By Ambassador Lilian Onoh
ABIKE Dabiri-Erewa, Chairman/CEO Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), is not fit for the office she holds or any public office for that matter. As an Ambassador who made sure to fight for every single Nigerian in my jurisdiction without regard to ethnicity or religion, she represents the very worst example of what a public officer should be and she endangers Nigerians at home and abroad by her actions.
The first and only time I met Abike Dabiri-Erewa was at Aso Villa on 4th July 2018 during a visit by my then host president, the late Dr. Hage Geingob of Namibia.
As soon as she shoved herself next to me in the line-up to greet President Geingob and General Buhari and heard my name and title, she opened her mouth loudly, without any restraint, without any provocation and without any context and said to me, “It is Igbo people committing all the crime abroad. They are all criminals. Sorry to say so because they are your people but it’s true.”
Completely shocked by the unprovoked vitriol from the person tasked with representing Nigerians in the diaspora, I looked at the uncouth woman with no decorum, civility or even basic respect for the occasion. I did not demean myself by responding. It would have sullied me to bandy words with such an uncivilised character.
From her words and her conduct that day, I finally believed all the unsavoury stories I’d heard about her meteoric rise from a mere NTA Reporter to becoming a member of the House of Representatives and NIDCOM Chair because there was nothing in her actions to show that she was in any way qualified for public office.
Before that day, her reputation as a virulent, rabid Igbo hater was already established. Nigerian diplomats who had encountered her had horrible tales to tell of her unrestrained, hate-filled utterances about Igbo people. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs often had to scramble to do damage control after some of her excesses.
For her to unleash her unprovoked vitriol at State House, with two Presidents mere steps away from us, showed how utterly loathsome she was. She is alive. I am alive. She cannot deny the incident and she cannot claim that she cannot remember it, either. In fact, I immediately relayed her words to another diplomat that I immediately placed between me and her, who is also still alive in case she wants to feign amnesia. This is a first-hand account of Abike Dabiri’s putrid Igbo hatred. It is not reported speech but fact.
Abike Dabiri is totally unfit to handle any assignment requiring national representation and certainly unfit to be in any position that brings her into contact with an Igbo person anywhere in the world. To put it bluntly, she should be locked up in her compound with only her clansmen having contact with her.
The fact that despite holding such an exalted position she could repost the vile tweet by someone of her ilk, who himself may have been sired by monkeys and gorillas; and endorsed it with laughter emojis, is actually the truest reflection of how deeply rabid her anti-Igbo sentiments are. She is beyond redemption.
In the absence of paternity tests for her and the original tweeter, and based on their conduct, one must assume that both she and the tweeter are more familiar with being “bastards”.
What is surprising is that she clearly failed to look in the mirror and realise that not only is she not Helen of Troy but that if her face was juxtaposed with the animals in the tweet she found so funny, the clear resemblance should cause her to be the last person to cast aspersions on anyone’s looks.
It was bad enough that General Buhari referred to non-Muslim Nigerians as “monkeys and baboons” whose blood would flow if he did not win in 2015 and never apologised or retracted his words before he died. For Abike Dabiri to join him to peddle and expand hate speech is totally unacceptable. Her Wikipedia page claims that she has a Master’s degree in mass communications, unlike Buhari whose educational credentials were never properly explained to Nigerians. If she actually got that Master’s degree from the University of Lagos as she claims, her conduct and media pushback raise questions about the quality of education at the Mass Communications department of the institution.
It appears that as if her years as a Reporter were only for networking and self-promotion. Whilst I don’t want to delve into the rumours as to why successive administrations have pampered this uncouth, hate-filled woman, who puts her foot in her mouth almost every time she opens it, one question remains:- Since the return to democracy in 1999, she has hardly stopped holding one political office after another – WHY?
She is not the only person that was arrested during the Abacha regime. Whatever payback different leaders believe she is entitled to for whatever she may have suffered in detention, it should not be at the expense of Nigerians and definitely not at the expense of Nd’Igbo.
Abike is not fit for the office she holds or any public office for that matter. As an Ambassador who made sure to fight for every single Nigerian in my jurisdiction without regard to ethnicity or religion, she represents the very worst example of what a public officer should be and she endangers Nigerians at home and abroad by her actions.
No Nigerian, and especially no Igbo, deserves to be represented by such a verbally incontinent vessel of hate. Her promotion of ethnic hatred is the sort of concentrated hatred that triggered the 1994 Rwanda genocide. She should either step down or be sacked. There is no middle ground. Her cup is full and cascading over.
