EJIKE MBAKA, UMAHI AND NIGERIA’S DUBAI

If Mr. David Umahi, the Ebonyi State Governor lives on another planet, Mr. Ejike Mbaka, a catholic priest and Spiritual Director of Adoration Ministries Enugu Nigeria (AMEN) is surely his neighbour. This much was publicly displayed recently.

The occasion was the annual thanksgiving and harvest of the Ministry in Enugu on 24th October 2019. Nigerians remember how Mr. Peter Obi, the PDP vice presidential candidate in the 2019 election and former governor of Anambra State, was thoroughly embarrassed by Mr. Mbaka who was literally forcing him to publicly mention the amount he was donating when he attended the thanksgiving and harvest of the Ministry in the buildup to the 2019 elections.

Nigerians also remember that the annual thanksgiving and harvest has become an opportunity for politicians to play politics. So, many politicians have visited, even those who belong to different religions. Of course, they are always drawn by Mr. Mbaka`s fiery rhetoric which change like the weather. And of course, his prophetic abracadabra.

So, on Sunday, October 24,2021, with his mouth apparently sweetened by Mr. Umahi`s donation of N30 million, 100 bags of rice and 200 tubers of yam, Mr. Mbaka, in the presence of the Enugu State Governor, Mr. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, declared that the heavens were shaken by Mr. Umahi`s donation, and that Mr. Umahi had transformed Ebonyi State into a sort of Dubai. Really?

The reaction was swift and cutting. In a statement by the Ebonyi diaspora, the Association of Ebonyi State Indigenes in Diaspora (AESID), chillingly pointed out that the reality on ground was far removed from Mr. Mbaka`s sugar-coated words, and that “the current administration in the state has elevated cosmetic governance and made praise-singing a glorified art in the state.”

As governor, Mr. Umahi sharply divides opinion. His reputation as someone who runs with the hare and hunts with the hound was solidified when he swapped the Peoples Democratic Party where he won elections in 2015 and 2019 for the ruling All Progressives Congress. If indeed Mr. Umahi has transformed Ebonyi State as Mr. Mbaka enthused, the poorest families in the state do not feel like they live in Dubai. In fact, they feel like they live in hell. So, from whence did Mr. Mbaka draw his illusory allusions, or was it thirty N30 million speaking from the pulpit?

After years of tussling with former Enugu State Governor, Mr. Chimaraoke Nnamani, Mr. Mbaka, went national with his ‘prophecies’ at the cusp of the 2015 general election where he predicted that the incumbent President, Mr. Muhammadu Buhari, would unseat Mr. Goodluck Jonathan. Between Mr. Mbaka and Mr. Buhari there have since been visits to Aso Rock and an embarrassing fallout. But the prophetic abracadabra has continued with politicians embarrassingly flocking to the Ministry or sending their emissaries to lap up the prophecies like panting dogs. After the 2019 gubernatorial elections in Imo State, while his petition meandered its way to the Supreme Court, Mr. Hope Uzodinma, the Imo State Governor benefited from Mr. Mbaka`s prophetic abracadabra. Today, he sits at the helm of affairs in Imo State and gleefully folds his hands while the State retrogresses.

But from where did Mr. Mbaka draw his delusions of Ebonyi as some sort of Dubai? Given that he is not from Ebonyi State and sparingly visits, did he come to such generous conclusions only after consulting Mr. Umahi and his aides, or did he take out time to visit Ebonyi State, see things for himself, and feel the pain of the many children in Ebonyi State who are out of school?

Again, from where did Mr. Umahi draw the N30 million he donated to what ultimately turned out to be an image laundering exercise? Was it from public funds? If it was, was it not an aberration for a man whose house in Ebonyi was on fire to travel all the way to Enugu to chase after rats?

In a country where countless families go for days with very little to eat, what justification does any governor have to abandon those who elected him and go on a spending spree elsewhere?

Being the Governor of a state with some of the south-east`s nay Nigeria`s worst human development indices, what moral authority did Mr. Umahi have to dole out such a huge amount of money to a private ministry just to pen himself into the good books of an extremely flippant praise singer?

Mr. Umahi has been in office for about six years now. How has he transformed the lives of children in Ebonyi? How much has he done to ensure the passage of the Childs Rights Act in the state and its concomitant enforcement? Did Mr. Mbaka ask him all that in public before pronouncing Ebonyi State as Africa`s `Dubai’?

In a country where public officers plunder public funds and remorselessly head to religious houses to mend their violated consciences with neither repentance nor retribution, those who minister in God`s name must be extremely careful. But, no. In a country where money has become everything no matter how ill-obtained, what is fashionable is for many religious ministers is to take the money first and worry about other things latter.

Thus, in public religious gatherings, those who steal from the people come to salt the wounds of their victims. Because they grease the palms of those who take charge of those gatherings, they rave on, fearing neither rebuke nor rejection.

However, their polluted offerings stand rejected even before they are offered. Because they scoop the sweat of others and with it seek to water their own gardens, their flowers will continue to wither.

As for those ministers who sell the pulpit for a pot of porridge or choose to speak out only when it is extremely convenient to do so, they necessarily cease to be men of cloth. Ignobly, they become men of cash; abominably, they turn God`s house into a den of thieves.

Kene Obiezu,

keneobiezu@gmail.com