For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul– Mark 8:36
Like many people who grew up in Ibadan in the 1960s and 70s, I too have been following the court case in which a little-known company, RCC, is accused of unlawfully taking over the identity and assets of the Israeli construction colossus, Solel Boneh Nigeria Limited..READ FULL ARTICLE HERE>>>>
The matter was brought to court by the family of late Chief Gabriel Akin-Deko, the popular First Republic Minister for Agriculture, who later became Chairman and a major shareholder in the company until his death in 1986.
When news of the case first broke two years ago, I reminisced about the many strategic places in Ibadan and neighboring towns where Solel Boneh and its huge workforce had once impacted entire communities with their Israeli ethos for hard work and camaraderie.
From University of Ibadan Second Gate and Bodija Estate where the company had offices and housed the families of its expatriate staff to the massive quarry near the Challenge Toll Plaza and the campuses of Obafemi Awolowo University and University of Lagos.
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Today, the company’s sprawling head office along Oyo Road and many of the equipment going in and out of the yard now bear the name of RCC – Reynold Construction Company. Nowhere are there any signs of the once illustrious Solel Boneh, the company in which late Chief Akin-Deko partnered with the Israeli government to establish in Nigeria.
The company that had built great edifices all over Nigeria and an enduring friendship between the peoples of Israel and Nigeria. History has it that Israel had been excised out of Palestine in 1947 by the region’s British colonial masters and in 1948 unilaterally declared its Independence.
The population of the new country was initially made up mainly of Muslims and Jews in Palestine, Jews who had escaped or survived the Nazi holocaust of World War 2 and Jews seeking refuge from the torment and famines of postwar Eastern Europe. Assisted by the Jewish underground to defy British efforts to control immigration into a Muslim dominated region, the Jews flooded the new nation desperate for sanctuary from their tormentors
The Israelis of those days were therefore a people forged by the ruggedness of desert life, the horrors of a holocaust and the deprivation of life in a famine-ravaged Soviet Union. They were determined to survive, to rebuild and to quietly multiply. They made friends throughout the world, revolutionized agriculture and public works in many countries and went on the charm offensive often using their national commonwealth as leverage to consolidate Zionism. Meanwhile, the Jews also nurtured a powerful lobby in USA politics which they put at the disposal of the new nation and allowed Israel o punch above her weight on the world stage.
Here in Nigeria, as Israel also administered Jerusalem and most of the towns of the Nativity of Jesus, it was always easier for the new nation to make friends in the largely Christian southern and middle belt regions of Nigeria than in the Muslim north. After all, Muslims went on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia and Christians went to Jerusalem.
Thus it was that over time, Israeli Jews captured the hearts of many African nations with their history of survival and an abiding philosophy of peace and humanity. But once the primary objective of Zionism– establishing a nation for Jews – had been achieved mostly by bloody sacrifice including several hot wars with their neighbors, Israel’s secondary objective – protecting that Jewish nation – took more selfish coloration.
Sometime in the 1960s and 70s, there seemed to have been an upsurge of immigration by a new type of Jew especially from USA; a new generation that had never known the horrors of war, nor the sacrifice of self-denial or the humbling experience of communal living. Israel also retreated from its cooperative-like kibbutzim and moshavim – clustering and communal approach to commerce – which had placed control of the economy largely in the hands of Histadrut a people’s organization set up to protect workers, and to provide social services for them through to old age.
This Jewish welfare system was eventually replaced by full blown capitalism. There was therefore a watering downof the economic influence of Histadrut as its ownership of many companies such as Sole Boneh and Bank Hapoalim, Israel’s largest bank passed into private hands. As Igor Gurkov noted in his 1994 publication “Privatization in Israel” the huge Israeli government sector, which included 160 state-controlled enterprises were controlled by “an intricate, multilevel system of management, regulation and control”. Such was the concern for the need of good corporate governance that in 1986 these government-controlled enterprises were under the control of 2 ministers one of which was the Minister of Finance.
But in the process of untangling these companies from government management, there arose a new set of privileged business leaders, who seemed to care less about Israeli friendships worldwide nor about the legal rights of their erstwhile partners in the host countries where they operated. Indeed as we now see today they cared little about Israel’s obligations to their Muslim neighbors who had been forced to share their land with the Jewish refugees.
Out went the shrewd wisdom of David Ben-Gurion or motherly touch of Golda Meir as the new corrosive capitalist ethos appeared to overwhelm successive governments of Israel.
So much so that today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is able to lead a military campaign to push the majority Palestinians out of the region in a desperate gambit to turn Israel into a nation purely for the Jewish race. Something like what the Nazis wanted to do for the Aryan race in the 1940s when they sent over 6 million Jews to their deaths in gas chambers.
We can only pray that the Israeli people will fight to restore their dignity and show the world that they place humanity above profit.
Meanwhile here in Nigeria, in the matter of the Akin-Deko family versus Reynolds Construction Company, which is before an Abuja High Court, one of the alleged principal beneficiaries of the disposal of Solel Boneh Nigeria after the death of late Chief Akin-Deko is a member of a highly respected Israeli family.
At the last court appearance on February 24, 2024, her lawyers filed for their client to be removed as Respondents perhaps in the hope of washing their illustrious family clean of the stench of injustice. In Nigeria we continue to say, there is a God o..READ FULL ARTICLE HERE>>>>
