Just recently the DSS invited a friend of mine and bonafide son of  Nnewi, Chief (Dr) Ifeanyi Ubah of Capital Oil & Gas Ltd fame to come  and give an account of the whereabout millions of litres of PMS stored  by NNPC on his Tank farms. Since this invitation, I have read some  funny write ups online in defence of the Nnewi Chief and some trying  to read ethnic meaning to DSS intervention.
Now the truth is this: My good friend Chief Ifeanyi Ubah is capable of  defending himself and Capital Oil & Gas Ltd. He has formidable  structures in place and good lawyers to defend his case. He does not  need yahoo, yahoo boys and girls and frustrated political hustlers to  defend himself. He does not need internet rats and professional  pay-me-i-write-for-you fraudsters. What I have been reading about this  drama online is totally uncalled for. It is ridiculous, shameful and  at best, clannish.
This brigandage did not start today. When Deziani Allison Madueke was  declared wanted by EFCC for fraud in the oil industry we saw this kind  of shameless interventions from even people who should know better and  those with full dose of Western education. When Stella Oduah was being  probed for purchase of BMW cars at unbelievable prices never known in  history, some Igbo leaders rose to her defence. They erected  billboards in the SouthEast and celebrated her with a chieftaincy  title, Ada Igbo Nile. The impression being created is that Igbo  prominent citizens are being persecuted because they are Igbo. I call  this persecution complex, leadership complex and defeatism syndrome.  It is even annoying that Col. Sambo Dasuki’s defense is being done not  by his northern brothers but Igbo who are sworn to bland defense of  everything PDP. They are the most fanatical mourners of the loss of  Jonathan and PDP even when the Ijaws have moved on.
NIA boss, Ayo Oke has been facing series of interrogations at EFCC  concerning Osborne Towers 15 billion Naira cash haul and I have not  read any Yoruba defending him. Babachir Lawal, the suspended, SFG is  being probed for contract scam and yet I have not seen his kinsmen  rising in his defence. They allow investigations to go the whole hog.  There are litanies of such trial of corrupt people going on everywhere  in Nigeria and except Igbo who always mount very embarrassing and  tepid defense of Igbo tried for corruption, no other race indulge in  such demeaning art, yet Ala Igbo is noted as a land where our  ancestors and forefathers abhor evil and treat corruption with  unambiguous disapproval from even pre-colonial times. What is wrong  with present day Igbo. What we see today is not our tradition. It is  not our culture. Let nobody rewrite our history, our culture, and our  tradition of eziokwu bu ndu( truth is life)
We see this funny re-occurring decimal more in the South East and  South South and this is becoming a national embarrassment. It must  stop. I am told that stupidity is knowing the truth, seeing the truth  but believing in lies. Igbo are a very hard working, proud and  successful tribe but we need to come down from a 30,000 feet storey  building to make sense to other Nigerians. We need to stop this  aberration that is demeaning and ridiculing Igbo in NIGERIA today. We  need to caution ourselves before we become objects of ridicule and  butts of ribaldry of other Nigerians as is dangerously becoming the  fad in the country today.
Written by Joe Igbokwe
