Dear Dr. Agagu,

You folks in the Nigerian Petroleum Ministry sure have a lot of accidental money to play with. Just yesterday, your colleague Adams Okhtah offered to give me $5 million to slough off his extra hospital equipment money. I'm thinking, with all this additional cash in your coffers, you might make a positive contribution to society, like VH1's Save the Music Foundation, which allows Melissa Etheridge, Lisa Loeb, and Eagle Eye Cherry to battle robots in space. Or you could persuade David Crosby to sire a viable Triple Crown contender for the A-rabs. Or you could buy new voting machines for the state of Florida.

You see, there are so many better things to do than split the cash between your three associates and myself. The proceeds from just one of your scams could put a baby on the sun, a long-awaited Grammy on Rush's mantelpiece, or Logan's Run's Jenny Agutter on my patio set in five minutes. Then you could cash in on the next scam you guys run, right? It takes so little to make a change for the better.

Here is a song I wrote for the Nagano Winter Olympics

Even without the children's chorus you are doubtless affected by the call to action those words represent.

I am willing to forego my $12 million portion of the proceeds if you would just promise to donate your 60% share to my own charity, Spay the Whales. It would mean a lot and it would show the world that Nigerian petroleum officials, despite the reputation they share with all oil executives for pederasty and cannibalism, can be, basically, human.

So that I might begin setting up a holding company, please send me your credit card number with expiration date, as I will need an initial outlay of monies with which to purchase wares, foodstuffs, and equipments. If I have any money left over, I am going to e-mail people in Togo to help me launder it.

Yours,

Marty Barrett

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