A Corpse For Joint Burial

Akwa Ibom State is the land of promise. Whether or not we are the children of Israel whose gift and right it was to inherit this land of promise is not the subject of my discussion now, but to point to the glaring fact that many dastardities have occurred alien to this land of promise. For any one who cares about the state, this is never a silly moment. It is time that writers, commentators, and the general public of the state are caught in awe over atrocities that has befallen it. I have written about them through “Plain Talk”, a defunct column in one of the state base tabloid and will continue from there in “In Quote” since my sincere duty for now is to write against this evil.

A crowd of youths in black and white attire took the streets of Uyo last week in march against kidnapping and related vices that has strangled on the state in the past few years to thaw the good record it has maintained before now. As one walk pass the lead of the protest to the mean, one sees a coffin firmly placed on an ambulance and driven majestically as if plagues in the state were escorted to the Mediterranean Sea. The ambulance was driven by Pastor Ime Ime Jerome, President of Christian Youth Network in the state. The march, an item in the series of events drawn for the anti-kidnapping exercise, according to the promoters was to cry against kidnapping/assassination (did they include character assassination?) and celebrate “good governance” in the state. It was to terminate with a fasting at Ibom Hall., all in collaboration with the ministry of Information and Social Re-Orientation. I was watching the boys and girls dancing Awilo on the street in the name of God and making merry for an opportunity to take their trysts to the street of Uyo. As the trail proceeded, many old memories about the state and Pastor Ime Ime Jerome resurged giving yet another angle of thought to my already busy minds.

It gave rise to the question of sincerity and eye service, a key problem we have to tackle first in the state among other issues. I remembered how the leader of the march was sent uncelebrated as a practicing Journalist and publisher of a newspaper to full-time Pastorial engagement at the inception of this government. I remember how his newspaper went underground because he alleged that Governor Akpabio has misappropriated funds accrued to the state. How he was accosted and drafted by security operative came to view as well as how he lost relevance for some while to recover from the incidence, an unexpected first gift Gov. Akpabio sent to the press upon inception as a warning that he may not tolerate them as past administrations in the state did. He may have struggled out of the trap and grap of government on an agreement that he will remain loyal and spineless till the end of the administration.

Yes, trap, because when government fingers the people's treasury, they are setting trap for journalist who will blow such money laundry (or how do you call it) and use apparatus of coercion at their disposal (as was in the case of Ime Ime Jerome) to hunt them at will. If such a person escapes from the trap, he will learn from sad experience to arrive at the saying that “if you can't force them to do right, stand and watch them do wrong and perish therein”, and that “a fool at forty will be a fool forever”. When I saw him driving a coffin leading youths last week in a road work praising Gov. Godswill Akpabio on good governance, I thought as much that he may be doing justice to the deal that set him off the Akpabio's hook. I may be wrong in my assessment of the Jeromic walk and travails then but certainly will not be in my submission that we have had to much prayers on this yet to be backed up with sincerity of purpose, action and demands.

To pray and protest against kidnapping and assassination in Akwa Ibom State of recent has become daily routine, and if God has not gone to bed, by now the crime would have faded to obscurity. But it is either God is sleeping or unable to answer our prayers on these issues. It can equally be that the clergies: the bishops, pastors, Revs, Arc Bishops, etc conducting these prayers are doing so to register their presence with government because most of them cannot preach against this menace and the atrocities, the corruptions, the decay and calamities of these politicians, especially when one of such dark-glassed-car-going, mobile-police-secured politicians is in their congregations.
To be continued