My Ordeal With Abdulmumin Jibrin (2)

By Odilim Enwegbara

I have been bombarded with calls from many curious Nigerians reading the Newspot.com online posting of story about Jibrin, including politicians, civil society leaders, journalists, and concerned Nigerians, most of them expressing their disbelief of what I wrote, hence the reason for their calls to hear from me. In fact, a very close friend of Femi Falana had to call after having talked to Femi Falana who confirmed that everything I wrote and posted is completely true and on that basis he decided to call and thank me for letting Nigerians know who really Jibrin is.

When I told him how shocked I was at Jibrin's behaviour his response was, "Those who elected Jibrin are different from those who elected Salisu Buhari, the disgraced first speaker of the same House of Representatives in 1999, who claimed to have a degree from Toronto University, and Farouk Muhammad Lawan, who confessed collecting $600,000 from an oil baron Mr Femi Otedola so as not to include him in the House Representatives' probe on fuel subsidy fraud, which Mr Lawan chaired.

In fact, to my great shock, some of the callers said they called from Kano, went as far as blaming me for making the mistake of not doing a background check on Mr Jibrin because, as they all said, did I do, either I would have decided to do it free or just walked away.

While without denying such a mistake on my own part, I did not fail to remimd them that there's no way anyone who encounters the Jibrin I encountered would not easily fall a victim, especially given how his flawless public facade maskes his ulterior motive, and how such deceptive stunt is reinforced by his confidence radiating sweet talks.

When one of them insisted that my charges were too much, I made him know that intellectual properties being priceless have always been expensive and that even Prophet Mohammad attested to that when he said, "The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr." This means that knowledge and intellectual property invaluable.

I reminded another that in 1985, young Bill Gates refused to sell to IBM his software just in floppy disc, notwithstanding that IBM priced it $2 billion, unheard-of then. I also drew his attention to how in 1875, Western Union New York paid Thomas Edison $40,000, unheard-of then for just helping them to fix an acoustic telegraphic problem that lasted for less than 30 minutes. In other words, Western Union rather than paid him for his time, which would have been less than $10, paid him $40,000 being agreed as the worth of his intellectual property work.

Yet to another, I asked, if I were a white man (even a yellow man) that Jibrin approached to come up with the 50 questions, would the white man not charge Jibrin more and would Jibrin refuse to pay him?

I am happy that all that called not only agreed with me but were now able to recognize who Jibrin truly is to the extent that almost all were insisting that I should share this encounter with this serial blackmailer with Nigerians so that they too are better informed.

I want to yet again bring to the fore this my unfortunate encounter with Jibrin so that Nigerians, especially his constituents should expect nothing believable from such a dishonorable man called Jibrin and possibly start the process of recalling him. This, I want to do because I am worried that he is having his media way because ours is a gullible nation, where those who are shouting on top of their voices are easily believed to be right, even without anyone bothering to take a serious look at who they are, and why are they making such baseless stories. Of course, it is our gullibility that this unrepentant unscrupulous character is exploiting with the fun of churning out all kinds of lies.

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