Emeka Offor Versus His Oraifite People In Anambra State

Emeka Offor

Many of us from Oraifite in Ekwusigo Local Government Area of Anambra, are amused by a recent statement credited to a controversial son of our community named Wilson Orakwue Offor but known everywhere around Nigeria as “Sir Emeka Offor.” It should be noted that none of this man’s registers with the church or the schools he attended has his name as Emeka. And Emeka could not have possibly been his name because he has a younger brother who bears the name of Emeka, a brother from the same parents. The authentic Emeka is alive, hale and hearty. It is, therefore, strange to a lot of Nigerians that Wilson Orakwue Offor should be parading himself as Emeka Offor whereas the real Emeka Offor is still around in flesh and blood. Those of us who know Wilson very well know why he had to change his real name. Offor was for many years desperate to change his identity. He was hiding and running away from the long arms of the law!

Against this background, the Nigerian people should understand why Offor's Oraifite people were amused and entertained to no end by the interview our son granted to Sunday Nation newspaper where he threatened to deal ruthlessly with any person who questions his "earned reputation". Of course, Nigerians generally know that it is only in a country where anything goes that Wilson Orakwue Offor can ever claim to have a modicum of respect. What brought him into national prominence should have sent him to jail if Nigeria were a bit disciplined. He came into prominence when the notorious Sani Abacha military dictatorship awarded his Chrome company the contract to carry out the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of the Port Harcourt Refinery and Petrochemicals Company for about $100M. This contract was a rape of the Nigerian people. It was a conspiracy by Offor who is a former driver with Julius Berger construction firm; the then Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Alhaji Gidado Idris; the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Dan Etete, who was to be jailed in absentia in France for monumental corruption against Nigerians; and, of course, the Abacha family. These characters used a group of Romanians to perpetrate the heinous crime against our citizens.

Needless to say, the contract was never executed. All these characters in the sordid drama just shared the huge amount of money. Out of greed, they even swindled the Romanians they used as both a conduit pipe and a smokescreen to pass for international expertise. One person who did not like what was going on but just played along was the then chief executive of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the late Dalhatu Bayero. Carried away by how easily a fortune could be made through fraudulent collaboration with the irresponsible military regime, Offor launched into a mindless campaign for Abacha's transmutation. The most remembered of the endless adverts he placed daily in the media in support of Abacha's self-succession claimed that with General Abacha in power, Nigeria would be getting two presidents for the price of one! Mrs Mariam Abacha was regarded as a president in her own right. Even on the day Abacha died, Offor was sponsoring a seminar on Abacha's life presidency where Etete, a barely literate person, was billed to give a star lecture! 

It is this Wilson Offor fellow who is today talking of honor and even threatening any person who has the temerity to ask questions about his reputation. Let us recall his exact words in the interview which Sunday Nation published on page 8 in its issue of September 22, 2013:
 

                 There is no part of this country that I have not been to. I’m not known as a criminal. I am not known as a poor man, but as a rich man and good man. I am going to deal with anyone, young or old, that tries to pull me down because it is time we start (sic) respecting ourselves, people tend to take my humble attitude as weakness and use it against me but I am out for any challenge now”.

Here a few facts unknown to most Nigerians but well known to the kinsfolk of Wilson Orakwue in Irefi and other parts of our sleepy Oraifite hometown. He lived in Kaduna between 1984 and 1986, and stole from a construction company in Makurdi, while pretending to be supplying bitumen to the same construction company. The accursed Orakwue lived at Ikot Ekpene in Akwa Ibom State, Suleja in Niger State, and at Otokoto Hotel in Owerri, Imo State—all within a very short period. He was in hiding. He was hiding from law enforcement officers who were desperately looking for him for various criminal offences. On one occasion, Group Captain Benson Nnoruka (now retired), an indigene of Oraifite, smuggled Orakwue out of police custody in Benin to the Air Force Base in Makurdi, Benue State, where he was living in hiding. In appreciation of the huge risk Group Captain Nnoruka took to save his life which could have led to Nnoruka’s instant dismissal from the air force if the authorities had known what the senior officer did, Wilson Orakwue Offor asked Nnoruka to retire in 2002 so that he would make him governor of Anambra State in 2003, succeeding Dr Chinwoke Mbadinuju. Nnoruka resigned, but Offor could not make him the governorship candidate of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Typical of Offor, he has since dumped Nnoruka like a hot potato, and this fine officer is today in an emotional and financial mess. He regrets everyday of his life his decision to follow Wilson Offor.

The gods of Oraifite will not forgive Orakwue for declaring, “I’m not known as a criminal.” Those of us who know him well know that he is both a criminal and a rogue. He is an unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person, a scoundrel, a rascal, one who is playfully mischievous, in fact, a scamp. Within British Metropolitan Police, Emeka Offor is known as Mr. D, the money launderer. He has a case for laundering £750,000,000 which was confiscated by British Metropolitan police, and his passport was confiscated. This “good person” is wanted by British and American law enforcement officers. That is why he cannot now enter Great Britain or the United States of America. 

This our “illustrious son,” who in the interview with Sunday Nation talked about respect and humility, insulted Chief Geoffrey Nsofor (Ichie Enyiamaoso) at Obi Nkalafia in 1997, when Geoffrey Nsofor, father of Humphrey Nsofor, a former legislator, was 82 years old. He also insulted and assaulted Chief Chuks Muoma, with policemen in 2007. Ichie Chuks Muoma is much older than Orakwue. He is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) who obtained his Law degree in London in 1968. On April 28, 1998, Orakwue slapped Hon. Humphrey Nsofor at St Michael’s Primary School Ezumeri, Oraifite. Still, this man claims to be an epitome of respect and humility.

Wilson has been living a lie as far as the Anglican Church is concerned. He will never disclose to the church authorities that he is married to several wives. If he has told them that he is a polygamist, he would have long ceased to be a knight of the church because an Anglican Knight (or any good Christian for that matter) should have no more than one wife. Maybe, Orakwue plans to return to the African traditional religion which some of us have since embraced. Frankly, the traditional religion should serve as his natural constituency. Wilson is scandalously fetish.

The Oraifite kinsmen of Wilson Orakwue Offor will soon reveal the real reasons why Orakwue was rusticated from Merchants of Lights Secondary School, Oba in Idemili South Local Government Area of Anambra State and why he was not allowed to live in the dormitory at Abbot Boys Secondary School, Ihiala, also in Anambra State—and why his West African School Certificate examination result was seized at Abbot Boys in 1977; and details about his stay at Orile-Igunmu, in Lagos. I truly hope that Orakwue is out, as he claimed, to “challenge” these revelations about himself.

Wilson Orakwue Offor, alias Sir Emeka Offor, is a veritable thorn in the skin of our hitherto peaceful community. The latest example of his numerous excesses is the use of police to arrest and illegally detain a well-known social crusader, Comrade Boniface Okonkwo, who is also an international businessman based in South Africa. Comrade Okonkwo was detained for three weeks in Abuja, away from Lagos where he was on July 13, 2013, arrested at an ungodly hour, put in the boot of a vehicle and driven all the way to Abuja by a team of the special armed robbery squad in the office of the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar.  Okonkwo’s offence was he dared advise Offor in an online publication for the Oraifite people that the $1.3m which the controversial government contractor donated to Rotary International for polio eradication should have been better used to ameliorate the condition of many indigent Oraifite people or paying the poorest of the poor who lost their life savings deposited with Offor’s Afex Bank when it collapsed in 2006 principally on account of insider abuses, with Offor alone owing as much as N3.85 billion. There are other examples of how Offor is dealing with his less privileged kinsmen and women like an emperor determined to annihilate recalcitrant subjects in a hated foreign land.

But not everyone is taking the matter lying low. For instance, Comrade Okonkwo has since sued Offor and the police for N100 million for illegal detention and abuse and denial of his basic human rights. The radical lawyer, Femi Falana, is handling the case for Okonkwo, and it will come up early next week in Abuja before Justice Okeke.

Oraifite people are once again advising Wilson Orakwue Offor, alias Sir Emeka Offor, to learn some manners and emulate the behaviors of other rich men from Oraifite, Ichi, Ozubulu and from our big brother, Nnewi. You can still be rich and not intimidate, harass and blackmail your people.