EBIRA LEADERS: QUIT YOURSELVES AS MEN

First, we concede an all-time opportunity of governing this State to Igalas when we arrived Kogi State. The nostalgia of old-time brotherhood in the then Kabba Province urged us to allow Igalas have a bite at the cherry. Now they have transfixed themselves to the position where they can consume all the cherry while we watch helplessly. We became beleaguered and disconsolate in a State in which we rightly have a stake. We danced to the perpetual music of calculated stratagems aimed at undoing us. We seemed not to be shrewd enough to decode the message.

While the political chapters unfurled gradually in the State, we allowed ourselves distraught by the shameful season of anomie we foisted on ourselves. At every political opportunity, we hamstrung ourselves by literally selling our land to others because of in-house bitterness. Our existential story became one “life”, according to Herbert Gold, “in which dog-eat-dog is man’s (our) closest pal”. We focused more on settling scores with ourselves while our arch rival tribe schemed us farther away from promises accruable to us.

While an upstart like Mohammed Kabiru Shaibu and a few patriotic National Association of Ebira students crusaded fiercely for power shift under the “Ebira Agenda” concept, a dissenting camp championed by the self style godfather of Ebira politics deafened us with the myopic “Ebira Ajeda” intransigence, this group later metamorphosed into the monster called Action Congress (AC) that introduced the do or die electioneering campaign in Ebiraland. The AC splintered from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in our attempt to wrest power from Igalas. The move failed for two major factors: first because the spirit behind it was self-serving, it was intended to teach the few Ebiras in PDP some lesson. (It was mission vendetta), second because mobs were allowed to direct the campaign to the exclusion of enlightened youths of the land. We left our common political enemies and made enemies of ourselves. So, lives were lost, properties destroyed and some were maimed for life. We carpeted the other camp for fault we committed ourselves. And we are nursing our suppurating injuries today. Read full article here