Great Ogboru: Greater Than Conspiracies

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.....

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