A deputy governor’s provocation

By Ekanpou Enewaridideke

I THOUGHT some persons are immune o provocation when viewed against the backdrop of their upbringing, administrative experience, intellectual and political exposure, religious and philosophical persuasions. The Deputy-Governor of Delta State ,His Excellency Barrister Otuaro Burutu Kingsley is a principled, reliable and intelligent person whose loyalty to Governor Okowa Arthur Ifeanyi only parallels the purity of Egbesu’s white cloth in the temple – a Deputy-Governor immune to the pathological predisposition to fang his boss on the heels in smooth sly moves.

In his daily steps, Kingsley enjoys association with the word MEEKNESS. His reinforced personality as a man who is meek is a product of his commitment to the service of  God.  No day retires home without Kingsley’s thoughts focused on the biblical virtues and soul-winning for the God of Mein, Kor, Oge, Kalanama, Ngbile, Ogbolu, Ogide, Owubrowei, Akan, Eze, Gbaraun and Moses – though his devotion to godliness is often channelled in fruitful functional alliance with his responsibilities as a Deputy-Governor.

For a man like Kingsley, recognised and daily applauded for meekness, provocation does not merit seepage into his programmed world of godliness. This is the conundrum here. For a Deputy-Governor to be justifiably provoked by critical literary essays published online in the Vanguard of 26 June 2017 and 5 July 2017 to the extent of JTF-deployment against the writer, murder-bent, Bible-carrying Deputy-Governors are indeed professional pretenders disposable in the waiting ABOMASUM of the biblical furnace. Maybe the critical literary essays have castigated the SMART political philosophy of his Excellency  Ifeanyi Okowa and in whose defence he has chosen OKONKWOIC provocation? Has Kingsley suddenly lost his phenomenal meekness and godliness because of critical literary essays entitled: ‘Thoughts of Peace and Revolt in Ebi Yeibo’s The Fourth Masquerade’ and ‘Ebi Yeibo as a Town-crier of Niger Delta Independence in Shadows of the Setting Sun’?

Provocation – intermittent or perpetual – must not be the defining feature of political office holders, particularly Deputy-Governors democratically enthroned on the strength of their good character compositions. When ‘Okonkwo was provoked to justifiable anger by his younger wife, who went to plait her hair at her friend’s house and did not return early enough to cook the afternoon meal’ (Things Fall Apart, 21), he beat his wife Ojiugo mercilessly and desecrated the ‘Week of Peace’ in Umuofia. At another time, for killing a banana tree in his compound, Okonkwo angrily descended on his ‘second wife who had merely cut a few leaves off it to wrap some food…’ (27). Bound for hunting after the bout of beating, he detailed Ikemefuna to bring his gun. Then he heard the murmur of the beaten woman that had to do with Okonkwo’s gun never being able to shoot. Anger grabbed Okonkwo immediately again and he took the gun and spoke its language of annihilation: ‘He pressed the trigger and there was a loud report accompanied by the wail of his wives and children. He threw down the gun and jumped into the barn, and there lay the woman, very much shaken and frightened but quite unhurt. He heaved a heavy sigh and went away with the gun’ (28). Okonkwo would have ended up as a perpetrator of culpable homicide, and WIFICIDE if WIFICIDE is an acceptable word in English, but for his miscalculation. This is a disgusting display of provocation. Is Kingsley excited by the action of Okonkwo when he angrily wielded his gun against his wife? Is Kingsley provoked that Okonkwo’s gun missed the target? Is the Deputy-Governor of Delta State now walking on the lane of Okonkwo who got nothing but opprobrium from his own people over his unguarded provocation?

The critical literary essays ‘Thoughts of Peace and Revolt in Ebi Yeibo’s The Fourth Masquerade’ and ‘Ebi Yeibo as a Town-crier of Niger Delta Independence in Shadows of the Setting Sun’ were written by me. A week after this online publication a voice of impersonality which identified itself as His Excellency Otuaro Burutu Kingsley called me up. With amazing succinctness he characterised the two essays in provocatively vindictive tone: Your two critical literary essays are badly written to spike and provoke me.  The apparently electrifying poetic language employed to analyze the two collections of poems was indeed contrived-poetry, pseudo-poetry, pretentious-poetry, devoid of any healthy intellectual nourishment. By this balderdash you shall be honoured with a memorable day with JTF in the Government House. JTF will teach you how not to write such rubbish, how not to use poetry pretentiously to provoke personalities when poetry should ideally be used soulfully to reawaken, rhythmically, emotionally devastated souls.

I felt a fear-stricken seepage of urine into my white pair of pants when I knew it was the true voice of the Deputy-Governor of Delta State. Shafts of disbelief and doubt invaded me with regard to the true intention of the caller. Could this be a dream? Could this be JULY-FOOL? Around me I felt a deposition of ‘Button B’, ‘Button A’,  ‘Red booth’, ‘Red Pillar-box’ and ‘Red double-tiered Omnibus squelching tar’ from Wole Soyinka’s ‘Telephone Conversation’! From JP Clark’s ‘Night Rain’ I heard invasive music and dance on roof tops:

‘It is drumming hard here

And I suppose everywhere

Droning with insistent ardour upon

Our roof thatch and shed…

I cannot quite make out overhead

Great water drops are dribbling

Falling like Orange or Mango

Fruits showered forth in the wind…’

Anchored on the poetic vibrations and notes from Soyinka’s ‘Telephone conversation’ and JP Clark’s ‘Night rain’, I became awakened to the reality that I had been programmed for a savaging by Kingsley because I turned out biting garbage in my two critical literary essays. Before thoughts of being savaged by JTF soldiers maliciously detailed by the Deputy-Governor of Delta State could bid bye to my mind, ferocious soldiers were already at my doorstep holding a mighty HOLY BIBLE, and a GIGANTIC brown envelope hermetically sealed with the inscription ‘from His Excellency Barrister Otuaro Burutu Kingsley’, no guns carried, no koboko(horse wipe) belted around their waists. They gave me the Holy Bible and the brown envelope with unprecedented courtesy. Could this be a letter bomb to bomb me to rubble like Late Dele Giwa?

A thought of dying with the soldiers came to me; I opened the envelope in their presence so we could all go to the underworld together if it was actually a letter bomb. Crisp notes denominated in N500 and N1000 danced WEIREI into my palms with steps more graceful than the dance steps of Chief Vero Tamgbowei of Gbaramatu Kingdom, Tosi Pafiye of Ngbilebiri Kingdom, Koromonghan Fanti of Gbekebor, Podoki Kenebokere of Akparemogbene and the magical Return Ekpoenaikezimini of Gbekebor. So for atrociously written critical literary essays thriving on contrived poetic language, rather than felicitously carved, I have been savaged by crisp notes from Kingsley when I feared and thought I would be gored by soldiers sent by the Deputy-Governor.

His Excellency Barrister Otuaro  loves poetry the way Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Chinua Achebe, Gabriel Emomotimi Okara, Late Dr JB Egberike and Timiebi Maika Ferebo love poetry, whose pardonable weakness is susceptibility to occasional provocation by critical literary essays from the Akparemogbene-born creek boy – occasional provocation stunningly at variance with the murder-bent provocation of Okonkwo of Umuofia. Therefore, I shall perpetually provoke His Excellency Otuaro Kingsley with critical literary essays because his occasional provocation is a bridge to the soothing OZONE from River Forcados.

 

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