I really don’t know whether I should still go ahead with this story that has enjoyed an unprecedented conspiracy of silence from the regular media. For the first time in my writing experience, I have suffered from uneasy sense of foreboding even when faced with equally conflicting and compelling force beyond my control to splash the entire damn story out there for the enjoyment of an un-protective public. Is it wise to continue this suicide mission in the face of intimidating evidence that suggest otherwise?
I really don’t know whether I should still go ahead with this story that has enjoyed an unprecedented conspiracy of silence from the regular media. For the first time in my writing experience, I have suffered from uneasy sense of foreboding even when faced with equally conflicting and compelling force beyond my control to splash the entire damn story out there for the enjoyment of an un-protective public. Is it wise to continue this suicide mission in the face of intimidating evidence that suggest otherwise?
This is not an exercise in macho-heroism because frankly, I don’t want to be any ones hero now; maybe never. I have a platoon of human beings that sleep easy every night because their worries have been outsourced to me as a matter of duty in a country that routinely rewards extreme mediocrity and punishes ingenuity and industry. What if I get picked up and given a fatal version of ‘Ohakimism’? What protection can I enjoy from a system that handed him the cynical title of ‘Chief security Officer of the State’? These and more questions have engaged my mind as I set out to report a sordid incident Gov. Ikedi Ohakim and his press crew would rather wish away. I am further motivated to do this piece because of my deep respect for Catholic priests who by their calling, are meant to deny themselves all pleasures of life and devote their entire being to the work and glory of God. Priesthood wasn’t one of my childish fantasies because of my close observation of early Nigerian and Irish Rev. Fathers that devoted their entire lives, holding nothing back to teach and sacrifice for people in my little sleepy village. As I grow older, my respect has increased a little more for them because I often wondered how they managed to locate that obscure village that could pass as the end of the world.
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Therefore, on the evening of August 8, 2010, when I received that call from a friend that Ohakim’s men have ‘kidnapped’ Rev.Father Eustace Okorie, I didn’t know what to believe. He was practically screaming and cursing H.E. Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo state. I managed to calm him down and enquired what the ‘amiable’ governor has done again to deserve these un-printable invectives. He quickly announced that Ikedi and his gang of thugs have seized, wait for it ‘a catholic priest in his full cassock, stripped him naked to his pants and detained him’. Even though my friend who will not allow his name mentioned here is a rather very serious individual, I chose to disbelief this piece of unsettling news that insults decent behaviour. I kept shouting forget it, this can’t be true but he insisted that another priest who will never be associated with rumour had called earlier to inform him. I quickly put off my phone out of frustration and not wanting to be further disturbed by incessant calls reporting the same matter. I waited for that evening’s electronic news media to confirm or deny the story- no dice. The following day, I hit the internet early wanting to confirm or contrast the story in the Nigerian dailies-no such luck. What of the press crew in the Gov’s convoy- I wondered allowed? Shouldn’t one of them have made himself/herself a hero by reporting the news and damning the consequence and go back to his station for reposting. No! There appear to be a conspiracy of see no evil, hear no evil and report no evil among those reporters. For dirty lucre or sheer fear of koboko {His Excellency, uses it freely} decided to dine and wine with the devils while God’s anointed was suffering in the hands of misfits, thugs and serial abusers that also regard themselves as Gov. and security agents.
Trouble started for Rev. Father Eustace Okorie on August 8, at Orie Akabo along Owerri-Okigwe Road for purportedly blocking the Governor’s convoy. According to an eyewitness account that was in that convoy, Rev. Father Okorie on hearing the devastating blaring of the sirens and screeching tyres of the said convoy tried his best to clear from the road while avoiding a big gully right in the middle of what used to be a road supervised by ‘amiable’ Governor Ikedi Ohakim. Yes, he likes being called ‘amiable Governor’. In the process, Rev. Okories old ‘V boot’ Mercedes Benz car disappointed and fell right into the ditch temporarily blocking the road. Hell let loose as the overzealous security operatives jumped out in a commando styled fashion and seeing that the ‘offending’ driver was a Rev. Gentleman, made to go back to their vehicles. However, the supreme ‘emperor’ of Owerri Government House would not have any of that as he commanded that the man must be bundled into the jeep and taken to the government house to be thought how not to block the road with a rickety car next time. He insisted the Rev. must have blocked the road on purpose and possibly sponsored by his political enemies. If Rev. Okorie thought he was in a bad dream from where he could quickly wake up for urgent supplication, he had worse fate coming. No sooner than they touched down in Government house, than they dragged him straight to what is fast turning into the Governor’s torture chambers. And there, his real travails began. He was stripped naked to his underpants, interrogated by the Chief security Officer of Governor Ohakim who took several pictures of the clergy before handing him over to the SSS office directly opposite the State House. He was then detained for more than two days alongside with a suspected student cultist when he purportedly refused to sign an implicating statement suggesting he blocked the road consciously.
All these happened as the majestic Governor left for Abuja from where he visits Imo occasionally to oversee his herds of ‘cattle’ called electorates.
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The most tragic aspect of this story is the fact that Rev. Okorie was said to be on his way for what Catholics call ‘sick call’ which entails prayers for the sick or admission of the last sacrament to a dying faithful. The news remained a highly guarded secret until the Catholic Herald reported it in its Sunday edition, more than forty-eight hours after the incident. The Archbishop of Owerri Most Rev. Anthony Obinna and the entire Catholic faithful in Owerri are enraged and distressed by this very humiliating drama directed by a Governor [s]elected to protect us from the very abuse he now superintends. Ohakims emergence is not of God, as he would want us belief. Obasanjo who anointed him cannot be God. He is an ordinary ugly man from Ota/ Abeokuta axis. God’s anointed don’t behave like this!
The above story was validated by a very inconspicuous news report on page 9 of the Daily Sun Newspaper of Monday, August 23, 2010 titled “Detention of Priest” with a rider, ‘…Ohakim apologises to catholic Church”. In the story that quoted a Catholic weekly tabloid-The Leader, Governor Ohakim in company with his Deputy, Dr. {Mrs.} Ada Okwuonu and some of his aides visited the Catholic Archbishop of Owerri, Most Rev. Anthony Obinna to tender unreserved apology on the ugly incident blaming to devil’s handiwork. [sic]. According to the news report, he said “I apologize to the faithful of Owerri Archdiocese, the priest, the laity and the entire Catholic congregation. I render 100 percent apology to the Archbishop”. Continuing, Ohakim was reported to have lamented “that his administration had a couple of problems in her kitty, pointing out that it had passed through a lot of distractions including six fire incidents, two attempts on his life and 24 law suits”.
It appears the Governor judging from his tone in the said report is pleading fatigue and blaming the ubiquitous devil as reasons for these un-becoming attitudes for a man in his high office. Gov. Ohakim is not the only one embarrassed by his incessant attack on innocent citizens of Imo State and elsewhere. We his kinsmen are beginning to wonder whether the devil he blames have taken permanent residency in Okohia Osu, Isiala Mbano. The Igbos’ say ‘it is not the mad man that dances naked in the market place that gets embarrassed but his relatives’. The equally said ‘that anybody his brother is dancing badly in a dancing competition is always scratching his eyebrows’. Ochi-na-Nwata, we, {your brothers and sisters} are almost plucking out our eyes in this uncomfortable exercise of scratching our eyebrows. Needless to recount the countless flogging and detention of journalists, closing people’s legitimate businesses and chasing out a woman that was church bound in a similar exercise of claiming your right of way in a convoy in far away Lagos where the presiding Gov. Fashola hardly engages in such childish vainglory exercise.
The Okigwe zone where we come from is extremely backward to the extent that a song composed as far back as the ‘60s {Obodo nile emepechala, oforo Okigwe n’ Orlu…} is still relevant today. {Meaning all villages have developed into towns except Okigwe and Orlu.} I know you remember that song clearly and can complete the rest. Whereas Orlu has taken itself out of that list due mainly to a brilliant combination of hard work and political correctness of her people and leaders, Okigwe has unfortunately remained the weeping child of the state. Yet, Okigwe it is that gave Ndi-Imo the indefatigable Dee Sam Mbakwe that has remained a pleasant reference point and a study in purposeful leadership in not only Imo but also Nigeria in general. If your administration had resurfaced the road in question, Rev. Father Okorie would not have fallen into that ditch that earned him what he called “psychological and emotional torture”.
Chief, you are not the only one that has faced tribulation in power if we can actually call it that. I need not remind you that Dr. Ngige suffered the most humiliating treatment known to a sitting Governor in Nigeria and rose from the ashes of that experience to liberate Anambra people and write his name in 18 carat gold in the minds of his people. Dr. Ngige is remembered today by ndi-Anambra not by his stolen mandate but by his works in the short and eventful period, he spent in Awka. Another close example is your colleague in Enugu State- Gov. Sullivan Chime. He climbed to power standing on the shoulders of a dictatorial majesty who unfortunately appear to be your role model- Chimaraoke Nnamani. He realized early that the shortest route to legitimize an illegitimate mandate is to stand with the people whose mandate was hijacked at gunpoint. His exploits in Enugu is a true testimony to smart governance. The last time I checked, Nnamani was sulking at some obscure corner at the hollowed chamber of the Senate just like you‘re doing before Archbishop Obinna.
It was exactly one year this month I wrote, congratulating you on your victories at the tribunals against your brother Senator Iheanyi Araraume and seized the opportunity to advise like a good brother would that it was time to do away with those annoying billboards scattered all over the State with your photographs announcing nothing. I further reminded you “that the noise about the clean and green initiative has been resounding enough even though we have not seen much of green any where around the State”. I went ahead to make excuses for you, again, like a good brother would that “it was my guess that it was a PPA chain that held you and that now that you have left PPA, you should abandon that legacy where there were more green grasses planted on billboards than on Imo grounds”. A year down the line, the chorus have remained the same.
It is easy for your horde of press spin-doctors to pick unnecessary quarrel about these home truths, but please do remember in your somber moments that there is indeed life after power. Desperation, muscle flexing, showmanship and raw exhibitionism are symptoms of a troubled mind and a sign of large dose of inferiority complex.
Chike Orjiako
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