Why I Won't Write About Ibori... Okey Ndibe

I won’t zero in on Ibori, for he is, after all, a small effect of a vast, pervasive cause. I realize that to make him, this day, the core of one’s disdain is to forget a little the way in which he is but a speck in a universe of venal grubbers and bloody thieves. To fix on Ibori is to leave the impression that he is somehow exceptional in Nigeria’s political planet. We all know that there aremany Iboris out there. What’s worse, the Nigerian system daily manufactures and graduates many more Iboris. These new Iboris daily enter the leeching enterprise. They take to that despicable business of a few dispossessing the many, tiny cohorts aggrandizing themselves by seizing the public harvest and doing with it as they please. To fix on Ibori today is to risk falling into a foolish temptation. That temptation is to celebrate the comeuppance of a man who reaped where the people sowed, a man who reduced the sacred business of governance to the art, and act, of personal greed. One must by all means run away from the celebratory temptation. There is no cause for celebration in Mr. Ibori’s downfall today. I will go as far as declaring that there’sno victory for the people of Delta, for Nigerians. There is for all of usonly defeat and shame.