NWAFOR ORIZU: CROOK, CONVICT TURNED SENATE PRESIDENT

Dr Abyssinia Akweke Nwafor Orizu (1920-1999) being a crook should never have held any political office had Nigeria been a proper country.

In 1946, Orizu presided over a new form of heartless fraud. Families and whole villages in the East sold their possessions to send a single student from their village to university because like Awolowo, they were passionate for the benefit of good education.

Orizu, a PhD holder, formed an agency, American Council on African Education (ACAE) to process these village students admission into American universities. He collected the maintenance funds from their parents and other sponsors and diverted them partly or totally to other personal and business schemes.

In 1947, two prominent African-Americans Alain Locke and George Schulyer resigned over Orizu’s conduct of affairs.

Horace Mann Bond, the African-American president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania who provided Orizu’s agency with many tuition-free scholarships complained regularly and bitterly about Orizu’s failure to financially support the students whom Orizu had placed in his school.

The 32-year-old Orizu was found out and on 2nd of February 1953 was arrested.

Azikiwe, Mbonu Ojike and Kola Balogun went to bail him out. On 9th February, his brother Joseph Onyekusi Orizu was arrested in Gusau and taken to Port Harcourt.

On 12th February both brothers were charged in a statement that read:

“That you between May 1, 1946 and December 31, 1951 at Port Harcourt, in the Port Harcourt Magisterial District, conspired together with other persons unknown to defraud such person as might be induced to deposit money with you as officers and agents of a body known as the American Council on African Education Incorporated, and you thereby committed an offence punishable under the Criminal code.”

When their lawyer told the court that Orizu was a honourable man, a PhD holder, a royal Prince in Nnewi, a member of the regional legislature, and also Azikiwe’s nominee for Minister of Local Government, Magistrate Dickson retorted:

''This court is not a department under the Government and it is not subject to any political party.”

Orizu was later jailed for 7 years. On Tuesday 22nd September 1953, he arrived the Lagos Prison by train under escort to serve his term.

At the House of Commons debate of April 29, 1953, James Johnson the MP for Kingston upon Hull West berated Oliver Lyttelton, the Secretary of Colonies for taking so long to arrest the Orizu brothers:

“Is not it somewhat disgraceful that it has taken so long to investigate this case of defrauding parents and students? Hence allowing him to cause untold hardship to his own people?''

The logic behind the rule was that the government was a sacred job; if crooks were allowed to determine the destiny of the people, the people would suffer indefinitely.

Mbonu Ojike, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Ozumba Mbadiwe started to entrench the false narrative that Orizu was convicted by the British colonial government not for embezzlement but as a revenge for his fiery anti-colonial speech given at the 1947 Enugu Coal riots rally.

Never mind that more important figures such as H.O. Davies also gave fiery speeches at the rally too but were not fraudsters hence not fated for conviction by the colonial government. But in the case of Orizu, colonialism became the excuse for a crook to be turned into a national hero.

Azikiwe made Orizu whole by nominating him unopposed to represent Nnewi in the Federal elections of 1959 that ushered in self-rule.

The existence of colonialism provided Nigeria’s moral system the perfect excuse to develop and strengthen the disdain for the objective perception of value on which any civilised society must rest. When colonialism expired in 1960, the disdain remained alive and thriving through the force of habit.

In 1961 for instance, Dr Okejukwu Ikejiani the Pro-Chancellor of University of Ibadan was caught lying about a certificate he never had.

A visiting scholar from University of Toronto who happened to be from the same department which allegedly awarded Ikejiani’s certificate was the first to point out that Ikejiani never had that esteemed Doctor of Science degree.

Ibadan erupted and there were calls for Ikejiani to resign and be prosecuted. To Azikiwe who was the Head of Government, the visitor to the university and in charge of such appointments, Ikejiani was being “persecuted” because he, Azikiwe, had dared to appoint another Igbo after Francis Ibiam as the Pro-chancellor and head of the governing council of a flagship Federal University in a non-Igbo region in particular when the Vice chancellor was already an Igbo.

Before departing Toronto University where he rightly earned his undergraduate medical degree, Ikejiani seduced and frequently unhooked the lovely secretary at the Vice Chancellor’s office until she embossed a Doctor of Science certificate in his name complete with authentic signatures but with no education behind it.

After the Toronto University investigation into the matter, the secretary realised her wrongdoing and quietly accepted her dismissal. But that was Canada.

In Nigeria, one of the criteria of eligibility for being considered a national hero was to be a bonafide crook.

When Ikejiani was forced to finally resign, being a medical doctor, Azikiwe made him whole like Orizu by appointing him to the State House as one of his personal physicians. He was not done: Azikiwe then reappointed him again to his former unfilled post less than two years later. He still was not done: In 1964, Azikiwe decorated him with the national honour – Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON) – pun unintended – ‘for his service to the nation.’

If anyone is interested in why Nigeria ended up being a pit latrine of implacable corruption where intelligence cannot assert itself in the conduct of public affairs, the Orizu and Ikejiani Affair is where to begin.

Azikiwe put into disorder all considerations based on value. And the absence of the objective perception of value produced the will to tribalism which eliminated the prospect of any meaningful progress for the nation.

And the story continues.......... #HistoryVille

Source: The News Magazine, June 19, 2016.

He Don tay.....

Not be today Toronto start.

Salish Buhari and Bola Tinubu also claimed that same Toronto.

TBH, Nigeria and corruption cum nepotism has been lovers for long.