A TRIBUTE TO DIEPREYE ALAMIEYESEIGHA
The news of your demise came as a shock and a rude awakening to me. This thing called life! Is that it? Just like that? Gone with the wind like a blade of grass! Why then? Why do you have to go through so much negativity that eventually tarnished your image for a life that is so ephemeral? Chai....
If you had used the £1m cash found in your London home and another £1.8m found in a UK bank account to build a factory in Bayelsa and employed the jobless youths of your kinsmen who are mostly graduates, I believe there will be uncountable people crying their eyes out in front of your house as I write this tribute not minding that you gave them a lease of life with money stolen from the government.
If you had built a classy and well equipped hospital in Bayelsa with the £10m you used to buy a single house in London, and employed world class medical professionals, you may be alive today as there may not be a need to rush you to a Port Harcourt hospital for treatment. As I write this article, millions of people in Nigeria and all over the world would have risen in your defence against the request that you be extradited to the UK for prosecution.
Rather than people do any of these things, they are happily sleeping in their houses and jesting about the circumstances surrounding your sudden death. Some people are even asserting that you have feigned your own death, which is in tandem with your feminine disguise from the UK. If you must know, your smartness was not responsible for your escape. The authorities turned a blind eye because they had their hands on something more interesting. Moreso, your leaving the UK was a loss to Nigeria and a gain to Britain. So, who is the fool? WE are! In your next life, when you hear British diplomacy, take a bow and run like a bat out of hell.
Let this be a lesson to all of us, particularly those stealing Nigeria blind. We came to this world with nothing and we will leave this world with nothing. Whatever you call your own in this world is not permanently yours. As I write this, if your body had been deposited in the morgue, your wedding ring, if you had one, would have been removed and given to your wife. Why lose so much for nothing? What a life!
A Nigerian multi-billionaire died some few weeks ago. The print and electronic media was agog with the news of his death but as I write this tribute, he is no longer in the news despite all the wealth he accumulated. Why? Because he did not add value to the life of the common man on the streets of his fatherland. Fela, Gani, Lumumba, Sankara, King, Ghandhi etc will be continually praised and celebrated for as long as the world remain.
May the Lord God almighty pardon your sins, transgressions and iniquities but the voice of people they say, is the voice of God. My condolence to your family, I pray that God gives your family the fortitude to bear your loss as they greedily and violently share the wealth you vainly gathered in your life time.
- Tony Ihidero
