“Chief Agharieaku was the richest man in his Ebenato community.
His wealth which was once a pride to him and his community that made them give him the title, Ide Ebenato, became a curse to him when all the youths and women in his community were made to believe Chief used their destinies for money ritual.
As a result of this vile accusation, Chief no longer longed to return home and when he did, he stayed indoors.
When the tree tops was still a playground for squirrels, whenever Chief returned to his Ebenato country home, his house was a beehive of activities. If it was during Christmas, he would share more than two thousand bags of rice and slaughter more than twenty fattened cows for his people to share. Then, he paid school fees for as many as possible.
In fact, half of the people that went to university in his Ebenato community passed through the university under his scholarship scheme. But all that has ended. The villagers came to realize it was through his beguiled benevolence that he swapped their shining destinies.
It was Anayo, one of the jobless youths in the village whom Chief started a rice business for in Aba and the business crashed within the space of one year that made this uncommon discovery. He thereafter started a campaign of calumny against Chief Agharieaku.
It all began when Anayo returned to the village after his Aba odyssey and was asked what happened? Anayo responded, what do they expect to happen when you use devil’s money to start a business?
Anayo told the villagers to open their eyes, that as far as Chief was alive nobody was going to ever be somebody in the village of Ebenato. He gave instances upon instances of people Chief Agharieaku had helped who amounted to nothing.
Without biting his words, he told them that Chief Agharieaku was an occultic man. He asked them if they had ever wondered why he kills cows and shares rice to them every December? He asked them to ponder on the reason why Chief does not bring his family in America to partake from the meat?
Anayo, however, did not tell his kinsmen how he started to live large in Aba as soon as he began a new business. He didn’t tell the villagers that he went into rice business without having a single knowledge of the business.
Well, he didn’t tell them because no one asked or no one ever thought to think towards that line. Even if they did, Anayo revelations gave manure to their innermost suspicion. His revelations about Chief Agharieaku matched the narrative they wanted to run with.
A few years later, when some youths of Ebenato went to fight on behalf of their community over a piece of land with the people of Anaku, a neighboring community, one of the big men of Anaku used police to round the youths of Ebenato up. There were about thirty of them.
When the community leadership got to the local police station, they were informed the boys have been taken to Force Headquarters Abuja. It quickly became clear to Ebenato elders that the matter had entered a big man fight or what the local man in the village will describe as, big man talk to big man.
Ebenato leaders then decided it was time to bring out their own big gun. So, they went to visit Chief Agharieaku, their own big man.
Agharieaku it seemed had been waiting for a day like this. He spared no time in telling them to go and meet Anayo. He told them they should remember his money was occultic. He told them he does not want to steal their stars by getting involved in their problem.
It was at this point they lay on the floor and told Chief, iwe nwanne anaghi eru na ọkpụkpụ. The anger of a brother is on the surface, it shouldn’t get deep into the bone.
Chief in turn reminded them, nkoto nwa ogalanya karịrị ogbugbu ya. To publicly blaspheme a big man, is worse than killing the big man.”