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THE ANATOMY OF FEAR BY DR AUSTIN ORETTE

THE ANATOMY OF FEAR BY DR AUSTIN ORETTE

 

“We have nothing to fear except fear itself “FDR

 

The All Progressives Congress (APC) primary election was an exercise on how to control the people with fear. The party primaries yielded significant victories for political heavyweights alongside massive upsets for several incumbents.

 

In a democratic exercise that was supposed to be peaceful, there was gun fire, mayhem and murder. As usual, the police will not investigate these assaults on citizens because lawlessness is their insignia and this is also a telescope of the most powerful weapon of incumbent politicians of the APC stripe.

 

Fear is their weapon and they will deploy it for the harvest of power. They have nothing to show for the high office they hold. Fear has always been the weapon of dictators and outlaws. This is also the weapon the kidnappers have used effectively in Nigeria without any hindrance despite the overwhelming electronic signatures and footprints. The Colonial masters used it. The military used it and threw the country into a civil war that we are still grappling with. They made Nigeria a fear-based society. Fear based existence is a mechanical existence that makes every citizen interaction adversarial. This is who we are now. We have become a people with contracted dreams and limited aspiration. Our limited dreams take us everywhere but here.

 

Any kind of leadership that induces this kind of behavioral changes must be voted out to save our republic. This is what patriotism demands. We have a duty to vote out this bunch of leaders who have no understanding of constitutional order and a democratic society. They perambulate like peacocks and want us to consider their irrational drivels as law of the land.

 

After many years of civilian administrations, you will expect that those who rule will abide by the laws and govern with reason. Not so fast. The people in power today were the acolyte of the military cadre that ruled and destroyed Nigeria. They have adopted military tactics to force obedience. Damn the law and damn civility. Nigerian leaders are yet to come across a situation they cannot resolve without violence and intimidation. The citizen must be made to be afraid, very afraid and pliable. Keep him hungry and he will always be afraid. There is no law they cannot break in order to physically maim or kill a citizen who is not in tandem with obeying before the complaint format of governing.

 

If you close your eyes and listen to the way some of these politicians talk, you will think they got their position through a military coup. They use sirens to drive citizens from roads they did not construct, and they have thugs on their payrolls. They use the army and the police to harass citizens during the day and use their thugs to harass them at night. This is Nigeria where fear has been distilled to render the citizen impotent and unreasonable.

 

Activities in most cities come to a halt at about 5pm, because the citizens have become very afraid of the dark. The Night now belongs to the kidnappers, robbers and thugs. This anatomy of fear envelops the whole nation that everyone is distrustful of each other. This atmosphere has created a situation where we think the worst of each other, and we become easy to offend and manipulate.

 

Without a little nudge, we become participants in orgy of hatred for anyone who does not share the perimeter of our thoughts. The defensive actions we take in response to these fears clouds our judgement and out of proportion to the point of irrationality.

 

How do you explain a burglary proof in the window of the fifth floor of a building? Who is that robber who will come at 2 am with a ladder to climb into the window of the fifth floor and descend with his loot? That is the irrationality of fear.

 

There was a time in Nigeria when criminals were afraid of the citizens. At this time of writing, Nigerians are afraid of the criminals. The fear is so morbid that a lynching mob assembles immediately to kill a hungry person who stole a loaf of bread. No one has empathy for anyone anymore. That is how a society dies.

 

We are too afraid to come to rational judgement. How do we deal with ourselves when we have just taken the life of someone who needed our help? In the same breath, we celebrate leaders who made these conditions happen. These contradictions push us into a state of mass psychosis as we cannot rationalize these behaviors.

 

Fear has made our society afraid of human compassion. Whether we know it or not, we have become dogs in Ivan pavlov’s experiment where our reactions become instinctual, and rationality is held in abeyance. We begin to equate the ability to induce fear as the strength of politicians and we use the ability to hurt or kill people as ennobling. Sooner or later, we surrender the society we love to the psychopaths amongst us. They will mimic our civility and make laws that will set the criminals free and imprison the innocents. This is what guarantees the silence of the masses in the presence of overwhelming criminality.

 

A person was killed during a primary election. No one is talking because they have been enclosed in a cocoon of fear. These fears keep us divided. As long as we are afraid of something, the mediocre leaders are empowered. The fear is their oxygen. A village is wiped out by marauding soldiers, and my governor pays a courtesy call to the president. Dead voters are of no use to him as long as those alive are still afraid. The leaders who enable this kind of atmosphere should never be entrusted with power. They are the problem and we should vote them out.

 

We must wake up and remember that even though the road to Samaria was very bad, there was a Good Samaritan who chose love over fear and saved someone he did not know.

 

Fear is a limiting factor that stops the growth of a people. People who are afraid cannot dream and be creative. We must get rid of these fears because fearful people cannot be free. This fear precludes us from knowing each other and doing business with each other in a terrain that lacks legal safeguards.

 

These leaders who love power without any sense of responsibility must be voted out of power. They have used their limited vision to put our people in bondage of ignorance, disease and poverty.

 

We are obligated to reclaim our humanity. Voting them out will remove the blanket of fear that has stifled the energy and productivity of the Nigerian youth. We must remove this fear that has programmed us not to be kind to each other. We must make them answerable to us. This is what the 2027 election is all about. They must be held accountable for the decay in our society.

 

AUSTIN ORETTE WRITES FROM OWHELOGBO IN ISOKO NORTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA

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THE NIGERIAN JOURNEY BY DR AUSTIN ORETTE

THE NIGERIAN JOURNEY BY DR AUSTIN ORETTE

 

It takes time to form a country.  It takes patience and dedication to gradually change attitudes. When people from disparate places and cultures are brought together to form a Country, it is never easy. In the long run, the tears and toil are worth it because the interactions lead to expansion of consciousness which drives human progress.

 

The journey of nationhood is not for timid souls.  It was never easy for countries like India and China to rise. It is not an easy journey. These countries have more divisions, ethnic and religious cleavages and groupings than we can ever imagine. The main thing that worked for them was that they never gave upstart military officers the chance to upend their civilian administration and throw their country into a fratricidal war.

 

The military is always subordinate to civilian authority. In time of distress, there are people in Nigeria who still look to the military for solutions. This is shameful. The military caused our problems. They have no capacity to solve our problems.

 

How did we arrive at this place where a lot of Nigerians still think the military has solutions to our problem? Are these folks’ victims of Military Induced Mental Retardation (MIMR) (pronounced Mama)? These people still think this way despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

 

The Nigerian military destroyed our uniform code of justice. Under military rule, law and justice became subjective and citizens were subjected to the brutality of the rule of men. This is the reason why the various legislative bodies have not seen it fit to abrogate the stupid decrees of the parasitic military that ruled and destroyed Nigeria on behalf of a certain group of people. This mentality is dangerous to our body politics. This is why a lot of politicians pay courtesy visits to these soldiers of fortune that turned Nigeria into a Pariah nation.

 

MIMR is the reason the Nigerian lawyers don’t know their role in a democratic society. For Nigeria to move forward, all the military decrees that are still in the statute books must be expunged. Those are laws meant for dictators not a democratic country. Those decrees gave unbridled power to the dictators and disempowered the citizens.

 

Military induced mental retardation is the reason we don’t have legal reforms. It is the reason why citizens don’t know how to seek redress from the government they elected. Most Nigerians don’t even know how they are governed and they don’t make effort to seek knowledge in this regard.

 

In a constitution that guarantees freedom of movement, the Nigerian is harassed daily on the highways by checkpoints which have become legal armed robbery by government agents.

 

Are we at war? Why is our freedom restricted? No lawyer has taken the government to court on behalf of any citizen that sustained injury from police brutality and constitutional violation. This is pathetic.  We need serious legal reforms.

 

The method of appointing judges is very antiquated. We need to know the character of those who will be judges. Knowledge of jurisprudence should not be the only criteria.

 

During the military years, the Nigerian lawyer played the role of stenographer for military decrees, and the judges took decisions from the soldiers. Now, they are playing almost the same role as politicians who have no idea why they were elected.  They have abandoned the practice of law to become jesters at the feet of reckless politicians and conveyors of injustice at our courts. Our courts harbor judges who suffocate justice under their robes and consider military decrees of bygone era as a guild post for our state of jurisprudence.

 

All over the country, you see governors and other politicians seizing and damaging people’s properties without just compensation and there is no lawyer in sight to argue on behalf of the afflicted. A lorry will damage and incinerate people on the highways, and no case is brought on behalf of the victims. The army goes into a village for security duties and wipes out the village. No justice for the victims. The governor pays a courtesy visit to the commander in chief. There is no lawsuit on behalf of the victim. The officer who issued the command to murder sleeping villagers is left to repeat the same scenario in another jurisdiction.

 

We will protest if this happens in Palestine. It is happening in the Democratic Republic of Nigeria where the rights of the citizens are undermined daily by those they elected. These politicians did not gain power by a coup. If you listen to them with your eyes closed, you will think they are military officers who have just gained power through a coup. They don’t seek consensus. They give directives. Some of them defy court rulings with fanfare.

 

The military infantilized everyone in Nigeria. They pushed the lawyer back into the womb. This is atrocious.

 

As a nation, we must consider the fifty-five years of military rule in Nigeria as the years of locust.

 

The journey of great nations is always evolutionary. The military years were the years when hatred of each other became ossified and personalized as the military played us against each other to prolong their power.

 

The revolution is always a lie. In history, most periods of revolutionary zeal turn to mirage.

 

What will be the sort of America if an upstart soldier took the reins of power during the great depressions of 1837 and 1929? We have good and bad leaders. Each period is an opportunity to learn what to do and what not to do. The rush to think that some army generals will appear and wave a magical wand to achieve all we wish for is infantile and dangerous.

 

No soldier can develop any nation. Nigeria is a testament to that foolery. It is the willingness of the people to understand the necessity to build bridges and lasting institutions of harmony that moves a nation forward. The rule of law is the cornerstone in this exercise. If we have the rule of law, the Nigerian will feel protected in any place he calls home.

 

The clamor for ethnic reductionism and tensions will dampen because he knows no matter what happens the law will protect him from ethnic or religious vigilantism that is the breeding ground for timid souls that are still married to the past.

 

These people must be made to see the supremacy of the law as the sign of our progress. The journey is arduous and our dream should be about building frameworks that last beyond our existence.   The nation that we dream of should always be a continuous journey of those who believe in tomorrow and understand that the yearning and aspiration of our people shall never die. This is all we can ask for as we toil in our little corner to build tomorrow for the next generation.

 

We must strive to make tomorrow a brighter proposition for those coming after us. It is when we arrive at that place that we can say our work is done. This singularity is love that binds us beyond ethnic and religious proclivities, which robs us of our basic humanity.

 

We can start this journey today and also understand that others who share the same aspirations with us may start their journey tomorrow. The wisdom we seek should give us the patience to know the difference and endure the pain and loneliness of waiting for those who are not ready today but will join us tomorrow.

 

For those who seek truth, justice and fairness, tomorrow is a distant horizon we must gaze at with hope, endurance and fortitude.

 

Tomorrow is not a destination. It is a state of our being. The futuristic tomorrow may never come but our state of being will be fulfilled and rewarded as our collective struggles will build monuments that last beyond our time.

 

That is the tomorrow we seek: a place where our dreams will never die. The rule of law must be established as Supreme in Nigeria. It must be transparent and treat the pauper and the king alike.  This should be the sine qua non of our development. A nation without justice will always remain in a state of anarchy. The rule of law should be the pinnacle of our strength and desire. This should be the aspiration of anyone contesting for leadership at all levels in Nigeria.

 

DR AUSTIN ORETTE WRITES FROM OWHELOGBO IN ISOKO NORTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA

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CANAAN LAND GOLF COURSE AND COUNTRY CLUB BOT MEMBER DIES AT 73 EMMANUEL TUNDE AGANBI

EMMANUEL TUNDE AGANBI, CANAAN LAND GOLF COURSE AND COUNTRY CLUB BOT MEMBER, DIES AT 73

 

A respected trustee of the Canaan Land Golf Course and Country Club, Elder Emmanuel Tunde Oludewa Aganbi, has passed away.

Elder Emmanuel Tunde Aganbi died on Friday, April 24, 2026, in Abuja at the age of 73.

In a statement issued on Monday in Koko, the family of Stephen Aganbi described Tunde Aganbi’s passing as a monumental loss, not only to the Itsekiri nation but also to Nigeria as a whole.

According to the family, Elder Tunde Aganbi was a dependable father, a trustworthy brother, and a distinguished gentleman known for his generosity, gratitude, integrity, spirituality, vision, and strong moral values.

A statement signed by the Chief Executive Officer of Akogate Group, Hon. Felix Aganbi, noted that the vacuum created by his death would be difficult to fill.

The statement added that Elder Emmanuel Tunde Aganbi left a lasting mark through his unique leadership style within the family, the business community, and the management of the Canaan Land Golf Course and Country Club.

The family of the Second Republic politician, Bible translator, and prominent lawyer also praised Elder Tunde Aganbi for his sacrifices, humility, and unwavering commitment to achieving set goals.

They further described him as a man of sound character, wisdom, and understanding who would be remembered for his wise counsel, humility, kindness, and enduring affection for children.

The statement also highlighted his astuteness, leadership qualities, and sense of humour, describing him as a role model who led by example.

The funeral and burial of Elder Tunde Aganbi, according to the family, will take place in Koko, Warri North Local Government Area.

‘‘The funeral programme will begin with service of songs on Thursday, June 25, 2026, at Christiana Aganbi Hall, Canaan Land Golf Course and Country Club, Koko, scheduled to hold between 4:00 and 7:00pm. An open-air service and interment will follow on Friday, June 26, at Canaan Land Golf Course and Country Club while a memorial golf tournament and traditional burial rites are scheduled for Saturday, July 27, 2026, in Koko, Warri North Local Government Area’’.

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AKPEDERIN SPEAKS ON HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES BID

AKPEDERIN SPEAKS ON HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES BID

  • LAYS OUT HIS AGENDA
  • PROMISES TO MAKE OKPE/SAPELE/UVWIE FEDERAL CONSTITUENCY MORE PROSPEROUS

Prominent Delta lawyer and politician, Kingsley Akpederin, has attributed his House of Representatives bid to the decision of Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) stakeholders in Okpe/Sapele/Uvwie Federal Constituency and the need for the party to put forward its best in the 2027 elections.

‘’Politics is collective and the bid for public office and especially that of which stage to aspire to represent is not left out. The NDC being one which is attracting massive interest now has decided to put forward its best as much as possible. I did not even know that many stakeholders of the party and especially those of my area of Okpe/Sapele/Uvwie Federal Constituency have been having a conversation as to whom to encourage for the House of Representatives position’’.

He told journalists in Abuja how the position was concretized during a caucus meeting at the party’s state secretariat, for him to represent the party in the federal constituency.

‘’I must reveal that at the beginning of consultations to decide on whether it is the House of Assembly or the House of Representatives I should go for, the support for the latter was substantial. I needed to expand the conversation beyond the Sapele Constituency before coming out fully. Now that the party stakeholders clearly endorsed me for the position and that I should immediately do the switch before the ruling party sponsors someone to hijack it with their resources, I have taken the bold step to declare for the House Representatives for the Okpe, Sapele and Uvwie Federal Constituency. I have undergone the party’s screening process with the national leadership in Abuja and we are good to go. The people of OSU Federal now have the opportunity for some breath of fresh air and a completely different orientation in representation that places premium on constant feedback with the people’’.

Akpederin said that he was ready to put the issues of Sapele Port, more financing of the Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun and the Petroleum Training Institute, Effurun, the need for a forward movement on the Petroleum Refinery, Ekpan, the dire state of the Sapele/Effurun Highway which reconstruction has been so slow and Amuokpe Agbor Highway Dualisation project on the front burner of national attention.

‘’There is a dire need for our people to have those who represent them to be persons who are prepared to sacrifice all to see that the area is selflessly represented. When those who represent a people are not preoccupied by what they can get from the office for themselves but motivated by the needs and interests of the masses, then the people they represent are in for positive impact. Let me just point out the recent example of Certification and Compliance Processes for five deep seaports, one each in Lagos, Ondo, Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Rivers. This leaves Delta State out of the equation. A State with some of the best natural harbours in Nigeria like Sapele, Warri, Forcados, Koko and others that should be the maritime hub of the country has been neglected. This is an example of what happens when we don’t put strong advocacy voices on the National stage to generate the necessary attention to the areas of strength and comparative advantages of your area. If we in Delta put out our best forward on the National stage like the National Assembly which the House of Representatives is an integral part of, the issues of our areas would continue to be on the front burner of National attention. The issues of the Sapele Port, more financing of the Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun and the Petroleum Training Institute, Effurun, the need for the for a forward movement on the Petroleum Refinery, Ekpan, the dire state of the Sapele/Effurun Highway which reconstruction has been so slow, Amuokpe Agbor Highway Dualisation project, and so much more that the people OSU Federal Constituency desire to be championed can receive national attention if the representative in Abuja actively and continually advocates for them and possesses the negotiating capacity to see them to fruition’’.

One area that representatives have not focused on, according to Akpederin, is the need to defend the people against the unprofessional conducts of the officials of some federal agencies including law enforcement and even the military agents against our people.

‘’When some personnel of the Nigeria Police Force for example violate the rights of our people, they have to be taken up if not impunity would make them continue maltreating our people. I therefore intend to set up a Human Rights Protection office which is to handle matters where our people’s rights are violated by whoever be it law enforcement agents or others. The focus would be on the voiceless and those without the resources to challenge such oppressive acts among the people and residents of OSU Federal Constituency. There is so much to do and we need a total departure from a leadership that is not bothered about what happens to the downtrodden in the society’’.

The legal practitioner said there were no doubts as to his preparation for the primaries and the 2027 National Assembly Elections.

‘’I am absolutely prepared to and have the capacity for this position. As a legal practitioner with substantial experience in political activism since my University Benin days in the 1990s and so much experience in advocating for an agenda for the people after, there is so much that I can bring to the table. The Okpe, Sapele and Uvwie Federal Constituency is in a strategic position in Delta State and Nigeria. It is the gateway to the Niger Delta and a large portion of the riverine part which is potentially the maritime goldmine of Nigeria and the region which produces a large chunk of oil and gas for Nigeria. Both Sapele and Uvwie (entrance to Warri) represent the geographical bridge to the Niger Delta coastal areas. Nigeria is missing so much in not realizing the huge economic potentials of the Niger Delta area to making Nigeria great. The focus is wrongly just about crude oil exploration and extraction. The OSU Federal Constituency is also supposed to be the Petroleum and petrochemical refining hub of the country if we seize the opportunity of proximity to the raw materials on the one hand, and its natural advantage in land and sea transport’’.

He stated that his House of Representatives bid should not be taken for granted

‘’I am prepared to the best of my ability and the task is to continually reach out. For the general election, we have several months to still reach out to the people of the OSU Federal Constituency. We are prepared to present ourselves to the people as the trusted alternative to the current leadership which has largely made the people disillusioned about politics and the governance of Nigeria for a couple of years now. Restoring the greatness of Nigeria and making meaning for the lives of the masses is possible’’.

He however said that contesting for public election was not a physical combat that can engender fear.

‘’I am in the race for the people and the people supporting me amounts to them supporting themselves. I am therefore not scared of others. I see them as partners for the public good. It is an intra-party contest and whoever emerges would need the support and cooperation of the others in promoting the party and thus enhance her chances in the coming general elections’’.

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