FW: Obama and Ndi Okereke: Views From Home

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Subject: Obama and Ndi Okereke: Views From Home

Obama and Ndi Okereke: Views From Home

Written by Ngozi Nwachukwu

Thursday, 28 August 2008

The sudden controversies surrounding Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke’s recent outings under the aegis of Africans for Obama Campaign and the fund-raising that followed have raised a lot of issues about the person of the Director –General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Some commentators have tried to address issues concerning her pedigree and background with delinquent precision and warped information contradicting her background and family essence. Her responses have not done her better either; hence rendering the whole scenario hazy and confused about the character of the great woman of the capital market and her true genealogy. That is why I write to correct these impressions and set the record straight for posterity and for the interest of the nation.

It was Tam David-West, the erudite professor of virology and a prince of Kalabari kingdom in Rivers State; who echoing his mother’s wisdom said “An individual does not outgrow his background” This is true! Chinua Achebe, the master story-teller and world-class novelist said in his classic work –THINGS FALL APART, “Those whose palm-kernels have been cracked by the benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble” This is also true of the person of Professor Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, who people and writers erroneously associate with Bonny kingdom in Rivers State as her place of origin.

Daa Ndii, (Auntie Ndii) as she is fondly called by her younger kiths and kins from Okereke’s family is from Okpala Eziama in Ngor-Okpala Local Government Area of Imo State. A daughter of the late Eze Daniel Okereke, a lawyer and the Speaker of Eastern Nigeria House of Assembly in Enugu in the first republic.Ndi Okereke is married to the Onyiuke family in Anambra State. Her mother was from Bonny Kingdom in the present day Rivers State.

She was born in Sussex England on November 2, 1948 to the family of Daniel Okereke-Ejije .Her father, Daniel was a rural teacher in his Okpala village in Eziama town in the 1940’s when the Igbo National Union had embraced the educational gospel of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe who came back from the United States and preached his catechism of the Golden Fleece. Eziama is a compact town of 23 villages of which Okpala is one. A progressive-minded and naturally endowed community sought for a son of theirs who would go to the white man’s land on the community’s expense and acquire western education at a tertiary level as it was common among Igbo communities in the march towards the independence of Nigeria from the colonial powers. The plan was to get a torch-bearer for the community. The late Daniel Okereke was a beneficiary of this development scholarship scheme by the Eziama and five neighbouring communities of Ntu, Amala, Alulu, Obokwe and Oburu all in Ngor-Okpala local government. These six communities are jointly called Mbaisii (six towns).

They funded the university education of the young Daniel Okereke and his academic sojourn to the United Kingdom in the late 1940’s.It was in the course of the studies abroad that Ndi Okereke, the Professor and Director-General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange was born in 1948 in Sussex England. These background stories are necessitated by the need to clarify issues of her history and geneaology;and to have a better understanding of the real essence of this woman who is clinically following the footsteps of her father and family in their unpatriotic and anti-peoples cherished values. They thrive on segregations and like identifying with flashy and wealthy aliens who help them dominate their people. That is her mission: to use the Obama brand and United States of America to climb the next social ladder against the Nigerian people.Obama will be president of the United States on the strength of character and patriotism as an American not as a black. The election is between John McCain of the Republican Party and Barrack Obama of the Democratic Party .It is not against blacks and whites as Okereke-Onyiuke would want us to believe. Blacks alone cannot make Obama President! What is their population? Ndi ought to have known this; since according to her “I am a very intelligent person; I have a PhD that I did not buy”

She has had the very best of education that institutions of her generation could afford all over the world. Having had her secondary education in Queen’s College Enugu, where she served as a senior prefect. She proceeded to City University, New York in the United States of America for further studies. Her working life commenced in the United States with the New York Stock Exchange. This career has flourished over the years culminating in her appointment as the Director–General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange where she has held sway since year 2000.

In that capacity, Ndi Okereke’s social responsibility roles have shown more in acts and projects that weaken the Nigerian project than ones that would touch the lives of the people. She was the leader of Corporate Nigeria, a fictitious organization which raised two billion naira for the PDP and Obasanjo to rig the 2003 elections against the opposition parties and the Nigerian people; thereby laying the foundation for political impunity in Nigeria. Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke was not yet done with her anti peoples’ tendencies as she funded the infamous Obasanjo’s life presidency project. The iron lady of the Nigeria’s capital market mobilized her corporate friends and served as a conduit pipe through which Nigeria’s common assets were bought over by few greedy elites who warmed their ways to the heart of power under the wicked reign of Olusegun Obasanjo.TRANSCORP has ruined a lot of families and companies in Nigeria. Where are NITEL and M-TEL? She is a major contributor to the crises facing Nigeria today in all departments as a result of the wasted opportunities of the Obasanjo’s years.

In other climes, women like her run charities in their communities and help fund the education of the girl-child.Oprah Winifrey, an African American is building a world –class institution for girls in South Africa. Okpala the home town of Ndi Okereke does not have any feature of modern development. In the so-called Okereke family where her elder brother Kelechi Okereke presides as a rural traditional ruler after serving as the Secretary to the late Evan(s) Enwerem government in Imo State; many of them are jobless graduates. An electricity project launched since December 26 1984 is still a pipe dream in the community with the peasant men and women having being over levied. No good road to access the community and public water is in none existence except for individual efforts who sink bore-holes.

Irrespective of the appalling and dismal situation of the community and her people; an influential Ndi Onyiuke whose father, Daniel Okereke died in 1983 as an enemy of his community is still busy “paying 10 million naira for a table at a concert” where unsolicited 100 million naira was raised for Obama in far away United States, while millions are ravaged by HIV/AIDS in Okpala.No maternity home or even good public or primary school exists in Okpala, except the one run by the Catholic Seminary in Okpala. Okpala Secondary School is now a shadow of itself since her brother ,Eze Kelechi Okereke became the chairman of the governing council.

The Obama campaign, all the way from United States has disowned her; good riddance to bad rubbish! Ndi Okereke no matter how she is seen is following the footsteps of her ancestors and father, who do not have community service as one of their virtues. They are known opportunists. Just the same way the Eziama and Mbaisii as a whole trained her father through scholarship to read law in England, without his giving back an iota to the communities; rather he used the opportunity given him by his people as far back as 1940’s to chart a course of division and disunity among them and promote his children and Okereke family members against the masses of Eziama and Okpala people. It is a common heritage of the Okereke’s whose palm-kernel was cracked by the benevolent spirit of the Eziama and Ngor-Okpala people.

It was this bad and unenviable record that made the Eziama community to reject in totality the Ezeship of Daniel Okereke.Rather led by Sir Samson Onyeso Nwachukwu,the articulate elder statesman who up till today lives in Aba;the Eziama Ngor-Okpala people chose the late Abel Ekwebelam Nwosu from Umuokoro Eziama as the Traditional ruler and the Nma 1 of Eziama.Irked by this humiliation and rejection even at the judiciary where Daniel Okereke appealed to, he explored the political enemity between Onyeso Nwachukwu who was then chairman of National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the old Imo State and the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP) Governor of Imo State, Chief Sam Mbakwe ,who carved out his family and neighbouring villages as an autonomous community for him, where he reigned till his death in 1983.

Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke claims to be a daughter of Bonny Kingdom as a result of unpleasant realities and controversies associated with her family. But the Nigerian national stage has offered her a lot of opportunities and patronage that she ought to have changed the standard character of her family in Okpala who have reaped a lot from the community without sowing back. Even when her big friend and political and business associate gave her a national award of Order of the Niger (OON), she was in Imo State list. Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke was supposed to have used her high profile connection to help develop Nigerian economy and her people in Okpala to prove the late Senate president Chuba Okadigbo wrong when he condemned their abject negligence of the community that gave them so much in year 2000, when he came to Okpala for the coronation of Ndi’s elder brother as the traditional ruler of their kitchen community.

Let the Economic and Financial Crime Commission treat her with respect! If she has run foul of the law, she should be corrected with regard and courtesy. She is our daughter and we wish, she changes for the better!

Chief Ngozi Nwachukwu (JP) is a retired school teacher from Okpala in Ngor/Okpala Local government Area, Imo State.ngoz...@yahoo.com

http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/guest-articles/obama-and-ndi-okereke-views-from-2.html

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