This week, Reno Omokri, a popular public affairs commentator, chose to jettison the fairness and objectivity that he preaches on a daily basis and join the bandwagon of ethnic jingoists out to tarnish the image of the Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora, Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa,. In a piece titled Buhari and Abike Dabiri as Poster Boys for All that is Wrong with Nigeria, the writer, a self-described stickler for facts, resorts to illogic and outright lies in his bid to tar Dabiri-Erewa with the brush of ethnic jingoism and perversity. He wants the world to believe that Dabiri-Erewa hates the people of South-East Nigeria, the Igbo, with passion. In doing so, he employs the sinister tool of power called projection, a technique whereby you accuse your opponents of crimes which you are the one committing.
He claimed that when multiple Nigerians were either executed or arrested for drug related offences in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and another set for Internet and credit card/mortgage fraud in the United States, Miss Dabiri-Erewa did not feel the outrage she felt over the Dubai incident. It is difficult to imagine how Reno came to determine what Dabiri felt or did not feel about these incidents, but it is perverse to say that she condoned them because the perpetrators were not Igbo. To come to such a conclusion, you need solid proof, but Reno supplies none. Instead, he resorts to lies: An Igbo who was first elected an MP in Canada has now been appointed a minister of Municipal Affairs. I thought Dabiri would celebrate this feat. She did not.
This claim is scandalous, to say the least. Not only did Dabiri-Erewa congratulate Madu publicly, she in fact wrote him a personal congratulatory letter, as she always does in numerous cases of Nigerians succeeding abroad. This incident only reinforces fact that Reno Omokri, and many like him who are bitter at not retaining the seat of power, are really the problem with Nigeria. They are the witches they themselves are seeking to hunt down. It is clear that these individuals will do anything to fan the embers of discord, disunity and warfare at any given opportunity and for any reason that suits their devilish intentions. Only this week, Dabiri-Erewa wrote on twitter: Abigail Katung Marshal has been elected as Counsellor under the Labour and Co-operative party in Leeds City Council Election on 2 May, 2019, in England. Congratulations to one of ours from Nigeria. Nigerians continue to do us proud all over the world.
In any case, as even Reno himself would agree, Dabiri-Erewa cannot decide what news trends or does not. She certainly does not decide what goes into the front pages of the countrys newspapers. Besides, when eight Nigerians were arrested for forgery in the US, with the news carried on front page by a national daily based in the South-West, why didnt people from that region scream that that action had embarrassed the South-West? Pray, has Reno not heard the story of Chima, Chidozie and Anyele, a set of triplets resident in Ikorodu, Lagos State, whom Dabiri-Erewa gave scholarships throughout their university education ? Out of ten scholarships, three went to these brilliant guys of Igbo extraction who are all proud graduates today. But to those deploying criticism for mischief, maybe facts dont matter these days.
Renos provocative piece is indeed not fortuitous; it is the fruit of deliberate mischief, a chapter in the campaign of calumny currently being propagated by self-appointed guardians of public morality. In the past few weeks, some commentators in the public space had indeed been busy ascribing perverse ethnic, specifically anti-Igbo, sentiments to Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa. Appalled by the bad image consistently given the country by Nigerians who commit crimes abroad and the burden placed on the government and Nigerians, the presidential aide had called on Nigerians to be more forceful in condemning the activities of these felons, including the five Nigerians arrested for robbing a Bureau De Change to the tune of Dh 2.3 million in the Sharjah Area of Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The robbers in question were caught on CCTV and the incident was circulated around the world. In a statement by her special assistant, Abdur-Rahman Balogun, Dabiri gave the names of the suspects as Chimuanya Emmanuel Ozoh, Benjamin Nwachukwu Ajah, Kingsley Ikenna Ngoka, Tochukwu Leonard Alisi, Chile Micah Ndunagu, describing their action as despicable and shameful, having brought the country to disrepute. Earlier in a tweet, she had said: We need to tell our brothers behaving badly to behave. Lets get the names of those involved to name and shame them.
In calling for a naming and shaming strategy, a strategy which anyone with at least a modicum of education should be familiar with, Dabiri merely sought to harness the power of social and communal sanction in preventing further deaths of Nigerians on foreign soil for crimes ranging from drug trafficking to kidnapping and armed robbery, reasoning that if Nigerians condemned these crimes with much more resonant force, those minded to toe a similar path would have a rethink, knowing that they have no home support to fall back on should they fall into the hands of law enforcement agents in the countries of their target where, as they themselves probably are aware, they face certain death. Surprisingly, however, while patriotic and forward-looking Nigerians endorsed this call in several spheres of life, including online and print media, a mischievous band of commentators seized on it to cause inter-ethnic strife.
They postulated that mentioning the names of the UAE armed robbers meant that Dabiri hated the Igbo nation! To the authors of such buffoonery, led by one Peter Nzwelu, it is a taboo for a Nigerian government official to mention the names of any Nigerian committing crimes abroad where such an official does not belong to the same ethnic group as the suspects. By implication, therefore, Dabiri-Erewa was wrong to have vehemently protested the execution of over 200 Nigerians, most of them Igbo, by the South African authorities only few years back. Beyond the surface structure of this sophistry, the underlying assumptions are even more perverse: “my kinsman deserves my support even if he is a proven armed robber, and I must excoriate whoever mentions his name. How can the nation ever progress with this kind of warped thinking? Why protect criminals because they belong to your ethnic group?
Besides, just how could the activities of five criminally-minded young men be read as a verdict on the South-East, one of the principal nations within Nigeria? What would mentioning the names of successful Nigerians from the South-East, as the critics have done, achieve? To prove that Igbos are distinguished? Whoever suggested that they were not? Indeed, did Dabiri-Erewa ever mention anything about the South-East in the tweet under reference? Critics would clutch at straws no matter what, but because Dabiri-Erewa never suggested, even remotely, that the Dubai five committed armed robbery by virtue of their ethnic origin, it wasnt hard for the public to see their utter stupidity and emptiness. But then will they cease and desist? Dont depend on it. People like Reno Omokri will never see anything good in the Buhari administration. They will cal white black and black with because they are master confusionists who thrive in chaos and disorder. One can only hope that their targets, such as the hardworking and patriotic Dabiri-Erewa, do not get discouraged by the ceaseless smear campaigns.
–––Dr. (Mrs) Chinyere Nwosu contributes this piece from Alvan Ikoku Polytechnic, Owerri.
