Portents of the unheeding, By Clement Afemikhe

I send greetings to you all my people back home in Okpella and those in diaspora from the cold city of Abuja– where the temperature this 17th day of October 2024, is 29° but it feels like 33° with the weather very clear and humidity is at 69% accompanied by a wind velocity of 5km/h.I hope you guys outside the Nigerian capital are experiencing a great wet season.

I just want to drop a few lines for us to meditate on, especially those our “demigods” of Okpella clan and those self-anointed “oracles” in Ukhomunyio community.

From my little understanding of leadership, a leader’s role is partly to ensoul, inspire and support the followers, as well as guide and direct the society’s vision within the context of a dynamic world.
For instance, in the ancient Bini kingdom, leaders were renown to be heavily reliant on knowledge and balance rooted in discerning pivot. The community and opinion leaders during that gone era possessed the abilities to decipher the veiled coatings of tradition, custom and culture and were usually able to peer beyond the stifling cloudiness of power all the time. What’s more they treated their ancestry and culture and tradition with utmost reverence. Great people of a great kingdom of a gone great era.
This exactly explains why till today the tradition, custom and culture of the Bini people remain unsullied and untainted: the Bini people revere their King, the Oba of Benin, dead or alive.

From my little knowledge of traditional institutions, Kings anywhere in the world play pivotal roles in the lives of their people or subjects. The Queen 👑 or King of England is a classical example of the importance of the traditional stool to a people and their kingdoms.

This is the reason why it yet baffles
some of us why the governor of Edo state, His Excellency, Godwin Obaseki decided to turn the other eye and ear to the quest by Okpella people to fill the vacant Okuokpellagbe of Okpella throne in Okpella. One had expected that the Edo State governor, Godwin Obaseki, a Bini man, would, in answer to his royal birth and training, move his ears closer to the mouths of the elders in Okpella or those in his native Benin kingdom to hear words of wisdom and advice regarding the selection or appointment of the right and credible person to sit on the vacant Okuokpellagbe of Okpella throne. One had also expected governor Obaseki to be noble, discipline, and far-sighted in handling the Okpella Kingship tussle.

Alas, in Obaseki’s heedlessness and swollen hubris he damned the elders of Okpella, the gods of Okpella clan, our ancestors and even told the Almighty God to stay off Okpella Kingship tussle–Godwin Obaseki alone had the foreknowledge of who the next Okuokpellagbe of Okpella should be. Great guy Godwin Obaseki is! He truly possesses the gift of clairvoyance but sadly, he is not rooted in discerning pivot and the ability to commission the good and noble.

The Edo state governor truly fills my curiosity and makes me to agree with a certain Richard Corliss who once said that, “scandal is the coin of contemporary celebrity. It keeps the public interested.” Governor Obaseki, for me, isn’t just a scandalous celebrity but an arrogant academic who knows next to nothing about African tradition, custom and culture, which amongst decent and cultured people are highly valued in other climes.

Maybe one should quickly ask the about-to-leave-office Edo State chief executive officer, Godwin Obaseki, to tell the world if he’s read it in any historical material where a King was chosen for a people without their knowledge, consent or asking?

I can’t remember that Okpella people are a conquered assemblage.
No. We’re a free people in Okpella clan and proudly occupying the northern fringes of Edo state where a larger percentage of the state’s revenue comes from. At least the clan is currently host to two giant cement manufacturing companies–the Dangote and BUA groups. Also, in the vast expanse of our dear Okpella clan, there abound credible and upright men and women, blessed, regal in bearing and of great character; men and women who have distinguished themselves in every sphere of life and are doing pretty well in their chosen careers and businesses around the world.
One is therefore tempted to again ask: Why did Obaseki through the prism of political conspiracy and patronage decide to unilaterally appoint just anybody as a King for Okpella which boasts such great assembly of humans?
Didn’t someone close to governor Obaseki drop it in his ears that Okpella people have a rich culture and tradition?

It just hurts and embarrasses any sane follower of development in Okpella that governor Obaseki, himself of Benin descent, could so wilfully desecrate Okpella land by his unilateral appointment of a person ( even if it were not Lukman Akemokhue) to occupy the exalted throne of the Okuokpellagbe of Okpella.

Let me dare to remind us that everything that Godwin Obaseki has done in his 8-year reign as governor of Edo state has been anachronistic. The gangster governor is inherently not pacifiable and lacking in tact and wisdom to manage crisis and people.
His appointment of a person as the Okuokpellagbe of Okpella clan (Lukman Akemokhue in this instance) has now pitched him and his unenviable administration against Okpella people and the entire world; Obaseki has never masked his contempt for Okpella people and his disdain for peace and orderliness in Okpella clan. No. We all know the story around the coming of Dangote cement company to Okpella. That’s a story for another day, maybe. Suffice to say, however, that governor Obaseki deliberately chose to desecrate Okpella culture and tradition and our beloved Okpella land, in his obsession with giving back to his loyalists which the “loyal boy” Lukman Akemokhue is one of.

Today Obaseki has succeeded in pulling Okpella people into the quagmire that’s now staring every Okpella free born in the face.The clan is reeling in the pains and blood of its youths gruesomely murdered in the violence that engulfed Okpella during the “triumphant entry” of Obaseki’s Okuokpellagbe of Okpella, Lukman Akemokhue. I do not blame the young man Lukman Akemokhue.Our elders say the death that will kill a man begins as an appetite.

But anybody close to governor Obaseki should please remind him that the Okuokpellagbe of Okpella throne is our heritage and not some commodity to be traded in the market of political settlement. Besides, Obaseki should be reminded that the Okuokpellagbe of Okpella throne is not a political office amenable to bureaucratic control and abuse.Yes, Obaseki has done his worst by appointing one of his loyalists to occupy the exalted throne of the Okuokpellagbe of Okpella. Fine and good! An African proverb says, “Stealing the village drum is not a problem. Where to beat the stolen drum is the problem.”

Governor Obaseki should also be reminded of the words of my literary mentor, Uthman Shodipe, that it is a fact of life that the unyielding umpire, steeped in ruthless absolutism, who does not heed the intercessional clarifications of the Oracle, may delude himself to the distortioning judgement of the moment, thinking that the present evil can be masked, believing that the contemporaneous wrongs can somehow be remoulded into righteous validations. Lie. That’s just an imaginary refuge. The future is always answerable to the articulations of the moment.

As I conclude this piece, I want to assure us all that because governor Godwin Obaseki has been too rooted in hideous designs, appropriating immortal licence to do whatever feeds his fancy and small mind, especially with regards to Okpella affairs, he must, someday, reap the proceeds from his investments in Edo State, Okpella clan on my mind. There is always a Providential accounting for every of man’s actions here and in the the hereafter.

The governor’s sense of triumph over Okpella people’s Kingship is only momentary because the sanctions of mere mortals can always be outmaneuvered by the Divine and the uniformity of the people.

We Okpella people are peace loving and have always tried to solve our problems peacefully. Governor Obaseki should therefore try to appease the gods and ancestors of Okpella clan before he leaves office in November lest they vent their anger and wrath on him. The sorrows of the benighted traveller are usually too unpleasant to the ears

God bless Okpella people
God bless Okpella clan
God give Okpella a great King