Ramos Abbas’ (a.k.a. Hushpuppi) sentencing to 11 years and three months’ imprisonment for money laundering, business email compromise and allied crimes, by the United States District Court which sat at the Central District of California on November 7, was expected. Justice Otis Wright II who delivered the judgment also ordered Hushpuppi, described as “one of the most prolific money launderers in the world” by the Assistant Director in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Los Angeles Office, Don Alway, to pay $1.7m in restitution to two fraud victims. The judgment drew the curtain on Hushpuppi’s trial that started after his arrest in June 2020 in his Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) hotel apartment. He was extradited to the United States on July 3, 2020.

We should commend the United States and the UAE for their collaboration which facilitated the trial and conviction. This is quite unlike our experience in Nigeria where such celebrated cases would have dragged on interminably.

We may argue till thy kingdom come whether the sentencing is commensurate with the crime committed by the Instagram celebrity; the point is that he is going to spend at least the next nine years behind bars, as the two years he had spent in incarceration during his trial would  be subtracted from the 11 years and three months that he has been sentenced to. The court apparently noted certain factors in sentencing him. These included the prosecutors’ claim that Hushpuppi behaved well in prison. For instance, he was adjudged to be one of the best cleaners in prison. As a matter of fact, “his report card for Central Valley workshop for prisoners showed that, between July 2021 when he enrolled and November 2021 when he completed work, Hushpuppi put up “very good” in attitude, quality of work, dependability and productivity.”

Moreover, Hushpuppi had in a final appeal to Judge Wright in September 19, ahead of his scheduled sentencing, written a personal letter to the court narrating his source of wealth, criminal adventure and regrets. Indeed, he pleaded with his family members for dragging their name in the mud and even commended the FBI for doing a thorough job in bringing him to justice.

If the judge was swayed by anything, it must have been these positive recommendations from the prosecutors and the remorse personal shown by the Instagram celebrity rather than the three letters that emanated from Nigeria. One was written by his wife Regina Manneh, and the remaining by two imams, all pleading for light sentencing. The imams are Rasaq Olopede, the Imam of Imisi-Oluwa Mosque in Lagos, who described Hushpuppi as “a frequent donator” to his  mosque. The other imam, Hudu Abdulrasak of Madrasatul Ahlul-Bait Islamiya, Maiduguri, Borno State, also paid tributes to Hushpuppi for his philanthropic gestures to orphans and widows.

I do not know what would have informed the decision of these people to write those letters in the first place. Not even the wife could be forgiven for pleading for light sentence for her husband unless she can prove that she did not know that her husband was an international fraudster who had made about two million people cry at one time or another through his nefarious activities. Agreed, when the going was good, they enjoyed the illicit proceeds together. But now that the long arm of the law has finally caught up with her husband, what someone who is truly penitent should do is remain silent in the circumstance or beg God for forgiveness. I would not grudge her if she had been praying silently or even gone to churches and mosques to look for some ‘powerful’ pastors or imams or even marabouts, who could get her husband off the hook. I have no doubt that Hushpuppi himself would have had people that he would be consulting so that he would never be caught, not to talk of being prosecuted. Many criminals in this part of the world have such people on their payroll that they spoil with money and other material attractions to do things that would make them invincible or bullet-proof whenever they are being trailed by law enforcement agents. But, as the saying goes, ‘all days for the thief, one day for the owner’. A day would always come when such charms or whatever they did for them would fail. That day, monkey would go to market never to return. Hushpuppi went to the market never to return when his cup was full. Now, he has got his due comeuppance: 11 years and three months behind bars. Was his wife not aware that her husband’s activities must have depressed not a few, or even led to the death of some of his victims?

Even if we pardon Hushpuppi’s wife for remembering the good time she had with her husband and therefore could not imagine him not being by her side for a whole 11 years, what do we say of the imams who joined her in pleading for leniency for her husband?

This should be the main worry for us as Nigerians. As the saying goes, “when gold rusts, what would iron do”? An imam is supposed to be a reputable man in the Islamic hierarchy. He therefore should be an embodiment of everything good. Are the two imams pleading for leniency for Hushpuppi saying they are not aware of the crimes he committed? Are they also not aware of the trauma his activities had caused his victims? So, tell me, if somebody made others to weep, or his activities sent many to untimely graves outright, why should anyone be pleading for leniency for such a person? After all he was not sentenced to death or life. So, were the imams’ actions on this matter informed by ignorance or illiteracy, or both? Or even greed or selfishness? Hushpuppi dominated the media, social and conventional, for so  long a time that no one can honestly claim he or she was not aware that the man was an international criminal.

But hold it! Something kept whispering into my ears when I was drafting this piece that these imams would not be the only people in their category who would not want Hushpuppi jailed. I want to believe that some ‘men of God’, that is to say, pastors or prophets must have deployed every weapon in their arsenal and firing from all cylinders to get Hushpuppi off the hook. As a matter of fact, some of them, across the board (Christians, Muslims, traditional religionists, etc) might also have conned Regina and her husband to part with huge sums of money to enable them do something that would make the U.S. court free him or at least give him the slap-on-the-wrist type of judgment that we are familiar with in this part of the world.

But his conviction is indication that nothing, no prayer, fasting or spiritual concoctions can stop an agenda whose time has come. I suspect that sometime in the future when Hushpuppi is privileged to tell us his odyssey in crime, we would be privileged to hear some of this sordid details at no charges at all. The kind of advertisement or privileged information that we would not pay a dime to know.

What I am trying to say is that, yes, imams happen to be our focus today because they are the ones whose activities and connections with Hushpuppi were reported. Things as terrible or even more terrible than this happen in many churches as well. Some years ago, a particular Pentecostal church was in the news for receiving millions as tithe from a very junior staff in a reputable hotel. Rather than quietly return the money after it was discovered that the tither stole it, the church was still arguing in a most annoying manner just to keep the stolen fund. Yet, this church was not the type

of church that would feel any negative impact if that money was returned to its owner. I mean that church is not a church of straw but a church of means. But the greed to retain the stolen money was palpable.

We have read stories of men of God who have armed robbers, ritualists, kidnappers and other criminals as clients. As a matter of fact, some of them confessed to rendering one form of service or the other that would ensure their clients keep making other people weep and go scot-free. We can go on and on.

But what was the fraction of what Hushpuppi gave the imams in question (and others who are not bold enough to make their relationship with him public), to what he stole from his luckless victims? This is a point many people forget or choose to ignore when taking money, whether from criminals or politicians who want to buy votes. People would steal billions and hundreds of other people would be fighting themselves over a few millions thrown at them by the politician or the criminal. And we would be hailing them for their subversive generosity.

Perhaps, in spite of everything, there is still something positive to say about Imams Olopede and Abdulrasak. Unlike many of their colleagues, they at least stood by their own even in a time of tribulation. So, they have demonstrated, like the pigeon, that they would not wine and dine with their owner only to deny him in times of trouble. Verily, verily I say unto you, the two imams could not have been the only clerics that Hushpuppi helped. Where are the others?

All said, for Hushpuppi, the game is up. This is the biggest lesson for those who had been admiring him as a role model, particularly our youths who think that all that glitters is gold. The fact that he even had to tell the world that he regretted his actions and apologised to his family members are all enough to convince such admirers that crime does not pay and that, no matter how long it takes, the arms of the law are never too short to catch up with any criminal.

However, now that we have had yet another evidence of how not to take lightly crimes such as Hushpuppi’s, we wait to see how long it would take Nigeria to dispose of the case of our once celebrated super cop, Abba Kyari. The one that we suspect to be bird of the same feather with Hushpuppi.