By Alozie Ogbonnaya Chikatara
My Sincere Plea to Sam Omatseye!
‘You do not get mad publicly at a mad person,’ goes a saying in my place, otherwise, people will assume that you share a common heritage of dementia. That was the first thing that came to my mind when I read Sam’s literary outburst on Monday 12, 2015 in his back page column of The Nation. Strangely as it appeared, coming from our calm Sam, this confirms the position of one Hilda Ifegwu on the Point Blank column of The Insider Weekly of August 3, 2015, ‘Abia festering sore.’
His penchant for controversies and inexactitude are incurable. If all discerning minds have come out in condemnation of OUK’s excesses, he would have withdrawn his nuisance displays and flagrant abuse of newspaper space, if not stopping entirely his unethical manipulations of the press through his publications.
Sam, you have stirred the hornet’s nest and be sure of attacks from all columnists in the Sun. First and certainly would be the Abia born, self styled media adviser, his most ferocious and highly inebriated of Kalu-mania. He will descend on the Nation with bombastic idiocies of the highest order and other good men scared stiff of going back to the job market will emulate just to keep their jobs.
Sam, do you know that time was when everything read in the Newspapers in Nigeria were taken with a high degree of veracity and respected like government edicts in official gazettes, but the emergence of the man who infuriated you as a newspaper proprietor greatly damaged this credibility and turned the broadsheets of news to lethal instruments of manipulation and witch hunting to the extent that truths previously taken for granted are turned upside down and lies made to stand boldly. The level of unprofessionalism hinted by Sam are trademarks exhibited in all his publications. It doesn’t need much search to identify these as they are manifest from the items captured as news and diaries of events are mostly the ones that delight him. They have only stopped at giving the public the gory details of his toilet habits.
I still remember that the publisher of one the flagships of newspapers was hunted down by a military junta for refusing to influence the editorial content of his publication. But we cannot say that of our young rascal who often times, dish out mouthful of insults to people who shun his excesses.
Our man’s verbal and noun confusion which Sam wrote about are old stories. There are more recent cases of malapropism. Before you nail him, he has improved grammatically after bagging a degree from Abia State University. If he had been patient to attend more lectures instead of six months, being a fast learner, he would have been more oratorical like the Martin Lathers’ of this world but his eagerness to finish the mess of being in class with his inferiors pushed him into forwarding Abia to all forwardness. Wanting him to write in public to earn eligibility of his Saturday columns may not be necessary after all, Oral English is still admissible as an a language assessment tool. A lot of people have fallen into such mess of educational backwardness, but they manage it with dignity, What bothers me most as an Igbo is his shameless, childish lies.
During the Obasanjo era, he touted the Igbo presidency which did not survive the electoral term but collapsed like a pack of cards. In 2012 and 2013 he toured round all over the country and even outside Nigeria delivering speeches about Njiko Ndi Igbo. In one of these, he denied having any political ambition but that changed sooner than expected as he contested the 2015 election for senate where he has failed a record two times.
While claiming to be a PDP member, he toured the Western States of Nigeria, urging the people of an opposing party to reelect their governors. Isn’t this an act of serious antiparty activity? When his desperate moves to rejoin PDP was frustrated by a strong amalgam of Abia PDP stalwarts, he forged PDP registration card No.787945, Igbere ward A, openly brandished and published in his dailies of January 19, 2013 but that was not to be. In the same period he claimed to have been given a waiver and all turned out to be a big hoax. What kind of negative guts are these? A normal and reasonable citizen would have known that such crooked attributes are not needed in the Nigeria of today but would only ridicule the doer.
Some guesses are that he passed through the Abia government House but Abia Government House did not pass through him, because his colleagues like Nnamani, Mbadinuju, Donald Duke are not as loquacious. Our enfant terrible may cause more damages if not challenged. At least he should have been charged to court for forging PDP documents. Now that PDP is down though not out, he is now free to join PDP but conversely, he is planning to decamp. That could be the only reason why he is trying to run down Tinunbu and take his place in APC.
Joining APC and supplanting Asiwaju may be a tall order but the self acclaimed master strategist never stops hatching plans whether it works or not, the PDP showdown should have sobered him but his thick skin is one of the hardest in Africa, but as it is said, be careful with a man without conscience, he can attempt anything.
As things stand in Abia today, the APC maneuver is dead on arrival. It may get the greatest challenge in Abia with the likes of Apugo, Emenike, Onyemobi, Acho Obioma and others who have been fed with more than a fair share of his instability and mendacity.
My dear Sam, the trending FIFA Presidency is now a-no-go area. Paul Basssey and Alh. Sani Toro, sports oracles in Nigeria have all expressed fears as OUK is heavily overweight and cannot scale through article 13 being a complete stranger as a FIFA member. For the past 3 weeks, his publications have brandished support from Isa Hayotu and now that Isa has become the acting FIFA president with the suspension of Sepp Blatter, OUK’s camp of jeerers are already celebrating. He should be reminded that it is not a Nigerian thing that can be easily manipulated, but we will wait and see.
Omatseye’s, your allusion to some publishers making editors work unprofessionally is just saying the least. His editors and columnists have been made to look stupid in many circumstances. As Hilda argued in the referred article in the Insider Weekly, these writers, columnists and editors are very well known, bright scholars who burnt the night’s oil in their days to acquire their varying certificates.
Many of them are exceptional writers who in the past in other organizations came out with good arguments and popular positions but dare the their publisher’s interest today, they are ready to insult their mothers and change their names.
If you are in doubt check out the withdrawal of his degree certificate by Abia State University. Who does not know that our man arm-twisted the authorities with his position as Governor then to obtain the degree but when withdrawn, his bay dogs all wrote, insulting the ABSU authorities and abusing the Abia Governor and his family for being responsible. Can you imagine this? Good men, hitherto with good conscience, coming out boldly in print to back and support evil, may God forgive them. As hinted earlier, earning a living could be a subtle blackmail.
The Nigerian press has come of age, fiercely protecting other countries; they should collectively resist such charlatan onslaughts that may ridicule them in the near future. The Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria, the Guild of Editors and NUJ should come out boldly against such whimsical publications that slander the great act and art of journalism.
In all my dear Sam, temper justice with mercy and please, do not throw away the baby with the bath water.