By Dr. Ugoji Egbujo
There is a god in Rivers. When it suits him, he corrects the injustice of the justice rendered by the supreme court. Sometime in 2015, he woke up and reviewed a supreme court decision. Many clapped with devotion. They lionized the small god. The supreme court had said Omehia was never governor.
But Omehia was a member of the sect of the triumphant young god. So the god lifted his countenance on loyal Omehia and shoved aside the supreme court judgment. Not even the dusty wig on the god’s head bothered him. After all, before he condescended to read law in a rusty university of technology, he had read politics.
Having been duly recognized by the deity, Omehia bowed and started enjoying ogbono from the pot of the state. Friend of a sitting god. For seven years, Omehia, who had spent a few months in the government house before the supreme declared him an impostor, enjoyed the dividends of divine arbitrariness. Truly nothing is hidden under the sun. Especially if an excitable megalomanic gossip has a hand in it.
Who would have known Omehia got so much pottage? Perhaps Omehia, conversant with the mercuriality of gods, should have taken higher priestly roles in the shrine of the minor god. If he had gone every day to loiter, shine his shoes, drink leftover st. Remy Louis xiii, and sing lullabies to the god, this calamity would have been avoided, at least mitigated.
But gentle Omehia took things for granted. And who wouldn’t? After all, the welfare extended to him didn’t come from any private pocket. It came from this same purse from which musicians in a concert received 10m naira each on a whim. It came from the same pot where northern delegates received uncommon motivation. Poor Omehia.
He allowed himself to be estranged from a riverine deity. And now the picture is ugly, and the consequences, messy. Omehia’s name is now sung by bands singing about traitors and political reprobates at project commissioning ceremonies. Adedibu was renowned for ruthlessness against traitors.
But he never asked anyone to vomit the amala, ewedu, and kpomo they had eaten. Adedibu never went that vengeful route. Nobody could have foreseen the affliction the god planned for Omehia. Though gods are naturally jealous and small gods meaner than big gods, even lawyerly demons know that this kind of retrospectivity is always unconscionable.
Omehia might have expected a repercussion when he started visiting another shrine. Like banishing Omehia from government parties and not sending Omehia gifts when his children marry. Such yellow card sanctions. But humble Omehia couldn’t have expected a god to dance naked to spite Omehia. In certain cultures, women dance naked to humiliate people or curse communities. But it’s unAfrican for men. People with elephantiasis of the scrotum, moral or physical, shouldn’t somersault in public. It is for their own good. Children are watching.
That televised session of the state legislature was also unnecessary. Only the drunk makes a show of his stupidity. Why send adults on childish errands and record them for posterity? Well, anybody contesting for a place in a house of assembly in Nigeria knows that the undertaking includes being called upon, from time to time, to swallow sewage from the government house. Those in Kogi were recently assembled to say that they suspect that the Dangote Cement factory Obajana which has been running for almost twenty years, was unlawfully purchased by Aliko Dangote.
Omehia has been given seven days to refund almost 600 million naira. If he fails, the house of assembly might summon him, or somebody might send the police to his house in Abuja to collect his pots and fridges. As it stands, he must avoid Rivers. Before Omehia, it was AIT. AIT had been the mouthpiece of the god.
But once the owner of AIT started growing political wings, the god moved in to put a plague on it. So AIT woke up one morning to discover that the state had revoked its ownership of a large parcel of land. Deities are allowed to be jealous, but the god of small things in Port Harcourt is particularly vindictive.
So, gentle Omehia must weigh his options. If he can’t cough out 600M, then he must live in Abuja and pray. Otherwise, if he sets foot in Port Harcourt, he might be given a modified Farah Dagogo treatment. If Omehia chooses, he can denounce Atiku, tomorrow. All he needs to do is, schedule a press conference with backup singers and sing praises to da lord.
Once he defects back to the small god of Port Harcourt, he might even get a huge sign-on fee. And the Rivers House will be gathered to summarily rescind the derecognition in the interest of justice and fair play. The house members won’t have any difficulty disowning themselves and their recent reasonings because they will not want to tempt fate. They don’t live in Abuja. They have since become used to functioning collectively as an old rubber stamp.
A god is on a rampage. Who will be next? I pray for those defecting to him now. They must retain the attitude of submissive slaves; otherwise, their sign-on fees might be published, and asset recovery processes might be unleashed.
The Bible says the gifts of God maketh rich and added no sorrow. Omehia now knows he received from a small god. The arbitrariness of small gods has been known since the ages. Therefore, people must now pray for citizen Omehia.
