Before March 17, not many Nigerians would have been able to pick out Mrs Ebelechukwu Obiano from a line-up of women despite her being wife of the Governor of Anambra State, in Southeast Nigeria.
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| Iyom Bianca Odumegwu Ojukwu |
Though she received the usual mentions
associated with her position, and for her pet project, Caring Family
Enhancement Initiative, (CAFÉ), a trend that is common to Nigeria’s First
Ladies at national and state levels, she performed no remarkable act that stood
her out.
CAFÉ, according to Mrs Obiano’s biography
pasted on its website, (cafeng.org), was established as a “platform to support
the Governor in delivering good governance to Ndi-Anambra.” Under its auspices, Mrs Obiano was in 2019, said
to have fed and distributed gifts of chairs, electric fans, and clothes out of a
U-Haul van to homeless Houstonians. Just so we are clear, Houstonians referred
to here are residents of Houston in the State of Texas, United States of
America. CAFÉ considered the act as humanitarian. For the World Igbo Congress,
however, the act was “mindless, unjustified, and uncalled for in the face of
…sorry situations of our people…”
Then on January 25, 2021, the Anambra State
Broadcasting Service, ABS, posted on its verified Facebook page, a press
release by the Governor’s Deputy Chief Press Secretary Willy Ozumba in reaction
to criticism by celebrated columnist, Sonola Olumhense, on the trending video
of Mrs Obiano, who at the height of the Corona Virus pandemic, travelled to the
United States, no doubt on tax-payers bill, with a one-man camera crew in tow to
receive the then elusive COVID-19 vaccine, as the virus continued its deadly spread.
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| Mrs Ebele Obiano |
In defending the then governors’ wife, the
Governor’s Office lis
“Most of these”, the Governor’s office added, “can
be attested to by ndi Anambra who also support her charity with
donations to actualize the projects.”
She was also known to have advocated for family values, urging women to ‘sustain family values through prayers and noble
actions.’
While the above may not be exhaustive of the perhaps
great deeds she did while her husband was in office, after eight years of her
being the First Lady of the State, like some other First Ladies made remarkable
by their inability to utilise their positions as spouses of Governors to impact
their societies, Mrs Obiano could have returned to her home in the United
States in peace or stayed back to canvass for the Senatorial seat she had been
linked to.
All that changed because of her one act of unmindful
indiscretion that resulted in the altercation between her and wife of the late Dim
Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu, Ikemba Nnewi, during which she received a ‘dirty
slap’ from the widow of the late Ikemba. The slap, which reverberated around
the world was dispensed at the swearing-in of Mr Obiano’s successor, Professor
Charles Chukwuma Soludo on March 17, 2022, in Awka.
As narrated by Mrs Ojukwu, ex-beauty queen, former
Nigerian Ambassador to Spain and ex-Presidential Adviser, Mrs Obiano had “verbally
attacked me with her voice raised, taunting me, and asking me what I was there to do and using unprintable
vile language…Then,
she kept aggressively putting her hands on my shoulders and shouting. While I
ignored her verbal onslaught, as advised by those sitting around me, I
requested twice that she refrain from touching me with her hands…She proceeded
to do so yet again and went further to grab at my head tie, which she attempted
unsuccessfully to remove…This very act is considered a sacrilege to a titled
matriarch such as myself in Igbo culture. It was at this point that I stood up
to defend myself and gave her a dirty slap to stop her from attacking me.”
For Mrs Obiano, according to her spokesperson, “all she did was approach
the former beauty queen for their usual friendly banters only to be slapped and
pushed by Mrs Bianca Ojukwu.” This explanation was despite the well-known fact
that no friendly relations existed between the two.
By now, however, as sobriety has set in, Mrs
Obiano must be asking herself why she bothered to show up at the inauguration,
a ceremony she already missed since the new Governor had been sworn-in before she
did the people the favour of showing up at the event. She must also be
wondering why she did not stay glued to her seat, instead of prancing, like a
young girl just gifted a pack of candies, over to where Bianca Odinakachukwu
was sitting, in an apparent invasion of Mrs Ojukwu’s space. Better still, she
must by now, be asking herself why she did not just walk away after the verbal
assault on the person of the late Ikemba’s widow, or even listen to the
admonition ‘not to touch me again’ by Mrs Ojukwu.
Mrs Obiano probably, also forgot that her
immunity as Anambra’s First Lady had already expired and that henceforth, she
was going to own her indiscretions and bear the burden of any untoward behaviour.
In ignoring the small voice that may have been trying
to hold her back, she induced the spectacle of Anambra’s slapgate, on a
day that Anambra State and its new, purpose-driven Governor, Charles Chukwuma
Soludo should have trended for all the right reasons.
Many have argued that Mrs Ojukwu should have
shown more maturity, class, and carriage by not slapping the former Governor’s
wife in keeping to the dictum of former United States First Lady Michelle Obama
that ‘when they go low, we go high.’
Mrs Ojukwu is a lawyer, diplomat, internationally
recognised personality, and widow of Ndigbo’s most respected son. She may have,
albeit in that brief moment, considered what she was doing and knew the
consequences or otherwise of that ‘dirty slap.’ Yes, she could have decided to
go high, but realistically, in the face of the relationship that had existed
between her and the Obianos in the past, Mrs Obiano’s confrontation of her
within her own space must have triggered that desire to say enough is enough by
‘defending herself.’
In law, self-defence remains a valid plea.
And the husband got arrested…
Poor Mr. Obiano, a titled Chief and CEO of the
State just about an hour prior, had to sit through the wife’s behaviour and her
eventual humiliation that crowned his eight years of governance in Anambra
State.
While that was trending, I had mentioned to
someone that husband and wife were going to leave the country on that same day
for their real abode in the United States. It was not necessarily a prophesy. That
was where they jetted in from to take the mantle of leadership in Anambra. Also,
reactions to his wife’s slap had shown that there was little, or no love lost
between the former first couple and their subjects, in addition to the ‘small’
matter of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission which had been waiting
for Obiano’s handover to take place.
So it was that by evening of the handover day,
Obiano was at the Lagos International Airport, preparatory to flying out to his
home in the United States. But rather than boarding his flight, he landed in
the hot embrace of the EFCC for crime that we now know is linked to accusations
that he dipped his hands in the till of the State he governed for eight years.
As I write, he is still cooling off in EFCC
custody. This is just as his successor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, a professor of
economics and former CBN Governor, told Arise TV station that he was handed
over a debt of about N100bn by a man who was said to have inherited more than N80bn
from his predecessor Peter Obi, one of the most prudent financial managers of
our time.
Governance lesson
Governance
does not get crasser than what has been displayed by the Obianos. Equating self
to State and delighting in the delusion that what belongs to the state is yours
to do as you wish, a case of modern-day ‘l'état,
c'est moi, ala French King Louis
XIV.
