BETWEEN JD VANCE AND DAN ETETE, BY YISHAU OLUKOREDE

As I get older, I am beginning to get very interested in reading biographies of men who have impacted the world in significant ways. My interest in movies inspired by biographies has also increased.

When Donald Trump picked JD Vance as his Vice President, I saw the movie adaptation of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, his best-selling biography starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close and wrote about it on this column.

Published when JD Vance was 33 years old, it tells the story of JD Vance’s rise from poverty in Middletown, Ohio in the heart of America’s Rust Belt to the Marine Corps (with stints in Iraq), the university of Ohio and then Yale, an Ivy League university.

In the introduction, JD Vance writes that “the coolest thing I have done, at least on paper, is graduate from Yale Law school…I am not a senator, a governor or former cabinet secretary.”

But what he didn’t realise and something his readers did not realise back then in 2016 was that he was practically speaking his future into existence because by 2023 he was already a senator representing Ohio and while his ambition seemed to have stopped at Cabinet secretary or minister as we say in Nigeria, he was picked by Donald Trump whom he had opposed in 2016, to be his Vice President as the 2024 elections got under way.

Growing up in a poor and very dysfunctional family, he pulled himself up by the boot straps and made himself a success. The story reads in places like fiction because of the odds stacked against him all of which he overcame.

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At the beginning of the book, in order to raise money to enable him move to New Haven Connecticut, he worked in a tile warehouse. It was back breaking work, but with his eyes on the goal he persevered earning $13 an hour.

The story and many others in the book speak of resilience, perseverance, focus and determination.

Being in the Marine Corps, he writes towards the end of the book, had imbued him with “the capacity to plan”.

Today JD Vance is America’s Vice President at just 41 years of age, a long way up for someone “who failed out of high school, earning Ds and Fs in English 1.”

Some days back, I came across the 80th birthday tributes to Dan Etete, former Petroleum Minister under General Sani Abacha, and I couldn’t resist comparing the lives of both men who qualify to be described as statesmen by the impact they have had in their respective countries.

By 1984, when JD Vance was born, Dan Etete had worked in the Nigerian Customs Service, cut his teeth in business and become a Senator in the second republic.

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He would go on to become Petroleum minister and now at age 80, the world remembers him mostly for the controversial Malabu oil deal involving OPL 245 and some of the biggest oil companies in Europe from Shell to Eni.

But surely, there must be more to the man and so I clicked and clicked on Google, trying to find out more about him and each try produced very slim pickings.

A court case in France led to a guilty verdict in 2007 but the French government granted him a full pardon in March 7, 2014, via bulletin number 3 issued by the Ministry of Justice, Criminal, Cases and Pardon Division.

But you have to scour the internet to discover the story of his pardon because what pops up as you search is mostly the story of his conviction.

Dan Etete’s story is in many ways similar to the one told by JD Vance. Even though we cannot ascertain whether he came from a poor or dysfunctional family we can safely conclude that he did not come from a rich one seeing as it is that he started life in a school in Ajegunle.

Ajegunle, a slum on the outskirts of Apapa, is not famous for producing ministers of Petroleum.

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Footballers, yes and musicians too but Ministers of Petroleum, not quite. But that was the soil on which the seed that produced Dan Etete was sown.

He did not go to the Marine Corps like JD Vance or even NYSC but instead he joined the Nigerian Customs Service.

He was, in that sense, as we say in Nigeria, a “uniformed man” and well qualified, if he was in a Danfo, to avoid paying his fare by shouting – Staff!

It was while serving in the Customs that he empowered himself by acquiring certifications that would stand him in good stead when he went into business.

An Ijaw man from the Niger Delta, he must have taken an interest in oil and gas and even though we are not told what business he engaged in after he left the Customs like many others before and after him, he must have had some interest in oil gas and with enough insight for him to be made Chairman of the oil and gas committee in the Senate.

Dan Etete must have made an impression in the 2nd republic and probably established long lasting political alliances because by the time Abacha got into office, he was well positioned to be appointed Minister and that is where his larger-than-life image grew nationally.

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This reflection is my way of saying that Nigerian politicians, statesmen and high achievers owe us a duty to document their lives, to tell us the story of how they defied the odds to achieve prominence because in a country of 200 million people it takes some doing to gain prominence in whatever sphere from music to football or business to politics.

Dan Etete is taciturn and not given to press interviews but how are we to know that in spite of the legal battles he keeps fighting he has set up a foundation that empowers people in his native Izon land?

Or as a magazine article notes that he remains a key player in the Nigerian oil and gas sector as a sought-after adviser?

My final take: Without ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, would JD Vance be Vice President today? No one can say for sure but what is clear is that sometimes it is a lot cheaper and a lot less controversial to blow your own trumpet.

(This article was originally published by The Nation)

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