Governor Ifeanyi Okowa the fearless

By Tony Afejuku

Nobody anywhere knows the true mind of the typical politician anywhere. I may be wrong to utter this line. But I know from experience, real and imagined, that the average politician, especially from our clime, can take or takes, his time to revise, re-touch, hide his tricks and tracks.

He is like an author, the creative writer and author, who “re-writes or cancels, or evades those passages where inspiration failed him, where he was at a loss, where he was struggling to make sure not only how he wanted to say a thing, but exactly what it was he wanted to say.” In several politicians, however, the tracks remain. We see them sooner or later.

Sooner or later they reveal their essential and true colours. In politicians and governors such as Umahi of Ebonyi State and Ayade of Cross River State, for instance, we have witnessed how they were airborne from their convenient – as we thought PDP abode and home to where they now are – their APC place of majestic liars and deceivers.

No matter what led them to where they now are, no matter what prompted their respective actions, they are now decerebrated governors.

But not all governors who are in the opposition party are like the aforesaid turn- coats whose decerebration will ever get a positive and welcoming turn-around. Never! I am so amply certain that they are gone forever from their real locus of politics.

I am glad, exceedingly glad, that the governor of my State of Delta is not and he will not ever be like the aforesaid versions of Nigerian swing-the-lead governors and politicians that have been rendered.

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa is a well trained medical doctor turned politician – as many Delta fellows know. He is not a green-horn in our country’s and state’s political firmament having occupied several positions nationally and locally.

Since he became the governor of Delta State which is our mini-Nigerian state, sort of, I have watched him keenly and un-keenly. My subjective and objective evidence in my observation of him so far is of much deeper interest than you may think.

And my subjective interest originated from his relationship with Professor Sam Egite Oyovbaire, a man I have known since the nineteen sixties as my worthy teacher. Let me spare you pertinent details in order not to distract every reader’s sparkling attention from my subject and object of patriotic attention.

But if Professor Oyovbaire, one of the most decent of human beings I have been fortunate to know on this earth plane, is rightly Dr. Okowa’s political god-father and supreme strategist, then our governor must be a lucky man and governor one can really look up to – to do what he rightly and decently must do for all people of Delta State.

Rightly or wrongly, I am seeing him or I have seen him, as a governor of the people – no matter his lapses as a human being. Or is there a perfect or a perfectly perfect human being anywhere?

And why do I call him a governor or the governor of the people? First, I see him as a governor haunted by a sense of urgency to leave a legacy for the people.

He manifested this recently when he established two universities and a polytechnic in three senatorial cities of Asaba, Agbor and Ozoro respectively.

His concern for the highly education-conscious people of Delta State informed his strategic establishment of the three tertiary institutions.

Our qualified and over-qualified children and students who have been unlucky over the years, or year in year out, to gain admissions into universities and polytechnics within and outside Delta State will now be smiling and laughing exceedingly well going by what Governor Okowa has just rendered our people.

Our qualified teachers, academics, professionals and parents are now being richly inspired by the governor, their governor, your governor, my governor, our governor to do their decently patriotic duty for their state, your state, my state, our state.

What the governor has done by creating the high profile tertiary institutions is an admirable index of his amazing political generosity and sagacity which he should decently and rightly extend to my people. I am now being patriotically subjective and objective at the same time. Warri deserves a university as well.

The Itsekiri homeland deserves a state university as well. Our governor of generous and sagacious politics should not allow himself to be menaced by the political ill-health of some past individual Itsekiri politicians of visionless vision to be inconsistent in his generosity I hereby openly acclaim.

His sagacity should aid his generosity to get to my homeland. It is not too late and it will never be too late for our generous and sagacious governor to shift grounds and give to Itsekiri people what they rightly deserve.

The Itsekiris rightly deserve a state university in their homeland. And they have the personal, collective and natural resources to make the would-be state university prosper under the sun of enlightenment. The dews of knowledge shall also give glory to the envisaged university in the Itsekiri homeland.

Pause not, governor, as I convey to you here and now the patriotic wish of patriotic Itsekiris who itch for your gallant foothold of generosity on our homeland. Help Itsekiris to halt their vicissitudes.

Now let me airborne myself, albeit briefly, to the super flesh and super meat of this column today. My main attempt is to preserve Governor’s Okowa’s creative mind that has creative fearlessness in the matter of bandits and herders in Delta State.

As I can perceive it, subjectively and objectively, the governor is in the forefront of southern governors, who are giving inspiration to us all who are uniting against all criminals terrorizing our lands. He is not flinching and retreating from his territory of opposition to open grazing in our lands.

The governor’s texture of courage and fearlessness will not flinch and retreat from the current night of terror. So far he has blazed well the trail for others to draw patriotic inspiration from.

May he ceaselessly continue on this life of fearless courage and courageous fearlessness and sharp mindfulness and manliness of manliness without qualms of qualms.

Governor Okowa is well endowed, well focused, consistently consistent to give us the deserved courage throughout the remainder of his tenure. We must support him whole-heartedly as I hereby do without any inhibition.

In this connection, I am on the same glorious page with our Niger Delta hot heads and hot minds who are ever ready any time any moment to counter all transgressors from wherever against Governor Ifeanyi Okowa the fearless and the courageous.

My nib is ready for any handwriting on the wall on this score against this decently and rightly courageous and fearless gentle governor of governors.

I say this unflatteringly, for flattery does not flow from the nib that nibs this column. And I am not what I am not, and never will be what I am not – again, I say this without any inhibition.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.