THE IGBO GIANT STRIDES AGAINST ALL ODDS
9 years ago
Governors Suntai of Taraba, Liyel imoke of Cross River, Sullivan Chime of Enugu, and Al Makura of Nassarawa State all have one thing in common- they are all either absent or bed ridden.
Few weeks ago, the oracle of Nigerian politics, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was in nearby Ghana as head of an Ecowas delegation monitoring the Ghanian presidential elections. As herculean as the task of election-monitoring was, Baba still found time to thrill spectators with Gangnam style, a dance style popularised by korean music star Psy, which mimicks one riding a horse, alternately holding the reins and spinning a lasso, and moving into a legs-shuffling side gallop. Click to watch Obasanjo thrilling his watchers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X99NUc0pLuQ
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I actually got to know Dr Oronto Douglas 0n 8th December 2009 when, as the then Senior Special Assistant on Economic Matters and Strategy to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, he represented and delivered a speech on his behalf at the maiden edition of the 2009 Justice Chukwudi Oputa Awards ceremony in Abuja.
In that speech, he noted that the energy and creativity of Nigerian youths was a satisfactory indication that the birth of a glorious future was undeniable.The Nigerian youths he went on, have at no time undermined our aspiration for a greater and better society. We must continue to support them so that they can continue to make us proud.
Thrilled by his perfect rendition of that speech, I sent him a Facebook friend request which he readily accepted and so the bond of friendship was established. Subsequently, we exchanged phone numbers and kept in touch from time to time even though we had never met face to face. Within the course of my short interactions with him, he did not leave me in any doubt as to his convictions on the necessity for empowering the youths for the challenges of the battles of the future which he rightly noted will be fought and won based on the superiority of ideas.
Barely 30 minutes of this very interesting encounter, Dr Oronto had to leave and attend to urgent office matters but not before I redeemed a pledge of two books published by my employers, Evans Publishers Ltd which I made to him during one of our Facebook chats. The Books were Wale Okediran's Tenet's Of The House ( a fiction on the intrigues and power play in the National Assembly) and Through My Eyes ( an insight into how Barack Obama emerged the first Black US President). It was actually from the latter book that I coined the title of this article: Through The Eyes Of Oronto Douglas.
Shortly before leaving, he had suggested that he would like me to travel down to Bayelsa State and have an assessment of four e- libraries located in Yenagoa, Ogbia, Okorogba and Otuoke and thereafter make possible recommendations on how local contents can be installed by my employers in the e-libraries. I was still considering the most auspicious time to make the Bayelsa trip, I received this text message from Dr Oronto Douglas:
"with the kind permission of my elder brother, Mr R.S Douglas, I write to inform u dt our father Pa Obebera Douglas begin a journey to eternal glory. Wake keep:14/12/12 &Funeral service @10am on Sat 15th. Pls join us in Okoroba Bayelsa. if your busy schedule permits. Thk U".
With this development, I now saw the trip as an opportunity for me to kill two birds with one stone: 1. Attend the Funeral of Pa Douglas and 2. Visit the Library Project in Yenagoa. It was an also an exciting opportunity I thought to myself, as it will enable me to get to know the Niger Delta region I have heard, read and seen a lot on the news but never visited before. On 13th December, I left Abuja for Port-Harcourt by road and next day, I left Port-Harcourt for Yenagoa-Okoroba en route Ogbia. Embarking upon
the journey through water was a bit scary being the first time in my adult life that I would be travelling on water. As we boarded the the speed boat at Ogbia government jetty en route Okoroba via Nembe, one woman noticed I was scared and asked me to sit in between her and another passenger. I became a bit relaxed until our boat captain categorically told us that he does not know the route to Okoroba, but obviously driven by the pecuniary reward of the #25,000 worth trip, was ready to gamble his way.
As we cruised past the Joint Task Force (JTF) checkpoint at Nembe where we observed the ritual of raising up our hands in show of non-militancy, we stopped over to refuel our speed boat. But shortly after resuming our journey, we realised we had missed our way as our speedboat engine ran aground along one the creeks we had taken. At that moment, the literal reality of choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea dawned me as a flurry of thoughts criss-crossed my mind. In retrospect, I guess this is a situation Yakowa and Azazzi did not want to experience and so choppered their way by air to Okoroba instead. The rest they say is now history.
Like a man on a mission, I quickly located the newly built state-of-the-art Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan library, a project of the Community Defence Law Foundation (CDLF). Inside the library, I quickly forgot that I was in a remote creek town in the Niger Delta as the library's super fast Wi-fi internet connectivity enabled me to come alive with developments across the globe. In a country where education does not get the requisite attention, this state of the art library is a obviously an exception to the rule.
To have conceived situating in Okoroba and other creek towns, such libraries that are fully digitalised and linked up with Berkeley University in California certainly smacks of a man with a vision given the futuristic dimensional importance of this initiative which obviously cannot be over emphasised. With these libraries around them, today's Niger Deltan child has what it takes to make him/her relevant in the course of world history which Oronto rightly noted will be driven by the battles of ideas that we cannot afford to be left behind in the historic process. It was a real privileged for me to have seen the unfolding vision through the eyes of Oronto Douglas.
I still recall seeing the both of them that morning upon disembarking from the chopper that brought them but little did I know that will be the last time, I would see them. As he proceeded to the venue of the event, Gov. Yakowa beamed smiles all the way and even stopped at the makeshift abattoir where he had a lively chat with his kinsmen hired to butcher the cow for the occasion. Then on the prompting of Gen. Azazzi, they proceeded to the hall but not before I personally took this picture of them, which The Nation Newspaper hurriedly used as its cover picture in their report on the crash without even acknowledging me as their source (intellectual theft).
Well that is by the way and the rest they say is history but what I took away from the my Okorogba expedition is the fact that visionary leaders are a sine qua non in the developmental quest of any nation. Dubai had visionary ruler and the dreams conceived yesterday have turned Dubai into an economic melting point today. The point however is that dreams as lofty as they may appear can only be meaningfully realised if they are domesticated and relevant to the universal need of the immediate environment. That is what Oronto Douglas took into cognizance in championing the movement for knowledge equipment of his people.
