by Tunde Fagbenle
For these Oduah’s supporters, she is being “persecuted” “because she is Igbo,” “because she is a woman,” and to add more weight, if those were not enough, because she is a staunch (financial) backer of Goodluck Jonathan’s yet unannounced but written all over him second term bid.
The stench of Oduahgate, the reckless and scandalous abuse of office by the Minister of Aviation, Ms Stella Oduah, in her approval of the purchase of two bulletproof BMW cars at an unimaginable cost of $1.6m (or about N255m) by the National Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), a federal agency under her ministry’s supervision, has suffused the air since the story broke a few of weeks ago, thanks to Saharareporters, the onlinenewsbreaker.
There is very little to add to the plethora of views and commentary already visited upon the issue in the media and general public space. Everything has been said, and yet it is as if nothing has been said. Ms Oduah is (seemingly) unshaken, and so is her employer, the President, other than the subterfuge of a probe panel!
Ms (she prefers to go by the title princess in exercising the right of her people to abandon some proclaimed republicanism and indulge in royal tomfoolery), Princess Oduah, in her deeds, utterances and carriage since the scandal broke defies everything. She defies logic, she defies rationality, she defies the National Assembly, she defies the media, she defies public opinion; she defies all. I think she defies herself too, seeing how more suited to the glamour of Nollywood she appears than the tempered sobriety of her ministerial office.
So she must know what those hollering about the spending of a mere $1.6m on two cars do not know. And in so knowing she must be privately amused by our ignorance and our little minds. As I’ve heard some of her defenders say in further illogic, “Is she the only one?” Princess must be saying to herself of us, the rest Nigerians: “Foolish people, do they even know what goes on in this country?” She would probably continue, “Billions are frittered every day through all sorts of guises, right under everyone’s nose, and they are shouting about some chicken feed. What is N200m when I spend that for my people monthly.”
Would we ever know how greatly disproportionate (or not) to actual job done all the money that has gone, and keeps going, into the laudable (I admit) facelifting of our airports by Oduah? Would we ever know how many other federal agencies are worse cesspits of scandalous wastes? Would we ever know the rottenness in some other ministries?
But I am not concerned about all that today really. True, Nigeria is being bled to death by all that profligacy, but what is bringing Nigeria to a more certain death is the crude resort to “ethnicity” in all things. And there is no deed too heinous, too morally repugnant, for its invocation.
Since Oduahgate broke, those who call themselves “her people” have risen in ignoble support of her. On Thursday, October 31, a small group of women gathered at the Federal Secretariat in Abuja carrying placards some of which read ‘A fight against Stella Oduah is a fight against women,’ ‘Leave Stella Oduah alone,’ etc. It was in all Nigerian newspapers. Before then on 26th October, PM News reported that: “Hundreds of Igbo youths, under the aegis of Igbo Progressive Union (IPU), have embarked on a peaceful protest against the calls for the sack of Princess Stella Oduah over the controversial armoured cars bought for her by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority. The protest held at the Akanu-Ibiam International Airport, Enugu temporarily paralysed business activities. The protesters from the Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra State were led by High Chief George Nwabueze.”There could have been no sadder sight.
For these Oduah’s supporters, she is being “persecuted” “because she is Igbo,” “because she is a woman,” and to add more weight, if those were not enough, because she is a staunch (financial) backer of Goodluck Jonathan’s yet unannounced but written all over him second term bid.
To be sure, as my brother Okey Ndibe wrote in his article, “Beyond Oduahgate”, “There’s no question that some of the minister’s harshest critics would shed their indignation and sing a different tune were she a member of their ethnic bracket. But that fact, I think, does not validate the use of ethnicity to defend impunity.” And Okey asks, “How does being Igbo lessen the awfulness and scandal of a minister’s decision to buy two BMW cars at a price tag of $1.6 million?”
For those who may wonder what TF’s position was when a similar scandal broke back in 2007 around yet another woman in power but his own Yoruba ethnic kin, let me quote this column of 02/09/2007 titled, “Should Mrs. Etteh go?”:
“Only someone of such disturbing complexity as an Obasanjo could on one hand figure giving the country sober and sound personages as Umaru Yar’Adua and Charles Soludo to run the country and the CBN respectively, and yet on the other hand inflict a Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh, someone totally malapropos, as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
“For, make no mistake about it, the departing General Olusegun Obasanjo determined who and who was to be what and what as he led his rampaging PDP party in their merciless onslaught against all democratic norms and values, rigging themselves to power and determining who held what offices in the National Assembly and elsewhere.
“Yet it is almost inconceivable that anyone in government would within weeks of assumption of office, and in total spite of the ongoing war against corruption and indiscipline, embark on acts of stupefying vulgarity as this Olubunmi woman has done.
“In one breath Mrs. Olubunmi Etteh, the Speaker of the lower house of the country’s highest lawmaking assembly spent figures in the hundreds of million — figures have ranged from N230m to N620m — on renovating her official residence and that of her deputy, then flown out, with a coterie of well-wishers, to the United States for some self-fancying birthday bash. How much such fancy trip could have cost the government or her person is anybody’s guess. Conservatively, it would also come to some hundred or so million naira.
“It is brazen, it is insensitive, it is foolish.
“I have reason to be angry. I hear she is originally from my Osun State where she was happily running her salon before being married off to an Etteh of elsewhere. After the inglorious episode of Tafa Balogun I had prayed that such infamy would not be visited on my state any more. Now this.
“But I have reason to cheer: Olubunmi may have come from Osun but she has not come from the proud Fagbenle family of Igbajo. Had she, she would by now have had some ticking-off her ears.
“Should Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh get kicked out of office? Yes and now, not a day longer ojare.” The end.
And there you have it. Again as Okey said further about Oduahgate, it “offers a challenge as well as an opportunity for the emergence of a cross-ethnic coalition of enlightened citizens. Such citizens ought to be courageous enough to reject the invocation of ethnicity in defence of nonsense.”
When, therefore, those calling for a rethink of the whole idea and bases of Nigeria are told they hate Nigeria and want it dismembered, I shake my head. Those killing Nigeria are those invoking “ethnic card” to defend corruption, to promote inequality, and to perpetuate all sorts of criminality.
Those Oduah supporters and their ilk elsewhere are the killers of Nigeria. Princess (or whatever) Stella Oduah must get kicked out of office. Now; not a day longer! And that’s saying it the way it is.
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Reproduced with the permission of the author
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.
