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Tag: Abraham Ogbodo

  • The development of underdevelopment – By Abraham Ogbodo

    The development of underdevelopment – By Abraham Ogbodo

    This is not the best of headlines. It contradicts common sense. The lexis and syntax are yelling for a harmonious structure. The sense here is in the apparent nonsense. But it serves the purpose of the day. The shouting oxymoron in the headline is deliberate. It is about the only way to explain the new fad in government business in Nigeria. The Federal Government is on a development spree, and it is only fair we mention too when government is doing well. The approach is comprehensive and all-encompassing too. None of the six geo-political zones has been left out in the distribution of Development Commissions by the Federal Government.

    Northeast, Northwest, North Central, Southwest, Southeast and South-South are all on board as equal shareholders in the allotment. For the first time, no part of the country is feeling short-changed. Nobody is crying marginalisation. All six geo-political zones have a Development Commission each to develop them. The principle of Federal Character has never been this beautifully implemented in the operation of the political economy. Going forward, the Federal Government should not deviate from this path. It is a path that leads to destination. The formula for lasting peace in the country has just been chanced upon. It will make so much sense if the major cash points in the country are also replicated like these Development Commissions so that each of the six geo-political zones can have its own chunk without crossing paths with others.

    The peace that will be experienced in this country shall be more profound than graveyard peace if each zone has, for instance, its own Aso Rock Villa, Central Bank, NNPC, NPA and Customs. Meanwhile, these Development Commissions are without boundaries. They are to perform what the Local, State and Federal Governments could not. In other words, they are created to stand in for government at all levels. Why this beautiful idea of outsourcing the functions of government from A to Z, for the sake of peace in the country, took so long to materialise is difficult to understand.

    All the same, it is better late than never. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo could have achieved the goal but his approach was half-hearted. The man could not see beyond his nose to appreciate what beautifully lay ahead. He lacked the foresight, so to say. He did only the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to develop the South-South and the two States of Abia and Imo in the Southeast. If Act No. 6 of June 2000 had been expanded to take five more DCs (Development Commissions) to care for the other geo-political zones, this late effort at outsourcing government functions to so-called development commissions to comprehensively develop the country and eliminate marginalisation would have been avoided.

    Umaru Musa Yar’Adua who came after Obasanjo was equally not clearly focused on the matter. Musa Yar’Adua, a Muslim, decided to lean towards the Bible in doing his own thing. He gave more to, he, that already had, but he, that had nothing, he gave nothing. The Niger Delta Ministry was added to the NDDC. Something else called the Amnesty Programme was added too. But I must say this. It wasn’t as if Musa Yar’Adua from Katsina State had become the saviour of the Niger Delta or for that matter, that the Nigeria State had become suddenly more responsive to the perennial issues in the Niger Delta. The truth was that, President Musa Yar’Adua was boxed into a panic mode when daily production of crude plummeted from two million barrels to just 700,000 due to the disruptive activities of armed agitators in the region.

    The economy faced imminent collapse. In fact, the State Ship was sinking and Captain Ya’Adua, was jettisoning anything within reach to strike stability and make the ship afloat again. In dispensing his largesse, what was paramount was the unhindered flow of crude from the bowels of the Niger Delta into the different oil export platforms. Development of the region, if there was any intention towards that, was incidental. This is part of the problem. The people of the region are often cast as trouble makers in the national drama. But since the rest of the country needs the resources from the region to survive, a pacifist scheme is usually worked out to contain challenges when they arise and keep the resource channel open. The issues at play in the Niger Delta are hardly framed in their proper contexts. It is the reason the words ‘’militancy’’ and ‘’militants’’ are always used to describe the kinetic tensions in the region. It does not serve well if the same people under intense existential pressures are called agitators or freedom fighters. Somehow, facts are misrepresented to turn victims into villains in the tragic narrative of the country’s crude oil economy.

    To the rest of the country, the Niger Delta region was receiving compensation for being troublesome and not for being exploited and abused. In fact, the ascendance of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, first as deputy to Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and then in a substantive role, was recorded in the national scheme as part of the appeasement to Niger Delta to avail its resources for general use. The region became a metaphor for profitable subversion that was worthy of emulation. Thus, in the build to the 2015 political biddings, General Muhammadu Buhari found so much sense in appropriating Boko Haram as the Northern version of the Niger Delta militants. He needed the asset for good political bargain. He condemned the Federal Government under Jonathan for killing Northerners in the name of fighting terrorism. He saw Boko Haramists as freedom fighters and not terrorists, fighting to terminate the marginalisation of the North by the Jonathan’s government.

    Buhari had pushed vigorously, asking President Jonathan to offer amnesty to Boko Haram fighters, the same way that President Yar’Adua did for Niger Delta Militants. I don’t know what happened when Buhari finally became President on May 29, 2015. He chose a different path with Boko Haram. He forgot that he had become President with prerogatives. Instead of just invoking Section 175 of the 1999 Constitution to exercise his Presidential Prerogative of Mercy and the grant amnesty as a man of his word and end the whole matter for good, he decided to donate the North East Development Commission (NEDC).

    The point was to create a stronger parallel between conditions in the Niger Delta and the Northeast that provoked the armed struggle in the two regions. By that gesture, Buhari effectively proclaimed that, as it was with the Niger Delta militants, the Boko Haram fighters took arms against the Nigerian State to draw attention to the socio-economic and ecological devastation occasioned by exploration and exploitation of mineral resources in the Northeast by the Nigerian State. The NEDC, like the NDDC, was therefore a compensation for the North East for its contribution to the national economy. The Bill establishing the commission was signed into an Act on October 25, 2017. A 10-year master plan to recover the region was put together to go with the inauguration of the commission. It would cost N31 trillion to fund.

    For some reason, Buhari could not finish establishing all the Development Commissions needed to run the country. But he managed to open the floodgate with NEDC. Development commissions have been flowing freely like the upper course of a river in the last two years. All the zones are covered. The South-south has another in addition to the NDDC. The zone will do thanksgiving for double or even multiple portions. The Southwest where there is Lagos State with an economy that ranks fifth on the African continent is also marginalised. The region is poorly developed and has not been adequately compensated for its contribution to the national revenue. Accordingly, it has been given a development commission to develop it and bring it to speed with other regions of the country like the North Central and North West.

    As you know, every state and local government demographically and geographically falls into a geo-political zone. Now that the zones have been separately and collectively reinvented to fend for themselves, what then is the function of government at all levels in the new scheme? From the design, the country can effectively run on the DCs without any other kind of government. Why are we then wasting time in dissolving Aso Rock Villa, the 36 Government Houses and the 774 local government headquarters? They have become superfluous in the new thinking. We can sell these buildings in an auction sale to highest bidders and raise good money to strengthen the finances of the DCs.

    Politics is driving development in Nigeria. When this happens, it leads to arrested development. There will be so much motion without movement and so many activities without achievements. This is what I mean by Deliberate Development of Underdevelopment. It is inexplicable as it tells of absolute negation of the human essence. Nothing underscores better the complete absence of sincerity purpose among policy makers than the ongoing national confusion called Development Commission. Erasing the confusion only requires the sincerity of allowing development to drive politics. Except in extreme situations where what is normative is tasked and overwhelmed and the call for extra efforts becomes imperative, development in this country can be effectively delivered through the existing channels under the Federal, State and Municipal governments.

    The attendant bureaucracies and the operational budgets of these so-called development commissions appear more important than the actual development of the zones in the overall calculation. Nigeria cannot display one good example where replication of basic government functions has achieved the desired results. For instance, 25 years after, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), has not concluded its intervention in the Niger Delta. The commission has remained an outpost for the dispensation of political patronage.
    Today, the basic functions of the Police Force have been spread across other agencies that were purportedly created to improve efficiency and tactical delivery. That has not happened. The Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) has not meant improved delivery in these specific areas. If anything, the EFCC has derailed into the political arm of policing. The commission is defined more by its arm-twisting tactics than it is defined by its tactical efficiency. The Road Safety Corps has not meant safer roads or better driving culture. These and many other extra agencies have come to burden public finances without adding corresponding value to public administration.

    The Federal Government, especially, has been administratively clueless. It has diminished into the proverbial incompetent workman that always picks quarrel with his tools. It thinks a problem that cannot be solved by an existing agency will automatically dissipate if lodged in a newly created agency. No process runs that way. The fixed factor remains fixed. The variable factors are however flipped to bring new outcomes. You do not build a new house because of a leaking roof. The roof is fixed and the house remains. That is the way to avoid the development of underdevelopment.

  • Open letter to Sheriff for shedding light – By Abraham Ogbodo

    Open letter to Sheriff for shedding light – By Abraham Ogbodo

    Dear Governor Sheriff,
    I have chosen to write instead of seeking to see you to deliver my message. The message is a bit urgent. It cannot wait for the protocols of your office. Don’t be offended by the way I have addressed you. As you know, in Warri, especially in our side of it, we don’t do too much protocol. It is either a senior man is Ose (father) or Big Bros. And it is either a senior woman is Malee (mother) or Big Sis. Against me, you are neither Ose nor Big Bros. But you are my Governor and nothing will take away anything from that. It remains constant. Back in Osubi, you are my neighbour. We were flowing steady before you left for Asaba, first for legislative duties before the beautiful migration to your current executive station. We still dey flow anyhow.

    Once, Ose Prof. Sam Oyovbaire had to refer my matter to you to handle. The boys in Okuokoko didn’t know me too well because I was still sojourning in Lagos. They were crossing red lines regarding the naming of Obomeyoma Close by Okpe Local Government. You had decisively stepped in to fix the matter. This was almost a decade ago. I still recollect your exact line when you called to say the boys had been briefed to dey their dey and strictly maintain their lane. “Bros, you would have called me first, instead of escalating this kind of small matter to Prof.’’

    It is like I am talking as if we have not crossed more paths since that engagement. Yes, we have. And the most significant and recent one is the operation of an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Ewu to care for the displaced indigenes of Okuama. Although that one is still an unfinished business which you must finish, it is not why I am writing you this letter.

    In short, let me go straight to the point. I am writing to thank you for signing the Delta State Electricity Bill into law last week. I don’t use to drink beer like that. I mean, I am not a beer drinker in the sense of beer drinking men in the bar. But I had sent for two bottles at once when the news hit me. I added a plate of fresh fish pepper soup to make it a complete package. The bill had been with you for some months and I was beginning to feel one kind. To me, it was the intending state law of the century and I couldn’t understand why the signing delayed till last week. But as they say, things may endure to either get better or get worse. I thank you for finally signing the bill into law.

    You see, Your Excellency, you may not understand why I am talking like this. I don’t even know how to tell you about my experience with public electricity in Ughelli and even Nigeria as a whole because it wasn’t any better in Lagos where I came from. My story, therefore, is the story of every Nigerian. I am sure your own story may not be too different in spite of the massive insulations offered by official paraphernalia. We are all victims of some set-ups called Electricity Distribution Companies and DISCOS for short. They are truly discotheque dancers who do their unconventional dancing at our expensive. But I will limit it to my experience with the one called Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC).

    As you already know, the Federal Government had woken up some time in 2005 with this fantasy that supply of public electricity would be better if what used to be NEPA or PHCN was dismantled into pieces. They called it privatisation and unbundling of the power sector and the hitherto Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) was accordingly unbundled into 18 successor companies including 11 electricity distribution companies of which BEDC is one. It was the new private company to distribute public electricity in the four states of Delta, Edo, Ondo and Ekiti. That was how we all became yoked with it.

    Your Excellency, I wasn’t part of the unbundling and so, I wouldn’t know the actual terms upon which the unviable bundle, in the first place, became unbundled into even more unviable pieces of companies. I have only been impacted negatively by the operations of the BEDC. I stand at the downstream end and from my stand point, I can say without fear of being contradicted, that BEDC exists only to guide us, and for an exorbitant fee called electricity bill, on how to generate and distribute our own electricity. Nothing more.

    Let me be more specific. Late last year, the distribution transformer in my area of town got bad. The fault was promptly reported at the BEDC office in Ughelli. Almost immediately, they generated a power consumption and payment analysis that returned a debt of N80 million, by way of unsettled bills, against us and insisted that until the debt was cleared, the fault would not be rectified. I was like, how? Why the ambushing? Why hadn’t there been a determined drive on the part of BEDC, before the fault happened, to recover its money? And where are the upscale households and companies in a lay-out of community folks living in their bungalows as landlords and tenants to consume this much power?

    It is a pattern Your Excellency. The BEDC and other Discos understand the helplessness of Nigerians. They know for sure that we are exposed not to the so-called market forces in a competitive economy, but a blood-sucking cabal of rent seekers that has everything, including government, going for it. They reap where they do not sow and nothing happens to them.

    We could not sustain any action against the BEDC. I had reached out to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) in Abuja. It listened but that was like going to the court in Nigeria where even what is obvious, would be required to be proved beyond reasonable and unreasonable doubts. Also, all straight-forward processes would be required to be proved beyond all technical limitations to avoid being ambushed by technicalities. Whatever NERC would do, and it has not been too known for taking hard decisions on DISCOS in support of consumers, would not assuage the pressing issue.

    To cut the long story short, Your Excellency, residents rallied and provided a new 500kva transformer. We paid sundry fees that were not receipted, and with I beg and the patience of a vulture, to get BEDC technicians to install the new transformer for us. We have also repaired the faulty transfer and working day and night to install same to separate the area into two transformer feeders.

    This is still hanging because we have not been able to provide the funding, in spite of our best efforts, for the contractor to conclude the process. Outside the transformer which was generously donated by one us, residents have so far raised about N11 million to achieve all the ancillary services and incidentals. And wait for this Your Excellency. Could you believe that to move forward with BEDC, we were whitemailed (some African scholars are saying we should not be using blackmail again in both verbal and written communication) into signing off these massive private investments as donations from us to BEDC?

    I don’t know who these scholars are, but they seem to believe that, there is a correlation between our being called black and all the dark, dark things, happening to us in this part of the world. It has been very frustrating sir in our area in Ughelli. To God who made me, If we had the guns, guts and the clout like those soldiers under Ikeja Disco, we would have stormed the Ughelli or Warri offices of the BEDC to beat sense into some of the staff. The BEDC is treating us anyhow as it likes. The faulty transformer and the entire distribution infrastructure, including aluminium conductors and concrete poles, that bring electricity into the area, were procured by us years ago. BEDC has done practically nothing for us outside collection of bills. It does not deserve its name.

    Yet, bad as it sounds, our situation is better. Are you surprised sir? Agbarha-Otor, a whole kingdom with about 30 satellite settlements and a functional university, has not had public electricity for almost a decade now. You are aware of this Your Excellency, and in fact, trying hard to work out a solution. Meanwhile, our wonderful John Player Disco dancer is patiently waiting in the background for all problems to be resolved and then resume its money collection ritual by way of baseless electricity bills to consumers. Is this fair to all parties, Your Excellency?

    I guess, you now understand why I am particularly interested in the state electricity law you have just signed. You do not have any way of knowing how relieved some of us are. Sir, I beg of you, don’t ever mix this beautiful endeavour with politics. Deploy the same pragmatism with which you have been handling the urban renewal scheme in Warri and elsewhere in the State. It shouldn’t be an open call to eat free ukodo . It requires utmost sincerity of purpose. The liberalisation of power generation, transmission and distribution is one big achievement that can be recorded for President Mohammadu Buhari. Just before he returned to Daura from Aso Rock, Buhari had okayed a law to terminate the grid hegemony in Nigeria. What you have done with the State Electricity Law is to key into the Electricity Act and free Deltans from the albatross called the national grid system.

    This is also saying that law is not definite performance. The real sense in all of this is in operationalising the law. Therefore, the expectation in the weeks and months ahead is for the proper regulatory and bureaucratic frameworks that will sound the whistle for effective investors to step in, to be created.

    Your Excellency, I don’t want this signing of this critical bill to end at the level of optics. The sweetness of this electricity law will not have Part Two like Nollywood movies, if you do a little more to move it from law to service. That is, to take it beyond mere aspiration and a declaration to a concrete discription. It will not take much to get to destination. Gas is everywhere in the state and creating ebbed power clusters to speak to the issues is more of a question of will than capacity and favourable conditions.

    With steady electricity, the private sector in Delta State will kick into life and its options shall become visible to all. Worrying to fix up every jobless youth in the state, that professes some measure of partisanship, into the governmental structure as Special Assistant, would become a thing of the past. There can never be a better demonstration of street credibility.

    Thanks and God bless you sir.

    Yours sincerely,
    Bros AB.

  • Let’s do apology letter to Buhari – By Abraham Ogbodo

    Let’s do apology letter to Buhari – By Abraham Ogbodo

    By Abraham Ogbodo

    We had accused President Muhammadu Buhari very wrongly. Without clear cut facts and evidence, we said he had an agenda to Fulanise Nigeria. Or let me put it that the facts and evidence against him were not tested to establish their admissibility. We just felt that putting only Fulanis or Fulani affiliated persons at the head of almost all the nation’s security agencies was in furtherance of an agenda. That is, an agenda to reopen the truncated Uthman Da Fodio Jihad and have it concluded by bringing the entire territory of Nigeria; from the Sahael to the coastlines under Fulani conquest and domination. It would be such that my Urhobo land with 24 kingdoms and kings would be collapsed into an emirate with one imperial emir that reported to the Sultan in Sokoto, in charge.

    Same way, Benin, Warri, Asaba and Agbor, for instance, would dissolve into emirates and instead of Oba, Olu, Asagba and Obi respectively, sitting on the thrones of their forebears in these kingdoms, it would be emirs and Alhaji this and that. The beautiful kingdoms in the Southwest parading varied kingship titles would be lumped into a uniform description. The time-honoured title of the Alafin of Oyo would change to Emir of Oyo and the immutable Ooni of Ife would follow suit. It was a most dangerous prospect and part of the anti-Buhari campaign back then, was to stop this from happening.

    That was the charge. In Nigeria, there is a big group called the Hausa-Fulani. This is just for purposes of ethnic identification. It is even much larger than that conceptually and geographically. Other Nigerians see all Hausa speaking areas of Northern Nigeria as being bound by a common interest. That interest is to dominate the polity and the political economy. The fact that, beyond the Niger/ Benue confluence to the far North, there are hundreds of ethnic nationalities and the core group called Fulani, are less than eight million human beings, does not affect the perception. Every group, from the Plateau and Benue through Adamawa, Borno, Gombe and back to Taraba, Nasarawa and Niger, including even Kogi and Kwara, is equally yoked. It is only now that the rich are also crying everywhere in the North that people are beginning to see the difference between the Fulani man, the Hausa man and other men in the vast North. It looks like while some are herders others are farmers.

    Meanwhile, here are some of the supporting facts and pieces of evidence to reasonably allege that President Buhari was on a continuation of the Sokoto Jihad that started in 1804 and ended in 1808. Under him, the heads of the Army and Air force were Hausa-Fulani. So were the heads of the police and secret police otherwise known as the Department of State Security (DSS). Other strategic areas of state operations like the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFFC) which has morphed over the years from an anti-corruption agency to an attack dog in the hands of the central government, the Customs and Excise Department, Immigration and Civil Defence were headed by Hausa-Fulani.

    It is the way of governance in Nigeria and nobody was particularly disturbed by it. It is usually a turn by turn arrangement in which the incumbent plundered the common wealth and reworked existing state structures to give advantage to his group. People only got agitated when a correlation somehow evolved between how herders operated unchallenged; killing and maiming farmers and others across the land, and the reality of the national security architecture under Buhari. No arrest, prosecution and conviction of killer herdsmen were ever recorded. Instead, it was one Sunday Igboho who saw how his people in Oyo were being killed by herdsmen and rose stoutly in defence that was branded a criminal that must be liquidated at all costs by combined federal forces. Even when the defender backed off and left his people to be slaughtered by armed herdsmen, he did not have respite. He was traced, tracked and fixed in Republic of Benin.

    There was also Nnamdi Kanu in the Southeast who sought and still seeking clarifications on the many aspects of the Nigerian Federation. The man has not known peace since he started asking too many forbidden questions. Questions like, why his Ibo people have not been fully integrated into the Nigerian system more than 55 years after the end of the civil? Kanu and Igboho basis the same question, but in different ways. However, while Igboho, since the advent of Tinubu, has been repositioned to ask more questions, Kanu is in the gulag and still searching for explanations for his ordeal. He has been in detention since 2021 when he was forcefully abducted from Kenya into Nigeria. People are saying his only offence is that he is an Ibo man. It is like asking him why he chose to be born into Nigeria as an Ibo instead of an ethnic identity that offers better advantages and privileges.

    But that is not why we here today. We are here to reiterate that when President Mohammadu Buhari left on May 29, 2023, there was some joy in the land. The relief that, the alleged Uthman Dan Fodio incarnate, bent on reopening and finishing the truncated Islamist agenda of 1804, was gone for good. A new Pharaoh who did not know Yusuf and his people had entered and the herders’ carnage would soon stop. This is more than 22 months after Buhari’s exit and nothing has even abated not to talk of stopping. The killings have heightened and it has become imperative to search for other reasons, outside Buhari, to explain the current situation. From Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina through Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Benue,Plateau, Kogi to Ekiti, Ondo, Edo and Delta, it has been an unbroken story of bloodletting. People are killed without qualms as if human life has become mosquito life in Nigeria.

    Not even in the jungle does that degree of mindless killing take place. If it does, both prey and predator will be endangered. The lion kills when it is hungry. It does not kill for sports or for keeps. In Nigeria, we are killing for the fun of it. We kill for sports, the same way the Nazis dispatched millions of Jews in a Final Solution scheme. Bandits and terrorists would storm a sleeping community and in the ensuing melee, they would aim at fleeing residents and take them out like game. And nothing happens thereafter. One estimate puts the deaths at about 200,000 since terrorism, banditry and kidnapping gained notoriety in Nigeria.

    It has become so bad that Buhari himself is endangered in Daura, Katsina State. He now lives more in Kaduna. He is helpless in the face of an un-abating existential onslaught. Yet when he held together all the variables, we had attributed the situation to his unwillingness to combine the right factors to achieve definite results.  I can now understand why the sages say history is the best judge. The true judgement has come out after only two years of history. If we had insisted on stoning Buhari to death for supporting the Jihadists invasion of Nigerian territories, we would have killed an innocent man. Now, the security architecture has been redesigned with a new localisation of the power points. The new Commander-In-Chief is not a Fulani Champion. The Service Chiefs and other security heads are fairly localised within a geo-ethnic zone. Why haven’t the killings stopped?

    This is why I am suggesting that a delegation should be sent to Daura or wherever Buhari is, to say sorry to him on behalf of all of us. That we had accused him wrongly for encouraging murderous Fulani herders to take over our land. It was not Buhari that failed after all. It was the Nigerian system that failed. Nothing appears to add up for good. The big defence budgets for years have not added up to an operationally efficient military that can combat effectively the problem at hand. Policing at all levels has become official extortion and any cross-border criminal who is fairly open-handed at the borders can move in and out of Nigeria with the same ease that President Tinubu jets in and out of France on official and working visits to review his two years performance as the President and Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

    Seriously, it is like something requires to be exorcised from the Nigerian system for things to work properly. Buhari did not know how to perform this surgery. For eight years, his media aides sustained the lie about his competence to carry out a successful surgery without endangering the life of the patient. President Tinubu has also been beating about the bush while killers roam the real bushes to kill citizens. Like Emperor Nero, Tinubu looks for whom to blame for the fire in Nigeria. He has detailed some aides to look for those to blame when there is fire. That is what Bayo Onanuga and others in his communication team do for him. When there is no ready scapegoat to carry the cross, his handlers would speak grammar to a situation that requires action. They think rationalisation is specific performance.

    On the body part of Nigeria that needs to be cut off for happiness to endure in the land, a suggestion has been made. Some people have said the cancerous tissue troubling the anatomy is the leadership. Settle this and the body-polity will become healthy forever.

  • Okuama: One year after the killings – By Abraham Ogbodo

    Okuama: One year after the killings – By Abraham Ogbodo

    It will be one year today, March 14, since the unfortunate killing of 17 soldiers, including four officers, at a location along the Forcados River in Delta State. While the point about the actual killers of the servicemen remains hanging, the Army, in the aftermath, pinned the killing down to persons in Okuama, a fishing community in Ughelli South local government area of Delta State. The army explained that the 17 soldiers were on a mission to settle a land dispute between Okuama, an Urhobo community and the neighbouring Ijaw community of Okoloba but that all 17 men were killed in cold blood on that fateful day by persons from Okuama. This sparked off a chain of catastrophic events, the end of which is still not in sight 365 days after.

    The army’s claim of a peace mission that went awry did not sound too probable across board. Doubts were raised. In the first place, soldiers are not primed to make peace. They are created to fight wars, especially wars to repel external aggression and protect the fatherland. Even at that, soldiers do not go about fighting their own wars. They fight the wars created for them by politicians. But when the time comes to discuss or make peace after a war, soldiers are kept far from the discussions. Politicians sit alone at the table to hammer out the terms of peace. That is the way it is happening right now in Ukraine/Russia and Gaza/Israel. Soldiers will only be invited by politicians if need be, to enforce the terms of the negotiated peace deal.

    Put differently, peace mission is not the same as peace keeping mission. One is a civil engagement and happens before the other which is a military assignment with an underlying kinetic approach. While nothing should justify the killing of Nigerian soldiers by Nigerians, the 17 men and officers of the Army, killed on March 14 last year, were not on a peace keeping mission. By the Army’s own admission, they were on a mission to discuss peace or peace-making mission. Peace is made before it is kept or enforced by deterrence which soldiers can do.

    Let’s put it into context. Even though they are neighbouring communities, Okuama and Okoloba are in different local government areas of Delta State. The former is in Ughelli South Local Government Area and the later in Bomadi Local Government Area. But neither of the leaderships in the two council areas was involved or even aware of the Army’s mission to make peace in the area. Also, the police formations in the jurisdiction, namely the divisions in Bomadi and Otor-Jeremi, as well as the Area office in Ughelli, were not accommodated in the scheme. The Department of State Service (DSS), that is, the Nigerian secret police was in the dark of the peace mission. Even the Delta State Government with all the human and institutional structures for such civic engagements, never knew that the 181 Amphibious Battalion in Bomadi, in a unique show of its capabilities, was moving officers and men across water for the settlement of a land dispute in Okuoma. To say the least, the army acted alone when it was most necessary and even mandatory for itto act in concert with civil authorities.

    Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen. Chris Musa added a dimension that should ordinarily refract the narrative and remove the heat from Okuama. But that did not quite happen. He explained that a certain Amagben from Igbomoturu, a Community in Southern Ijaw local government area in neighbouring Bayelsa State was behind the death of the 17 service men. His revelation however came after the army had rolled over Okuama and reduced the once bubbling community to rubbles, leaving nothing standing except the Anglican Church. All the same, the lead offered by the CDS was followed by soldiers on ground and water to extend the unmitigated pain to Igbomoturu. When the smoke cleared, the authorities in Yenagoa quantified the loss as 20 deaths and many destroyed houses.

    As a matter of fact, the facts of the Okuama tragic story are not too complex. They are fairly straight forward and easy to understand by quarters that should understand them. And here is a recap. There was a very heinous crime of the killing of 17 men and officers of the Nigerian Army on March 14, 2024 by yet to established killers. The army however alleges that the crime was committed by persons from Okuama and in a reprisal on March 15, 2024, destroyed the community and rendered the people homeless. The army became army of occupation and stayed put in Okuama for about 40 days before they retreated following interventions from high quarters.

    Instead, what have appeared really complex, are the procedures of the case. The crime remains murder as defined in the provisions of Chapter 27 of the Criminal Code. The procedures for the determination and punishment for murder are all contained in the Criminal Code. The summary is that murder, as in all crimes, is between the Nigerian State and the defendant. Crime, technically, is committed against the state and not against individuals or institutions. At the very best, person or institution, against whom the crime is committed or who bears directly the consequences of the criminal act or omission would only be invited by the prosecution as a witness. It is the police and the attorney-general that prosecute criminals. There is no private crime anywhere in the criminal justice system in Nigeria and in fact elsewhere in the whole wide world.

    It means, effectively, that the military authorities have been seeking justice outside the law. This kind of thing is called ‘self help’ in law. It does not enrich the jurisprudence of any jurisdiction. It diminishes it. It should be known also that if the military is not dealing with its own matter, among its own people and according to its own rule, it has no authority whatsoever under a democracy to declare any citizen wanted. In the Okuama matter, the Army has acted as if it is a republic within the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It has declared perceived criminals wanted without a police report of investigation. It has investigated without making public the report of its investigation. It has arrested and detained without recourse to the court.

    Not only that, the Army refused blatantly to honour an invitation to appear before the House of Reps ad-hoc Committee that looked into the Okuoma matter. The soldiers were just bent on doing things their own way. They felt and still feel that the gravity of the crime and their arising grievances are enough justification for their serial procedural breaches. No civilised system runs that way. The difference between murder and assassination is in the profile of the target. Thus, even the assassination (instead of murder) of a sitting president will still be determined within the relevant provisions of the Criminal and Penal Codes. No other law applies under a democracy. I am saying therefore that after one full year, the time has come for the army to backtrack and follow laid-down procedures to close the Okuama matter for good.

    In the wake of the military offensive in Okuama, persons suspected by the Army to be connected with the killing of the 17 soldiers, were declared wanted by it. These included the king of Ewu-Urhobo Kingdom, HRM, Clement Ikolo. Okuama is one of the satellite towns of Ewu-Urhobo kingdom and the specific charge against King Ikolo, I guess, is allowing Okuama to be part of his kingdom. How is that his fault? The king, who didn’t want to look like a fugitive from the law, had voluntarily surrendered himself to an army formation in Asaba, Delta State. He was to remain in military custody, without an enabling court order, for 22 days. Others on the wanted list were Akevwru Daniel Omotegboro who is same as Amagben, Prof Arthur Ekpekpo, Andaowei Denis Bakiri, Igoli Ebi (the only female amongst them), Sinclair Oliki and Reuben Baru.

    It would be interesting to say a thing or two about Prof. Arthur Ekpekpo. He teaches physics at the Delta State University, Abraka. He is the former Dean of the Faculty of Science of that university. By the known social and material dialectics, Prof Ekpekpo is cast at a social station that should distance him far from the maddening crowd. But he was spat at by the spitting cobra that bit the toe of King Ikolo. He happens to be doing the right community service at the wrong time. He is the President-general of Ewu-Urhobo Kingdom and also an indigene of Okuama. Both are non extenuating facts in the understanding of the Army. The Prof is complicit and stands guilty until he is allowed some space by the military to prove his innocence or reinforce his culpability either in a court-martial or a conventional court as the case maybe.

    The army, which alone, knows the murderers it is looking for, had plucked out Prof from hiding in August last year. It expanded the list of wanted persons to include more persons from Okuama. They are Chief Belvis Adogbo, Denis Okugbaye, Denis Amalaka, James Oghoroko and Mabel Owhemu, all of whom were taken at different locations and dates between August 17 and 20 last year. Two of these persons are no longer in army custody. James Oghoroko had a permanent reprieve when he died in custody in December last year. He was the President-general of Okuama community. Death was allegedly knocking for Denis Okugbaye when he was released on compassionate grounds last December to Senator Ede Dafinone, who represents Delta Central in the Senate. The rest are still where they are – Bori Camp in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

    More worrisome is the impression of institutional helplessness in a democracy. The police cannot assert itself against the military and say clearly that investigation and prosecution of crime is not a military task. The House of Reps did not issue warrant of arrest of the Army Chief when the Army refused to appear before the House committee on the Okuama matter. The Minister of Justice and Attorney-general of the Federation (AGF), Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), who likes to see treason in everything, did not see treason when armed soldiers stopped a sitting Governor from accessing a part of the state he governs. He has also not shouted treason over serial procedural breaches of the military or act to compel the Army to stay within bounds in the Okuama matter.

    As at today, about three suits bordering on the enforcement of fundamental human rights are lying in court against the Army. These are ordinarily matters of urgent attention, but nothing definite, outside announcement of postponements, has been pronounced by the court to compel the military to act appropriately. Some of these processes were filed since April last year.

    Last Tuesday, the Member representing Ughelli North, Ughelli South and Udu Federal Constituency in the House of Reps, Hon. Francis Waive moved a motion for the House to urge the Nigerian Army to: 1. release the report of its investigation into the Okuama matter; 2. release the detained innocent members of the community or charge them to court; 3. rebuild the homes destroyed by its men in the wake of the incident and 4. mandate the House Committee on Defence to ensure compliance and report to the House within four weeks. The motion was unanimously passed. It is something to cheer about in the matter at hand.

    All said, my appeal is for the military not to be consumed by rage. It should seize this parliamentary window created by the representative of the people of Okuama to backtrack into honour. Whatever is the magnitude of the injury, yielding to democratic processes in seeking redress strengthens the institution of the military more than it weakens. We are in an age of information. Others are watching us. The current posture of the Army concerning the Okuama matter is bad public relations for the country. The Commander-in-Chief should be interested.

    Meanwhile, plenty thanks should go the Delta State Government that stepped in with an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp to coordinate relief efforts to help the unfortunate victims of the Okuama crisis. The camp which operated for seven months (between May 2 and December 31, 2024), achieved the short-term purpose of supporting the displaced people of Okuama to recover from the trauma of the military invasion and reposition for normal life. The long term agenda of returning the community to baseline conditions calls for the participation of all stakeholders including the Federal Government, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), national and international donor agencies, good spirited individuals and the Delta State Government.

  • The gospel according to St. Badamasi – By Abraham Ogbodo

    The gospel according to St. Badamasi – By Abraham Ogbodo

    By Abraham Ogbodo

    I guess there is nothing more to discuss about the IBB’s book. It is now eight days since the book, titled: A Journey In Service, was presented in Abuja. The reviews are as varied as they are many. We have had more reviewers than the pages of the 420-page book. Anyone that can read and write and who also witnessed, as an adult, the years of IBB as President of Nigeria, that is, between 1985 and 1993, has a perspective to present regarding the book. He or she is a potential reviewer of the IBB book.

    Engineers, doctors, teachers, lawyers, diplomats, politicians and some enlightened traders have been running commentaries. The most outbursts, understandably, have come from journalists, many of whom experienced, first-hand, the circumstances recounted in the book. Google and internet access providers must have earned more money from readers of the reviews than what the publisher or author ever hopes to earn from readers of the hard book itself. The presidential library bazaar was a different plot. I will come to it later in the course of this outing.

    In all, it has been a big literary fanfare. The content has made every commentator an expert in textual interpretation. I cannot remember the last time that the content of a book, written in English, attracted so many interpretations, as if written in Greek. In searching for what was on the writer’s mind, some have remained with the text, others shifted to the subtext and yet many others have created contexts to load imputations. At least, one beautiful thing has been achieved. IBB has managed to direct attention to written content in Nigeria, where reading engagements and mental inquisitions outside smart phones, have become such a burden among old and young people.

    I hear, the book sells for N40,000 a copy. Jokes apart, that is so much to spend on a textbook that cannot easily fulfil the taxonomies of scholarship and be appropriated into any discipline in our higher school system. The closest would be political science. Yet, except by an extensive drive down for specific meaning, personal stories of life do not strengthen into hard positions in academics. This is not to say the book is valueless. It may not exactly go for a tale told by an idiot that is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The stuff can still pass for an interesting story book on military leadership in Nigeria even though portions of it, from what can be gleaned from the avalanche of reviews, may read like ‘Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves in The Arabian Night’.

    I have another good reason not to bother about the book. While the theme remains the military career of General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, the area of real impact is the annulment of the presidential election held on June 12, 1993 by him. I did not only witness but participated in the events that gave June 12, 1993, its character in Nigeria’s recent political history. As a Staff Writer with The African Guardian Magazine back then, I was part of the official chroniclers of that piece of history. Lagos was the epicentre of the protests that followed the annulment of the election which was won by the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Chief M.K.O Abiola. The city was on a complete lock-down. All commercial activities were at a complete standstill. It was like a war zone where fatalities were normative. Movement through the barricades and bonfires in the streets required the special skills of a war reporter.

    Only protesters enjoyed the privilege of unhindered movement from one point to another. You were instantly branded an enemy with attendant consequences, which could include being beaten to coma or death, if, instead of a rough-looking protester, you appeared dressed for the office. To move around therefore, you must be kitted for street combat. Movement didn’t also mean going about in vehicles or on auto-bikes. I trekked from my own part of town in Daleko-Ejigbo to The Guardian office on the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway on a daily basis while the protests lasted. That is a distance of about five kilometres. To step forth and arrive safely at destination, I would wear a pair of trousers under an unbuttoned flying shirt that showed I was fully out and ready to chest the consequences of any police action. With a big stick in one hand, as if going to club down the enemies of June 12 in wherever they were, the picture was complete. I had right of passage through the charged streets to Rutam House to do my work. The protests would have dissipated by night and it was much easier returning home from the office.

    The Guardian itself was taken out of circulation for 14 months (between August 1994 and October 1995) as a consequence of its tough position on the senseless annulment of the election. This was the same period that I picked skills in buying and selling to avoid slow death by starving. I had escaped sudden death in the streets from police strayed bullets as I navigated through battle frontlines to the office in the heat of the June 12 protests. I pushed deep into yam producing communities in Oke-owo in Oyo State to bring truck loads of yams for sale at Mile 12 Market in Lagos. The overall experience of that episode was captured in my article: The Reporter As A Yam Seller published in The Guardian after its reopening on October 1, 1995. I cannot remember the specific edition.

    The proscription wasn’t the worst experience for The Guardian in the June 12 debacle. After IBB had stepped aside on August 26, 1993, and Chief Ernest Shonekan whom he brought in as replacement, shoved aside on November 17, 1993, the one that came next entered with a suicidal determination to crush all obstacles for his own survival. He was Gen. Sani Abacha who died in office on June 8, 1998; just four days to the fifth anniversary of June 12. Somehow, The Guardian Publisher and my big brother from Agbarha-Otor Kingdom, Mr Alex Uruemuesiri  (good character) Ibru, was marked as one of the obstacles that must be cleared for Abacha to reign supreme. Abacha had thought making Mr Alex Ibru a cabinet member would soften the anti-regime stance of The Guardian. That did not happen as Alex Ibru himself pleaded helplessness regarding the issue. He exited the government but was marked for liquidation by Abacha.

    Abacha’s hit man, Sgt. Rogers had not been reported to fire in vain. Except he didn’t fire, his targets did not survive to recount the encounter. But on this day, February 2, 1996, he did fire and fled, without hindrance, the Falomo Bridge Ikoyi scene of the attack, thinking the matter had been settled. Perhaps, for the first time, in his demonic operations, Sgt. Rogers was cheated by his target. Mr. Alex Ibru survived to recount the encounter. Mr Ibru fled the country and only re-entered after the death of Abacha on June 8, 1998. That day remains green in my memory. It was the same day I bought my first car; a 1978 crafted Mercedes 200 straight engine. I had real difficulties taking the car from the Mile 2 car mart to my new location on Akinbaye Street in Isolo area of Lagos. The roads had been taken over by crowds carrying mock coffins to celebrate and mourn the passing of General Abacha.

    As you can see, I do not need any tutorials by IBB on June 12, 1993. I was part of the story. The other thing is that everybody that has commented on the IBB book is angry with the author for telling lies. How? The man has told his version. And I have just given abridged version of mine here. All witnesses should come out to tell theirs. People are even angry with IBB for playing safe with Abacha. Really? Are they saying Abacha didn’t exhibit enough signs to be dreaded by all except God? Here was a man who exercised power maximally and did anything to defend his hold on power. While Babangida mostly engaged on good terms and with a view to winning over opponents, Abacha engaged to terminate opposition. He did it with Generals Olusegun Obasanjo and Musa Shehu Yar’Adua. The former was actually waiting to die after the death of the latter when fate rearranged the chart and made it the turn of Abacha to die. This precipitated the uncommon grace that moved Obasanjo from prison to the presidency in 1999.

    In the endless battle of life, there is a time to beat a tactical retreat to stem a strategic collapse. I guess that was what IBB did regarding Abacha. He retreated to avoid absolute capitulation. Wise men take flight to fight again another day. They do not obstinately push on when danger outweighs hope. Of the key actors in the June 12 high drama, IBB appears the only one standing to do the final curtain call after the diabolic performance. Others are missing in action. And so, IBB is standing alone in the cast line-up to talk as he likes. It shows some wisdom if you ask me. Overall, he has performed very well to earn his special name: The Evil Genius.

    Finally, on the crowd and the billions that rolled in at the book launch, there is really nothing much to say. The scene, you may call it obscenity if you like, is a validation of my narration. IBB is a human relations expert. He is loaded with emotional intelligence and knows how to cut deals with human beings. Did you listen to the testimonies of the people, including Dangote and President Tinubu? They said IBB had a hand in the very successful men and women of today. IBB had more professors and academic doctors in his government than the most established university of that time. Even now, these big brains are ready to do anything and everything for IBB. Who, then, is the fool amongst us, if I may ask?

    I will name names on another day. For today, I want to state, without fear of being contradicted, that IBB in his hey days issued bankable political IOUs across board. In simple management and accounting, all IOUs must be retired. The billions that rolled in at his book launch the other day are part of the retirement of IOUs previously issued. The process continues. Here is a man who left office 32 years ago exerting that degree of gravity from his wheelchair as if he has become the centre of the earth. We have every reason to work at things and wait patiently for Nigeria to reset and change character. It is only then that we can muster the ammunition to tackle the evil geniuses among us.

  • Life after death for the two grand old men – By Abraham Ogbodo

    Life after death for the two grand old men – By Abraham Ogbodo

    THE headline seems misleading. It reads as if I am set for some esoteric excursion into spiritism to unravel hidden facts. The capacity to do that is not among my unique selling points. I am simply here to say that a life of impact does not die just like that. It lives on to ultimately answer the ancient quest for immortality in a different manner. Pa Obafemi Awolowo died on May 9, 1987, at the age of 78. By same date this year, it will be 38 years since the sage left us. But his name has remained with us and persons yet unborn as at the time of his so-called death, are very familiar with him. This is in spite of the criminal exclusion of history from the curriculum of basic and secondary education in Nigeria by the authorities.

    They understand that Awo is the reference point in good leadership in the nation. In the Southwest, he has remained a moral and leadership compass. Stranded politicians reach out to the compass, called Pa Awo, to navigate through difficult political terrains to safe destinations. And that has been the small problem also. There has not been due diligence to separate butterflies from birds. And so, every Bola, Yemi, Ayo, Abiodun, etc, who shouts Awo passes for a disciple of the great sage. Some have even promoted themselves to Apostles without apostolic content. Politicians have just come to understand that the shortest route to a political Eldorado, is to proclaim the discipleship of Pa Awo. And they have been calling and even shouting that high name in vain. Mere identification with the name earns instant marks on the political score board.

    There is life in his dress accessories that he left behind. There is so much life in his signature round velvet cum woollen cap. There is also life in his circular eye-glasses. Some people who claim his mentorship have recreated these items in their sartorial turn-outs to strengthen the impression. Ability to recreate the Awo persona in any way possible has become a winning formula in political contest in the South West. This is all because the life of Pa Awo has continued after his physical death in 1987. This is my understanding of life after death. It is not in the mystery of tracking the spent entity in his original form to some other location outside or within planet earth.

    Neither is it in the belief of the indestructibility of the soul being after physical expiration. Only people with monumental impact like Pa Awo have defied the limitations of death to continue to live on. The life they have lived after death is even larger. That is the point I am making here.

    There are a few parallels in Urhobo land; at least within the context of that geo-ethnic space. There is Chief Mukoro Mowoe, reputed as the founder of the modern Urhobo nation. His efforts birthed the pan-Urhobo socio-cultural group, Urhobo Progress Union (UPU) in 1931. Chief Mowoe coordinated the movement for Urhobo self-help, culminating in the short run, in some landmark achievements including the establishment of Urhobo College, Effurun in 1948 and the building of a Government College in Ughelli in 1945. In the long run, the Urhobo have come from almost point zero to assume leading positions in business and academics. There is also Olorogun Michael Ibru, a business colossus, who is however, defined more by his excellent character than his stupendous wealth among the Urhobo.

    We can also add Chief Demas Akpore, a man who chose to forgo all the attendant privileges of a Master’s Degree in Classics as at 1958, and relocated to his village that had no electricity, good access road and potable water, to found Orogun Grammar School Orogun in 1966 to nurture future great men and women. The line-up is almost inexhaustible but just to highlight: retired Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG), Marvel Akpoyibo, former MD of Seplat Petroleum, Dr. Austin Avuru, the Vice Chancellor of Denis Osadebe University, Asa-ba, Professor Ben Oghojafor and retired military ophthalmolo-gist, Brig-General Anthony Okpobrisi. Like Pa Awo, these men and a few others in Urhobo land have been living long after their death on account of the sheer impact of their advent on planet earth.

    Why am I teaching on the pages of a newspaper, the history that has been prohibited in classrooms? Yes, it has become necessary to explain the passing of two elder statesmen who died three days of each other. They are Pa Ayo Adebanjo, leader of the pan-Yoruba group, Afenifere, and Pa Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, leader of Pan Delta Forum (PANDEF). The former died on February 14, 2025 at age 96 and the later on February 17 at age 97. In fact, the ink with which sympathisers wrote messages in the condolence register at the Lagos home of Pa Adebanjo had not dried when another register was opened at Pa Clark’s home in Abuja to record condolence messages. They died at 96 and 97 in a country where life expectancy is put below 60 years. And so, they lived very well and also died very well.

    In the ensuing messages, no sympathiser is writing about the wealth, investments, buildings, etc, the two old men left behind. Everyone, including pretenders, is pained by the loss of these two oases in the desert of national decadence. People are even saying it was not time for the men who were almost a century old to die. Agreed, there is a time to be born and a time to die. But just when would have been appropriate, as demanded in the Book of Ecclesiastes, for these two old timers to time-out? We think it was not time for them to die because others have refused to run their part of the national race. And so, after finishing theirs, Pa Adebanjo and Pa Clark had nobody to take over the batten. By the records; 96 and 97 years, they had actually covered extra distance and time waiting for relievers that didn’t show up.

    That was unfair. Life does not operate that way. Either in the divine or mundane scheme, there is equity and responsibility.

    People must be made to play their roles. Even Apostle Paul finished his race and left the field for Silas and Timothy to continue. And so, the national question that requires urgent answer this moment, is not this true federalism that has become a cheap anthem among pretenders. It is the dearth of good men to do good things. Once the issue of good men and women is guaranteed, no further questions, including the quest for equity through a good constitution, shall subsist. The one, who rode on these cheap sentiments of seeking to cure a faulty federal structure to the pinnacle, has remained insulated in his maximum habitat called Aso Rock Villa. He is now doing as if the trouble with Nigeria is over and the rest of us talking are the real trouble makers. As it were, the character, competence and courage to act in good conscience were never present in him in the first place. It was all a scheme to feed an expansive ego and greed.

    No actor likes to play by the script of justice in Nigeria. Once put on stage, every political actor invents his or her own lines and stage business to circumvent the central purpose. The ordinary people cannot just comprehend the degree of wickedness in high places and how and why same is sustained forever in spite of efforts to cause a change. After conquering wealth and fame, King Solomon in moments of deep reflection, dismissed his great conquests, including 700 wives and 300 concubines, as multiplicity of nothingness. “Vanity upon vanity is vanity.” In the journey of life, everyman and woman too has two priced possessions. These are his name and his soul.

    At death, he leaves behind one and goes with the other. His activities will either nourish or starve his soul. While a nourished soul connects with God for a place in heaven, a starved soul creates its own orbit in an unending cycle of perdition. At least, this is the perspective of Christian theology. And I am a Christian.

    It follows also that a well nourished soul leaves a good name behind and a starved soul leaves behind a bad name.

    It translates to double portions of acclamation or damnation as the case may be. The nourished soul enjoys endorsement here and in the hereafter and it is absolute condemnation in both contexts for the starved soul. In cloaking the subject of economics with existentialist flavour, John Maynard Keynes noted that, in the very long run, we would all be dead. Nobody lives forever.

    The real achievers are those who die and still live on. Those who die and black out never really lived. They only stayed to promote consumption and ostentation. Their place on earth is finite and their place in hell is eternal.

    From what has been said so far about these two elders that passed, it is obvious they shall experience very robust life on earth after death. Something may endure for good or bad. Both men lived very long even by the most ambitious scale of life expectancy. Yet the people still wanted them to stay longer as if they, in real sense, still had more points to prove.

    Pa Ayo Adebanjo and Pa Edwin Clark finished well according to popular verdict. Vox Populi, vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God. Both have departed with nourished souls and in a blaze of glory. Good enough, they are both Christians and so their double portions are ensured here on earth and there in heaven on account of the life they lived on earth.

  • Still on Oshiomhole’s sound bites – By Abraham Ogbodo

    Still on Oshiomhole’s sound bites – By Abraham Ogbodo

    By Abraham Ogbodo

    I was saying last week that Senator Adam Oshiomhole did more than pinning down retired generals to the lucrative business of illegal mining of solid minerals in the country. He also spoke to serving military generals who had visited the Senate in search of ways and means to have more money to do their work of defending the territorial integrity of the country. In a nutshell, Oshiomhole confronted head-on the totality of the military institution. It is not a very wise thing to do in Nigeria. But he did it. I am sure some of his family members and very close friends would have told him so too. That in Nigeria, whether under civil or military rule, no ‘bloody civilian’ talks anyhow to top military brass. Instinctively, a few of them would have advised him to dissolve a while from visibility for the tension to dissipate.

    It was the same way I was told to relocate to the village after my appearance on Arise TV last April. The tragic incident of the killing of 17 soldiers including four officers around Okuama, a fishing Urhobo community on the bank of the Forcados River in Delta State was on the front burner of national discourse. The sympathy, understandably, rested with the Nigerian Army. Even in real combat, such a number would be considered too high to fall in one swoop. Emotions were high. The arising commentaries were therefore more sentimental than they were logical. Every commentator, including even the President, asked for the perpetrators of the heinous crime to be fished out at all costs, surprisingly not by police men but soldiers, to face the law. It was like the C-in-C giving a wild-cat order for the army to move into the scene of crime, which had been pinned down to Okuama to do and undo.

    The soldiers were in obvious rage. The desire to avenge the killing of their men and officers in their own way was strong. In the circumstance, there was inadequate processing of the events that culminated in the unfortunate killings to properly place culpability. And so, my point that the 181 Amphibious Battalion in Bomadi breached its own  operational procedure to have deployed its entire strategic team for a civil mission without adequate tactical cover and the collaboration of the political leaderships, namely the State Government and the two council areas of Bomadi and Ughelli South where the warring communities of Okoloba and Okuoma are located, came as a bolt from the blues. I emphatically stated that while the killing of servicemen under any circumstance shall forever remain condemnable, the army should be humble and sincere enough to state all the dimensions. Almost immediately, the Chief of Defence Staff, Lt. General Chris Musa emerged on national television with the angle of one General Endurance Amagbein as being the mastermind of the killing. This redirected the kinetic efforts momentarily from Okuoma to Igbomorotu in Southern Ijaw local government area in Bayelsa State where about 20 persons were reportedly killed and many houses razed by invading soldiers in search for the new target.

    What am I saying? I am saying that the Armed Forces are a creation of law – the Constitution and the Armed Forces Act. This places an obligation on them to operate within the law especially under a democratic dispensation. They cannot do and undo. In a democracy, even their own special trial, called Court Marshal, is not final. It is subject to judicial review. Decisions reached in such quasi judicial set-up can only remain binding if such decisions are not further tested in a court of competent jurisdiction by affected persons. It is the reason, for instance, that Chief Femi Falana (SAN) has been neck deep in the matter regarding some 70 soldiers who were convicted of mutiny and dismissed from the army.

    That is, when soldiers themselves turn victims of their own arbitrariness, they look up to civil society for help. In my days as Editor, I was inundated with requests for media assistance by, especially middle-level officers, who fell on the wrong side of military court marshal. I would detail reporters to play up the issues in the court of public opinion to assist their cases.  A moment that has remained evergreen in my memory was the day that late Admiral August Aikhomu sought frantically to speak with me. This was about 1996 or 1997. The telecom revolution called GSM had not happened in Nigeria. I was a Senior Political Correspondent.  I returned from the field to be told that Admiral Aikhomu had been calling and dropped a number with which I could reach him back. I had previously met him in his Apapa, Lagos home to propose an advertorial package to mark his 60th or so birthday anniversary.

    But he was not calling to further to seal or reject the advertorial deal. His time in government had passed. Late General Sani Abacha who sat on the saddle was not pretentious as to how he wanted his own show to run. He voted to be a maximum leader and nothing less. On this day, the whole Admiral Augustus Aikhomu was persistently calling a small boy like me, as if we had become mates, because some security boys were playing hide and seek game with his Green Passport at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos. He could not fly out because he was prevented from doing so.

    Until August 26, when that historic ‘step aside’ announcement was made, Admiral Aikhomu was Vice to the only Military President Nigeria has had, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB). He was the same man that was calling me to do something in the media to redirect Abacha’s attack dogs off his back. It is all to say that the military may create its barracks, barricades and rules of engagement to enforce some advantages in the short run. But in the long run, it cannot sustain an exclusivity that will make it stand beyond reproach and a common humanity in the scheme of things.

    Today, we are in a democracy where all questions, no matter how tough, are expected to be asked and answered. Accordingly, Senator Oshiomhole chose, the other day, to ask serving military officers, after finishing with their retired counter-parts, tough questions on the floor of the Senate. As I said earlier, the officers had gone to the Senate to ask for more money for the armed forces. Oshiomhole didn’t get even simple answers in return. In fact, his fellow Senators including Senate President Godswill Akpabio pretended not to have heard him. They made it seem as if Oshiomhole was talking nonsense. First, what he thought was a beautiful motion; his call for increased legislative oversight of the three branches of the armed forces – Army, Navy and Air Force – was defeated without even a debate. The motion was not actually seconded. It was dead on arrival.

    But, instead of backing down, Oshiomhole switched into the comrade mode. He stood fast like the right-hand marker in a parade formation and ready to battle the soldiers with his tongue. He charged the military to do like other institutions of government and subject itself to public scrutiny. Hear his plea: ..”our Armed Forces must be made accountable. It borders on blackmail to say we don’t give more money. Since I arrived here at the Senate, we have done for the nation two appropriations; 2024 and 2023. For the Armed Forces, we have done several supplementary appropriations. And the revelation on the floor of the Senate is that they are buying the wrong equipment.”

    Oshiomhole also tried to put in context, the procurement of a certain yacht that was in the news not too long ago. “It is on record that the Armed Forces are often times or sometimes procuring equipment that they really don’t need. The issue of the yacht is a shining example of complete gross misplacement (of priority). I think they spent about $6billion. Convert that to naira.” Oshiomhole recounted his engagement with former President Mohammadu Buhari on this same matter of yacht procurement. “I remember President Buhari said he never asked them to buy a yacht. Which President will go in a yacht on holiday?”

    The whole issue actually was that the military didn’t want to be unnecessarily encumbered and it was asking the Senate to place it on First Line Charge so that it could do at anytime whatever it needed to do with money without having to answer too many questions from the Accountant-general of the Federation or some other meddlesome officers of the Federal Ministry of Finance. And here is how Oshiomhole saw it: “I think when you say we should move the military to first line charge, you must face the origin of the security crisis we are facing today. The only thing I will favour for first line charge is education.”

    He explained: “…people who are educated or skilled are unlikely to be poor that terrorist organisations can easily recruit them. If we put all the money to defend the country and there is nothing left for education, healthcare and investment in the manufacturing sector, and those things that will ensure that our GDP grows at a reasonable pace, and at a rate higher than our population growth, our poverty will remain endemic. The super highway to criminality is hunger and starvation. So the armed forces have to understand that Nigeria doesn’t have unlimited resources.”

    Let me quickly add that in this endeavour, I have tried to separate the message from the messenger. I am asking you to take the message and leave the messenger, who, you may say has not cultivated any moral high ground to stand upon to pass his message. But here is the thing. In this country, nobody has been able to tell the military that its mouth smells. Everybody tries to put up with the smell. Since I knew how to follow the presentations of annual national budgets to either Supreme Military Councils (and by whatever description) or National Assemblies, I cannot remember too many instances when allocations to defence fell below other sectorial budgets including the critical sectors of education and health. Under the military, it was a fait accompli and it had looked as if Nigeria was under constant threat of external invasion and we therefore needed to spend good money to enhance the combat readiness of the military to contain any eventuality.

    The painful aspect is that when Boko Haram eventually happened about two decades ago, the decades of big defence budgets to cultivate combat capacity and capabilities failed to count. Let’s take it from 2015. One estimate puts the total defence budgets for the period at about $25 billion. This is not chicken feed. It is more than enough to create another Dangote Refinery or turn the Nigerian Defence Industries Corporation (NDIC) now Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria (DICON) into a production centre for arms export. The corporation was established in 1964 as the nucleus of a projected military industrial complex.

    It was meant to start with the production of ammunitions, riffles and other defence consumables and then grow into a complex for the production of military hard wares, including tanks and jet fighters. Six decades down the line, the basic hopes have remained elusive. The projected lofty dreams are completely off the discussion table. The answer to this lies in the fairly persistent budgeting pattern in the military where the ratio of recurrent expenditure to capital expenditure has been on an average of 80 percent to 20 percent. In 2020 and 2021, the defence capital expenditures were a mere 12 percent and 13.2 percent of a total budget outlay of N900 billion and N900.4 billion respctively.

    This is why the military needs more money. It is also why Senator/Comrade Oshiomhole is saying the military cannot get more money. That further disbursement should be done on the basis of a proper and accountable retirement of previous disbursements. I don’t know what else to say. I will only add the military has no other enemy than itself. It must therefore work to save itself from itself. That done, the rest of society including Oshiomhole shall queue behind it in support. The honour of every military lies in its civility. I mean that content of medieval chivalry that pushes an officer to defend public good against self interest.  Honour does not lie in the propensity to rely on the power of a smoking gun to breach the rules.

  • Oshiomhole’s sound bites from the Senate – By Abraham Ogbodo

    Oshiomhole’s sound bites from the Senate – By Abraham Ogbodo

    First, let me state why I love Comrade Adam Oshiomhole. He knows how, when and where to say the right things to win the audience. That is, he says the right thing at the right time and at the right place. He is very good with his tongue. His is not just a mere display of oratorical prowess because he doesn’t just talk for effects. He talks to achieve a deeper purpose. He talks to create the profile of the defender of the common good. And he has been very successful in that mission.  The totality of his circumstances forms an interesting study in characterisation. He started from the very beginning, in fact, as a tailor in a garment factory according to popular accounts, and moved against the tide to very high places. He was the President of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Governor of Edo State and now Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, representing Edo North in the Senate. He had made a brief stop as the National Chairman of the APC.

    Clearly, Comrade Oshiomhole has worked very hard to distance his orientation from his inclination. He works so hard to forget where he is coming from to focus entirely on where he is going. This is also what makes his life story interesting and intriguing. It is the typical story of a rise from grass to grace and how the exception can become the rule if there is a corresponding determination. The man was not born great and he didn’t seem destined for greatness. His raw determination to move in an opposite direction and against the circumstances of his birth pushed him into greatness. He is the type that motivational speakers love to use to preach the virtue of determination and positive thinking. To illustrate how attitudes attain altitudes in the journey of life.

    I wouldn’t know, which, between Comrade and Distinguished Senator, currently suits him better. It sounds good though to distinguish Adam Oshiomhole, except to note that nothing distinguishes the Godswill Akpabio led Senate from a gathering of hustlers. The National Assembly is symbolised by the vibrancy of the red and green colours. Oshiomhole is on the red side. In composition and character, both chambers have failed to exhibit colourful. Chromatic experts tell us that where all the colours are absent, the result is blank. Inversely, where all the colours are fused in confusing contention, the result is dark or black. Where it is blank, a tiny dark spec becomes well defined. Where it is the reverse, an otherwise negligible spark, shines like a thousand stars.

    That seems the position of Adams Oshiomhole in the scheme of things. Either as a spark or dark spot on a contrasting background, the man commands good attention in the Dome House. He has a way of rising gallantly to the occasion to create a crest in the flat-flowing business of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Whether or not all of that comes with a corresponding sincerity of purpose is a matter for another day. For now, let us agree that all the memorable sound bites from the red chamber appear to have come from one Senator called Adams Oshiomhole.

    His method is unique. He says with gusto what others labour to avoid. Let me start with the latest. Everybody knows in Nigeria that there is illegal mining of mineral resources by unlicensed operators. For instance, people in authority know for sure that the unending bloodbath in Zamfara State has more to do with the illegal mining of gold than it has to do with banditry in the state. In fact, the latter is a function of the former. But nobody is saying so.  It is just the same way that both government and the people have refused to understand the things that are wrong with Nigeria. Everybody feigns ignorance of the fundamental issues and hopes for things to change by themselves.

    Yet, the application of cosmetics does not cure fundamental deformities. Even Bola Ahmed Tinubu who grew from a disciple to an apostle of power devolution has been pretending to be asleep after moving from the corridors to the bedroom of power. He is just cool with savouring the sweetness of presidential absolutism and doesn’t seem to remember anything about true federalism or even its cold derivative, called federal character which he once upon a time, preached about.

    And so, the inspiration to say it loud and clear openly that illegal mining is not petty stealing that is done by street urchins is not ordinary. It can only come from a man with the courage, arrogance and indiscretion of a Caesar. That is, a man with a huge sanctimonious bend, who acts to cut an impression of piety. A seasoned actor, who sees every platform as a stage, to pull stunts.  And it has come from Adams Oshiomhole, who, as if protesting in the streets of Abuja as a comrade, said last week that highly placed individuals, including especially, retired military generals, are fuelling the theft of the country’s mineral resources at a scale that threatens the national economy and security. It is good he is quoted verbatim as reporting his statement might detract from its strength. I seek permission to run the long quote.

    Hear him: “Those involved in illegal mining use choppers. They procure arms exactly the same way our militants were doing in the South-south…they use choppers to cart away the gold out of this country and make billions of US dollars. And the Federal Government is not doing what they should be doing.”

    Senator Oshiomhole is from the South-south geo-political zone. He created a contrast to further underscore the fault lines in the Nigerian State. He said, in effect, that what happens in the house of crude oil does not happen in the house of solid minerals. Hear him again: “There is hardly any part of Nigeria where you don’t have solid minerals, even in the South-south. But what I observe is that whereas the Federal Government is ruthless with people who are doing illegal oil bunkering, and they deploy JTF (Joint Task Force) to deal with those involved in illegal oil bunkering, when it comes to illegal mining of solid minerals, the Federal Government Changes. It is like using different standards, and I am very angry about that.”

    Who won’t be angry? You kill my people in the South for just taking a little of their God-given resources which you have unjustly renamed national wealth and you allow and even protect and pamper people in the North for doing exactly the same thing. I largely agree with Oshiomhole. Whereas in the Niger Delta, it is called crime, economic sabotage and other fearful names, in the North, it is called good business. He got even more frontal and direct. “They (solid minerals) are being mined by retired generals, and we know them. Yes, we know them, and nobody can pretend he doesn’t know them.”

    As Chairman of the APC back then, Oshiomhole claimed to have written to former President Mohammadu Buhari to report the matter. Nothing, not surprisingly, was done. And as it was yesterday, so it is today. I dread to add the concluding phrase: ‘ever shall it be.’ But Oshiomhole is asking his fellow Senator to do something or be seen as doing something. “We shouldn’t as Senators be lamenting. As senators, we should fix the problem. We should tell the executive, ‘you must deploy exactly the same force that you deployed against illegal oil bunkering…to deal with criminals who are mining (illegally)’ ‘’.

    This is real sound bite. The man has said something the people want to hear. Whether he said it from his heart or from his head is of no consequence this moment. What matters is that he has said something big. Experts can take what he has said later to the laboratory for authenticity test. The last time that a Nigerian spoke in this manner was some 20 years ago in Effurun, Delta State. Former President Olusegun had come to town to do some hard talk on oil theft in the Niger Delta. This was in the heat of the armed agitation in the oil region when everything that was wrong with oil production and by extension, the economy, was put on the heads of Niger Delta Militants.

    Talk shows were frequently staged all over the place to discuss how oil could still flow amid the crisis. Warlords such as Government Tompolo, Asari Dokubo, Tom Ateke, General Boyloaf, General Shoot-At-Sigh, General Togo and others were deep in the trenches purportedly fighting to bring a better deal to the Niger Delta from the Nigerian State.  On this particular day, amid plea for peace, Obasanjo had also charged his military commanders who were combat-kitted and seated in the front row of the auditorium to rise up to the challenge of clearing the Niger Delta of oil thieves, parading as freedom fighters.

    Late Chief Benjamin Okumagba, then Otota (Prime Minister) of Okere, Warri Kingdom who later became the Orosuen (king), was among the top dignitaries at that occasion. He assumed the microphone and announced that if the former President was sincere in looking for oil thieves in the Niger Delta, he should search no further. ‘’These ones sitting here are the thieves’’ he told Obasnjo, pointing sarcastically at the military officers seated in the front row. There was silence because nobody expected it to come that way. But it had come. All the same, it wasn’t a point for debate. After all, the thief knows how the goat got missing.

    But to the recent allegation by Oshiomhle,  Gen. Johnson Olawumi, former Director-general of National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) has risen gallantly to the defence of his constituency, describing Senator Oshiomhole’s comments as ‘’harsh and reckless.’’ He is an interested party and therefore his verdict cannot represent justice. “As a retired general, who has faithfully served this country, I find Senator Oshiomhole’s comments not only reckless but a direct affront to my person and the legacy of my service. His insensitive generalisation has exposed retired generals like myself, to unwarranted public scorn and suspicion.”

    So sorry Mr. Retired General! That is how Comrade Oshomhole talks sometimes. He does not fear people. Just bear with him. By your calling, you have worked to ensure the territorial security or integrity of the country.  But it is not only you that have worked for the country. Many other people have also faithfully served this country. They include my late parents who worked as farmers to ensure the food security of this country. Nobody accused them of illegal mining of solid minerals or crude oil theft before they passed few years ago. This is to say that perception is also reality in some cases. The most you can do, General, is to talk for yourself and not on behalf of all retired General who do not live like they retired from the same civil service where, until recently, the lowest paid worker received N30,000 a month and the highest paid took home about N500,000.

    So much for the retired generals! Oshiomlole also had a word for the serving generals who went to the Senate to arrange for how they could get more money and faster too to defend the nation against bandits. But we cannot treat all the Oshiomhole’s sound bites in one outing. Let’s meet next week.

  • Pa Clark and the ‘Street Governor’ – By Abraham Ogbodo

    Pa Clark and the ‘Street Governor’ – By Abraham Ogbodo

    By Abraham Ogbodo

    Delta State Governor, Sheriff Oborevwori never stops to give thanks to God. But he needs to arrange a special thanksgiving now. Praying every morning at the Government House Chapel is part of his daily routine. He doesn’t miss it. He doesn’t also miss Sunday service. He is an Elder in Winners Church. Nothing reduces his time with God. Overall, he stands very tall in that department. He even tries to show it in his conduct by being more reserved than he is expressive. In other words and like an orphan, he tries in every way to do his own thing quietly and avoid unnecessary quarrel with people who are more privileged. He understands where he is coming from. In the built-up to 2023, his opponents said he was from the street and therefore, not good enough for the elevated formalities and tasks of the Government House in Asaba.

    But he made it against the run of the fast-pacing politics of 2023. We can as well say that his hard nut was cracked by a benevolent spirit and he has not forgotten to be humble. That humility is helping him a lot. It has kept him focused and very far from exhibiting any form of street mannerisms that his critics had hoped for. Instead, he has been able to strike some impression in Pa Edwin Kiagbodo Clark. This is a big score. It is the reason I am suggesting to the Governor to expand his spiritual bouquet to accommodate a special thanksgiving to celebrate this huge endorsement of his efforts, so far, by Papa Clark.

    Maybe I should explain a little more. Papa Clark is not ordinary. He is a principality even in the national context. He is beyond bounds. He says whatever he wants to say, to whomever and at whatever time and nothing will happen. He has earned that privilege. Pa Clark is unaffected by the known sentiments. “I am not a praise singer” he reiterated. And so, when he talks, even at age 97, the low and the high in Nigeria listen somehow. He cannot be pacified to tone down. Like crab, you cannot put him securely under wraps. For instance, if as Governor, you take to him a giant cow at Christmas and then begin to dream big dreams of having him under wraps, he breaches the boundaries almost immediately to proclaim that he actually deserves more than you have done as an elder statesman. If the package is enhanced, to a say, a brand new Prado SUV and an accompanying cash of N50million, he will describe the largesse as statutory and he therefore does not need to go overboard to express gratitude to the generous giver. It is like asking a pensioner to specially thank the pension manager for releasing his pension money.

    There is yet another aspect of Pa Clark that is also pretty difficult to comprehend by casual observers. The old man is very stingy with praises. It is very difficult to impress him. Here is an example.  After what seemed to former President Olusegun Obasanjo like good deal on the Delta Steel Complex (DSC), Ovwian-Aladja, Pa Clark had stormed the stage to cast spanner in the works. He lambasted Obasanjo for selling DSC to some con Indian investors for peanuts. In the tumultuous aftermath of the sale, Pa Clark had explained to stakeholders at one forum in Warri that a well run thrift cooperative in Kiagbodo or Aladja, would have been able to raise, without hassles, the 30 million dollars, at a time dollar exchanged for one to N120, which Global Infrastructure Holdings Limited (GIHL) paid for the steel company. This was to underscore his disapproval of the concession deal described back then by industry watchers as a rape on the national heritage. Obasnjo’s successor, Alhaji, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua  acted without looking back on the prevailing sentiments to revoke the concession and resell the complex to Premium Steel and Mines for about N40 billion.

    In national discourse, Pa Clark comes in different descriptions depending on the context. He is an elder statesman. Other times and when PANDEF (Pan Niger Delta Forum) is in focus, he drops to “foremost Niger Delta leader.’’ When the issues are further disaggregated, he settles finally for “foremost Ijaw leader.’’ So far and good, he has managed to project in these cross-cutting, and sometimes conflicting, roles, without losing stature. He has simply learnt to answer whatever name that he is called at any given time. What doesn’t change is the purity and strength of his message. Either as an elder statesman, Niger Delta or Ijaw Leader, Pa Clark has been fairly constant. Nothing pushes him into a correctness to manage political intrigues.

    Almost a decade ago, the old man announced his entry into the departure lounge and that he could board and fly away any moment. He has not boarded. He is still holding his boarding pass and walking about the duty-free zone where he runs free commentaries on the composition of shops and prices of goods on display. If a Wike, for instance, is displaying expired goods in his shop and refuses to walk back from the wrong way, he assumes the corresponding role of a Niger Delta Leader to talk him back on a sensible path. If it is a Bola Tinubu that is inventing taxes without creating an economy in his financial services shop in the duty-free zone, Pa Clark will step in as an Elder Statesman to note that neither the economics of Adam Smith nor Karl Max supports creating humongous national wealth from a traumatised people.

    It is much easier for the old man in Delta State where his stool and stature are almost sacrosanct. His language is also understood by all. Principally, he speaks Ijaw, Urhobo and English. But whichever he chooses to speak, is understood by all the ethnic nationalities, namely, Ijaw, Isoko, Itsekiri, Urhobo, Ukuani, Ika/Anioma, in the State. Most times, he speaks to the people through their Governor. And since 1999 when this democratic experiment started, he has been speaking to all the Governors in the state. He previews and reviews. While his previews have been moderated by anticipation of performance, his reviews during and after performance have been very caustic. He has got nothing nice to say about all the past Governors, namely, Chief James Onanefe Ibori, Dr. Emmanuel Eweta Uduaghan and Dr. Arthur Ifeanyichukwu Okowa.

    Although Pa Clark spoke differently and at different times to different Governors, the message was same. He accused all three past Governors of misrule. It was a blanket condemnation that didn’t recognise the modest contributions of these Governors in certain areas. For instance, Ibori’s opening up of rural areas with roads and electricity did not tilt the scale in his favour. Neither did the efforts of Dr. Uduaghan in health care and Okowa in road infrastructure cut impression as relevant facts in the court of Pa Clark.  Nothing about the performance of the trio was admitted in evidence to help their cases. The old man handed a verdict of guilt. He sounded triumphantly final like the Supreme Court. Chief Ibori, in the light of his port-office travails, got the worst bashing from Pa Clark. He was named the founder of the misrule dynasty. The alleged misdeeds of Uduaghan and Okowa were traceable to the foundation that Ibori laid.

    Therefore, for Pa Clark to wake up in his departure lounge and talk as if the incumbent Governor is a product of a different political dynasty, is really, really, a big deal. Just for the records, this is how it has been in Delta State. Ibori begot Uduaghan. Uduaghan begot Okowa or put differently, Ibori caused Uduaghan to beget Okowa. When it was time to beget Oborevwori, there was a real confusion over the heir-apparent was. The hurdle was scaled somehow and in the end, Okowa struggled to beget Oborevwori in spite of the position of the progenitor. In other words, Ibori did not cause Okowa to beget Oborevwori. That made Oborevwori  to become a descendant without ancestors.

    You can now understand why the incumbent has been steadfast in oiling his paths with God and the ordinary people in the streets in efforts to cultivate a protective base. The efforts have paid off following his adoption and proclamation as a worthy son by Papa Clark.  The old man did not just talk and move on to other matters. He actually wrote a commendation letter with his own hand thanking the Governor, for, among things, “returning (Warri) to its old self.”  Expectedly, the Governor’s spin men feasted on the endorsement. “The oracle has spoken’’ said one supporter in a manner that captures more than the given circumstances to project into the battle ahead, and almost saying that, with what Papa Clark has said, the re-election of Oborevwori in 2027 is also  settled issue.

    Well, that is left to be proved. What we can however say for sure, even now, is that it isn’t going to be as tough as in 2023 when the Governor was seen as coming from nowhere. This time, he will be coming from somewhere and bringing to the bargain, his huge endorsement by Chief E.K Clark. But it is just mid-term. What has given Oborevwori the edge is governance and not politics. The Governor has been able to rest a great deal of the post-election anxiety with his M.O.R.E Agenda. It is an acronym that defeats its own ease and requires further factorisation for better understanding. The M and O stand for Meaningful Development Opportunities For All. The R is Realistic Reforms and the E is Enhanced Peace and Security.

    As it is, the prayer of the ordinary people in the streets of Asaba, Warri and elsewhere in Delta State is for the strict implementation of the Agenda to continue. Oborevwori can choose to slip from implementation into sloganeering at his own risk. He is not the first Governor to do agenda in the Delta State.  Since late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua introduced the novelty of coded agenda in governance with his Seven-Point Agenda, it has become a fundamental objective in policy drive in Delta State.  Governor Uduaghan did one called THREE-POINT AGENDA of Human Capital Development, Infrastructural Development and Peace and Security. This ran for eight years more as a slogan than it ran as a programme and towards the end of his tenure, another, called DELTA BEYOND OIL, was introduced to replace the agenda that recorded no clear implementation.

    After him, came Okowa with a SMART AGENDA that was broken into 1.Strategic Wealth Creation 2. Meaningful Peace Building 3. Agriculture and Industrialisation 4. Relevant Health and Educational Policies and 5. Transformed Environment Through Urban Renewal. In the end, Delta refused to be transformed to a smart state. It is only Governor Ibori who did not have an agenda as such because it was not fashionable in his time to encode basic governance into an agenda to be pursued exclusively. He did Resource Control which was close to human rights crusading and which put him on a war path with former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

    All said, Governor Oborevwori should continue with his own agenda the way he has been doing it. He should look neither right nor left but straight. He should raise the substance higher than the shadows. The people know what to do when the times comes. Even me, one of the drivers of the opposition in 2023, I am getting convinced. The Pa Clarke endorsement should not get into his head. He should quietly go for the thanksgiving and return to work.

  • The turn by turn politics in Bayelsa – By Abraham Ogbodo

    The turn by turn politics in Bayelsa – By Abraham Ogbodo

    By Abraham Ogbodo

    Bayelsa is described as an all-Ijaw State. The visible divisions are not along ethnic lines. There are however dialectical variations which are often exaggerated in the cut-throat competitions for positions and privileges.

    In other words, the monolithic character of Bayelsa State does not translate to a single view point or common front in all matters. And where this is most noticeable is politics where the state as many other states in Nigeria run on a tripod with the three senatorial districts representing the different stands of the tripod.

    No one is to blame for these divisions in a nation where justice and fairness are subordinated to loyalty and other affiliations and adequate share in the common patrimony comes only by direct participation in the process or belonging to the hegemony. The urge to fight to finish is so attractive that nobody wants to wait till tomorrow to take his proper turn. Everybody wants the same thing at the same time thus increasing the competition among contenders.

    Specifically in Bayelsa State, it may not be a written rule or agreement but the rotation of the governorship among the three senatorial districts of Central, East and West has been a binding arrangement since 1999. It is, in fact, the same practice in many other states including the neighbouring South-south states of Delta, Edo, Akwa Ibom and Cross River where the governorship has on a turn by turn basis since the start of this dispensation in 1999 to manage the arising competition for power among stakeholders.

    Chief DSP Alameyesiegha of blessed memory had kick-started the rotation game in Bayelsa State when he was voted governor in 1999. He was from the Central Senatorial District and been electorally processed to exhaust his constitutionally guaranteed two tenure of eight years before his impeachment by the State House of Assembly midway into his second tenure of four years.

    His deputy, Dr Goodluck Jonathan ran the remaining years as the substantive governor. Jonathan’s plan to start afresh on his own slate was shelved for a higher calling when he became running mate to the PDP candidate in the 2007 presidential election, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua who won the election. Interestingly, this was also the point at which Timipre Sylva who came a distant second in the PDP’s primary got introduced into the Bayelsa governorship politics.

    Dr. Jonathan who had preferred Francis Dukpola who came third in the primary to Mr. Sylva could not prevail. The party stuck to Sylva and suddenly his dream of becoming governor which had appeared so farfetched in the political and electoral calculations became more assured. One, Goodluck Jonathan primed to become the Vice President would not want to lose his home state to an opposition party. Altogether, the political tailwinds moved in Sylva’s favour who won the governorship election without much ado. He came into Creek Haven after Alameyesiegha and Goodluck Jonathan had lived in and vacated the place.

    Alameyesiegha who started the rotation was from Bayelsa Central and he was followed by Jonathan and Sylva both from the East Senatorial zone. The immediate past Governor of the State, Seriake Dickson from the West completed the cycle thus bringing the process to the starting point with the incumbent, Douye Diri who is from the Central Senatorial District. By this time-honoured arrangement, the governorship can only shift elsewhere when Diri must have fully exhausted his time which is in 2028.

    After him, the East Senatorial District is next and very likely, this same argument will be used, when the time comes, to crop out contestants from the Central and West Senatorial Districts of the State.

    It should however be mentioned that this turn by turn arrangement that ensures the participation of all sides has endured subtle resistance in spite of its beauty. Each electoral season has come with attempts by free players to offset the arrangement on claims that the monolithic character of Bayelsa State does not call for such delineations to produce a sense of belonging among the people.

    Other times the argument is that instead of these affirmative scheme, the government contest should run on merit so that the best candidate can emerge. For now, this is a minority and more precisely an elite opinion without grassroots buy in. This is the same reason why the Timipre Sylva venture is seen in many quarters as misadventure.