Understanding the sources of human aggression — By Emeka Ugwuonye

Aggression can be described as hostile or violent behavior, readiness to attack or confront. The question is where does aggression behavior come from?

I will like to quote directly from the book of Robert Green, The Laws of Human Nature, page 492:

“Unlike other animals, we humans are aware of our own mortality, and that we could die at any moment. Consciously or unconsciously this thought haunts us throughout our lives. We are aware that our position in life is never secure – we can lose our job, our social status, and our money often for reasons beyond our control. The people around us are equally unpredictable – we can never read their thoughts, anticipate their actions, or totally rely on their support. We are dependent on others who often don’t come through. We have certain innate desires for love, excitement and stimulation, and it is often beyond out control to satisfy these desires in the way we would like. In addition, we all have certain insecurities that stem from wounds in our childhood. If events or people trigger these insecurities and reopen old wounds, we feel particularly vulnerable and weak.

“What this means is that we humans are continually plagued by feelings of helplessness that come from many sources. If this feeling is strong enough or lasts for too long, it can become unbearable. We are willful creatures who crave power. This desire for power is not evil or antisocial; it is a natural response to our awareness of our essential weakness and vulnerability. In essence, what drives our behavior is to have control over circumstances, to feel the connection between what we do and what we get – to feel that we can influence people and events to some extent. This mitigates our sense of helplessness and makes the unpredictability of life tolerable”.

How do I apply the above understanding to my analysis of certain events that have happened recently around me? In March of this year, when DPA decided to protect some of our members that were victims of Chimark, one of my staff forwarded to me something written against Chimark by a person known as Azubuike Ihemeje. I was pleased that someone else seemed to have been paying attention to Chinmark and that perhaps we could learn one or two things from his effort and research. I sent a text message to Ihemeje suggesting to him that we could collaborate in the matter. I thought he had some useful information for DPA that would help us protect victims of the Ponzi. But Ihemeji never responded to my message.

Yesterday, out of nowhere, I saw a post by Ihemeji vicious attacking me and DPA. Initially, I didn’t know he was the same person I sent a message in March. I knew immediately that someone “paid” him to attack me.

I knew I was attacked. It was obvious. I knew it was information attack. An information attack is an aggressive behavior where the weapon used is manipulation of facts around you to put you in a negative light and to isolate you from your followers and thereby weaken you. It is the best weapon to use against powerful people in a strong position. The best form of power is when you command respect without exchanging material gifts. I enjoy respect in DPA because many of our members see what I do, how I do them and they are impressed. The most effective way to attack me therefore is to weaken the respect I enjoy among our members, to damage their confidence in DPA. If you damage the confidence of members in DPA, you discourage them from registering and feeling secure in DPA. And like in any other human contest, whoever defeats the champion becomes the champion. It doesn’t matter your history of victories, once you defeat the champion, you are the champion.

So, whoever can defeat and crush Emeka Ugwuonye will take his place. So, I clearly understood what Azubuike Ihemeje was trying to do. If you remember, he was not the first to try that. Remember on Assistant Commissioner of Police Remi Adeoye? Adeoye was looking at retirement very fast approaching and he wanted to make fame quickly. He wanted to gain a lot of following. The social media provided him an excellent opportunity, or so he thought. And what was the best way for him to crash into fame? He believed it was by pulling Emeka Ugwuonye down. Again, some women who fell out favor with me enlisted Remi Adeoye to attack me. And from out of nowhere, Remi attacked me.

Despite the fact that I was facing battle from all angles then and taking fire from all directions, Remi could not defeat me. He was an Assistant Police Commissioner. He thought he could defeat me. But an Assistant Police Commissioner is nothing when compared with a Harvard trained lawyer. You may think I am bragging. But it is true. I am Harvard trained. School fees at Harvard per annum is $100,000. There must be a reason for such fee. Remi could never defeat me. And something else, I have the capacity to fight forever – ten, twenty years, the rest of my life. I knew that Remi was just a shortimer. He could not play the long game.

The second man to try to use me to gain fame was actually now my friend, Harrison Gwamnishu. The same set of women went to Harrison and persuaded him to attack me. Harrison wrote a petition against me to the EFCC. But before anything could be done with his petition, those women fell out with him and accused him of something. It was Harrison himself that contacted me to tell me about the plot. (We are friends now).

So, when Azubuike Ihemeje jumped in to take down Emeka Ugwuonye, I smiled. I have seen this more than once before. As I have always known with previous cases, I knew that Ihemeje was in trouble. How did I know? Because he cannot prove his allegations. Indeed, he can’t even come near to proving them. He cannot show you one person that I defrauded. He cannot show you one person that I stole his thing. He cannot show you one person that I scammed. He cannot show you any court in this world that has ever convicted me. The only times I have ever been accused were by Nigerian police. But, if Nigerian police have not accused you, it means you are either corrupt or not important.

Indeed, Ihemeje is in a worse position than those who accused me in the past. At least when I was accused in the past, the two criminal trials the EFCC was prosecuting me for were still pending. But last year, I won those two trials. The 1.5 million dollars Remi Adeoye was accusing me of stealing is now over. I won those cases. They will always try to use a pending case to accuse you. In the second post Ihemeje made last night, he said: “All Emeka’s cases are still pending in court. I will visit the Supreme Court to find out”. What a clever way to tell a lie. He wanted to pretend that he might be right in his false allegations. As a lawyer, he does not know that when a case is pending, it does not amount to a conviction and that the accused is presumed innocent. He wanted to suggest to those cheering him on that maybe he was right in calling me ex convict just because some cases are pending against me. Can you imagine that from a lawyer? And he says he would go to the Supreme Court where my appeal is pending to find out. He wants to go there to find out if the Supreme Court had decided on my appeal? As a lawyer, Ihemeje knows that an appeal cannot be decided and still pending at the same time. He knows the truth, but he wants to pretend that he might be right.

Ihemeje is a proud man interested in fame. He wants to gain power, just like others. He wants to become influential just like others. He is a proud man, just like Remi Adeoye. He cannot come out directly and say: “I was very wrong and I am sorry. You are not an ex-convict”. He cannot say that. He is a proud of man. He understands that he might lose his followers if he admits that he was wrong. So, he wants to make it look as if he was half-right or somehow right.

Back to the lecture – the source of human aggression. The woman I rejected her application for employment turned aggressive toward me. Why? That rejection opened an old wound in her life. She publicly admitted that she was sexually molested by her uncle from age 5 to age 12 and she got pregnant and had abortion at age 13. It was a painful experience that affected her. I was now the one to receive the vengeance she had stored up all her life for the world that abandoned her. Remi Adeoye attacked me to hide the weakness and powerlessness he felt as he was about to retire into irrelevance. Ihemeje attacked me because he needed power. He wanted to seem more influential. When he called me last night, he said to me: “I should have heard your side before I posted what I posted. But you can send me your side of the story so that I would also publish it”. I laughed. I said to him: “So, you see yourself as God? You attack me and I would bend over and be forced to talk to you so that you would stop attacking me?” Obviously, he wanted to be in a position where I would be going to report myself and my activities for his approval. Can you imagine that? Power and intoxication of power. I would never bother to give anybody my side. If you like, tell lies against me. I will never come so low as to report myself to any wannabe.

My message to Ihemeje is the same message I gave Adeoye 4 years ago: please continue the lies. When I told Adeoye 4 years ago that I would defeat him, many of you thought I was joking. But where is Adeoye now? Is he still on Facebook? Likewise, I tell Ihemeje publicly now that I will defeat him and he cannot do anything about it. He attacked the Ponzi operators because they were already on the run. Chinmark is on the run. He cannot fight anybody. So, Ihemeje could attack him, but he will never be able to recover even a penny from Chinmark. He simply doesn’t have the capacity to and lawyering resources required to recover a penny. First, he needs to understand the operation of the Ponzi schemes to be able to know where to start. But certainly the anger he spews against the Ponzis on his page will give you some temporary comfort. If Ihemeje did not know that Emeka Ugwuonye has never been convicted of any crime anywhere on earth, how can he know what Chinmark did? If Ihemeje did not know that my appeal is pending at the Supreme Court and that there cannot be a disbarment unless and until the Supreme Court dismisses my appeal: this is something they teach in the first year in the law faculty: if he did not know that, how could he ever understand the financial statements that Chinmark may present in court if sued? So, by attacking me in other to bolster himself, he has greatly weakened himself. Intelligent people now know that he is not informed even on basic things.

Like Adeoye, Ihemeje assumed I was so weak and so down that it would be easy to slaughter me and claim to be Ogbuagu (lion killer). He saw a lion that was resting and he approached thinking he was dead. Well, it is an interesting game. Let’s watch it play out. I wish him luck.

I understand human aggression, its nature and its origin. Ihemeje was totally predictable. And the isi-okpukwu and isi-ngwongwo he mobilized against me will melt away, as usual. I just want to remind him that I won 4 cases against the EFCC. I won 3 cases against the Abuja police command. I am not afraid of pending cases. I welcome them with open arms.

Kalu Idika

See author's posts