Mr. Nkem (Jika) Ibekwe began his latest pseudo-reply to me with a mad and maddening misquotation of a common enough sentence: “Perhaps, the Sages of the old times had ….. in mind when they prefaced the profound saying that; “Fools always rush in where even Angels fear to thread”. Please who will teach Nkemjika that there is a great difference between “thread” (as in needle and thread) and “tread” (as in walking) as Pope wrote in his immortal phrase.
Second, the word “always” was inserted by Mr. Ibekwe as it is not part of the quotation.
As Ibekwe’s ignorance of the usage of basic English words is disastrous, may we please proceed gently, ABC style. Only a mad man could have written, as Mr. Ibekwe did, in his very first sentence, that “Perhaps, the Sages of the old times had Mr. Tony Eluemunor in mind when they prefaced the profound saying that; ‘Fools always rush in where even Angels fear to thread.’” Could someone ask him what the sages prefaced the profound saying….with? Or put differently, what came after the preface? What did the preface introduce?.
Here is an example of how to use “preface” that came from the internet: “I had some guests from those not reckoned commonly among the town’s poor, guests who appeal, not to your hospitality, who earnestly wish to be helped, and preface their appeal with the information that they are resolved, for one thing, never to help themselves”. Oh, how I love that example of preface as a verb, because it seems to refer to Nkemjika Ibekwe. Another example: “This historical ramble may fitly preface what we have to say regarding…!
Having dealt with Mr. Ibekwe’s inability to correctly use the word, “preface”, I will move on to his non-understanding of the quotation he misused. The ‘fools’ Alexander Pope targeted in his 1771 “Essay on Criticism” poem were the literary critics of the day, who behaved much like Nkemjika Ibekwe …” Thus Wit, like Faith by each Man is apply’d/To one small Sect (and All are damn’d beside.) Some to Conceit alone their Taste confine/ (dishing out) One glaring Chaos and wild Heap of Wit”. And Nkemjika writes “one glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.”
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, is now a common enough idiom standing for people who without good sense or judgement will have no hesitation in tackling a situation that even the wisest would avoid. Or taken in context, Pope actually wrote: “No place so sacred from such fops is barr’d … Nay, fly to altars; there they’ll talk you dead; For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
Mr. Ibekwe wrote: “The first is that as an interloper on the matter at hand, Eluemunor”… wrote on a matter concerning him (Ibekwe). It is on record that in “Ifeanyi Ubah, The Man and The Essence”, published in the September 3, 2015 Vanguard newspaper, I wrote that “Ifeanyi Ubah, had through his Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) raised the bar for future election support groups and that after the election, he not only moved on but patriotically and single-handedly, ended the oil-marketers petrol-lifting strike that had threatened to hobble the economy and mar President Buhari’s May 29, 2015 inauguration. Ubah intervened on Sunday May 24. The strike ended 8pm the next day.
My conclusion:” Ubah alone, could keep Nigeria rolling. And he did it. And without asking for any concessions too. And if other tanker owners refused to join him, he had over 600 tankers to dispatch to service across the country. He acted. He served. That is Ubah the man – deep into his very heart, soul and spirit”.
Ibekwe never contradicted. He did not refer to a single thing I discussed. Instead, he started his reply with this: “In what were clearly bland and vainglorious ripostes, …Tony Eluemunor in “Ifeanyi Ubah: The man, the myth and the essence” (Vanguard, September 3, 2015 P. 37)” bla blah bla. Mr. Ibekwe’s attack was already in full sail. Or was that not an unwarranted attack? Why did he attack me with the twin words of “bland” and “vainglorious”? So which fool rushed in where Angels may fear to tread?
And is Mr. Ibekwe asking me whether I have the locus standi to write about his failure to pay the journalists he has owned up that he put together in 2013 to work for Ubah? Well, my African Fiction teacher, the incomparable Chinua Achebe, wrote in his preface to Morning Yet On Creation of Day (his first book of essays) that “though a writer never needs offer apologies for writing, I elect to be accused of nastiness than join in the national pastime of consigning events of less than a decade ago into pre-history”. So, I will offer no apologies for asking Mr. Nkemjika Ibekwe, who owned up that he collected millions of Naira from Chief Ubah, to pay the journalists who made up his media team. So how much did he pay any of those unfortunate journalists?
Nkemjika, showing that his mind is as shallow as a saucer, has even inadvertently shown his reasons for writing. In his last mail, he said: “Incidentally, while the police and the DSS cases have the potential of sending Ifeanyi Ubah, Tony Eluemunor and the other members of their abduction gang to jail, the libel suit has the capacity to negatively impact the operations of The Authority Newspaper. I wonder if this is not the way the mind of an average blackmailer works: if you made the wrong noises long enough about a rich man, he would he be ready to pay to have some peace. And if you distract a busy journalist long enough, he would let you be just because he has other important things to do. He has also said he would use other media to publish his reactions to my articles. I plead with him to hasten up and give me other avenues to showcase his nothingness. Mr. Ibekwe may have forgotten that my first article on this matter was not published in The Authority newspaper. So, let him write on the Moon’s Express or The Times of Planet Mars and I will be happy to seize the same opportunity to display his inadequacies.
My thesis is this: It will take a treacherous and wicked heart to put together a team of journalists for an election campaign and then the head of that team would not only fail to pay those journalists, but would have the hypocrisy to be going after another person. So, if the Millions of Naira Ibekwe said he received from Ubah was to cover for just a day’s wages, why did he not pay them for just a day? Also, why would Ibekwe be demonizing Ifeanyi Ubah, who, even after losing the Anambra election, still had the mind to call together the same set of journalists Ibekwe refused to pay, and collectively gave them millions as recompense? Or is he angry because the money did not fall into his pockets? Why would somebody leave the logs of wood in his own eyes to be pointing out the specks in another person’s eyes?
Ibekwe appears to have the strange habit of threatening everybody with court cases. He does not know that his own situation is as precarious as that one the bus stop man refers to as “quarter to jail”. He may be closer to jail than he thinks if those journalists decide to approach a court and sue him for their agreed emoluments.
Mr. Ibekwe quoted my assertion that I do not know about the nature of the contract that existed or still exists between him and Chief Ifeanyi Ubah. Let him show that contract and I will join in asking that he be paid what is his due. But if there was no contract, how would I know of a non-existent thing? And here, would someone please teach him about understatement.
Why is Nkemjika or Nkem Ibekwe totally deaf and dumb when the discussion touches on payment due to members of the media team he put together? Did he ever pay them? And does he ever wonder what kind of a person he is, if all he lives for is to pick fights with everybody he comes close to? Does it not bother him that not many others may not be ready from now to touch him with a long pole? Well, here I am, ready to tell Nigerians who the real Nkem (Jika) Ibekwe is. And his story is not “delectable.” This is not the end, it is just the beginning, so I beg Nkemjika Ibekwe to attack me in more newspaper articles. I am ready to stretch the “Nkemjika Ibekwe has no reputation to protect” series of articles till it surpasses the 100 mark.
Finally, Ibekwe made me laugh when he warned of his forthcoming book entitled, “Ifeanyi Ubah: Profile of a Beat in Business and Politics”. If Ibekwe’s newspaper articles are so disastrous, how dreadfully unreadable would his book be? Well, after the Anambra politics, Ifeanyi Ubah organized TAN, bought a soccer team, the Ifeanyi Ubah Football Club and founded a newspaper, The Authority –within two years. Ibekwe, who signs himself off as a former Researcher, with no hint of what he does at present, who from his stupid use of the English language is obviously a failed newspaper hack writer, is preparing to be a failed book author, all in a bid to get someone he describes as being as poor as a church rat to give him money. Hey, there must be a limit to one man’s empty boasts and bluffs.
Written by Tony Eluemunor.
