Imo: An Episode we can't wait to watch

The thought that has been reverberating in my mind since I read the story that Mr. Ikedi Ohakim, their Imo State governor, allegedly (physically) brutalized one Mr. Samuelson Ikenna Iwuoha who was reportedly said is an activist struggling to correct many anomalies is Ohakim-led government of Imo State, was if Ohakim wants to take-up a career in pugilism, after his present career as a politician. (Not as a democrat, because politicians in Nigeria rarely behave like democrats). Democrats abide by the principles of the rule of law Nigerian politicians debase in a democracy like ours.

There is no website one opens that the said brutalized picture of Iwuoha is not in. I think Iwuoha has become popular from the alleged bad story of a governor's pugilism act. I will not fail to confront Ohakim to physically brutalize me so that I will become popular, if the story becomes convincing in any court of competent jurisdiction.

However, the black stripes on Iwuoha's back call for probing. Many of us who are humanists, should not only pity. The stripes are eyesore and mindsore. Watching those alleged stripes, especially, coming from a governor, call for sober reflection. And do we now call those stripes “A Governor's Brutality” as we have heard “A presidential handshake”? What do we call it?

'Common sense' has it that Nigerian leaders brutality is not only as we can see on Iwuoha, as alleged, but as we can collectively experience in their daily activities on the daily general sensibility of Nigerians; the leaders make merry everyday while we eat ashes as bread always; they send their children to the best schools overseas while they cannot pay our home-based preceptors salaries, and even when they pay, they pay pittance. Our roads are pit-of-hell etc. How many do we mention?

While we suffer in abject penury in the hands of our leaders, those who were privileged to work under these leaders give us 'bigger punches' than their masters', they cook-up lies to defend their masters' to protect their job, instead of protecting us, who applauded their appointment when related to the public, anytime such public offensive like Iwuoha's was made public.

Those workers, working for their masters' like Ohakim, are now exhibiting their expertise of the rarest habit of hack-writers by publishing articles on the newspapers and on the Internet to deface us on the truth about the story that Ohakim has turned a pugilist. Are writers, not again, the conscience of the society? Who knows! This is because, those writers writing for Ohakim have always betrayed us, with many attacks, on who ever that 'talk' to their master, and sometimes, they attack mirage. They are now directing the story by Iwuoha that Ohakim brutalized him as the orchestration of Ohakim's political enemies to smear his image. They did not allow us to hear what the court was going to say as we have learnt from the Lagos-based Lawyer, Mr. Festus Keyamo, but they have concluded that their master was being maligned by his 'enemies' to gain prominence: saying that literally implies that Ohakim was innocent.

While the hack-writers rages with non-issue in favour of their master, they are now not attacking Iwuoha on the newspapers alone, but Mr. Festus Keyamo, who wrote a public letter to Ohakim in respect to the alleged brutalization of Iwuoha. The hack-writers said that the way keyamo sent the letter was not the proper way to address a public personality like Ohakim. But was Keyamo not right by writing a public letter to Ohakim, with his client's directive? Have we not heard such public figures like Ohakim denying letters sent to them in secrecy because 'they are above the law'?

If this story was later found to be true, I think Ohakim should resign, except as wonders will never end in Nigeria. Has Ohakim not made Imo stat the Banana Republic of Idi Amin, by punching the Peoples Progressive Alliance (PPA) under whose platform he became governor for the Peoples Decratic Party (PDP)? I felt so much like crying the day Ohakim defected and how he rushed to the newspapers, chasing shadows, that the former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu was after his life.

While reading this story of Iwuoha, I put myself in a place of melancholy, because as the adage goes “One Okrika person denied fish implies that all Okrika people have been denied fish”. It is not only the court that should handle this matter; the Civil Society must investigate this story. Let justice be done. If Nigeria were a developed country, Ohakim would have resigned; and it can happen in Nigeria, but it would seldom public office holder resigns in Nigeria, because these leaders don't have shame. No office holder can stand this shame in the USA., let alone, asking his hack-writers to write in his defence.

In conclusion, let me implore here some ideas and advises in an online forum on the story: Ohakim, this allegation is too much o! Ohakim has a history of violence? He has ordered his aides to beat up a woman in front of her children in Lagos before, on allegation of not disappearing from the road for his convoy to pass. Anyway, what do you expect from a man like Ohakim? The main issue here is evidence or lack of it. Ohakim can easily deny these allegations. If he has enough evidence he should head to court than deploying his arsenal of hack-writers to write in his defense. In serious countries, forensic evidence would have been collected from Ohakim's office to verify if his blood indeed was spilled on his rug etc even if Ohakim changes the carpet. But Ohakim is very aggressive and this episode did not come as a surprise to us. Desperation has no bounds in Nigeria. 'ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY'. If this is true I hope this Samuelson survives Ohakim's onslaught because a typical Nigerian politician will kill easily to retain power without thinking. The alleged brutality is of the highest order from a (s)elected governor in connivance with a Commissioner of Police and an SSS director? This political madness from the office of Yar'Adua, I am sorry, office of Jonathan, to the Local Government chairmen. Iwuoha, for his safety, he has to take his family far from the reach of the governor and then he can fight his battle. Ohakim vs. Iwuoha: An Episode Nigerians Must Watch.

But since the ball is in Keyamo's lawn, we are watching and waiting what he is going to play.

Odimegwu Onwumere is the Founder of Poet Against Child Abuse (PACA), Rivers State. +2348032552855. [email protected]