If you’re not outraged by this, you should be.

Vitalis Lanshima, the guy picked to replace the serial pants-dropper Dan Johnson on the Louisville Metro Council, has gone missing.

Lanshima is not returning phone calls; he’s not answering texts.

Seems he’s too freakin’ busy to do his job because he’s running for another office.

In Nigeria.

That’s 6,065 miles away. In Africa.

Meanwhile, he’s still collecting his $48,000-a-year paycheck, and the poor folks of Louisville’s 21st District are stuck yet again — just as they were when the pants-dropping Johnson was banned from City Hall — not getting the representation they pay for or deserve.

Background:Louisville councilman's run for office in Nigeria spurs call for investigation

And that’s too bad. Vitalis will go down in history as a joke and not the inspiring character that he should have been.

He’s got a really cool story.

He came to the United States in 2002 from Nigeria and became the first foreign-born member of the Metro Council when a coalition of Republicans and Democrats picked him to fill Johnson’s seat.

But perhaps the most inspiring thing about him is that he excelled despite the fact that at the age of 12, he inadvertently touched a high-voltage wire that led to both arms being amputated near the elbows. According to his page on the Metro Council website, Lanshima became a world-class athlete and set two world records at the 2000 Paralympic Games.

From 2017:Lanshima takes historic seat on Louisville Metro Council

But in the past year, the cracks started to form.

A day after he was chosen to replace Johnson, it became public that Jefferson County Public Schools wanted to fire him from his job as a special education teacher at Ramsey Middle School because of allegations that he had tossed a desk, threatened to withhold lunch from a student and wrestled with a student in class.

He denied those charges and was ultimately allowed to keep working for the school system. He was reassigned to the ESL program, where foreign-born students learn to speak English. JCPS spokeswoman Renee Murphy said he resigned early this summer — that was just after Nicole George walloped him in the May primary.

And then, he stopped doing his job at City Hall. Stopped going to council and committee meetings.

He’s missed 22 of them, in all, said Council President David James, who has been trying to figure out what in the world Lanshima is up to.

He just stopped showing up. He hasn’t been to a meeting since Aug. 14, but he did go to the state fair about that time.

At some point we learned that he was running for the national assembly in Nigeria, his home country, and the Courier Journal reported that he had registered in July to vote there. That might just make him ineligible to vote or serve in public office here.

That’s what the Metro Council is trying to figure out.

He flew in Tuesday night from Nigeria and started answering questions Wednesday. It was the first time Lanshima has been seen at City Hall in nearly two months.

He said in an interview that when he left the country, he didn't intend to be gone as long as he ended up staying there. And he argued that not a single constituent who tried to reach him couldn't get in touch with him by way of email or social media.

But he also said his cell phone malfunctioned a month ago, and he has not been able to use it since then.

The problem is that Lanshima's missed council meetings go back well before he went to Nigeria in August, and absences have been a pattern since he lost the primary election.

Lanshima needs to just end the charade and quit the council. He's not doing his job, and with every paycheck he accepts, he's stealing taxpayers' money.

Who would have thought that the guy who followed Dan Johnson in office would make us long for the days of the serial pants-dropper. But at least Johnson showed up at City Hall — when they’d let him through the doors.

Are you outraged?

Joseph Gerth's opinion column runs on most Sundays and at various times throughout the week. He can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/josephg.