Ideally, after the usual break, resumption should be gradual and light-hearted but events in the country are not only torrential and seemingly uncontrollable but also shocking. For example, the latest of such events.
Nigerian Vice President of the World Bank, Oby Ezekwesili, is admirable not just as a scholar, sound economist our country’s pride in her present position especially in these days of national re-branding but also noteworthy for her simple style – Afro haircut and regular outfits in West African Ankara stuff.
From her base, Washington, United States, Oby Ezekwesili sneaked into Nigeria either in her private or official capacity. Whatever, her arrival and indeed stay so far, have been deliberately rendered unpleasant by the notorious Nigerian factor. Imagine a World Bank top notcher being exposed as facing state investigation for alleged theft of public funds during her tenure as education minister.

What really is our problem in ever getting things wrong on matters of national image? Oby Ezekwesili is still a vice-president of the World Bank and that is the lady Nigeria’s Independent Corrupt Practices and Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has damaged. That is assuming a light attitude to the charge. The real victim of this damage is Nigeria. Oby Ezekwesili may not eventually lose her World Bank job. She may not even be queried as Nigerian Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) is querying the Director-General of the Nigerian Exchange (NSE) Ndidi Okereke-Onyinke to explain how her company TRANSCORP came about a non-performing bank debt of over thirty billion naira.

Instead, the certainly is that henceforth in World Bank circles especially at the headquarters in Washington, United States, Oby Ezekwesili and her country, Nigeria, will be objects of gossips and ridicule, (definitely privately) anytime she passes or contributes to official discussions.
Yes, that is all about any sympathy for Oby Ezekwesili or any disgust with ICPC’s stupid action. Otherwise, she has just tasted the dirty tricks she inflicted on former heads of state in her days at Aso Rock. Apart from that, Oby Ezekwesili has just suffered the same treatment her boss Olusegun Obasanjo who, on two occasions – eve of the opening of Commonwealth Heads of States and Prime Ministers’ Conference in Abuja and the eve of his (Obasanjo’s) meeting with a World Bank official at Aso Rock accused the then Internal Security Minister late Sunday Afolabi along with other officials and former Senate President Adolphus Wabara as well as Education Minister Fabian Osuji with some senators, respectively, of alleged corruption. None of these innocent ones has been convicted by a court of law, even as Obasanjo went away with cheap popularity.

Oby Ezekwesili, as Madam Due Process did not fare better than Obasanjo. In a display of palpable ignorance and a prejudice on how Nigeria came to be indebted to the tune of forty billion dollars, Madam Due Process went populist with her claim that the role of all Obasanjo’s predecessors (all northerners except General Agui-Ironsi and ex-military officers except Shehu Shagari) would be probed on the country’s foreign debt. Ezekwesili was of course only exhibiting eye service to be noted by Obasanjo who surely could never have asked Oby Ezekwesili for such probe, in the full knowledge that he, Obasanjo took the jumbo loan of almost three billion dollars from the foreign creditors in 1978.
However, it was all part of the third term plot for Obasanjo, to discredit all potential challengers and the deal was to present all such candidates as the destroyers of Nigeria’s economy.

Hence, whether ignorantly or deliberately Oby Ezekwesili announced her plan for such probe, she was dared in this column that as much as Nigerians would welcome the probe, such must not only be open but also be broadcast on both national television and radio networks. And to alert her of what embarrassment awaiting her at such probe of the part played by past Nigerian leaders played in Nigeria’s foreign debt, it was revealed in this same column that only Olusegun Obasanjo took the loan as Tafawa Balewa, Agui-Ironsi, Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Mohammed, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha and Abdulsalami Abubakar never took a kobo loan.

That revelation not only shocked Nigerians but also induced re-thinking among erstwhile misinformed critics. But that was the instant death of the threatened probe of Obasanjo’s civilian and military predecessors and successors.
Rightly or wrongly, today, Oby Ezekwesili has been accused of abuse of office. In a way, she may be innocent since anything or anybody Obasanjo must be scandalized just as Obasanjo assisted by the likes of Oby Ezekwesili similarly scandalized anything and anybody pre-Obasanjo. To worsen matters, none of the numerous probes instituted into various aspects of Obasanjo (civilian) era produced anything cogent. In fact, some of the reports were even discredited by the same people who set up the probes in the first place.

It is therefore not enough for ICPC to impliedly malign Oby Ezekwesili, who if unknown, stands less to lose in this matter than the chief accuser, ICPC. That is on the domestic scene. For unnecessarily or indeed, mischievously dramatizing the abuse of office charge against ex-Education Minister Oby Ezekwesili, the ICPC has put its credibility on line. Nigerians are waiting for the facts to justify the alarming allegations against the ex-minister.
Oby Ezekwesili’s mother was reported by sections of the media to be near tears in lamenting the serious charges against her daughter. Perhaps, rightly so. But the poor old woman’s daughter in her days at Aso Rock unfairly painted former heads of states, Prime Minister and former presidents in lurid colours, did the mother call her daughter to order?

Today, out of public office in Nigeria, Oby Ezekwesili, virtually agonises. Listen to her, “I am amazed that ICPC could engage in this kind of professional misconduct. I left the country over two years ago, and up till now, no one has ever asked me about any allegation of such magnitude. It is sad that some characters could just try to destroy an individual’s reputation like that. The so-called complainant was not named and I was not contacted by the ICPC. This is reprehensible. It is clear that my place of abode is known to everybody and if indeed there was any reason for ICPC to investigate my tenure, I would have expected them to do the most decent thing and they haven’t done that. So, I see no specificity about what I have learnt on the pages of the newspapers. It is really not worthy of being dignified.” Some pity.

To be fair to Olusegun Obasanjo, even he never accused any of his predecessors of any role in piling up Nigeria’s foreign debt. How then did Oby Ezekwesili come about her idea to probe the role of past leaders in Nigerias foreign debt?
Yes, Ezekwesili left office two years ago and in 2006 announced her plan to probe role past leaders in Nigeria’s foreign debt. Tafawa Balewa left office forty years before then. Ditto for General Ironsi.

General Gowon left office thirty-one years earlier followed by Murtala Mohammed in 1976. General Buhari left office twenty-one years before Ezekwesili announced plan to probe his role in Nigeria’s debt.
General Babangida was thirteen years out of office when Ezekwesili decided to probe his role in piling up debt for Nigeria. General Abacha was eight years out of office and yet was to be probed by Oby Ezekwesili. General Abubakar was seven years out of office.
As already established, none of these past leaders took a single kobo foreign loan for Nigeria. But even if they took, was it fair for Ezekwesili to have planned to probe those among past leaders already dead (Balewa, Ironsi, Murtala Mohammed and Abacha) for their role in piling up dead for Nigeria?
Did Oby Ezekwesili, before announcing to the press, contact pass leaders alive (Gowon, Shagari, Buhari, Babangida and Abubakar) to inquire about their role in piling up debt for Nigeria?

Surely, Oby Ezekwesili in those days was just being disgracefully over zealous in that Obasanjo never directed her to probe any past leader. And if the lady who tackled and indeed solved Nigeria’s foreign debt, the then Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala never thought of probing the role of any past leader in Nigeria’s foreign debt, what was Oby Ezekwesili’s problem in imposing unnecessary burden on herself?
That is why today, she is facing reverberation of her overzealousness. The lesson is there for her. Now, Oby Ezekwesili knows how it hurts to be unfairly accused even if impliedly, moreso if she (Oby) never misappropriated any fund. When you find yourself in any position of power, don’t be carried away. Some time, some day, you must quit.

It was the same misuse of power when Oby Ezekwesili, on her first visit to Nigeria as Vice President of World Bank, came to confront Umaru Yar’Adua for allegedly neversing Obasanjo’s so-called economic reforms. Perhaps, rather harshly, Yar’Adua dismissed her impudence by reminding her of an expenditure of billions of dollars on power project with nothing to show for it. Quietly and well-humiliated, she left Yar’Adua’s office.
This is not to say that ICPC is correct in the handling of the allegation of abuse of office against Oby Ezekwesili.