Invictus: Our smelly underside

He broke into global consciousness with media blitz celebrating his Midas touch and holding him up as a prime role model to African youths and indeed young people all over the world. Alas, it was all chaff. Although Journalist/Science writer Robin Marantz Henig claims that the English language has 112 words for deception, and even […]

He broke into global consciousness with media blitz celebrating his Midas touch and holding him up as a prime role model to African youths and indeed young people all over the world. Alas, it was all chaff. Although Journalist/Science writer Robin Marantz Henig claims that the English language has 112 words for deception, and even though I have spent over four decades in the grind, I still can’t invent the word that appropriately captures what 32-year-old Obinwanne Okeke, Chairman of the now infamous Invictus Group of Companies, has done to himself, his family, his country, his continent and the world. (By the way, Invictus means “unconquerable” or “undefeated” in Latin.)

That is the same young man that had been touted by foreign media as running a successful conglomerate built from a little more than a computer and employing hundreds of people across nine companies.

Obinwanne Okeke’s arrest for gargantuan fraud running into over $20 million by the American FBI is the biggest corporate de-marketing news for Nigeria on the global scene this year. The gut-wrenching sadness that I feel is not just on account of the crime but because we have turned the sad incident into another opportunity to hurl inter-tribal mud at each other instead of analysing how we are raising the many other Obinwannes that are yet to be busted.

We all have our Obinwannes stalking the internet and kidnapping resources at mouse-point on the cyber-superhighway. It used to be a shameful thing to be called a Yahoo-Yahoo boy. Now, it is a profession. Many of our young people have been schooled to believe that the end justifies the means. Like Niccolò Machiavelli, they believe that a good outcome excuses any wrongs committed to attain it.

With the shortage or near extinction of good examples from their elders who flaunt ill-gotten wealth and rule the socio-political and economic roost with ruthless impunity, how many good examples are there to emulate?

The saddest part of the new global misbranding of Nigeria as a country of corrupt people is that for every fraudulent Obinwanne or Adekunle, or Abubakar or Kpogrikpokpo, there are millions of hard working, honest-to-God Nigerians as good as good people in any other part of the world. The criminals who now define the Nigerian brand at home and abroad are less than 0.01% of the population, but that is still a lot because it means that there are at least 20,000 fraudsters, drug dealers, kidnappers and corporate robbers on the loose!

Imagine, Obinwanne’s deception was so comprehensive that Forbes Africa named him as one of 30 Africans who may be future billionaires. “This is the most important list of the year for FORBES AFRICA. If one young African reads it and is inspired enough to start a business it has done its job. Entrepreneurs like Obinwanne are proof that there is hope for Africa,” said Chris Bishop, Managing Editor of FORBES AFRICA. Without prejudice to Forbes’ good intentions, do you see why we Africans should choose our own heroes by ourselves?

In this column last January (https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/imperative-of-moral-resurgimiento.html), I advocated for a moral resurgimiento. That is still the way to go.

Many honest Nigerians will pay the price for Obinnwanne’s crime. We’d better be ready for the fallouts. Already, many foreign embassies in Nigeria are discriminating against young people travelling for legitimate academic and business purposes.

Foreign investors are going to be wary of Nigeria. Everything concerning a Nigerian traveller will be put under intense, even embarrassing scrutiny. Nobody is going to take us for who we say we are anymore. Foreign media, especially Forbes Africa and BBC, will be more circumspect about featuring Nigerian entrepreneurial whiz-kids henceforth, thereby limiting our young people’s potential and global reach.

The FBI bust has further dented Nigeria’s reputation and all Nigerian businessmen will have to work twice as hard as other nationals to convince their foreign partners that they are legitimate and honest. Future Nigerian startups will find it harder to access capital from the global market. International airports will be more hostile to Nigerians henceforth. Already a banking group in Texas has stopped accepting Western Union transfers to Nigeria.

Invictus Group of Companies’ website has now been taken down but a cursory search lists the following as directors of the company: Obinwanne Okeke – Chairman & Chief Executive Officer; Mrs Celine Okeke – Executive Director; Mrs Uzoma Ozobugha – Non-Executive Director; Mr Selmah …

My message to the world: The fact that the Italian Mafia or the Mob dominated the socio-political and economic scene in United States, particularly New York, in the past did not make every Italian a criminal. Nor did it detract from the status of its parent country as host of the Vatican from where His Holiness, the Pope, superintends over the affairs of 1.4 billion Catholics. Mafia or no Mafia, Italians are generally good people.

Internet fraud or no, Nigerians are generally good people.

If I had the power, I will declare a state of emergency in moral rearmament in Nigeria. When I wrote last week about “Corruption in low places”, I was trying to draw attention to the fact that corruption has so percolated into every fibre of society that it cuts across tribe, social class, religion, gender, occupation or locality. It has become pandemic.

I call on President Buhari to declare a state of moral emergency so that we can begin to pick up the pieces of our societal values as a people. It’s the only way to reclaim our honour.