Partick Obahiagbon the Igodomigodo
Partick Obahiagbon He is a lawyer and holds two master 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:
Q: What is the meaning of Igodomigodo, So many people would want to know?
PO: 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)
Q: How did you actually come about the bombast with which you speak?
PO: 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 practicing 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 ambiance, 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 and that’s all)
Q: How?
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:
Q: What is the meaning of Igodomigodo, So many people would want to know?
PO: 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)
Q: How did you actually come about the bombast with which you speak?
PO: 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 practicing 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 ambiance, 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 and that’s all)
Q: How?
PO: 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.
Q: Why did you
adjust from the PDP?
PO: 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.
Q: But you appear to be on your own now; no PDP; no House membership?
(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.
Q: But you appear to be on your own now; no PDP; no House membership?
PO: 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 me.
(He muttered some words that appeared to be a mix of his Edo dialect and Latin, to which he was bluntly told me when we finish, you will have to write those words yourself and laughter followed)
Q: 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?
PO: 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 to 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)
Q: 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?
PO: 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.
(He muttered some words that appeared to be a mix of his Edo dialect and Latin, to which he was bluntly told me when we finish, you will have to write those words yourself and laughter followed)
Q: 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?
PO: 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 to 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)
Q: 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?
PO: 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.
Q: Did government not buckle at the end of the day?
Q: Did government not buckle at the end of the day?
PO: 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.
Q: What about the insecurity in the land as occasioned by the Boko Haram insurgency?
PO: 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.
Q: 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.
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.
Q: What about the insecurity in the land as occasioned by the Boko Haram insurgency?
PO: 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.
Q: 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.
Comments