Our first encounter in 2000 was simply apocalyptic. The old cop
was at his bewitching best - marshalling provincial tactics of intimidation and
seduction.
An editor with THISDAY then, I was in Benin City for the weekend
and happened to have been with then Governor Lucky Igbinedion at the White
House that evening before the then acclaimed "strongman of Edo
politics" appeared like an apparition.
Nothing, in my wildest imagination, had prepared me for the
coming volcanic eruption while chatting with the Edo governor over wine. As the
day wore on, folks - a few familiar faces and the others unknown - began to
trickle in, until the main lounge was packed full with the “powers and
principalities” of Edo PDP then, ahead of a pre-scheduled state caucus
meeting.
Easily recognizable among them was the durable Chief Sam
Ogbemudia, debonair Mike Oghiadome (deputy governor), gangling Samson Ekhabafe
(now late) and feisty Aguele (state chairman).
Then, the air would freeze as Chief Anenih sauntered in a white
kaftan with everyone standing up in courtesy to “The Leader”.
It didn’t take long for his sharp police eyes to notice the
oddity of my presence.
“Youngman, who are you?”, he muttered, before taking his
seat on the two-seater sofa by the national flag.
“I’m Louis Odion.”
“Louis Odion, the journalist?,” he asked, eyes dimmed
quizzically behind his trademark thick bi-focals, while others watched with
growing curiosity.
“You guessed right, sir.”
What remains difficult to tell till date is whether it was that
casual retort or the self-assuredness it was expressed that stoked Chief
Anenih's anger the more. With a voice now almost breathless in anger, he chose
to direct his bazooka instead at the chief host (Igbinedion) and let out a
fiery shot: “Lucky, what’s this enemy doing here?”
“My Leader, Louis is my friend o. He’s in town and came for a
drink.”
“What friend?!” he exploded further in a paroxysm of expletives
and imprecations, too harsh - if not mean - to restate here.
ODION |
He continued: “He cannot be a friend. This boy abuses
everybody every day with his pen. I used to think he was even an old person. I
didn’t know he’s such a young boy like this.”
In the brief, testy silence that followed, the building would
seem to be quaking in the tremor of his venomous rage.
Then, the earth parted again and the volcanic eruption resumed
in its blazing severity, with Chief Anenih finally thundering: "Young
man, will you get out of this place!!!"
Of course, by now, such dark hint was enough to activate my
survival instinct.
As I made for the door, the stentorian voice boomed
again, "Young man, come back here!", with the same Chief Anenih
beckoning me to come and sit next to him on the sofa!
Never in my life had I been this publicly embarrassed
before.
After hesitating at the door, I turned back, more out of respect
for someone old enough to be my grandpa.
Only then did the gathering of party grandees return to a
cacophony of banters, but their voices muffled, in deep reverence of the
monumental presence of "The Leader", while awaiting the meeting to be
called to order.
In our corner, a completely new drama began to unfold.
After you chastise a child with the right hand, they say, you’re obliged
to cuddle him with the left. From the earlier bullying, “The Leader”
suddenly and astonishingly resorted to patriarchal charms. The way he went
about it was most disarming. He wasn’t looking at me as he began to speak in
soft voice, having pulled closer on the sofa.
Cupping his mouth with the right hand so that not even anyone
standing by could eavesdrop while facing the crowd, he whispered conciliatorily
to me: “I can see you’re really angry at the way I spoke to you now.
Louis, that’s me. Go and ask my children, when I’m angry I tell them off. After
that, we’re family again.”
To break my last wall of defence, he doubled the flattery,
“Louis, I never knew you were even this handsome,” his face now lit with a
broad smile. “But if I may you, why do you always like attacking me in your
writings?”
“Sir, I’m only a journalist doing my work,” I finally found my
voice “As a reporter, I report facts. As a columnist, I only express my
personal opinion. I may be wrong, but don’t mean to be disrespectful, sir.”
Then, he sent for his aide, Odion Ugbesia, and asked him: “Do
you know this man?”
“No sir.”
“That’s the famous Louis Odion, the journalist. He’s your
namesake and also from Edo. Take his number and give him all my direct numbers
in Abuja and Benin and make sure you’re in touch with him.”
Indeed, that night marked the next phase of the complicated
relationship I would have with Chief Anenih in the next decade. Which
journalist - especially one whose forte is political reporting - will not swoon
at securing unlimited access to arguably one of the biggest players in Nigerian
politics at the time. A rich news source, undoubtedly.
But such access also comes its own perils.
Unfailingly paternalistic, he would henceforth often ask THISDAY
publisher (Mr. Nduka Obaigbena) whenever they met, “How’s my son?”, referring
to me. And whenever Mr. Obaigbena wanted to pull my legs in the office, he
would tease, “I wonder what you’re looking for in the circle of those old men.”
In his tribute, his old “political customer” in Edo State,
Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, was right to describe Anenih as having genuine
commitment to advance not just the nation at large, but his native state and
the entire South-South in particular, though his methodology might not have
appealed to everyone. No one can deny that as Works minister, he, for instance,
facilitated the construction of the the critical Benin by-pass which has helped
in no small measure to ease the perennial migraine of traffic gridlock within
Benin City. Not forgetting the dualization of the Benin-Asaba road and the
Benin-Warri road.
The morning after a “political solution” was contrived to the
Onshore-Offshore dichotomy palaver in 2002, I was the first journalist to get
the exclusive, courtesy Anenih who presided over the presidential panel that
sat all night to resolve the issue. That singular recommendation helped defuse
mounting tension in the Niger Delta and brought immediate succor in particular
to Akwa Ibom which had had to endure zero oil receipt for months.
His sense of humour was something else. After being
introduced publicly to Azu Ishiekwene, then editor of The PUNCH (against
which he was vigorously pursuing a libel suit in court), Anenih quipped:
"Ah, I never knew you already look lean," referrring to Azu's petite
frame. "By the time I would have won my case again you in court and you’re
forced to pay heavy penalty, I only wonder what flesh you will have left on
your bones!"
Doubtless, Anenih’s power and glory in the OBJ years were
never in doubt. The Anenih-Atiku story is a riveting one indeed. Both being
disciples of the mercurial Shehu Yar’Adua, it is amazing how OBJ they brought
to power also separated them later.
When OBJ’s campaign continued to limp late 1998 under Iyiorcha
Ayu, it was Atiku Abubakar, as a popular acccount goes, that helped conscript
Anenih, against OBJ’s initial reservations. No sooner had he taken charge than
things changed dramatically. The secret? He simply reactivated the old boys’
network of Yar’Adua’s PDM by coopting members as OBJ’s field commanders in the
774 councils across the country. Only then did OBJ’s presidential campaign leap
froward like tiger, a testimony to Anenih’s extraordinary talent at organizing
and mobilizing.
So, he instantly gained OBJ’s confidence and cemented his fame
as the new “Mr. Fix It”. When the PDP’s presidential flagbearer later sought
his counsel on the choice of running-mate after the party’s convention in Jos
in 1999, “The Leader” did not hesitate before recommending Atiku as “the deputy
you can trust” from the shortlist of five names.
The story of how dire circumstances would set the two old Yar’Adua
collaborators apart three years later is a story for another day.
But a man of uncommon passions, he similarly triggered extreme
emotions in others - cult worship among disciples and fierce hostility in
adversaries. In what could only have spoken to a hangover from his
professsional creed as policeman, he never seemed able to tolerate neutrality:
you were either an ally or an enemy. To him, loyalty must include
a willingness to inherit the leader’s enemies as well.
That peculiar psychology would invariably redound on our
relationship. He was never able to see reason in drawing a distinction between
the professsional and the personal. Hard as I tried, I never succeeded in
making him understand that I could only be held personally accountable for
views expressed in my column, and not for reports published as objective
representation of facts in the finest tradition of journalism.
When the report was positive, he would call me and
affectionately say, “My son”. When the story was unflattering and I called and
began by saying “Daddy”, he would angrily snap back, “Will you stop ‘daddying’
me! You’ve done it again. You’re a bad son!!”
When I wrote a column in his defence in 2004 as Sun editor based
on my personal convinction in the heat of his skymish with then Governor Orji
Kalu of Abia, he was deeply emotional when he called and spoke Ishan in
expressing appreciation of my courage to write against the owner’s
interest.
But that “father-son” amity only endured till another negative
story appeared in the Sunday Sun I edited till January 2008 or
the National Life I was MD/Editor-In-Chief for the next three
years.
He would seem to finally give up on me after I accepted an offer
to serve as Information Commissioner in Edo under Oshiomhole. Interestingly,
the very day I was sworn in Benin City in 2011, the governor showed me a text
message one busybody had sent him, sympathizing with him for appointing the
“lap dog of Anenih, your arch political enemy, as spokesman”.
We both laughed at such juvenile tomfoolery.
“The Leader” would appear to have found it too hard to bear
hearing the voice of his once beloved “son” speaking against him on national
television or local radio stations or issuing statement denouncing “the
Edo godfathers” on behalf of Edo State Government. Again, he seemed
unable - or unwilling - to accept the philosophical distinction between the
professional and the personal.
Then came February 17, 2012, the day Oba Eradiuauwa gave out his
daughter in marriage. While exiting the marquee at the palace, Governor
Emmanuel Uduaghan of neighbouring Delta State stopped to compliment me “for
helping to reposition Comrade’s information management. I notice things have
changed since you took over.”
Uduaghan’s kind words only seemed to annoy “The Leader” who stood
beside him. Then pointing finger at me menacingly, he growled: “Odion, you’ll
soon see what’ll happen to you!” He repeated that four times.
So, when on April 29, 2012 a band of gunmen laid siege to my
private residence in Benin City and only retreated after the local vigilante
boys engaged them in gun duel, it was humanly impossible for me not to
draw a parallel between that descent to barbarism and the undisguised threat of
February 17 and, therefore, become paranoid at “The Leader”.
In remembering his flaws as a mortal, charity nothleseless
obliges us to also acknowledge his strengths, chief of which was his generosity
to unquestioning loyalty.
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