskols in power on the national level. Well, their best friend is now having his mail delivered by groundhogs so that it was only a matter of time before that nasty man from EFCC came around asking the same awkward questions about where the money from Rivers State went, where the money for Arik came from, is that perhaps the same money... that sort of thing.
The next act of this farce should be the stripping of Arik's assets (mainly its aircraft, one assumes, if they aren't found to be merely leased) and the hiding of the money.
Then we should have the disappearance of the people behind the scam for a decent interval before they sort things out by paying a mere percentage of what they stole (
invested, whatever) to return to live in peace and freedom.
To an outsider this reads like something outlandish but just check out the history of Umaru Dikko, for one. First the then-government of Nigeria wanted him back so badly that they even did a clumsy kidnap attempt from London, since he seemed to have made away with quite a bit of money from his time as a cabinet minister. The memory is a bit foggy but was it something like $1, 000, 000, 000.00? Later, though, everyone kissed and made up so that now he's back home, probably still in possession of the bulk of his stolen loot although that is something we little people probably shall never know.
I really, really miss Jerry Agbeye-Agbeye now! He would have such a good time raking this one over.