Author: By Efe Duku
PREAMBLE
‘He is a coup plotter.’ ‘He is
a debtor.’ ‘He has no money.’ ‘He wins elections but not allowed to govern.”
“He is a coward.’ ‘He is too principled.’ ‘Ogboru this, Ogboru that!’
For so long, these have been
recurrent allegations against Chief Great Ovedje Ogboru by his enemies,
opponents or haters. The motive of Ogboru’s accusers has always been and
remains how to dim his constant star and stop the irresistible change he stands
for. It is time to clearly meet these allegations with truth, facts and
confidence. And it will so continue.
Change has always been a counter
force wrestling against an existing resistant order. It takes courage, vision,
integrity, and a constancy of purpose to make change happen. These are the
defining qualities of the leader of a serious change agenda. Real change does
not come on a platter of gold. Obstacles or opponents are enemies of change.
But, as the great writer Og Madino put it, “… victory comes only
after many struggles and countless defeats. Yet each struggle, each defeat,
sharpens your skills and strengths, your courage and your endurance, your
ability and your confidence and thus each obstacles is a comrade-in-arms
forcing you to become better … or quit.” The possibility of a better
future is thus lost when we fear or turn away from enemies. They are to be
confronted.
Change is often difficult and
tortuous where enemies are strategically positioned. It is even much more
difficult when external enemies manage to become internal enemies, or what
Pentecostals call ‘unfriendly friends’, who are extremely deadly cancers that
kill from within. They are dangerous, mean and sometimes just petty. They live
by hate – hate so deep and incurable. Their major interest is to bring down
whoever leads a popular quest for change. This evil is assuming a different
dimension in Delta where the Ogboru political factor is a constant pain to the
enemies of Delta. It is a situation where injured and unfit politicians rehabilitated
by the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) have become deadly conspirators fighting
the air to do the impossible: Discredit an innocent Ogboru and stop change!
Such an agenda is evil and has to be quickly buried.
CHANGE IS NEAR
The endless fear of the Ogboru
factor by enemies of change and agents of hate often reaches an intolerable
level at critical political moments such as election times. It would seem that
the forthcoming senatorial by-election for Delta Central has presented yet
another opportunistic moment for cheap political blackmailers, interlopers, and
even certified madmen to launch a wave of propaganda to attack and discredit
the iconic personality of Chief Great Ogboru. Their list of ‘discrediting
charges’ against Ogboru as adumbrated above is endless. But discrediting Ogboru
is a ‘mission impossible’. You need more than empty propaganda to be
successful. You have to prove beyond any shadow of doubt that Ogboru is the
real enemy of the people and not those who have persistently made it impossible
for Ogboru to govern the people as they desire with their votes.
Clearly, our people are not idiots.
They know and deeply respect good men. They hate unholy alliances against
upright leaders. They easily identify and punish corrupt and evil men. Men with
skeletons in their cupboards waste precious time when they try to pull down
respected leaders. Our people prefer aspiring leaders to convince them on their
own agenda to better their lives rather than plot the downfall of noble men. An
agenda to discredit Ogboru is not in itself a manifesto. Our people prefer
aspiring leaders with verifiable history of success based on a track record of
honesty. Our people just don’t want to listen to persons who have nothing to
offer but smear campaigns.
Attacking Ogboru because he
reasonably prefers better strategic alignment of political forces will not
change the political sentiments that have been resolved in his favour. Ogboru
deeply respects peoples’ right including the right to join a party of their
choice. He also fiercely resists attempts to destroy his own party (DPP) by
those who came from PDP, but now want to leave to somewhere else, or even
anyone for that matter. To him, it is immoral to do so.
Ogboru, like many Deltans, knows the
real problems of Delta State. He refuses to be blackmailed, intimidated or
stampeded to join any party without a clear roadmap to deal with the serious
challenges facing Delta. He knows his people want guarantees that their votes
would count and he insists on those guarantees. He is determined to find
practical answers to the very specific and unique electoral problems facing
Delta, whereby fishes and periwinkles reportedly vote as humans! He does not
believe in empty talks and electoral sloganeering, going forward.
Ogboru feels his people. They have
questions and he knows it is his duty as a leader to give answers. That is true
leadership. Not so surprisingly, those who now understand his real motivations
have started talking seriously. And that is good because the dynamics of
existing political equations have started moving dramatically. There is a great
new hope for change in the horizon. “Great Ovedje Ogboru” remains
the handwriting on the wall! Go, tell it to the doubting Thomases that even the
blind are seeing it!!
And that is to say, soon, very soon,
Delta shall be free from misgovernance and wild corruption. Free from lack of
vision; a sub-culture of inhumanity and immorality; political rascality; and a
targeted ethnic hate policy of “genocide by instalment”. Free from
illegitimate and mediocre regimes. Indeed, Delta is heavily pregnant. A
miscarriage is impossible. Change unstoppable is near. A new Delta beckons.
Unknown to the agents of hate, Great Ogboru firmly holds the ace in victory.
In his autobiography, Long
Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela wrote, “… I was not a messiah,
but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary
circumstances.” This perfectly describes Ogboru’s consistently
inspiring life of integrity, responsible leadership, and humility. More
specifically, it captures his bold intervention in the stormy waters of
Nigerian politics, after his return from a 10-year self-exile in year 2000.
Originally, Ogboru did not return
for politics. He had rationally assumed that with the return of civil rule,
Deltans were safe in the hands of James Ibori, whom he did not know before he
left in 1990. The proud ‘ordinary crayfish seller’ returned to do his business.
His plan was to re-organise his business empire and privately extend the “good
life” to more people. His businesses had suffered severe setbacks due to
continuous violations by successive military regimes. He quickly settled down
to correct all that, even as he immediately went to court to challenge the
illegalities done by the military and later won in a landmark judgment,
awarding him billions of naira in damages against the Federal Government.
With a rare iconic personality
defined by integrity, vision and a huge wealth – attained when he was just
about 25 years of age – Great Ogboru has an undying mystic and personae so
feared by people who delight in bad governance. These qualities would sooner
than later pull him to intervene in politics to challenge the absence of sane
governance in Delta. Ibori was feared by all. Even the antagonists who now
enjoy the freedom of propagating hate against Ogboru either hid themselves in
dark holes in fear or were hero-worshiping Ibori! But Ogboru simply
demystified, defied and defiled Ibori.
Assuring all that Ibori was a
“goner”, given the atrocities coming out of Delta, Ogboru boldly launched the
South-South Rainbow Coalition (SSRC) to mobilise the people towards a sane
political leadership direction. He foretold it that the battle would be long
because of the huge State resources available to Ibori and his cohorts to
protect their dynastic hold on political power in the State. And truly, Ibori
showed his hand very early in the day when Ibori hastily organised a panicky
rally on March 7, 2002 to stop the public merger declaration of the SSRC and
its over 100 associate political organisations with the then Alliance for
Democracy (AD) at the Petroleum Training Institute (PTI), Effurun. At this
ill-fated rally, an apparently licenced criminal gang was let loose to wantonly
commit arson, destroy public and private property and take innocent lives
including that of Charles Afigo!
We may have forgiven and that is the
right thing to do as God’s people, but how can we forget that such extreme
crimes had to be brazenly committed just to scare the people and stop Ogboru
“at all cost”? But they failed as Ogboru refused to give up. While the blood of
the innocent is still on their hands, heads and paths, Ogboru remains at peace
with himself.
The SSRC has since seen strategic
transformation, but remains true to its objective of providing an alternative
avenue for better leadership. SSRC was the engine room of the Alliance for
Democracy (AD). It is integral to the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP). Those who
think they can destroy the DPP in a flash are just naïve because they just know
nothing about its genetic make-up and driving force. True DPP members are
wedded to the SSRC creed or values – unbreakable, tougher than hope and
deeply formed around the iconic legacy of Ogboru, a true leader who though is
human, appears divinely committed to helping his people no matter the
obstacles.
A leader’s capacity to deal with
obstacles, including misrepresentations of his life and actions without losing
focus on his mission is key to his quest for change. The legacies of Lincoln,
Gandhi, Mandela, King Jnr, or even the greatest of them all, the Master
Himself, Jesus, speak volumes in this regard. All was done by even ‘Iscariots’
around them to undo their stars, yet they never dimmed. They just refused to
quit. In the end, they prevailed. The more the obstacles, the more their lives
changed the world because, falsa demonstratio legatum non perimi –
a legacy is not destroyed by an incorrect description. Their legacies continue
to transform the world inspite of the efforts to kill, distort, or wipe out
their essence from humanity. One is therefore not in doubt that those who seek
to perish what Great Ogboru stands for are on an impossible journey.
It was the great Chairman Mao
Tsetung of China who reasoned that a good leader deserves to be encouraged to
lead “provided he really helped the people when times were difficult, did
good before and keeps on doing good without giving up.” Yes, our people
agree without question that Ogboru is that leader. But a few see him as their
biggest ‘problem’. But how is he really their problem? Let us now consider the
noisy allegations individually but sometimes jointly, as the case may deserve.
ON THE ORKAR ACTION OF 1990
When in year 2000, the process of
rescuing Delta from leadership recklessness began with a simple poster
captioned “The Man” which summed up the enigma of Great Ogboru as
the leader of the change agenda, Ibori’s arrogant response was essentially: ‘He
is a coup plotter whose wealth had dried up and would therefore run out of
steam very soon’. The baseless allegation that Ogboru is a poor coup
plotter is therefore not new. The lazy haters are only borrowing a leaf from
Ibori’s torn playbook by recycling a worn-out propaganda.
First, it is a fact that the Major
Gideon Orkar action of 1990 was targeted at an unelected, illegitimate military
regime. Any revolutionary action targeting an illegitimate, tyrannical regime
is legitimate, proper and moral. No apologies. To this end, Ogboru has himself
said repeatedly that his conscience will always support actions against
tyrannies.
Secondly, the Orkar action was
prompted, as it were, by choking imbalances in the Nigerian nation, including
unwritten codes that gave some sections a “Borne To Rule” title while others
must be servant followers. Ogboru was reported to have single-handedly provided
the huge financial backbone and logistical support for Orkar and his gallant
team to fundamentally change the existence of two classes of citizens in
Nigeria. This is generally believed because, just a year before, i.e. in 1989,
the same Ogboru had similarly made the largest donation for the liberation of
Namibia. It is however on record that the Federal Government later cleared him
of any wrong-doing in a gazette signed by then Head of State, General
Abdulsalami Abubakar. This was after untoward hardship had been brought upon
his family, including loss of lives and several attempts to assassinate him
abroad.....
urhobotimes.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment