GUEST COLUMN: GYB, The Ebira Biblical Moses, God’s Gift And Jewel of Inestimable Value
By Ozumi Abdul
AREWA AGENDA – You death, you came too suddenly soon and unannounced, you forced the door of our threshold opened and never gave us the minimal chance of bidding our byes to him.
You struck impulsively at midnight during our nocturnal rest, and in the middle of a struggle for Ebira liberation, he was pivotally at the epicenter of.
We cried out our hearts, we had our voices hoarse, we wept profusely because despite our misty eyes we could still see in a premonition that we have been orphaned politically for a God-knows when time.
June 2006 was a month and year of mournful and brokenhearted reminisce, and commemoration that an average Ebira son or daughter would not want to recall in a hurry.
It was a year of unforgettable mental torture, anguish and excruciation for every Ebira son and daughter, both at home and in the diaspora; a dark year in the annal of our history in deed as a people.
While penning these words, emotions were still intermittently playing tricks in my head, getting the best of me and threatening to alter my apt usages of words as I recall with vivid nostalgia what Ebiraland and Ebira people went through years after his death without his political leadership and leeway.
It was some fourteen years ago, precisely on the 10th of June 2006, when Ebiras and the entirety of Kogi state were thrown into endless and unforgettable rounds of mourning of one of their foremost charismatic, altruistic, revered, venerated and distinguished political leaders, in the person of Senator Ahmed Tijani Ahmed (AT Ahmed) to the chilling hands of death via a ghastly motor accident along Lokoja, Abuja road.
When the news of his death struck us, we the Ebiras were particularly enveloped in the doom of gloom that loomed in our land, as we stood in akimbo of bafflement, bemusement, bewilderment, discombobulation and utter confusion of who next to lead us out of the impending political wilderness and doldrums enforced on us by the virtue of his impromptu death.
Like herds without herdsmen, we wandered through the thick and dark forest of Kogi politics without stewardship, we lost our political relevance and pathways just like centrifugal Fulani cows without their shepherd.
Then, Ebiraland was nothing short of an unsteerable rudderless ship politically without a captain as we stood motionlessly standstill at the spot the late Ebira sage left us.
Proverbially, ashes they say are better replacements for extinguished fire, but unfortunately, they are mere fire byproducts, and not even its replicas, because ashes can’t cook a meal; thus most of the AT’s proteges he left behind then were either incapable and incompetent enough to step into his humongous shoes or too self-centered to take the enormous selfless responsibilities like he did during his active political lifetime.
Things fell apart for us like packs of cards without nothing to hold on to, lives in our dear Ebiraland became solitary, short, brutish, and nasty, like that of a Hobbesian state.
Lives of fellow kinsmen were frequently taken to the slaughter slabs with crass levity and recklessness, the bloods of our brethren flowed on the surfaces of our soils; where exterminations, pogroms, butcheries, carnages and holocaust reigned supreme.
It was as though the devils and their agents had just berthed on our dear land then, as empathy was lost, the sanctity of lives became nonexisting, and social solidarity was a distant thing from us.
We were all simply at war with ourselves without a political leader to prevail on us to plunge or bury our destructive swords into their sheaths.
Then, we lost political relevance, seemliness, suitability and bearing in the Kogi political space because our home was in disarray, as well as in dysfunctional diametrical disunity, and bereft of a political leader to unify us.
In all these years, as we Ebiras writhe in pain, our brothers across the water rejoiced and write their gains. It was nothing short of the mischievous divide-and-rule tactics from them then, as the cracks in our walls had harbored their lizards as their comfortable abodes to exploit us politically.
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We were then mocked, demeaned, derided and traduced by them as “slaves and stupid minority”, whose relevance is metaphorically akin to that of tools used by a task man to carry out a particular task and get dumped on the same task ground with reckless abandon upon the completion of the task; we were seen as a second fiddle (deputy governor) at best, and even had to settle for a third at a point, especially during the Idris Wada era.
Ebiras’ assumption to the revered Luggard House then was disdainfully viewed as an abominable anathema by our brothers from across the river bank, since ” slaves” don’t share the same throne with kings.
As all these sad trajectories in our history trudged on with corresponding contempt, revulsion, malignancy, virulence and belittlement from our Okura brothers, the supreme God in his mercy came through for us in a manner that is beyond a mere mortal’s comprehension.
Thus, in reference to the Qur’anic reflection No. 485. Āyat 8:49, where during the battle of Badr, the supreme being, (God) helped the Muslims to conquer despite their apparent weakness, being smaller in number and had limited weapons, in a miraculous and transcendental manner, God again came to the Ebiras’ rescue to overcome our adversaries, archenemies, foes and nemesis in 2016 by bequeathing on us yet another political leader in Governor Yahaya Adoza Bello, exactly a decade after A.T Ahmed’s demise in 2006.
Just as the biblical reference of the book of Exodus Chapter 1: 11-14 narrated how Moses liberated the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt in the 13th century BCE, and their safe passage through the Sea of Reeds (traditionally mislocated as the Red Sea), Governor Yahaya Adoza Bello became Ebiraland’s biblical Moses, who liberated us from the bondage of political slavery, servitudes, servility and thralldom, while also removing that denigrating tag of “second class citizens” of our necks in a state we (Ebiras) were fundamentally pivotal to its creation in 1991.
He has given the Ebira nation that sense of belonging, political relevance and direction as a leader, the realities that we were hitherto bereft of.
We now have that bragging rights, walk with our shoulders high up in the sky.
God has now mopped up our hitherto tears-infested misty eyes with the miraculous coming on board of Governor Yahaya Bello. We have now found our hitherto political lost path in the Kogi political space, we have now joined the pantheon of Kogi “Kings” and not slaves again as we were hitherto taunted by our Okura brothers.
We have found our hitherto croaky voices, that when we speak again people listen and don’t disdainfully ignore. We now have a leader who wants the best for us and one we are willing to listen to.
Sanity has now returned to our homeland, we can now go to our beds with our two eyes closed without fears of nocturnal attacks.
Gone are the days when in an anarchical manner non-state actors take up arms against the state unhindered, with even a cell of Boko Haram insurgents rearing its ugly head in the state.
We now count modest achievements, and not the filthy carcasses of our dear brothers, whose bloods spurt from the barrel of guns, because we are left to our fates to kill ourselves till we get tired out.
Governor Yahaya Bello’s emergence has brought about the long-awaited flicker of light at the end of our tunnel, with landmark achievements in the areas of security, mentorship and human capacity building, gender inclusion, vision and clear decision-making.
The White Lion has braved the odds and successfully instituted a system of government that carries everyone along, ranging from standard infrastructural development, to human capacity development, people empowerment without gender prejudices, and effective and transparent governance.
As it is to every man and administration, because of human beings’ peccability, GYB and his administration may have some shortfalls, but as his New Direction mantra implies, he has been able to give the Ebira nation, and by extension the state the needed new direction, a different relics from how things were in the past.
What we now crave is consolidation of his New Direction mantra as his administration gradually winds down, may we not go back to the sorry, sorry yesterday.
Ebira Roreyi!
Abdul Ozumi is a staff writer at PRNIGERIA and a columnist at Arewa Trust Newspaper.
He can be reached via 07031106826(strictly WhatsApp) and [email protected]
