Peter Obi's Response to Ukpakareports
okwy okeke
Chuks Iloegbunam.
Ukpaka Reports (Ukpakareports.com) describes itself as
an impartial observer. It is uncertain that the owners
and operators of this curious website intend to be
taken seriously. There is this fictitious May 30, 2007
story it posted on Mr. Peter Obi, to which my
attention was drawn only yesterday. I visited the site
and could hardly believe the nonsense on publication.
Peter Obi, claimed Ukpaka reporters, had escaped to
Canada! Peter Obi, claimed Ukpaka reporters, was being
silently investigated by the EFCC. Peter Obi, claimed
Ukpaka reporters, had withdrawn the sum of N100
million from Anambra State ’s accounts in the week
before May 29, 2007. Peter Obi, claimed Ukpaka
reporters, had blown N14 billion of Anambra’s money in
the 120 days of his post-impeachment governorship of
Anambra State . Peter Obi’s siblings, claimed Ukpaka
reporters, had been placed on security watch by the
EFCC!
The three As – affordability, availability, and
anonymity – that make Internet pornography a booming
business are rehearsing at Ukpakareports. The
Ukpakareports website is little other than political
pornography. It costs its champions very little to
ventilate propaganda and vile lies. Their identities
are hardly known. They reach a wide audience because
the Internet is a superhighway. But they are engaged
in prostitution. One of my acquaintances – he lives in
New Jersey – telephoned the fellow behind the series
of defamatory and scurrilous articles on Governor
Peter Obi in Ukpakareports with the charge that he
receives generous financial patronage from elements
bent on hijacking power and the public treasury in
Anambra State. This shameless hack acknowledged that
he was a kept hand—and then rationalized his treachery
on the grounds that he had bills to pay!
Is the settlement of bills enough reason to cast
aspersions on innocent people? Let me paraphrase a
warning I read at the Lagos office of the National
Youth Service Corps (NYSC) many years ago. Those who
destroy others to succeed will have destruction
waiting for them at the post of their success. Those
who kill others to succeed will find death as sentinel
at the post of their success.
I should not bother to comment on Ukpakareports but
for two reasons. One is the wildness and inanities
that fester in their so-called “authoritative”
reports; the other is the gullibility of some sections
of the reading public.
The bother is neither that Anambra State never had a
Commissioner for Parks and Markets nor that Peter Obi
never had a political appointee known as and called
Obasie. I am rather appalled by the pedestrian import
of the Ukpaka-scoop. The EFCC stands for the Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission. Not even the
hyperbole usually attributed to sectional Nigerian
press ever converted the EFCC into an intelligence arm
of the Nigerian government. Under what heading,
therefore, would the EFCC have placed Mr. Peter Obi’s
siblings on security watch?
If it was ever true that Peter Obi, a man roundly
abused for and accused of unremitting frugality,
suddenly spent N14 billion of Anambra State’s money in
a spare 120 days, as Ukpakareports “found,” the onus
was on this fiction-specializing “media” outfit to
outline the areas in which the money was expended. No
such details appeared in the report. If it is true
that Peter Obi made wild withdrawals from Anambra’s
accounts, as Ukpakareports reported, will it not be
true to point out that Andy Uba is Governor of Anambra
State today and so has the right to know whatever
withdrawals were effected from the state’s coffers?
Why did Ukpakareports not go the extra kilometer to
authenticate its report by interviewing people in
political authority in Anambra today to corroborate
its story? Ukpakareports claimed that the EFCC is
silently investigating Peter Obi. How come that a
commission famous for loquacity suddenly decided to
lose its power of speech and media touch when it came
to broadcasting the corruption which Ukpakareports
spectacularly “discovered” in Peter Obi?
Fair is fair. But it seems that filthy lucre won’t
allow some “journalists” to recognize this point. Mr.
Mike Udah, the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Peter
Obi, told me he was in a telephone conversation with a
certain Ikenna Ellis-Ezenekwe, whom he said was
anchoring the anti-Peter Obi Ukpakareports from the
Nigerian end. He invited the fellow to Government
House, Awka, to interview Mr. Peter Obi, examine
relevant documents and draw proper conclusions. Mr.
Ezenekwe made promises, but never showed up. Instead
he is carrying on with his so-called authoritative
reports. Pray, when did it stop being a cardinal
principle of journalism to listen to all sides of an
argument? I wish to remind this gentleman that, as the
great Nnamdi Azikiwe said, history will vindicate the
just.
Mr. Peter Obi is not on the run. He has no reason to
flee Nigeria, being one of only three Governors given
a clean bill of health by the EFCC. Mr. Peter Obi is
not in Canada. It is a mater of public record that he
is in England at the moment. Recent press releases by
Mr. Valentine Obienyem, his media assistant,
underscore this point. So much for irresponsible
journalism!
Chuks Iloegbunam is Mr. Peter Obi’s Chief of Staff.
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Roy Doron
A white man’s burden
Jun 2nd 2007
From Economist.com
Tony Blair has been good for Africa. Africa has been good for him
AP
“A SCAR on the conscience of the world” is how Tony Blair, Britain’s departing
prime minister, once described Africa. In an attempt, perhaps, to remind people
that there is more to his legacy than Iraq, this week he returned to the
continent that has given him some of his greatest foreign-policy successes. Mr
Blair can certainly claim that he has done more than any other leader to make
the world aware of that scar. But doing somehting about it has proved trickier.
For Mr Blair’s relationship with Africa has been one of vaulting ambition,
dashed hopes and modest success.
The three countries that he dropped in on before returning to Britain on Friday
June 1st are richly illustrative. Sierra Leone is where his African adventure
began in 2000 with a British military intervention to restore the elected
president, Ahmad Kabbah, to power after a rebellion. A former British colony,
Sierra Leone was a classic failed African state: years of civil war fuelled by
“blood diamonds” had ripped the country apart. But Britain’s successful
military strike, combined with dollops of post-conflict aid to rebuild the
country, showed Mr Blair that Africa was an arena where Britain, with its
strong historical ties to the continent, could make an impact.
Today Sierra Leone is visibly a better place. In the streets of its capital,
Freetown, Mr Blair was greeted almost like a returning messiah; once he must
have hoped for something similar in Baghdad. Sierra Leone showed Mr Blair how
he could fuse his evangelising morality with practical politics. He began to
argue that the rich world now had the means to cure poverty and disease, if
only it could find the will.
But Mr Blair also went to South Africa, where the limits of his power have been
starkly revealed. Despite his supposedly close relationship with Thabo Mbeki,
its president, Mr Blair has failed to convince him to take a tougher stand
against Robert Mugabe, the president of another former colony gone disastrously
wrong, Zimbabwe. Appeals to human rights and democracy have fallen on deaf ears;
Zimbabwe’s neighbours have preferred the solidarity of the liberation struggle
against what they still tout as white imperialism.
Zimbabwe is one case where Mr Blair’s brand of easy Western morality has come up
short against the realities of African big-man politics. Sudan is another,
though it has not been a total failure for the West. America and Britain did
force the Sudanese government to sign a peace agreement with its rebellious
south in 2004. But the Sudanese have run rings around both for years over
getting a UN force into the Darfur region to stop a murderous government
counter-insurgency campaign that has so far cost the lives of about 300,000
people.
Mr Blair also invested too much in leaders who he hoped would lead an “African
renaissance” but turned out to be more old school than Blairite. If he had left
office a couple of years ago, his farewell safari might well have included
Ethiopia. Meles Zenawi, the country’s president, was the most prominent African
member of Mr Blair’s Commission for Africa but he repaid the compliment by
allowing his police to shoot scores of protesters dead and arrest hundreds more
in the wake of flawed elections in 2005. So now it is back to the old game of
figuring out how to help people whose leaders are mainly interested in helping
themselves.
Although African politics have proved messier than Mr Blair must have hoped, his
famous charm nonetheless worked on some of its leaders. His tour began in Libya,
where he led the way in persuading President Muammar Qaddafi to give up his
nuclear programme in exchange for the resumption of ties with the West. And if
all the “scaling up” of aid agreed at G8 summits does eventually help to reduce
poverty and disease on the continent, Mr Blair’s African legacy might yet turn
out to have been important.
At the least Mr Blair can be sure that Africa was good for his government. New
Labour’s technocratic approach at home never satisfied the old yearning to
build a New Jerusalem that lurks in the breast of every Labour activist. Africa
gave them a “great cause” to rally round, and helped Mr Blair through some of
his worst patches over Iraq. Furthermore, scaling up and debt relief are among
the few issues on which Mr Blair and his successor, Gordon Brown, are in
absolute harmony. So as Mr Blair goes, expect more of the same from the new
government on Africa.