For a very long time, there is this long standing truth that whoever you make your friend will either make you or mar you. The Ebira nation mainly dominant in Kogi Central took this saying with levity when their struggle for Kogi State became green. They believed everybody was a friend that needed help and they unknowingly presented their shoulders for others to rest on.
Going down memory lane, you will recall that the Igala nation were struggling to get Okura State while the Ebiras were jostling to have Kogi State. At the end of the day, Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) who had his secondary school education at the famous Abdul Aziz Attah Memorial College, Okene (AAAMCO) gave the positive nod to the creation of Kogi State. Our sons who worked with IBB when he was the military Head of State were also influential in the creation of Kogi because truth be told, they had a smooth working relationship with their boss.
The Igalas and the Okura they wanted to have in order for them to gain freedom from the people of Benue State did not see the light of the day. As much as they tried to achieve Okura State with all the juju and incantations to the many demi-gods having apartments in front of their houses, their hope of becoming proud owners of Okura State was dashed. That was how we got married to them as they were carved out from Benue State to join the Ebiras and the Okuns that were coming all the way from Kwara State.
To many who are outside there and seeing the Ebira people as wicked and heartless, it is high time we made it clear that the Ebira people are the best set of people to live with except you stir their hornet nest before they place you were you belong. Based on this, when the sudden marriage of the three axis that made up Kogi State was consummated, the Ebiras out of pity and the not too wrong believe that eating what is on ground together is what will move the newly founded Kogi State forward, they allowed the Igalas who were already beaten black and blue by the people of Benue State which was their former abode. Or can the Igalas come out to say that they held any tangible position when they were with the state known as the Food Basket of the Nation?
If I may ask, where was Murtala Ajaka when the struggle for Kogi State mainly by the Ebiras and the Okuns was on? I am not one that is against the progress of anyone. Even our own present Governor of Kogi State, Alh. (Dr.) Yahaya Bello (CON) was still a teenage when Kogi State was birthed but his lineage played a vital role in making sure that the dream of Kogi State became realistic and not the abstract Okura State that has gone into oblivion.
During an election that is based on democracy, nobody can stop any party or anyone from contesting. In the same vein, no one is against or trying to stop the Social Democratic Party (SDP) for fielding Murtala Ajaka as their flag bearer in the governorship election coming up on the 11th of November, 2023. However, the masquerade they have brought into the open has opened his mouth wide to insult the whole race of the Ebiras, a tribe who embraced the Igalas, washed off the dirtiness of sitting at the back from where they were coming from and clothed them to be part of royalty.
How on earth can Murtala Ajaka have the guts to refer to the whole Ebira nation as the common enemy that must be fought to a standstill. He said this on Channels Television whose viewing reach cuts across the globe. He did not even have his tongue in his mouth when he said it in the first place. He was blunt, frank and happy for emitting the contents of foolery deposited in his heart. The small stature and Zacchaeus looking lilliput that Murtala Ajaka is was beckoning on the Okun people to join forces with him to fight the Ebiras that is now a common enemy in his own eyes. Murtala Ajaka as an ingrate has forgotten so soon that the height he has attained today was made possible by God and a human vessel known as Alh. (Dr.) Yahaya Bello (CON), the present Governor of Kogi State who he thinks his unruly and uncouth choice of words will be enough to unseat him on the platform of a political party whose horse is now as weak as the latter days of Boxer, the horse in the book titled *Animal Farm by George Orwell.
Unknown to Murtala Ajaka and his train that are already heading to a landslide defeat in the powerful political hands of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ebiras which our Governor is serving as the Head boy and the unalloyed support of the people of Okun. Is it our Ebira-Koto brothers and sisters that the thugs of Murtala Ajaka heartlessly killed one of their daughters in his last campaign at Kogi Local Government Area that will now allow this beast to win within their territory?
Lastly, I want to humbly submit that the Ebira people missed it greatly when they allowed the Igalas to first taste the Governorship position before them and the Okuns. Let us remove the alphabet O from the Okura State they were agitating for. What you will have left is Kura. The word Kura in Hausa language is the name given to the animal known as hyena in English Language. We all know the negative traits of the hyena as voracious and a desperate scavenger. They are restless and always not satisfied no matter how much they prey on other animals out of greed and a longing for more best known to them.
The Ebira people and the Okuns did not know that they were handing over power to the hyenas. They got to the position of power in *Kogi State and they bought all the glues available in the market to eternally gum their buttocks to power not until God uprooted their smelly and hairy buttocks as a farmer would easily uproot a cassava plant during the rainy season.
Fine, we the Ebiras are the common enemy in the eyes of Murtala Ajaka and his cohorts from the Igala nation. We have just ruled for 8 years and now they want to faint out of frustration. We will rule yet again and the people of Kogi West* will rule. That is how we will continue to exchange the baton of Governorship till Murtala Ajaka and his cohorts run into the abyss of Okura, a state that never was. A big congratulations to Alh. Ododo Ahmed Usman (OAU). Amen.
By Balogun Omeiza David (BOD), Lokoja.
