I read Mr. Joe Eto’s self-absorbed attempted rehabilitation piece in Elomba.com. If indeed Eto was “routinely arrested at the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport” on April 30, 2013, as he stated in that piece, he must be an incorrigible sociopath. Even in Governor George Wallace and Commissioner Bull Connor’s Jim Crow Alabama, let alone in the State of Georgia in 2013, to be arrested by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) or any other Government Agency, for that matter, there must be an arrest warrant. In the alternative, the arrest must conform with one of the exigencies that satisfy the exceptions to the arrest warrant requirement. The exigencies include the officers’ observation of the commission of a crime or that the interest of the public, for an example in the case of a suspected or a potential suicide bomber or a terrorsit attack, thereby necessitating that the suspect or suspects be apprehended because it may be too late if the officers have to wait to procure an arrest warrant. Who among Eto’s readers who frequently ply through Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, are routinely arrested at that airport?
Eto’s suggestion that he is innocent of the indictment that he colluded with others to defraud Kennesaw State University (KSU) through fraudulent billing, but pled guilty to one count of Racketeering in the State of Georgia on or about November 10, 2014 because his lawyer advised him to or because the State of Georgia wanted him to plead guilty to save the State time and money, is a bunch of malarkey. Eto pled guilty because his lawyer painted a graphic enough picture for him to see that it was in his best interest to plead guilty instead of risking trial with the ominous prospect of going to prison if he loses. This is elementary, and lawyers and their criminal defendant-clients make these decisions in court throughout this country every day.
The public should know that no Judge in this country will accept a guilty plea without giving a defendant allocutions and obtaining the factual bases to convince the Judge that the defendant indeed committed the crime for which he was pleading guilty; that he is pleading guilty freely and voluntarily, and that nobody is forcing him to plead guilty; that he understands that he has the right to go to trial, but that he is freely and voluntarily waiving his right to trial; that he understands that by pleading guilty, he will have a criminal record of conviction; that he is not under the influence of drugs or alcohol; and that knowing all these, that he is still willing to plead guilty.
If the Judge did not voir dire Eto on these allocutions when he entered his plea, Mr. Eto, then should not have any trouble having the plea set aside and proceeding to trial to prove his innocence to silence the “handful of [his] Igbo kit and kin who” according to him, “have found limitless joy in the unfortunate incidence of the investigation of [his] firm and arrest.”
By the way, the focus has long shifted from Eto’s arrest and investigation of his firm to his criminal conviction record, and the deleterious impact of having the image of a convict associated with the WIC. No matter how Eto tries to minimize his present unfortunate legal dilemma, these his “Igbo kit and kin” are only saying that they do not want the poster child of their beloved WIC to be the image of a convicted felon who is on active probation for the next five years. Period!
One day, Eto will realize that his real enemies are not these his “Igbo kit and kin” who can look him straight in the face and tell him the bitter truth, but these his “Igbo kit and kin” who are egging him on to continue making himself an object of ridicule.
Nobody that I know wants to destroy Eto the convict but himself. And if he thinks that he can shift attention from legitimate discussion on whether the WIC stakeholders have the right to insist that a brother with a self-inflicted legal incapacity as his should not be parading himself as the pride of their fleet, World Igbo Congress (WIC), he has another thing coming. Anybody claiming to be a WIC Chairman, which is only a claim on his part because he was not reelected in Houston, cannot claim that legitimate inquiries about his character and fitness for that esteemed position is a violation of his personal freedom. So far, I do not know anybody who has written anything un-towards about Eto’s personal life besides the right of the Diaspora Igbo to have a WIC Chairman who is not a convicted felon on active probation imposed on them.
Of course, I am not in the least surprised by Eto’s grandiose delusion that he has ”committed more personal resources of [his] to the WIC stabilization and invigoration more than any stakeholder, including all the of the past WIC Chairmen [Dr. JOS Okeke, Chief Austin Egwuonwu, Dr. Kalu Kalu Diogu and Ichie Chibuzo Onwuchekwe]” put together. But even if he is right, the WIC and the Igbo are not for sale. We may appreciate and honor our true benefactors, but we are never enslaved to them.
In any case, isn’t it silly to even make this childish claim in the first place? How does Eto know how much resources others have contributed to the WIC, not to talk of the past WIC Chairmen, who are the true forerunners of the WIC, and who have not, in any shape or form, contributed to the level of destabilization that Eto has single-handedly brought to the WIC. Anybody who has wreaked the amount of havoc Eto has wreaked in the WIC and yet believes that he has stabilized it more than every other person is indeed an incorrigible sociopath.
Demanding accountability from Eto or any other Igbo leader neither demonstrates lack of love for the Igbo nation or anti-Igbo activity as Eto foolishly and shamelessly claims. On the contrary, not insisting on excellence and embracing mediocrity, amidst the numerous Igbo primus inter pares, will be both anti Igbo and lack of love for the Igbo nation. As our people say, “onye kpara nku ahuhu, si ngwere biara ugwo” (he who fetches insect-infested firewood, is indebted to the lizard). Eto is only reaping what he sowed in the WIC.
It shall be well with WIC and ndi Igbo.
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C.C. Chikezie, Esq.
(C. C. Chikezie, the former two term Secretary General of the World Igbo Congress (WIC), is a Journalist and a Criminal Defense Lawyer, based in Essex County, New Jersey).
