The Achebe Challenge To Anyaoku and Others
By Theodore Ezediokpu
A friend of mine who hails from Osun State but practises law in Lagos has a wife from Etiti, Imo State, also a lawyer. He recently travelled by road to see his in laws in the village, and was scandalised at the condition of federal roads in the Southeast. On return to Lagos, the first thing he asked me was: "Please, what do well-known Igbo personalities, including ministers, tell the president about the state of federal infrastructure in Igboland, where it exists at all?" I could not answer this question because I could not hazard any guess. Shortly after, another friend from the Southwest who works in the Universal Trust Bank in Lagos travelled by road to Imo State for the burial of her boss's father. She has not stopped to be amazed at the so-called federal roads she saw and experienced, vowing nothing could ever take her to the East again. As if she had the lawyer's discussion with me, the lady asked: "what do your big men who work with Obasanjo or see him tell him about the state of roads in the East?" Once again, I had no answer.
But ever since then I have on occasion found myself asking, "what do people from our area who have access to Obasanjo tell him about his unbelievable alliance with certain characters from the East to destroy Anambra State, for one?" I was planning to write an article on this issue when God a few days ago rebuked Obasanjo through the world-renowned novelist and social analyst, Prof. Chinua Achebe, author of the well quoted books, Things Fall Apart and The Trouble With Nigeria, among others.
In declining the Commander of Federal Republic honour the President had proposed to bestow on him, Prof. Achebe said in polite but firm and inimitable language: "Nigeria's condition under your watch is ... too dangerous for silence .... I write this letter with a very heavy heart. For sometime now, I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay. I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my home into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the presidency".
Three indigenes of Anambra State I know who enjoy the president's personal respect are: Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, Obasanjo's Senior Special Assistant on Due Process who seems also to work as his personal pastor, and Chief Gilbert Chikelu, a highly regarded technocrat and whose son is the Information Minister, as well Chief Emeka Anyaoku, immediate past Secretary-General of the Commonwealth. What do they tell the president about his despicable role in the Anambra State political crisis? I have always wondered. I have not bordered so much about Mrs Ezekwesili and Chief Chikelu as about Chief Anyaoku. Mrs Ezekwesili, being a relatively young political appointee of the president, may not be able to look him in the face and tell him the bitter, home truth. Chief Chikelu a career civil servant is not known to ruffle feathers, even when it is absolutely necessary to do so.
Chief Anyaoku, on the other hand, may appear too diplomatic and gentle in utterances and conduct. But he is capable of generating fire in his eyes, as his surname suggest ! When Sani Abacha turned into a demon in the late 1990s by jailing Obasanjo and others on trumped up charges, Chief Anyaoku who was then the Commonwealth Secretary-General mobilised the entire organisation and a substantial part of the international community against the monstrous regime. He was obviously a marked man. At different gatherings in Abuja, Abacha's barely literate National Security Adviser, Alhaji Ismaila Gwarzo, consistently warned people against mentioning Chief Anyaoku's name. Fully aware that the regime was composed of desperadoes, the Commonwealth chief scribe kept away from Nigeria for years for the first time in his working life, thus denying himself the much sought after opportunity of savouring his favorite bitterleaf soup!
Obasanjo should still be indebted to Chief Anyaoku for the heroic role in saving his life under Abacha. No wonder, when Anyaoku visited Obasanjo on his farm at Otta, Ogun State, shortly after his release from Abacha's Gulag, Obasanjo received him with the exuberance of an overexcited teenager. As I am writing, I have before me a memorable photograph in the Nigerian press of the meeting between Anyaoku and Obasanjo, a photograph masterfully taken by Sunmi Smart-Cole. Obasanjo is in flight in the attempt to hug Anyaoku! When he became president, Obasanjo made the former Commonwealth Secretary-General the honourary chairman of his advisory board on foreign affairs
It is, therefore, a cruel irony of history that since his ascendancy, Obasanjo has been aping Sanni Abacha. Just the way Abacha targeted the Yoruba to be dealt with is the manner Obasanjo has been bent on destroying the Southeast, beginning with Anambra, Chief Anyaoku's home state. Not satisfied with the less than annihilating role of his erratic but long-standing friend, Jacob SPC Nwokolo, from Abagana, Obasanjo recruited one Emeka Offor, a former tractor driver, to be his Viceroy in the Southeast. Discovering that Offor and Vice President Atiku Abubakar are like Siamese twins, Obasanjo now turned to one Christian Uba, the only barely literate member of a family of educated people, and recruited him to head what Achebe has properly called "a small clique of renegades" to turn Anambra State into "a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom".
There are no atrocities this cabal has not committed. It has substituted names of candidates in an election who were declared winners by the electoral commission with names of people who did not even stand the election. It has physically manhandled the Anambra State Governor, and on another occasion kidnapped him with the support of an Assistant Inspector General of Police. It has corrupted at least two high court judges to give irresponsible judgments, one in Abuja and the other in Enugu. It has made outrageous financial demands on the Anambra state government which, if granted, will impoverish the state for several decades. And having vowed to make the state ungovernable until the high performing state governor is removed and replaced with one of their own kind, it has done everything possible to make the state anarchic. It has got the Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice to direct the ruling Peoples Democratic Party to disregard the legitimate orders of the Anambra State High Court which do not favour it. It has taken many state legislators to shrines to swear an oath of total allegiance to it. It has got Obasanjo to try to stop Govornor Chris Ngige's impressive roads rehabilitation programme.
In the clique war against civilised values and order, it has enjoyed every inch of the way Obasanjo's absolute support. It is strange that the Obasanjo government which claims to be desirous of fighting corruption is insisting on having as the PDP Chairman in Anambra State, one Uche Emordi who was sacked from Orient Bank for several scandalous malpractices which brought the bank to its knees. The person Emordi wants to replace is Ivy Obi-Okoye, a senior member of this gang who has been suspended from law practice by the Nigerian Bar Association for irresponsible professional behaviour. Another member, Chuma Nzeribe has been in and out of several detention facilities in Nigeria, including the dreaded Directorate of Military Intelligence where he spent several months for offences bordering on national security. Nzeribe was the leader of the Bakassi Boys, during which he was always on the run from the police who denounced him for numerous extra-judicial killings, illegal arrest and gross violations of human rights. Now that he is with Chris Uba, Nzeribe has suddenly become one of Obasanjo's hatchet men. As for Chris Uba, his story as a wheeler dealer is too well known to be repeated here.
By citing as one of the reasons for the rejection of the CFR honour Obasanjo's unleashing of a battalion of demons on Anambra to overrun the state, Prof. Chinua Achebe has thrown a challenge to the likes of Chief Emeka Anyaoku and Gilbert Chikelu. These elite should either publicly speak up on behalf of the people or .... Let them take a cue from the statesman, Chief Arthur Mbanefo, Obasanjo's immediate past Permanent Representative to the United Nations, who has consistently drummed up support for Governor Ngige because "he's our last hope" for redemption.
Ezediokpu lives in Lagos
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