I Challenge DELSU’s Emma Mordi To A Debate

By Tony Eluemunor

Today, I have elected to go the way of the over 160 years old American ideas magazine; the Atlantic monthly. The magazine states challengingly: “We seek debate over agreement, fact over favour”. 

For two weeks, I have been providing some insights into the hypocrisy that was spruced up as an anti-corruption fight since the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency incepted in 1999. The moment I uploaded the first salvo; Ibori, Okowa, Obasanjo, Ribadu, Atiku, UK; Anti-graft “Politricks”

Dr. Mordi knows that I know his opinions about Chief James Onanefe Ibori, the present Governor of Delta state, His Excellency, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa and Delta state government, but that is not what I want to address today or ever, after all, a man is entitled to his personal opinions. 

The issue I have with him is totally and entirely this: the thrust of my article under consideration was unambiguous: “How serious is Nigeria’s anti-corruption fight? Answer: That depends on the accused, the accuser and the amount of prejudice (bias, preconception, prejudgment, predisposition, partiality) and the “politricks” involved. 

The best thing under the circumstances would be to get Dr. Mordi to debate me so that he would have the chance to expose me and for me to defend myself against his grave allegation. To accuse a writer of sophistry is to accuse him of the worst fault a writer could commit; fallacy and dishonesty. So, let him expose all the faults that I committed in that article, and then I will reply. Whatever way the academic give and take goes, some practicing and up and coming journalists would be able to gain from it. 

That same evening I replied: “Dr Emma Mordi, I wrote some two thousand-word essay. Please now, do us a favour, or at least do me a favour; write so that people may read you. I hereby challenge you to an open debate here or in the newspapers. 

Then he tried to dodge, saying: “Check me out on Google Scholar. I write for High Impact Journals, not newspapers.” I reminded him that Profs Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Femi Osofisan, Chinweizu, Adesanmi (who died March 10, 2019 on the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash) Farooq Kperogi, Olatunji Dare, Adebayo Williams, G.G. Darah, Edwin Madunagu, Biodun Jeyifo, Okey Idibe, Ayo Awojobi, Levi Ogwujiofor and other academics both living or dead, did not disdain the newspapers. 

That was when Dr. Mordi accepted the challenge. He wrote: “So, these few lines took you two hours to write? Embarrassing. I have not found Tony worthy of my study as a media scholar. I study and write about the media. Why should I run away from this empty debate? Let’s dig it out. I am only reluctant because we have come a long way. I am better than Tony Eluemunor in every material particular. Start the debate and be deconstructed for all time. But let it be on record that I called you to ‘die the matter’.

Hahaha. What does Tony call an article? This is even more embarrassing”. 

Well, I have waited for two weeks, but I have not read Dr. Mordi anywhere. That explains this reminder. I am waiting for him to point out the faults in my article. Anyone may wonder why I, who has been mentioning names in my articles, should challenge anybody to a debate. Well, Dr. Mordi gave no reasons why my article is nothing but sophistry. He should point it out, in the true spirit of scholarship. I have always furnished the points I have against those I have ever opposed, and challenged them to fault me. I wrote that what went on under Obasanjo’s administration was nothing but hypocrisy, and that Chief James Onanefe Ibori was targeted because of his politics. Dr. Mordi accused me of sophistry. What really is his point? How does he justify the charge of sophistry (fallacy, fraudulence, illogicality, dishonesty) against me? He should say so, and he and I will have an open debate to defend our positions. I promise to be very civil. I ask for nothing more. 

And let the public be the judge. 

Why I Itemized Index of Corruption Recently 

There are university teachers and there are university teachers. Every profession, every trade, every vocation, has them; the real and the fake. The remarkable and the scandalous. The gifted, the skilled, the brainy and the worthless, the trashy, the insignificant and irredeemably irrelevant. Some are so terribly useless that they are toxic and sickening. While I await Dr. Emmanuel Mordi to debate me on my referenced articles, I thank Prof. Tony Afejuku for the question he asked over the same articles. 

Prof. Afejuku and I offer short commentaries on each other’s articles; a short criticism here, a truth overlooked or a point that needs to be further developed there, but no punky flattery. 

For two weeks, I had dwelt on what I laughingly call an index of corruption, where I mentioned spectacularly costly contracts that failed spectacularly, too. And then, two things happened that reminded me of Alexander Pope’s famous phrase, which in full or in part, has been used countless times since 1711. Pope describes an insolent “Critic” (such as Dr. Emma Mordi of the History Department of Delta State University, Abraka: “The Bookful Blockhead, ignorantly read, With Loads of Learned Lumber in his Head, With his own Tongue still edifies his Ears, And always List’ning to Himself appears. Name a new Play, and he’s the Poet’s Friend, No Place so Sacred from such Fops is barr’d, Nor is Paul’s Church more safe than Paul’s Church-yard: Nay, fly to Altars; there they’ll talk you dead; For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.”— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, lines 612-615, 620-625. 

Unlike Dr. Emma Mordi, Prof Afejuku sagely asked a simple question which demanded a complex answer from me. Well, there are lecturers and there are lecturers. He said: “Very interestingly loaded. But what purpose will this longish piece immediately serve”? 

That was an important question, for a piece of writing must be engineered to have a particular effect, or the author would have wasted his time. 

My reply: “Thanks. I want to show the people the “dark side of the moon”. It is there all right, but unseen. 

I want to show that no anti-corruption fight was never on. It wasn’t. What ensued was power games, the sort no journalist ever wrote about. I want to show that what obtained from the Obasanjo era was AUDACITY OF HYPOCRISY…the title of a book I have been working on since 1999. 

I want to show that Nigerians, including our journalists, columnists, professionals and Professors, especially them, failed Nigeria by surrendering the healthy skepticism they should have had, a good dollop of it, owing to their learning, and joined in applauding the masquerades they didn’t BOTHER to understand. 

I want to show that we applauded the grandstanding of the hypocrites in power who were decidedly deceitful from the start. And thus we aided them in the destruction that ensued. And having been so bushwhacked by a series of generations of politicians and pseudo-leaders, we nationally raised our collective hands against Obasanjo’s enemy number one, Ibori, as the face of corruption. 

Nuhu Ribadu, a political prostitute who was fighting mightily to make his friend, Nasir el-Rufai, President in 2007, identified Ibori as an obstacle and did everything to remove him from the political scene. (Ribadu began by fighting Obasanjo’s battles but went rogue when Third Term scheme ended. 

Nigerians never knew of Ibori’s battles; the stout and lusty stand he took on MATTERS SOUTH-SOUTH AND RESOURCE CONTROL. 

How many knew that during Obasanjo’s national conference, Ibori’s Delta state funded a Secretariat in Abuja for the entire South- South delegates? How many knew that the DSS operated one Secretariat to further Obasanjo’s Third Term agenda? I know the street where that office was, in Abuja. I know the building itself. 

I want to show that we have been slaves fighting the slave-masters’ fights. 

What could have happened if Dr. Alex Ekwueme became President in 2003, he and his seven-degree brain? He may not have been a political and leadership genius but he would have been a gentlemanly President, open to ideas different from his. He could have been accommodating. But Obasanjo was a bull in a china shop. That is why some people stole our elephants but we play blind to their infractions as we all pursue Ibori who the really corrupt and corrupting leaders want us to see as corrupt, because they say he stole our cricket”. 

Did you notice how I emphasized the Professors’ failures? I did that because it was not only leadership failure that has made Nigeria a failed state, there has been followership failure too. How much did the military dictatorship shred the ties that bind Nigeria? How much does Nigeria mean to people from the various ethnic groups? What is Nigeria to our children? Are we getting more united or disunited? Does our military differ from the civilian population? If not, is that why some persons there may be sabotaging the fight against insurgents? 

The July 1977 ATLANTIC monthly magazine article, THE WIDENING GAP BETWEEN THE MILITARY AND THE SOCIETY shows that an example of American Professors’ constant studying of America’s problems, unlike their Nigerian counterparts. 

From that article came this: “Whatever the implications of these changes, they put society at odds with the classic military values of sacrifice, unity, self-discipline, and considering the interests of the group before the individual”. 

Now, who has tracked the changes the military academies have on their graduates? Do they change at all, and in which directions? Is the military divided along ethnic lines? What about the civil service? The Judiciary? The Nigerian youth? 

Nigeria continues to wither away; the governments fail to provide services that necessitate countries and governments in the first place and nobody studies or explains the effects of such on the populace. 

Adieu, Yinka Odumakin 

I am not sure Yinka and I met more than once. But we were friends based on ideas. We met on the internet discussion groups during the Goodluck Jonathan presidency and the Ibori London trial controversy was hot. It was I against the rest. And they kept it coming and I kept replying. Some days the engagements would go on for straight 24 hours. 

Yinka and I jostled and jostled. But he was not only civil, like Prof Bolaji Aluko, Yinka would pick offence whenever anyone insulted me. He insisted that Nigeria would need the journalist in Tony Eluemunor after the Ibori controversy would have blown over. Over the years we exchanged countless e-mails. 

Ah, Yinka was a federalist, supportive of resource control. He recognised that fiscal federalism was the way to go. Somewhere along the line, he and Ibori would have embraced, for he was fast learning that hypocrites have been hoodwinking Nigeria, and he was being attacked, tarred and demonised too for his position on issues. But he died too soon. May he rest in perfect peace. (Independent)