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Tony Ogiamien: Lurking in Omo Omoruyi’s Shadows By Okechukwu E. Asia Boston, MA, USA
“But when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away” and “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” (1 Corinthians 13:10-11)
I should have ignored Tony Ogiamien’s rejoinder to my article –In search of the Real Professor Omo Omoruyi, (see www.gamji.com and Vanguard newspaper, April 26, 2005) but for many telephone calls and email messages I received from my readers all over the world urging me to respond. And for opening himself up in this manner, the world will know who Tony Ogiamien really is. But I am not going to attack Tony Ogiamien, as he attacked me in his response. I will, however, tell the truth.
For those who do not know, Tony Ogiamien is the flamboyant and corrupt former acting dean of the faculty of law from the University of Benin, Nigeria, whose tenure was, infested with corruption, embezzlement of student body and scholarship funds. Not only that he allegedly embezzled the university’s fund but also he expelled two law students for questioning his interest in their scholarship fund. In the United States, Tony Ogiamien is perfecting his financial management skills with the opening of an online-only University – the so-called Heritage University in California. Ogiamien is the president and CEO of this University, his wife is the treasurer and his elder son is the provost - a kind of family affair University.
If Omoruyi was looking for someone to defend him and help to polish his image he hired a wrong man for the job. Tony Ogiamien has his own image problems; it is no surprise that Ogiamien and Omoruyi are blood relatives. So you know, Omoruyi that Ogaimien performed poorly in his attempt to defend you in his rejoinder to my article. Instead he used his three-page essay to attack me. Nowhere in the entire essay had Ogaimien defended the issues I raised about Omoruyi rather he called me names and lectured me on Igbo culture.
In the first paragraph of Ogaimien’s rejoinder he wrote: “The objective of any public discourse or exchange of views is, or should be, to present unambiguous ideas designed to inform or educate, persuade, and convince in an effort to provide truth.” Ogaimien failed in his effort to provide truth; rather he strengthened the truth in my own essay. Ogaimien’s rush to respond to me on behalf of Omoruyi was not out of loyalty but to quickly control the perceived damage my article might cause him and his master (Omoruyi), which would threaten their job-hunting exercises in Minna, Niger. But he did a good job in hiding the truth and presented an unambiguous denial of Omoruyi’s unwholesome and overbearing public intellectual shenanigan, pranks, tomfoolery, and cunning.
In Igbo culture, we do not prostrate for an elder who poured ashes on himself, rather the children will use the broom to dust off the ashes from his body. Omo Omoruyi has poured ashes on his body when he stoop too low to beg for IBB’s forgiveness as a ploy to influence IBB to appoint him the chairman of contact and mobilization committee of the IBB presidential campaign.
In the erotica Omo Omoruyi wrote to his one time estranged lover Ibrahim Babangida which he (Omoruyi) described how he managed to reestablished contact with IBB: “I called and he (IBB) was not available as he had gone to his village, Wushishi; he returned my call and I too had gone to school. When I came back I called and he took the phone; the rest is history. All within 24 hours.” This kind of love letter is yet to be written in the “lovers first night out” movies. His passion, the caress and the scorching orgasm are all hidden around and behind every comma and period in Omoruyi’s lover letter to IBB. Legends do not write this kind of love letter, but a sycophant and a job seeking worn-out professor who wants to launch himself back to relevance.
The shame is on whom whose brother is a bad dancer. In the case of Ogiamien and Omoruyi, it is the children who are sitting down and seeing things Ogiamien and Omoruyi could not see while standing up. While the new generations of Nigerians and indeed most Nigerians are sick and tired of being sick and tired of worn-out and irrelevant public intellectuals like Ogiamien and Omoruyi, you could not notice. All the mis-educated graduates of Omoruyi’s so-called Center for Democratic Studies have taken refuge inside our government and have refuse to go away while raking havoc in our polity. But Ogiamien and Omoruyi did not notice.
As a Nigerian citizen I must be concerned about what happens in Bini and to Bini people or elsewhere in my country. The spirit of “One Nigeria” must guide me to be concerned about the welfare of other Nigerians irrespective of their nationalities. Ogiamien and Omoruyi should have learned this while mis-educating Nigerians at their Center for Democratic Studies.
We cry foul about Obasanjo’s atrocities in
the Niger-delta region because if unchecked it could trickle down to Imo
state and indeed the whole of Igboland. Niger-delta today, tomorrow
could be Imo state. Ogiamien, you can see why I am concerned about what
happens in Bini.
Indifference is a nursery where inhumanity
germinates. There is no greater destructive force on earth that is
stronger than indifference. You are much more neutral if you clap for
the powerful or kick the powerless than when you opt to be indifferent.
As to the use of Igbo proverbs in your essay, you should do more research on Igbo culture before you find yourself struggling to explain your half-baked Igbo proverbs that you pasted all over your article. You should do more homework to understand the complexity of Igbo proverbs and how and when to apply them. Or you will be called an “efulefu.”
Okechukwu E. Asia Boston, MA, USA
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