The Lords Of May, Otuaro, Mutu, Pondi And Asupa_By Ekanpou Enewaredideke
In every year there are many months that file out and file away like ants in chronological order after the seeming corporate pulverization and disappearance of the sugar that usually brings ants together with a magnet-like propulsion. The most enigmatic and complex month of the year has just come. Astrologically termed Taurus in zodiacal language, it is the month called May – the complex multifaceted May month carrying mails from different people who demand vociferously that their mails be opened, read and mastered thoroughly so that they can be clearly understood in terms of development theories and visions they represent and be worked with or worked for electorally in pragmatic alliance by the inscrutable Lords of May. And so waiting to be read and mastered for amalgamation and separation towards ultimate amalgamation are the mails of His Excellency Otuaro, Rt. Hon. Nicholas Mutu, Rt. Hon. Julius Pondi and Hon. Forteta Peter Asupa.
Every month of the year has justices and judges but they are not known beforehand. Contrarily, Justices and judges in the month of May in this 2022 are known. For this year many months have journeyed away without any hullabaloo and tension created. This month of May holds many promises. This is the month for ideas and theories to struggle to pass the test of validity and acceptability. This is the month to test happiness, sadness and resolve. This is the month to know the real in people. This is the month to know the lies and the truths of delegates; the month to know aspirants who break pacts with fellow candidates to give away their delegates; the month to know candidates who deceitfully go into multiple pacts with fellow aspirants to guarantee electoral victory; the month for aspirants to get the karmic consequences of their lies – the lies of aspirants who suddenly strive to be interested in the welfare of the people; the month aspirants pick their calls with renewed vigour and flourish to create a new narrative of being sensitive to the plight of the people – the ordinary people they have recklessly abandoned for years.
A complex month May is because it is the period arrogant and selfish aspirants - not developmentally arrogant and implacable aspirants - wear chameleonic behavioural coats to deceive the people by showing unmerited love to delegates; a period delegates whisper differently to every aspirant that they will vote him or her; a period aspirants pamper delegates with mind-changing blandishments, performance-enhancement materials, gifts and instantaneous periodic good behaviour in largesse-creation; a period aspirants and delegates lie to one another and ‘truth’ the truth or truck the truth to one another. For the anointed aspirants without karmic luggage, the delegates truck the truth to them with their votes cast favourably. For the aspirants with karmic luggage, mind-changing blandishment and performance-enhancement materials are claimed and lies deposited at the doorstep of the aspirants in arrears told with their votes cast on the day designated for primaries.
It is like hell or heaven where the aspirants are usually held for years to labour for freedom. For good aspirants they enjoy for four years and wait to be retained through mandate-renewal or denied mandate-renewal and sent to four-year hell or four-year political paradise of representation. Victory or failure, aspirants are constantly on trial every four years. Sometimes aspirants are misunderstood and wrongly sent to hell in May. Viewed against this backdrop, it should be noted that Otuaro has worked commendably with good developmental theories and healthy campaign that have taken him to every part of Delta State; also firmly established in the minds of the people with commendation are personalities like Rt. Hon. Mutu celebrated for his legislatively influenced Akparemogbene River canalization project, Hon. Pondi recognised for his legislatively influenced three class-room block building at Omotimipere Primary School, Akparemogbene and many other similar development projects in every ward of Burutu Local Government Area, and Hon. Asupa for his legislatively influenced three class-room project in Serikoromo Primary School, Oyangbene and his legacy Egodo road project. Men without karmic luggage they are, may Otuaro, Mutu, Pondi and Nicholas be perfectly understood by the delegates and sent to the electoral Heaven where they will dwell and labour for renewal-sojourn with good deeds demanded of every good man electorally ‘heavened’ by the unpredictable delegates.
May is a very busy month. In this busy month of may, May maybe too busy to be spoken to because it is the month aspiring senators, members of House of Representatives, governors, presidents and members of State House of Assembly will subject themselves to the Lords of May for a wise judgment on their communicated lies and truths upon which the accredited Lords will have to deliberate after collection of performance-enablement fees and mind-changing blandishments from all the aspirants at different times. This bargaining for higher performance-enhancement fees, the actual collection and the final judgment are among the salient issues that keep May busy throughout this month of May in 2022.
Justices and judges in the month of May in this 2022 are known. The storytellers on whose stories the justices rely in this month of May 2022 are also known. The delegates are the justices, the judges. The aspiring members of House of Assembly, House of Representatives, Senators, governors and presidents are the story-tellers who strive to tell stories as their sworn affidavits deposed to in the presence of the justices. . . To Hell or to Heaven, to be remanded or to be discharged and acquitted at the end of all the proceedings, it is the justices who have the final say.
The justices and judges are now at work. Now at work, may they be genuinely swayed by the good stories and the sworn affidavits of Otuaro, Mutu, Pondi and Asupa because these four aspirants have striking stories told to be listened to compulsively even without the arrival of mind-changing blandishments and performance-enhancement materials. These four faces are known to the justices by deeds of performance.
The month of amalgamation in 2022 is May because May is a busy month where possibilities live side by side with impossibilities. Where delegates bow like Iroko branches to mind-changing blandishments from the various aspirants, they have a visionary plan to execute in full circle. For such delegates they have been proportionally intoxicated by King Alfred Izonebi, the Golden Eagle of Niger Delta and the Trumpet of Africa, whose philosophical stand is that aspirants are always ‘goat-eyed’ when seeking elective offices but become ‘lion-eyed’ after they have become victorious. For such goat-eyed aspirants they are capacitated to offer the delegates mind-changing blandishments and performance-enhancement materials of any variety even where it is clear their under-performance and agedness in look and their agedness in the elective office mark them out for failure. For King Izonebi such goat-eyed and old political aspirants should be voted against as a lesson after claiming the mind-changing blandishments and performance-enablement materials offered by the candidates.
Come sun or rain in their full radiance, the political journey of an aspirant is a journey punctuated by ironies only mastered by God and the psychic because amalgamation and separation always dance cyclically until the ultimate bell rings. However the altitude of amalgamation, there shall be an ultimate separation towards ultimate amalgamation – a political paradox only the initiated have the key to unlock.
A known phenomenon in democratic exercise is that the delegates and the aspirants are usually amalgamated at first and get separated after the primaries. The amalgamation ends with the outcome of the electoral result. In the ‘separatist’ state another amalgamation occurs in the real election to further separate the aspirants and the voters into final amalgamation. Here the once separated delegates and the aspirants are ultimately welded into one by the victory of the aspirants. At this level no further division is possible until another primary arrives in which new stories are told again to determine amalgamation and separation. Indeed, in the political journey of an aspirant, amalgamation and separation always dance cyclically until ultimate victory claims the surface of the earth.
In the seeming ironically twisted see-saw of amalgamation and separation in democratic engagements, clearly situated is the fact that the honourable PDP delegates may not be caught up in the premeditated acceptance of mind-changing blandishments and performance-enhancement materials from goat-eyed aspirants and actually voting against them as a lesson because they are respected and well-educated delegates who vote for or vote against a given aspirant based on the performance-assessment of candidates without claiming performance-enhancement materials before voting. Interestingly, the acceptance of performance-enhancement materials from aspirants before voting is ethically archaic and condemnable because this is alien to the electoral political culture of PDP during primaries conducted.
Incidentally, where the theory of ‘Konoweitoruism’ propounded by King Izonebi, which clearly situates visionless, untrustworthy, dishonest, insincere, sugar-mouthed, aged, tired and expired aspirants as ‘goat-eyed’, becomes the guide for delegates, the likes of Otuaro, Pondi and Asupa may be the only occupants of the minds of the delegates because by performance history, age in actual age of sojourn on earth and age in the occupation of elective offices, Otuaro, Pondi and Asupa are the antithesis of King Izonebi’s theory of ‘Konoweitoruism’ because these are known candidates committed to their constituencies and senatorial districts in terms of developmental arrogance. So if the whole elective exercise is fundamentally about King Izonebi’s “Konoweitoruism’ in May, a victory madrigal awaits Otuaro, Pondi and Asupa.
Chai! A dance of finality it is now and so, however it strikes you here, claim it with your two hands. Call it the writer’s benevolent or self-confused digressional dance of finality if you wish. Like a bird stuck to the instinct of homing, may Rt. Hon. Nicholas Mutu not be maimed by the Lords of May in this 2022 May – I mean Rt. Hon. Nicholas Mutu the progenitor of developmental arrogance in the Niger Delta whose name has just stormed my cerebrum like the Ayakoromo-born poet Ebi Yeibo’s ‘fourth masquerade’ watched in a dance of masquerades in Akparemogbene during the famous Eselekere masquerade festival. And so the choreographically entertaining fourth masquerade Rt. Hon. Nicholas Mutu becomes in allegorical appropriation in this historical May where only delegates become the accredited Lords of May whose verdict becomes the death-knell or the victory dance decibel for the aspirants of any political party in Nigeria because for those electorally hauled into hell, they struggle for extrication and manumission, and for those politically paradised and electorally hauled into heaven, they labour to renew their paradisal mandate at the retirement of the four-year paradise.
BY EKANPOU ENEWARIDIDEKE
Writes from Akparemogbene, Delta State
