Federal Polytechnic Orogun: Hate Is Hate, Not Criticism

By Henry Efe Duku

A multitude of good Deltans in both the APC and PDP were quite happy when Senator Ovie Omo-Agege got President Muhammadu Buhari’s approval for the establishment of the Federal Polytechnic Orogun.

To them, it was a matter of effective legislative representation. One Deltan who kept partisan politics aside to celebrate the approval is my dear Ijaw brother and UNIBEN friend, Barr. Eric Omare. We sometimes disagree on partisan political issues, but as one who is in politics for the good of our people, Omare is not a petty faults-finder.

Now, do we still recall those who mocked Senator Omo-Agege when the approval was announced? A very few but very loud and caustic haters within his own APC! They campaigned with such a sickening zeal that the approval was somewhat forged – latching onto issues that were completely senseless and easily proved the contents of their wicked hearts.

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As they searched for faults in the approval and barked that it was not an Act of the National Assembly and therefore inchoate, The Obarisi simply advised that they should be ignored and more focus should be put on the task of realizing the Federal Polytechnic Orogun dream. This is consistent with Winston Churchill’s admonition that: “You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”

And so boom, the Bill establishing the polytechnic was passed by the National Assembly and Mr. President assented to it! Meaning, beyond the presidential approval, an Act of the National Assembly establishing the Polytechnic was also successfully midwifed by Ovie Omo-Agege. But did they stop? No. Stopping was/is just impossible. For them it is as Kofi Awoonor puts it in his ‘Songs of Sorrow’, having led themselves ‘among the sharps of the forest, returning (to rectitude) is not possible’. With boastful hearts, they insist that the institution won’t be built! Such wickedness!

We have always kept it calm because we trust that their hate and wicked bets were against God who has given us a man of grace with an extraordinary determination to succeed, especially in matters that concern our people.

While some laughably laboured to dress their hateful stance on the establishment of the Polytechnic as some new species of ‘constructive criticism’, many have seen it plainly for what it is: nauseating hate.

To God’s glory, today’s physical rising of the first set of the magnificent buildings of the institution is a fruit of our calm disposition to the unnecessary hate visited on us by our own people. May God heal our land of such hate, as we prepare for the smooth take off of the Federal Polytechnic Orogun to His eternal glory.