An Open Letter to Mr. Inye Harry

Dear Mr. Inye Harry:

I do not know you. You do not know me. In other words, I am writing this letter to you because you have made statements that affect me. You have told lies against a man you knew nothing about. You have dragged his name in the mud. You have dishonored him. You know the man I am talking about: my father, the late Mr. Justice Melford Dokubo Goodhead. I am aware that in the murky waters of Nigeria’s Machiavellian politics, lies are cheap. Truth is scarce. The end totally justifies the means. Man, contrary to Immanuel Kant’s sage advice is not an end in himself; he is rather seen in all his particulars as a means to an end. It is little wonder why we seem to live in a perpetual Hobbesian state: life is brutish, nasty, and short. But, brother, do you have to perpetuate falsehood about a man that you did not know?

Let me tell you about the late Mr. Justice M.D. Goodhead. He was a man who started out as a Public Health Officer. He saw no future there and decided to enroll at the University of Lagos to study Law. His father, an Anglican catechist, who nurtured him into a very morally conscious young man, had died before he went off to study law, and, so, he put himself through the university and through Law School. During the holidays, he worked his tail off to be able to provide for himself after the resumption of school. To save money, he squatted with his best friend, Chief Zenas Alabo, and his family, at the Alabos’ apartment at Ikwerre Road. He was going through these hurdles when his wife, the late Bekinwari, my mother, died in 1972. He was heartbroken, but forged ahead with his studies, finished, went off to Law School and his National Youth Service Corps posting in Northern Nigeria, I think Maiduguri, and returned to Port Harcourt and got a job with the Rivers State Ministry of Justice as a public prosecutor.

As soon as he got the job and the apartment that came with it, he took his children and some of his sister-in-law’s children from various relatives to live with him. He gave us three important gifts. The first gift he gave to us was love of the written word. Every weekend he gathered us around the breakfast table to read the newspapers with him, with a fat dictionary at our elbow. Whenever we came across a word we did not know, he asked us to consult the dictionary. It was his way of telling us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Not surprisingly, the second gift he gave to us was the idea that we could stand on our own as individuals. In other words, he subtly nudged us not to hang on to his coattails, as children often do with their parents. It is little surprise that today all of the children that he raised during that phase of his life are fiercely independent adults, and who after his death decided without any dissenting voice that whatever earthly possessions he had should be used to take care of his second set of children and their mother. The third gift he gave to us, and the gift which I treasure most, is character—as in being honest and fair in one’s dealings with others, even if that meant living out one’s life in poverty.

He drilled the third message into us with a courageously exemplary life. He would not take any bribe and for a long time, before he used his meager savings to start a poultry business, which eventually folded up, he depended solely on his salary. Life was harsh. To the outside world, we were children of a state prosecutor, and, so, we should be living the good life; but, no, we were terribly poor. We had food and a little extra change and that was it. My cousin, Godwill Tom-George, and I paid occasional visits to his father’s house at Harbour Road to get used clothes from his older brothers Daerego Tom-George and Mpokima Tom-George. Later as a university student, I leaned heavily on my cousin, Godwill, for clothes, after he had perfected a way of getting money from his mother, Mrs. Sundayba Tom-George (nee West), to buy clothes. There was very little money to buy books too. After my younger sisters, Bitebo and Boma got into High School, it became terribly difficult for my father to even buy books for us.

Early in class four, I needed to buy certain school items that I badly needed to succeed in school, so I obtained permission from my house master and paid a visit to my father at his office at the Rivers State Ministry of Justice. As always, my father was very excited to see me. After we had chatted for a while, I brought up the reason for my visit. And once more, I heard that dreaded sentence: “My son, things are very tough.” I told my father: “But I need these things to succeed.” He said he understood my plight, but that he did not have the money to buy the things I was asking for. He will give me a little pocket money to use as best I could, and that was it. I was so pained that I told him: “So, you don’t really care that I succeed in school?” And for the first time in my life, I saw tears in my father’s eyes. As the tears stood in his eyes, he quietly brought out his pay form and pushed it across his desk to me. I took a look at the meager amount, and thought of all the things that he was doing with that money, including taking care of his old mother, and before I knew it, I too had tears in my eyes. We consoled each other and he gave me some fatherly advice and a little money, and I left.

I came away from that visit with very little money in my pocket, but with a ton of respect for my father’s character: his determination to suffer deprivation rather than use his position to corruptly enrich himself. Not too long after that visit, he became the Director of Public Prosecutions, but poverty still stuck to us like our skin. And often, I would hear people say, “The Director of Public Prosecutions can be filthy rich if he wants to be.” Indeed, the Director of Public Prosecutions can be filthy rich if he wants to corruptly enrich himself, because he can kill a case if he does not want it to go to court. But, again and again, my father, as Director of Public Prosecutions and later a high court judge would not budge from his stance. He was determined to go to his grave in penury rather than soil his name. I will cite some instances where I was an eye-witness. And Mr. Inye Harry, please go and look up these cases in the archives of the Rivers State Ministry of Justice.

Case 1. A high school kid, who was living with his uncle in Port Harcourt, stole his uncle’s pistol and, in the company of his friend, used it to rob a cab driver. The cab driver reported the case to the police right after the robbery. The police went after the two boys and found them not far from the site of the robbery having a good time at a beer parlour. I think they engaged the police in a shootout, and the boy’s friend was badly injured or killed. The father flew down from Lagos to tell my father to kill the case. He was obviously a wealthy man. He went on his knees and pleaded with my father and told him that if he killed the case, he would make him rich. My father told him in very plain terms that he was not that kind of Director of Public Prosecutions. In the first place, he had listened to the man, because as a father with two teenage boys and another (my cousin) living under his roof, he could empathize with him as one father with another; but he could not pervert justice for any amount of money. Please, Mr. Inye Harry, go and check the archives of the River State Ministry of Justice. I was there. I witnessed the scene.

Case 2. An ex-commissioner carted off government property when he was leaving his official residence. Someone blew the whistle on him. He came to bribe my father to kill the case. He brought a bottle of wine as a precursor to discussing the bribe with my father. My father was asleep in his upstairs bedroom when the man stepped into our living room. One of us, I think it was my younger sister, innocently took the bottle of wine. I knew that there would be trouble when my father woke up from sleep. And, yes, there was trouble. My father, as virtually all who know him would affirm, was a very quiet man, the sort of man that we used to call a perfect gentleman in that corner of the world. But on this occasion he exploded in anger. He warned us never to take anything from anybody for him. He made it very clear to us that he would never accept a bribe. Mr. Inye Harry, this is not hearsay; I was an eye-witness. And if you are an astute investigator and you go back into the archives to check the papers, you will find out the name of the commissioner who came to bribe my father.

Case 3. I think it was in 1993. The Social Democratic Party had conducted their gubernatorial primaries and returned Chief Sargent Awuse as their flag bearer. The primaries was said to have been fraudulent. Awuse’s co-contestants took the matter up for litigation. The late Chief Judge of Rivers State, Graham-Douglass, told my father that he was giving him the case because he was well aware of his reputation as an incorruptible judge. The case was a very sensitive one. There were Ikwerre people who were saying that they would burn down the state if Awuse’s victory was overturned, because it was the turn of an Ikwerre man to rule the state. My father was very calm. He told me that he had looked at the evidence and there was enough to ask the Social Democratic Party to redo the primaries. Nonetheless, he was going to hold his decision to his chest until it was time to deliver judgment. While all this was going on, one of the most respected Kalabari chiefs, who was also a famous politician, came to visit my father on behalf of Awuse. I don’t know whether it was Awuse that sent him. My father was taking a nap when the chief came. I was in the living room and greeted the chief. The chief told me to go and wake up my father and tell him that he wanted to see him. I went upstairs to tell my father that Chief X wanted to see him. My father told me to go and tell the chief that he would not see him.

To put my father’s decision in proper perspective, let me tell you that my father was a stickler for tradition when it came to paying respect to one’s elders. He would not raise his voice to his older sister, who was only a couple of years older him, because he considered that disrespectful. If an elder came to visit him, and you told him about the elder’s visit, even if he was sleeping, he would rush downstairs to welcome the elder. But in this instance, my father was determined to do what was right, even if it meant making a departure from his usual practice, and alienating a powerful chief and politician.

There are numerous other cases where my father had chosen to damn the consequences rather than damn his conscience or take the path of least resistance. But I was not present in those situations, and, so, I am not inclined to share them here. However, I will share one. When my father was a judge, a fellow brought a briefcase laden from bottom to top with money to bribe my father. He rejected the money.

In the case that destroyed my father, Mr. Inye Harry, please I want you to go into the archives of Newswatch magazine and find the issue and read it. Newswatch has a very impressive library, so you will not have a hard time finding the article. In 1992, the National Republican Convention (NRC) had its man in office in Rivers State. His name was Chief Rufus Ada-George. His deputy was Dr. Peter Odili. The two parties were equally strong in the state; but the governor wanted to return to office. So, he and his deputy perfected a plan to win a second term in office. The plan was to cause confusion in the local government councils controlled by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to enable Chief Rufus Ada-George to appoint a caretaker committee made up of NRC party men, who will then pave the way for his victory at the polls.

In Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government Area, Dr. Peter Odili’s LGA, there was a Social Democratic Party LGA chairman. The NRC tried to cause confusion in his LGA and remove him from office, so that the governor could carry out his plan of appointing a caretaker committee. The LGA chairman told the governor that he could not be accuser and judge in his own case. He went to seek an injunction from my father, who was the presiding judge there, to stop the governor from removing him from office until he had dealt with the charges against him. My father knew that the man was right. The governor could not be accuser and judge in his own case. The LGA chairman should be given the opportunity to defend himself before he was removed from office. The chief judge of the state, Justice Unbuku (I hope I have the spelling of his name correct), worked hand-in-glove with the governor. In this regard, he was very unlike his predecessor in office, the powerful and honest Graham-Douglass, who could look any governor in the face and tell him to get lost. My father told me of an instance where Graham-Douglass told a governor that long after the governor was gone he—Graham Douglass—would still be there and that his broad shoulders were quite capable of carrying the men and women who worked with him.