i had a dream last night and i saw my self with two invites to lunch one from The US president and The other from The Nigerian President. it also stated the i will have to share the whole weekend with them but the problem is the it is both happening on the same day. if it were you, what would you do? who would you want to g for and what would you discuss over lunch?

helppp i need a wife text me soon 08026163995

Jealousy is one of the negative emotions and can end almost any relationship it basically arises from insecurity within oneself and not trusting your partner. Often it is mainly a result of woman being possessive about her man or partner. It is basically a result of human psychology which reacts according to what has happened in the surrounding environment. But if there is jealousy in a relationship there are also effective measures to deal with it.
Insecurity factor- This is one of the major factor due to which women get jealous of their partners and they to show lesser faith in them. Sometimes even a small disagreement can spark a massive fight just because of jealousy. Insecure feeling about someone gives you an uneasy feeling and you tend to be suspicious about almost everything around you.
Possessiveness- Some women are just simply a bit more possessive than the rest and often tend to get an insecure feeling about their partner and often suspect their spouses just out of curiosity and making it sure that everything is alright.
Lack of communication- Sometimes lack of communication between couples can be a big cause of jealousy. One partner might hide something from the other and that might lead to misunderstanding and jealousy. There is always a thought bugging a woman what if he finds someone else and leaves me for her. Why did he hide these things from me? Is he going out with someone else? Even such thoughts can arouse the feelings of jealousy and insecurity.
Distrust- Often when women tend to have lack of trust in their partners they normally get more jealous. They are always thinking about what if their partner goes out with someone else or is already involved with someone else. Therefore it is very important to trust and have complete faith in your partner to prevent jealous feelings towards him. Learn to let loose a bit and open all lines of communication with your partner and be a good listener for a change. The more you share the better your relationship would be and the more you trust and have faith in your partner you would probably never get jealous again as you know he only loves you and not someone else.
You might not be able to make the person fall in love with you on the first sight but you can definitely make the person be strongly attracted to you if you follow some simple steps. So what type of guys do women truly prefer? Find out some of the "Best kept secrets" on how to become a guy women want- How to become a true Girl Magnet
so guys tell me “Do you believe jealousy is a natural part of love?”

to cut the long story short, the lady i dedicated my whole heart to for over 4 years only to send me a mail after 2 years with nothing but attachment of photos of a very big white weeding with an afro american. now she is telling me to forgive and and pray for her that god will give me my own woman some day. somebody help what do i do? i av been sad for over 2 years now. can i trust a lady again?

Thanks guys i actually have moved on i just want you all to know that i trusted her then. And we couldn get married cos she was still in school then and i planned to do dat when she came back

In July 2004, police lay in wait at an airfield in the far northeastern corner of Nigeria. Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese businessman and one-time adviser to the late dictator Sani Abacha, was set to touch down in his private jet. Nuhu Ribadu, then the country's top anti-corruption prosecutor, says that Chagoury was a kingpin in the corruption that defined Abacha's regime. "You couldn't investigate corruption without looking at Chagoury," Ribadu tells me in a recent interview in California.
Six years after Abacha's death, Ribadu's officers stood ready to take Chagoury down. Ribadu says that Chagoury made it possible for Abacha to steal billions of dollars and lined his own pockets in the process. The prosecutor says he indicted Chagoury and ordered his arrest for relatively minor violations related to Chagoury's businesses so that he could later bring additional charges for his activities in the Abacha era.

But, no sooner had Chagoury's plane hit the ground, than it took off again. Ribadu says it's likely that an airport official tipped him off, and Ribadu's big catch slipped away, literally into thin air.

Chagoury was among the last of the all-powerful middlemen who served the heads of oil-rich African states, says Philippe Vasset, longtime editor of Africa Energy Intelligence, one of a series of influential energy industry newsletters. "He [Chagoury] was the gatekeeper to Abacha's presidency," Vasset says.

In many African countries, a Western entrepreneur might hand over money to a fixer or middleman, who would then pass it on to a political leader in exchange for support for a business venture. In Nigeria, Vasset explains, Chagoury was just such a figure in the mid-1990s, when Abacha ruled the country and held the key to much of the country's oil wealth.

Today, Chagoury is a diplomat representing the tiny island nation of St. Lucia. He is also a friend of former President Bill Clinton and a generous philanthropist, who, since the Abacha years, has used his money to establish respectability. He appeared near the top of the Clinton Foundation donor list in 2008 as a $1 million to $5 million contributor, according to foundation documents. (His name made the list again in 2009.)

Chagoury's contribution to the Louvre in Paris some years back was large enough for the museum to name a gallery for him and his wife. In recent years, he has put up $10 million for the construction of medical and nursing schools in Lebanon, his parents' country of origin, that also bear the Chagoury name.

Unlike his friend, the former president, Chagoury conducts his affairs largely out of public view. He rarely talks to reporters.

But on a cool day in late 2008, I headed up a gently winding road in Beverly Hills, where Chagoury's Moorish-style villa sprawls across the top of a steep canyon. The home once belonged to entertainer Danny Thomas, and Richard Nixon, Raquel Welch, and Michael Caine have all lived in the neighborhood.

After a written request for an interview and many follow-up phone calls, Chagoury invited me to meet him. "We'll see if we can get along," he said. Chagoury's home is packed with art, antiques, and crystal chandeliers, and offers a staggering view across West Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean.

As I'm taking it all in, Chagoury climbs a thickly carpeted, winding staircase to the living room to greet me. He's a stout man, dressed in a navy blue sport coat with buttons that strain against a barrel chest. His fingernails are buffed and manicured, and he has a full head of salt-and-pepper hair.

Almost immediately, he has a proposal: Do your story, but don't sell your work to a media outlet. "Do it for me," he says, offering me access and contacts -- even the chance to write a book. In exchange, I would get cash, and he would get full control of the product. I politely turn him down, but he brings up the offer several times during the interview.

As we talk, I learn that much of what Chagoury says about himself is so out of sync with the public record and what others have told me -- even those who are friendly toward him -- that it seems he's not just in the market for positive spin, but for all-out reinvention.
When I bring up his days in Nigeria, he tells me that he detests his reputation as Abacha's middleman. "I am not in that business," he says. Rather, he has worked hard since he was a teenager, building a conglomerate called The Chagoury Group, which employs 20,000 people in Nigeria in construction, real estate development, telecommunications, and other sectors.

"I am an industrialist," he says in lightly accented, near-perfect English. "I spend a lot of time with my family. I don't have time to do all that people say I do."

"I have never bribed anyone," he says, looking me straight in the eye. "I have never had to make a crooked deal." He is absolutely sure of himself, even though he has offered me a bribe of sorts just minutes earlier.

As for Ribadu, the Nigerian investigator who says his officers nearly made that 2004 arrest on corruption charges, Chagoury says, "He's not such hot stuff." He tells me that Ribadu -- who until 2007 headed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, an agency similar to the FBI -- was an attack-dog set against the enemies of President Olusegun Obasanjo, who appointed him.

Ribadu was pushed out of his job after Obasanjo left office, and says he was given the freedom to act independently during his tenure and was ousted because of his zealous prosecution of high-level officials.

Chagoury, who turns 64 this month, was born in Lagos and is the eldest of eight children. He has dual citizenship in Lebanon and the United Kingdom because of his parents' heritage and because he was born in Nigeria while it was still under British rule.

His father came to West Africa in the 1930s from the northern Lebanese town of Miziara. The elder Chagoury followed what was by then a well-worn migrant trail to Nigeria, where he traded in textiles and helped his brother in a small trucking operation.

Chagoury is part of the Lebanese diaspora, which is by some estimates several times larger than the population of Lebanon, and includes such influential members as Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, the world's third richest man, Columbian entertainer Shakira, and American activist Ralph Nader.

Like their Palestinian and Jewish neighbors, the Lebanese have scattered about the world, and Chagoury seems equally at home in Lagos or Beverly Hills. He has also maintained close ties to his parents' home town of Miziara.

Today, Miziara survives -- and even thrives -- because of Chagoury and his brothers, says Gilbert Aoun, who was Lebanon's ambassador to Nigeria during Abacha's rule. Still, nine months of the year, the mountainous settlement of some 15,000 is a ghost town, Aoun says, because most Miziarans old enough to work are employed by the Chagourys in Nigeria.

Chagoury didn't grow up rich, but he says that he always wanted the security and prestige that money brings. He went into business with his father-in-law, and later with his brother. The family established several flour mills in Benin and Nigeria, a construction company in Nigeria, and a club in Lagos.

An Indispensable Adviser
Chagoury says he met Abacha by chance on a flight to the Niger Delta city of Port Harcourt, when the future dictator was a young officer. The two struck up a friendship, and when Abacha seized power in a 1993 coup, Chagoury became the general's indispensable adviser.

General Abacha was an eccentric man and a brutal leader, who consolidated his power by declaring martial law and jailing political rivals. He kept a menagerie of exotic animals and rarely removed his sunglasses. The regime drew worldwide condemnation in 1995, when activist playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other men who had campaigned against the environmental degradation of the oil-rich Niger Delta were executed for what most observers say were trumped-up murder charges.

From his earliest days in power, Abacha set the tone for an administration that would become the most corrupt in Nigeria's history. Today, more than a decade after the dictator's death, investigators from Washington DC to the Nigerian capital of Abuja are still unraveling the web of shady dealings around Abacha's rule.

Within months of taking office in 1993, Abacha began to divert money from Nigeria's central bank to the overseas bank accounts of his family members and associates, including Chagoury's. A lawsuit brought by the Nigerian government against Abacha's heirs and associates in the United Kingdom shows that the dictator fraudulently ordered the bank transfers for national security purposes.

By the time of Abacha's death in 1998, those so-called security payments would total $2 billion, but they would represent less than half the funds that money-laundering investigators around the world estimate that Abacha and his associates stole from their country.
However, Abacha found other ways to pad his bank accounts. A $180 million bribery scheme -- the largest ever discovered as part of a U.S. Justice Department investigation -- was hatched the first year Abacha was in office.

Halliburton's Nigerian Bribes
The scheme began in the early 1990s, when Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), at the time a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, led a joint venture that bid for a $6 billion contract to build a sprawling liquefied natural gas facility in the Niger Delta.

The group won the bid, but not before Abacha had agreed to accept a $40 million bribe that he would share with other Nigerian officials, according to Department of Justice court papers. It was the first installment of $180 million in bribes that KBR would pay, not only to officials of the Abacha regime, but to officials of the two heads of state who succeeded him.

A few months before I interviewed Chagoury, former KBR CEO Jack Stanley had pleaded guilty in a Texas courtroom to charges related to organizing the bribery scheme that went on for a decade in Nigeria, and to taking millions in kickbacks for himself. Since then, two more KBR contractors have been indicted, and Halliburton entered a guilty plea and paid the government a record fine of more than $500 million.
Chagoury denies any involvement in the bribery case, but his name surfaces in notes taken by one of the indictees, Chodan, who kept detailed records of so-called cultural meetings, where bribes were discussed.

One entry reads, "$250 , to IPCO via Chagoury."
When I ask Chagoury about these records, he doesn't dispute that the note refers to a sum of $250 million, but he argues that it refers to a contract, which, he says, was legitimately awarded to one of his companies, IPCO Nigeria Limited, for construction related to the liquefied natural gas plant.

Chagoury has not been named by the Department of Justice or charged with any crime related to the KBR affair.

His work as an intermediary for Abacha went beyond business affairs. He was also deeply involved in diplomacy, even though he held no official government post. In the mid-1990s, when Nigeria came under increasing pressure from Washington to hold elections, Chagoury gained access to high-level U.S. emissaries like Jesse Jackson and Bill Richardson as well as to a number of senior State Department officials, according to Donald McHenry, a former American ambassador to the United Nations, who worked in U.S.-Nigeria diplomacy at the time.

The Clinton Connections
Chagoury, along with his wife and three of his children, were guests at a the Clinton's White House holiday dinner shortly after Chagoury gave nearly half a million dollars to a voter registration committee, Vote Now '96, according to a report in The Washington Post. (Chagoury would have been barred from donating directly to the Clinton campaign because he is not a U.S. citizen.) Since then, Chagoury and Clinton have traveled together and seen each other socially.

"Every one knows I'm friends with the Clintons," Chagoury says.

As Abacha's health began to fail in the late 1990s, Chagoury made major efforts to prop up the dictator. A State Department memo obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, entitled "The Health Watch on the Head of State Continues," shows that Chagoury appeared to have brought medical specialists and sophisticated medical equipment to the presidential residence in Abuja, while publicly downplaying the seriousness of Abacha's condition.

When Abacha died in June 1998, a second State Department memo notes that Chagoury placed an in-flight call from his private plane to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria to report that he was in touch with Nigeria's Provisional Ruling Council, which would be meeting later that day to discuss a successor to Abacha. In the phone call, Chagoury asked what governmental structure would be acceptable to U.S. officials, according to the memo.

Immediately after Abacha's death, Ribadu, then a young police investigator, says he began looking into the dictator's financial affairs. "It wasn't uncommon for Nigerian leaders to put money elsewhere," Ribadu says. "But the magnitude was beyond anybody's comprehension."
The money -- estimated at more than $4 billion -- was stashed in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and the Isle of Jersey in the names of dozens of individuals and companies. Ribadu argues that it was Chagoury who vouched for Abacha's sons at banks where the source of their assets might otherwise have been questioned.

Indeed, Chagoury's Swiss attorney, Luc Argand, told me that his client served as a reference for Abacha's sons at Credit Suisse. The Nigerian government eventually requested help from law enforcement around the world in tracking the stolen assets. In 2000, Chagoury was convicted in Geneva, Switzerland, of laundering money and aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the Abacha years.

Argand has insisted that Chagoury used the money for diplomatic missions on behalf of Abacha. Asked if he had records to substantiate that claim, Argand said he couldn't produce any. He also conceded that the money was "stolen by Abacha, and had to be returned."
However, Argand says that Chagoury had already decided on his own to return it. In the end, he says, his client agreed to a plea deal: Chagoury would pay a fine of a million Swiss francs and hand over $66 million to the Nigerian government. Swiss authorities promised to expunge the conviction after two years, which they have done.

In 1999, Chagoury won immunity from prosecution in a separate looted-assets case in Nigeria by agreeing to return money that he held in Swiss bank accounts. The precise amount that Chagoury returned is unclear.

Meanwhile, the hunt for Nigeria's stolen treasure continues. A panel appointed by Nigeria's current president, Umaru Yar'Adua, is currently investigating which Nigerian officials took bribes in the Halliburton case and has reportedly requested U.S. Department of Justice cooperation in the probe. However, some Nigeria watchers, including Ribadu, doubt the seriousness of the inquiry.

While the Nigerian government struggles to recoup the losses it suffered under Abacha, Chagoury has prospered and continued to win acceptance from influential people around the world.

Last year, he was knighted by the Catholic Church and inducted into the Order of St. Gregory the Great, an honor bestowed upon those who serve the church, including many who are big donors to the institution. Bob Hope, Ricardo Montalban, and Rupert Murdoch are among past recipients.
The Clinton Foundation did not respond to emailed questions and repeated phone calls about the nature of Bill and Hillary Clinton's relationship with Chagoury. Former Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe, who, according to The Washington Post, was a sponsor of Chagoury's invitation to the White House in 1996, also failed to return phone calls. A spokesman for former Clinton political advisor James Carville, also a Chagoury acquaintance, said that Carville could not comment on the relationship.

And Chagoury hasn't stopped earning his fortune. Knowledgeable sources say that Chagoury controls South Atlantic Petroleum, a company that was awarded a choice oil exploration license before Abacha's death. Three years ago, the company sold a portion of its government-granted concession to the Chinese oil company, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, for $2.7 billion.

In our interview, Chagoury didn't deny that he profited from the deal, but he said rumors that former President Clinton helped make the deal happen were untrue.

Chagoury is unfazed by the crackdown by the U.S. Justice Department on foreign bribery, exemplified by the Halliburton case, and waves off the recent spate of prosecutions like an elder statesman: "You have lobbyists; we have agents," he says.

"You are never going to stop corruption," because it's favoritism, and that's human nature, which laws won't change, he tells me.
It's no wonder he is so confident. He is now free to come and go in Nigeria, while his nemesis, corruption hunter Nuhu Ribadu, left the country last year, he says, after an attempt on his life.

Robin Urevich is a reporter in Monterey County, California. Her work has appeared on NPR, Marketplace, NPR affiliates KQED and KPCC, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Las Vegas Sun. She is a graduate of the University of California Berkeley School of Journalism.

This story was originally published by PBS Frontline.

“When I was contemplating the struggle, I knew it was going to require a lot of energy, patience and money,” Ken writes in his prison memoirs A Month and A Day (which I am paraphrasing here since somebody has permanently borrowed my copy). Of those three things, Ken said he knew he had a lot of energy, that if he did not have patience he could cultivate it. But concerning the last one, money, he knew he had no money anywhere in the world. So, instead of waiting to win a lottery, Ken became a business man. But because his foray into business was for a higher purpose, it could only be a transitory phase. He knew when his trading career had served its purpose and then, even though he had become a very successful business man, had to call it quits in order to devote his energy to the Ogoni struggle. He did not succumb to the joys of money making and its attendant greed and glories.

But the rudiments of the struggle were already stirring in Ken even as he served in different portfolios as a commissioner to the government of Rivers state. Indeed, much earlier than that, he had already started to question why the oil companies operating in his native village should be flaring so much gas and filling the whole place with obnoxious seethe. At that time he memorably wrote that “The flames of Shell are the flames of Hell.” This, admittedly was only innocuously lodged at the back of his mind at the time for he reportedly sought employment at Shell at a point. But as he grew in maturity the question began to haunt him. So it was no surprise that as a member of the Rivers state government he was becoming increasing vocal in his criticism of the shabby way oil producing communities were being treated. This led to his being unceremoniously sacked from that government. From that point on he knew that his work was cut out for him. But he had to do his homework thoroughly. That was when he realized that he needed mostly the three things I just mentioned above.

I was already an admirer of Ken long before I read about those three things, but that kind of thinking reinforced my respect for the man. One of the most outstanding traits of a leader is the ability to contemplate the future realistically. This characteristic is usually called having a vision. No one can be a leader without knowing exactly where s/he wants to lead others. And most importantly, how to get there with them, or how to put them on the road so they could continue the journey if when the inevitable happens.

To acquire the last of those three things, Ken started off in the grocery business. Yes, he started off selling things like milk and bread. This profile does not fit that of a typical Nigerian politician. He could easily have gone into taking contracts from governments, or cultivating the ‘friendship’ of some ‘big’ men and women in order to get back into government, or something like that. But no, he started by selling grocery. But because his aim was quite high, despite his humble means, he knew how to ‘save the pennies and reinvest’ as he said in one of the stories in his A Forest of Flowers. Ken was very fiscally responsible. One piece of advice he gave his son, reported in In the Shadow of a Saint was that ‘if Jesus saves’ so must he! One of his lawyers, Sam Amadi, reported that Ken would scrutinize all the expenditure his family was making while he was in prison with a death sentence hanging over his head. One day Ken was unhappy that bottled water was boughtmfor him. The lawyer was surprised that a man of Ken’s worth would bother about the cost of bottled water. Ken gave him a classic answer: ‘Why buy water when you can boil it?’ Isn’t Nigeria crying out for that kind of fiscal responsibility? (For instance, why buy generators while we can generate our own electricity? Or why import fuel when we can refine it? The list can go on). Ken’s initial hard work as a business man paid off for soon he started supplying grocery to big customers; and that was when the big bucks started rolling in (apologies to Eddy Murphy in his classic ‘Coming to America’). This kind of knowledge about where one wants to go and how to get there reminds one of Barack Obama choosing to work as a community organizer, and refusing to be seduced by the glories of Wall Street. As Friedrich Nietzsche, the great German philosopher put it, “He who does not know how to find the way to his ideal lives more frivolously and impudently than the man without an ideal.”

Once Ken felt that his bank account was healthy enough for him not to have what we have come to know today in Nigeria as a godfather, he began to organize his people. That was how MOSOP was born. He had effectively cultivated patience as well for despite serious temptations, he refused to let the struggle turn violent. No wonder he was nominated for the Noble Prize for Peace but was murdered before that glory could come his way. As the struggle took off, he authored The Ogoni Bill of Rights, a document that I will advice everybody to read carefully for it contains a blueprint of how to make not just the Niger Delta but the whole country great.

When Abuja began to feel the heat coming from this sweet little man and his equally tiny part of the country, they knew it was time to talk. The dark-goggled General, whom Ken had known when the former was serving in PH, thought he could buy Ken off. An offer of any ministerial post was put on the table for Ken to take his pick. But Ken instead asked the hedonist General to sign the The Ogoni Bill of Rights. The dark-goggled one felt slighted. What type of Nigerian would refuse such a blank check? If he doesn’t want to be a minister, what else could he possibly want to be? Confusion. A scheme for a sweet revenge was already in the works from that point on. Of course there were other interested groups who were feeling the heat as well. They found a very valuable ally in the dumb General. The recent out-of-court settlement by Shell is a case in point. Ken may be in the grave but his ideas are very much alive.

I think it is this aspect of Ken’s astute leadership that progressives in Nigeria should emulate. Before Ken started his struggle there was no OMPADEC, no NDDC, the pittance the oil producing states were receiving from the federal government was an abject insult. The ND (for Niger Delta), was one desolate, depressing sight. The people and the land were being treated with unmitigated disdain. Now more money is deservedly pouring into the area, even though it is breeding corruption, but that is another story altogether. Serious talks about meaningful development are actually going on currently. It is becoming increasingly clear to the oppressors that short cuts are no longer going to work. In short, the plight of the people of the ND is now one of the burning issues in the country. Ken told his oppressors that whether the struggle will remain as peaceful as he wants it will depend on the tactics they want to use. What is happening in the ND today has shown that he is absolutely right. Ask the head that lies at Aso Rock what its biggest headache is and it will tell you it is the ND.

With this type of stellar result, is it any wonder that Ken and his ideas are and will remain at the centre of the Ogoni and the ND narrative for a long time to come? Ken is still leading his people from the grave, just like one other Nigerian I admire, Awo, has been doing for his own people. Now one may argue that these are regional leaders. But all politics, as one wit quipped, is local. That is, even though it does not have to be all local, it usually must have a robust local foundation. And in all likelihood, the kind of local foundation that Awo and Ken cultivated would ensure a strong national showing when the occasion calls for it.

And so, as we commemorate the 14th anniversary of the judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa, I cannot help asking, as a Nigerian: When are we going to get a good leader to lead us on the national level? As I ask this question, I am aware that a great leader does not need to be officially in power to lead. So let me reframe the question: When are we going to get a leader who, like Ken, can lead us with great ideas? And even if s/he does not eventually get into official power, would forever make it impossible for mediocrity to thrive as leadership in Nigeria? For what have we been having on the national scene if not unadulterated mediocrity?

Mention the name James Onanefe Ibori and many different emotions and impressions flood the Nigerian mind. The man is seen as a personification of arrogance and avarice. He’s perceived as an embodiment of the worst in the Nigerian “misruling” class. He conjures the image of a man who gets away with anything. Well, not any more. Wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to answer to charges of diverting billions of naira in state funds, Ibori was finally arrested last week – thanks to the doggedness of British law enforcement – in Dubai.

The last Nigerians heard about Ibori before he turned up in Dubai, he was holed up in a fortress in his hometown of Oghara – reportedly protected by heavily armed thugs whose firepower beat back a police contingent sent to arrest him. He proved what Nigerians and foreign watchers of Nigeria know full well: that some Nigerians – especially the biggest criminals – are above the law.

The British are interested in Ibori because they accuse the ex-governor of using UK financial institutions to launder his loot. As I write, a jury at the Southwark Crown Court is weighing a verdict in a money laundering trial involving several of Ibori’s associates, including his sister and one of his mistresses. To Nigeria’s shame, the UK has demonstrated by far more seriousness in prosecuting Nigerian looters than the Nigerian state itself.

In Nigeria, Ibori was – until recently – treated like a luminary. While corruption charges were pending against him, he and former Governor Lucky Igbinedion – a convict – were put on Nigeria’s official delegation to the Beijing Olympics. Shortly after, the ruling party elevated him – a man in his mid-forties – to the status of “party elder.”

His eventual money laundering trial in Nigeria was choreographed to fail. Ibori was a major (perhaps the major) financier of Umaru Yar’Adua’s presidential campaigns. Mr. Yar’Adua – using the shameless offices of Michael Aondoakaa, a man who thoroughly debased the post of Nigeria’s attorney general – took every deliberate step to ensure that Ibori was spared the inconvenience of a real trial.

First, all the professionally sound officers who worked assiduously to assemble a dossier on Ibori’s graft were dumped from the EFCC. This punitive redeployment effectively chilled the case against the former governor. The rusticated officers possessed a depth of insight into the methods, nature and scale of Ibori’s money laundering artistry. Then a brand new court was created for Ibori in the Delta capital of Asaba, a town where the prosecutors knew that witnesses, for fear of their safety, dared not testify against the accused ex-governor. Add to the mix the fact that the EFCC’s attorney often acted and spoke, in and out of court, as if he were not a prosecutor but an advocate for the accused.

Yar’Adua, whose attorney general parroted the mantra of “the rule of law” while trafficking in the “ruse of law,” ensured that the system was rigged just so it would declare Ibori blameless.

Yet, in the wake of Ibori’s arrest in Dubai, the EFCC’s Mrs. Farida Waziri amazingly found her voice. Mrs. Waziri, who oversaw the bungling of Ibori’s first prosecution, now says she wants another crack at putting him to trial. She wants the embattled governor sent to her, instead of being extradited to London.

In an ideal world, Ibori should be headed for Nigeria to answer for his alleged crimes. But Nigeria is a haven – a heaven, even – for big time criminals. It’s a place where those who steal billions of naira are decorated with flamboyant chieftaincy titles, declared to be “stake holders,” and garlanded with national honors. There are (doubtless) courageous, principled judges in Nigeria. But too many judges are hopelessly corrupt, all too willing to sell their judgment to the highest bidder. And Nigerian police officers are routinely assigned to guard notorious criminals who should be in custody –or jail.

That’s why – if one gauges from comments on websites – most Nigerians don’t want Ibori in Mrs. Waziri’s incompetent hands. They believe that the odds of putting the man to a credible trial lie in ferrying him to London.

Ibori should never have become a governor in the first place. In the early 1990s, he and his future wife were convicted twice in London for possession of a stolen credit card and theft. This history should have disqualified the man from seeking even to be a typist in a government office. Instead, he became a two-term governor. Any surprise, then, that he is today mired in the mud of corruption?

Nigerians don’t hold a patent on corruption – far from it. The trouble is that the Nigerian state makes little or no serious effort to combat corruption. Graft has been permitted, instead, to fester, to infect every sector of society – the judiciary, media, law enforcement, religious groups, commerce etc. In many other countries, corruption is properly perceived as a kind of blight on the body polity, an unwholesome stain. In Nigeria, by contrast, the corrupt are wont to strut and swagger; they make a fetish of their loot and a spectacle of their thieving selves. They wear their moral deformity as if it were a mark of rare ethical refinement.

There’s never a shortage of groups or individuals to champion the (grandly) corrupt. Thus, a group styled “The Delta State caucus in the House of Representatives” last week made bold to disparage Ibori’s nemeses. At a press conference in Abuja, the group categorized the nabbing of the former governor as “a real breach of the basic fundamental human rights of a Nigerian, a statesman and a leader.”

When a man of Ibori’s antecedents is held up as the face of statesmanship and leadership, what else is there to say about Nigeria’s malaise?

The task before Nigerians is to sustain the heat against the Iboris in our midst. For make no mistake, the haulage of public funds will stop only when more citizens become enlightened, and when these enlightened citizens insist that those who hold public office render account. The brazen privatization of public wealth will cease when – only when – we institute a practice of sending our big name criminals and “‘steak’ holders” to jail.

Rather than asking for another opportunity to fumble the trial of Ibori, Mrs. Waziri should get cracking on the prosecution of Nigeria’s numerous grand looters. If she’s serious, she should begin by naming the Nigerians, including former heads of state, who took bribes from Halliburton executives. Then she should move to arrest them and put them in the dock. She should investigate whether, as recently reported by Saharareporters.com, Mr. Ahmed Modibbo Mohammed, the Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), has funneled plum contracts to companies owned by his wife, Aishatu Mohammed. She should vigorously appeal the scandalous judgment that shields former Governor Peter Odili from investigation or prosecution.


A nation that jails or amputates the limbs of petty thieves, but encourages its big thieves to run for the presidency – such a nation is bound to sail from one disaster to another. There are many Iboris in the space called Nigeria. It’s our individual and collective challenge to ensure that there’s neither rest nor hiding place for these plunderers – neither in Abuja nor in Dubai.

I am sitting soberly in the departure lounge of the Frankfurt Airport with my laptop waiting for my connecting flight back to Lagos. I have just had a couple of beers even though its 11AM local time. While at the bar I could see the runways clearly and could not but notice the number of Boeing 747’s belonging to Lufthansa Airways landing and taking off. Lots of planes were landing and taking off but I noticed the 747s because, well, their shape was different from others and before the Airbus A3480, the 747 was the biggest commercial jet flying. I wonder to myself when I will see at least one Nigerian flagged 747 in any airport in the world. It seems unfair to be comparing Nigerian Aviation with that of Germany, after all Germany is the 4th biggest economy in the world, while Nigeria is, well, is….

I am on my way from Canada, where I had gone to attend the Rotary International Convention 2010and recall seeing two African carriers at the Airport in Montreal and also had same thoughts. Talking about the convention, it seemed to me that there were more participants from Nigeria than even Canada itself. I suspected that a lot of them had made huge sacrifices to be there and would probably drink “Garri” for some time after but that is a discussion for another day.

Just before leaving Montreal, I heard about an Earthquake in one of the adjoining cities and I thanked God for being born in an area where there are no earthquakes and other natural disasters. In fact I have a lot to be thankful about; I am one of the lucky few. I have a decent job, a good car and stay in a decent house. However, I also have to generate my own electricity with two generators and an inverter to boot! Just two weeks ago I had cause to travel on the Benin – Sagamu expressway and since then my car has not been the same with all sorts of noises and this was a car a spent a small fortune fixing before travelling so it does not breakdown on the highway leaving me to the mercy of men of the underworld and security agents. Yes, security agents! I did not take a count of the number of check points on the highway but they must have been at least thirty yet we read in the papers daily about attacks on travelers on this same highway, leaves one thinking, doesn’t it?

On my departure from the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos I almost died from hyperthermia as a result of the heat. This was not helped by the number of people inside the terminal majority of who had no business being there in the first case but who are able to get in because of the laxity and corruption of security agents. Thinking about the situation, I could not help thinking whether we are moving forward or backward in Nigeria. I first travelled out of the country in 1998 and since then I have travelled an average of twice yearly and have visited at least 20 countries. Regressively, things have gotten worse each time I travelled, whether it is the air conditioner or the conveyor belt ( I once spent three hours waiting for my baggage and since then I have sworn not to check in any luggage). Presidents have come and gone, Ministers have come and gone and the Airport remains a shame to Nigeria and its people. Someone please tell me, how much does a central air conditioning system cost even in a country where the cost of building a runway is twice the cost of building an airport in other climes!

Again, nothing shocks me again in this country. Talking about the state of the Benin – Sagamu expressway and many others around the country, monies have been budgeted ( some reports say N350 billion alone during the tenure of Olusegun Obasanjo regime) and the state remains same and the dramatis personae are still with us calling the shots and making the decisions. Media reports said that the Mrs Allison-Madueke, when she newly became minister of works, cried when she visited the road. Some mischievous “amebos” say the reason for crying had nothing to do with the state of the road but her regret at how her predecessors had been making money and leaving her out of it otherwise where have the tears gotten us three years after!

Just another thought, I just read in the news that our Honourable Members of the House of Representatives were involved in fisticuffs over an allegation of corruption by some members leveled against the Speaker. A lot of people consider the whole episode a big shame but for me I have since come to the conclusion that most Nigerians (leaders and followers) do not know this word. I am not wont to take sides in issues like this, after all, was it not in the same house that members of the committee on power swore to die to ensure that people responsible for the waste in the power sector are prosecuted only to discover later that they themselves were also dipping their hangs in the till but since when did an allegation become guilt and why can’t the “honourables” allow the law to take its course instead of such odium!

Oh, Nigeria, why are we so cursed!

The June 15, 2010 edition of NEXT reported that a coalition of groups in Abia State had asked Governor Theodore Orji to resign on account of the level of insecurity in the state. It was not the usual partisan fare, with a number of opposition parties banding together to hound a state governor. Instead, the call for Orji’s resignation came from seven human rights and pro-democracy organizations.

There was no doubt that the groups – the Human Rights, Justice and Peace Foundation (HRJPF), Abia Peoples Forum (APF), Centre for Reform and Public Advocacy (CRPA), Popular Participation Front (PPF), Campaign for Democracy (CD), Centre for the Advancement of Children's and Women's Right (CACWR) and Centre for Human Empowerment, Advancement and Development (CHEAD) – were in deadly earnest. They set a deadline of June 30 for Mr. Orji’s resignation. And they promised to commence non-violent civil disobedience should he ignore their call.

My bet is that Governor Orji would not hearken to the ultimatum to resign. Nigerian politicians are not in the habit of giving up power, even when they have no idea how to deploy the resources of their office to solve problems.

The first duty of any government is to guarantee the security of the lives and property of its people. By this measure, Governor Orji has failed the people of Abia.

The groups demanding his resignation took care to offer a convincing narrative of Abia as “a failed state.” The dossier included a “spate of armed robbery, kidnapping for ransom, ritual killings and rape in Abia State, particularly Aba.” The groups decried “the spiraling wave of insecurity in the state.” They instantiated with gory, shocking details: “Between 14 May and 8 June, several banks have been robbed, security personnel brutally killed, trouser-wearing ladies raped, and innocent persons kidnapped for rituals and/or ransom under the nose of heavily armed security men, including the blood-thirsty Abia State Vigilante Services (Bakassi boys).”

Then there was this unanswerable indictment: “Armed robbers and kidnappers now give notice before they strike, as vividly shown by the invasion of First Bank Plc and Fidelity Bank Plc, both in Port Harcourt Road, Aba on Wednesday, 2 June. Recall that they had written to inform [the banks] of their intention to rob them and eventually did, to [the] chagrin of all.”

It’s a sweeping, bleak panorama of the state of insecurity in Abia. But the stigma of failure is not Theodore Orji’s alone. It is a humiliating admission to make, but sadly true: a cadre of greedy, visionless leaders has for too held sway in the Igbo-speaking southeastern states. Other past and current governors of these states have – by their corruption, lack of vision and absence of strategic intelligence – condemned Igboland to economic doldrums and moral degradation.

On June 5, A friend was in Toronto to give the keynote address at the annual Biafran War Memorial celebration. His talk harped on the current war in Igboland, a war characterized, above all, by a crisis of values. I tried to persuade my audience that, in sheer enormity and direness, the ongoing war dwarfs the effects of the Biafran war that claimed more than a million lives.

Let’s be clear: the triumph and veneration of morally virulent values is not an exclusively Igbo malaise. Nigeria as a whole has long been in the grips of a deformed ethos, the reign of a disorder in which absurdity is held to be sensible, impunity is exalted, and honor is mocked.

In my view, however, the Igbo have paid the steepest price for permitting these misshapen values to gain traction – and then to be embedded as the norm. The moral cancer metastasizing through Igboland is best detected in the music as well as social language.

For years, the fiercely republican Igbo carelessly allowed themselves to dance to lyrics that proclaimed “ana enwe obodo enwe” – roughly translated as “a community is owned.” At first glance, that lyrical claim would appear innocuous, even persuasive. Another lyric set out to name the Igbo’s “nnukwu mmanwu” – big masquerades. Any discerning person would be shocked by the questionable pedigree of some of the men advertised either as the “owners” of their community or big masquerades.

Wealth, whatever the mode and means of its accumulation, was the unmistakable criterion for “owning” one’s community or receiving recognition as a big masquerade. Bowing to wealth, some Igbo musicians shamelessly trumpeted scallywags, scoundrels, and charlatans. It seemed anathema to credit anybody for the quality of his or her public service, for exemplary moral conduct, or for proven distinction of mind. I have never heard any musician invite Chinua Achebe, the most globally well-known and revered Igbo man – a man of stellar intellectual achievement and stupendous ethical funds – to take a seat among the masquerades. Nor have I heard any musician suggest, in a lyric, that the outstanding novelist has a say in the ownership of his community. No pride of place was reserved for women and men whose stock came in the form of dedication to service, whether in the private or public sector, or self-sacrifice in the cause of advancing the common good.

It was inevitable that the habit of worshiping material possession would bring Nigeria to its present troubling pass. In Igboland, the consequence has been nothing short of tragic. One of the popular phrases in Igbo public speech is, “onye bu igu ka ewu n’eso” – or, the goat follows the man with the palm fronds. It is a disturbing statement in every particular. It reduces humans to the level and ethic of a goat. It dictates that every goat/human must follow the man with food, even where the food is stolen.

Such scant regard for sound moral values has had devastating effect. It has fed an anything-goes culture. It has enabled shady characters to sink roots in Igboland and criminals to make a cottage industry out of kidnapping their fellows. There are whispers that some traditional rulers, unscrupulous police officers, shady businessmen as well as “prominent” politicians – the kind often dubbed big masquerades – now organize, sponsor or run their own kidnapping cells.

The Igbo have never faced a more serious challenge than the current blight of kidnappers. We can no longer afford to dress up the ugly truth in fine garbs: the Igbo people are engulfed in a war for survival akin to Biafra, but more desperate, if you ask me. The only difference is that, in this case, the enemy is within.

The casualty is extremely high. Fewer and fewer Igbos resident in such places as Abuja, Lagos or Port Harcourt look forward to traveling to their home states. And when they go, they must arrange to hire several police officers to guard them. The prospects are even grimmer for Igbos who live abroad. For fear of kidnappers, many – perhaps most – traditional marriage ceremonies are now held in Nigerian cities far from Igboland. Imagine the economic and social costs of the flight of such ceremonies. How about investment in new businesses? They have virtually dried up.

Igboland is beleaguered, dangerously close to becoming a no-go area. Yet, the Igbo governors have disconcertingly shown little inclination to weigh any serious measures to remediate the situation. Is it that they fail to recognize the scale of the threat, that they are bereft of ideas for tackling the monster, or – as many people speculate – that some of them are profiteers from the crisis?

Equally indicted are those men and women who run around Abuja and Lagos, styling themselves Igbo leaders. Their pretension to the role of leaders is rebuked by the fact that they have not seen fit to confer and focus on strategies for winning the deadliest, costliest war facing their people. The Igbo’s cultural and moral crisis is exacerbated by a crisis of leadership.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the specter of kidnapping was germinated and fertilized by a permissive culture that, over many years, sought to blur the line between “alu” (sacrilege or profanation) and “ife zili ezi” (good conduct). Consequently, if we are to win the war we’re in, we need not just a diligent, sanitized, well equipped and highly trained police (a far cry from the corruption-ridden apparatus that has usurped the name of law enforcement in Nigeria), an attuned political leadership, and a judiciary that is awake to its sacred mandate. Above all, we need a fundamental re-orientation of values. We must reclaim that moral clarity that once enabled the Igbo people to be appalled at execrable conduct and to look at ill-gotten wealth and say, in fierce repudiation, “Tufia!” or “Alu!”

We must seek this moral rebirth, or we’re doomed.