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The education Doctor Reuben Abati needs outside PhD!
By Sunny Igboanugo
Would any sane man go to Iga Idunganran and demand to buy the palace of Oba of Lagos or a piece of land inside? How much would anyone offer the monarch to cut such a deal? Even if Kabiesi is willing to sell, assuming he is so pressed for cash or the amount being offered is so mouth-watering and irresistible, would his chiefs allow it? Would ordinary Lagosians including even the area boys that swarm around that area of Lagos?
An accurate response to these questions should produce the right answer to educate Reuben Abati, the main anchor on The Morning Show, the breakfast programme on Arise Television on issues regarding the sale of land in Igboland. For indeed, despite his high educational level and high intellect, he still needs education – a lot of it.
That Abati is an intellectual giant and media guru is difficult to deny or put down even by his worst enemies. But there is more to intellectualism and media face to make things complete. I guess that’s where the problem is with (Doctor) Abati – he insists that everybody must include that prefix in addressing him. So, I must comply.
I guess Doctor Abati has everything anyone could desire in a country like Nigeria where superfluousness takes precedence over substance. His meteoric rise in the academia – getting a PhD at the age of 24 – certainly no mean achievement – speaks to this. So is his attainment in the media industry also enough proof.
Imagine leading the Editorial Page of The Guardian – the almighty Flagship of Nigerian media – where all the intellectual titans of a certain era in the country coalesced as a driving force of the nation’s thought industry – and at such a young age to boot. He couldn’t have been up to 30 at that time. So for this, he becomes a superstar – so elevated by an admiring public. But is that all there is to it?
Somehow, Doctor Abati, seems to reflect the reality of Nigeria. President Olusegun Obasanjo, put a finger to it in one of his public outings. He narrated how certain people had gone to God to complain about Nigeria. Why should you give this country everything on earth – abundant land with all manner of precious minerals buried in it – so rich that it grows virtually everything – too many waters that are home to the most prized aquatic life – human resources that prove the best across the globe – how could you be this partial?
God was said to have laughed at his accusers and told them to wait and see the type of leaders the country would have. Even those who took that complaint to God, which of course could have included people from Israel, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia or Singapore, would have been aghast at what Nigeria has turned out and would be thanking the same Almighty for not allowing them switch places.
Doctor Abati, as he wishes to be addressed, has virtually everything. But see what his immense gift has done to him. Like many of his ilk unable to manage their endowments, he has been struck with the same disease geniuses suffer – megalomania. He simply lacks the ability or knowhow to manage all the gifts bequeathed in him by nature and learning.
Imagine what he would have been if humility was added onto him as well. But instead, having been so bereft, where that virtue ought to be, sits a deluge of egomania, self-conceitedness, if not narcissism. Even a passive observer notices those features easily on that programme, where he ostensibly makes his own rules and brooks no form of opposition thereof. Who else hasn’t noticed him dismiss his critics as illiterates and uneducated? Who didn’t hear him call others social media rats? Many of such expressions are not only inelegant for use on television especially, but in most cases, forbidden totally. But he uses them.
“I’ve said it severally on this programme that nobody will tell me not to speak!” That was him last week, clapping back on the backroom staff, who apparently wanted to manage the programme to fit into the time and space allocated to it. Of course, he spoke while others had to recline and recede to their cocoons.
How many times did he have to shout-down his colleagues right there before the cameras? Even the irrepressible Rufai Oseni had had to suffer the impetuous, grumpy attitude and bow to the cajoling, if not bullying on many occasions. Who would have thought that Mary Chinda, his colleague could face such tongue-lashing in the open studio for the singular sin of not prefixing his name with Doctor?
Who else could have demanded that especially on television where it is a well-known tradition to address people by their first names if not Doctor Abati? It is this penchant for egoism that has been at play since last Thursday’s outing on the programme regarding his infamous comment about Ndigbo not selling land to strangers, which has now raised a lot of dust.
Now, much as I agree that targeting Ndigbo and handing them the short-end of the stick in Nigeria has remained a somewhat state policy under the All Progressives Congress (APC), beginning with President Muhammadu Buhari, as he then was and sustained on a higher scale by Bola Tinubu, his successor, I don’t think that he was playing anyone’s script in that direction. I definitely don’t think he was speaking for anybody.
I think he simply went into an overdrive as it is wont with him on many occasions. No doubt, the nature of the programme allows the anchors a lot of latitude to impute their opinions lavishly on given subject matters. But on many occasions, this has not only led to excessive licentiousness, but outright abuse. This was actually the case in this instance, in my view.
Now, what was in issue? Ojy Okpe, the anchor of What’s Trending segment of the programme, had played a video where Godswill Akpabio, Senate President, praised the entrepreneurial spirit, what he called the mercantile spirit of the Igbo that impels them to develop everywhere in Nigeria, including building their own residential houses and dwelling with host communities, something he says other ethnic groups lacked.
“The Igbo are very proud people, the Igbo are very mercantile, the Igbo are the only ethnic group in Nigeria that when they enter Kano State, they build houses in Kano State for themselves. They don’t rent. When they enter Lagos, they own almost two or three local governments, they build houses and live there. There’s no place they go they don’t make impact. But other Nigerians will come to my place, rent houses and live without building a structure. But the Igbo are not like that.”
This was what Abati reacted to. And what did he say? First was to acknowledge the truism in Akpabio’s comment. He even stressed the popular local saying that anyone that ventured into a community where there was no Igbo should scram immediately because it meant danger. But the problem is what he described as the flipside, which he took the liberty to adduce.
In doing so, he sought to take back with the left what he gave with the right hand, stating that in Lagos, for instance, it was rather the “liberalism” of the people than “conquering spirit” of Ndigbo that was at the base of their massive investment. Really? Pray! What is this liberal spirit supposed to look like when the lands were not given out free?
When did a symbiotic affair based on willing seller, willing buyer translate to one party doing the other a favour. For those who don’t know, it is with the proceeds of such lands Igbo people bought that families established businesses for themselves and sent their children abroad where they became high-rate professionals, with some of them becoming mega billionaires in foreign currencies.
This is not peculiar to Lagos. It is true of all the major cities in Nigeria. Families in major towns of Onitsha, Aba, Enugu, became very prominent because they sold land to outsiders to develop themselves. Onitsha became the hub of lawyers in the entire Igboland, because families sold lands and with the proceeds, sent their children abroad to study law. The evidence of that enterprises is everywhere.
Many interior Igbo families would like to be like Onitsha where land is hot cake or Aba, where families become entrenched as billionaires because they raised enough capital through land sales to engage in merchandises like textiles, stockfish, same as their counterparts in Lagos. Incidentally, it is the scallywags and urchins in such families that the public seem to focus on to count the losses. They never showcase the big men that attained their status from such proceeds. In other words land sales is a quid pro quo, where you lose something to gain something. It has nothing to do with accommodation or liberalism. It’s pure business, simplicita!
Besides, could an American in New York claim to be “accommodating” or being “liberal” to a fellow citizen from Texas who bought and built house in the city? Shouldn’t that be an anathema? Should those expression ever come from a public figure like Doctor Abati? Methinks no! That’s a dangerous mindset, the sought that has now become quite prevalent in recent years, especially of the APC-Lagos.
When Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu established the Apapa Wharf, was the thinking like this? Did he acquire land to set up and engage in other businesses that made him the richest man in Africa, because the Yoruba were liberal or because each of the people in the value chain saw opportunities? Did Aliko Dangote establish the Dangote Refinery Limited in Lagos, because the Epe people are the most liberal in Nigeria?
Citing what he claimed was the experience of Thomas Owolabi Shobowale (TOS) Benson, the late Yoruba politician and lawyer, who rose to the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), and who he quoted as claiming that his Igbo in-laws refused to sell land to him, Doctor Abati had stated how that summed up the “irony of Nigeria about the politics of the federation.”
Then he went off: “The same Igbo who are so industrious that they are all over and do well in other parts of Nigeria, you go as a non-Igbo man to go and buy umunna land, you will be told that you don’t belong even as an in-law. That’s by the way of an aside, but these are the issues, in my view!” Does he know what Umunna land is all about? That’s where he should have begun the conversation.
By now, it would have been obvious to Doctor Abati that he committed a faux pass given the deluge of responses that have trailed his comment. In fact, it would have been much so as he stepped out of the studio on that Thursday into the volleys of reactions from Ndigbo across the world. Even those with him in the Arise News studio, who were privy with the Igbo tradition would have schooled him adequately.
The encounter between him and the same Ojy Okpe the next day, seems to underscore the fact that he must have been privy to the other side of the story. They must have told him the difference between Umunna land, which is land belonging to a family as opposed to land belonging to an individual. He must have been told the reason such lands are seldom sold to an outsider, including members or the same community.
All he needed do at that stage, was to at least clarify his position or provided further evidence if he was convinced he was right. That’s if apology would be too heavy in his mouth. But he didn’t. Instead, he remained obstinate and even switched on a combative mode, dismissing the opposing views as nonsense is the key issue. That’s the way of the pompous – a disease of the self-centred.
How would it look that a whole Doctor Reuben Abati, who ought to know everything, and whose job is to teach and correct the ignorant society, who practically learn at his feet, would now submit himself to correction? That constituted the albatross that made him thunder at Ojy Okpe, when she tried to bring up the issue with the obviously sole intention of offering him the opportunity to make amends.
Even since that time, more evidences have been pouring out about how wrong he was on the matter. Beside many examples of Yoruba people owning properties in Igboland, the Mbieri people of Imo State – the supposed in-laws of TOS Benson have also contradicted the TOS Benson supposed narrative. It has now emerged that the people saw it as an anathema to sell land to their in-law, but instead, donated one to him, where he now decided to build a post office that is still standing in the community till date.
Indeed, the issue of Ndigbo not selling land to outsiders didn’t start from last week. It is an old story. But the classic response is how many houses do these people have in other areas outside Igboland? Recall Akpabio that spoke is not Igbo and the reference he was making wasn’t about Igboland. He was complaining that other people do not copy Ndigbo who build houses in Akwa Ibom and live.
He insisted that rather do so, others simply rented for the number of years they lived in the state and departed thereafter without owning properties. That was the crux of his submission. Abati, ought to have made more sense if he had detailed how many houses, he built in Akwa Ibom or anywhere outside Lagos to justify his hunger to buy Umunna land in the South East.
How many houses do other tribes have elsewhere outside their homelands? Are the people in Maiduguri refusing to sell land also? Are people of Benin, Delta, Benue, Katsina, Rivers, Ibadan or Ekiti selling to only Igbo people? So, why are other ethnic groups not dominating the Igbo in those areas where lands are sold easily to outsiders unlike Igboland who hoard their land?
Except anyone could prove that he went to buy land from the ubiquitous real estate companies or land dealers that advertise on daily basis all over Igbo cities and was denied on account of not being Igbo, Doctor Abati, would not make sense. But insisting on buying Umunna land or okpuno obi land, is like insisting on buying land inside the palace of an oba or a sacred shrine in Osogbo. The response to that is a no-brainer. If that is the crime Ndigbo committed, then it will be repeated over and over for many years to come.
Doctor Abati must have been told this much. But has it changed anything? Will it? Nada! From him since then, mum has remained the word. Incidentally, Ojy Okpe was not on duty on Monday. Perhaps, if she were, she might probably be moved to raise the issue once again and given him further leeway to make amends. But knowing the persona involved, the “emperor” would have cowed the others from bringing up the matter, accounting for why it was not on the card on Monday despite remaining a live issue on the front burner in the Nigerian polity still.
What does this say? Not a few see the development as demonstrable evidence of character failure on his part, which they say reflected the President Goodluck Jonathan days and the mess he made of it as presidential spokesman. His critics say with Oronto Douglas, his predecessor the former President, was smelling roses, but even after Jonathan virtually handed him a blank cheque and boundless latitude to operate when he took charge, the result was still unmitigated disaster.
By the time he was trounced by Buhari, the image of the ex-President was so bad that Nigerians preferred to vote in a man with bread label or NEPA bill as certificate instead of a PhD holder then at the Presidential Villa. Nobody needs be told the consequences of that ironical outing, given what Nigeria is today. So, vicariously, given this line of thinking, Doctor Abati cannot exculpate himself of blame from the further mess of today’s Nigeria – a consequence of his supposed character failure.
That same template erected on omniscience, arrogance and self-conceit with which he was accused of virtually messing up the well-oiled media structure Oronto left behind, thus ruining the Jonathan presidency, is what they insist have become evident in the current undertaking at The Morning Show, he hosts.
The jury is still out on this tag. But what is evident is that Doctor Abati needs some education – not the type through which he acquired all manner of academic credentials that have equipped him with such rare intellect and with which he has become such a superlative analyst on television, quintessential orator and public speaker – but the one that strips him of all forms of arrogance and purges him of every vestige of contempt for opinions outside his. He needs to attend the University of Humility and human management!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo and I’m The Tiny Voice!
I bet you didn’t know Abike Dabiri. Two factors will make this possible. Either you were not around in Nigeria in the golden era of our Nigerian television girls – the era when being a regular face on Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) gave you the golden key to open all doors – or you were somewhere in the villages very far and distant from civilization – many of us were – that included not having access to the television.
O! You didn’t know? You didn’t know a time was in this clime when seeing a television screen from a distance, was one of the biggest privileges one could get let alone watching it – that people clustered at the windows of homes with television sets to catch a glimpse of Village Headmaster, for instance.
You’re carrying shoulders because you probably met the time when carrying a Blackberry phone was all you needed to get that fine babe behind your sheets! Today, you thought that because you could now watch your matches on your phone – I watched all the AFCON matches on my phone, being on the road most times – there was no time men had to climb walls to turn television antennas to get some appreciable pictures. Chai! This changing world.
Bet you didn’t hear about Bimbo Roberts – later Bimbo Oloyede, Julie Coker and later Augusta Maduegbuna, Elizabeth Nze, Sienne Alwell-Brown, Ruth Benamesia-Opia, Eugenia Abu, Ronke Ayuba, Kehinde Young-Harry, Lola Alakija, in no particular order. No! You wouldn’t if you were not that privileged in the 1980s and even 1990s. They were the glamour of that era.
Glamour? Not in the sense of beauty – but glamour, because television made them so. For indeed, some of these television faces, were not that glamourous.
But beauty or no, Abike Dabiri was one of the discoveries of that era. Obviously not in competition with these others who were the newscasters on NTA News At Nine, she actually carved a niche for herself elsewhere on Newsline – the soft-sell edition of the station’s news programme aired every Sunday.
Abike Dabiri was a toast of that programme. She was a reporter’s reporter – traversing beyond the seven seas and seven wildernesses to bring to Nigerians those rare stories that either made Nigerians laugh their hearts out or cry their eyes out – a doyenne of human-interest reporting.
Then, suddenly – suddenly – suddenly – the serpent came with the forbidden fruit – the temptation of higher ground – the allure of high office – Tinubu’s tainted chalice that comes like glittering ornament but with hollow and rotten underbelly. She took, she ate and now everything scatter-scatter. Our dear Abike Dabiri accepted and ate the sour grape and now her teeth are set on edge! What a pity!
The breeze has blown to uncover the romp of the hen. Before now, whoever believed that our dear Abike Dabiri farts. But we now know that Abike Dabiri-Erewa not only farts, but her fart smells badly. At first, no one noticed the degeneration.
The time she was at the House of Representatives, was the golden era of Tinubu. That was when the Jagaban Borgu was the governor of Lagos State. She glowed along by tapping from glittering appeal of the Lagos show boy!
At that time, Tinubu was generally holding the golden trophy adorned with the beautiful calligraphy of democracy in Nigeria. That was before he drank from the poisoned chalice of Muhammadu Buhari, his predecessor by joining him in the hatred for the Igbo man – a phenomenon that becomes the nemesis of some Nigerian leaders – Buhari’s major insignia. Then the desperation! Then the degeneration! Now the albatross!
Now, whoever hates the Igbo and remains the same? None! That was what sealed Buhari’s fate. And surely the snake that bit that braindead archeological discovery – that museum piece – has definitely whipped Tinubu with its tail and the rest is now history. If not, compare a Tinubu as governor when he was all cozy with Ndigbo and now he has turned 360 degrees.
And as long as the darkness will give way to reveal the sun breaking from the East, the sting of the snake’s tail will reach everyone who toes that line. You know why, the dominant culture of the Igbo man is ofo n’ogu – justice, equity and fair-play! Have you watched an Igbo man pray with colanut.
He wakes up and with his cola in his hands, beckons on his chi with these words – ndu mmiri, ndu azu, mmiri atanaa, azu anwuna – the life of the river, the life of the fish – may the water not dry and may the fish not die! Egbe bere ugo bere, nke si ibeya ebena nku kwaa ya – let the kite perch and let the eagle perch – whichever says the other should not perch, may its wings whither. Which other people say the same or similar prayer elsewhere?
Now, because the kid-goat watches when the mother-goat is chewing the cud, hating the Igbo has become a fad among those who want to please Tinubu. Obviously, the totem through which this sentiment find expression is Peter Obi. He has become the tree standing by the roadside that receives the strokes of the machete. Obi has remained the hieroglyph for expressing real and imagined pro-Igbo angst.
So, in 2025, when Babajide Sanwo-Olu wanted to mend fences with Tinubu, after allegedly falling out of favour with his boss, he launched an unprovoked attack on Obi, using the latter’s Johns Hopkins University lecture as a pad. Reno Omokri, has since made himself Minister of Peter Obi Affairs. Daniel Bwala, Femi Fani-Kayode et al along this line never end a line without Obi getting a slash of their machete.
Enter our dear Abike Dabiri-Erewa. The little birds flying around whistle that her tenure as Chairman of Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiCOM) is coming to an end and she is eying a renewal or another job from the Jagaban. How else to go about it than the low-hanging fruit? – Peter Obi.
From nowhere, on Sunday, the media were suffused with the screaming headline – “Peter Obi has actually raised monsters.” As it were with syndicated stories, each of the medium used to transport the outing carried the same headline – well crafted – of course, using her journalism skill to make maximum impact.
After rambling some clearly obtuse and incoherent words in form of reasoning, she ended up with even more brainless, imbecilic and asinine submission – by the time it is Igbo turn to produce Nigerian President, Obidents – followers of Obi – would have destroyed his chances. Me paraphrasing. Chai!
Now, aunty Abike, whose turn is it now? Isn’t already the turn of Ndigbo and the selfsame Obi? Isn’t it part of the argument that the seat your Jagaban is occupying was stolen from Ndigbo? So, you know that Ndigbo also have a stake to it? Yes! You know. But now you have eaten Tinubu’s palm nuts, see how your teeth have all turned red.
But Ndigbo have another way of invoking justice – ochu nwa-okuko nwe ada ma nwa-okuko nwe nwenwe-oso! I won’t explain. Find an Igbo staff at NiMCOM – if there is one – because I hear you hate them so much that finding one near you might be impossible. But even a cleaner in your office could help or better still – ask your spare parts seller. He’s sure to be Igbo!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
Justice Centus Nweze was one of the seven S’Court justices that gave the judgement sacking Emeka Ihedioha and pronouncing Hope Uzodinma Governor of Imo State on January 14, 2020.
He later recanted when Ihedioha returned to the same court and declared that Uzodinma was no longer fit and proper to be governor – the only one out of the seven to hold a different view out of the seven-man panel in a dissenting judgement.
These were his exact words on March 3, 2020, with which he emphasised his position after disavowing his earlier position, to capture the impact and import of that event: “The decision of Nigeria’s Supreme Court on the Imo governorship election is wrong and will continue to haunt our (Nigeria’s) electoral jurisprudence for a long time to come.”
But, on Monday, February 6, 2023, Nweze himself, was to lead the same Supreme Court to give another highly controversial judgement – one – legal purists considered no less impactful and damaging to Nigeria’s legal jurisprudence.
It was the 3-2 Supreme Court decision that paved the way for Ahmad Lawan, former Senate President, to return to the Senate, despite being supposedly barred by an existing law forbidding politicians to contest for two different positions in an election circle.
Recall that Lawan, was one of the candidates that contested for the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC), a few months earlier, which was eventually won by Bola Ahmed Tinubu, now President of Nigeria.
Many had practically laughed it off, dismissing him as a jester, when he returned with a fresh struggle for the Yobe North ticket for the Senate under the same APC.
But it turned out that the real joke was on these naysayer, who taunted, mocked and even pilloried the former Nigeria’s number three citizen, because in the end, he came out thumbing his chest and shinning his teeth in triumph.
Reason! On Monday, February 6, 2023, the Supreme Court practically wrenched the APC ticket from Bashir Machina, who had earlier picked it at the APC primaries months earlier and handed same over to Lawan.
Guess whom the mantle fell on to read the lead-judgement? The selfsame Nweze, who made the statement above. With two others in support, he went ahead to decapitate the decision of the Court of Appeal, which had earlier thrown into the thrash-can Lawan’s appeal to a Federal High Court decision slamming his claim to the ticket.
Interestingly, Lawan, seemed too ashamed to continue with the matter after the attempt at the appellate court collapsed. He had to hide under the umbrella of the APC, who appealed on his behalf to get the judgement at the apex court.
But you know what? On July 30, 2023, Centus Nweze, died! Just barely six months after the outing. He was just 64 – six years shy of age of retirement for Nigerian judges.
Now, the story. A little message-bearing-bird, squealed that the late eminent jurist didn’t die a happy man.
The establishment was said to have moved in to make him eat his words for stepping out of line in the Uzodinma case. The decision was supposed to be unanimous and giving a dissenting judgement was an affront – more like challenging the gods!
The Lawan outing was the height of teaching him a lesson on how to play ball next time. And play ball he did!
He was procured to read the lead judgement as a way to punish his impudence, underscore his vulnerability and prove where the real power laid.
An erudite scholar, judicial perfectionist and purist of the highest order, whose track record was known beyond the judicial circle, he not only became a wreck thereafter, and unable to live with his conscience, he apparently died a broken man.
Now, it is hard to authenticate this. Nweze is no longer alive to tell his story. But it all the same points as an indicator to the fact that a lot of water passes under the bridge in the nation’s high places, including the judiciary.
Were Nweze alive today, may be one day, in his memoir or other places, Nigeria could read the true story of what actually happened with Lawan, with powerful forces and with intimidation. But do we even need to go that far?
In which other country of the world has the homes of judges been burst open in the middle of the night – many still in their underpants or completely in their birthday suits?
In which other country, has the Chief Judge of the country suffered the fate meted out to Walter Onnoghen by the executive branch of government? Did we not see these with our own eyes?
Has Nigeria been the same ever since? So, if you looked around today and you didn’t find the Kayode Esos, Chukwudifu Oputas, Niki Tobis et al, who looked the military in the face and dispensed justice according to law, who do you blame?
Who is the culprit if the only people who you see are those who receive keys to mansions and sing lustfully – On Your Mandate We Shall Stand? Through where did water enter the coconut?
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
What was the offence that swept Adrew Cuomo out of office as former governor of New York? You don’t know? Okay, I’ll tell you. He was accused of touching women, including hugging them without their permission. That was considered inappropriate. Fiam! Out he went! That was the end of it.
But you know what? It is the culture of Italians, where Cuomo hails to grab people, embrace them and even kiss them as an expression of warmth and friendship – no string attached. But did that help his case? No! He was a politician, occupying a high position. And cuddling people – women or no – was inappropriate for such a position. And Cuomo doing so, it was not only fatal, it was final!
Now, there is a bigger example. What chased Boris Johnson out of office as Prime Minister of UK? You still don’t know? Again, here is the answer. First, he drank tea and shared a couple of drinks with his colleagues in government during COVID-19. Then the fatal blow – he appointed a cabinet Minister who had a case of abusing a woman.
O tan! Magana yakari! Okwu agwu! In both cases, the two apologised. But their apologies were not directed at retaining their offices. They were for their inappropriate behaviours. The apologies neither vitiated, mitigated, nor cured the consequences, prominent of which was loss of their individual jobs.
Now, imagine the selfsame Boris Johnson announcing the appointment of a dead man into his cabinet. What do you think would happen to him? But how many times has President Bola Tinubu announced the appointment of dead people for public institutions? How many times has he included the names of dead people for national awards as if they were living?
Again, imagine the fate of Cuomo, if he were the one who was caught in a private jet massaging the feet of a woman in such a cozy and lascivious manner as the one seen in a recent viral video? What do you think the American society would have done to him?
So, you hear Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, declaring on national television – with a chunk of global viewership that what stopped him from shooting and kpaying Seun Okinbaloye of Channels Television is the barrier of the TV screen.
Outside that, if he had the way of breaking the screen, our dear Seun would have been resting somewhere in the morgue in Abuja or joining his ancestors in his home of Kwara State.
As you read this, some 72 hours after, he is still in office signing papers for land allocations and supervising the carving out of plots for new estates to emerge out of Jabi Lake precincts – an enclave sustained and maintained by successive governments as probably the only remaining arena for public recreation – in an entire nation’s capital city – to boot!
Surely, you’re hearing the ballyhoo, abi? Some people are even calling for his head! What a laugh! Calling for Wike’s head! In this Nigeria? People joke too much. If Wike is no longer the Wike we know – if he is stripped of his Odogwu power – who would take over and do what he does? Remember if it is not Panadol, it cannot be the same as Panadol.
Who would hold PDP down to ensure that Tinubu has no opposition in 2027? Who has the blank mind to sequester Rivers State the way he is doing such that Sim Fubara, Governor of Rivers state is not only a shadow of himself but a shadow of what his office should be? You people should think! Don’t just talk. What you’re demanding is impossible.
Now, don’t even imagine that it were the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK that said that he would shoot Piers Morgan of US Secretary of State that said he was so angry over a comment made by Andy Cooper that he would have shot him! Don’t even go there. The heavens would fall! On their head! Practically!
But surely, you must have read Wike’s response. If you didn’t, know it that he is blaming Nigerians as usual. He says the outrage by citizens is engineered by those doing a hatchet job, “as instrument of blackmail and propaganda by those whose intent is to misrepresent facts for political gains!”
Now, you could be sure that’s the end of the matter. Go wager on it anywhere. Nothing would come out of it. You would probably be hearing about it for the last time within some more few hours from now. Soon, another drama will overshadow it from the theatre house that has become Tinubu’s Nigeria. Just watch.
Come to think of it, who would speak or act in such a manner to check Wike or make him circumspect, wiser or more prudent with his utterances? Who is Wike afraid of? Who would he fear? Is it Tinubu, who himself is full of drama? Didn’t you see the sordid show he put up in Jos, Plateau, hours before Wike’s outing? What is the worth of Nigerians that would make Tinubu sacrifice Wike? That’s a joke!
Which other President across the sane world would instead of visiting the locus in quo – the scene of kpaying of 30 persons in his country – stop at an airport and ask for the victims to be brought to him? And if you took in his puerile explanation that he was pressed for time, ask him if Jos was an isolated case.
Was it not an encore of Benue, when he visited the state over the slaughtering of more than 200 people in Yelwata. Did he visit Yelwata? Did he not stop in Makurdi where he left the grieving people with some phantom and banal words, just like he did in Jos last week.
The only element that politicians are afraid of is election. That is why Cuomo suffered his fate in the US. The snake that bit Cuomo in the US was the same that whipped Cameron with its tail. The reason even Donald Trump is thrashing around frantically today is because the mid-term elections are around the corner and he knows the consequences of losing out.
But here, it is a different kettle of fish. It is either a Yakubu Mahmoud is there in INEC to create “technical glitches” to ingratiate and enable the patrons of grab, snatch and run-away brand or a Joash Amupitan is ensuring that his own INEC will make sure that the patron becomes a sole candidate in his own show.
In other climes, citizens wait to use the power of their thumbs to create the change they need, but here, that door is completely shut in their face. INEC and the judiciary will make sure of that. And might you think of a different approach – I’m sure you saw the bigger show at INEC headquarters last week. Those mint military machines you saw on display were not for fancy.
It is no longer guesswork that the Nigerian military has the best equipment around in this part of the world, the ability to use them more on the citizens than the terrorists for whom they were acquired have also been clearly proven on many occasions. You don’t need to go far to see the left overs. The evidence is there at Lekki Tollgate and other parts of the country.
So, head or tail, Wike stays. Of course, if you do anyhow, you see anyhow! Naturally, there is always a consolation. In the instant case, Lere Olayinka, Wike’s spokesman, told the world that Brother Seun and Wike have spoken on phone about the incident. If you fail to understand that aspect of the conversation a la Nigeria – na you sabi! The joke is on you!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
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