Overtime since my brother, Senator Akpor Pius Ewherido, died, I have read and seen vain attempts and insinuations by some people to pin the travails of Chief James Ibori, the former governor of Delta State, during the President Goodluck Jonathan government on my brother.
I have always seen them as beer parlour gossip and ignored them. My dear brother is gone, why dissipate energy on an exercise that will not bring him back? But last Saturday, I saw a two-page article in Saturday Vanguard [Tinubu, Atiku, Okowa, Ribadu, Ibori: The controversies, the truth – Vanguard News (vanguardngr.com)]. It was written by Tony Eluemunor, one of Chief Ibori’s media men.
Initially, when I saw the headline and the name of the writer, I felt it was a piece of public relations work to rebrand and reposition Chief Ibori. It is normal in mass communication practice. When I started reading and with the photos of Chief Ibori and Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, the immediate past governor, I saw a subtle reminder to PDP members in Delta State, who denied Chief James Ibori the opportunity to choose a PDP governorship candidate to succeed Okowa, that Ibori was back in the corridors of power. Eluemunor wanted them to know that Ibori is still very much relevant contrary to their thinking.
These had nothing to do with me, so I moved on until my attention was drawn to a portion of the article where my late brother’s name, Senator Ewherido, was mentioned and my family and my brother were portrayed in a very bad light. My first worry is that why is my brother’s name coming up in an article dealing with current PDP matters? My brother left the PDP in 2010 and died in 2013. That is about 13 and 10 years ago, respectively. What has he got to do with current happenings in Delta State PDP?
Going through that portion, it became apparent that Eluemunor was also on an evil mission against the dead and living Ewheridos. He claimed that my late brother was among those who “railroaded” Ibori to Jail. How? He said my brother and someone else wrote a petition against Ibori to former President Olusegun Obasanjo. That is nebulous. How do you make wild allegations without concrete facts? What information was in the purported petition? Do they tally with the grounds on which the London court convicted Ibori?
Eluemunor insinuated that the former EFCC Chairman, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, is lobbying Ibori to get the position of National Security adviser in President Bola Tinubu’s government. Perhaps the alleged Ribadu’s lobby is an opportunity for Eluemunor to find out from Ribadu if the evidence he supplied to the British authorities were from my brother’s so-called petition against Ibori?
Is Eluemunor saying the so-called petition my brother and another person wrote was what the UK court relied on to convict Ibori? Is Eluemunor telling the world that the EFCC is so inept that it had to rely on my brother and that other person, Eluemunor did not mention, to get information to get Ibori convicted in London?
Eluemunor paints the British legal system like the alleged external influence-prone Nigerian legal system. Can Pius Ewherido even influence the Nigerian legal system to Send an almighty Chief James Ibori to jail, not to talk of the stricter British Legal system? Eluemunor writes as if he is telling children tales by the moonlight.
Was it on the so-called petition my brother gave to Obasanjo that got Ibori into trouble with former President Goodluck Jonathan? I know that government is a continuum, but Ibori’s problem with Jonathan had nothing to do with my brother. Both men are still alive and in a best position to tell the world what their issues were, personal or official.