By Opia Olomah
Those who seek power not for the service of the people but for self glory and personal aggrandizement as ultimate end often regard deception, treachery, betrayal and greed as great virtues.
Characteristically consumed in Robert Greene’s “The 48 Laws of Power” and Nicolle Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” just with intent to steel their political ruthlessness and arrogance, I wish they also had learned from Rosemary Rowe’s “The Rewards of Treachery” and other inspired political admonitions, to gift them temperance and moderation and enable them understand that self pride peeps through every part of the man, and that whoever and “whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise.”
This appears to be the frame of former Deputy Senate President, Obarisi Ovie Omo-Agege, now apparently in bed with Nemesis, the implaccable daughter of justice, and being left nowhere and with nothing in the scheme of things.
It is happening so because you can shamelessly walk away from your selfishness and greed with an arrogant smile of fulfillment, but loneliness awaits you at the end of the road as deceit is like quicksand, you get filled and sinked.
Thus, while Omo-Agege is struggling in futility to falsely claim the Governorship mandate through all manners of legal concoctions and contortions and had also been eyeing possible federal appointment either for himself or his proxies for resettlement, all his expectations are cut off.
For one, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu knows that Omo-Agege never supported his presidential bid. Two, Tinubu is spiritually discerning enough to be wary of and to exocise someone whose political life is defined by the accusation of having raised thugs to steal the Sacred Mace from the hallowed chamber of the Senate, an abomination of national magnitude with curse implications.
In his ill-advised misadventure into the Delta State Gubernatorial race, the former Deputy Senate President had hoped to gain political capital from Chief James Ibori’s disproportionate anger over the loss of his candidate in the PDP Governorship primary but while he failed woefully, the romance also has seen Ibori cream off all the possible federal benefits that could have accrued to the APC in Delta.
Tinubu has appointed Ibori’s man, Chiedu Ebie, as Chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), another of his man, Monday Igbuya, as Delta State Commissioner in the board, his daughter, Erhiatake, as House of Representatives Committee Chairman on NDDC and possibly another of his man could be Director General of NIMASA or some other big office.
The romance with Ibori reminds us of how Nemesis, the goddess of justice, led Narcissus to admire his reflection in the water and how he dived in and drowned.
In the appointment of Ministers, Omo-Agege’s projections were also not considered, and while he shunned the reception in celebration of Festus Keyamo as the ministerial preference, the national leadership of the APC showed high and loud presence. If you can’t see, at least, you can hear.
Also, while Ahmed Lawan, former Senate President whom he deferred to, has returned to the red chamber after losing out in the Presidential primary, and now Chairman of Senate Committee on Defence, it has become clear that his then deputy over estimated his himself and has been left empty handed.
Maybe, just maybe, the Delta APC governorship candidate can now begin to understand the lessons in John Keats’ “Fame (II)”: “How fever’d is the man, who cannot look upon his mortal days with temperate blood, who vexes all the leaves of his life’s book, and robs his fair name of its maidenhood… teasing the world for grace, spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed.”
For a reminder, Omo-Agege was nursed into the political scene by Chief James Ibori, after he had contested and lost the PDP primary for the House of Representatives.
Ibori appointed him Executive Assistant in 2003, later elevated him to Commissioner for Special Duties and then to Secretary to the State Government in 2007.
Never mind that it is suggested in some quarters that he possibly may have been among those who betrayed Ibori. More curious was the fact that in 2007 he obstinately contested for PDP’s Governorship ticket in flagrant disregard of the party’s principle of rotation and the stability of the state, even when he was aware that his Delta Central Senatorial District had just had the position and was to hand over the baton to Delta South.
Of course, the party stood it’s ground on rotation and Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan from Delta South was elected, but in pursuit of his selfish interest, Omo-Agege Agege later defected to the Labour Party to run for Senate in 2015.
Rather than stay faithful to the Labour Party which gave him the ticket, our dear senator quickly defected to the APC in 2017. While there, he immediately dislodged O’Tega Omerhor who had held the party together before his entry.
Also deploying his influence as Deputy Senate President, he further seized the leadership structure of the party from Chief Great Ogboru who had also sustained the party as he aspired for the Governorship of the state.
With these scheming, Omo-Agege emerged the Governorship flag bearer of the APC for the 2023 elections but was roundly rejected by Deltans, leaving him with just four of 25 LGAs in the elections. Even his said win in the four remain questionable.
Now, we can see the reason why, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius advised Laertes to understand, “above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Same characterisation is identified in the words of Thersites in Troilus and Cressida: “If I could ’a remembered a gilt counterfeit, thou couldst not have slipped out of my contemplation. But it is no matter. Thyself upon thyself! The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue! Heaven bless thee from a tutor, and discipline come not near thee!”
If the Orogun born politician does not understand his present condition, he can perhaps look into a mirror and he might recognise the fellow described by Agamemnon to Patroclus: “You shall not sin if you do say we think him overproud and underhonest in self-assumption greater
than in the note of judgment; and worthier than himself.
Here tend the savage strangeness he puts on… Watch his course and time, his ebbs and flows… Go tell him this, and add that, if he overhold his price so much, we’ll none of him. But let him, like an engine not portable, lie under this report… (for) a stirring dwarf we do allowance give before a sleeping giant. Tell him so.”
For any man with those credentials, as a Pidgin proverb says, “dem no dey tell blind man say market done close.”