By Onwuasoanya FCC Jones
Martin Vincent Otse, alias, Very Darkblackman definitely has a derogatory notion about the average Nigerian, hence, he believes, he could feed them with anything, and nobody would question him. His perception about Nigerians being gullible is not very different from the disrespect that the Nigerian elites, especially, among the political class have about the ordinary Nigerian. They believe that we are a bunch of airheads who are easily misled into following fraudsters and hailing them as heroes.
VeryDarkBlackMan was or is trying to carve a niche for himself as a friend of the masses, who belong together with the poor and the downtrodden. Millions of Nigerians take to his social media pages to vent their frustrations with the system and they applaud him for his seeming humanitarian, human rights and good governance advocacies. He has been able to win a lot of Nigerians to his side because of his careful but imitative rather than real crafting of a poor persona. Many Nigerians see him as being one with them: in poverty, in their political frustrations, in their angst against the system, etc.
Obviously, Martin Otse is far from being who he has made many people believe that he is, but the image he has crafted of himself could have been forgiven, if he had taken the time to ensure that he maintains such an image, both in physical appearance, speech and his attitudes towards people.
Over the past few days, he has given some of us cause to review and investigate him deeper than we would have been interested in doing, and it is heartbreaking to me personally, to conclude, that VDM is not different from the rest. It might be too early in the day to describe him as a charlatan, but there is no hiding the fact that he is a businessman rather than a volunteer, which he had made us believe he is.
VDM’s recent ‘prank’ or what a defender of his tried to pass off as a social experiment, goes beyond its stated intentions, but reveals more about the character and persuasion of the individual behind the VDM mask. The young man reminded some of us of the many red flags in his supposed NGO and his fund raising for an undisclosed “humanitarian” project. The principle of transparency which he makes us believe he promotes does not start and end with merely how money was spent, but goes to how that money was raised and the process of managing the funds.
Coming out after several months of raising over 180 Million Naira to crack a joke about the money growing wings and even telling us that the police were already on the trail of the individuals behind the hacking could be an experiment to know if Nigerians would believe him, so that he could go ahead to steal the money eventually. Coming back to insult those who questioned his crappy tale as unintelligent is worse than when a politician blames the electorate for falling for his campaign promises.
VDM is a beneficiary of the rotten Nigerian system he pretends to want to correct. He wouldn’t have been able to run such an unaccountable scheme of an NGO in a better regulated country without giving good accounts of what he intends to do. In fact, he could be a subject of financial crimes investigation for keeping that money in the account and probably being the only signatory for the past six months or more.
The most intelligent Nigerians are the ones who refuse to take his words for it about the purported disappearance of that money. Those who made excuses for him are not different from those who believe that Olumba Olumba Ogbu is Jesus Christ or those who say that Simon Ekpa is another saviour or that the so-called Biafran government in exile is a reality. Those are the dangerously gullible ones, who fill the ranks of extremists and terrorist organisations across the world. If VDM is aiming for that demography, then, it would be in order to congratulate him.
The young man from Edo is only fortunate that Nigeria is filled with many people at different levels of public service who keep live humans in their cupboards and wouldn’t risk any inquest, hence, many small small thieves and wannabe oppressors could always get away with varying levels of demeanour and crimes.
May Nigeria Prevail!
