To build Okeogun of our dream, we need to have a dream. As it is now, we have not generated any dream that will give us direction and drive our collective passion and focus. And, until we do that, we are going to get involved ina wilderness of merry-go-rounding for such a long time.
While we are thinking about an Okeogun dream, let me go ahead, with a presumption that we are going to rise up and take it up as a challenge to draw up a dream for our enclave, to discuss some of the things that will help us build a great and virile society in Okeogun region.
My main discussion will centre on the forces of unity and love as prerequisites for building a strong, virile and egalitarian Okeogun region that will serve our generation and many other generations coming after us.
Unity means the state of being one undivided entity. And, before unity can be in place in any given environment, there must be harmony, oneness, togetherness and agreement among the people.
In other words, people must speak with one voice and see things from a common perspective. Okeogun has not been seeing things from the same perspective and, as a result of this, we have been denying ourselves the kind of blessing a big region like ours should have been enjoying.
Bayelsa State is just eight local governments without landmass, but water which does not even allow for development. We can all bear witness to the kind of development she is attracting to herself and her people to the extent that a whole parastatal, the Niger Delta Development Corporation (NDDC), is dedicated to champion her cause.
Okeogun has ten local governments with a very big landmass, fertile arable land with rich flora and fauna as well as large deposits of different mineral resources under the bellie of the ground, yet it is managing to breath in the midst of all manner of self-inflicted and artificial factors limiting her progress and development.
One indubitable factor that has been hindering Okeogun from moving forward is lack of unity. Without unity, even God cannot command His blessing. Without the blessing of God, we will continue to labour and languish in pains as we have been doing over the years. We are already cut-off from the mainstream of development, not only because of the external factors, but also, due to a lot of avoidable internal factors.
Talking about unity, the main foundation for unity and all it’s associates that I mentioned above is genuine love. Without love, we can’t be talking about unity at all. Without love, there cannot be harmony, oneness, agreement and togetherness.
By love, I don’t me the kind of erotic or romantic love that we often see between two love-birds who are lusting after each other. Such is a kind of love, but that’s not the kind of love that can build a community. The love I’m talking about is agape love that is always ready to sacrifice to make things work.
I’m talking about the kind of love God has for all of us that makes Him not to treat us with partiality, favouristism and nepotism. The kind of love that does not discriminate between Christians and Muslims; that does not discriminate between armed robbers and good people in the society before He can give them rains, sunlight and all other blessings that money cannot buy.
When I talk about love, I’m talking about love that is not seeking for anything in return, but is ready to give all for the sake of love. This love is uncommon, but it is the one that is required to build a society, especially a heterogeneous society like ours.
Let me describe the common attributes that can be found in the kind of love I’m talking about which can produce unity in every aspect of our life as a people.
Number one, the kind of love I’m talking about is not selfish, self-seeking and greedy. Any love that seeks for ‘me’, ‘myself’ and ‘I’ alone is not a genuine love. Genuine love must be ready to make sacrifice for others. Genuine love must be ready to give and forgive. Nothing should be too big to give and when offences come, someone with genuine love is always ready to overlook and forgive offences.
To build Okeogun of our dream, we must jettison anything that will promote selfishness either of religion, politics and town patronage. If you think every good thing must be for you, your group and your town alone, it is a selfish love which will not promote harmony, synergy and unity among the people of the region.
Number two, the love I’m referring to is the patient type. Whoever is rash and cannot tolerate other people’s strengths and weaknesses is an impatient person. Yoruba people said ‘sùúrù lè s’òkúta jiná’ – meaning ‘patience is a virtue that can solve all problems no matter how difficult they are’. Without any attempt to paint a bad picture of our womenfold, the Yoruba elders will also say, ‘sùúrù la fí ñ s’oko obìnrin’ – meaning ‘patience is required to manage a woman and, by extension, the home front.
In addition to this, to promote the importance of the virtue of patience, the Yoruba elders will also say, ‘àgbà to ní sùúrù oun gbogbo ló ní…’ – meaning, ‘a patient elder has all things in control’.
To build Okeogun of our dream, the virtue of patience is very important. Someone with patience will listen to others and consider things from an objective point of view. Without patience among one another we cannot achieve much as a people.
The wordings of the popular song rendered by the creator or founder of Fuji genre of our traditional music, Sir Sikiru Ayinde Barrister (SAB) came to mind when he sang, ‘à í sùúrù ní mú ni sì ‘wà hù…à í sùúrù ní mú ni ja’lè…à í sùúrù ní m’óko-láyà ko ra won…à í sùúrù ní de’le rú… – meaning impatience leads to all manners of misbeaviours ranging from stealing, armed robbery, divorce, lack of peace at home or in the society.
Time had come to embrace the fact that we can never see things from the same perspective. We were brought up differently from diverse backgrounds and orientations. We had different exposures coming from different religions and philosophical inclinations. We were raised with different principles and ideologies by different parents with different approaches, so we are bound to disagree. But, when we disagree, what we need is patience to resolve things amicably and move forward together.
Disagreement is a germane ingredient for building a strong society. It was Bernard Shaw who said ‘without disagreement, life itself will be a monumental boredom, but no sane person will carry disagreement to a point of no return’.
I think that was a good one there from Bernard Shaw and we must all be ourselves to that point where we would always return whenever we disagree. When we disagree, we must allow patience to take hold of our hearts, minds and emotions till we calm down. We shouldn’t make decisions when we are angry. If we do, we are always going to make wrong decisions and it is the accumulations of wrong decisions in time past that has brought us to where we are now as a people.
Most times, if not well-managed, disagreement can lead to unfriendliness and suspicion where two good friends will become impatient and will start to resent each other to a point of boycotting each other. At such point, anger, hatred, bitterness, offences and malice would have set in and, instead for a little patience to reign, a little misunderstanding will escalate into something volatile that we can’t control again.
We need to begin to love our region so much that we must be ready to show genuine love that will accommodate the other indigenes of the region and even non-indigenes among us with patience, kindness, compassion.
Number three, genuine love that will lead to unity will not demand and enforce its own way. While it is not a bad thing to love oneself, family, community, town, religion and political party, it is better to draw a line of limitation in the extent to which we can drive our love to give room for much love for others and whatever they stand for too. This is an objective approach to life and it is the best approach we should all vote for and embrace to move our enclave forward.
Time has come to develop an Okeogun dream that we will all bear allegiance and submit to as important than any other consideration.
We need a dream that will project and uphold ‘OKEOGUN FIRST other than considerations for religion, politics and town patronage which have been bedeviling our region for so many years now.
No religion, politics and even patriotic solidarity for one’s town will promote things that will cause disunity or disharmony among a people. God hates disunity and we must also hate it with passion.
So, we must watch it and make up our minds to return or refrain when we are rising up against one another, when we are becoming subjective in our judgments and when we are becoming critical and catty always ready to fight. We must not forget that we are brothers and sisters. We must not forget the common cliche that says ‘omó ken néè ni gbogbo wa jo mó’ – meaning ‘we all sucked milk from the same breast’.
We should not forget another similar cliche that says ‘wo t’ólá omó ken néè ta jo mo’ – meaning ‘consider the same breast that we sucked.’
Each time our arguments or hot arguments begin to degenerate into insults, name calling and verbal assaults, we should not forget that we sucked from common breast-milk which ties us together in a bond of regional covenant like the inexplicable covenant bond that always exists between a mother and his child.
This is the kind of bond that we need in our region to build Okeogun into an enviable region in Oyo State, in Nigeria and in the world. And, believe me, we can do it. And, we should do it!
Furthermore, if we look at it closely, we are going to see the power of unity in the way our body systems operate.The brain is the coordinator for all the human parts and systems. We have the respiratory, vision, digestive, blood circulation, mobility, etc sytems which all the body parts represent to work together as one whole entity.
In other words, there is a strong bond of harmony in the way the body systems work not because they carry one singular function, but because they have to work together as one in a continuous synergy to make the entire universe run the way God has planned it to run before the foundation of the earth.
In the same body, the eyes perform the function of sight and seeing. To see clearly, they don’t want dust or dusty environment. But, in the same body system, the legs are at the down part of the body and they are dust-friendly. Can you see unity of purpose as the the eyes and the legs are working together for a common cause. To move Okeogun forward, we should take cue for the relationship of all the parts in our body systems.
Both the eyes and the legs operate in the same body system to complement each other. What this simply suggest is that all humans beings were created to complement one another not to compete with one another as we are doing whenever we project our religions, political parties and ‘townism’ to borrow the coinage made by one of us recently.
As I said earlier, the brain is the coordinator. So, we also need the brain to do the thinking on our behalf and do the work of coordination or administration in Okeogun.
However, the composition of this brain must be all-inclusive before it can be acceptable to all the sons and daughters of Okeogun, home and abroad.
We need an all-inclusive brain who will always stand to represent all our collective interests with objectivity, fairness and justice.
To do the work of the brain effectively, we need a strong committee that stand for all of us and, again, the composition of that brain must be drawn from all the well-meaning individuals of our region.
Every society that will grow and develop into greatness must uphold values. Sunday Adelaja was then correct when he said ‘nations are not built by virtue of their wealth, but by the wealth of their virtue’. Okeogun, Oyo State and Nigeria cannot be built by the proceeds of petroleum or any other resources, minerals or otherwise, they can only be built by the virtues or the vices the people decide to uphold per time. If we uphold corruption, we are going to always bear the
consequences of corruption. ‘Èèyàn ò lè gb’àlùbósà kó h’èfó, oun a bá gbìn la ó kàá’ – meaning, it os what anyone sows that he will reap.
Thus far, I have talked about the virtue of genuine love which must come with other virtues like harmony, oneness, agreement and togetherness. I have talked about the attributes of kindness and patience in relation to love. Now, the other thing we need to consider about such love I’m talking about is that it must have respect for the rule of the law which could either be written or unwritten. With respect for the rule of the law, respect for fairness, justice, probity and accountability will be in place; respect for integrity, honesty, truthfulness, sincerity and loyalty to the collective dream and aspiration of the people will also be in place.
Such love must operate in the fear of the Lord because there cannot be any rule of law without the fear of the Lord. Anyone who does not fear God will find it difficult to obey any law even if it is easy.
Such love must uphold righteousness because it is righteousness that exalts every nation, but sin, corruption, manipulation, selfishness, greed, avarice, materialism, etc are sins to any people.
Then, as our practice jas always been, we must not mistake ‘righteousness’ for a religious word. Righteousness is neither a Christian or Muslim word, rather it is a government word which means ‘to do the right thing’ at all times no matter how difficult it is. Doing the right thing is necessary where there is any government, be it the family and community governments as well as the government within a town, a region, a state and a country.
We need righteousness to kill corruption in Nigeria, in Oyo State, in Okeogun beginning with ourselves. We need a serious government who will uphold righteousness and enforce it at all levels with a genuine of heart so we can move to our promise land together.
Now, as a case-study, the question is, how do we put righteousness to practice in a situation where one person is divided between two options?
For instance, in a situation where one should support one’s town or one’s region and vice versa like in our own case, what choice should that person make between his or her town and region?
To further stretch the possibility of options that might confront an individual per time and might further divide his or her interest, what will one do if one is present with supporting one town or the region for the site of a university like the case at hand?
To support one’s town is a righteous thing to do and to support one’s region is also righteous to do – one choice is not more righteous than the other! I believe we all know that.
The above is the crossroad of puzzle that we have now found ourselves for some time and it has generated a lot of serious emotional, but legitimate debates and arguments on the part of all of us. The question, again is, how do we go about this puzzle that is dazzling us in the face?
Now, to resolve this issue righteously for the sake of peace, one thing that must always be at the back of our minds is that, nothing should be a do-or-die affair. So, each of us must be ready to make sacrifice in case it comes out that the decision does not favour our town knowing full well that there are many other projects coming to our region as time goes on and our town might be considered when such projects come.
But, apart from this gentleman appeal that we must be ready to make sacrifices to let go whenever necessary, time has come to put down an acceptable sharing formulas on ground that will take care of the different levels of our operations.
For instance, whenever anything comes to our region, there must me a body that will decide on where it should be sited based on the agreed sharing formula to zone the project to the next constituency among the constituencies we have in the region.
Then, after the project has been zoned into the appropriate constituency, there should be a body that will further work on the project to decide which local government should host the project based on the existing rotational formula.
Finally, there should be another body to be at work at the local government level who will follow the same rotational sharing formula to decide which town it will go among the towns; and, if need be, which ward it will finally rest on. If we don’t do this, nobody will come from outside to do it for us.
So, to my mind, I have a strong believe that if we follow these right, all-inclusive and objectice steps that carry every interest and sentiment along, all the debates and arguments will fizzle out to become part of our history sooner than we expect.
The problem we are facing is that there has never been any time we sat down to plan how things are going to be handled in our region. So, it is not the fault of anyone of us to go on with long debates and arguments in support of his or her town. Where there is no law, they say, there is no sin.
From the beginning up till now, we have been operating with assumption and, as we know, assumption is the worst form of knowledge.
For instance, time has come we should stop to assume that Iganna will accept that a project should always be cited in Iwere’le everytime it comes without an acceptable sharing formula. Things don’t work like that again in this modern time when many sons and daughters of all the different towns have not only gone to acquire education, but have also gained wider exposures as a result of their wider travels into different climes of the globe.
My conclusion is, it is love and unity that will produce peace, progress and development in our region. But, to make things work the way they should, we must plan and strategise because nothing will work until we make it to work.
Jesus made a powerful statement on planning which is evergreen and still relevant in today’s polity when He said:
“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’? Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace.”
It means, building any community is not anything that can come through wishful thinking, it can only come through hard work and sacrifice.
To build Okeogun of our dream, therefore, time has now come to set ourselves to work.
Remember, ‘isé lòògùn ìsé… Omo Òkèògùn isé yá!
