RE: ALFRED REWANE RAIL TERMINAL, UJEVWU; STOKING THE TINDER BOX OF ETHNIC STRIFE IN DELTA STATE…. A Call For Caution.

My Response To Hon. Daniel Reyeneju's Post:

 

As someone who does not subscribe to bigotry, I will acknowledge my mistakes and misdeeds ditto for my ethnic Urhobo nationality. My ethnic group may be guilty of other vices but they best every other ethnic group in the defunct Warri province in nurturing harmonious relationships, tolerance, accommodating dispositions and forgiveness. I challenge any one to put a lie on my assertions with empirical facts.

"Only recently, when Chief Bernard Okumagba was appointed into the board of NDDC that never came to fruition; the negative reaction from the Rita Lori led group and the palpable silence from all major Itsekiri leaders speak to an incurable hatred".

 

I truly appreciate your expected response because, it has brought to the fore, the imperative of Urhobos, Itsekiris, Ijaws and Isokos to reinvent themselves. Much as I appreciate and subscribe to a recalibration of our values, I strongly feel that the tenor of your rejoinder ignored the basic facts which had defined our relationships for too long .

As someone who does not subscribe to bigotry, I will acknowledge my mistakes and misdeeds ditto for my ethnic Urhobo nationality. My ethnic group may be guilty of other vices but they best every other ethnic group in the defunct Warri province in nurturing harmonious relationships, tolerance, accommodating dispositions and forgiveness. I challenge any one to put a lie on my assertions with empirical facts.

While the Urhobos truly revel good neighbourliness and strove to collapse ethnic barriers in their relationships with the Itsekiris, the latter misconstrued those virtues foreground in love  and peaceful co-existence as evidence of pusillanimity in their unrelenting  battle lines over issues bringing succour to  Urhobo people as individuals or as an  entity.

Only recently, when Chief Bernard Okumagba was appointed into the board of NDDC that never came to fruition; the negative reaction from the Rita Lori led group and the palpable silence from all major Itsekiri leaders speak to an incurable hatred.

Sequel to that perplexing incident in spite of our filial bonds and the conscious efforts  of Urhobo people to promote togetherness,  many well informed Urhobo people saw the futility in the continued show of love which characterize our dispositions as that incident was one too many.

Even in ancient times up to the 1990s, it is only Urhobo people that did not discriminate against their neighbors whom they truly which to live happily with. There is no other way to explain the many Itsekiri names in every household in Urhobo land without exception.

But the actions of Itsekiris taught their Urhobo people about the need for a behavioral change and, that is why it is now a taboo for an Urhobo man to answer an Itsekiri name hence, the many abbreviations to hide the Itsekiri root in those names amongst Urhobo people.

Every honest Itsekiri person who spare a brief moment for introspective reflection will acknowledge the fact that Urhobo show of love to them, was despised and mocked.

If yours truly, who is an adept in conflict resolution, can resolve to throw overboard, what exist in the books on conflict resolution to embrace a more realistic architecture, even if only for  the singular reason of making the Itsekiris to experience, even briefly, the trauma they subject the Urhobos to by their constant  haranguing of  the latter as an enemy that must be eliminated, no less should be expected from other Urhobos who choose to ventilate their grouse in subterfuges.

Yes, Chief Alfred Rewane worked more than the average person to elect Chief Felix Ibru as the first civilian Governor of Delta State just as Chief James Ibori worked more than the average person to make Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan the Governor of Delta State.

While writing my original piece, I was not oblivious of the fact that my numerous Itsekiri friends whom I grew up with post primary school through primary school to tertiary school might also, be impacted.

I was more concerned with laying the facts as they were before the public hoping that more objective people from both side of the aisle will see this as a wakeup call for recalibration of good relationships that our forebears laboured in vain to nurture. A testament of this is in the Itsekiri names, which our forebears accepted from their Itsekiri friends for their children, but the names our forebears gave to the children of their Itsekiri friends then were askance creating a wedge in the growth   of good relationship.

However, in Daniel Reyeneju's  rejoinder to my piece , he slanted his in the most  denigrating note which I will not respond to in kind because of my  training in conflict resolution and more particularly the Premium  I place in  relationship and harmonious living.

Howbeit, a friend who cannot tell his friend a bitter truth is a fool while a friend who cannot accept a bitter truth from his friend is a vile hypocrite.

Reciprocity is the lubricant and lifeline of any good relationship, none of the noble and friendly gestures from Urhobo is even  appreciated by their neighbours, let alone reciprocated.

The bellicosity which has defined our relationship in the past 100 years has left our communities and environment impoverished.

Warri province is the only province that did not morph into a state and ditto Warri town amongst her peers is the only town that is not the capital of a state. 

What a shame! 

If we all truly acknowledge that our growth is stunted by unnecessary bellicosity, we all must be prepared to make the sacrifice to change that ugly narrative and reposition the defunct Warri province and Warri town to their natural enviable positions in Nigeria and the world at large.

In my wide and extensive travels, there is no other town that is endowed with mojo, like Warri. 

I will sign off by challenging Daniel Reyeneju to initiate the moves to make all us see ourselves first as Wafarians before anything else if we must reach the ideal state which underline his response.

 

Kenneth Yugbovwre Mph,

Conflict Resolution,

Trinity College,

Dublin -Ireland.