With Ben C. Abraham.
VDM AT THE NBA CONFERENCE
The NigerianBar Association (NBA) held her General Conference in Port Harcourt, Rivers State in the last week of August 2026. The conference is a gathering of lawyers and legal minds for one week of conferring. It is not the first time that the conference has held. In fact, the Port Harcourt event was the 66th in the annual series. The fact that the conference held is not the issue; so, what then? the fall outs from the gathering. Whilst many attendees gave a thumbs down to the organizers for everything gone wrong – flooding of the entrance to the halls, sub-quality conference materials, lawyers scrambling and even begging for food from the vendors – none of these compared to the outbursts that followed the appearance of Vincent Martins Otse aka Verydarkblackman or VDM at one of the sessions. The organizers had extended an invitation to VDM amongst other non-lawyers to share their experience and thoughts on insecurity under the discussion caption ‘known Gun men’. Of course, VDM had told the eminent gathering that he was not speaking as a lawyer or attempting to teach law but that he had some information on the insecurity plaguing the country, before making sweeping statements about the involvement of security men in the saga. The backlash was swift and furious – who is VDM to come address lawyers, what does he know, is the conference now a circus, etc etc. The criticism came in torrents. Femi Falana SAN did not hold back too. Well, not every lawyer criticized. Quite a number weighed in on the brouhaha and stated that VDM’s rise and impact was a product of a systemic failure that the NBA should introspect on – Chidi Odinkalu, Dele Farotimi etc. Then, not to be outdone or silenced, VDM left the conference and went on a tirade. He put on the wig and gown and ‘yabbed’ lawyers in a video he put out. He even slammed the economic status of many lawyers stating matter-of-fact that law was a broke profession while adding that many lawyers sold bedsheets and other household items to make a living. Maybe, just maybe, the Port Harcourt conference offered a fitting avenue for lawyers and the NBA to rethink their essence, purpose and existence; the same City where in 1992 during a similar conference the NBA stood at a crossroad. Well, the conference ended with a change of baton – a new National President took oath of office and pledged to wring much needed changes. Time is already ticking for her; two years from now her administration would come under the spotlight of assessment.
BY THE RIVERS OF ‘BABY-IZZI’;
A popular scripture goes thus, ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion……. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.’ Nigerians were treated to a spectacle within the week. A serving Senator from Ebonyi State took his campaign train to a community in his senatorial constituency. You know that 2027 is around the corner. But what stood between him and his constituents was a river. He could not cross to the other side, neither could his constituents be summoned to come meet him. There was no bridge to connect the community. The Senator, nevertheless sought their votes come next year. The video had since gone viral and the Senator has denied going there to campaign. He said that he went to articulate the community’s problems. The community was identified as Ezza Inyimegu in Izzi Local Government Area of Ebonyi State. Campaign or not, after the visit the Senator would retire to his cozy mansion in Abakiliki and later Abuja while the hapless constituents would sit by the riverside ‘weeping’ and bemoaning their existence in a ‘strange’ land; strange, not because they are not indigenes of the community, but because they are only remembered every four years, just before elections. It should indeed be strange that a Senator did not factor this community into his intervention program so that a bridge would be constructed for them, but did not mind standing across the river and solicit their votes. Despite his belated denial, did the Senator need to visit them to realize that they had no connecting bridge? What do I even know? Is there really anything strange in Nigeria today? On one of the virtual platforms I belong, an indigene of the State in a bid to ward off the backlash said that the video was AI generated. Whether or not it is AI, the scenario that played out in that video is not peculiar to Ebonyi State. You will find it in every State of Nigeria, between the politicians and the people, between the governed and the governors; we all too often see that divide in every setting – the ‘big man’ in Government addressing the poor masses, soliciting their support and sacrifice even where his failure stares him in the face. Who will sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
……AND ONE OTHER THING:
APC MEN ON THE RAMPAGE
What started with Sunday Igboho has since spread like a cancerous tumor to other parts of Nigeria and from the look of things will go on and metastasize. You recall when the self-acclaimed Yoruba Nation leader, Sunday Igboho declared Abubakar Atiku and Peter Obi persona non grata in the South west of Nigeria ahead of the 2027 elections? Yes, maybe because nothing happened afterwards, as in nobody cautioned him neither was he invited by any security Organization, others took the threat a notch higher. As soon as the curtain was raised by INEC for campaigns prefacing the elections, threats by certain public officials under APC began to pour in. The Kuje Area Council Chairman in the FCT, Samuel Danjuma Shekwolo, stated that non-APC supporters should leave the Area council in the build up to 2027 elections. He said that Kuje wasn’t for non-supporters. It was a threat and it was captured in video. Then a commissioner in Borno State Saina Buba told whoever cared to listen that anyone who showed them a finger would have that finger broken. He stated this during a City Boy movement program in Maiduguri while adding that those who supported the Government would enjoy the honey. The threat was directed to the opposition; after all, as they say, this is time for politics. Saina has since denied the threat and apologized. It didn’t stop there. The dancing Governor of Ebonyi State warned all the Local Government Chairmen to deliver their councils for APC or risk being removed from office. He stated that there was no space for failure. ‘If you like sleep and another person will take over your house,’ he stated. Spurred by the Governor’s charge, the Ohaukwu Local Government Area Chairman Paul Ituma did not mince words in warning those who did not support APC that they were persona non grata in the Area. He stated in a video which is making the rounds that Ohaukwu was cordoned off for the opposition. He added that politics was his business since he didn’t own any shop in the market. I am sure that you are familiar with the saying that any son sent by the father to steal would break down the door with two legs. Mr Paul Ituma has just confirmed that. The morning, they say, shows the day. The road to 2027 has just began. The signs do not show that the journey will be smooth at all.
