By EBERE WABARA
[email protected] 08055001948
IF Opara were not a bloodsucker, he would have briefed his benefactor (Theodore Orji) on the need to engage me, their potential victim, on a cerebral discussion and explore possibilities of addressing whatever grey areas existed. If that did not work, extra-judicial channels like kidnapping and illegal detention could stupidly follow.
Alas, there was no time for decency and intellectual exploration. This columnist, in their warped and imbecilic thinking, must be taught the lesson of his life and with Opara, His Excellency should consider it done at all costs!
Before I continue, a brief recap is pertinent for readers that may not have followed the tragic event that escaped fatality by a whisker. Shortly after my appointment as the media advisor to the former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, in January 2014, I began writing articles in defence of Dr. Kalu—who was the tirade peg of oppositional calumniation—with his successor as the gang leader having unleashed rabid dogs on his predecessor over political disagreements. Just six highly volatile articles I did on these pages, Theodore Orji masterminded the foregoing with Opara as the executioner!
Of course, the moment I came on the pitch, the harbingers of scurrilous, vicious and mischievously malicious cock-and-bull figments about Dr. Kalu ran for cover! Ever since, oppositional water has found its level to avert cataclysmic consumption occasioned by their communicative asininities.
The foregoing summaries and other related issues concerning the matter have been well documented by multifarious stakeholders in copious online and offline channels. Any interested reader could google “Wabara’s abduction” and be amazed by volumnious interventions. The space here is circumscribed as to capture even a fraction of what happened that hellish morning at my Aguda, Surulere, Lagos, residence before I swiftly moved house to another part of town after the gory seizure incident.
For those who did not follow the attempted murder aborted by God, the full story is online and I am ready to send the soft copy to anyone who is interested.It still amazes me the ease with which the Abia and Lagos State police commands were brought into this illegal and unconstitutional assignment. What kind of compromise could have informed such murderous intentions, nonchalance and unprofessionalism?
What it means is that with “pepper”, those paid with our taxes to protect us are also the ones who will expose/maim/kill us depending on terms of engagement. In other words, our life, protection and safety in this country rest in our own hands and of course God ultimately. Do not be deceived that the police are your friends because they could be your worst enemies if the hounders’terms and conditions are right, usually cheaply!
The commitment, overzealousness, passion and excitement with which they manhandled, criminalized, dehumanized and gruesomely carted me in handcuffs from Lagos in the Abia Line bus on a tortuous 12-hour journey to the CID cell in Umuahia showed that with “motivation/blood money”, our cops can move mountains! Avoid Nigerian cops as much as possible. In corruption ranking, they come next after the INEC. It still baffles me that the Abia State Police Commissioner, Mr. Adamu Ibrahim, could consent to such dictatorship by sending his boys to carry out the heinous crime all the way from Umuahia to Lagos. What could have been the pressure or benefit?
On receipt of the petition against me by Ochendo, I had expected the police to follow a logical and constitutional process of inviting me for questioning and thereafter possibly charge me to court if they have enough grounds for litigation.
Alas, the “action budget” could not allow for such finesse! After all, power is might in all its crudity here. It is unsurpassably incontrovertible that Ochendo’s tenure in Abia State is inerasably the most unconscionable, repressive and autocratic regime both under military and civilian rule in the state’s history.
I thank God that I survived on grounds of His wholesomeness, mercy and favour to commemorate this sadism. Not many were this lucky between 2007 and 2015! As for the so-called Barrister James Opara, the gods have already ambushed him—it is a question of time.
Ochendo’s family counsel, Chukwunyere Nwabuko, who was garrulously grandstanding on the court premises in Umuahia after the chief magistrate read his script from Government House, must have been humiliated, humbled and diminished when Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court sitting in Lagos lampooned the former governor and the chief magistrate for their incivility and cruelty informed by fleeting power inebriacy.
In no particular order, it is apposite to thank some people who God used to liberate me from the clutches of death in the hands of Opara and his co-conspiratorial merchants of death: my family, Dr. Kalu, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, Alhaji Sule Lamido, former IGP, M. D. Abubakar (who swiftly intervened and got me released Saturday night, March 29, 2014, at 10 p.m. from the last of copious cells I was incarcerated in Umuahia), immediate-past Force Public Relations Officer, Frank Mba—whose spirited efforts to stop his colleagues’ rascality in Lagos were rebuffed by my wild and effusive captors— Femi Adesina (most especially), Richard Akinnola, Levi Obijiofor, Okey Ndibe, Simon Kolawole, Dan Amor, Adonis Eric Osagie, Steve Nwosu, Onuoha Ukeh (more especially), Ralph Egbu, Michael John, pulchritudinous Funke Egbemode, Kenneth Ugbechie (especially), Ikenna Emuwa, Robert Obioha, Airtel MD/CEO Segun Ogunsanya, Emeka Oparah, Emmanuel Onwubiko, Michael Jegede, the NGE and the NUJ…the list is inexhaustible! God—not me— will reward you all and punish conscienceless Barrister James Opara, the most bovine sadist in the world. It is not yet over!
I cannot end this anniversary explication without recalling the evergreen words of Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court: “The action of the governor is barbaric, archaic, unconstitutional and undemocratic.” I assure James Opara that he will not escape karmic retribution awaiting him.
Concluded