Okpebholo and the sacred thief

By John Mayaki

There was a time when theft required a defence. Not anymore. These days, all it requires is a tribe.

“If anyone from Akoko-Edo appointed by Governor Monday Okpebholo commits any infraction, nobody should probe him or her because that will amount to hatred on my people”, very infantile and childish, isn’t?

The formula is as ingenious as it is convenient. Once an appointee is suspended over alleged misconduct, the discussion is immediately evacuated from the scene of the alleged infraction and relocated to the map of place of birth. Suddenly, the issue is no longer what happened. It is where the suspect comes from.

A suspension becomes ethnic cleansing. An investigation becomes persecution. Accountability acquires a tribal accent. At least, that’s what I now understand with the recent suspension of Commissioner for Livestock. He is above probe because of his place of origin.

How comforting.

One would have thought that those shouting loudest would first insist on clearing the name of their kinsman. Instead, they demand something far simpler: don’t ask questions at all. Leave our brother alone. If he is our son, our in-law or our neighbour, his ethnicity should become his certificate of innocence.

Curious logic. This is my fear for this country.

Some people see public office as ancestral property. It is not. It is a public trust. And public trust imposes public accountability. No appointment letter comes with a clause exempting the holder from scrutiny because of his senatorial district.

The day Okpebholo catches a thief from Akoko-Edo, he should jail him or her. We are not used to stealing. We won’t condone it. Nobody should.

Even more inconvenient for the merchants of ethnic outrage is that the facts refuse to obey their script.

The governor’s own Edo Central has produced officials who have exited government under one cloud or another. Former Chief Press Secretary Fred Itua left office. The former Managing Director of EdoGIS also exited. A former Special Adviser on Students was arrested. Their addresses did not become shields against official action. They were Okpebholo’s kinsmen.

Which raises an uncomfortable question. If officials from the governor’s own backyard have faced disciplinary measures, where exactly is this carefully choreographed ethnic vendetta?

Perhaps the new constitution, known only to ethnic propagandists, provides that misconduct should be measured with a compass instead of evidence. Perhaps guilt now depends not on conduct but on coordinates.

That would be a dangerous republic indeed.

Real ethnic discrimination is a serious matter. It wounds societies and deserves universal condemnation. But crying wolf every time an appointee faces administrative sanctions trivialises genuine grievances. It converts ethnicity from a shield for the vulnerable into a hiding place for the politically exposed.

The tragedy is that some people seem less interested in proving their brother innocent than in making him untouchable.

But public office does not confer sainthood. Neither does shared ancestry confer immunity.

A government that refuses to discipline wrongdoing because the accused is “our own” ceases to govern. It merely operates a family reunion at taxpayers’ expense.

And that is one tradition no state can afford. Okpebholo cannot afford this and no amount of blackmail should make him surrender.