By Chuks Osuji
It is an incontestable fact that among those thinking, and reasoning Nigerians who have the opportunity to interact with me one way or the other know that my Igboness is real and could never be in doubt. But more than that, I am very proud to be an Igbo man. I can never make any pretense about it.
I can recall one black American musician, popularly called James Brown (JB). He had a music lyric entitled, “I am black and proud.” Similarly, I am an Igbo and proud too.
However, my comprehensive Igboness can never allow me to condone evil, support or even acquiesce to an act of criminality by an Igbo man because the plank upon which Igbo culture rests is not to admit, promote and participate in the slightest act of criminality or to do things every decent person believe is evil.
In fact, the whole concept of Igbo World View lies on adherence to clean-hands, purity and honesty which is the basic cultural ethos of the Igbo man.
Another point I need to make clear here if only to drive my view home or to still the hands of shallow minded Nigerians, particularly those from other cultures is that Olisa Metuhh is not one that elucidates my interest or admiration.
Although by accident of political convenience I identify with him in the same party which I believe we do for different purposes. Perhaps, he is in PDP to contribute to the party’s success in order for him to be relevant and to make money.
I identify with the party because it is narrowly close to my own minimum accepted ideology.
Although PDP is a mixed bag of ideologues, to me, its narrow divined ideology can tenuously accommodate my views.
I am discussing this Metuh issue from two perspectives. One, as an Igbo man because I strongly believe that “if you insult the sensibility of one Igbo person, you have insulted that of every Igbo person.”
Second, I am writing as an intellectual who strongly believe in the whole gamut of democratic ethos and principles, because by education and profession, I am pure and simple, a political scientist education which I obtained in an environment devoid of any iota of examination malpractices and other hanky panky business that happens in our educational system.
Thus, I was educated in an environment to know the truth, speak the truth, defend the truth and promote the truth.
Be that as it may, I lift my pen to condemn in its totality and in all ramifications the treatment meted to Metuh, the national publicity secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by leading him into the court room in handcuffs.
Nobody in his or her truly objective mind can condone such an act of security disgrace. Those who did it including their top functionaries or those in the high leadership positions in the country would think that they have scored a mile stone security fit.
Rubbish! They have rubbished this nation among the nations of the world. Because inescapably, three things were working in their minds: to disgrace Metuh because of his articulation and position as PDP spokesman.
Second, to silence him and his party from causing a political nuisance to the ruling party and its administration.
And of course the most important of the three, to humiliate him as an Igbo man in order to show how the level of incredible disdain to which the Igbo nationality is met in this country.
These, of course, are part of the reasons why Nnamdi Kanu and his group are agitating.
By parading Metuh in handcuffs before the world, the authorities and their cohorts did not know that by implications, they were giving credence to Nnamdi Kanu’s case and cause. It is just like one Igbo proverb puts it, “a goat in an attempt to undo her owner, while defecating the hut succeeded in tearing her anus.”
I have read and listened to several arguments for and against the justification of that action against Metuh. In law, morality and common practice, there can be no justification for that show of shame by the security operatives.
In the first place, Metuh is not a violent common criminal like an armed robber or was there any likelihood that he could overpower his guards to escape and to elude his arraignment? After all, he is a very senior citizen and a Publicity Secretary of a former ruling party.
Even his position in the society and age entitled him some decent treatment and respect for his human dignity.
Now, many non-Igbo personalities that have been paraded to different courts on the same case have been paraded without handcuffs.
Those who are calling the shots today in this country must be reminded that every society is dynamic. And change as a functional conceptual abstraction inevitably admits change to itself.
According to Michael Haas, “political circumstances of today are bound to yield to upcoming political circumstances of tomorrow.”
But for one thing, if Metuh were to be a mallam or a Caliphate, he would not have been so disgraced and humiliated. Do I need to say more.
• Osuji, a public relations practitioner, wrote in from Owerri.
