Don Etiebet: Straight like an arrow

 Michael Jordan is arguably the greatest basketball player of his era not only because of his height and strength but also because of his competitiveness and brilliance. Donatus Obot Etiebet, better known as Don Etiebet could have been a great basketballer but he was born in 1944 when basketball was not a major or attractive […]

 Michael Jordan is arguably the greatest basketball player of his era not only because of his height and strength but also because of his competitiveness and brilliance. Donatus Obot Etiebet, better known as Don Etiebet could have been a great basketballer but he was born in 1944 when basketball was not a major or attractive or lucrative sport in Nigeria. He is a six footer. He is competitive. He is brilliant, infact cerebral. He has dedication. He has tenacity. These are attributes that lead or can lead to success. And these qualities are the ladders that have taken Etiebet to the sky in two professions, ICT and the petroleum industry. In these two professions he stands tall, very tall, like an iroko tree, like a flag pole, ramrod straight. Even at age 80 he doesn’t walk like a man who is bent double by age. He walks straight and does not use a walking stick to support his movement. He uses it only as a symbol of royalty for he has been decorated by many royal fathers as a chief for his numerous achievements and his philanthropic exertions.

Etiebet went to school in Oruk Anam and Abak, in Akwa Ibom State and did his Higher School Certificate Course at the College of Immaculate Conception in Enugu. He then got admission into the famous Imperical College of Science and Technology, London where he earned a second class honours upper division degree in Oil Technology. He also got a Master of Science degree in Applied Geo-physics from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He worked for oil and mineral prospecting companies in Europe and Canada before returning to Nigeria in 1971. In 1972 he set up Earth Sciences Limited to handle geo-physical, prospecting and computer data processing services. He established a computer centre in 1974 for geophysical data processing for government agencies and international oil companies in Nigeria. Etiebet has been widely acknowledged as the pioneer in indigenous ICT services and developments in the country since 1974. In 1979 he founded Data Sciences Nigeria Limited to take over the Computer Methods Division of Earth Sciences Limited which was the exclusive distributor of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) of USA. In 1980 he founded Obodex Nigeria Limited which by 1990 had produced the first ever Nigerian brand name personal computer known as Obodex PC. That innovation gave him the bragging rights as the “father of ICT in Nigeria.” Etiebet has, over the years, contributed significantly to the birth of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) and the Nigeria Internet Group (NIG). He had been decorated as a fellow of the Nigeria Computer Society, fellow of Computer Professionals Registration Council of Nigeria and has been given a Lifetime Achievement award by the Nigerian Information Society.

In the petroleum Industry he is also a don working with several international oil companies in Holland, Switzerland, Ireland, Canada and Nigeria. He capped his career in the oil industry by being named as the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources from August 1993 to February 1995. Being a Petroleum Minister is no cake-walk. That is Nigeria’s honey pot so the temptations are plentiful. One week into the saddle as Minister Etiebet was face to face with temptation. Someone operating in the oil industry brought a brand new Mercedes Banz car to his residence and told Etiebet, “This is for you.” Etiebet told him he doesn’t need his car. He has his own car. Within two weeks a man who said he was being owed a lot of money by the NNPC promised to give Etiebet 10 million dollars if he was paid the money. Etiebet told him he was not interested in his dollars. He turned it down.

Nigeria is a country that is thoroughly victimised by corruption but Etiebet as Minister of Petroleum displayed a fierce fidelity to principles. He worked hard to establish the Petroleum Trust Fund; He relaunched the 35 year old moribund NLNG project which has now become the toast of the moment. He approved the first ever deep water off-shore oil and gas exploration and production programme that was pioneered by Shell in 1994. That gave rise to the discovery of today’s prolific BONGA oilfields.

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Etiebet does not believe in gold plated materialism acquired through fake ways. As a Minister he did not seek to fatten his wallet through corrupt means. He hadn’t and still does not have any oil field, minor or major, marginal or magnificient, allocated to him or to any member of his family, nuclear or distant. He served the nation without blemish. He preferred to wear the white garment of honour. If you want to know what a man is place him in a position of authority. The true test of morality is what a person does when he has power. Etiebet had power. He passed the morality test by ignoring every effort to compromise him and his principles. You need courage, extreme courage, to resist corruption, extreme corruption. Etiebet did. He looked straight at corruption and said No. Today he can speak with chin-jutting pride about his meritorious service to the nation. Others, too, have spoken in a similar vein about him. On Wednesday September 25, the Petroleum Club honoured him at the Metropolitan Club in Victoria Island. The club members spoke in glowing terms about his service to the nation. The Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Pastor Umo Eno, a PDP chieftain honoured Etiebet, too, even though Etiebet is in an opposing party, APC. The governor, a very decent man, is one of the few politicians in Nigeria who practise politics without bitterness.

Etiebet has been in politics since 1978 when he joined the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) and supported his elder brother Donald Etiebet to become the governor of the then Cross River State. Don was a founder and leader of the National Centre Party of Nigeria (NCPN) from 1995 – 1998. He became the presidential candidate of the party until Sani Abacha forced him to renounce his presidential ambition. All the politicians of all the parties were forced to endorse Abacha as the sole presidential candidate of five parties an absurdity, a political polyandry that the great Bola Ige described as the “five fingers of a leprous hand.” Etiebet was also one of the founding fathers of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and contested for the party’s presidential nomination in February 1999 and came third.

As leader of the PDP in Akwa Ibom State it was his responsibility to handle the selection of the governorship candidate of the party. Architect Victor Attah, had asked me to recommend him to Etiebet as the preferred candidate of the party. When I spoke to Etiebet about Attah he asked me a series of questions which I answered frankly in Attah’s favour. He remarked that if Attah had hired a Senior Advocate to plead his cause he would not have done better than I did. Attah was selected as candidate by consensus after which Etiebet asked me to come and be Attah’s running mate. I declined for two reasons. One, I knew that Attah would hold me in suspicion since he knew me to be Etiebet’s cousin. Two, I knew that my brutal frankness would let me down. When the man who eventually got the job as Deputy Governor, Chris Ekpenyong was impeached, he and I joked about it. He told me that he was sure that if I had taken the job I would not have lasted as long as he did. That may or may not be true but it is obvious that Nigerian politics is a partisan blood spot, an algorithm of complex calculations. You have to be a stooge to succeed as somebody’s godson and when you are asked to jump the only question you must ask is “how high?” Etiebet didn’t go very far in politics because he wasn’t ready to be somebody’s stooge. He does not have the persona, the mentality and the mendacity of a stooge.

He is straight like an arrow. That is why many fair minded persons in Nigeria honour him.   

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Ekpu is Nigeria’s renowned veteran journalist and writer