Igodomigodo’s Bombast: Why Nigerians must constantly challenge their leaders, by Obahiagbon

 Jide Ajani

He is a lawyer and holds two master’s degrees. A former member of the House of Representatives; House Leader, Edo State House of Assembly; Supervisory Councillor, Oredo LGA; and former chairman, Edo State Lawn Tennis Association, Partick Obahiagbon speaks with a lot of bombast; and he is widely known for that, even on facebook and twitter. This interview was a deliberate engagement to draw him out. He was indeed drawn out. The aspects of this interview which contain high-sounding words are explained below in italics. It is an interview for all seasons.

Excerpts:

What is the meaning of Igodomigodo? So many people would want to know?

Igodomigodo is a political sobriquet I have habilimented or if you like togarise my identity for a period of aeon to emblematize my culturico-spiritual fons et origo. It was an advertent stratagem to cosmopolitanize my genealogical matrix and arcane trajectory since it was not by accident that I originated from the land of Igodomigodo. The interesting thing is that IGODOMIGODO, being the pristine nomenclature of the Bini man, evokes in me the alacritous presence of the invisible “gods” of my progenitors which, by itself, invokes a luxuriation in an ancestral egregore of pristine resurgimento.

(All that he has said here means that he adopted the name Igodomigo to give meaning and pleasure to his belief in his Bini culture. Fons et origo means source or origin)

How did you actually come about the bombast with which you speak?

Well, this question can be answered from a bifurcated fons et origo.

One, I had a singular privilege of having a martinet for a father. My father was, and remains a very strict disciplinarian of puritanical and quixotic predilection. What that meant, my brother, in practical terms was that I never saw the streets of Benin outside my father’s compound after 7p.m., until I became a practising lawyer. I didn’t know how Benin looked like after 7p.m., except of course when I had to go to school.

If you grew up under that type of ambience, you cannot but put your nose to the grindstone. And more germane was the fact that when my father traveled abroad, he brought with him a flyer to the effect that good speakers have ruled the world, and if you want to rule the world, you cannot but be a good speaker. I was very impressionable when he gave me this flyer which he had bought from London and for me who have always had the primus mobile and gravitating force to want to be part and parcel of the political higgi haggar of my milieu, I said to myself that if being a good speaker was the condition sine qua non for ruling the world, then I was going to do everything possible to be a good speaker and that was how I acclimatized myself very voraciously to the Students’ Companion and read all there was to read that came my way. It was indeed a period of mental lucubration and intellectual gymkhana but more fundamentally is the fact that – and I’ve always said this – for most people, the dictionary is a reference point; but, for me, for over 25years now, the dictionary is a vade mecum – constant companion that is.

(Because his father bought him a flyer which says to rule the world you must be a good speaker, he started reading all there was to read with a view to becoming a good speaker because he wanted to influence the politics of his area – that’s all)

How?

I have spent nothing less than an hour on a daily basis on my dictionary for the past twenty five years and this could go from the pedestrian dictionary to the Encyclopedia and even to the Encarta dictionaries.

What purpose do you want to achieve with that? Just to speak, or to confuse people by being bombastic and verbose?

Let me tell you an incident that occurred that I want to bring under focal hiceps and biceps when I had the rare privilege to peregrinate through the green chambers, the House of Representatives, specifically. I’m talking about when I had the opportunity to describe the intended legislative gambadoism of my colleagues as amounting to legislative rascality. You remember I was to be committed to parliamentary seppuku for that idiolect.

(An incident that occurred when he called his colleagues in the House of Reps legislative rascal).

You were talking above them?

As far as they were concerned, the use of rascal simply meant something that was odious and malodorous and, to that extent, they felt scabrously stigmatized. But if you had the opportunity to go beyond the normal dictionary, into the high mental lingua dictionaries like the Encarta dictionaries, it would tell you, for example, that the word rascality, beyond those stigma, equally means when someone or an institution takes a position that is antipodal from the majority position.

So, from the point of view of the fact that majority of Nigerians including the progressive media and even the political parties objurgated the contumacious attempts by us to foist ourselves as automatic members of the NEC of our respective political parties, our intended actions had a deprecable and philistine pigmentation of legislative rascality which I pooh-poohed.

(Because the word rascality also means taking a minority position which was what the attempt by Reps to become automatic members of the National Executive Committees, NEC, of their parties amounted to, but which his colleagues did not understand, he got into trouble)

So, after courting trouble with your bombastic words, did they easily agree with your definition?

No, no, no, no.

Of course, normally in parliament, a concatenation of Machiavellian colloquy enveloped in punitive vendetta preceded my supposed parliamentary guillotine. Of course they were not in the mood for robust dialectics. I have dealt a mortal blow to their calculative solar plexus and I must be dealt with. Enough of the “obahiagbonesse”

So, it was a mob reaction and when I made to justiceate my earlier position that the action of parliament amounted to legislative rascality, my justification indeed further added fuel to their anger and when against my wish, the Speaker insisted that ‘Honourable Obahiagbon, I agree with what you are saying, but your colleagues still feel angered and why not please pacify them by saying you are sorry?’ It was at that juncture and in deference to Mr. Speaker who was so righteously desirous of my not swimming inside an aqua of vendetta and an already predetermined hara-kiri, that I had to verbagogically meander around the interstices by rendering the famous apologia even though I was still quick to insist on the strong conviction of my position. But do you know my brother that even the use of the word apologia deposited

parliament even more in turpsy turvydom?

(Laughter)

(The Speaker wanted him to say sorry but he used the word apologia which was rejected by his colleagues and which further infuriated them, leading to shouts of no, no, no no from members)

But you could also have simply said SORRY?

My friend those were funny times and a day of the long knives.
Apologia and SORRY mean one and the same thing!

If for me apologia was what my medulla oblongata popped up at that time, so be it.

(if what his brain suggested at that time was apologia, so be it)

The ‘rascals’ did not become members of their party’s NEC any way?

I no know book oooooo.
(I don’t know what you’re talking about)

You did not return to the House. Was there any link between this, your move from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, and eventual exit from the House?

Was there no deal between you and your governor before you went into ACN?

I don’t want to think so. I am a practising and an ardent student of Rosicrucian mysticism.
And as a student of light, I believe that anything that happens to me does not happen by chance and, in fact, nothing happens by chance or accident to a practising student of mysticism.

I don’t want to believe that; but suffice to say that by the time I adjusted from the PDP, there was a deal between myself and the governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, and the high priests of the ACN that they would deploy the ACN party machinery to actualize and concretize my mandate. The rest is history.

The rest cannot be history because Nigerians would want to know what happened?

You became a victim of what?

May be the governor had his reasons why he could not deliver on his promises but, like I earlier opined, nothing happens to a prasticing mystic by accident. We are still the best of friends and I am still an active member of the ACN. The governor remains my friend.

Why did you adjust from the PDP?

Democracy is government of the people for the people and by the people. No matter your feelings about Governor Oshiomhole, you cannot but give it to him that he has brought about the transformation and transmutation and, if you like, the acatalectic transmogrification of the socio-political topography of Edo State; he has brought the dividends of democracy to the people of Edo State; he has been quixotically committed to making the people get the dividends of democracy. There was a fundamental shift, a very radical shift in political loyalties and alliances.

(That Oshiomhole had brought never-before-seen development to the state).

Several members of my constituents moved on a daily basis from the PDP to the ACN at that time. In fact, 80% of those who gave me their imprimatur to represent them had already egressed from the PDP to the ACN; and every time I interacted and interfaced with them, I was daily bombarded by my people that though they gave me their mandate to represent them, they had moved to a different political tangent. I had to be on the same democratic page with my people.

But you appear to be on your own now; no PDP; no House membership?

If the governor of your state gives you his words, how could I have doubted those words my brother? Such promises are supposed to have the hallowed importance of…

(He muttered some words that appeared to be a mix of his Edo dialect and Latin, to which he was bluntly told ‘when we finish, you will have to write those words yourself’ and laughter followed)

Some people have said you ought to be a tourist attraction for your state but here you are, out of the House of Representatives, in limbo sort of?

I feel flattered and humbled by what you have said and by what people say.
Sincerely speaking, daily, I find myself in a state of lachrymoseism when at the airports and at various public places people receive me even up till now with reverence and most times with eyeballs soaked in tears.

There was a day I was going to Calabar for my mystical activities and a whole family rushed towards me and a woman started crying like a baby and said ‘you mean in spite of all your contributions and your ability to call a spade a spade, your people didn’t bring you back to the House of Representatives? It must be a shame; what kind of country are we in?’ To the glory of GOD, I still get that kind of reception on a daily basis even though I never knew my little contributions affected people so emotionally, but you know a prophet is always without honour in his home town. We continue to give thanks to Omneity and appreciate Nigerians that have shown me so much love.

(That he feels flattered when people praise him)

Deep inside you, when you look at the potentials of Nigeria as a nation and where we are today, with the insecurity and challenges we have, what would you say, especially with what the woman at the airport said, about Nigeria being where it is because of our approach to governance issues?

It just shows that we have not gotten it right.
With all the scenarios you have painted, I want to add another scenario in terms of the bellicose and belligerent reaction of Nigerians when, on January 1, 2012, they were awakened by the rude increase in the price of petrol.
When government took that decision, it was from the point of view of Roma Locausta Est, Causa Finista Est, which means when Rome has spoken, there is nothing more to be said.

Did government not buckle at the end of the day?

That brings me to what I have always said, that the political class would not by itself commit class suicide, that the movement out of our political phantasmagoria, economic quagmire and social stupour does not rest on the shoulders of the political class but the people who would have to rise against the malodorous excesses of the political class.

The marginal reforms we have made in our polity have come as a result of the fact that the progressive intelligentsia, the progressive media and students’ unions have forced the hands of the political class to change. The lesson is that Nigerians must constantly be at the barricades and constantly engage the political class. Eternal vigilance is the price for democracy.

What about the insecurity in the land as occasioned by the Boko Haram insurgency?

Let me first of all say that we must draw a difference between religious Boko Haram and political Boko Haram. Just as in the days of Obasanjo, there was religious Sharia and political Sharia. Political Sharia came into play when the Hausa Fulani oligarchy thought that Obasanjo had become as refractory as a mule to be controlled and they thought they needed to put him in check. So they introduced political Sharia.

I have said it for a period of aeon that the Boko Haram that has manifested into a murderous and malodorous saga cum gargantuan gaga, has come as a political contrivance, a Machiavellian and Mephistophelean contrivance to reject the way and manner they rightly or erroneously thought they were short-changed.

And beyond that, political Boko Haram is aimed at doing for the North, what the Niger delta militants did for the south-south.

If Niger Delta militancy could bring to the front burner the marginalisation being suffered in that region and forced a shift in political power to an Ijaw minority, the northerners were not sleeping and they were watching and interpreting those events and they are now moving in a way as to put them ahead of other regions preparatory to 2015.

That is why no matter what solutions are adopted to curtail it, I don’t see its containment until after the next presidential election. If power gets back to the northern hemisphere, you can quote me verbatim, Boko Haram, like political Sharia, would fizzle out by itself.

What is your relationship with President Jonathan today, Chief Anenih and Governor Adams Oshiomole?

I enjoy a cordial relationship with Chief Anenih. My relationship with my governor remains very warm and he enjoys my absolute loyalty and of course you knew the activism and robust role I played when I was in the House of Representatives to support Mr. President and he still enjoys my support.