Last Friday, August 4, 2023 Professor Sam Egite Oyovbaire was eighty-two years old on earth, on this earth-plane. I did not know this until some birthday advertorials in the Vanguard newspaper boldly encountered my reading sight or, better stated, until my reading sight encountered them. Of all the birthday announcements that day the ones, the only ones, two in number, that beautifully and handsomely stared at me and which I equally stared at faithfully, diligently, earnestly and wondrously in wondrous wondrousness were those that gave frank and supreme value to an elder who has a powerful influence on the young: “Happy 82nd birthday to a motivator, pragmatic politician, bridge builder, and
Nigerian patriot. Congratulations, Sir!”

This was the poetic coinage, the brief poetic song, which spoke volumes, which Rt. Hon. (Elder) Sheriff F.O. Oborevwori, Governor of Delta State rendered last Friday earnestly in birthday conversation with his elderly master and political titan whose hermitic influence, power and authority in Delta politics is a perfect story that needs to be composed and told by a perfect story teller and song-writer someday. The quiet iconic influencer of PDP politics in Delta politics deserves it.

The second young friend of the octogenarian delivered his birthday composition experientially: “As a father figure, you have been a source of strength and support, and I am immensely grateful for the wisdom and guidance you have bestowed upon me. May God grant you many more years in health and strength to enable (me) continually (to) count on your invaluable wise counsel as you progress in the journey of Iife.”

Chief James Augoye, the honourable member representing Okpe constituency in the Delta State House of Assembly crafted the limpid lines of limpidness that express his genuine emotion in gratitude monumentally to a political icon who is more than a political icon whose silence in Delta and Nigerian politics is now very transparently noteworthy – at least from the perspective of this columnist – who was a Sapele Council Primary School pupil and an Ahmadu Bello University undergraduate student (who grew up to be a family friend) of the octogenarian: the immaculate teacher and scholar, a brilliantly brilliant one for that matter. As his pupil and student I had faith in him. As a matter of fact, we had faith in him.

And when I say “we” here I have in mind my close intellectually-radiant friends and pals who admired his depth and heights of knowledge and of humanity: Dr. Basil Owomero, Professor Ayo Olukotun and Professor David Ker all of whom are sadly now under the earth and others whose respective memories I can now hardly recollect saw him as an adorably adorable and admirably admirable teacher and elderly friend who gave us, at different times in our Ahmadu Bello University years, ‘pure air and solitude and bread and medicine,’ as Friedrich Nietzsche would have enjoined us to put it – if he had lived in our time and clime.

Personally, in my sensitive imagination and down-to-earth reality he was (and still is) a persuasive talker’s persuasive talker and a masterly communicator’s masterly communicator both in the powers of the mouth and of the pen as they wished (and still wish) it. His spoken and written words always adorn his wisdom and honour of friendship.

Professor Kayode Soremekun, the immediate past Vice Chancellor of Federal University, Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), who defended his doctoral thesis before Professor Sam Oyovbaire who was his external examiner a pretty long time ago informed me in the not too distant past that the great personage whose praise I now am rightly singing is a peculiar man whose peculiarity he recognized in the course of his afore-said doctoral thesis defence.

The details Professor Soremekun gave me amounted to Professor Oyovbaire’s peculiar just- mindedness and kindness that did not inflame the mistakes in his thesis. All great theses are like all great existence that is not un-blameworthy; but the external examiner, our octogenarian guarded himself the mistakes and guided the candidate to the scent of the thoughts of the thesis.

Simply put, Professor Oyovbaire is a very thorough political-scientist-and-humanist who does not suck the blood of his political opponents as I remember telling Professor Soremekun, a peculiarity he demonstrated in the course of the doctoral candidate’s defence at Obafemi Awolowo University (then University of Ife), Ile-Ife in the days and years when our public universities were our public universities. He lent his applause to my lovely music of/for the man – an original Sapele man who taught me first, as I have already indicated, at the Council Primary School in that famously famous city of Safa from where he ocean-journeyed to London School of Economics.

In 1999 our distinguished teacher and mentor in his supremely totalising political view of a political scientist of aesthetics rightly expected to be the governor of Delta State. But this was not to be. The players of rotten fish politics made sure that he did not surface as the governorship candidate of his party – even though he was clearly and indisputably the best, the very best candidate, of the lot who queued to govern the new State.

Prior to the gubernatorial election – in fact, prior to the emergence of his party’s gubernatorial candidate, everything was done to make sure that he was not the new idol even among his kinsmen, despite his very strong academic credentials and mien and trappings of honour and integrity. People of obstinate cunning invented what I pictured then (and still picture) as the weapon of superfluous envy and jealousy against him. “The man know book die; e know people; e get clout; now e wan be guvnor. Who go fit hold am down? And nor be only im dey Delta and Urhobo land.”

These were some of the words that I was confronted with even by some Urhobo academics, including Okpe intellectuals and academic gems, when I, as a non-partisan politician, did my busy-body investigation at that time. Professor Oyovbaire had at the time, I think, ceased to be the Federal Minister of Information.

His occupation of that office that should have stood him in good stead experience-wise, at least, was unkindly employed against him. Those who jealously and cruelly found him blameworthy on account of his success at the federal level were blood suckers who rightly knew that the great political scientist was too decent a human being and a humanist to suck anybody’s blood. So they did to him what they did to him!

In a socio-cultural circle I savoured then, although I was not a partisan politician and have never been a partisan politician – a solid intellectual monograph entitled To Those Against the Creation of Delta State which he wrote while we were in Zaria became a poisonous weapon used against him when the Delta State gubernatorial chips were down, in a manner of putting it. Professor Oyovbaire (then Dr. Oyovbaire in Zaria) wrote the stimulating work as his own contribution to the debate in regard to the creation or non-creation of Delta State. Of course, even though I did not share his pro-right perspectives on certain issues, I defended vigorously the great theoretician who has since become as well an organic practical politician of interestingly interesting importance.

I won my defence of him but they still did to him what they did to him. Professor Oyovbaire is only now aware of everything I am saying presently. The majority of those who betrayed him then were his friends of sorts. That experience among others I gathered as a researcher always rekindles in my imagination Nietzsche’s words thus: ‘Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.’

Why have I dwelt a little on what I have just dwelt on? If Professor Oyovbaire had become the governor of Delta State his socio-economic theory and blue-print would definitely have put Delta State where it rightly should have been today. Our entire subsequent development would have been set in train by the work of his successors on his idea. Delta State would not have been conquered as it has been today by the conquerors – whose political heads and minds he cannot fruitfully enter no matter how hard he tries to.

Professor Oyovbaire and his former pupil had not seen each other for a long time that is a long time. But they spoke very recently. He phoned to wish him well on his mandatory disengagement from active service after almost forty-six years his pupil diligently and patriotically gave without blemish to Nigeria. He even expressed his doubt if his pupil was really up to the age of his recorded mandatory retirement in the books. Growing old is luck denied many folks; and his pupil, despite his youngish looks and luck, was happy to grow up to approach the age of a senior citizen.

I join the Oyovbaire clan at home and in the diaspora and all those whose general view of our eminent and iconic British-trained scholar and octogenarian is richly superlative to say: Stay as long as you wish on this earth-plane. Keep on singing and dancing the song and dance of human and patriotic love for true friends and country – O the best Governor Delta State never had and will never have! I say all this with utmost goodwill and affability.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.