A Press Statement issued by Pastor Joseph Suleiman (Manjoe), Coordinator, Ebira Renaissance Group (ERG) on Friday, 21st March, 2025 On behalf of the Founding Fathers of Ebira Youth Congress.
This press statement would not have been necessary because many reputable individuals and organisations have lent their credible voices to the ongoing farce called “The Recall of Natasha from the Senate”. What is more, many seasoned Clergy men and clerics had made good use of this season of penitence to voice out against bad politics in the name of this abnormal recall. I commend such men of God in our communities and this is just a way of lending support to their godly stand.
I can’t believe that we have come this low in politics. This is sacrilegious and to some extent treasonable against the Ebira nation, to say the least. This assertion is against the backdrop of the Charter of Ebira Youth Congress which states inter alia:
“We reckon that even if the good of the community coincides with that of the individual, it is clearly a greater and more perfect thing to achieve and preserve that of a community, for while it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of an individual, to do so in the case of a people or the community is something more sublime. The Ebira Youth Congress (EYC) therefore reject in its entirety the self defeating philosophy of ASI KA EZI EHEBE ANI OSOSO OSIVO, but strongly affirms the Ebira ancestral philosophy of ADU IRADA NA DA VAKA AUHWE VE. “
This is the Charter that I and the founding fathers of Ebira Youth Congress subscribed to. We have no reason to betray the spirit and the letter of this charter.
Where is our communal spirit in all of these shenanigans? I like on behalf of this organisation to assert pointedly that, the mammon induced recall process that was lavishly advertised with the commonwealth of the nation does not represent the vast majority of our people nor does it portray who we are as people of character as depicted in our name, Ebira. It has not even come this low in the second republic when the great philosopher and singer, the great Achewuru Obanyi Idoji rebuked Ebira politicians against bad politics in his living song:
Eyi vi ani eyi Anebira me ya ini ume Adayi /x2
Ekẹhi oniri Akpabio beri Ukata /x2
Ẹnini eva si eyi Anebira ga hi in umẹ ọyani /x2
Ẹnẹ ka yi wa ka andayi Anebira vi uji angọ
Ẹnẹ kavọ ka andayi Anebira vi uji angọ.
Cautioning that we must not allow outsiders to divide us. How low have we degenerated since then? It was Saraki, Adebayo and Olawoyin then. Today, it is Akpabio, money and power that is at play in dividing us.
Those behind this public show of shame are the kind of political characters that Sun Tzu referred to in his famous speech as evil men that are too dangerous to occupy positions of leadership in any sane society: An evil man, he said, “will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes”. This must not be allowed to happen to us. We are too good to be this cheap.
For those calling on traditional rulers to intervene should appreciate their precarious positions; the Ohinoyi, the Ohis and other vulnerable positions that the traditional rulers occupy in the present political structure. They are the appointees of the State and local governments and are therefore too fettered to take any objective or patriotic stand in this matter. We can only covet their royal prayers in the secret place.
Conclusively, we are happy that INEC has denounced the whole charade, called the recall process. Happier still, is the news from the Federal High Court sitting in Lokoja on Thursday, 20th March, 2025 that granted an interim injunction restraining INEC, its staff, agents, privies or assigns from receiving, accepting or acting on any petition containing fictitious signatures of purported members of Kogi Central Senatorial District and conducting any referendum upon such petition for the purpose of initiating a re-call process of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan as Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria pending the determination of the Motion on Notice to the same effect. This has provided a window for us to put our house in order by engaging positively with our aggrieved brothers.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at the times of challenge and controversy” – Martin Luther King Jr.
These are times that try men’s souls and all patriots must rise in defence of the common good as espoused in the EYC Charter quoted extensively in this Press Statement.
God bless and save Ebira Nation!
Signed
*Pastor Suleiman Joseph (Manjoe)*
Coordinator, ERG
