• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Abike Dabiri And The Unraveling Of An Empty Head

Abike Dabiri And The Unraveling Of An Empty Head

Last week Thursday, I discovered that I am apparently a murder suspect. Or at least, that was the statement that Abike Dabiri-Erewa, current NIDCOM Chair and erstwhile Nigerian answer to North Korean patriotic newsreader Ri Chun-hee put out.

Not that she had the stones to actually mention my name, mind you – putting any kind of conviction into anything one does is far beyond the mental station of the likes of Mrs Dabiri-Erewa.

Instead of explicitly mentioning my name in the ridiculous story that only one news platform determined to be fit for publishing, Ri Chun-Abike decided to reach into the deepest parts of the sewer and pull out the oldest, most fetid and malodorous solid wastes for use in her latest attempt at flinging mud until something sticks.

Not satisfied with the public failure of her nationwide “It-Wasn’t-My-Fault” media tour last year following the death of Itunu Babalola in Cote D’Ivoire, she set her sights on achieving a new low. And if you know a thing or 2 about Ri Chun-NIDCOM, that is really saying something.

Dear Abike, Mention My Name If You Dare

In her statement, she claimed that the results of the “investigation” into the death of Itunu Babalola would “surprise Nigerians.” According to her, the Ivorian police do not know anything about what happened to the wrongfully imprisoned Itunu, because a certain dark male Nigerian who visited her shortly before her death was responsible for it. The said man could apparently not be identified because there was no CCTV.

While it took the best part of a year to sit on her hands and do absolutely nothing until Itunu died (as had been threatened by the Ivorian police), it has taken only 9 months for Sherlock Dabiri-Erewa to not only absolve the Ivorian authorities, but to blame a convenient Nigerian bogeyman whose identity she apparently knows, but cannot confirm because – wouldn’t you know it – the poor Ivorians didn’t have CCTV.

She could not mention this person’s name, but she could mention his physical appearance, his job and other information that clearly identifies her imaginary murder suspect as the journalist who broke the story – me.

This was not Abike’s first pathetic attempt at flinging mud at me so as to take the spotlight off her miserable lack of usefulness as NIDCOM Chair.

Shortly after Itunu died last year, I obtained her father’s bank details and posted them on Twitter for the general public to donate funds to get his daughter home.

I did this because after failing her so unforgivable, the Nigerian embassy in Abidjan wanted to metaphorically eat her corpse by charging her family to transport it to Nigeria.

Seeing the backlash against her which this generated, Abike went on national television and made reference to “some people who opened an account for her father and are soliciting donations from the public.”

Whoever did not see the actual tweet in question would not realise that not only did I tweet the old man’s bank details (which he himself freely gave me when I asked him), but that I actually helped him to get out of the extortion bind that Abike’s co-travellers at the Nigerian embassy had him in.

As usual, Ri Chun-Abike did not have the metaphorical balls to actually mention my name in the accusation, but the identity of the person in her accusation was clear and obvious. When one has the intellect and morals of a honey badger, these are the despicable, scummy tactics that one is reduced to.

Another “Smart” Nigerian Is Exposed As Horribly Empty

I have made the point before that Abike’s greatest career triumph has been convincing 2 or 4 generations of Nigerians that working as a newsreader at a goverment-owned TV station operating under multiple authoritarian dictatorships, somehow equated to being a “fearless, brilliant journalist.”

Read also: Nigeria’s ‘heroes past’ and the inconvenient truth

Somehow, over the course of a decade and a half of being a regular face on ‘NTA Newsline,’ Abike Dabiri insinuated herself into the public consciousness, not just as a journalist of some description, but also as some kind of good-hearted social crusader.

For anyone who can see the cold, unimpressive truth behind the often-false NTA news bulletins she read for decades, it is clear and obvious that Mrs Dabiri-Erewa was at best, an actress.

A pretty screen face with a commanding voice and manner, coupled with the ability to infuse faux emotion and empathy into script readings, like any half decent thespian can do.

I would argue in fact, that she is the conceptual forbear of a certain modern day genre of Nigerian female faux-journalists who have built entire media and publicity careers on lies, fabrications, sexual favours and falsely assuming credit for other people’s work.

Unlike her modern day descendants however, Ri Chun-Abike is apparently not intelligent enough to realise that when you want to tell lies that have a chance of sticking, you have to infuse enough truth in them to make them believable.

If you are going to accuse David Hundeyin of having visited Itunu shortly before she died for example, you might want to at least confirm the dates in question.

For the record, when I visited Cote D’Ivoire in March 2021, I spent all of 48 hours in the country, most of which were spent in Abidjan – about 400km away from Bondokou where Itunu was incarcerated.

Also, I visited the country in March, which was a good 8 months before she passed away.

A more intelligent liar than Ri Chun-Dabiri would also realise that certain things are too easily verifiable to lie about. If one wanted to play Sherlock Holmes and solve a case in Abidjan from your office in Abuja, one would be able to pull up things like hotel and Airbnb records through the local police, and one would clearly see the date when David Hundeyin lodged at the Ibis Hotel in Plateau, Abidjan – a good 8 months before Abike’s miserable failure led to Itunu’s death.

One would even realise that trying to link me to Itunu’s death is an incredibly stupid plan, even by the incredibly stupid standards of the administration she works for.

So apparently after taking on a story that other journalists had rejected since 2020, and spending my own personal resources to investigate and publish this story and the wider story of human trafficking in Cote D’Ivoire, I somehow decided that I wanted Itunu dead.

Before that happened, I had already published my investigation and forever torpedoed my ability to enter Cote D’Ivoire legally or illegally, but I somehow not only got into the country, but I travelled 400km inland to a prison in Bondokou where I apparently started a relationship with a sick inmate who was the subject of my story, before I also somehow decided to kill her.

Despite having gained notoriety in Cote D’Ivoire after my story, I was also able to walk in and out of a maximum security prison in the country all willy nilly. Using this magical ability to teleport myself into an Ivorian prison because I apparently find female prisoners irresistible, I somehow then murdered Itunu using an unspecified method, after which I then proceeded to publicly blame her death on poor, innocent, blameless Abike Dabiri-Erewa.

Oh, and despite having all this in-depth information about how I apparently committed this great crime, she did not have enough information to actually mention my name.

This task was instead left to her PA, a certain Akin Akinboye who was too unintelligent to resist gleefully tweeting the obviously planted story at me with a burner account even before the selected “news platform” itself tweeted it.

So there we have it, ladies and gentlemen. Another one of Nigeria’s retinue of false heroes and heroines has inadvertently exposed herself as the conceptual equal of Kemi whats-her-face on Twitter. Completely unprovoked, I might add.

For shame, Nigeria. For shame.