ORONOKPONO: A SLAP ON AN OLD RACE

All was quiet in this park
Until the wind, like a gasping messenger, announced
The tyrant's coming.
Then did the branches talk in agony.
You remember that storm?
In their fear despairing flowers nevertheless held
Bouquets to the grim king….
---D. O

In a state where leaders believe so much in tribal politics, where ethnocentric bigotry holds sway, where millions of people are made to live in fear, where tension looms, where Machiavellianism is in vogue, where disunity is the order of the day yet the people outside the shores of the state are made to believe that there is unity here. In fact, in a state where smaller component(s) is/are marginalized, victimized and their rights trampled upon, a citizen like me with the Marxist's heart and thinking has nothing else to do in his leisure than to listen to, not just any music, but, reggae music. And not just to any how reggae music, but to those of Bob Marley, Lucky Dube, Peter Tosh, Eric Donaldson (peace on their ashes), and Mandators, Maxwell Udoh, Andy Shurman, Orit Wilki and Peterside.
I was listening to Redemption Song by Bob Marley when my phone rang. I ignored it because of the wordings of the song which I hold in a very high esteem. “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery/ none but ourselves can free our minds/ I've got no fear for atomic energies 'cause none of them can stop the time….”
The phone rang again and I picked after lowering the volume of my radio set. Behold a man from Oron Local Government Area whom I have not known called me.
“Am I on to Thomas squared?” he asked
“Yes you are right,” I responded.
“Well, you do not know me, but I am an ardent reader of your column right from when you were writing for the Community Pulse…”
“I see!”
“Please, I want to ask if you have heard the arrest and subsequent arraignment of Comrade Ononokpono? Please I want you to comment on that, please because it is a slap on the Oro nation. How can a man be arrested for asking questions and proffering advice to his fellow man? Is it because Ononokpono is in the minority?”
The man spent about ten minutes talking the minds of all true born Oronians. Towards the end of his conversation, I raised the volume of my radio set and the music continued; “How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look? Some say it just a part of it; we got to fulfill the book: won't you help to sing? The song of freedom; the song that I ever have, redemption song”
“Ah! That music in the background is sweet,” the man said.
“It does not only sweet but suits the situation on ground. Don't you know that Chief Ononokpono is a prophet who before now had prophesied what would happen if ……well, good buy?”
I switched off my radio set because of furiousity. But come to think of it what was this Ononokpono wrote that should irk the governor? Was he not writing/repeating what others like Obong Victor Attah, Sen. Udoedehe etc. have been saying? Is he arrested because he is from the minority? Is he arraigned because he published his in a national tabloid of no less reputation- the Nation? Was he not asking questions bordering on the security situation and the management of funds in the state? Or is it because he has mentioned the face off between the governor and the Acting President Goodluck Jonathan? Or, could that be done to spite Oro nation?
Well, before I go on asking questions, let me quickly say that some sycophants in Oro nation will issue communiqué (s), distancing themselves from what High Chief Ononokpono is facing right now either because they are afraid of being arraigned or want to be relevance in this present government.
If Sen. J.J. AkpanUdoedehe could say that this government is made up of cultists, that the governor spends our money carelessly without creating employment for the teeming youths of the state, that kidnapping is arranged and executed by those in Akpabio's government, and that Tropicana has no benefit for the poor, (which of course are those questions raised by Chief (Comrade) Ononokpono, but was not arrested, then we are left with no other opinion than to say that the High Chief was arraigned because he is from Oron.
Let me go on asking: is he arraigned and put in A.T because he breaks his own views into fifteen questions? Didn't Victor Attah wrote about Tropicana and asked how it will benefit the common man? Was he arrested? Is it because Chief Ononokpono is not an ex-governor or ex-senator? Was he not in the National Assembly when politics and of course democracy were in good shape?
Come to think of it, is the governor not embarking on Operation Send-Cultists-Away From My Cabinet? What I'm trying to say is that the governor is no the verge to making his cabinet members and those aspiring to hold public offices in his government to denounce cultism? What then gives him the impetus to do that? Is it not because he believes that some members of his cabinet are into cultism? And what was Ononokpono saying in this regard? Is there any relationship between Chief Ononokpono's questions on cultists in Akpabio's government and the governor's action?
Of recent, I have received close to 20 text messages and calls from different lines, threatening to kill me if I do not take a drastic U-turn from writing “against the government”. These text messages I have forwarded them to appropriate quarters, and I hope to publish them in the nearest future for public consumption. Meanwhile, I am begging everybody to be my keeper because I am not in any way against the government or Chief Godswill Akpabio (who happens to be my in-law) but I am against the misbehaviors of those in his government in its entirety. I know I am at gun point, yet I don't have the heart to withdraw from what I believe in. That is why no one can impose a limit on me because I know that the only legitimate limits are self-imposed limits. “The only impossibility of which I am aware,” wrote Schleiermacher in his soliloquies (1800), “is to transcend the limits which I freely placed upon my nature from the beginning; the only things I cannot do are those which I surrendered in deciding what I wanted….”

Those who have painstakingly and near-religiously followed my writings would certainly agree with me that I have, some months ago, written something about Chief Ononokpono. In that article, I describe him as “a Lion that kills fear”. Oh yes, he is, and in fact, that is the title I give to him. Anybody who has gotten the opportunity of interacting with him or be in a gathering where Ononokpono talks would be convinced that he is fearless, truthful, uncompromised, undaunted even in the face of death, and very fluent in speaking English.
Why is he in court/prison, facing trial? I cannot answer, and I believe you too can't answer. If you can, then your answers are as good as mine. Yes, I will not say that he is arraigned because he has raised fifteen thought-provoking questions to the governor. I ill not dare say that he is suffering a transfer of aggression. I can't say that he is a sacrificial lamb for the new Akwa Ibom that will soon surface. And I can't say he is a litmus test to see if Oron people still believe in afang ki.
Conclusively, therefore, the arrest and arraignment of the High Chief of Oro extraction is not Ononokpono's business alone, but ORONokpono's derogation.

From my mail box:
Congrat Mr. Thomas, we need people like you to move this state foreward, not those sycophants who will rather stake their careers and future just to have a share of the king's portion of meat. God forbid!
Emmanuel Thomas
08071746272