You Will Leave Office in a Wheelchair
My mother's ordeal was not the end of frightening events that occurred In late 2012 and early 2013. A few months after my mother's escape, I had just wrapped up a meeting late one afternoon with some of my staff in my ofice and was taking a short break, sipping, a welcome cup of coffee. when my cell phone rang. It was again my brother Onyema. He sounded paicked. My first thought was that something else had gone wrong in the family. I braced myself as he frantically asked me, Where are you? Where are you?"I was surprised, and said I was in my office.
He said I needed to immediately seck additional security, I must leave work early (my staff and I were notorious for working till third shift, as we called it, after the afternoon meetings), effectively starting the atternoon meetings), and I must vary my route of travel. I asked what was wrong, and my brother told me a strange story. One of mv brother's old friends had called him to say that he had just let a secret meeting where the subject was how to inflict maximum physical damage on me, just short of killing me. The agreement reached at this meeting was to attack me in a way that I would end up paraIized and bound to a wheelchair and forced to leave the Finance Ministry. The meeting was held by a group of oil importers and marketers to whom the federal government "owed" money. It was held in the house of the chair and owner of one of the oil marketing companies.
They were angry that I was withholding the subsidy payments that they thought were "owed" them for their retined petroleum imports. Because my mother's kidnapping had lailed to torce me to resign, their next iction to force me out of office as to ttack and disable me. My brother's friend participated in this meeting but felt what was being planned was unjust and cruel and I did not deserve it.
He therefore resolved to get the information to my brother as possible. I was shaken, primarily because a few weeks earlier I had woman in whose house the meeting was purported to have place, along with her husband. Her husband even announce. taken that he was my brother, as is our tradition, because both of them are from the same part of the country. How could a fellower this? I toid my brother I would take additional precautions course of two years on the job, I had received sevral thater the light of my mother's recent imminent to woman do to ordeal, this one seemed very real and When I reflected on the situation, I felt the best way to avoid in even greater fear and danger was to do the unusual: confront the woman who owned the house in which the meeting took place and tell her I was aware of the plot. I was never one to live easily with mail or threats. I told my brother my plan. He thought it was worth a try. This woman would probably deny it, but she would be on notice. I felt that if she was innocent, she would probably her husband, "my brother," call me in outrage with a protest about the accusation against his wife, as would be expected in our tradition. If she didn't do this, then clearly something was wrong and could imply her guilty.
We searched for her telephone number through contacts, and the next day I rang her and invited her to meet with me in Abuja to discuss the amounts owed to her company. After she arrived for the meeting a couple of days later, I wasted no time getting straight to the point and informing her that I was aware of the meeting held at her house and the matters that had been discussed. I told her the security services were aware. She feigned ignorance and denied any knowledge of what I was talking about, tried to get on her high horse, and insist that a woman in her position would never be involved in such a plot. But her denials rang hollow. After warnings that I would not be intimidated, I ended the meeting and she left. I could see that she was in a bit of shock. The outraged call from her husband never came, so I knew the strategy had worked. Whatever plot had been hatched, there would be no follow-through! It was another narrow escape, made possible only through sheer God-given intervention of my brother's friend. I was in second year of the ministerial assignment. It seemed like a long street ahead.