a cake of soap

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull. The phrase her mentor liked to quote had actually been a bit more descriptive than that, but it was the philosophy that was important.

Many estates peopled with crown peasants have been, according to an ukase of Peter the Great, ceded to particular individuals on condition of establishing manufactories […]

But worse still, Alhaji Arzika equally was adjudged to be frustrating the speedy privatisation of the octopodial state-owned NITEL.