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Chimaroke Nnamani as Obasanjo's Latest Cheerleader |
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Sunday, 17 October 2004 |
The annals of history has borne witness to the rise and fall of bloody sycophants and hypocrites, callous tyrants and spineless traitors. They configured themselves into the crooked timbers, out of which history’s worst crimes were hewed and sculpted. They prided themselves in their self-delusional allergy to goodness. Their ruthless greed created monsters of deceit out of them. While they held court, they felt invincible. They raised their murderously leprous hands on the purveyors of truth and goodness. They invaded and raped the temples of truth in order to sequestrate truth in service to their avarice.
But history always paid them in kind.
Their names have forever being inscribed with the inks of infamy on the writing pads of history. They are forever assigned pages of dishonour, and interred in history’s halls of infamy. There they reside eternally in frozen opprobrium and everlasting disrepute. The most significant aspect of it, is that they are mourned derisively with scorn and irrelevance. They are merely cited as footnotes of accidental import, that holds no positive interest for men of character. Judas has eternally fossilized into an irredeemable Traitor, who auctioned off his master for sordid money. Macbeth will forever bear the unimpeachable imprint of the murderer, who killed innocent sleep in service to his vaulting ambition. Brutus will forever remain the rogue that slaughtered the bonds of friendship at the instance of envious ambition. These are some historical examples.
It has stood out to note that whenever a rendition of contemporary Igbo history in Nigeria, is replayed, some men will stand out as traitors extra-ordinary, who destroyed the collective aspirations of their people in imbecilic service to pecuniary considerations. Men like Arthur Nzeribe, Chris Ubah, Emeka Offor, Chinwoke Mbadinuju, and lately Chimaroke Nnamani will invariably stand out for scorn and derision. Not minding the fact that when greedy wills converge, avarice is crowned a king. And that pursuant to that jaundiced and narcissistic vision, lies are re-engineered to beat the social watchdogs of truth. We know that history has never failed to give every traitor a rejoinder of his treachery.
In Nigeria, Ndigbo have been short-changed only with the active complicity of their leaders, casting provenance on the age-long Igbo calabash of wisdom, to the effect that, it was the rat living and enjoying the sybaritic and unearned comforts of the house, that went and informed his kin resident in the bush, that there were some fishy delicacy in the basket. Some of these inglorious leaders, rose to bound our aspirations, and auctioned it off for mere pittance, in order to gain some cheap and ephemeral consideration in the esteem of those who bear us ill. They sold their birthright for a cheap platter of messy porrige, like Esau of old.
Obasanjo has never hidden his congenital dislike of Ndigbo and all that they represent. This accounts for his tyrannical highhandness in attacking and destroying Igbo holdings wherever he could found them. But he would never have recorded any successes without the active collusion and collaboration of his page-boys across the length and breadth of Igboland. But these mentally challenged traitors have not learnt lessons from the fate of that befell all traitors of history, and most contemporaneously, all those who helped Obasanjo in sabotaging the birth of Igbo renaissance.
In history, no traitor ever arrived at a reputable station or berthed at the harbours of dignified rememberance. They all fizzled away like inglorious meteorites or smoke puffs of pollutory import; constituting some shameful and embarrasing footnotes to the chronicles of history. Like earlier broached, Macbeth, one of the greatest Generals of his time, who battled armies and armadas, conquered lands and peoples, fought great battles and won great wars, spoiled great cities and decimated mighty nations, ended up a vagrant slave to the dictates of some weird apparitional fraudsters, who preying on his greed and ambition, led him into writing his name forever, in bloody cowardice, as a cold blooded murderer of sleep. A brave warrior, held captive by ambitious greed, brought himself and his dignity so low, as to succumb in canonization of the worst form of poltroonery, that he could not even bear to look his victim in the face. He murdered him while he slept; when his eyes were closed in peaceful rest. Macbeth geometrically retrogressed from a hero to an enfeebled rascal of all times. What a base manner to leave history’s stage. Brutus was another great literary/historical scoundrel. He betrayed and back-stabbed his most trusted friend. For his eternal recompense, his name gave rise to that which came to summarize all that is wicked, base and ruthless-’Brutality’. One notices a strain that runs through these great traitors of history. They are equally great cowards. Macbeth could not look Duncan straight in the face. He has to murder him while he slept. Brutus could not look the great Ceasar in the face. He had to stab him from the back. The same posture obtains among all Igbo traitors, the ranks of which Chimaroke Nnamani has joined. Chimaroke launched into a diatribe bashing Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, on behalf of Obasanjo, but in his cowardice akin to that of legendary traitors, he could not muster the courage to call him by name. Though the mouth and voice were Chimaroke’s, the words were Obasanjo’s. Just read for yourself:
This was a time it could be said that if he was hateful of Ndigbo, at all, he actually had their underbelly when his advancing Third Marine Division defeated Biafran Army. In that period, we had a situation where the deans of Biafran regime... especially those who had made mediations and reconciliation impossible,as the late General Philip Effiong broadcat to the Biafra nation, had voluntarily removed themselves from our midst (Chimaroke, Ibid, P.3, Par.3)
It is still difficult to understand why many of those actors are either too discrete to step forward and restate the facts of the scenario fairly as well as they have been represented in well publicized accounts. May be they have been too stunned by the duplicity of such MORE PROMINENT BIAFRA LEADERS, who have gotten more of government patronage and recognition, since the war.( Chimaroke, Ibid., P.3 Par 4)
The above citations and the strenous attempt made by Chimaroke to crypticall insult Ojukwu are all glaring. But in his imbecilic cowardice, he stopped shy of calling Ojukwu by name as the person he was directing his gaseous fulminations at. He knows that his executive incompetence would not save him from the floodgates of Biafran fury, which would greet any direct insult at His Excellency, Dim Emeka Ojukwu. Chimaroke can afford to insult Ojukwu because Ndigbo have it that Nza the bird, fed fat, and deemed himself now potent enough to challenge his god to a duel. This posture of cowardice abundantly showed by Nnamani has been the exclusive province of traitors. Every traitor is a great coward. And every traitor’s star will consume itself in the heat of its own unwisdom. A little anaylsis of his forunners in treachery will shed more light on our position here.
Jim Nwobodo was the traitorous joker used by OBJ in 1999 to dislodge Ekwueme’s run for the presidential nomination. He allowed himself to be used, because Igbo aspiration meant nothing in his considerations. He prefered bags of ‘Ghana-Must-Go’ to right reason, which recommended Ekwueme a better candidate than the buffoonery of Obasanjo. And since wherever money is in command, bullshit is bound to work. That was why bullshit works more in Nigeria today under Obasanjo, than it ever did under the tatoo-faced and dark-goggled General Sanni ‘de Thief’ Abacha. James Nwobodo thought that he has purchased an immunity or life insurance policy that spares his being eaten up by Obasanjo after decimating Ndigbo. Late did he realise that an appeaser a la Winston Churchill only feeds the crocodile hoping and praying that it will eat him last. When Obasanjo sat safely on an ill-gotten presidential saddle, he sought for heads to trample upon, like an enraged kraken. Nwobodo’s head equally came to the decapitation block. His Savannah bank was torpedoed to liquidation, even when the base capital of the bank against all reason and logic indicated otherwise. Savannah was declared sick through the vengful quackery of Obasanjo, even when all diagnosis shows a healthy, robust bank. The objective was to deal with Jim Nwobodo by scuttling the flagship of his investments. The hippopotamus has eaten up the guy that fed him with his brothers. Nwobodo was taught an everlasting lesson. Traitors will never live to enjoy their 30 pieces of silver. More awaits them. Not only that, heaven and earth will reject them. The elements will too join in rejecting them. Today, I wonder any true Igbo save the sycophants, that revere Nwobodo or really commiserate with his self-inflicted misfortune.
Orji Uzor kalu was once a willing tool in the hands of PDP gangsters. He was at the head of that infernal congress of Igbo traitors, used in eviscerating the backbone of Ekwueme’s aspiration to the presidency in 2003, just like Jim Nwobodo did in 1999. When this monstrously murderous political crocodile was dining off the limbs of good governance, and making a mincemeat of stability in Anambra state, Orji felt good pocketing his 30 pieces of silver in the form of Obasanjo’s patronage. Slok Air was allowed an operating licence to funnel some profits into the pockets of Orji and his gang. He sacrificed Igbo collective aspirations for his selfish ends. But the crocodile whose hunger cannot be assuaged quickly ran out of fodder and equally out of patience. No new territory is left unbetrayed. He noticed that the guy feeding him, namely Orji uzor Kalu, was equally made of Igbo flesh and blood; his favorite delicacy. It sought for more. It came steathily for Orji Uzor through his ‘Fixing’ minister. Orji screamed out loud like a chicken about to be devoured by the kite. That vociferation saved his ass a bit longer for another day of frying. The stealth messenger kite having lost the element of suprise that informed his stealth in the first instance, though enraged and disempowered, backed off, waiting for another opportunity. Orji rejoiced at his presumed cleverness in rousing and coaxing public interest to his favour, little did he know that a great thing was last in coming. The traitor could never be allowed the peace to dine off the proceeds of his betrayal. Slok Airline, a flagship of Orji’s selfish interests was de-winged. No reasons essayed to justify the grounding of Slok Air, save Obasanjo’s enraged ego, insatiable vindictiveness and unparalleled Igbophobia. One wonders if Orji has really learnt any lessons at all.
George Santayana’s words, that those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it, have enjoyed an unparalleled historical regularity in Igbo land, Mr. Chimaroke Nnamani, having betrayed the fact of his being a very poor student of history has condemned himself to repeating it. Chimaroke Nnamani rose up in the courts of public opinion, stripped himself naked in brazen ignorance and announced to Obasanjo and his crew of igbophobes, that he was ready to be a dog for the sake of a piece of rickety bone, which is the vice presidential slot for 2007. This inglorious announcement, which tendering an apology to JP Clark, will mercifully be designated as the ‘Song of a castrated he-goat’ came in the form of an article titled ‘Obasanjo, Ndigbo and History’ published simultaneously by Thisday Newspapers and the author’s own parochially insular, and megalomanic self-advertisment website http://www.ebeano.org/articles/obasanjo_ndigbo_history.html. We would plunge straight into a phenomenological appraisal of this article in question, which reeks of an unvarnished and maladrous whitewashing of the truth, with layers of sugar-coated fictions and manufactured facts, to lick the convulsively ugly and undeodorized arses of power.
Chimaroke Nnamani wrote himself into disrepute the day, he assumed the mouthpiece and the latest cheerleader to the Obasanjo’s mismanagement of Nigeria, and avowed goal of eviscerating and disembowelling Igbo renaissance in Nigeria. His was a perfect example of what happens, when men whose stock in trade is the peddling of cant and unvarnished sycophancy latch onto state power. In this instance, greed collides with ambition, and a collusion of the greedy is born, to turn truth on its head, canonize falsehood and distort facts on the ground in service to his unholy ambitions. What Chimaroke wrote was simply imbecility elevated to an ontological level. A corrugated piece of malodorously unmerited praise sang to soothe the deranged nerves of an oafish tyrant. Lines and lines of this piece of unedited trash reeked with unvarnished and inveterate bootlicking. I concede him his right to grovel, and in self-induced senility bend his knees in intractable subservience at the altars of his avarice. After all, Kenneth Tynan summarized it well, when he wrote that ‘It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheats, to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths, to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of good will." This is to say, that when vaulting ambition and selfishness calls, fools rise to obey, while holding up the decapitated head of their mothers as sacrifice for their avarice.
In the first paragraph of this song of a sycophant, Chimaroke Nnamani betrayed the raging war between his sub-conscious and his pretences. His sub-conscious was intransigent and recalcitrant in its righteous revolt; ceaselessly informing Chimaroke of his irredeemable ignorance and grotesque incompetence, in the area he was about to dabble into. But he was far gone down the miry pit of habitual greed to pay any heed. His conscience which has been progressively compromised and blunted by avarice and bloody tastes for power, could not withstand the present onslaught on its fragile sensibilities. Despite that, he knew he was posturing in a hypocritical contradistinction to the dictates of his conscience. Yet he went on. Suffice it note that this impulsive need to project an image at the expense of one’s true feelings is the classical characteristic of narcissistic personalities. For Chimaroke; his pretences ignored the factual realities on the ground and went on ahead to write and speak ex cathedra on a province, where his incompetence is monumental, and his lies most apparent. That was why he spent the opening paragraph trying to garner some authority and legitimacy; pedestals upon which he was to unleash his mutilated and doctored version of history to appease his Abuja masters. He wrote as follows: With the benefit of five and half years of democratic practice, as both a leading player in my state and front row observer/participant at what obtains at the more global nation State, I will hardly escape giving my own version of contemporary description of statesmanship, that is attendant to relations with various sections of the Nigerian Federation( Cf. Chimaroke Nnamani; Obasanjo, Ndigbo and History, http://www.ebeano.org/articles/obasanjo_ndigbo_history.html., Par.1)
A vivisection of the first paragraph will yield the hidden hues and psychology at play during its construction. Like I reiterated earlier, this paragraph portrays whoever wrote this article, which Chimaroke appended his name to, as someone quite unsure of himself. He needed some prop ups, before venturing into an area that he is grossly incompetent to handle. Chimaroke really did not need to posit his five years as a rigged-in governor of Enugu State, as a basis for a sweeping generalization about the Igbo plight in Nigeria with special reference to Obasanjo, which in the later part of his piece he rightly came to acknowlege dated back to 1914. Chimaroke should have at least posited the factors and build up to the Biafran war in order to be fair to history. Five years is notoriously inadequate to explain a phenomenon ontologically etched in the genetic blueprints of the Nigeria federation. Furthermore, he posited himself as ‘a front row observer/participant at what obtains at the more global nation state’, as another qualification that empowers and legitimizes his indiscretions in that piece. Well, he was first of all an observer and secondly a participant. That is true. He was an observer when Jim Nwobodo brought him out of irrelevance and virtual nothingness and imposed him on the people of Enugu State in 1999. He was an observer when Ugochukwu Agballa ate up the votes and tore the papers that showed Nduka Agu beating Chimaroke at the primaries, all at the instance of Jim Nwobodo. He was an observer when Nwobodo climbed the fences of Enugu South LGA headquarters and other vote collation centres to rig him into office. That was in 1999. He was an observer when 14 of innocent citizens of his state were massacre at the Adoration ground praying centre at GTC grounds, Enugu by men suspected to be agents of the state government, and he, the chief security officer kept observing as no culprits were found nor indicted. In 2003, he became a participant. He learnt the act of thuggery and political rigging well from Jim Nwobodo his master. A man sitting astride a stolen mandate has no moral authority to givie us that bull crap about ‘five years of democratic practice’, as what he benefitted from was neither democracy nor its practice. I wonder what was democratic in arming secret cult boys of ESUT and IMT to murder one’s political opponent, and double as armed robbers. I wonder what is practically democratic for Nwabueze Ugwu, a vehement critic of Enugu State government’s policies to lose his brother to some ‘government approved’ assassins. The democratic practice in Enugu state used as a basis by Chimaroke to explode his callous subservience to Obasanjo, is the democracy that has transformed Enugu State from the most peaceful and tranquil citadel surrounded by hills, to the city, with the highest crime rate in the South East and the city with the record of most violent deaths and secret cult wars in Nigeria. All these constitute the sociological observatory from which Chimaroke rose to ventilate ‘his own version of the description of statesmanship, that is attendant to relations with various sections of the Nigerian Federation’. This governor has not succeeded in solving the intractable problems of his state. He is rather creating more by creating a dichotomy between Agbani and Enugu state, as the capital of Enugu has now been ideologically and infrastructurally relocated to Agbani. He is equally bent on disfiguring the face of Enugu, and embezzling the scenic beauty and ecological integrity of Enugu concieved by M.I Okpara and Akanu Ibiam out of existence. He has cleared the little forest of pine trees, spanning the Dr. Micheal Okpara Sqare and The Federal Court of Appeal for some building project of questionable utility and value. This shows the mental capacities of this observer/participant in a modern world that is fanatical about environmental protection.
In the second paragraph, he introduced what in his opinion could pass for the pivot upon which his quasi-adulation and whitewashing of Obasanjo’s excesses, revolves. But he was dead wrong. We are in the courts of logic and history, and both cannot suffer patiently some illogical somersaults designed to hoodwink the unwary. Chimaroke wrote in paragraphy 2, as follows: Indeed, most Nigerian leaders, past and present, have had to contend with their individual abilities or chances to fit into the roles perceived for them by the more vocal and articulate elements of their immediate environments or localities. The have faced as well the pressure of what the others outside their ethnic origin perceived of them, especially as they ascended higher positions of national responsibility.(Cf. Ibid., Par.2) A conclusion heavily supported by this paragraph, after a careful exegesis is that a new speech writer has been employed in the Enugu State government house. The speech writer betrays his lack of training in logic, philosophy of language and hermeneutics, which is a conditio sine qua non for every man whose calling is writing for public consumption. I would have recommended for his immediate firing, but for the fact that Chimaroke decided to fly on the wings of this guy’s monumental disabilities to hoist his flags of sycophancy and betrayal of Igbo aspirations. So much for the unspoken dimension of the text in question. Now to the text proper.
That most Nigerian leaders spent their time contending with their individual abilities and chances to fit into roles perceived for them, a la Chimaroke rightly underscores the fact, that we have never had a leader in Nigeria. If a leader is defined as he who knows the way and shows it, how then could we identify a man as a leader, while he spends his time unsure of who he is or where he is going? How can we reconcile his chameolonic vacillation between his disabilities and his ego identity? Such a person is so very unfit to rule a herd of cattle let alone a nation of human beings. The Socratic dictum urged man to know himself. This is most importantly recommended for philosophers. And the Plato’s republican philosophy urged kings or rulers to become philosophers. How then could a man who does not know himself; who is unsure of who he is; who spends his time contending and striving to meet the people’s fluid opinion of him be termed a leader? Well enough, the human sub-conscious can never lie. That was why Sigmund Freud told the world that ‘A Slip of tongue’ as we are wont to call it is never a mistake, but the irrepressible explosion of a fact, known to the mind, which the ego is essaying very much to suppress. Psychology here has proven its validity once again. The unseen lines revealed by the discription has been noted, to the effect that Chimaroke personifies in himself, this schizophrenic dichotomy between his ego and the people’s perception of him. That is why he fiddles to praise his Most Arrogant Holiness, Saint Obasanjo the First, while Enugu state decays. He is so alien to the pulsations of the people he claims to be governing, so much so that his subject obeyed a sit-down order handed down by MASSOB; what in his estimation, will go for a rag-tag army of ne’r do wells, and daring him and his Abuja masters to do their worst. This shows that despite all pretences to the contrary, Chimaroke may be the governor of Enugu state, but he is not and has never been a leader. And were a free election to be held today in Enugu State with Chimaroke and Ejike Mbaka on the ballot, I will not bet heavily on ‘his excellency’ winning 2% of the votes.
Obasanjo, who he remotely implied in that second paragraph, is no leader. I have never seen a leader without a constituency; without followers. But the whole of Nigeria which OBJ claimed voted massively for him in 2003, obeyed the NLC a few days ago and in the process passed a vote of no confidence on OBJ’s leadership. But this guy is so dumb to realise that. His propaganda minister even went on air to ‘thank Nigerians for the failure of the strike’. I wonder how a strike action that crippled Nigeria for 3 days and led to the loss of millions of naira in lost man hours could be characterized a failure. It is only an idiot, a blind man, a fool or a liar that will make such a characterization. This shows the kind of leadership we have in Nigeria. And this is the leadership that Chimaroke is praising to high heavens as the best thing ever to happen to Nigeria in general and Ndigbo in particular.
The third paragraph running through to the 7th, which made up the first page of Chimaroke’s six-paged hymn in benediction to Obasanjo’s arrant misgovernment, could only be summarized as wooden attempt to show a sophistication in thought which is simply non-existent. That attempt was a failure, and was simply nothing but four paragraphs of coagulated nonsense. He oscillated in these lines to theorize politically, but ended up falling into a blackhole of incomprehensibility. For instance, he wrote ‘In other words, such political ascendance makes no pretensions about conferring the conscience of the nation to those individual’( cf. Ibid, par.4, line 1) The fact following from this piece is that the only class of people that reason along lines such as this are persons with residual abilities, depraved debauchees or someone whose head is not more than a hat rack. If our leader cannot rise up to the challenge of being the conscience of the nation, then we are doomed. The dangerous thing is that not only that Nigerian politicians and leaders are not the conscience of the nation, they personally seemed to have been absent when the creator was dishing out consciences. Chimaroke wants us to believe him and applaud him for this sentence which summarizes buffoonery. Well, he should read his history to realise that Mahatma Ghandi took up the challenge and became the conscience of the Indian nation. Martin Luther King, Jr. equally did not shirk the responsibility nor hid his head in the sands of moral cowardice when history beckoned on him to be the conscience of the African-American struggle for equal rights and justice. These examples may be too distant. Mandela, rose through moral courage and vision to become the conscience of the South African nation today and for always. To this end, Chimaroke’s cheap attempt to excuse his ineptitude and that of his man Obasanjo are really ethically revulsive. A leader should be upright, just and do justice. That is the quintessential character of leadership. His personal weaknesses should never constitute an excuse for the perpetration or allowance of injustice. David is a perfect example here. As a king over the Jews, he never allowed his weaknesses to distract his sense of justice and uprightness. Even when he usurped Uriah’s wife and had Uriah killed at his orders, the metaphorical rendition of that episode to him attracted his indignance. When it came to him that the rich man in the metaphor was equal to David, he wept, repented and strove to atone for it. But Chimaroke would have us excuse the ethical debauchery of our leaders, and not hold them to a higher degree of responsibility and accountability. Common sense should have taught him that he who is allergic to scrutiny should never peddle himself to be elected into any public office, or position of public responsibility. Since he shed the toga of his privacy to ask to rule us, we reserve the right to hold him up to accountability and microscopic scrutiny. That is the price one pays for venturing into the public space.
His extensive dwelling on the allocation and distribution of resources as the chief end of leadership really gives us an inkling into what leadership is for this guy and his masters; namely a huge distribution agency. Leadership is quintessentially not about allocation and distribution of resources. It is fundamentally about showing the light so that the people can find their way. The best society is always, where there is less government is the private affairs of the people because the government has evolved to such heights, where it has gone back to it most primeval function, which is showing the light of adminstrative policy so that the people can find their way. In Nigeria, the government is a distributor-general. It creates nothing. It is there simply to distribute revenue generated from crude oil sales. This is a government that cannot even maintain a functional refinery to distill prime motor spirit for domestic consumption. This is a government that sits atop the most corrupt and most dysfunctional social construct in Africa. It is a government of contractors. This is the status quo in which people like Chimaroke and his master Obasanjo are basking in sickening flamboyance and obscene opulence, while Nigerians cannot even place two decent square meals on their tables.
Then comes his betrayal of Ndigbo. Page 2, from Paragraph 3.
But if there appears any definite track in which Mr. President appears permanently assailed, even as the truth is to the contrary, it is his perceived attitude to Ndigbo. Initally, I have had wondered why he had to be tackled with such persistent questioning of his individual attitude to a whole Igbo race, a vital section of Nigeria and one historical strand of Nigeria’s political tripod’ (Cf. Ibid, P.2 Par.3)
Here, Chimaroke did not even take the beaten part of intelligent peddlars of falsehood, by being diplomatically economical with the truth; in the lines above, he proved himself a liar of the first eminence. Some questions then force themselves on our consideration. First, can somebody lie against his flesh and blood, his people, his brother, etc. Are there historical precedents to that effect? The answer is positive. One can lie against his brother(s), against his heritage, his ancestry, even against himself. The Jewish crowd lied against Jesus their brother whose only crime was, ‘going about and doing good’ The greed of the Pharisees not only blinded or forced them to lie against Jesus, it was potent enough in co-opting the naive non-challance of the crowds and bending it into joining them to lie against an innocent man. That was a historical precedent. But why would someone undertake to lie against his heritage like Chimaroke did in the above citation? The answer is quite simple but not simplistic. Barbara T Bradford, on the 18th page of her Novel titled ‘Hold the Dream’ stated that ‘Ties of blood and of flesh did not come into play when vast amounts of money and, more importantly great power, were at stake. People thought nothing of killing to attain even the smallest portions of both’. In lieu of this, Chimaroke is working really hard to earn the spoils listed above, but most unfortunately at the expense of a dream that towers above his infinitesimality and irrelevance, namely, the future of the Igbo nation. Secondly, narcissism is another plausible explanation. Narcissism is a destructive impulse, which masquerades as self-love. Narcissistic personalities canonize their ego as the only good. And anything that conduces to the constant massage of this dyfunctional ego is courted even to the portals and thresholds of self-destruction. This theory most appropirately summarizes the reasons informing Chimaroke’s betrayal. Edward Klein, in his book, ‘The Kennedy Curse’stated in unclear terms, that ‘contrary to popular beliefs, narcissists do not love themselves.They are full of self-loathing and destructive impulses. Because they are obsessed with enhancing their grandiose image at the expense of their true self, they are more concerned with how they appear than with how they feel. What more, since narcissists are deadened to their own feelings, they are incapable of loving others’( Edward Klein, The Kennedy Curse, New York, St Martin‘s Paperback, 2003, P.18). To this end, Chimaroke is incapable of loving himself or anybody at that. This explain why he was so very fluid in battering the Igbo pain for some ego massage from Obasanjo.
On further probes, one finds Chimaroke claiming a monopoly of the knowlege of how government runs. He labels every other person who had ever pointed out Obasanjo’s excesses, ignorant. I wonder if he ever read the defence presented by Ohaneze at the Human Rights Violation Investigations panel, which Obasanjo has refused to implement or release a white paper to that end. Ojukwu pointed out that Obasanjo is simply perpetuating the marginalization of Ndigbo which led to the civil war in 1967, and here is Chimaroke, a self appointed Professor of crooked history telling us otherwise after 5 years as Obasanjo’s page boy. Compounding that indiscretion was the fact that no factual evidence was presented in refutation of what Ndigbo have been complaining about since after the civil war. Realising the enfeebled status of his arguments, he went into whitewashing Obasanjo’s achievement, which are at best non-existent. Lets dissect his postulations.
The proofs of Obasanjo’s non-hatred of Ndigbo according to Chimaroke’s gospel, are as follows.
1. Enugu state has never gone begging for her allocation
2. Obasanjo has directed the building of an ultra-modern trade fair Complex, whose completion has virtually arrived at 70% in construction work done so far.
3. He has awarded the extension of the runway of the Enugu airport to facilitate ist international status
4. Obasanjo accepted to foot part of the bills incurred by Chimaroke’s government in building the Augustine Nnamani law school at Agbani, such that both parties are ALMOST DECIDED on what refunds are due to Enugu State now.
5. Chimaroke has undertaken the reconstruction of Federal roads to which he got refunds from Obasanjo as well as commendations6. Chimaroke is indebted to Obasanjo for the miragic water projects, which AT COMPLETION will
put behind us the failure of past administrations in that regard.
7. The accounts of the civil war that Chimaroke selectively consulted were copious in their praise of Obasanjo’s flair for RECONCILIATION AND HARMONIZATION, which no other person has yet revealed
A point by point appraisal of the points tendered in evidence by Chimaroke here is apposite to explode once and for all the sycophantic postures of his praise singing.
For his first point itemized as No. 1 above, We reply by saying that Enugu State has never gone begging for allocation from the Federal government, is not because of Obasanjo’s love of Ndigbo. It is as a result of his powerlessness in that regard. Chimaroke should equally know that the Sharia hotbed of Zamfara and their bigoted, fanatic of a governor have never gone begging OBJ for their allocations too. They got it as and when due, even if Nigeria is burning up at their fulminations. A situation where the crooked and the straight got their allocations that is due to them cannot be legitimately and reasonably be tendered as evidence of goodwill. Rather, it is an evidence of Obasanjo’s powerlessness to withhold that under whatever pretext. Chimaroke’s myopia is attenuated by the fact that he considers only Enugu state as Igbo land. The facts which Chimaroke chose to ignore have equally shown that whenever and wherever Obasanjo had the power and leeway to hurt Ndigbo, that he has done so with brutal relish bordering on phobia. Examples suffice to bear us out. Obasanjo raped democracy in Anambra State and led the assault on the destabilization of the Igbo heart land, which Anambra represents. He engineered the kidnap of a sitting governor, an inglorious precedent unparalleled in the history of democracy anywhere in the world. He has made sure that the Anambra state Governor is diametrically exposed to the capricious wiles of those who care to do him harm, by withdrawing his police orderlies and guards. Obasanjo loves Ndigbo, yet those who kidnapped Ngige at his instance, are still walking the streets in freedom and impunity.
We are greatful to our ancestors, who have always striven not to allow the forces of falsehood have the stage for long. Hardly had Chimaroke finished his sterile and nauseating litany, than Achebe came in on the scene to wipe away tears from our eyes. Chimaroke’s hypocrisy has been so very appropirately counteracted and neutralized by an African Iroko of Igbo extraction; Chinualumogu Achebe. Chimaroke was busy praising Obasanjo’s rascality, little did he know that Achebe was coming to speak his intelligent mind, so very intelligently. The Guardian Newspapers of Sunday 17th October carried in its front page Headlines ‘Chinua Achebe rejects National Honour (says Nigeria’s condition too dangerous for silence’ (Cf. http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/news/article01)
(Also see http://www.nigerialinks.com/Articles/CAchebe/2004/10/open-letter-to-president-obasanjo.html).
Achebe rejected the offer of the CFR - Commander of the Federal Republic, awarded to him by the Obasanjo’s government. Achebe wrote a letter to President Obasanjo in which he stated his reasons for rejecting the offer. In a two paged letter to Obasanjo on Friday 15th of October, Achebe told Obasanjo the home truths to his face. These were the truths that Chimaroke as an unpaid cheerleader was afraid to tell. Achebe told OBJ, ‘Nigeria’s condition today under your watch is, however, too dangerous for silence. I must register my DISAPPOINTMENT and PROTEST by declining to accept this high honour awarded to me in the 2004 Honours list’, Achebe continued: ‘I write this letter with a very heavy heart. For some time 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 homeland into a BANKRUPT and LAWLESS FIEFDOM. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not CONNIVANCE OF THE PRESIDENCY.(cf. Guardian Newspapers, 17th October, 2004, P.1) Is this not genius in righteous anger? Is this not wisdom in full bloom? Is this not the courage of a lion packed in the mind of a genius? Chimaroke who is neither a genius nor courageous had the effrontery to downplay the connivance of Obasanjo’s presidency in fomenting instability in the ancient bastion of Igbo land. That is one. Secondly this same Obasanjo engineered the electoral fraud in Abia state which saw Adolphus Nwabara who never won the election in his constituency being imposed on us as a senate president, simply because Obasanjo needed an Igbo rubber stamp. The Owerri-Onitsha road that is a festival of potholes is really a testament to Obasanjo’s love of Ndigbo, while Benin/Lagos by-pass reputedly gulped over 300 billion naira al la Tony Anenih. The Enugu-Onitsha Express way is an erosion wasteland, and OBJ’s silence and inaction is a proof of his love for us going by Chimaroke. The Biafran war veterans who were demanding their legitimate pensions were labelled as traitors by an Obasanjo who loves Ndigbo to death. This was the same Obasanjo who before the appointment of Dora Akunyili as the NAFDAC director general was reported as saying, that appointing an Igbo person into that office tantamounts to legalising fake drugs in Nigeria. Thank God that Akunyili has made him eat his words. This is the same Obasanjo who feigns ignorance of the fact that the Niger Bridge at Onitsha, a very vital communicational link to Igbo territory is in the danger of collapsing. And his love for Ndigbo has prevented him from doing anything to that effect.
On the second proof he tendered: directing the building of an ultra-modern trade fair complex as a proof of OBJ’s love of Ndigbo could be measured against what obtains in other parts of Nigeria. This evident misapplication of resources is indicative of what Obasanjo had in mind for Ndigbo and betrays a well articulated blueprint to perpetually keep Ndigbo at the periphery of relevance in Nigeria. Do we need an ‘Ultra-modern’ trade fair complex, while the University of Nigeria haemorrhages into dereliction, for lack of funds and resources. Obasanjo has indirectly told Chimaroke and other unreasoning stooges of his ilk that Ndigbo should be content with their role as traders, and should forget education. OBJ and his cohorts have striven to cast Ndigbo in the role of congenital traders, who should be denied every educational opportunity, for fear that the crude Ogbunigwe of Biafra will be a child’s play in comparison to what Igbo intelligence is capable, in the event of another showdown, if they are given opportunities to be educated. Chimaroke’s greed has blinded him to the subterreanean imports of that.
Thirdly, citing the political cosmetic of the Enugu airport internationalization brouhaha , as another ‘irrefutable evidence’ of Obasanjo’s love is to say the least is at the very fringe of rational respectability, and would be considered wildly lunatic. OBJ used that as a cheap political trick to coax Igbo votes his way while he was planning to steal the mandate of the Igbo son, Ekwueme. Later facts have borne that out. Since Obasanjo made that proclamation of the internationalization of Enugu airport and the people residing in the airport quarters were asked to relocate, Chimaroke should tell the world the name of the contractor handling that project. He should equally come out with the amount with which the contractor was mobilized for that job, and he should round it off by telling the world the extent of work done so far on that project since its approval. The answer to the above queries will burst open the can of lies being generously peddled for effect by a stooge of Igbophobes. There is no contractor on the site or on the ground at Enugu airport as at the moment. No work has been done. The money released is for cosmetic purposes. Obasanjo has never wanted to do that project. He is simply waiting to sit out his term in 2007, and another government will come and announce that the project is not feasible and hence cancel it. We wait and see. Chimaroke should have asked Obasanjo, as a sign of his goodwilll and love for Ndigbo to complete that project and ensure that it is up and running before 2007. Obasanjo’s is the kind of love that a wolf nurses for the lamb that is unfortunately it most proximate supper.
On the fourth evidence tendered, Chimaroke stated that Obasanjo accepted to foot part of the bills incurred by Chimaroke’s government in building the Augustine Nnamani law school at Agbani, such that both parties are ALMOST DECIDED on what refunds are due to Enugu State now. The truth are coming out gradually. The fact has eternally remained that once you hand a rope to prodigious liars, they would eventually crank out a noose that will end up hanging their lying tongues. Since the Old P&T training school at Agbani was converted into the Augustine Nnamani Law School, Agbani at the cost of 800 million naira , it has taken both dysfunctional governments up till now to be almost decided on refunding Enugu state. Here Chimaroke tried to play it smart. The English man would say that ‘nearly does not kill a bird’. That they are ‘almost decided’ in diplomatic parlance means that we just talked about it, without any resolution in sight. I urge Chimaroke to publish it once he is in receipt of the said money. He is using the money which he is yet to receive; something still nebulous, and mired in probability, as a basis to prove Obasanjo’s mad love for Ndigbo. It is really a pity.
The 7th exhibit he tendered in evidence was that he, Chimaroke has undertaken the reconstruction of Federal roads to which he got refunds from Obasanjo as well as commendations. Enugu state and roads is really to be looked into seriously and disinterestedly. Chimaroke has rehabilitated roads in Enugu no doubt. I concede that to him. That was a job well done. The Federal road between Enugu and Abakaliki is still begging to be rehabilitated. The Enugu- Nsukka road is still a single laned death trap, begging to be dualised. The Enugu-Onitsha express way is still pockmarked and punctuated with gullies, pot and man holes. This is within Chimaroke’s vicinity. A trip to Onitsha and other parts of Anambra state, on the Federal roads transversing them, confronts one with the surreal vision of the outbacks of hell. Imo, Abia and Ebonyi equally have their tales. The roads in the South East were so bad that their impassable nature has equally been acknowleged by Obasanjo’s minster of works, Ogunlewe. What Ogunlewe; an engineer declared as impassable and bad, has been glossed over and declared as good by Surgeon Chimaroke. I wonder when roads that are civil engineering concerns metamorphosed into fetal limbs as to attract the authoritative competence of a fetal surgeon.
In exhibit 8, Chimaroke is indebted to Obasanjo for the miragic water projects, which AT COMPLETION will put behind us the failure of past administrations in that regard. This is simply akin to a castrated man giving the priest the baptismal name of his yet to be concieved child, which from all indications remains a biological impossibility, going it the natural way. At completion it will put us ahead of the failure of past governments. This is what Chimaroke said about a project which is still conceptually in the pipeline. The conclusion heads home that either Chimaroke is an absentee landlord in Enugu state or that he has started believing and using the lies he sells. And that is a dangerous point. Al Pacino, playing the role of Tony Montana in the Cuban drug movie, Scarface, urged all who peddle drugs and by extension lies as well: If you sell, don’t use. If you use, don’t sell. A peddlar of falsehood should never get to the point of believing his lies. If he does, it is siesta time for all that is good, true and beautiful across his horizon. Is that the case we have on our hands here?
The accounts of the civil war that Chimaroke selectively consulted were copious in their praise of Obasanjo’s flair for RECONCILIATION AND HARMONIZATION, which no other person has yet revealed, and with this he launched into a spineless and cowardly attack on Ojukwu. Chimaroke equally said that Obasanjo crisscrossed Igbo land and among other things was distributing relief. Well, this lie stands out naked among others. Obasanjo was never a member of the red cross, Catholic Caritas or the World Council of Churches who brooked the frown of Gowon’s Nigeria to bring in relief and distibute same to the starving children of Biafra. Obasanjo never in his life distributed a grain of relief in Biafra. Chimaroke seems to be getting his facts from a source that is non-existence, or manufactured to say the least. He equally stated that Obasanjo’s role has not been equalled in its decency at Biafra’s capitulation. Well Chimaroke here committed a blunder against scholarship. How can one draw a conclusion of such sweeping import with fact gleaned from one source. His source for this was one Obasanjo praise singer like himself named Onukaba Adinoyi Ojo, whose tribal allegiance to his kinsman may have to a great extent influenced his literal canonization of Obasanjo.
Obasanjo’s love for Ndigbo according to Nnamani made him adopt Nzeogwu’s mother. And Chimaroke and JSPC Nwokolo all visited this woman. Talk of a congress of rogues going to church. Italian Mafians can shotgun you while saying the rosary in the precincts of the Church. These three wreckers of Igbo renaissance, paying a visit to a woman who suckled one of our greatest heroes, does not convert their greedy hearts to our struggle. They went there in hypocritical posturing, while their hearts speaks of betrayal. These three gentlemen namely Obasanjo, Chimaroke and Nwokolo have more than one thing in common. They all had great problems with religious and anointed men of God, when their greed and crudity clashed with good sense. Obasanjo called the Chairman of the Christain Association of Nigeria an idiot in public. Chimaroke fell out with the Catholic Church in Enugu State for his crude and unethical mismanagement of Enugu state. The Catholic Church in Enugu accused him of attempting on the life of one of the most illustrous and erudite priest, Rev. Msgr. Prof. Obiora Ike. The Church equally accused him of threatening to eliminate Ejike Mbaka, the fiery young charismatic priest that criticised his excesses. Nnamani’s government was equally fingered in the death of 14 Adoration ground worshippers majority of whom were women and children. Jacob Nwokolo of the Pasch and Jake fame fought the Catholic Church in Enugu, usurping the land that belonged to the church for his personal purposes. At this as was the story, the then Catholic Bishop of Enugu, Rt. Rev. Dr. Godfrey Okoye, placed a curse on him, which many allege, has really dealt with him, even to the point of a whirlwind blowing the canopy and wedding guests at his daughters wedding into the swimming pool at the hotel presidential Enugu. These are the men whose company, Chimaroke courts and glorifies.
He equally contended that OBJ played a role in nominating Ukpabi Asika as the governor of the East Central State. The citation of Ukpabi Asika here is really providential. Traitors of the same feather will always flock together. Ukpabi Asika worked extra hard to become the grand father of Igbo saboteurs. He was widely hated and despised by Ndigbo, that even at death, almost all Igbo websites were unanimous in calling him an ‘EFULEFU’. A conquering army will always appoint collaborators that betrayed their own people into offices. They will never appoint those who gave them a bloodied nose or sabotaged their campaign to crush the resistance. That Asika was appointed speaks volumes of his treachery to the Igbo cause. And that Obasanjo helped in appointing a traitor to rule over us was never for our interest, but for his and the interests of his masters. They could not appoint an Igbo military man for fear that another Ojukwu would be born in the process, hence their appointment of a traitor.
Chimaroke having finally exhausted his wooden apologetics for Obasanjo, tried to create an Obasanjo that even Obasanjo’s kinsmen would never recognise. Obasanjo rose to National responsibility according to Chimaroke. But he has been as irresponsible as a cow in a China shop since he came to power. I would have loved that Chimaroke produced watertight arguments and evidence to justify his positions, but he came up with none. He even willfully supressed the date of publication of his most famous and favorite historian of Nigerian history, who doubles up as Obasanjo’s autobiographer, namely Onukaba Adinoyi Ojo, so that we would verify that his account was not a PDP scripted public relation stunt.
Chimaroke after squealing on his people, for the good pleasure of the tiger bent on eating us, should remember that the tiger makes no distinction between his meal and those who feed him; all are made of the same stuff. After dealing with us, the faceless cabal that paid him for his songs against his people will equally come for him. That is recompense.
This is just the beginning. The torch has been passed to a new generation of Ndigbo. We are no longer ready to take any nonsense from these traitors who having wasted their years, are bent on embezzling Igbo posterity. Chimaroke and other traitors of his ilk are now to know that we are not ready anymore to spare exposing their treachery anymore. We challenge them to go on flooding the arena of public discourse with their engineered falsehoods about Ndigbo and we will meet them with the truth of our convictions. We know we would always win. Truth is on our side. Impious cant and rhetorical embroidery of falsehood cannot save any Igbo scoundrel today anymore. Massob on August 26th made a statement, which is a vote of no confidence on those masquerading as Igbo leaders today. Ndigbo know their leaders and Ojukwu is one of them. We equally know the pretenders. The hall of infamy is waiting for them. Mr. Cheerleader, what was your price? 30 peices of sordid silver? Posterity and history are watching and recording their judgements.
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Last Updated (
Thursday, 24 April 2008 ) |
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Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh 
Posted by Robot| 17.10.2004 00:00