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Opinion

Dele Momodu @63: More Than Meets the Eye

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By Joshua J. Omojuwa

This is a flash piece. Even if I wrote a book about the exemplary persona that is Chief Dele Momodu, I’d still need several volumes to do justice. There are many personal and powerful stories. This is why I could not do this using an Instagram post because it’d be too long and it’d not still be enough space. It actually started out as an Instagram post, then I stopped. I needed to say more.

I met him for the first time in Lagos, 13 years ago. He had traveled into the country for an event where we were both speakers. When we met, he said, ‘Ah, Omojuwa, look at how fly you look. I was expecting to see one of this funny looking activists. You look great, keep it up’. Back then, I never missed a chance to let people I respect know I was not an activist and wasn’t interested in being one. I quickly got that off the table but I could not miss my chance to thank him for his iconic media brand, Ovation Magazine.

Every Nigerian baby boomer and millennial passed through the excellence delivered by Ovation, something it continues to do, since 1996. His touch of publishing excellence that was unknown to the entire continent at the time ended up inspiring like magazines and publications – Like, only in their attempt to be Ovation, not in their ability to hit the mark. Everyone wanted to be Ovation, everyone wanted to be in Ovation. One of my favourite ads in Ovation at the time was around the fact that, if you already did your wedding and it was not in Ovation, you had to do it again. Lol. It had its critics and its lovers, but both its critics and its lovers fed off its glitz, colours and glamour.

Those who loved it loved to love it and those who hated it hated that they loved it.

The pull was gravitational, you could not defy it. The interesting thing is, as Bob Dee evolved through the advent of technology, those who copied him at the time were late to it. A wire to wire leadership, Ovation and Bob Dee started leading them from the beginning and it continues to this day!

I remember trying to get my passport out of one of these notorious embassies several years ago. I messaged Bob Dee about wanting to go to the country and having some issues. He immediately asked me how much I needed. lol. I thought that was really cool but I needed something even fewer people had, his ability to call my passport out from a foreign embassy. He made it happen.

There are several stories with his answers in reference to me as, “I only know one person,” before he then makes the call to connect me to one of his numerous friends and allies. Often times, the fact I was always flying would be an issue, he’d then tell them, ‘ah, I don’t know who else to recommend o. I only know Omojuwa!’ Those of us who recommend people and know the risks that come with that know that it is risky enough to recommend someone, to now put an extra stamp that screams, ‘this is it! Nothing else!’ clearly goes above and beyond. I have been immensely blessed by these selfless acts.

But these acts of kindness do not compare to the one thing that separates him from the big people in his position. He has never at any time tried to get me to advance his politics. Never. I had years of struggling where some mentor would repeatedly reply my tweets privately in order to moderate my views or completely have me back down, especially when such tweets appear to touch someone they favoured. Bob Dee has never, directly or indirectly, tried to influence my politics. He has been involved in our elections across several expressions, recently managing strategic comms for the Atiku campaign. He respects your views and position and expects you to respect his. It wouldn’t matter if you were a security man or you were the president, he respects everyone.

In a world where people pretend to be saints in public but are far from it privately, he is the true expression of living one’s life and truth without a care for your feelings or expectations. On this account, everyone who deals with him knows what you see is what you get. And means a lot in a world where enemies pretend to be friends. That is, even those perceived to be his adversaries will open their doors to him immediately he is there. Africa’s most influential private individual, he is an exceptional man. Like Ovation, this conclusion does not seek your agreement, it is a fact that just is. Happy birthday to a great icon. He deserves every joy. This was meant to be a flash piece. I know. But ‘our Bob Dee’ is no flash. He has been here for a while, he will be for many more years. God willing.

© Joshua J. Omojuwa, Writer and Strategist at Alpha Reach

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Opinion

The End of a Political Party

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By Obianuju Kanu-Ogoko

It is deeply alarming and shameful to witness an elected official of an opposition party openly calling for the continuation of President Tinubu’s administration. This blatant betrayal goes against the very essence of democratic opposition and makes a mockery of the values the PDP is supposed to stand for.

Even more concerning is the deafening silence from North Central leadership. This silence comes at a price—For the funneled $3 million to buy off the courts for one of their Leaders’, the NC has compromised integrity, ensuring that any potential challenge is conveniently quashed. Such actions reveal a deeply compromised leadership, one that no longer stands for the people but for personal gain.

When a member of a political party publicly supports the ruling party, it raises the critical question: Who is truly standing for the PDP? When a Minister publicly insulted PDP and said that he is standing with the President, and you did nothing; why won’t others blatantly insult the party? Only under the Watch of this NWC has PDP been so ridiculed to the gutters. Where is the opposition we so desperately need in this time of political crisis? It is a betrayal of trust, of principles and of the party’s very foundation.

The leadership of this party has failed woefully. You have turned the PDP into a laughing stock, a hollow shell of what it once was. No political party with any credibility or integrity will even consider aligning or merging with the PDP at this rate. The decay runs deep and the shame is monumental.

WHAT A DISGRACE!

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Opinion

Day Dele Momodu Made Me Live Above My Means

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By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

These are dangerous days of gross shamelessness in totalitarian Nigeria.
Pathetic flaunting of clannish power is all the rage, and a good number of supposedly modern-day Nigerians have thrown their brains into the primordial ring.

One pathetic character came to me the other day stressing that the only way I can prove to him that I am not an ethnic bigot is to write an article attacking Dele Momodu!

I could not make any head or tail of the bloke’s proposition because I did not understand how ethnic bigotry can come up in an issue concerning Dele Momodu and my poor self.

The dotty guy made the further elaboration that I stand accused of turning into a “philosopher of the right” instead of supporting the government of the day which belongs to the left!

A toast to Karl Marx in presidential jet and presidential yacht!

I nearly expired with laughter as I remembered how one fat kept man who spells his surname as “San” (for Senior Advocate of Nigeria – SAN) wrote a wretched piece on me as an ethnic bigot and compelled one boozy rascal that dubiously studied law in my time at Great Ife to put it on my Facebook wall!

The excited tribesmen of Nigerian democracy and their giddy slaves have been greased to use attack as the first aspect of defence by calling all dissenting voices “ethnic bigots” as balm on their rotted consciences.

The bloke urging me to attack Dele Momodu was saddened when he learnt that I regarded the Ovation publisher as “my brother”!

Even amid the strange doings in Nigeria of the moment I can still count on some famous brothers who have not denied me such as Senator Babafemi Ojudu who privileged me to read his soon-to-be-published memoir as a fellow Guerrilla Journalist, and the lionized actor Richard Mofe-Damijo (RMD) who while on a recent film project in faraway Canada made my professor cousin over there to know that “Uzor is my brother!”

It is now incumbent on me to tell the world of the day that Dele Momodu made me live above my means.

All the court jesters, toadies, fawners, bootlickers and ill-assorted jobbers and hirelings put together can never be renewed with enough palliatives to countermand my respect for Dele Momodu who once told our friend in London who was boasting that he was chased out of Nigeria by General Babangida because of his activism: “Babangida did not chase you out of Nigeria. You found love with an oyinbo woman and followed her to London. Leave Babangida out of the matter!”

Dele Momodu takes his writing seriously, and does let me have a look at his manuscripts – even the one written on his presidential campaign by his campaign manager.

Unlike most Nigerians who are given to half measures, Dele Momodu writes so well and insists on having different fresh eyes to look at his works.

It was a sunny day in Lagos that I got a call from the Ovation publisher that I should stand by to do some work on a biography he was about to publish.

He warned me that I have only one day to do the work, and I replied him that I was raring to go because I love impossible challenges.

The manuscript of the biography hit my email in fast seconds, and before I could say Bob Dee a fat alert burst my spare bank account!

Being a ragged-trousered philanthropist, a la the title of Robert Tressel’s proletarian novel, I protested to Dele that it’s only beer money I needed but, kind and ever rendering soul that he is, he would not hear of it.

I went to Lagos Country Club, Ikeja and sacked my young brother, Vitus Akudinobi, from his office in the club so that I can concentrate fully on the work.

Many phone calls came my way, and I told my friends to go to my divine watering-hole to wait for me there and eat and drink all that they wanted because “money is not my problem!”

More calls came from my guys and their groupies asking for all makes of booze, isiewu, nkwobi and the assorted lots, and I asked them to continue to have a ball in my absence, that I would join them later to pick up the bill!

The many friends of the poor poet were astonished at the new-fangled wealth and confidence of the new member of the idle rich class!

It was a beautiful read that Dele Momodu had on offer, and by late evening I had read the entire book, and done some minor editing here and there.

It was then up to me to conclude the task by doing routine editing – or adding “style” as Tom Sawyer would tell his buddy Huckleberry Finn in the eponymous adventure books of Mark Twain.

I chose the style option, and I was indeed in my elements, enjoying all aspects of the book until it was getting to ten in the night, and my partying friends were frantically calling for my appearance.

I was totally satisfied with my effort such that I felt proud pressing the “Send” button on my laptop for onward transmission to Dele Momodu’s email.

I then rushed to the restaurant where my friends were waiting for me, and I had hardly settled down when one of Dele’s assistants called to say that there were some issues with the script I sent!

I had to perforce reopen up my computer in the bar, and I could not immediately fathom which of the saved copies happened to be the real deal.

One then remembered that there were tell-tale signs when the computer kept warning that I was putting too much on the clipboard or whatever.

It’s such a downer that after feeling so high that one had done the best possible work only to be left with the words of James Hadley Chase in The Sucker Punch: “It’s only when a guy gets full of confidence that he’s wide open for the sucker punch.”
Lesson learnt: keep it simple – even if you have been made to live above your means by Dele Momodu!

To end, how can a wannabe state agent and government apologist, a hired askari, hope to get me to write an article against a brother who has done me no harm whatsoever? Mba!

I admire Dele Momodu immensely for his courage of conviction to tell truth to power.

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Opinion

PDP at 26, A Time for Reflection not Celebration

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By Obianuju Kanu-Ogoko

At 26 years, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) should have been a pillar of strength, a beacon of hope and a testament to the enduring promise of democracy in Nigeria.*

Yet, as we stand at this milestone, it is clear that we have little, if anything, to celebrate. Instead, this anniversary marks a sobering moment of reflection, a time to confront the hard truths that have plagued our journey and to acknowledge the gap between our potential and our reality.

Twenty-six years should have seen us mature into a force for good, a party that consistently upholds the values of integrity, unity and progress for all Nigerians.

But the reality is far from this ideal. Instead of celebrating, we must face the uncomfortable truth: *at 26, the PDP has failed to live up to the promise that once inspired millions.*

We cannot celebrate when our internal divisions have weakened our ability to lead. We cannot celebrate when the very principles that should guide us: justice, fairness and accountability,have been sidelined in favor of personal ambition and short-term gains. We cannot celebrate when the Nigerian people, who once looked to the PDP for leadership, now question our relevance and our commitment to their welfare.

This is not a time for self-congratulation. It is a time for deep introspection and honest assessment. What have we truly achieved? Where did we go wrong? And most importantly, how do we rebuild the trust that has been lost? These are the questions we must ask ourselves, not just as a party, but as individuals who believe in the ideals that the PDP was founded upon.

At 26, we should be at the height of our powers, but instead, we find ourselves at a crossroads. The path forward is not easy, but it is necessary. We must return to our roots, to the values that once made the PDP a symbol of hope and possibility. We must rebuild from within, embracing transparency, unity and a renewed commitment to serving the people of Nigeria.

There is no celebration today, only the recognition that we have a long road ahead. But if we use this moment wisely, if we truly learn from our past mistakes, there is still hope for a future where the PDP can once again stand tall, not just in name, but in action and impact. The journey begins now, not with *fanfare but with resolve.

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