April 29, 2010
In a week that featured a certain character who brandishes a knighthood of Saint Gregory, KSG to be exact; an OON, and other titles, made a feeble but calculated attempt to insult our collective sensibility by blowing hot and threatened court action over his perception of what he regards as ill-treatment that came his way on SaharaReporters for specifically publishing a list of alleged bribe takers from oil services contractor Halliburton, in which his name stands comfortably as the twenty-second amongst other beneficiaries of illicit funds, the present writer deems it fit to embark on a cause quite paradoxical to what earned the said character a deserving place on Halliburton’s list of infamy.
The paradoxical cause that I must wage here this time is informed by the rationale that the quest to build a proper state in the parts of the Niger basin that British colonialism carved into the warped contraption that it called Nigeria merits multi-pronged strategies. For too long people of goodwill and good conscience have ceded the political space associated with Nigeria for charlatans and thieves who strut and parade it with unbridled impunity and arrogance even as they loot the wealth and resources that the land is endowed with.
At a time when it seems like a given that well-intentioned people amongst us are incapable of seeking and gaining public office to do good, I recently read somewhere that Mr. Femi Ojudu, who is also an accomplished journalist, has declared his intention to throw his hat into the ring to contest and win the Ekiti Central Senatorial seat in Ekiti state come the next general elections as an Action Congress, AC candidate. Femi is an individual whom I have known from close quarters since the early 1990s. In fact, it wouldn’t be an over-statement on my part if I call him a friend.
He is one of the five individuals who broke loose from Chief MKO Abiola’s Concord newspapers stable and founded TheNews magazine in the early 1990s. They used the magazine and the TEMPO—which was the other title that they used to publish—to join the battle against General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s regime and its successor regimes in the 1990s. Three of them have stayed together ever since and continued to manage the outfit even after two of the five founders took their leave for different reasons.
Do not get me wrong here; there is not a thing that I know about Femi that will make me begin to presume that he is anything close to being a saint. But I know a handful about him that gives me cause to suggest that his head is properly screwed onto his shoulders. He has all it takes to be a responsive senator. He is capable of delivering quite credibly in public office. If an erstwhile friend who subsequently became a Central Bank Governor did possess the sort of heart that this writer associates with Femi, this manner of endorsement being disclosed here today would have been the least that one could have proclaimed for him during his recent ill-fated foray into elective office.
Although this writer is not from Ekiti, this endorsement is the least he is willing to extend to Femi now and in the months ahead as he pursues his desire to remain relevant in public service as an elected representative.
Postscript: This writer was recently intimated by a friend that there’s a certain individual in Lagos who scours SaharaReporters.com habitually just to relish negative comments made by readers of whatever emanates from my keyboard. I must say that I take that individual’s delight as a compliment indeed. Any activist, who is unaware that the endeavour is more thankless than otherwise, ought to cut and run.
●E. C. Ejiogu, PhD, is a political sociologist.
The paradoxical cause that I must wage here this time is informed by the rationale that the quest to build a proper state in the parts of the Niger basin that British colonialism carved into the warped contraption that it called Nigeria merits multi-pronged strategies. For too long people of goodwill and good conscience have ceded the political space associated with Nigeria for charlatans and thieves who strut and parade it with unbridled impunity and arrogance even as they loot the wealth and resources that the land is endowed with.
At a time when it seems like a given that well-intentioned people amongst us are incapable of seeking and gaining public office to do good, I recently read somewhere that Mr. Femi Ojudu, who is also an accomplished journalist, has declared his intention to throw his hat into the ring to contest and win the Ekiti Central Senatorial seat in Ekiti state come the next general elections as an Action Congress, AC candidate. Femi is an individual whom I have known from close quarters since the early 1990s. In fact, it wouldn’t be an over-statement on my part if I call him a friend.
He is one of the five individuals who broke loose from Chief MKO Abiola’s Concord newspapers stable and founded TheNews magazine in the early 1990s. They used the magazine and the TEMPO—which was the other title that they used to publish—to join the battle against General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s regime and its successor regimes in the 1990s. Three of them have stayed together ever since and continued to manage the outfit even after two of the five founders took their leave for different reasons.
Do not get me wrong here; there is not a thing that I know about Femi that will make me begin to presume that he is anything close to being a saint. But I know a handful about him that gives me cause to suggest that his head is properly screwed onto his shoulders. He has all it takes to be a responsive senator. He is capable of delivering quite credibly in public office. If an erstwhile friend who subsequently became a Central Bank Governor did possess the sort of heart that this writer associates with Femi, this manner of endorsement being disclosed here today would have been the least that one could have proclaimed for him during his recent ill-fated foray into elective office.
Although this writer is not from Ekiti, this endorsement is the least he is willing to extend to Femi now and in the months ahead as he pursues his desire to remain relevant in public service as an elected representative.
Postscript: This writer was recently intimated by a friend that there’s a certain individual in Lagos who scours SaharaReporters.com habitually just to relish negative comments made by readers of whatever emanates from my keyboard. I must say that I take that individual’s delight as a compliment indeed. Any activist, who is unaware that the endeavour is more thankless than otherwise, ought to cut and run.
●E. C. Ejiogu, PhD, is a political sociologist.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });