Leery Writers Like Okey Ndibe

“Festus said with a loud voice: Paul, thou art beside thyself: much learning doth make thee mad. ...” ACTS 26: 24

The opening salvo culled from the Holy Bible can be ascribed to leery writers like Okey Ndibe: Much writing has made Okey dubious. He writes with a hidden agenda and that agenda is to champion his own cause, to protect his friends, to decimate his enemies, to frighten the establishment. He is a gifted writer but rather than use this gift for the betterment of society has chosen the path of perfidy.

Okey has by his mastery of the art of writing generated a cult following for himself, when he writes people stand to attention and he knows it. But he uses this craft for sinister purposes. I once fell for his trap but like the phoenix I rose again. I deciphered him quickly, in the nick of time. But he still has his followers: poor souls.

Okey positions himself as the voice of conscience in a morally depraved country like Nigeria but he is just as morally depraved as the people he attacks, he is one of them. The likes of Obasanjo, Ibori, etc use the instrument of political office to cause mayhem, Okey uses the ink to do as much damage but in disguise. You have to read in between his lines to see that Okey is much closer to Obasanjo than to the masses he claims to represent.

advertisement

Okey gives the impression of a gallant writer that spares nobody but that is all a mere kerfuffle. He does spare those that look after him. Okey attacks to put food on his table and woe betide thee if you cross his way. He appears to be no respecter of age, religion, gender, race and whatever. But that is all a wile. He does prostrate to powers that be, to those that look after him.

Okey is from a little town in Anambra state called Amawbia (Ama Ndi Obia) meaning ‘settlement for visitors’. It is a settlement given to some roaming nomads years ago by the good people of Awka but rather than show gratitude to Awka people these Amawbia people decided to pay them back with ingratitude, with uncalled vengeance. So you can see that Okey’s writing vengeance is genetic just like his premature greyness.

Hear Okey on David Mark, the senate president – “ That a man with Mark’s troubled, and troubling, pedigree should emerge as a candidate at all for the leadership of the Senate is a sad commentary on the air of moral lassitude that pervades Nigerian politics. That he won says something about the cynical depths to which the public sphere has been cast.”

On the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Patricia Ette. Okey wrote – “… But to jump from hairdresser to speaker? That seemed a stretch. She may have been at the top of the hairdressing game, but did she have what it took to pilot the country’s legislative business?”

Okey even flew across the Atlantic to attack the former UK cabinet minister, Baroness Lynda Chalker on whom he penned a ghastly article titled “Chalker the fraudster and other tales”. Hear him in the said article – “ And what a pathetic figure this genteel woman cut, a desperate propagandist from the gray metropolis of England caught with her stinky foot in her mouth…”

Hiking a ride on a donkey, Okey travelled all the way to Zamfara state where he castigated the former governor, Taliban Sani Ahmad Buka Yerima. Hear Okey on the Taliban – “ The name Sani Ahmad Buka Yerima occupies a special place—of infamy—in the annals of Nigerian politics. A former governor of Zamfara, he made history by becoming the staunchest champion of the institution of Sharia law. And to serve notice to the world that he meant business, he authorized the cutting of a man’s hand for stealing.”

His latest tirade was on Saminu Turaki, the erstwhile governor of Jigawa state. On Saminu, Okey deposited thus: “ He has become a sorry embodiment of the kind of moral malaria that propels men and women of puny ideas and wretched principles towards the space of leadership where they wreak havoc while feathering their nests.”

His inept state governor, Peter Obi has equally not been spared and rightly so. His attacks on ex President Obasanjo knows no limit, it has no bounds. And the beat goes on and on.

Whilst I totally share and can level with Okey in these his attacks, my reservation about him is that he has boundaries; he has limits irrespective of his vociferations about the way Nigeria is been governed. He has no go areas because they pay his bills. Ex president Obasanjo and Atiku are birds of the same feathers: morally, politically, corruption-ridden and otherwise. There is absolutely no difference between Obasanjo and Atiku as far as sharing the Niger Delta derived oil revenue is concerned. But Okey sees no evil, hears no evil and smells no evil as far as Atiku is concerned. Hence his sparing his sword-of-ink on Atiku.

But most worryingly is that one of the most leprous, corrupt and evil ridden individual that has ever graced the Nigerian political scene in the name of Orji Uzo Kalu, the former governor of Abia state is Okey’s pay master and that is why Okey has very cleverly evaded castigating Orji Kalu in his writings. And that is my beef with the way Okey parades himself. He is not the soul of the nation but a mercenary, a soldier of fortune who writes with a hidden agenda.

How can Okey see no wrong with Orji Kalu? Taliban Ahmad Sani is a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and has no pending case with EFCC yet he incurs Okey’s wrath but Orji Kalu is on a hundred million naira bail for corrupt practices when he was a governor. Orji Kalu has been accused and the accusation upheld by a court of competent jurisdiction of fetish and diabolical acts whilst a governor, yet Okey sees nothing wrong with that. Perhaps Orji has taken Okey to Okija shrine?

Andy Uba, the man whom mere mention of his name makes Okey’s erection go limp and his pubic hair turn grey like the hair on his head has held no executive position in Nigeria, Andy was merely an errand boy but Okey will not let Andy sleep and yet Okey allows Orji Kalu to enjoy his loot. Why? The answer is blaring obvious.

advertisement

Okey’s exasperation with Andy Uba is that when Reuben Abati sacked Okey at the Guardian newspaper, Okey laid the blame on Andy. He accused Andy of twisting the arms Reuben via the Ibru’s, the owners of the Guardian newspaper to get him the sack and since then Okey has not allowed Andy to rest. His disparaging writings on Andy and the rest just like his measured silence on Orji Kalu are all with a hidden agenda. It has nothing to do with Okey’s quest for a just society in Nigeria. It has everything to do with Okey’s personal comfort.

 

Odenigbo Chidi Anyaeche

London

UK