By Gabriel Omonhinmin
The Ibenanaoweie, Paramount traditional head of the Ijaws of Ekpetiama Kingdom, His Royal Majesty, King Bubaraye Dakolo Agada IV, who is the Chairman, Bayelsa State Traditional Rulers Council has been awarded ANA’s Fellowship as a result of his hard work as a prolific writer and author.
King Dakolo’s investiture will take place on the 2nd of November 2023, during the preliminary opening ceremonies of the Conversation at the Association’s 42nd International Conversation scheduled for 1st to 4th November 2023 at the Chinua Achebe International Conference Centre, in Mamman Vatsa Writers’ Village Mpape, Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city.
In a signed letter dated 11th October 2023, the Association’s General Secretary, Mark Ortserga wrote, “In the course of the Association’s developmental process, there have been writers/person who have constantly remained on the side of reason, offering advice and envisioning plans for which ANA will continue to move forward in the direction of its forbears. You are one of such distinguished writer/persons whose value-centered consciousness has positively and quantitatively impacted ANA. The Association is, therefore, pleased to induct you into the prestigious Council of ANA Fellows.
The letter continued, “Generally speaking, the ANA’s Fellowship is conferred upon deserving individuals for their dedicated services to the Association and proven contributions to the development of Nigerian literature in particular and society in general. Previous ANA Fellows includes Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, J.P, Clark, Mabel Segun, Labo Yari, T.M. Aluko, Kole Omotoso, Femi Osofisan, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Olu Obafemi, Elechi Amadi, Zaynab Alkali, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, Dora Akunyili, Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan.”
King Dakolo, who was a member of the Regular Course 38 of the Nigerian Defense Academy in Kaduna, was summarily dismissed from the NDA where he was a final year cadet officer, because of his immediate elder brother the late Captain Perebo Dakolo’s involvement in the Major Gideon Orkar coup of April 22nd 1990 against General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s military junta.
In that coup, four Niger Delta military officers, Major Sowaribi Tolafari of Bonny and Lieutenant Amadi of Ikwerre, both of Rivers State, and Captain Perebo Dakolo of Ekpetiama Kingdom and Harley Empere of Tarakiri, both of present-day Bayelsa State were prominent young military officers who were executed by firing squad in and around Lagos State. Captain Dakolo was among the military officers executed in Owede area of Lagos state in the 1990 coup. They were all aggrieved officers, who felt compelled to do something drastic to reduce the unnecessary waste and miss management of the huge petro-dollar revenue realized from Nigeria’s crude oil and gas and the utter neglect of the oil-bearing communities where this money is realized.
King Dakolo who rose from the ashes of this disappointing exit from the Nigerian Defense Academy, braced up and went back to the University of Port Harcourt first as a Chemistry teacher in the University Demonstration Secondary School, and later took a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Chemical Engineering, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Education, and a Master of Art degree in Terrorism, international Crime, and Global Security in Coventry University, England.
Among King Dakolo’s literary works are the most popular books entitled “The Riddle of the Oil Thief”, “Once A Soldier” and “The African Voice.” He has again completed work on another book entitled “Pirates of the Gulf which is about to be released any moment from now.
Pirates of the Gulf is a riveting tale of the plunder of the Niger Delta and the criminalization of those reeling under the jackboot of a swashbuckling capitalism that renews itself with the blood of people in the creeks. Yes, the story of sea piracy is an old tale. But His Majesty King Bubaraye Dakolo, Agada IV, Ibenanaowei of Ekpetiama Kingdom, tells it afresh with a voice and authority that are entirely new. As it is already known, His Majesty, King Dakolo has established a reputation as one of Nigeria’s most gifted chroniclers of its endless environmental tragedies, especially those taking place in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. There are many able scholars and writers on the ongoing deathly struggle in the Niger Delta region. Truth must be told none has boldly and brilliantly celebrated the beauty and grandness of its fauna and flora and in the same breath waxed polemical against capitalism and neo-imperialism. For many of today’s writers and thinkers, neo-imperialism is dead and buried. But every day it lives in the mangled mangrove of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, where like the frosted shrub, it sheds its foliage but keeps its poisonous prickles. From the Pirates of the Gulf, King Dakolo refuses to accept the end of history and the western narrative of the triumph of universal benevolence. He knows that like an apparition at the seaside, the ghost changes forms. And the people of his kingdom are the victims of ageless and soulless mercantilism in spite of what another Africa griot call ‘the holy water of baptism’. Pirates of the Gulf makes it clear that no matter how you baptize globalism, it continues to deprecate and despoil.
