A birthday celebration
I woke up this
morning minded that I will escape the need to tweet anything crazily absurd about
Nigeria and just have a swimmingly smooth day. No sooner than that thought had
crossed my mind I clicked on a link that brought up a picture and that was the
end of my wish.
The associates of Chief James Onanefe Ibori
[1], the ex-governor of Delta State and current jailbird in Her Majesty’s
Prison accommodation in the United Kingdom will be gathered [2] at his Oghara Country
Home in Delta State to celebrate a “Birthday of Reconciliation” highlighting
his 54th birthday anniversary with a praise and worship service
presided over by three “eminent” men of the cloth.
We need friends
Now, regardless of
the tribulations by omission or commission a man faces in life, it is of the
greatest hope that he is not deserted by friends and that might be the case
with James Ibori, he still has friends and that is probably a good thing.
What is dangerous
is having friends who are dishonest, disingenuous or who choose to remain
obdurately oblivious of the truth about one’s character, behaviour and
reprehensible acts.
Living legend?
In a full page
advert taken out to announce this celebration which should have been private
and completely out of earshot for its odium they have suggested James Ibori is “The Living Legend of Resource Control
Struggle.”
These people must
be having a big laugh at our expense because if this is to suggest James Ibori
was at the forefront of the Niger Delta struggle, then I must have been living
in a parallel universe not to have noticed it.
However, what we
know by reason of the case
of fraud and money laundering [3] brought against him in the UK is that a
man on a £4,000 per annum
confidently bought a house in the UK worth £2.2m.
Beyond that, the
litany of looting is such that the judge in the case said it was impossible to
ascertain how much James Ibori frittered away in avarice par excellence that
makes the mind boggle.
Let it be known
that James Ibori had acquired his riches "at the expense of the some of the
poorest people in the world".
These people stink
In any case,
disgraced, convicted and jailed in a foreign land along with his wife, his
mistress and lawyer, there are people albeit of dubious respectability who are
gathered to laud this man as some champion of a cause that seriously escapes
me.
The associates
[4] of this bounder, scoundrel, fraud and thief have successfully corralled into
their disreputable assembly the South South Vice President, Christian
Association of Nigeria (CAN), Archbishop God-Do-Well Avwomakpa, as guest
preacher, while Rev. Gbejero and Rev. Oyibo would also minister.
It begs the
question where the moral compass of Nigeria is if men of the cloth are
cavorting with those who in other polite societies would be completely shunned
until slowly rehabilitated when memory fails us, it is beyond shameful the hold
that money and Mammon has over many church leaders that they will forget
principle, character and tenet to sup with those without any virtue worthy of
the barest emulation.
Where is our polite society?
The repugnant occasion
will be chaired by an elder statesman and Professor Emeritus, B.I.C Ijeomah, a
one-time eminent social science professor who by his involvement in this
charade is neither distinguished nor reputable – but we probably have no
discernment of character in Nigeria once the money is on the table to judge who
we should associate with and who we should shun.
In another country,
no one will publicly associate with James Ibori apart from his lawyers one of
whom is serving time for serving him, he will be stripped of all honours and
dignities and left so full of shame that he will seek a low profile exile in
some faraway land.
Give no honour to them
Nigeria is not
about to see that kind of society, though James Ibori will be kept at Her
Majesty’s pleasure for 13 years or probably less than that, he will most
definitely return to Nigeria triumphantly, celebrated to the rafters to find
great honour amongst thieves like himself who have milked and bilked Nigeria
dry with impunity and without consequence.
We can however
avoid this shameful parade of the notoriously ignominious by excoriating in the
sternest terms all who gather to celebrate corruption and worse as they
continue to give our dear country a very bad name and image.
Stop this nonsense
Invite yourself to
that rotten assembly at Oghara on the 4th of August 2012 and make
all the attendees as uncomfortable as you can get them, we need to repudiate
these congregations of the reprehensible and give no place to the indefensible –
we will do our bit on Social Media.
Nothing on God’s
good earth should give licence to this decadent fanfare.
Sources
Other reference
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