Until his latest outing: ‘Leave the Ijaw alone’, published in two parts by the ‘Vanguard’ in its editions of November 16 and 18, the last work of Dr. Patrick Dele Cole I read was his piece in ‘The Guardian’ of May 18, 2015, with the caption: ‘Federal Minister of Agriculture, Adesina’. In the said writeup, Cole tore Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, the immediate past Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, to shreds at a time when Adesina was at his peak anxiously networking for his African Development Bank (AfDB) Presidency job. Had Cole’s rubbishing of Adesina weighed as basis for considering him for the AfDB plum job, Adesina would most probably not be the President of the bank today.
Cole, a former Managing Director of the old Daily Times (1976); ex-Nigerian Ambassador to Brazil (1987-1990); Deputy National Chairman (South-South) of the People’s Democratic Party (1998-1999); Special Adviser on International Relations to former President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2001); and Chairman of ‘africapractice’ West Africa, among others, has an uncanny way of exposing his truths (or falsehoods, if you like) and piercing through the underbelly of paradoxes. ‘Leave the Ijaw alone’, for instance, is one article in which he exposed a lot of truths; injected a lot of ethnic sentiments; and sounded dispassionate and detached, all at the same time.
In the said piece, it seemed what he set out to impress on his readership was the point that all politicians in the land have stolen; and therefore, singling out politicians of his ethnic South-South for harassment, prosecution or punishment, was roundly unacceptable. When he spoke about the late Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha of Bayelsa State, his position was that “Alamieyesiegha was one of 36 thriving governors, one of thousands thieving politicians…Alamieyesiegha was hounded to death because he was a minority”. On former Minister of Petroleum, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke, and others, Cole says:
“My point, however, is not to defend her, but to point out the sorry state of South-South geopolitical area since the demise of Alams, Ibori and Odili. These three were in charge of funding PDP and its coterie of politicians…Indeed, if they were to speak about how much help they gave to the PDP, then more people would join them in their lonely cells in prison… They were no more corrupt than all other governors, all politically exposed people who worked a system that was mired in corruption… ” But Cole said the piece was in no way meant to condone the corruption of South-South politicians or their alleged corrupt practices.
It is, therefore, intriguing that he turned around to lampoon the same group he defended when he said in the piece: “If an Ijaw man is President or Governor, he will try to sleep with five or six women every two or three hours of the day. He will drink, usually with his friends, with complete abandon. It is not that he does not realize the weight of his office. He does. But it does not matter to his psyche…If it is a woman and she has money, she will spend it like water. She will order containers from China that will seat for six years without opening…If she still sees new things, she will order more; she has no recollection what she has ordered or how much. She will beg her husband to kingdom come for more money for more orders. If she is rich enough, she will buy houses in almost all cities; and may never enter one of them. She will have no idea where her documents are”.
A close friend, Bankole Aderinola, about five months back, drew my attention to a similar comment said to be a speech former Apartheid South African president, P.W. Botha, made before his cabinet in August 1985, reprinted and written by one David G. Mailu for the ‘Sunday Times’ of South Africa. Botha reportedly said: “By now, every one of us has seen it practically that the blacks cannot rule themselves. Give them guns and they will kill each other. They are good in nothing else but making noise, dancing, marrying many wives and indulging in sex. Let us all accept that the black man is the symbol of poverty, mental inferiority, laziness and emotional incompetence…”
The rightness or wrongness of Botha’s observation has been canvassed across our circle of friends, the majority for, and a miserable few against. Now Cole has swelled the ranks of those that approve of the Blacks’ downgrade. For, in the same cobweb are not just the Ijaw, but the entire Nigerian and African black leadership. The parodox of Nigeria as a nation, for example, is that of a fool that is thirsty in the abundance of water, to the shame of her carousal leaders that perfectly match the descriptions of Botha and Cole. Leaders who, in place of giving good leadership, have left in their trail the bogey of heinous underdevelopment, extreme poverty occasioned by widespread unemployment, avoidable insecurity, desperation and frustration, as well as all manner of crimes, to list just a few. Some of such empty leaders are still being recycled in power and are very much around. But I totally disagree with Cole’s interpretation of corruption in the land as mere ethnic witch-hunt. His suggestion is that two wrongs can make a right, which is off the mark.
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