Alex Enumah in Abuja
Chairman of the now disbanded Special Presidential Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property (SPIP), Mr Okoi Obono-Obla, was on Friday arraigned alongside two others before a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in Apo, Abuja over allegations bordering on fraud.
Obono-Obla and his co-defendants were arraigned on a 10-count charge brought against them by the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC).
The other defendants include his (Obobo-Obla’s) Senior Assistant, Special Duties (Protocol), Aliyu Ibrahim, and the Managing Director of ABR Global Petroleum Resources Ltd, Daniel Omughele.
The ICPC specifically accused the former SPIP Chairman of conspiring with the others to divert N19,994,185.00 meant for the furnishing of SPIP offices.
Paul Obi
More than four centuries ago, an English Poet and a Thespian from Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare indicated that a “valiant never taste dead but once.” He held that death, as part of human cosmology and circle of life is a necessity that must come. As mere mortals, and as the Holy Bible postulated, we do not know the hour. Our duty therefore is merely to live our lives in preparation for that calling and sojourn to the great beyond. Once the curtains fall, our humanity takes its last breath and our lives nosedive in perpetuity; our contact with the world ceases. Only by our deeds and legacies are our lives sustained by memory. Or they vanquished as well.