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Settling Personal Scores And The Alamieyeseigha’s Ordeal By Okoh Emeka
Since September 15 when the executive governor of Bayelsa State Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha was picked up at the Heathrow airport in London by the British police, I have read and heard lots of comments in connection with that arrest. The case has been receiving needed, deserved and undeserved comments from the members of the public, the media and any other means that human can manage to pass information.
Unfortunately though, most of the comments I have read and heard are either made out of ignorant or simply without critical analysis of the whole situation, most of the comments I have seen on cyber world are full of emotional outpour with little or no merit, some of them completely lack sense of reason. On one hand however, I do understand my fellow Nigerians, with the larger population living in abject poverty, then someone somewhere tells you that your governor was found with one million pounds, of course the natural reaction will be disgust, anger and all other emotional reactions that goes with it. After that stage however, comes an era for critical thinking, when all points and conditions that lead to the problem at hand need to be rationally analyzed.
I am not in any way expecting everybody to agree with the opinion I am going to express in this write up, you have the right either to agree or disagree with me, I have different opinion which run contrary to the opinion of many who have already commented on this issue, however, I may disagree with them but will defend to death their rights to say out their views. Most of us have a pre-fashioned mind and to them every accused is guilty even before been convicted by a court of law and the situation gets even worse when such person is holding a political post. Most of us chose to indict, try and convict people in papers and the internet. Not until convicted by a court with the jurisdiction to do so I will not only assume him innocent but also treat him as such till the law proves my as sumption wrong and that at least you should accept as the position of law.
Going further we have this few questions to ask ourselves, the first one, of course is, is Nigeria really corrupt? If yes, do we need to fight corruption? My answer to both questions are unequivocally yes, we are dangerously a corrupt nation, we have fought hard to maintain such “wonderful” names as the most corrupt or second most corrupt (it doesn’t really matter, 1st or 2nd) nation in the world. That status though we have been able to maintained it for years, I do sincerely believe it is high time we get rid of it to forge ahead, I think that even the most unpatriotic Nigerian will agree with me that it is long over due to say enough is enough to corruption and bad governan ce in all levels of government and national lives as a whole. Corruption is the bane of development in Nigeria, corruption is one of those strong sleeping pills that the giant of Africa took, that pill that made her the sleeping giant, I have no doubt that every or rather most Nigerians are ready to throw their weight behind any SINCERE effort to get an antidote to get the giant on his feet, and to get him moving without stop to claim and clear his name. In a nutshell, the above paragraph is clearly stating that this writer is uncompromisingly in support of getting corruption to its lowest minimum, hoping to see the disappearance of corruption completely will sound more or less like hoping to see the materialization of the utopian state Plato described in his work “The Republic”. Corruption resides everywhere in different addresses with different names, unfortunately it has come to stay and its total annihilation is impossible, what we can only do is try to change its name like in the united States where they chose to give it a more respectable name—lobbying.
Having pledged my total support to the fight against corruption; then comes the second question which is: Does fighting corruption have anything to do with the principle of selected justice, witch hunt and the desire to settle personal scores? I don’t know how you will answer that question but I take it that your answer is absolutely no, of course a better answer cannot possibly exist, in this case as in most cases truth is one, it does not have variants and if truth is one without variants, and further, if the answer given here is the truth then comes the next question which s closely connected to the one you and I just answered, here goes the question: can we sincerely claim that this well publicized war against corruption is void of selected justice, double standard, witch hunt and settling of personal scores? While it was easy for me to answer the first two questions, the same cannot be said here, it was very easy to recognize that Nigeria is corrupt, it was even easier to acknowledge the need to fiercely fight that corruption but here, it is quite difficult to ascertain the level of sincerity attached to that battle. You will not wait long to find out my difficulties. That I can assure you. Although if I correctly assume I will not be wrong to insinuate that am not alone in this difficulties. You are most likely riding in the same lane with me.
The head of this present administration, the president of the federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency President Olusegun Obasanjo, once boldly declared to the world that there are and were no evidence against Babangida not to mention Abubakar who was able to reduce our foreign reserve to the lowest it could ever get within the period of 12 months, well, he has been accorded the status of a saint since he did the “undoable” which was handing over to a democratically (s)elected pseudo democratic government. I bet that if almighty Abacha was to be alive all evidence against him would have disappeared, he would probably be in the club of the untouchable. Doesn’t it surprise anybody that EFCC see only what the president wants them to see, doesn’t it worry anybody that the blindness of which EFCC is inflicted with suddenly leave them when some certain personalities that somehow have a different view from that expressed in Aso Rock are involved, and when it concerns the big fish, the unfortunate blindness quickly reappears and ticker than ever to the extent that not even the best of all surgeons can help.
The arrest, detention and further prosecution of a serving executive governor of a state in far away Britain is a disgrace to the image of the country in the eyes of the international community, especially when the case is more of political than criminal. When EFCC act like a hired assassin employed by someone somewhere to achieve his personal goals then the said fight against corruptions can only be termed fake. Alamieyeseigha is said to be a strong opponent of the yet undeclared third term bid of Obasanjo, he is said to be in vice president Abubakar camp and if all that is true then his ordeal with the London police becomes clearer, if a nation quietly accepted the search of the house of the number two man of a sovereign nation by foreign security operative and two weeks after, the government saw to it that the whole process was publicized just at the time the “culprit” had open confrontation with his boss. Why was the government and the media silent till that particular moment when the boss and his vice started washing their pants in public. Here, fight against corruption was used as an instrument of settling personal scores. Instead of making a strong statement condemning the embarrassment that action of the FBI caused the nation, the desire to satisfy personal egos were rather displayed at the expense of the nation.
In a normal country where laws function, the National Assembly will be up all night trying to find out the truth and the lies in the accusation leveled against the president by the governor of Abia state; sanctioning the president if found guilty or punishing the governor if his words are empty accusations, but that was not done. That action however helped me to acknowledge the saying of my uncle that when people are in power they think everybody a full, if not how can the directive given to EFCC by OBJ to investigate him be explained, am sure that no sensible person will be waiting for EFCC to wake up one ugly morning and say “OGA OBJ YOU ARE GUILTY SIR”. They should have waited for Alamieyeseigha to direct them to investigate him before harassing him. Remember they were fully a ware of the letter written by Orji Kalu but could not do anything (of course even now they are not investigating anything) until Oga directed them to CLINICALLY investigate him. It is funny that all these old crusty windbags in Abuja really think 130 million Nigerians a fool. The famous human right activist Gani Fawehemi SAN, has been calling for the investigation of the OBJ’s library money, but how can they investigate when they have not received directives to “hospitaly” investigate that, can EFCC claim to be unaware of the fact that leaders use such schemes to publicly legalize their ill gotten wealth? Is the simple fact that someone once denied any connection with Bell University not a perfect base for suspicion?
The Nigerian “wahala” can partially be compared with the situation in Russia, in connection with Hadarkovski the former head of YUKOS, one can hardly dispute the fact that his wealth were partly acquired by tricks, but he was an angel until he started supporting opposition parties, then from no where one thousand and one reasons to keep him behind bars appeared. The former prime minister Mihail Kasianov after expressing his opposition against some of Vladimir Putin’s policies, it was immediately noticed that he bought a house for less than its cost when he was pm, he was immediately placed under investigation by all the government agents. I will not be surprised to see him behind bars before the election year of 2007. Why am I making this connection, it is to show that everywhere the politics of totalitarian democrats are parallel and identical by nature and can easily be spotted. And here the Nigerian example is no exception.
As for 2007 and all the intrigues that goes with it come an interesting question, which is, does it mean that during Obasanjo’s first term in office corruption was not noticed, or does the so called fight against corruption have some hidden agenda, could it be that someone is planning to continue the “good works” he has started after 2007? I will not be surprised if all these drama performed by EFCC are directly attached to 2007.
I will want to hope that this administration is actually out to put down corruption but my hope can easily be converted to conviction when EFCC becomes fearless, daring the sacred cows, touching the untouchables, that way we will have some real result and until that is done I still see EFCC as personal police with politically obsessed image tarnishing objectives. Period.
Moscow
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