REVEREND David Ugolor, executive director of the ANEEJ, an international NGO based in Benin City, Edo State of Nigeria has been a celebrity since the 1990s when he formally launched his NGO career. In case you aren’t aware, his NGO took an active role in the Jubilee Movement of the early 1990s which radically campaigned for foreign debt cancellation. This was because the debts were not only illegal and unsustainable but moral reprehensible. It was this campaign that culminated in the cancellation of part of Nigeria’s Paris debt during Obasanjo era in government. Also, name it. Is it the campaign against water privatisation? Or the advocacy for local government revenue autonomy as well as good governance, public accountability and transparency in the marginalised Niger Delta region? How about the campaign for publishing federal revenue inflows and expenditure out flows in the Nigeria extractive industrial sub-sector of oil, gas and mineral resources? ANEEJ and Ugolor have been involved in these campaigns and advocacy that takes him round the world. Similarly, some of us don’t know Ugolor worked tirelessly to stop Edo State Government from repaying the ADB loan for urban water supply in Benin City which suffered military haemophilia during the regime of Lt. Col. Mohammed Onuka in 1993/94. Still, how many of us know that Ugolor facilitated the establishment of EDSOPADEC in Edo State by Chief Lucky Igbinedion in 2007? Only a few of us. Well, this is not a biography of Ugolor. All I have done is to lay the infrastructural foundation of this articles to show that he has long been a celebrity in NGO activism. Fortunately, he has now progressed from this celebrity status to that of a global icon. Why? It is because of the ungodly persecution he endured in the hands of the Nigerian Police in 2012 when he was wrongly accused of conspiring to murder comrade Olaitan Oyerinde, former principal private secretary of the governor of Edo State, on May 4, 2012. Imagine, although top-ranking DIG Peter Gana from the Force Headquarters in Abuja was assigned the case by the Inspector-General of Police, investigation into it was dead-on-arrival, to use a medical term in morbid anatomy. This was because DIG Peter Gana was working from the answer to the question in the case for reasons best known to him. For instance, without any visible iota of diligent investigation for a whole 61 days, Ugolor was pick-up like a common criminal on July 27, 2012 for the May 4, 2012 murder of his bosom friend Comrade Olaitan Oyerinde. This was on the flimsy grounds of gaseous suspicion and the forced confessional statements of suspects like Garuba Maisamari, Danjuma Musa and Murtala Usman. The BBC African proverb of 8th October, 2010 says: “A lie has a short life but truth lives for ever.” So, after 41 days in three different, unsanitary detention facilities in Edo State and Abuja, a court of competent jurisdiction set Ugolor free. His bitter ordeal ended. No doubt. Ugolor went into detention as an NGO celebrity. However, he emerged from it as a global human rights icon of the struggle to make society a better place for humanity. This is why he is a toast of the world, today because more mileage has been added to his NGO activism. All his enemies who thought ANEEJ and his career, as an NGO personality would be destroyed have been put to shame. A prophet may not be accepted by a section of our disingenuous Nigerian Police but the knowing world do. This explained why recently in October 2013. Ugolor had jam-packed international engagement abroad. He was first in Germany for a meeting with officials of the German Ministry of Economic Development and the human rights community. After the event, he jetted to Oslo, Norway for a date with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From Norway, he went to Geneva in Switzerland where he attended the 17th session of the UN Universal Periodic Review Conference. Also, during the extensive trip, he was in England for a date with the human rights community. Finally he was in Dublin, Ireland to brief the world assembly of FRONTLINE DEFENDERS (an organization committed to the protection of human rights activists at risk) on his travails as well as those of his compatriots in Rivers State, today. Indeed, persecution doesn’t mar an innocent, a strong-willed person. It only makes him or her a greater earthly being. Remember Oba Ovonranmwen (1888-1897) of Benin Kingdom. As a King, he was a heaven-baked celebrity already. However, the British punitive expedition to his kingdom which was nothing but a territorial trespass, criminal invasion and cultural breach of his royal privacy transformed him into a global icon. Dele Giwa, the founding editor-in-chief of Newswatch Magazine had a similar biographic. From 1979 to October 18, 1986, he had made a name for himself as a millennial writer/journalist. But beginning from October 19, 1986 when he was innocently murdered by a letter bomb, his reputation under went binary multiplication into that of a global icon. Enter the Mandiba, I mean the great Nelson Mandela. He was already a household name in1963 when he was arrested with 10 other South African Compatriots for fighting for a multi-racial country and democracy. His iconic image however loomed large like Olumo rock when he was unjustly jailed for life by the evil apartheid regime of South Africa. In 1990, twenty-seven year later, he was set free unconstitutionally with his global iconism untainted. Subsequently, in 1994 he became the first democratically-elected President of a multi-racial South African, still a world citizen and a No1 statesman. Then, the United Nations declared July 18, 2010 Mandela Day to mark his birthday. All these harvests for Mandela are rewards for his innocent persecution in the hands of the enemies of humanity. They are God’s gifts for his 67 years as an activist, a lawyer, a humanist, former president of South Africa, a public servant and a one-time prisoner of conscience from 1964 – 1990 in South Africa. As it is with Ugolor, Oba Ovonranmwen, Dele Giwa and Mandela so it is with 16 years-old Malala Yousofzai of Pakistan. On October 9, 2012 she was shot in the head by a Taliban for advocating girl-child education in her country. She was flown abroad for treatment in several countries before she finally berthed in Birmingham, England for the continuation of her education. Before the shooting incident, Malala Yousofzai was already known as a heroin of girl-child education. On being shot, however, her campaign metamorphosed into a global one. It was no more a limited country affair in Pakistan. Fortunately, the UN has stepped in to enhance her world stardom by declaring July 12, her birthday, Malala Day – nay a world holiday. This year she was invited to New York to address the UN Youth Assembly on the theme ONE CHILD, ONE BOOK CAN CHANGE THE WORLD. Indeed, what unjust persecution has done for Reverend David Ugolor, Oba Ovonranmwen, Dele Giwa, Nelson Mandela as well as Malala. Yousofzai is to crystallize their extant celebrity status into global iconnism. All of them have demonstrated that they are unpardonable by the inhumane travails of life concocted by visceral enemies of mankind. The quintet are like gold which beauty is further enhanced by smithic polishing.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 04:18:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015