Nigeria: Celebrating the Banditry of James Ibori at 54

A birthday celebration

I woke up this morning minded that I will escape the need to tweet anything crazily absurd about Nigeria and just have a swimmingly smooth day. No sooner than that thought had crossed my mind I clicked on a link that brought up a picture and that was the end of my wish.

The associates of Chief James Onanefe Ibori [1], the ex-governor of Delta State and current jailbird in Her Majesty’s Prison accommodation in the United Kingdom will be gathered [2] at his Oghara Country Home in Delta State to celebrate a “Birthday of Reconciliation” highlighting his 54^th birthday anniversary with a praise and worship service presided over by three “eminent” men of the cloth.

We need friends

Now, regardless of the tribulations by omission or commission a man faces in life, it is of the greatest hope that he is not deserted by friends and that might be the case with James Ibori, he still has friends and that is probably a good thing.

What is dangerous is having friends who are dishonest, disingenuous or who choose to remain obdurately oblivious of the truth about one’s character, behaviour and reprehensible acts.

Living legend?

In a full page advert taken out to announce this celebration which should have been private and completely out of earshot for its odium they have suggested James Ibori is “The Living Legend of Resource Control Struggle.”

These people must be having a big laugh at our expense because if this is to suggest James Ibori was at the forefront of the Niger Delta struggle, then I must have been living in a parallel universe not to have noticed it.

However, what we know by reason of the case of fraud and money laundering [3] brought against him in the UK is that a man on a £4,000 per annum confidently bought a house in the UK worth £2.2m.

Beyond that, the litany of looting is such that the judge in the case said it was impossible to ascertain how much James Ibori frittered away in avarice par excellence that makes the mind boggle.

Let it be known that James Ibori had acquired his riches "at the expense of the some of the poorest people in the world".

These people stink

In any case, disgraced, convicted and jailed in a foreign land along with his wife, his mistress and lawyer, there are people albeit of dubious respectability who are gathered to laud this man as some champion of a cause that seriously escapes me.

The associates [4] of this bounder, scoundrel, fraud and thief have successfully corralled into their disreputable assembly the South South Vice President, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Archbishop God-Do-Well Avwomakpa, as guest preacher, while Rev. Gbejero and Rev. Oyibo would also minister.

It begs the question where the moral compass of Nigeria is if men of the cloth are cavorting with those who in other polite societies would be completely shunned until slowly rehabilitated when memory fails us, it is beyond shameful the hold that money and Mammon has over many church leaders that they will forget principle, character and tenet to sup with those without any virtue worthy of the barest emulation.

Where is our polite society?

The repugnant occasion will be chaired by an elder statesman and Professor Emeritus, B.I.C Ijeomah, a one-time eminent social science professor who by his involvement in this charade is neither distinguished nor reputable – but we probably have no discernment of character in Nigeria once the money is on the table to judge who we should associate with and who we should shun.

In another country, no one will publicly associate with James Ibori apart from his lawyers one of whom is serving time for serving him, he will be stripped of all honours and dignities and left so full of shame that he will seek a low profile exile in some faraway land.

Give no honour to them

Nigeria is not about to see that kind of society, though James Ibori will be kept at Her Majesty’s pleasure for 13 years or probably less than that, he will most definitely return to Nigeria triumphantly, celebrated to the rafters to find great honour amongst thieves like himself who have milked and bilked Nigeria dry with impunity and without consequence.

We can however avoid this shameful parade of the notoriously ignominious by excoriating in the sternest terms all who gather to celebrate corruption and worse as they continue to give our dear country a very bad name and image.

Stop this nonsense

Invite yourself to that rotten assembly at Oghara on the 4^th of August 2012 and make all the attendees as uncomfortable as you can get them, we need to repudiate these congregations of the reprehensible and give no place to the indefensible – we will do our bit on Social Media.

Nothing on God’s good earth should give licence to this decadent fanfare.

Sources

[1] James Ibori - Wikipedia

[2] James Ibori 54^th Birthday Advert

[3] Former Nigeria governor James Ibori jailed for 13 years | BBC News

[4] Associates to honour Ibori at 54 | Daily Independent

Other reference

Nigeria: Celebrating Honour Amongst Thieves

Mandarin unbids Christies auction

Going, going but not gone

I am sure there are few who were not wide-eyed in amazement at the returns from the sale of artefacts from Yves Saint Laurent’s [1] (YSL) estate, the financial estimates were huge some people were already saying that the art world was going to shrug off [2] the credit crunch and recession.

When it comes to the return of antiquities, nothing bring focus to that issue more than when they are about to change hands and they are not going to those who lay legitimate heritage claims to them.

There are elements to the fact that YSL and his partner who is a patron of the arts were probably a tad acquisitive and his estate has turned into a treasure trove of sorts with records tumbling [3] like Chinese acrobats in one of their amazing performances.

Ratting on a rabbit

At dispute were two Chinese bronze sculptures of a heads of a rabbit and a rat (originally 12, 5 have been returned, these 2 on sale and whereabouts of the other 5 are unknown) allegedly looted from the imperial Summer [4] Palace by French and British troops towards the end of the Second Opium War in October 1860.

The Chinese authorities had remonstrated about the sale and asked for the “rightful” return of the bronzes to China and they even tried to prevent the sale of the artefacts but when the sale went ahead they threatened [5] the business of Christies [6], the auction house.

One can say that some Western businesses are well behind the curve on doing business in China [7] and have not fully understood how business and government can be conflated in one singular purpose of patriotic fervour.

That would be nothing to pay

A Chinese bidder who happens to be an adviser to China's National Treasures Fund which works on recovering looted treasures won the bidding at $19 million for each bronze sculpture to the whooping and applause of the auction attendees no doubt.

Just as the Christies might have been rubbing their hands with glee and the resulting commission the bidder has flipped a patriotic card and said he will not pay and cannot pay [8] – he has created the symbolism that the bronze sculptures cannot be sold.

Methinks Christies has been seriously wrong-footed and caught in what might even been Confucian in its origin – What you do not own, you cannot legitimately sell.

Undue diligence

How this threatens the business of Christies is myriad and could be quite damaging in that a bidder without adequate funds was able to command and win a bidding war in a reputable auction house – even if someone else had won the bidding, the thought that one of the bidders was a phony would leave bidders concerned about auctions.

Surely, if Christies had checked and verified the credentials of the bidder they should have been conscious of the possible political and sentimental twist to the issue – the Chinese demanding the return of the looted bronze would hardly be wanting to pay for what they claim is legitimately theirs.

It all also smacks of the phony and fraudulent schemes that have become reminiscent of our financial services where mythical reputations serve as fronts for nefarious deals which unwittingly entice people into transactions they should never engage in. Due diligence, is that now so foreign to business transactions?

This enterprise despite its patriotic undertone is no less fraudulent and it shows that anyone is capable of large scale fraud especially where the gullible meets the crafty.

It would all end badly

Much as Christies and the French courts might term the sale legal, it is unlikely that any money would exchange hands, the bidder would most likely have the full support of his government such that the legal wrangle would just sap Christies of requisite enterprising energy to weather the global financial crisis.

This is a major embarrassment for Christies as they scramble to preserve their reputation as a dependable auction house despite their other successes.

There is no telling the public relations nightmare that might ensue as researchers dig out details of how less powerful lobby groups and countries have been unable to prevent sales of their relics in Western auction houses.

Any customer would well be wary of any heirloom that seems to have a suspect provenance even if the claims go back over a century.

The bigger lesson is doing business with China is probably straight forward but when a tinge of sentiment borne of heritage is added to the mix, it is a high wire act without nets – he who walks the wire might well end up splat on the ground.

Do not run the gauntlet of mandarins, you might get seriously hurt.

Sources

[1] Yves Saint Laurent (designer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Record-breaking YSL art auction shrugs off crisis | Reuters

[3] Records tumble at YSL sale - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

[4] Old Summer Palace - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] China Gets Tough With Christie's - Forbes.com - Magazine Article

[6] Christie's - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[7] Understanding Chinese business culture and etiquette

[8] BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China relics buyer refuses to pay

Chinese bidder of looted sculptures refuses to pay _English_Xinhua

Authority Stealing in Nigeria

Inured to it all, I suppose

Strangely, none of the Nigerian blogs I visit daily seemed to have picked up on this issue that Nigerian leaders have ‘stolen’ $380 billion cumulatively since independence with the worst atrocities in the 80s and 90s.

This leaves me a bit uncomfortable because it would imply that this is no news or people are so inured to that fact that they cannot be bothered to express any outrage.

Whilst the word stolen is qualified as either wastage or outright kleptomania, I would plumb for the least desirable definition of the word.

Basically, good leadership and stewardship of Nigeria’s resources and means should have ensured that any moneys spent were properly accounted for and whoever dipped into the treasury should have been able to declare in clear terms what for, why and what is to be achieved.

If they have been remiss in ensuring the proper management of resources then not only should those leaders be ethically sanctioned, they should indicted on possible treasonable offences for not serving the best interests of Nigeria.

Those military kleptomaniacs

The 80s and 90s had 3.5 years of democratic leadership and 16.5 years of military leadership. Whilst we can lament the dubious electioneering of the civilians, we really should stand up to those to forcefully imposed themselves on Nigerians in military dictatorship and then plundered the treasury without moving Nigeria forward in any appreciable way.

The selfsame rotten miscreants are now parading themselves as possible presidential candidates in the 2007 elections, this really should not be so.

What has happened is these people have looted the treasury years ago and are seemingly going straight and presenting themselves as gentlemanly and respectable people, however, it is important that the provenance of their wealth be probed to the last kobo (lowest denomination of the Nigerian Naira).

How much would a military dictator have been earning per year and how much more would have come his way through corrupt patronage?

Then what business interests were fronting for them as they passed moneys from the Nigerian treasury that they had turned into personal cheque accounts?

Name, Blame, and Shame them all

It is not enough for the chairman of the EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) to highlight the fact of waste and theft; he should have a crack team questioning how any senior military official who appears to be living beyond the means of their remunerations came about their good fortune or largess.

Also, if the chairman is indicating that we should reject corrupt leaders, he should help us better by telling us who they are first and then he should have them first indicted and then arraigned into detention till every source of wealth is accounted for and tallied to the dot.

But then where does he make this statement? At the 60^th birthday celebration of one of those leaders which included many of the ex-military leaders – this could have been bare-faced cheek or the usual annoyance of patronage that confers credibility on people of suspect integrity.

Once upon a time

The greater ill here is that there are many of us in Diaspora who most probably would have stayed in Nigeria if our resources were better managed, as I was growing up in the 70s, it appeared there was much to look forward to in Nigeria – you never thought your parents had to speak to some Mandarin to get you into the right school, you got there on merit.

The salaries people were paid meant they could easily afford a life of Western tastes, the middle classes thrived and help the promise of a better future for their children and grand-children.

In the early 80s, all I had to do was walk into the Student’s Union office having obtained a Nigerian passport a week before and book a flight to anywhere in the world, visas and documents arranged without much fuss.

The Naira had a value that was almost at par with the pound, students going for summer in the UK or the US were not a rare thing.

By the time the 80s came to a close, not only had these easy things gone, the Naira was devalued to less than 5% of its value in 1980, anyone who by happenstance was born abroad in the 60s was leaving and many others who had the opportunity left seeking good fortune elsewhere.

The destruction of the middle classes

The plundering of our resources destroyed the fabric of a cohesive and thriving society and it was used to polarize the nation along tribal, religious and moneyed lines as both violent crime and white collar crime literally went unsanctioned.

There are more people who probably left for their safety and security than for anything else, it is not helped by the fact that recently some people who have aspired for office have been expired by murderers probably on contract to eliminate opposition.

Ban them all

However, this really should be the radical change to our constitution, any military or civilian person who has been in leadership in Nigeria in the 80s and 90s covering the Head of State, the cabinet, the permanent secretaries, CEOs of major companies, leaders of military divisions, former governors, their deputies and their cabinets should be barred from contesting office ever again.

If they were not involved in the looting and wasting of our resources, they cannot have been ignorant of those activities and they could have raised a groundswell of revolt against the corruption of those days.

Also, they should all be at risk of losing their freedom if they are found to be politicking by trying to influence selections or elections, they should be under duress to prove that they have not been interfering with the system.

Accountable leadership beckons

We definitely need a new crop of leaders who would be subject to the scrutiny of the EFCC which should have a head that is appointed independent of the presidency and of the status of probably the deputy chief justice of the federation.

The rape of Nigeria should and must not go unpunished; we should be outraged and demand that they all be swept out the history of Nigeria into black books of shame from which they would only be able to extricate themselves once they can prove the untainted provenance of their wealth.

We cannot continue to condone as Fela did say – Vagabonds In Power/Authority Stealing and that was 1979 – could the outgoing President Obasanjo who was had of State then be indicted on a few counts of plundering too?

References

The Politics of Implementing the Structural Adjustment Program in Nigeria