A quick clarification
before I offer my opinion on Emeseh’s EFCC and
NZERIBE piece. I am not a politician and do not plan to become one. My reasons are that I don’t have the money
to win elections in Nigeria and also my Christian faith forbids that I visit Okija or any other ogwugwu for any kind of pact
signing with the devil.
I am only a concerned and ‘poor’ teacher but one that is already receiving
his ‘rewards’ here on earth. Also, I do not know Arthur Nzeribe personally and have not been bribed by him or by any of his ‘people’
to carry his cross; The Ogbuagu I am sure is the kind of man who likes bearing his own cross and taking care of
his own business.
My concern is only as a social writer and commentator, an Igbo man and
therefore a Nigerian. Arthur Nzeribe being an Igbo man and also an elder, My strong belief in culture and tradition
(omenani) demands that I pay him his due respects, therefore I will call him by his native title in this article
by addressing him as Ogbuagu Damanze.
My wider objective lies in the common good and also in the ethos that
criticisms and the fine art of public discourse should be progressive and constructive. If we all as social crusaders
and members of the noble and honourable business of writing begin to jump on the bandwagon in our discourses, malign
without reason and fail to acknowledge the most little of efforts from the most unlikely of people, then it spells
doom for our trade and our society.
Ogbuagu Damanze is many things to many people. Let history and posterity
judge his actions. Every mortal chooses for himself his destiny, we all have the faculties to choose between right
and wrong, some of us care about what footprints we leave in the sand, some of us don’t, some of us strive to make
meaning out of life, we try to contribute to make the world a better place, we succeed, we fail. Our intentions,
honourable or not are understood and misunderstood, but strive we must. It is every man on his own, everyman battles
with his conscience and deals with his own demons.
Emeseh started his piece: Senator Arthur Nzeribe, the EFCC and Corruption in Nigeria. By
Engobo Emeseh (GAMJI)
thus:
Senator Arthur Nzeribe is hardly a saint in the Nigerian political arena. Why, the man has his imprints
on some of the most catastrophic intrigues that have dogged Nigeria’s attempts at democracy. The example that readily comes to mind is the activities of
his infamous Association for Better Nigeria (ABN) in the run up to the June 12 election of 1992. Furthermore, since the inception
of the current democratic government, the senator has been mired in one controversy after the other. He has shown
on more than one occasion that he has only one constituency and one constituent – Francis Arthur Nzeribe…
As a reader and
observer, on reading the above quoted opening lines, you become
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hungry for more, your appetite is wet, you want to taste blood, you begin to sharpen your tools one more time ready
to nail the culprit and subject, you are thinking ...There he (Nzeribe) goes again, let’s see what he is up to
this time?.
Sadly as you move
in for the ‘kill’, it dawns on you that the man is innocent this time, the Ogbuagu hasn’t done anything. Anger,
dismay and frustration seize you, you swear, curse, smile and wince as you put back all your tools in the kit,
and you begin to wonder what the whole fuss was all about in the first place.
The theme of Emeseh’s
article was Ogbuagu’s comment on EFCC’s corruption fighting strategies in Nigeria, Ogbuagu was quoted in the article as saying
that the…
“EFCC goes after "small thieves" and spares bigger thieves in government.”
Emeseh also quotes
Ogbuagu’s comments further…
We have heard all these things you have said since 20 years ago. You are simply rendering lip service
to the fight against corruption and going after small boys who just collect small money.
Supposedly, Ogbuagu
was addressing Ribadu in the above situations. As observers, almost all what we hear about the goings on in our
government come from the mass media, in that sense then, we can rightly assume that government officials and beneficiaries
of our common wealth will not be throwing stones at their glass houses, and also that as gold fishes they will
not have any hiding places.
Ogbuagu Damanze
and Orji Uzor Kalu are not exempt from these basic assumptions, so why are they adopting this ‘Come and get me
or Catch me if you can’ attitudes judging from their recent comments.
Emeseh agrees with
the Ogbuagu on his comments, I quote Emeseh once again…
There is therefore no gainsaying that here is a man that one needs to dine with, with a very long
spoon. However, the wisdom of our fathers is that we do not disregard the message simply because we do not like
the messenger. It is in this light that I believe the senator’s recent “message” on the accomplishments of the
EFCC deserves some attention by well meaning Nigerians even if for the senator, this may very well be another attempt
at hugging the limelight by generating some controversy.
My issues with
Emeseh are as follows: Why let his message to the readers get lost in translation? Why let the wider meanings and
implications of Ogbuagu’s comments get lost in space? By starting his piece in the negative about the ‘messenger’
(Ogbuagu), and therein the source, he should have known that he is also discrediting the ‘source’ and that this
ultimately affects the fidelity of the source’s or messenger’s message.
Emeseh has failed
to separate the two issues of the Arthur Nzeribe that held Nigeria hostage in 1993 and the Nzeribe that is now exorcising his demons, should we
throw the baby away with the dirty bath water? And like Emeseh rightly asked, should we disregard the message because
we do not like the messenger?
By adopting the
negative-first approach in his article, the wider implications and societal gains of Ogbuagu’s comments may now
be lost on the readers who may already
have been psyched in the beginning of the article into viewing the Ogbuagu in a negative way. This is in light
of the literary translation of the saying and ‘theory’ that …Nothing good ever comes out of Nazareth.
Communication is
a tool; an effective and powerful one too, we make meanings in both the things we say and the way we say them,
also in the symbols we use, in the medium we use and finally in the things we fail to say. The order in which we
say things also affect our meanings, there is the theory of primary recency to support this, what comes first and
last matters a lot in any discourse as almost always, the audience do switch off along the way, the audience are
no longer sitting ducks. Unless we have new, powerful and convincing evidence to hold their gaze and attention,
we loose them.
It is difficult
in communication to un-ring a bell, those that heard it the first time (in the beginning) may have long gone to
the market or to town with the first message.
Ogbuagu’s comments
made directly to the government’s corruption Czar himself are grave and serious enough, Objective commentators
will be worried especially when the man that we all have all along thought was a chief corruptor himself turns
around to actually say he is not and even go on to ‘challenge’ those that should (EFCC and Ribadu) to come and
get him if they can. Orji
Uzor kalu a while ago made similar comments, so who are the people stealing our money?
Emeseh should have
been probing and demanding these answers from the EFCC.