The Ekweremadu’s ordeal and the take away for Nigeria

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER

info@medaner.com | justme4justice@yahoo.com

Each week, new development. That is the experience in contemporary Nigeria. I just stumbled upon an interesting piece as I was about to begin this week’s piece and unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to dwell much on it as a main course, but I will nonetheless express a point on it as I pass by. It was Reno Omokri, perhaps, in an attempt to utterly discredit the ruling APC and the incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari, he wrote, and I quote “let me give you a list of investments in Nigeria that dwarf Rwanda’s proposed $2 billion airport. The $25 billion Lekki Free Trade Zone, the $19 billion Dangote Refinery, The $10 billion Escravos gas-to-liquid project, the $10 billion train 7 of the NLNG and the $3.2 billion Indorama fertilizer plants; to mention a few… As a Nigerian, don’t belittle your country because of your frustration with disappointing leaders like Buhari. Nigeria is not APC.”
It is obvious the target was to drop low the APC government; but then, he forgot that all the huge and momentous achievements he boasts of are handiwork of Buhari and APC; all without exception. I am going to do some work on this much later, but as of today, Reno Omokri has informed Nigerians that the Buhari Administration they so much wish to pull down has done so much for the country to be proud of as a Nigerian. We may have insecurity still and the economy may not be what we all expected but those highlighted achievements are worthy of praise. And as rightly placed by Reno, these are but to just mention a few. Thanks Reno.
And finally before I commence my work for the week, the ruling party, and my party is currently engulfed once again with the task of deciding who becomes what at the 10th National Assembly. Unfortunately, we are missing out on the fact that unlike other arms of government, it has been unique overtime; even since independence. The arm of government has been the only institution in the country that has refused to be affected by religious and regional dichotomy that has become a headache to the country as a whole today. This is the reason why again and again the composition of leaderships of the two chambers have never had regard for religion nor tribe. At a time, during the PDP era, we had a Christian Senate President, David Mark, from Benue, a Christian Deputy Senate President, Ekweremadu from Enugu and a Christian Speaker, Patricia Eteh from Osun. It is not limited to that, there have been times in the past when they are all from the north and Muslim. The legislative arm of government has never at any time in the past pandered to the sentiments in question. APC must be very careful in its meddling with the leadership of the 10th Assembly. As an independent institution, the imperative of participation, number and equity is what must deliver capable leadership for the two chambers. Let NASS decide its leadership on the basis of contribution to the shared victory, number and popularity on the floor of the Assembly. Attempting to foist any candidate outside this might not be considered a consensus and it would definitely have implications. The party must be careful, 2027 is just by the corner politically speaking.
This week, I am bothered about the Ekweremadus’ travails in the United Kingdom and the implications on our nation as much as the lessons from the diminishing event.
It is absolutely disgraceful both to the nation and the person of Senator Ekweremadu; that is, the entire events and ordeal the entire family has gone through in the UK. It did not only diminish the person of the man who was a three-time Deputy Senate President of the country and once the Speaker of the ECOWAS Parliament, but also to the country that is again giving a bad name by the scandal.
Organs transplant has become a popular procedure that we shouldn’t have to go to another man’s backyard to get it done as a nation; but unfortunately, while we parade medical practitioners, who are capable of carrying out the procedure across our hospitals the country over, the needed infrastructure is lacking. Thanks to the failure of those in positions of power, that have literally preferred to eat up the resources and depend on medical tourism for their healthcare deliveries at the detriment of all Nigerians.
Why would there be a need for the Ekweremadus to have to rely on medical facilities to save Sonia if we have done what is right about our healthcare delivery in Nigeria? Over the years, clamours for increased investments and conscious elevation of the nation’s health sector to meet up with global standards has been paid lip service to by those in government across the states and the center. Nigeria, the giant of Africa, without a trustworthy capacity to carry out regular simple organ transplant on its soil is an indictment of the failure of our government and system.
It has happened, the sentencing has been passed and the Ekweremadus have been lucky enough to escape with unbelievable light sentencing giving that the offence carries a maximum of life imprisonment, perhaps thanks to direct and indirect interventions across the board to the effect of the leniency.
While some part of me wished the family got off the hook for the sake of what drove them to commit all the errors and crimes that led them to this point, I also have known that for the sake of the lessons that need to be learnt, justice must have to be served and served right.
As a nation and a people, there is a lot to learn from the revelations; and hopefully, lessons that are capable of driving us to some national sanity and usefulness. You see, Nigerian politicians have become demi-gods, allocating and using power like the Almighty; but in this case, amassing illegal wealth, crumbling the national system and living a luxury life completely out of the reach of ordinary citizens they claim to serve. They watch the national education system deteriorating while they conveniently send their children and wards overseas for quality education and rub it off our faces as they celebrate their graduations on popular social media.
They watch our industries die and industrialisation capacity taken away from us while they keep all looted money in Swiss banks and invest in offshore accounts far from the spying eyes and reach of the country. They buy and eat foreign foods, live in houses with furniture all imported, and drive customised cars to be different from all of us.
While Nigeria parades the best of doctors and health practitioners globally, doing positive exploits across developed nations of the world, locally, we present a moribund sector deprived of functioning infrastructure. We parade hospitals and clinics that are never good enough for our leaders, or why would they fly out to treat malaria at the least. Have we ever heard that the American President, the UK Prime Minister, the French President or any leader of any serious nation are flown out for medical interventions in another country? Of course not, they built infrastructure to take care of their health and they trusted what they built. Our leaders, the politicians, budget billions of dollars annually for the national healthcare at all levels, then turn around to embezzle the money and run out to foreign cities to receive medical services. Would they learn from the Ekweremadus’ plight? I doubt, though I wish.
When I look at the whole revelation from another perspective, it occurs to me that our nation Nigeria still has a long way to go. The reason the politicians would play us like a chess game and get away with it is and has always been because they would always get away with it. We have got laws, but they are nothing but toothless dogs when it comes to handling the politicians and those in the corridors of power. It is only in Nigeria that it is easy to sentence a man caught on the street with a stolen goat to ten years behind bars while a government official or politicians who stole billions of dollars is set free to go and re-contest. It is only here that an individual under trial for stealing hundreds of billion dollars of our commonwealth would become a senator and would still be contesting to become the Senate President.
What has become of our laws? Why must it be foreign nations getting hold of our politicians and those who stole our commonwealth or committed gory offences against the country to accountability and jailing them? The list is now growing; they walk free in the country but get napped outside and humiliated. James Ibori, the former two-term governor of Delta state was jailed in the UK for stealing the state money and laundered it in the UK. He served his jail time and returned back to the country to a rosy welcome to resume his position as the godfather of Delta state politics. Late Dieppreye Alamieyeseigha, one time governor of Balyesa state was arrested in the UK for the same reason of laundering stolen money. Late Kashamu Buruji was a senator of the Federal Republic in the 8th Assembly who was arrested in the UK while he was trying to enter the country with $230,000 in cash. After five years in prison he returned back to Nigeria to resume his popularity. The list continues if we would list non-politicians who walk free in the country but nabbed overseas for offences the country ought to have tried.
We celebrate our politicians, urge them to abuse our resources by our actions and the judiciary plays to the gallery when it is called to duty for as long as whoever is involved is a ‘big man.’ There was a research funded by the UK’s Department for International Development, which examined how Nigerians politicians used unexplained wealth to buy millions of pounds’ worth of properties in the UK and fund excessive private education for their children.
The research on finding about Ekweremadu submitted that the Nigerian politician would have legitimately earned about £339,000 as a political office holder in his stint as the deputy president of the Nigeria Senate; however, in that period, he bought three properties – two in London and one in Cambridge worth £4.2 million. It was also established that Ekweremadu’s international property portfolio was worth more than £6 million.
That is just one politician; out of the hundreds that sit on the wealth of a whole nation. If Ekweremadu had been arrested and tried in Nigeria, it is obvious what the outcome would be. Today, he would be in the national assembly making laws for the country and enjoying his loot and getting away from all crimes.
We cannot talk of real progress, growth and national development if there is no justice. We need to return to the desk to fashion out a return to accountability – financial, legal and morally. Till then, we are only playing and we will continue to get embarrassed with our leaders spending their jail times overseas.
GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA !