By Ray Ekpu
Mr. Rochas Okorocha,
Governor of Imo State is one of the leaders of the All Progressives Congress
(APC). The APC’s signature tune is anti-corruption. Okorocha has just shot
himself in the foot. He rolled out a red carpet for a man who doesn’t deserve
it; he named a street undeservingly after him; he erected a multi-million naira
statue to honour a man to whom honour is not due. He gave Imo State ’s
highest award to him as well.
*President Jacob Zuma of South Africa and Gov Rochas Okorocha of Imo State |
The excuse that Okorocha offers for his royal treatment of President Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma of
Secondly, as an important element in the APC administration Okorocha’s
relationship with such a corrupt leader under any guise, for any reasons
whatsoever is a disgrace. Here are the facts: Zuma has just been indicted for
corruptly allowing an Indian family to influence the appointment of his cabinet
members. On June 14, 2005, Zuma who was the Deputy President of South Africa
was sacked from his post on several allegations of corruption by President
Thabo Mbeki. Last year the Supreme Court of South Africa ruled that Zuma had
failed to uphold the Constitution by using state funds to build a swimming pool
and a cattle ranch at his Nkandla home. He was ordered to pay $500, 000. He
apologised profusely for this misdemeanor. Recently, the South African Supreme
Court of Appeal ordered that Zuma must face prosecution for almost 800 charges
of corruption relating to an arms deal in the 1990s.
The man’s sins are
many. In December 2005, Zuma who has six wives and more than 20 children was
charged for rape. He was accused of raping a 31-year old woman who was HIV
positive. He claimed that the sexual activity was consensual. But the shocking
aspect of the sexual transaction was that he admitted that he did not use
condom when having sex with the woman even though he knew that she was HIV
positive. Another shocking revelation in court: He stated that he took a shower
after the sex bout to “cut the risk of contracting HIV.” HIV educators carried
out a major campaign to inform the public that no bath, warm or cold, could
prevent HIV transmission. The court acquitted him because it believed that the
sexual encounter was consensual. But it blasted him for his recklessness.
That is the man Okorocha
was treating like a hero. He is not. He is just one of the dirty fellows to
whom Africa has wittingly or unwittingly
entrusted its destiny simply because he is a liberation war veteran. But the
worst disservice that Okorocha did to the young children of Imo State
was to have asked Zuma to address them. Okorocha assembled some secondary
school students and asked Zuma to speak to these kids. What could Zuma be
expected to talk to the kids about? Integrity, fidelity, incorruptibility? If
he spoke about these his words would be aflame with dishonesty. It would have
been the equivalent of Elizabeth Taylor’s thesis on marital stability or Donald
Trump’s doctoral dissertation on factuality.
Zuma simply had
nothing to tell them on character building. Well, he could speak to them about
war and the liberation struggle and his 10 year tenure in Robben Island
prison with Nelson Mandela. But Imo
State , I am sure, has
many war veterans and many others who believe in the ideology of liberation.
This ideology may be called IPOB or MASSOB or simply Justice or Equal
opportunity or Gender Parity or Level Playing Field or the Ideology of Symmetry
or Evenness. There would be no shortage of such apostles in Imo State
if Okorocha wanted them to speak to his young minds.
If these young fellows turn to Wikipedia and see the listing under Jacob Zuma,
the fourth President of South Africa, they would wonder why Okorocha saw him as
a role model, as someone after whom they could pattern their lives. They will
be deeply disappointed. They will wonder whether their governor is like him and
if he is not why he would choose to celebrate him.
Okorocha’s defence for
his decision is that the only industry in Imo State
is education. To him investment in education, from anyone is welcome. It is
not. There are more than 200 leaders of countries in the world who share the
ideology of liberating people from the shackles of illiteracy through
education. A careful search would have yielded dividends that his people would
not feel angry or embarrassed about. Despite his well-known activism in the
education sector Okorocha has, by the Zuma controversy, put his people, if not
his party, to shame. Now, can I ask him a question. Has he a statue for Dr
Nnamdi Azikiwe or Dr Alex Ekwueme, two Igbo leaders who have through their
exertions over the years brought honour to Ndigbo? And these two men are
actually very honourable men whether in Igboland or in Nigeria .
This honour to a
corrupt man who is roundly despised by his own country men and women is a dirty
business. The man is dirty but may not even be dirtier than many Nigerian
politicians. But that is not why we should be asked to celebrate him here: The
difference between Nigeria
and South Africa is that in South Africa a
sitting President can be prosecuted and sent to jail. In Nigeria he
cannot be investigated or prosecuted. He is fenced round by an all-encompassing
immunity. Besides, Nigeria ’s
security agencies have a mandate for regime maintenance. No attempt to change
this has succeeded.
No sitting President
in Nigeria
has been investigated while in office since 1999. So any anti-corruption
attempt by any Nigerian government must necessarily focus attention on the
opposition and the perceived enemies or potential rivals of the president, not
on officials of the government in power. If any of Nigeria ’s Presidents had ever been
investigated there would have been ample evidence that huge elephants may have
been passing through the needle’s eye. We would have discovered that some of
them are as dirty as Zuma if not dirtier.
Governance in Nigeria
is pure thievery, thievery by any and every means, seen and unseen, subtle and
blatant, moveable and immoveable property. The immoveable properties can be
registered in various names including names of children yet unborn or wives not
yet married. The moveable assets can be hidden in roofs or soak-away pits, or
farmlands, or cemeteries so as to confound the most intelligent search agent.
Each of these discoveries takes us to the point of unshockability about
corruption and its corrosive properties. Probably Okorocha is shocked that
Nigerians are shocked by his tango with Zuma?
The reasons people
steal massively in Nigeria
are (a) to be able to maintain and sustain a fraudulent lifestyle till
eternity. That way their children and grandchildren will have no reason to
raise a finger in honest labour. (b) to be able to escape by hook or crook from
corruption conviction by corrupting the anti-corruption process. They take care
of the defence lawyers, the prosecuting lawyers and the witnesses and judges if
they can reach them. Nigerians have apparently been conditioned by the massive
looting of the country to begin to regard it as “one of those things.” I did
not see Imo State citizens carry placards, just
placards, to demonstrate their outrage. It is apparent that we have reached a
tragic point in our journey as a nation where we have lost the sense of shame.
I ask Okorocha to
remember the words of Mark Twain as he frantically tries to find a
justification for his affair with Zuma. “It is better to deserve honours and
not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”
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