Shelley Winters in 1970 appeared in a Roger Corman film Bloody Mama. I never got to watch it but if you did please let me know.
In the movie she was depicting a legend of the Wild West of the Americas Kate ‘Ma Barker’ Barker who, along with her sons, terrorized everything that moved particularly if it had an association with money and banks.
The legendary music group of my early day Boney M had a hit in 1976 titled Ma Baker. It was about the same woman. Whilst we had to cope with what now seems like a terribly contrived dance or ‘robot’ routine of the sole male member of the band, we liked the track Ma Baker and it certainly brought flooding back nostalgic waves of the legend.
If you must have a picture of what ma Baker looked like then take a look at the picture above. Fat, yes you are allowed to be politically correct and call her chubby cute, light-skinned, had sons and they worked the same business.
Like every other scary legend of the Wild West when anything went the way of the gun-totting terrorists, it all had to come to a dramatic end. Ma Baker and her sons went out in a blaze of glory. Or did they.
Word on the street says they turned up, reincarnated in Africa and in Nigeria to be precise.
Unbeknownst to the majority of the population, their entire livelihoods were at risk as a reincarnated Ma Baker and her sons went on the rampage in wave after wave of oceanic raids.
Though not in a blaze of glory, we stopped shooting robbers at the stake a while a go, though we bump them off willy-nilly in extra-judicial killings to avoid a waste of court time, it all came to an end for the Ma Baker of Nigerian banking.
The once glamourous and seemingly untouchable Cecilia Ibru, chubby cute much like Ma Baker, had come to the end of the road. So it seems.
Soon after being awarded national hounours, it beats us all what for whilst under serious fraud investigations, and making a few customary appearances at functions in honour of the Big Kahunnas of the Nigerian Elite, the Bow-tied Sherriff won Game One in his battle against the cowboy bankers. He has promised much more excitement as they all come trooping out into the dock one after the other.
Ma Baker was the one everyone wanted to see what would happen to. Nigerians revel in the demise and downfall of the elite in a pretentious claim to care for the down-trodden. We just love to have a laugh built up over years of fraustration and sometimes envy. It eases the daily pains of merely surviving out here.
N195 million is approximately $1.25bn depending on whether your currency converter was Chinese or Korean. It matters little as the amount was staggering and much more zeros than the majority of the population can count given an entire year to do so.
That amount and a 6 month jail sentense raised a few questions. Nigerians are a difficult lot to please. They would pass the same sentence and still want to hang the culprit high and naked in the middle of the village square for little children to poke long fishing needles into. We have luckily since moved away from such barbaric acts.
Many will say the culprits such as Ma Baker and her fellow travelers in a once admired Oceanic Bank were barbaric to have defrauded customers, shareholders and ordinary onlookers of such a preposterous amount of money converted into assets, stocks, bonds, shares and real estate around the world.
A list of the properties confisicated droop off the dinner table like a never ending roll of toilet tissue and it is not Andrex.
Was 6 months enough to be seen as a deterrent to other currently thinking of doing the same within the banking industry?
Word on the street says that it was inadequate when, going by our usual habit of believing the unbelievable, there is so much more hidden away by Ma Baker. Secondly, 6 months in a plush hospital in the better part of Lagos did not seem like punishment beffiting of the crime.
However this is explained and for whatever value plea-bargaining served, Ma Baker now has a criminal record.
Many would snigger at that saying that such never stopped anyone from rising to positions of authority and influence in Nigeria.
Ma Baker is down, she still holds a 10 percent stake in the same bank and at least one of her sons remains a top director of the bank and life simply goes on as the short 3-day memory of Nigerians kick in.
After Bloody Mama gave us a bloody nose, she is down for the moment and we wonder who next and how much will be recovered this time and for what length of sentence.
What do you think?
