Ezekwesili: Courage in extreme danger (I)

However, I settled for the title above because it is closer home: “courage in times of extreme danger” is borrowed from the title of a paper recently delivered at a public function by Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with the recommendations made by Mr Ekweremadu (in his paper) regarding the way […]

However, I settled for the title above because it is closer home: “courage in times of extreme danger” is borrowed from the title of a paper recently delivered at a public function by Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with the recommendations made by Mr Ekweremadu (in his paper) regarding the way forward for our country, but he succinctly identified our well known problem and here is what he said: “Corruption, both financial and political, is responsible for the poor state of the nation and its continued inability to live up to the potentials it held at independence. We can see it all around us – in poor socio-economic infrastructures, broken down industries, broken and deprived education, poor per-capita income, and mind boggling looting in the system.”
It is not as if one totally agrees with the bourgeois credentials of a World Bank apologist called Obiageli Ezekwesili, but since the Nigerian Deputy Senate President himself has identified corruption as one major problem of Nigeria, then it is very easy to see how Ezekwesili has again emerged at the centre stage of the unfolding events in our country. The unprecedented kidnap of such a whopping number of schoolgirls in Chibok in April can only happen in a thoroughly corrupt society – and corruption is something that Dr Ezekwesili has fought against, at least since the beginning of this republic.
Oby, like many of our compatriots, is scandalised by the government’s tardy, clumsy and unserious response to the daring kidnap of these girls. Oby has shown tremendous “courage in times of extreme danger” by continuing to rally pressure on the Jonathan government and indeed all Nigerians with conscience who feel that concrete action should be taken to recover these girls, either through negotiations with their abductors or some other means.
Except the government intends to do nothing to regain those kidnapped girls in the full knowledge that Nigerians will also do nothing about it, Oby and her colleagues in #Bring Back our Girls group are no threat to anyone, least of all the government. Many Nigerians are already persuaded that Oby’s rallies have already flopped based on the fact that the campaign that began with several thousand has dwindled to scores of people. But it is not the physical numbers that matter, it is the moral force that prevails, and it weighs on the mind of anyone that has conscience about what we should do to #Bring Back our Girls.  
Ekweremadu had asked: “How does a country or continent grow under such weight of corruption?” He recounted our gains: “We are already reaping from the dangers thereof in terms of terrorism, militancy, kidnapping, etc. But even worse is that our future is even more gravely endangered should the trend be allowed to persist.”
And the trend is persisting indeed. And some people don’t want to do anything about the ills of corruption in this country; they regale in it; they don’t want Oby to do anything about it either. They ask what her motive is for asking the government to #BringBackOurGirls. But if you are a chartered accountant, a co-founder of Transparency International (the global anti-corruption body), a former chairperson of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative NEITI), a former Vice President of the World Bank and had also served in Nigeria’s murky bureaucracy first as Minister of Solid Minerals and then Minister of Education, and have come out unscathed, what could be your motive for intervening in a national scandal of this magnitude where hundreds of girls are kidnapped, other than to help return them to their parents and redeem your country’s image?
It is only the likes of Oby that can make such kind of sacrifices required to keep on the front burner the fate of the Chibok girls. Oby is thoroughly educated, compassionate, cosmopolitan, Godly and occupies a moral high ground when it comes to discussing national issues in today’s Nigeria. Not long ago, our voluble Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, had accused her of mismanaging funds while she served as Obasanjo’s Minister of Education. Promptly, Oby countered that she could account for every Kobo she spent there and actually invited Maku to a national debate on her stewardship but since then the garrulous fellow has avoided her.
Recently, Oby and her colleagues asserted their God given human rights to continue to assemble peacefully and lawfully to demand that the Nigerian government does something tangible to #Bring Back our Girls stolen from Chibok. One policeman called Mbu Joseph Mbu, who described himself as “Abuja Police boss” had in June announced a ban on all protests in respect of the Chibok girls, claiming that apart from embarrassing the government, the campaign was going to be infiltrated by miscreants. Indeed, before then, some miscreants had infiltrated the Unity Fountain screaming #Release Our Girls, instead of taking their own campaign to Sambisa forest where they could be properly heard.
Last month, the pressure on Oby and group to wind up their campaign was ratcheted up by Marilyn Ogar of the SSS who claimed to know but stopped short of disclosing a bank account purportedly in the name of #BringBackourGirls bank, individuals they met to solicit for funds, etc, all in the bid to buttress claims that the group is now what the Department of State Security regards as a “Franchise”. But we all know what DSS has turned itself into today; an ally of the ruling cabal and a terror to the citizens and the very state it claims to protect.