Date Published: 01/21/10
Money should not take the place of family, love, and service By Temple Chima Ubochi
You're never promised your next breath (Lenny Kravitz)
It is a wise father that knows his own child (William Shakespeare)
It behooves a father to be blameless if he expects his son to be (Homer)
The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother's always a Democrat (Robert Frost)
I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection. (Sigmund Freud)
I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play (Beverly Cleary)
For those who stole and stashed our commonwealth in local and foreign banks: 2010 is a year for them to return about 90% of all they looted and seek for forgiveness, or else, there will be no peace for them and their household! All those who made this writer and many Nigerians to abscond from Nigeria they love and be living a “meaningless” life abroad, would pay for it in one way or the other.
To tell Nigerians what that could happen to looters/embezzlers of our resources, they should look at Ibori today. Ibori, upon all the money he looted; cannot travel to the west, his wife, Theresa, is stuck in London and cannot come home, because of the money laundering charges against her. It has been more than a year, they last saw each other. What's the point of being a husband and wife then, what's the use of the stolen wealth?
Stolen wealth brings no happiness. If in doubt, ask Pa Mutallab. He stole and gave his 23 years old son a 4 million pounds house that even a British Prime Minister cannot afford on his own and an avalanche of cash to spend, and these ended up making the boy a terrorist. There’s a puzzle here. Alhaji Mutallab reported his son about 2 months ago to the authorities, claiming that he does not know his way about. But we learnt that a family source said Farouk was “generally around” during the celebrations marking his father's retirement from First Bank and his father formally retired from the position on December 13, 2009. So who’s fooling who here?
Pa Mutallab has put a new twist to the whole story: This man still wants to continue, albeit fruitlessly, to cover up his ass and save his family’s name and properties all over the world. We’re told that Farouk’s father did not only stop at reporting his son to the United States authorities but also made effort to stop him from living in Yemen. That when Farouk abandoned his master’s degree programme in Dubai and relocated to Yemen, his father applied for visa to Yemen to visit him and take him back to Dubai. It was gathered that the Yemeni embassy in Nigeria denied the man visa and therefore, stalled the planned trip. This writer is not buying this crap. Who would believe that? This is a man who heads an Islamic Bank, owns property in many Arabian lands and even has a Yemeni wife, so Pa Mutallab is partly a Yemeni by marriage. How can the embassy refuse him visa, does he even need a visa to travel to Yemen, is he not one of the owners of Nigeria, so which embassy can refuse a visa to a multi-billionaire? It didn’t fit here.
On the other hand, we were told that Alhaji Umar Mutallab never made any formal report about his son’s terrorist tendencies. We learnt that investigations from the Presidency have revealed that the only conscious efforts from him to reach out on this issue was an informal chat with a former National Security Adviser, NSA, during which he claimed that his son had cut links with him and would appreciate if efforts could be made to locate him. According to sources within the Presidency, Alhaji Mutallab’s claim of formally reporting to relevant security agencies is being investigated because of emanating facts that he did not approach the State Security Service, SSS, the National Intelligence Agency, NIA, or even the Police to divulge Farouk’s terrorist tendencies. The source queried further, “Why did Mutallab approach a former NSA instead of the serving officer (was he inaccessible)”? The only known evidence is that Mutallab approached the US embassy as stated and acknowledged by the Americans, with details indicating his son was missing, without clear cut information about his affiliations or religious extremism.
Pa Mutallab might have achieved what he wants to, despite his failure to raise his son uprightly. He blames every other person, and not himself, in order to save his assets all over the world and that, he might have achieved. The Punch (04.01.2010) wrote: Multi-Billionaire businessman and father of Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian arrested for a failed attempt to bomb a US passenger jet, Alhaji Umaru Abdulmutallab, would have got all his assets and wealth seized but for his effort in alerting the authorities of his son’s radicalism.
This is what the former Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Alhaji Abubakar Tsav, said recently: “The unfortunate thing in this country is that we have people who are rich. Instead of putting their money to develop the educational system in this country, they prefer to carry this money, buy properties overseas and then send their children to study overseas. Indeed, there is nothing wrong sending your children overseas and to the best schools in the world. What is wrong is that most of these wealthy Nigerian parents only send their children abroad, give them a lot of money and leave them to their fate without any proper monitoring. They don’t monitor them to know the type of friends they move with. Here you take a very young boy, send him out, pay his school fees and allowances and then you think you have done everything for him. You don’t take time to know the kind of friends he keeps. There are some of these rich men who don’t have time for members of their family. They only have time to look for money and go after women. That is all. All of the time, they are in guest houses or hotels while they don’t know about what is happening to their family. That is what is responsible for this type of thing. Because I understand that this boy was first sent to Togo from there he was sent overseas”.
A Kaduna based lawyer, Yahaya Mahmood, concurred with the preceding points when he said this: “You see, the terrorist Act existing in the United States, which we have also passed in Nigeria and other countries of the world, stipulates heavy penalty for terrorism. It includes forfeiting all your assets. I think his father was very lucky that he informed the security agents and that was accepted. Otherwise, he also risks forfeiting his assets, especially if there is evidence that he collaborated or assisted the son. But I look at the whole thing from two different angles. The way we send our children abroad without proper guidance is one problem. You send your son to London or to the United States, you don’t check him or monitor the kind of friends he keeps there. At a tender age of 18 to 20, anything can happen. For some of these children, the enjoyment is so much that they start thinking what next to do. This is somebody who has not known any poverty or suffering, staying in a 4 million pounds house in London and then he started saying that he likes his religion very well; he started writing on his Facebook that he is so lonely and has no Muslim friends to discuss Muslim affairs with. These are the kind of people that Al-Qaeda will easily convince.”
We learnt that the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations invited Alhaji Umar Mutallab to appear before it on January 20, 2010 to discuss his experience with his son. This writer is advising Pa Mutallab to tread cautiously here. It might as well be that this invitation is a bait. Forget about the niceties in the letter of invitation, it might be a sweet-coated poison to lure him to United States. Pa Mutallab would never know what his son must have told the American authorities in their investigation of the botched bomb attempt. The rebellious son of his might have made some incriminating statements against his father and the American authorities might have used their senate to surreptitiously bring the old man to American soil to grill him and in that process, might in the long run, find reasons to confiscate his assets in the United States.
Raising of kids is a full time job and he/she who has no time for them (kids), needs not to procreate in the first place. It’s not easy for so many parents, but, they’re not shying away from that responsibility no matter all the odds, because, they know what’s at stake. Pa Mutallab left his son on his own as early as when the boy was about 13 years old, thinking that his money would replace parental care and monitoring, but he was dead wrong.
One other important person who is failing in his responsibility to raise his children well is our president: Yar'Adua is so sick to take care of his sons, his wife is busy chasing after power and money as to have time for her boys; that's why the boys, instead of playing with books and computer, are playing with AK-47, fresh minted bundles of naira notes. Then tomorrow, if these boys become arm robbers or terrorists, people would be asking how come. Yea, because, nobody put the kids through the right way when it mattered most! The formative years are very important in a child’s life and if the child is not put through the right track then, it would be hard to do same when the child passes that developmental phase. You can “bend an iron only when it’s hot.” The Bible says: “He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly. (Proverbs 13:23-25)”.
This is part of what this writer wrote this on April 12, 2009:
“There is nothing in YarÁdua to show that he is an upright man contrary to what we were told at the beginning of his presidency. Based on pictures I saw, I can infer that he is a man that can't even raise his children in an upright manner. Then one wonders the examples he is setting for Nigerians to follow. He is failing as a president and in the home front, he is a failed father from my distant understanding or else what can one say about one of his sons that is not upto to 14 years old (in my own estimate), posing with bundles of freshly minted naira notes (wad) for the cameras in Aso Rock; the same "little" boy, scion of our president, posed with AK-47 (machine gun) for the cameras in Aso Rock; the same boy or his brother behaved like a spoilt child he is, when he posed with girls of his age (may be, some of the daughters of Aso Rock staff) on top of a car with the front of his baseball cap tilted backward (if you are in doubt about these, check them out in saharareporters.com. I hope the pics are still there).
These are not pictures that a man that claims to be upright will like to see. Those pictures can in no way be that of a son or children of an upright father, not to talk of a president that is supposed to be a role model for other fathers. We knew that President Bush's daughters were wayward, but, we also saw how his presidency played out and how it all ended. That means 1+1=2. What YarÁdua did when those pictures were published was to accuse his staff of leakage and subjected them to oath taking in which they vouched to "plug the leaks" by not give away information from Aso Rock to the outside again”.
It’s true that the three things a person has no control of the outcome are a wife, what a child would be in the future and when and how a person would die: A wife can start on a good or bad note and ends up on the contrary. What a child would be in future, is not solely determined by what his/her parents want him/her to be, because, parents can do everything for a kid, he/she still turns out to be everything other than what they ( parents) wanted. But, we should b trying, irrespective of the outcome. Some of us giving our best despite all the odds, to our kids, by taking them to soccer practices and competitions even on weekends when we're supposed to be resting, or taking them to swimming or music/ballet lessons, taking part in their home works etc, know why we're doing these. The young Mutallab was sent to boarding schools throughout; he lost the family touch and was lonely through the years. The young Mutallab has been living outside Nigeria for the greater part of his life. He had gone to Lome, as a kid, from where he proceeded to England. When other students in London and other places and countries were worrying how to pay their schools fees, engaging themselves in one menial job or the other (for their school fees, rents and food), Young Mutallab was not worrying about all these, because, he was swimming in money made available to him by his father, so he had time to think evil.
The Secretary of the Council of Ulamas and a foremost northern critic, Major Abubakar Umar (rtd), has attacked the northern elite, describing them as a disgrace, first to the religion of Islam, the north and Nigeria. He said: “All these elite in the North they are like that. They don’t bother about our education here in Nigeria, since they have a place to send their wards to. Go to Dubai today, most of our serving and former governors, ministers, have estates and hotels there, but go to their states in Nigeria, nothing is there. And that is all they do, they don’t have time for their family. If this Farouk of a boy has a very sound religious background, devoid of satanic inklings, he would not attempt what he wanted to do.
The ripple effects of the terrorist act of Farouk Mutallab on Nigerians started almost immediately. The collateral damages are chilling. How're we going to survive all these? As an added insult for reeling Nigerians, a good for nothing senator, who is also the Senate Deputy President, Ike Ekweremadu, another prodigal Igbo man, moved a motion that would have mandated the Federal Government to give Pa Abdulmutallab a national award "for giving out information to security agencies regarding his son’s activities". But common sense prevailed and the senate rejected the motion. What's worrying some of the Nigerian politicians? INSTEAD OF EKWEREMADU MOVING A MOTION FOR NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT TO SUPPORT HAITI’S EARTHQUAKE RELIEF EFFORTS IN ANY WAY IT CAN, HE'S IN SENATE CHASING SHADOW. This writer thinks that they (Nigerian politicians) need psychiatry test to ascertain their mental stability/capability, because, their demeanour and utterances, depict them as being deranged.
This writer commiserates with the Babangida family on the death of the matriarch, Maryam. She was a good woman to his Asaba people. She never forgot her root and that was why she made it possible for Asaba to be the capital of Delta State, when the state was created by her husband. But her death is a lesson to everybody. Despite all IBB stole from our commonwealth, he couldn’t bribe death with the money so that his wife could live. IBB, we learnt, was weeping like a baby; not too bad, many of us have wept many times due to one problem or the other caused by IBB when he was a military president, so crying is not new and this writer wants to tell him (IBB) that he will suffer more, unless, he returns 90% of all his loots back to Nigeria. He ruled for 8 years and allowed the health care sector to deteriorate beyond imagination; otherwise, his wife’s ovarian cancer could have been detected earlier and may be, she might still be alive now.
IBB, despite his status is not welcomed in the United States; he cannot get a visa to the United States and many western countries. He was belatedly granted a United States visa, on humanitarian ground, so that he can be at his wife’s bed side and now that she’s gone, his feet will never touch United States again, until he returns all the wealth he stole from Nigeria, confesses and atones for his sins. We learnt from Maryam’s sister that when he started with his wife, IBB had only a Vespa motorcycle, but, today, IBB is a trillionaire in Nigeria’s standard and a billionaire in world's standard; he has a 50-room mansion, private jets, houses everywhere, budging bank accounts all over the world and Maryam’s corpse was flown by Air Ambulance from the US. How did he made all the money, how much was his salary/recompense for all the years he served in the army and as the military president of Nigeria for eight years? One day IBB will have a lot of explanations to do. Mark this writer's words.
IBB should take heart. He should not forget that he made so many men, widowers; so many women, widows; many children, orphans; ruined many lives and businesses through his actions and inactions through the years he strangulated Nigeria in the name of ruling.
To go off-point here: This writer just want to advice the women couriering drug by stuffing the "stuff" into their private parts to desist from such disgusting and dangerous adventure. They might as well be courting ovarian cancer that will manifest in their old age. The consequences of such misuse of the body always manifest later in life. Just an advice!
The world is changing; rewards for evils are now instant and spontaneous. Nowadays, the evils that men do are living with them, rather than after them. The problem is that the reward for other people's evil might affect innocent people in one way or the other too. That's why we should be more circumspect in all we do from now on.
THE THANXS IS ALL YOURS!!!
Temple Chima Ubochi writes from Bonn, Germany through ubochit@yahoo.com
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