Just recently the DSS invited a friend of mine and bonafide son of Nnewi, Chief (Dr) Ifeanyi Ubah of Capital Oil & Gas Ltd fame to come
and give an account of the whereabouts millions of litres of PMS stored by NNPC on his Tank farms.
Since this invitation, I have read some funny write ups online in defence of the Nnewi Chief and some trying to read ethnic meaning to DSS intervention. Now the truth is this: My good friend Chief Ifeanyi Ubah is capable of defending himself and Capital Oil & Gas Ltd.
He has formidable structures in place and good lawyers to defend his case. He does not need yahoo, yahoo boys and girls and frustrated political hustlers to defend himself. He does not need internet rats and professional pay- me-i-write-for-you fraudsters.
What I have been reading about this drama online is totally uncalled for. It is ridiculous, shameful and at best, clannish. This brigandage did not start today. When Deziani Allison Madueke was declared wanted by EFCC for fraud in the oil industry we saw this kind of shameless interventions from even people who should know better and those with full dose of Western education.
When Stella Oduah was being probed for purchase of BMW cars at unbelievable prices never known in history, some Igbo leaders rose to her defence. They erected billboards in the SouthEast and celebrated her with a chieftaincy title, Ada Igbo Nile. The impression being created is that Igbo prominent citizens are being persecuted because they are Igbo.
I call this persecution complex, leadership complex and defeatism syndrome. It is even annoying that Col. Sambo Dasuki’s defense is being done not by his northern brothers but Igbo who are sworn to bland defense of everything PDP. They are the most fanatical mourners of the loss of Jonathan and PDP even when the Ijaws have moved on.
NIA boss, Ayo Oke has been facing series of interrogations at EFCC concerning Osborne Towers 15 billion Naira cash haul and I have not read any Yoruba defending him. Babachir Lawal, the suspended, SFG is being probed for contract scam and yet I have not seen his kinsmen rising in his defence.
They allow investigations to go the whole hog. There are litanies of such trial of corrupt people going on everywhere in Nigeria and except Igbo who always mount very embarrassing and tepid defense of Igbo tried for corruption, no other race indulge in such demeaning art, yet Ala Igbo is noted as a land where our ancestors and forefathers abhor evil and treat corruption with unambiguous disapproval from even pre-colonial times.
What is wrong with present day Igbo. What we see today is not our tradition. It is not our culture. Let nobody rewrite our history, our culture, and our tradition of eziokwu bu ndu ( truth is life). We see this funny re-occurring decimal more in the South East and South South and this is becoming a national embarrassment. It must stop.
I am told that stupidity is knowing the truth, seeing the truth but believing in lies. Igbo are a very hard working, proud and successful tribe but we need to come down from a 30,000 feet storey building to make sense to other Nigerians.
We need to stop this aberration that is demeaning and ridiculing Igbo in NIGERIA today. We need to caution ourselves before we become objects of ridicule and butts of ribaldry of other Nigerians as is dangerously becoming the fad in the country today.
Joe Igbokwe writes from Lagos
