The Return of Olisah Metuh

By Okey Ikechukwu

I had a good laugh when Olisah Metuh said he was quitting politics, some three years ago. I had then said to him: “To say ‘I am quitting politic’  is one thing. For politics itself to say:  ‘I am done with this fellow and I will let him go’ is another matter altogether. I recall telling him, back then, he was kidding himself.

Of course, he maintained at the time that he was dead serious and that I would see how serious he was. When I replied that he had unfinished business in the political arena and that his declaration was premature, he said: “I am telling you that I am done with politics”.

His decision and announcement at the time were predicated on his understanding of his own reality based on certain experiences he had gone through. It was these troubling experiences preceding the declaration that led him to the assumption that the right thing to do was to quit politics.

When a friend who had read the report of his “withdrawal” from politics brought up the matter with me, I simply told him that Olisah had always had a great future in leadership, but that part of his challenge was “stakeholder” management. Then the conversation shifted to the varied reactions to his predicament when he ran into trouble with the authorities; who were more into a witch hunt than a search for justice.

At the beginning of that unfortunate personal crisis, some individuals from the South East, and some of them presumably close to Olisah, came up with the hare – brained idea of “doing whatever they could” to contribute to the latter’s problem by further damaging his image, especially in the media. They declared a budget of 250 million naira for a strong media campaign that would put Olisah in an impossible situation. This was really the very limit of e wickedness.

When I demanded an explanation, baffled that they could contemplate such a thing, one of the major promoters of the project burst out: “Nwoke m, oburo sooso Olisah ka ekeelu South East (My friend the South East was not  created, or made, for Olisah alone). He has been rising consistently and everyone has been losing to him. If it was someone else that has had the kinds of political favors Olisah has been getting, others around him would have benefited more from it.

I disagreed with both the proposal and the motive. I also rejected the implied media “consultancy”. Then, a member of the group angrily announced his regret that they contacted me. “This is your problem”, he said. “When Ugochukwu Uba came to the Senate and we wanted to drum up media support to use Andy’s influence and make him Senate President you opposed the idea in his presence and even rallied your media people behind you.

You had said it was in the interest of the Uba family not to also over expose their very reasonable brother”. He was going on and on, but somebody stopped him at a point. Meeting over, I headed straight to Olisah’s house and arrived just before midnight.

I told him and his wife where I was coming from but without mentioning any names. I said that Olisah needed to know the extent of animosity against him and why he must take everything more seriously than ever before.

I went to see him in court a few weeks later. He was sitting almost alone and waiting for proceedings to begin. My message to him was simple and direct: “Olisah, I am in a bit of a hurry to get to the airport, but I needed to tell you this while you are in court. Everything is looking very bleak right now, but do you remember Nelson Mandela? The experiences that prepared him for his future global leadership role looked like suffering while it was going on.

My brother, this shall pass, no matter how long it takes. The most important thing is for you not to miss the lessons the coming experiences have for you”. He smiled genuinely and said: “Okey d’alu.  Thank you so much. This means a lot to me”. I left.

I did not talk to him or see him again until the worst aspects of that experience were over.  This was deliberate on my part. It is sometimes important to give someone you take seriously reason to doubt you. That is, doubt you in every way possible. If in the midst of those doubts he finds it difficult to convince himself that you are really bad, and that the new reality he was seeing was not quite real, then the prospect of genuine, unsolicited, trust will arise and subsist.

Today, I think back to my first meeting with Olisah Metuh, some 25 years ago. It was at the Sheraton Hotels and Towers in Lagos. He had come for a scheduled meeting with the Minister of Transport, Ojo Maduekwe, to whom I was Special Assistant. He appeared genuinely interested in helping Ojo leverage the latter’s relevance and visibility within his limited sphere of influence.

Seeing that the brief he had been given by my boss was a non-starter, and as I had seen the same pointless brief given to others without expectations of any meaningful outcome, I later called Olisah aside for a separate meeting, wherein I frankly asked him not to waste his time on what he was told and face something else of greater value. Today, not many people know Olisah’s role in dousing some aspect of the tension surrounding the “Idiotic Igbo Presidency” controversy. Nor of the team of youth leaders he brought for a very important meeting in Abuja.

When Olisah relocated from Lagos to Abuja and I learnt of his need for accommodation, pending the completion of his house, I approached my boss to give him the lovely Minister’s Guest House. Ojo wouldn’t hear of it. Why? He asked.

I explained that it was a duty he owed a young man who was the youth leader of his party. I pointed out that Olisah would most probably be living in the Hilton, or in some other luxurious accommodation provided by elders from his part of the country, if he was the party Youth Leader for the North or South West.

My point was that Olisah would not have to waste that money, and that it would also give him a profile upgrade in political perception if he is known to be living in the “Ministers Quarters” in Mabushi. Ojo listened without comments. He was angry but he hid it well.

When I brought it up again soon afterwards, speaking with some urgency, he burst out: “To think that this conversation is going on while you know very well that my older cousin, Old Soldier, is living there.. What am I supposed to do with him, in order to give your new friend the house? I thought you didn’t know him before our recent encounter with him. Look, you have to tell me what business you have with Olisah Metuh, really!”

He continued: ” I have never seen you so persistent and tenacious about anything since you joined me. So, I must ask you to tell me what is going on”.

As I later learnt, months after Olisah and family had moved into the Guest House, that two people were asked to discreetly find out “what deal I may have struck” with Olisah. He was both politician and business man and may have achieved the unlikely feat of having me as his advocate for a consideration. Curiously, there were also concerns even from Olisah’s closest associates, that “there must be something Okey wants, or is planning, for him to appear more concerned about your welfare than yourself”.

Which takes me back to the discussion I mentioned earlier, about his supposed friends who offered a media consultancy in order to “bury him” politically. “What has he done for anybody”, one of them asked, in the heat of the discussion. ” Okey is here talking as if Olisah has cast a spell on him, instead of asking himself what Olisah has ever done for him”.

When I spoke about the need for them not to deliberately stand in the way of anyone, one of them threw in this proverb, apparently for my edification: “Our people say that the person who is eager to give advise and support to a peer, or anyone for that matter, should ask himself how he is going to remain consistently greater than him. Okey, what do you have to say to that”?

I tmchucked and replied: “Those who live by that proverb forget that it is sometimes their duty to advise a peer so that, collectively, everyone would be at his best; to the benefit of all”. I also added this: “The proverb which says that a snake must swallow it’s kind in order to grow, rests on the wrong assumption that snake growth is necessarily dependent on eating another snake”.

Coming back to the present, last Sunday, at his 60th birthday thanksgiving service, Olisah declared that he was not only back in politics, but was also simultaneously changing his political party. For someone who has not, at any time, wavered in his identification with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), this was seen by some as an event of near-cosmic dimensions.

What are his reasons? How are the stakeholders around him reacting to it all, while keeping a straight and smiling face? What should he pray for, going forward? Where does he see himself in the next 5 years? How about the next ten years?

Let me say, as I have had cause to say to Olisah privately in the past: “Your ability to influence your environment politically must not be taken for granted. For you to still be going relatively strong, against all odds and after overcoming many obstacles, it means that there’s a purpose you are yet to divine correctly and fulfil. Let it not be about you. Look beyond narrow horizons and expand the scope of your fulfillment”.

Unemployability Index and Other Matters

Against the background of many things going on at the highest level of national leadership, let me share a fees paragraphs from a piece that appeared on this page two years ago, under the above title.

“Unemployable Nigerians have become an absolute majority today. This includes intelligent graduates who actually studied for, and got, their academic qualifications. The “unemployability” of some of them stems from a moral handicap. In their education, socialization and engagements, they internalized the wrong values about leadership, public office, service delivery and much more. Thus, they are a danger to the state.

Is it correct to say that the major crisis facing the Nigerian State today is the failure to work out, and be guided by, the unemployability index in everything it is doing today? Just asking.

We walk through a maze and claim to be walking under bright lights. Debauchery has been given a new name, in the hope that the discerning will no longer keep watch over disappearing values. No, the relevant eyes are still wide open, even if fewer in number than hitherto. The call for authenticity is real. Enough said!