“Because we love the unreal and hate the truth, we appear incapable of holding a meaningful dialogue. Our verbal interactions wear the garbs of a sophisticated ritual–a play on manners and politeness. Our intentions never seem to be the resolutions of issues, rather whenever discussions appear to be on the threshold of discovering a basic Nigerian truth, it becomes the duty of every Nigerian to intervene in order to halt the discussion…Since Nigerians took their own destiny in their own hands, every national intercourse has borne the sterile aspect of a ‘coitus interruptu’ –a primitive method but very effective in preventing the birth of a new nation.”
Words of late Chief Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu in his introduction to his epic book “Because I am Involved.”
To say it as it is, the favoured ones in Okpella—the clandestine local Chiefs, opinion and religious leaders sided by their clueless followers—have for several years now continued to halt every concrete step and discussion meant to guide the entire Okpella people out of the current nebulous trajectory. The cacophony that has continued to emanate from their camp(s) suggests that those devil-possessed sons and daughters of Okpella, beyond their evidently exaggerated sense of relevance in the clan, do not realize that no river can flow upwards the hill against itself. I know and I am sure that, today, even the gods of our land, our ancestors and God Almighty himself are angry and weeping over the leadership vacuum in Okpella.
How each one Okpella freeborn, home and abroad, has reacted and still reacting to the current generally debilitating life in the clan, I cannot tell; but I most certainly can tell us that it’s currently a “dog’s day” in Okpella with a “things fall apart” sobriquet.
Every discerning mind will agree with me that currently there is a pervading depressing groveling sedation amid the unfathomable flummox in our beautiful and beloved Okpella clan. There’s a persistent confusing jumble all over the clan. Nothing is working or certain. Our beloved Okpella has gradually metamorphosed into a society which defies the laws of science that teaches us that the higher you go, the cooler it becomes. Today in our dear Okpella, the higher you go, the hotter it becomes and, the more confused you are about the affairs of the clan. Sadly, the heat is generated from within–our kith and kin–supposed Okpella freeborn, who have become possessed by the demons of greed, avarice and corruption. It is this hotter atmosphere that has fertilized all manner of evil, chicanery, corruption and diverted the high-up from the set goals of our great community.
Need I remind us that we have been kidnapped by a group of very wicked and satanic men and women with Okpella blood in their veins and arteries; flattering, thieving chiefs and pressurizers aided by a clueless youth following, with selfish interests whose first loyalty is to those interests rather than to the clan. Do you then wonder why today Okpella has suddenly become a hothouse of kindred and clannish hatred, corruption, nepotism, land grabbing and the unmitigated violence as well as all forms of retrogressive tendencies?
Sadly, it thus appear that everyone else is cool with the existing aberration. No, not true! Some of us aren’t happy with the current situation in Okpella. The current order of Okpella affairs is totally alien to us!
This article entitled, “A Nation in Tow: Time to Heal Okpella” therefore, centers on matters that have continued to retard our progress in Okpella where our people, suddenly, are becoming increasingly less patient under tradition and the thrall of uncertified new breed of emergency community leaders: leaders who have refused to be guided by both man and the divine, and have unthinkingly refused to allow past and current happenings in the clan to register and serve as compass to guide us all out of the morass we currently find ourselves.
The obvious complicity of the new breed of leaders in Okpella in the widening exploitation of our natural resources, has completely knocked them and their zombie followers off the sanity lane. On the whole, our people’s socio-cultural, political and intellectual temperaments are now orbiting like some defenceless animals before the Lion King in the wild.
As an Okpella freeborn, I particularly feel a sense of loss by the antics and manipulations currently going on in Okpella; the clan is now in the iron grip of a group of people whose every action has turned our fatherland, Okpella into a theatre of the absurd, a hothouse of corruption and kindred hatred—a land of sorrow and insensitivity toward the poor and suffering community people.
Any Okpella freeborn will attest to the fact that tremendous changes, disturbing and unnerving changes, have taken place in our clan after the painful exit of our king in the early days of 2019: the vacant stool at the palace in Awuyemi testifies to this.
Truth be told, our land and its people have been halted in puzzlement since the death of our paramount ruler, Alhaji A.Y.E Dirisu, the Okuokpellagbe of Okpella in 2019. Amid the vacuum created by the King’s death, amid the contradictory approaches to select his replacement, Okpella has pitifully sunk in complete fogginess. With all the cries about our clan’s evils, only an Okuokpellagbe guided by the divine can save the clan and its people. This is why our dear Okpella needs the right and credible traditional ruler, a king to be enthroned.
It was the great philosopher Socrates, who, in ‘The dialogues of Pluto’ said to Callices: ‘You do see, surely, that our conversation is on the subject which should engage the serious attention of anyone who has a particle of intelligence.’
For me, the recent history of our traditional stool and its other institutions is a celebrated rule that whatever traditional evil that befalls a traditional community such as ours depends on how far that community chooses to be so bound. This is why I agree with some of our people who insist that the current groups of devil-possessed leaders in Okpella are visitations we individually and collectively bargained for. Yes, we truly got in them ‘Pharaohs’ who will not let the Israelites breath or go in the land of Egypt.
It’s so heartbreaking that our once serene and progressive Okpella is now mottled in shrouding obfuscations. Everyone is now impeded by the demoralizing bulk of a set of monstrous class of self-styled community leaders backed by a ubiquitous and and clueless violent youths as well as the village chiefs–those self-proclaimed custodians of Okpella culture and tradition.
It worries me that since the death of Alhaji A,Y.E. Dirisu, we Okpella people have continued to set and reset our minds on the enthronement of a new Okuokpellagbe. For me, I just think we have failed woefully in efforts to choose, through the divine guide, the right and credible person to occupy that exalted throne of Okuokpellagbe; we unwisely succeeded, through a wickedly executed high-wired plan, in proving cynics, naysayers and haters of the clan right in their predictions. How sad.
The obvious lack of clarity from the people of Oteku whose turn it is to produce the next Okuokpellagbe has led to an infection of numbing helplessness in the clan. Now, nobody from among the elites in the clan, appears distinguished enough to earn the respect and loyalty of our Okpella people let alone be trusted with the affairs of our clan, especially in choosing an Okuopellagbe: our Den Haag is now desolate and almost abandoned.
One would have thought that those older persons amongst us who witnessed the thorny path and tortuous process we went through in the early 1970s to choose and coronate late Alhaji A.Y.E. Dirisu as the first Okuokpellagbe of Okpella, would guide us to look backward—and forward! Sadly, they all cowered or compromised!
I just think we must not forget that, in the main, human attitudes and behaviours stem from culture which is a people’s total way of life and the people of any given community are usually socialized into these ways of life in order to become responsible actors and culture-bearing members of society. We must also remember that most human attitudes and actions which are destructive are usually founded on ignorance which itself engenders very harmful effects. This is exactly what is playing out in Okpella where those we’ve entrusted with our destiny have turned out to be Mambas, those arboreal snakes of Central and Southern Africa whose bites are often fatal. Our own people, those supposed community leaders and elites, have been biting us, injecting poisonous venom into our bodies and, today, Okpella and its people are bleeding.
In “The Dialogues of Pluto” the great philosopher, Socrates asked Callices, “are you then able to mention any of the older statesmen through the influence of whose public career the Athenians became better than they before? On my part I haven’t a notion who such man might be…”
With apology I think we may need to do a prolonged search for such an individual and individuals in Okpella. But, I am sure and convinced we would find one or more in our clan.
I remember this famous dictum of Socrates which asks humanity, “In what way should one live life?”
Hmm, difficult question but simple answer: you decide how you live your life in amity with fellow humans and in reverence to God. Like Socrates I also asks us all in Okpella, particularly those of us from Uteku: how do we want to live our lives in Okpella to ensure that, by our deliberate and sustained efforts, we effectively grow the clan and achieve high quality life for ourselves? Socrates has properly guided us when he said to Callices: “And, my dear friend…the bad soul… as long as it is in a bad way, it will be witless and uncontrolled, unjust and impious, and we must keep it from its desires and allow it no action except what will improve it”
My counsel: let’s continue to cling obstinately to the ideals of our clan, let’s continue to voice our displeasures over the vacant Okuokpellagbe throne, let’s continue to advocate the enthronement of the right and credible man as our king, let’s work towards the overthrow of the subsisting unstable destructive order, let’s together say NO to the leadership deceit and, the rape of Okpella clan generally by a set of bad chiefs, opinion leaders and elites. Let’s try to eradicate injustice from Okpella in its entirety and plant seeds of fairness, equity and love for one another. Let’s recover our dear Okpella land from bad leadership and together build the Okpella of our dream. Let’s together, through our intellectual and physical excellencies arise and build our clan. We must all do a rethink, change our ways, reset our minds and agree among ourselves to find the ‘potent ash” to heal our dear Okpella of all its ailments.
A house which has order and harmony is a good house, says Socrates!
It’s time to heal our dear Okpella land.
We must commit to efforts to apply the healing balm.
God bless you all.
Long live Okpella
Long live all sons and daughters of Okpella
……….
Clement Afe Afemikhe, MUICS
©A broadcast journalist, columnist, writer and media consultant, writes from Abuja, Nigeria
