“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever
can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to
destroy their illusions is always their victim”.- Gustave Le Bon
I found it extremely difficult to write about
Nigeria in recent times. It becomes even more difficult when I lost two dear
friends to avoidable automobile accidents in the last two months. Don’t get me
wrong, I know death happens. We all have to die one way or another. What irks
me most are the avoidable deaths and carnage on Nigerian roads. More so, when
some of these deaths could easily have been avoided by deft planning, care for
road users and enforcement of extant laws, something now alien to Nigeria as
the rich, the wealthy and politicians live by impunity.
The first to die in a ghastly motor accident is my
good friend and colleague, Sunny Ofili. Sunny as we all like to call him was
first an award winning journalist, a tech savvy United States government
technocrat, before he decided to move back to Nigeria to serve his people in
Delta north. Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State appointed him as special
adviser on information and communication technology (ICT) on September 11,
2011. Before his appointment, he widely consulted some of us in Diasporas who
were very close to him (most especially myself and Iwedi Ojinmah). He had
established the first Nigerian online newspaper, the “Times of Nigeria” online
as a veritable news aggregation website patterned after Drudge and Huffington
post (Ojinmah and I blog frequently on that platform).
He also took risk in exposing the corrupt Obasanjo
regime at that time. I recalled his late night call for help to pay for
document from the Corporate Affairs Commission registry in Abuja. Some of which
proved the involvement of the Obasanjo’s presidency in shady oil contract deals
in a Portuguese speaking island country in the Bight of Benin. We also pay to
have some of the contract document translated from Portuguese to English. I
recalled the urgency in his voice as he tried to escape arrest by operatives of
the Federal government when they heard he is snooping around. He eventually had
to come back to the US through the Benin route-made famous by Uncle Wole
Soyinka. He knew well that route, as he took the same route on his way out of
Nigeria as he fled the pernicious Abacha regime. As we often say in Nigeria,
the more things change the more they remain the same.
I restated all of these to emphasis this point: Most
cats with nine lives often died feeding on a drunken poisoned mouse. The
obvious irony was apparently lost on Governor Uduaghan in his elegy at the
burial of Sunny Ofili on September 5, 2014 when he said: “Over the years, I
have learnt to control my anger but on the day he died, I was very angry over
the circumstances of his death. I asked myself why Sunny entered that vehicle.
He did not need to embark on that journey. When you wake up in the morning,
pray not to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, pray against associating
with the wrong people and pray against being dragged along with the wrong
people at the wrong time.” What an irony! The vehicle Sunny should have avoided
was that of his government. The wrong people he should have never associated
with are the Ibori/Uduaghan crowd. The wrong time is 2011 and not 2014.
Obviously, the governor’s comment is in reference to
the fact that Sunny Ofili chose to ride in a Jeep driven by an heavily
intoxicated driver, the Late Agbogidi Henry Ezeagwuna, the Obi of Issele-Uku, (who
also happened to be the traditional ruler of his home town and his
father-in-law). Granted Sunny should never have agreed to ride a car driven by
an heavily intoxicated driver, but the real irony here, is that the same
Uduaghan used Sunny’s reach and influence with Delta north first class chiefs
and Obis to get his government reelected. This happened even though he and his
predecessor, James Ibori had nothing to show in terms of benefit to the Delta
people. The vehicle Sunny should have avoided is the disaster prone Jeep called
the Delta state government. A government that has no exact policy on road
management! A government that sustains itself through bribery and sheer
impunity. A government that receives more statutory allocation than any other
states and yet primary school students still attend classes under a thatched
roof! I could go on, needless to say that the death of Sunny Ofili is no more a
sad event than the thousands that died daily on Delta roads while the Delta
state and Federal Government of Nigeria looks on. It is also a warning to many
of us idealist in Diaspora: Look before you jump!
And then there is Dimgba Igwe, of the Weekend
Concord fame! He along with Late Michael Awoyinfa started the demystification
of celebrity journalism in Nigeria. They both put the poor on the front page of
newspapers in Nigeria through their rich stories on Nigerian masses. Imagine
the shock on the face of newspapers literati in Nigeria in circa 1990s, when
Weekend Concord published an in-depth story on the travails of “dumpster
diving” college graduates in Nigeria in the early 1990s. Dimgba Igwe died this
week in the hand of a hit and run driver, in another PDP controlled states,
Abia state, with all the federal might at their disposal. Yes, it could have
happened in an APC control states, but as long the president continue to go
around to gloat in Osun and Ekiti about how he would have love to help the
respective states but for the fact that state government is controlled by
opposition party, it is fair game to remind him about the carnage in the states
controlled by his party! After all, it is the federal government of Nigeria
that controls the Federal Road Safety Marshall. The same federal government
forbids state government from establishing any patrol on federal roads by
statute.
The ongoing divisive and ethnic politics in Nigeria
is largely responsible for the inept and corrupt regime stalking our land. You
can bribe the traditional rulers to force their people to vote for you and
called it democracy. But you cannot protect the people from callous death, in
the hands of Boko Haram, Niger Delta militants, OPC, or a random drunk driver.
What a shame! We are at a point in our democratic experiment we need to start
asking our leaders tough questions, one of Winston Churchill's pithy
observations seems appropriate – “however beautiful the strategy, one should
occasionally stop to have a look at the results”. Is this the democracy we
fought for as student union activist and journalist?
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