Date Published: 05/10/10

Lamentations for Olisa Agabkoba

To Olisa Agbakoba, With Tears!

So many things that have happened in the past few months have made me shed endless tears over the fate of the once foremost human rights organization, Civil Liberties Organization (CLO).

My lamentations are not necessarily over the intra-leadership crisis in the body. I continue to weep for CLO because of the attitude of the human persons who have helped drive the death nail in her head.

Such human persons, by clear design, resolved, and are about to actualize their resolution, by plunging CLO into such an internal crisis which, if time is not, will be the nun dimities of the orgnanization.

Now that the CLO vandals have done their worst (in the name of leadership scuffle), attempting to destroy an organization which they were not where it was founded in the first instance, what have been their gains? If these destroyers of CLO who are currently looking elsewhere to extend their destructive tendencies do not answer this question, shame unto them!

Yet, another reason I shed tears for CLO is whenever I remember that it (CLO) is now an orphan even when it actually has a healthy living father in the person Olisa Agbakoba. In the 80s and 90s when he (Olisa) was toiling day and night, trying to midwife and sustain CLO, one took him for an extremely serious minded person.

But the contrary, at least, as far as current rotten head of CLO is concerned, is the case. Or, is it not?

Why must Olisa Agbakoba allow his brain child, the CLO, to be so submerged in the murky waters of human rights politics? If not that I’m scared of the legal implications of saying ‘Shame onto Olisa Agbakoba (SAN)’, I would have boldly told him that without giving any hoot, and still go ahead to call him other unprinted names that roll to my mind.

Should I say that Olisa Agbakoba has lost his head for abandoning CLO the way he has. And for me, his reason/s for leaving CLO in the scorching sun should go to hell and burn to ashes. Suffice it to say that Agbakoba’s attitude has classified him as a poor finisher.

Yes! Who on earth would have been the founder of such an organization as CLO and allow it to die and rotten? Tell me. CLO, apart from losing its Lagos headquarters, has presently lost most of its six zonal offices due largely to internal crises that have eaten deep into its fabric.

My gnawing problem with Olisa Agbakoba is that he has, even on invitation, refused to intervene in the CLO crisis. Agbakoba has rather chosen not to touch the crisis in the CLO with a very long stick. This certainly shows that something is wrong with Olisa Agbakoba. It is either that Agbakoba has gone jinxed, or that he, unknowingly, slipped into irreversible class suicide. The implication of the later is that he used CLO to climb to the top and, then, heartlessly dumped it to crash to pieces. Or how else can one explain this lackluster attitude of the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN)?

Let me, once-more, recall that the immediate cause of the current crisis began with the purported unconstitutional suspension of the President, Titus Mann, by some members of the Board. Titus Mann was neither given fair hearing to react to the seeming trumped-up charges against him, nor was he present at the meeting during the purported suspension. More heart-rending was the fact that President Mann had informed the board that he was seriously sick, and could not attend the meeting, yet those who were more interested in hijacking leadership in CLO rather than fighting the cause of the oppressed insisted on sending him to the hangman irrespective of protests from the other members of the Board present.

To demonstrate their knack for lawlessness, this group, having tried in vain in coax Uche Wisdom Durueke, Vice President, to preside over the sanctions on the T. Mann, forced him to step aside for them to take their long sought for pound of flesh on the President.

With Durueke out of the way, Igho Ighariwe got prodded to unconstitutionally assume the position of Acting President of CLO, and, in fact, presided over the meeting in the course of which they, of course, achieved their set objects.

This group did not stop at this. They went ahead to forcefully take over the CLO secretariat in Lagos, unleashing the Nigeria police on both Ibuchukwu Ezike, the organization’s Executive Director and some other staff.

As I write this piece, there is still a police occupation of the Lagos headquarters of CLO. What a shame! The rest is now history.

But wait a moment. If Agbakoba dumps CLO, what of past leaders of the organization like Ayo Obe, Uche Onyegucha, Peter Eze (Esq), Emma Ezeazu, Innocent Chukwuma and a host of others? What have they done to stop CLO from imminent death?

There seem to be too many questions begging for answers from for those who stand on the sideline, watching this one time ‘Hope for the Hopeless’ body to die.

By: Uba Aham
(Chairman, Southeast Zone & Member, CLO Board of Governors