Despite the calculated campaign of calumny and acrimony launched against the esteemed personality of High Chief Phillip Agbese, the acclaimed ‘Oganka’ of Benue State by sundry contractors and hired sycophants, one immutable fact stands out without dispute; Hon Phillip Agbese Chairman House Commitee on Media and Publicity is the most courageous man in Nigeria today.
When Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Wole Soyinka, Rev Jesse Jackson, Paul Robeson, Barack Obama, Maya Angelou and other advocates of civil rights, democracy and good governance stood up to be counted several decades ago, they were met with a desperate and vicious pushback by the ‘powers that be’ or those that benefitted from the crumbs of power.
While the stalwart Hon Phillip Agbese has stood up against the abuse of power in his beloved Benue State,none of his traducers has uptill now, faulted his bone of contention being the illegal removal of the council chairmen which many Nigerians both within and outside Benue State have roundly condemned in all it’s totality.
Rather, the perennial sycophants have sought to divert the attention of Benue people by assailing the personality of Hon Phillip Agbese or questioning his motives in calling out the glaring injustice meted out to the sacked council chairmen.
What is bad is bad and there is no way of getting round the truth but to call a spade a spade and not a garden tool. By standing on the side of truth, a resolute Hon Phillip Agbese has etched his name, indelibly and irrevocably in the sands of our time and no doubt generations of Benue men, women and children born or unborn will have cause to be grateful to him for upholding democratic tenets and ethos.
Hon Phillip Agbese has chosen to align with the people and their inalienable rights and interests rather than seek the lure of lucre and transient gratification in siding with rampant authority or unbridled officialdom out to trample on constitutional guarantees and the rule of law.
The rented crowds and hired praise singers shouting themselves hoarse in support of the ongoing undemocratic shenanigans in Benue State should save their breathe as they cannot move or shake the uncompromising person of Hon Phillip Agbese who has the unwavering and unbending support of the vast silent majority of Benue people. They know to the last man, woman or child that he is fighting the good fight for a better tomorrow for all of them and their thoughts, prayers and good wishes are for the irrepressible Oganka, come rain, come shine.
When Martin Luther King confronted the forces of racism and white supremacist ideology in America decades ago, he was abused, villified,beaten and jailed without mercy.
Similarly, when Nelson Mandela confronted the evil forces of apartheid South Africa, he was met with an unforgiving 27 years jail term. But today Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and all other heroes of civil rights, democracy and the rule of law have their names written in gold letters while their sundry oppressors and forlorn traducers have long been consigned to the dustbin of history.
The same pernicious fate awaits those who continue to antagonise and villify Hon Phillip Agbese as not only history but our contemporary times will be harsh and unforgiving of their ill-motivated depradations for self-serving and ultimately self-defeatist ends. They better think through their actions and turn a better leaf in order to move Benue State and the nation forward in the crucial scheme of things. A word is enough for the wise, the sages posit.
TERHUMBE TERSEER, A CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST WHO WROTE IN FROM GBOKO, BENUE STATE
