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When Udom Inoyo Faced The Media

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Moses Oko: Jailed Without Trial?

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Sam Akpe

July 30 was, in several ways, a historic evening. The entire press centre of the Akwa Ibom Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists was filled up. More than half of the people in the hall sat outside, under canopies. My presence was based on an invitation by the State Council Chairman of the NUJ, Amos Etuk. He made me feel special. Amos disclosed that a respected technocrat, Udom Inoyo, would be the special guest. Udom retired recently from ExxonMobil as Executive Vice Chairman.

I knew it would be an opportunity to reconnect with colleagues I had not met in years. The event attracted almost every practitioner of journalism in the state. I listened and watched Udom deliver a well crafted and easily applauded paper. At the end, it was announced that only three questions or comments would be taken. I was one of the three people recognised to ask questions. I had three questions but I tried to melt them into one.

However, before then, in a conversation entitled: ‘Your Pen, Our Future,” Udom left no one in doubt as to how his past prepared him for what he has become in life. He talked about his late father with a sense of pride in what the man stood for. Here was a man whose life was ruled by the four pillars of hard work, contentment, integrity, and fear of God. Citing verifiable legacies, he said his father walked the talk on several fronts.

READ ALSO: IGP Appoints Tunji Disu To Replace Abba Kyari

He recalled: “I will never forget offering my father N300 in 1988, and he refused to accept it, querying the source. He had retired from service, and though I was an administrative officer on grade level 9, he thought the amount was too much for me to pull out of my savings. To date, I still visualize my hands stretched out and listening to his interrogations. He was always interested in the source of everything in our possession and even my friends, who would visit, especially in cars that seemed off their economic mark, did not escape such scrutiny. It did not matter if those cars belonged to their parents.”

Udom challenged Akwa Ibom-based journalists not to abandon investigative journalism. He reminded them of the legendary professional exploits of two Washington Post investigative reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, backed by a determined editor, Ben Bradlee, who exposed a corrupt political system and forced a sitting American President, Richard Nixon, out of office. He noted that the action of the two investigative reporters also led to the jailing of more than 40 people including America’s chief law officer, the Attorney General of the United States.

Back in Nigeria, he called to remembrance the investigative prowess of Segun Osoba, who discovered the corpse of the first Prime Minister of Nigeria after the 1966 coup. His conclusion was that “today, there is the Freedom of Information Law that could help reporters do more than what others did, in the past. You do not need to bring down a government or discover a missing corpse, but you can do a lot to help the government and society through truthful investigative reporting.”

Suddenly, the hall exploded in endless applause as Udom said: “I have thought of what I could do as my little contribution to the NUJ in Akwa Ibom State with regard to this matter (of investigative reporting). Anywhere that I have gone in this world when people talk about journalism, one individual comes to my mind first. He is…an international award-winning journalist, who rose from a position of insignificance to that of global prominence. It is in honour of this high priest of quality reporting that I hereby request (you) to accept the institution of an annual award to be called: Ray Ekpu Award for Investigative Journalism.”

The award is to be administered annually by a panel of five first-class media chiefs comprising: two celebrated veteran journalists; one national officer of the Nigerian Guild of Editors; a nominee of the award sponsor; and the State Chairman of the NUJ. It is aimed at encouraging quality, factual investigative reporting in Akwa Ibom State and Nigeria at large. The prize money for the overall winner each year is N500, 000. But the journalist must operate from Akwa Ibom State.

Shortly after Udom announced the award, I put a call across to a delighted Ray Ekpu in Lagos to congratulate him. He was stunned after I revealed the detail of the award to him. He confessed: “I know Udom Inoyo closely. But Sam, I have never done anything special for him to deserve this kind of honour. This is purely from a heart of love. I’m glad to be so honoured by someone who has never placed a demand on me. I am greatly delighted.”

READ ALSO: The Nigerian Condition: The Way Out (4)

Soon, it was time for questions and comments. So far, it was clear to me the combination of issues I needed to raise with Udom, whom I first met in 2005. I tried to make it a simple straight-forward inquiry; which required an equally straight shot of an answer, powered by facts. Both happened. Colleagues had thought nobody would have the intrepidity to raise such a contentious issue with Udom; who parades towering credentials in public service. He was also our guest. There was therefore the need not to embarrass him with any negative interrogation. It was even made clear at the beginning that no political questions should be asked. I considered that as self-censorship.

In journalism, every question is aimed at searching for and unearthing facts. It is these verifiable facts that would eventually open doors for truth to emerge. Only truth can heal doubts and end every speculation.

I cannot recall the exact words in which each section the harmonised question was captured. But it went this way: having left ExxonMobil, are you going into politics? If you are eyeing the governorship of Akwa Ibom as being speculated, what is your view on the issue of cultism which has recently brought avoidable bloodshed and death to the state?” Then I ventured into the hyper-sensitive, seemingly politically-motivated but widely-held conjecture that he had, during his university days, identified with the Pyrates Confraternity, also called Seadogs. I told him that no one has provided any evidence to prove that Seadogs is a cult. “But I want you to be categorical in your response: are you a member of any secret cult, or even the Pyrates Confraternity?”

The silence that ruled the hall suddenly ended. Uneasiness set in. Within a split second, tension took over the hitherto relaxed atmosphere. It was a question nobody wanted to ask, but which everybody now waited for the answer. A senior journalist who sat next to me whispered: So you came all the way from Abuja to ask one long satanic question! My eyes were however focused on Udom. I needed to observe and decode his reaction. Was he harassed?

Quietly, he took hold of the microphone, stood up with a tantalising smile, and confidently responded to the inquiries without any hesitation. He looked first in my direction as though trying to tell me something important enough to demand eye-to-eye contact. At that point, I only hoped he was not taking it personal. Then the smile waned. Diplomacy left. Seriousness took hold of him as silence returned to the hall. Journalists were ready for the news and every word must be recorded. Udom understood the moment and declared in no uncertain terms: “I am not a member of the Pyrates Confraternity.” He said this three times. He did not stammer. It was for emphasis. The message sank in. Something snapped; and the tension ended.

After the absolute declaration, he went ahead to state his position on the menace of cultism in the state. He spoke as a father whose children could have been victims of the bothersome situation. You could sense the pain as each word dropped from his lips. He expressed serious concern over the threats and challenged parents and every person to rise to the occasion: “We must not take the matter of cultism lightly. We must begin to find out what is driving cultism in our state and in Nigeria. We must take cultism out of the reach and the realms of politics.” It was another way of saying that cultism must not be used as an instrument for political gains.

READ ALSO: Udom Emmanuel And Politics 2023

Udom refused to accept or deny any interest in the governorship issue. His position was that Governor Udom Emmanuel does not deserve any distraction as he focuses on the serious business of governance in his final two years. He told the media professionals that every indigene of the state and indeed every Nigerian should be politically conscious and must develop a sense of involvement in governance even without necessarily contesting for any office.

The position of the former ExxonMobil chief may have been a cautious demonstration of maturity in view of what a local newspaper did to his reputation earlier in the week. He woke up that morning to see a screaming headline in one of the state-based tabloids suggesting that he had a meeting two months ago in Calabar with a former governor of Cross River State, Donald Duke. The imaginary meeting was intended to lobby Donald to in turn arm-twist Governor Emmanuel to consider Udom as his successor.

The reporter who created the deliberate falsehood sounded as though he was privy to Donald’s conversation with Governor Udom Emmanuel. He cited the governor as telling Donald on telephone that “Inoyo is a hard sell” for the governorship. Udom’s description of the story was: “This is complete falsehood and a mischievous creation of a fiction writer. While I will never border to debunk such falsehood it would be better if all practitioners would uphold the basic tenets of journalism in their daily practice, which includes truth, accuracy, objectivity, social responsibility, etc.”

The evening ended on the high. With five laptops as gift, an institution of excellence award in journalism worth N500, 000; a promise to collaborate with the NUJ on several issues for the good of the profession; and of course, some other heavy but undisclosed packages, the weekend started well for my colleagues.

 

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Opinion

Kemi Badenoch’s Bad Knocks  On Nigeria 

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By  Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

One of the interesting proverbs I picked up in our General African Studies (GAS 201) course with the late Professor Jabez Olowo Ojoade in the University of Jos in 1979 was ‘it is a bastard child that points at his homestead with his left hand! The Akan people of Ghana put it this way: a bastard child points to his father’s house with his left hand’. The Yoruba say that ‘a person who points to their homestead with the left hand is not a good person’, while the Luhya of Kenya say that ‘when pointing to your village, use your right hand’. It is in the Swahili language that a sort of generalised use of the left hand is concretised when it says ‘the left hand is for personal hygiene, not for pointing!

Bastard child! Homestead! Pointing with the left hand! These three constituents and functional parts of the proverb tickled my teenage imagination to no end. What is it about the left had that it should not be used to refer to one’s family? Why is this metaphor common across the continent? Indeed, there must be something about the family, about the homestead, about one’s origins that deserves respect no matter the circumstances.

By the way, some Nigerians in the diaspora also point to Nigeria with their left hand. ‘That country’, is often used to describe the place where some spent eighteen or thirty of their lives as they tried to find their feet. So, in a sense, Kemi is simply doing what some full-blooded Nigerians do in reaction to the anomie which currently rules the land. Kemi stands out because of her delicate and prominent position in the world. We all took offence when Bully Donald Trump referred to ours as ‘shithole countries! At that level, who said what becomes very important, that is, the message is given prominence because of the stature and calibre of the messenger.

            The proverb, according to Wikipedia, is ‘often used to convey that someone who is not respectful or grateful to their roots or heritage will eventually be rejected or ostracised by their community! The left hand, we are told, is for personal hygiene. We don’t use it to give or receive gifts; we don’t use it to serve drinks or for traditionally important functions.

             In the African context, a bastard child is not one who was born out of wedlock or whose father is not known to the family. Bastard child represents a person who is disconnected from their family. Pointing to the family house with the left hand is indicative of disrespect.

            These thoughts flooded my mind when I read recently elected leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, Kemi Badenoch, gave some hard and bad knocks to Nigeria, the Nigeria Police, and governance in her Nigeria, her ancestral home. To be sure, nobody who has encountered some men of the Nigeria Police in action can fault Kemi. Her chemistry of being brutally frank is what has taken Kemi to the heights in Conservative Party politics. Whether she can indeed lead the Party to victory in an election is a different kettle of fish. As the potential leader of the British government, all cards will count when push gets to shove. Which is why Kemi should remember that no well-trained child points to the family house with the left hand.

            Nigeria is in process. It is a building site. And we started this project of disparate and different cultures fused together when the British pounced on our ancestors to create Nigeria. We look back to the years when a British monarch, King Henry VIII (1491 to 1547), who ate two of his six wives for breakfast and dinner. Wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were executed by beheading. Jane Seymour died under mysterious circumstances. Perhaps if Diana had emerged in the 15th century as wife to a British monarch, the reigning king would have sent her to the guillotine instead of the tunnel in Paris! Some British monarchs actively participated, supported, and profited from the transatlantic slave trade. British monarchs oversaw the colonisation of indigenous lands in Africa, North America, and Australia sometimes through genocide! No where in Africa, our dear left-handed and grandly insolent Kemi, would a Prime Minister allow his wife to remain in an adulterous relationship for decades as Harold Macmillan did with wife Lady Dorothy Macmillan did with the bisexual Bob Boothby in the 20th Britain!

            We may need to remind Kemi that racism still dominated policing in Britain as it does in much of the Western world. Yet, we have not painted the entire police system as being racist. Indeed, Kemi, without officialdom around her can still be profiled by a police officer if she were found driving alone in some areas of London! Her skin colour, is not typically British, I dare say. Yet, we have not said that Britain is racist. The ‘how dark’ racist discussions which precipitated Harry and Meghan fleeing the British monarchy is still very fresh and raw in our consciousness; yet, Nigeria’s Vice President has not called the British monarchy a racist institution.

            Time will fail me to discuss the Damilola Taylor case in year 2000 when the Metropolitan Police handling of Taylor’s murder was seen as slow and inadequate due to racial bias. By the way, Damilola was both British and Yoruba like our illustrious and petulant Kemi who believes in giving hard knocks! What about the Stephen Lawrence 1993 murder case which the Metropolitan Police badly handled owing to racial bias? In 1999, Roger Sylvester, a Black man, died in police custody and an inquest showed that the police used excessive force. In 2009, newspaper vendor Ian Tom died after being struck by a police officer during the G20 protests in London. The 1999 Macpherson Report, which investigated the Stephen Lawrence case, concluded that ‘the Metropolitan Police as institutionally racist! As late as 2017, the Lammy Review which was led David Lammy (MP) concluded that “black and minority ethnic individuals were more likely to be stopped and searched, arrested, and imprisoned than their white counterparts! Need I say more?

So, our dear daughter and bright star Kemi in the British firmament, we shall not point to you with our left hand, because in spite of you, you are our daughter. We can only say that the Nigeria Police is in good company of the Empire of the Police system which was created in 1820 by your progenitors from the other side! Colonial vestiges are not easy to shake off!

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Afe Babalola And Dele Farotimi: On Justice, A Just Society And The Nigerian State

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Prof. Tunji Olaopa

By Tunji Olaopa

The feud between elder statesman, Chief Afe Babalola and civil rights activist, Mr. Dele Farotimi, is perhaps the most significant discourse that postcolonial Nigerian state has thrown up for the moment, one in a class of those grand defining disputations that surely will gather dust which will take some time to abate. And it is one case that is fraught with all sorts of legal, jurisprudential, moral and political traps and complexities that speak to more than the trivial interventions—leveraged around the David and Goliath motif—that are attending the matter. Those who have been able to go beyond the surface of the case will agree that it goes to the very foundation and founding of the Nigerian society, and the fundamental objective of crafting a good and just society for Nigerians. That the issue revolves around the dispensation of justice immediately alerts us to the deep insinuation about the idea of social justice itself, and how the conception of fairness could be written into the very fabric of the Nigerian society. And yet, the complexity of the case is what makes it a case that is too critical for a public servant like me to dabble in.

(Un)fortunately, my intellectual maturation, my political science education and my professional endeavor in institutional reform advocacy have prepared me to intervene in this critical matter. I have always been involved with Nigeria, and with reflective thoughts about how to reconstitute her greatness. Three learning encounters with three world-historic icons configured my passion for wanting to see that Nigeria becomes a state we all can be proud of. The first came from my reading of Plato’s Republic. There is a reason that the entire treatise commenced with the question, what is justice? Justice was a fundamental issue in the decline of the ancient Athenian democracy that allowed Socrates to be judicially murdered. The second learning derived from Wole Soyinka’s dense prison memoir, The Man Died. And like most who have read it, Soyinka was troubled by the idea of justice: “For me, justice is the first condition of humanity.” By the time I would be coming to Thomas More’s Utopia, I was already apprised of the connections between my political science education, my professional endeavor as a public servant, and the key elements of institutional reform as a cogent framework for transforming Nigeria.

From Plato to Soyinka, we have a trajectory of political reflection that takes justice seriously as the basis for organizing a just society. This is part of the intellectual frameworks for my undergraduate and graduate studies at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. In one of those explosive seminar classes that played some fundamental role in my intellectual maturation in the graduate school, I had proposed an argument through a seminar paper titled: “Is a revolution an option to fix Nigeria?” The topic was meant to titillate the collective yearning for revolution that would serve as the ultimate mechanism for social change that would flush off all traces of corruption and degeneration in postcolonial Nigeria. Revolutions seem to possess some allure for the masses because they constitute a framework of justice that the constitutional justice mechanism might not be able to handle.

However, as Wole Soyinka, Thomas More, Martin Luther and even Galileo Galilei would realize, the need for radicalism is balanced by the force of establishment orthodoxy. The Nigerian predicament has, as a fundamental foundation, a lot to do with the connection between governance failure and injustice in terms of the persistent and protracted class strife between the haves and the have-nots, between the rich and the poor, indeed, in the final analysis between the government and the governed. And in the case between Afe Babalola and Dele Farotimi, the issues boil down to the administration of justice and the entire edifices and institutions of social justice and the rule of law in Nigeria. And so, in outlining the key issues involved in the matter, we must be careful enough to read between the lines and the noises of analysts who are eager to queue behind their favored protagonists.

First things first. Let us remove the surface debris. Indeed, and in this case, the debris points us in the direction to look for the rot within the matter. First, there is the matter of civil defamation and its legal ramifications. And second, there is the issue of the legal and moral protocols involved in dealing with the pursuit of redress by someone who knows and understands the law. Barrister Farotimi has a legal right to seek redress in court. Chief Babalola has a legal right to defend his reputation in court. In raising the specter of legal prosecution against defamation, I see Chief Babalola as being at the forefront of gatekeeping the legal establishment in terms of what is and is not permissible or possible under the law and its conservative tenets. If you are hurt or an injustice has been done to your person, then the best place to seek redress is not the court of public opinion but the constitutional legal establishment.

Unfortunately for him, Barrister Farotimi’s book, Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System, impugns the entire legal and judicial establishment up to its apex institution, the Nigerian Supreme Court. However, does radicalism preclude moral decency? A book could be written and allegations made without the complement of atrocious language. Or maybe the rot in the judicial system, and the need for a revolution preclude any niceties, especially with those who are allegedly at the forefront of perpetuating and protecting the rot. But then, how to prove what we all consider to be the norm in terms of legal prosecution of judicial corruption remains a hanging question.

No matter how we look at what we are calling the surface debris, we are redirected deeper and deeper into what lies beneath the surface. The ultimate question is that between Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi, what we are asked to contend with is the state of the Nigerian judiciary and the corrupt impediment of social justice, especially for an average Nigerian. What Barrister Dele Farotimi said about the Nigerian judicial system is not new. We are all familiar with the rot within the system. Indeed, this is not the first time an alarm would be raised about what we are all familiar with. Indeed, as far back as 1999, The News magazine carried a most unsalutary headline, “Crooks on the Bench: An Expose on the Rot in the Judiciary.” The magazine headlined the names of 47 judges indicted for judicial corruption. What is new is that Dele Farotimi dared to go so far as to mention specific names, and to confront the big players in the legal establishment. And he did this in a most scurrilous manner targeted at getting maximum traction and attention. It is as if Mr Farotimi, through the public sphere, is throwing the gauntlet to every Nigerian and challenging us on our collective responsibility to clean the Augean stable.

If Barrister Farotimi cannot prove his allegations in court, it would not mean that his charges are false. It might only imply that the system which is supposed to guarantee justice has become too corruptly dense to achieve its mandate. But there is also the chance that since the entire judicial system cannot be tarred so broadly with the same brush, Farotimi’s allegation might receive a dispassionate hearing that might deliver justice as we expect it. This might be a tall expectation. Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament has inevitable consequences on the capacity of the judicial system to facilitate the delivery of justice. And this failure also complicates the capacity of the Nigerian state to deliver on its social contract to Nigerians. This is what makes the Babalola-Farotimi case too complex to be decided either in the constitutional court or the court of public opinion. The burdens of postcolonial disruptions that the Nigerian judiciary system carries are enormous: judicial corruption, miscarriage of judgments, executive lawlessness, delayed trial due to insufficient infrastructure, financial dependence on the executive arm of government.

To outline the fundamental challenges of the judicial system in Nigeria this way is not to give in to cynicism and a deterministic mindset that we might be caught in a vice that is inescapable. It is simply to say that the ongoing uproar between the two dramatis personae demonstrates that the court has been given a chance to reflect on the role that (in)justice plays in the fundamental understanding of the Nigerian postcolonial predicament and the capacity of a democratic system to correct itself. When Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi are given their day in court, we will have no choice but to trust that same judicial system to deliver unbiased judgment no matter our misgivings about how objective and untainted that judgment could be. This is just a way of saying that though our judicial system is not perfect; it is still the best that we have.

The last words on this reflection on the connection between the ongoing feud between Babalola and Farotimi and Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament must be given to Haile Sellasie, former emperor of Ethiopia: “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission,Abuja, and Professor of Public Administration.
tolaopa2003@gmail.com

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Opinion

Fear Of Witchcraft And Politics In Zambia

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Witch Burning, Impunity And Abuses Linked to Witchcraft Beliefs In Benue State
Dr Leo Igwe

By Leo Igwe

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) is concerned over the reported arrest of two men accused of being ‘witchdoctors’ in Zambia. The arrest underscores the potency of witchcraft fears and the connection between occult anxieties and the country’s politics. These individuals were accused of trying to bewitch the Zambian president, Hakainde Hichilema. The police claimed that they had charms. They planned to use the charms to harm the president. The report says the two persons have been charged under Zambia’s Witchcraft Act. The Act criminalizes “possession of charms”, “professing knowledge of witchcraft”, and “cruelty to wild animals”. The police found the two with assorted charms, including a live chameleon.

This development is utterly embarrassing and shows that the Zambian government is slowly losing its focus and bearing.The country has many socio-economic challenges. Suspicion of bewitchment or possession of charms should be the least of its worries at this time. There should be no place for witchcraft and possession of charms in modern politics because there is no evidence for these beliefs and practices. Zambian authorities should not weaponize the Witchcraft Act or use it to justify this incident. Zambian law does not recognize witchcraft. Zambia’s Witchcraft Act criminalizes naming or imputing witchcraft. It prohibits accusing or threatening to accuse any person of being a witch or a wizard. In this case, it is the police who are breaking the law.

Otherwise, how did they know the two individuals were ‘witchdoctors’? Did these persons identify as witch doctors? If not, the police are liable because they named and imputed witchcraft and have to prove that these individuals have witch-doctoring powers. The police claimed to have charged these individuals for possessing “assorted charms”, including a chameleon. Really?

The police in Zambia have questions to answer: What are charms? How did they know that what was in their possession were charms, not pets? Is a chameleon a form of charm? What makes possession of a chameleon possession of a charm? When and how does a chameleon become a charm? The police need to answer these questions and more before one takes them seriously.

Again, did the individuals describe what was in possession as ‘charms’? If they did, does confessing or designating something as a charm make it a charm? And if they did not, the police are liable because they need to prove how those possessions translated into charms.

In addition, the police claimed that the duo wanted to bewitch the president. What does that mean? How did they know? Are the police not contravening a provision under the Witchcraft Act by professing knowledge of witchcraft? Can one harm another person using a chameleon? They claimed that the two persons wanted to use the charms in their possession, including the chameleon to harm the president. How did they know that? What is the evidence for that?

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches calls for an end to this state-sponsored witch hunt. There is no evidence of harm through witchcraft or charms. The Zambian government should desist from witchcraft- related infractions and violations including arbitrary arrest, and detention of innocent citizens. These allegations are baseless and absurd. The arrest was politically motivated. This development demonstrates that Zambian authorities are out of sync with their duty and obligation to uphold the rule of law and protect accused persons.

Zambian authorities need to act in compliance with the 2021 UN resolution, which urged states to take measures to combat abuses linked to witchcraft beliefs and ritual attacks. End witchcraft allegations in Zambia. End witch hunts in Africa now!

Dr Igwe directs the Advocacy for Alleged Witches.

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