By Emeka Obasi
There must be something about Labour Party anchorman, Peter Obi, that continues to confound those who stand in his way. What they pretend not see is just what makes him a celebrity within and without. Sierra Leone is trending.
While Obi was busy at the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal in Abuja, his name was all Sierra Leoneans heard as they prepared for their own elections. Chairman of that country’s Political Parties Regulation Committee (PPRC) Abdulahi Bangura implored presidential candidates to adopt the Obi Formula.
There must be something about
Labour Party anchorman, Peter Obi, that continues to confound those who stand
in his way. What they pretend not see is just what makes him a celebrity within
and without. Sierra Leone is trending.
While Obi was busy at the
Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal in Abuja, his name was all Sierra
Leoneans heard as they prepared for their own elections. Chairman of that country’s
Political Parties Regulation Committee (PPRC) Abdulahi Bangura implored
presidential candidates to adopt the Obi Formula.
Many of Bangura’s country men
have adopted Obi as the New Face of African democracy. I have friends and
extended family members in Freetown. There are positive vibes coming from that
part of the West African Sub Region, with strong Nigerian links.
President Julius Bio, 59, was re
– elected after defeating his closest rival, Samura Kamara, 72. What
coincidence that while Obi is in court to prove that the All Progressives
Congress ( APC) did not win in Nigeria, the APC ( All Peoples Congress) lost in
Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leoneans look up to
Nigeria to get things right and show that they are worthy Big Brothers. When
war ravaged their country, Abuja played a major role in bringing peace.
Foday Sankoh, who led the Revolutionary United Front ( RUF ) was shipped
to Lagos.
Sankoh trained in Nigeria and
did not rise beyond the rank of corporal. When peace was restored, President
Ahmed Teejan Kabbah pleaded with Brig. Gen. Maxwell Khobe to stay behind as
Commander of the Sierra Leonean Defence Forces.
Ties between both countries date
back to the Nineteenth Century. Freetown was founded to resettle West Africans
who were sold into slavery as war prisoners or kidnap victims. Many of them
came from what later became Nigeria.
Among the Creoles of Sierra
Leone are Igbo, Yoruba, Nupe and Hausa. By 1859, the first West African Medical
doctors emerged. William Broughton Davies, a Yoruba and James Africanus Horton,
an Igbo, were also commissioned as officers of the British Army.
By the Twentieth Century, Robert
Wellesley Cole became the first West African Fellow of the Royal College of
Surgeons, England. His father was Yoruba, his mother, an Igbo whose surname was
Okoroafor. Kid sister, Irene, found her way back home by marrying Samuel
Ighodaro, who later became the first Benin High Court judge.
Ighodaro
served in the judiciary when Samuel Ogbemudia was military governor of Mid –
Western State. Ogbemudia married Yetunde Afolabi, who has strong family links
in Freetown. Justice Bode Rhodes-Vivour, whose nephew, Gbadebo is in the Obi’s
Labour Party, served in the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone.
George Dove Edwin, a top
Nigerian diplomat, rose to head the High Commission in the United Kingdom.
While he served Nigeria, his nephew, Horace, represented Sierra Leone in Track
and Field. I met Horace Dove Edwin at Sportscity, Lagos in 1989. He was part of
Barcelona ’92 Olympics.
Sports has brought both
countries so close. In the early 1920s, the Fourah Bay Grammar School, Freetown
soccer team had three Nigerians. There were Ekeng from the Calabar area, Cookey
from Opobo and an Asaba. One of their teachers was Ladipo Solanke.
Obi played soccer for Sierra
Leone. Sam Metzger Obi was coach of the Diamond Stars that lost to Bendel
United in the first round of the 1989 African Winners Cup. His son, Obi, made
the Leone Stars team that lost to the Eagles on February 11, 2011.
The match, decided at the
Thunder Balogun Stadium, was Samson Siaisia’s debut as Super Eagles manager.
Ayodele Cole also played for the visitors. He replaced a Bangura, that sounds
like the name of the PPRC man who adores Peter Obi.
Patrick Ekeji was Technical Adviser
of Old Edwardians when they were knocked out by Leventis United in the first
round of the 1985 African Winners Cup. I saw Ekundayo Williams run for Sierra
Leone at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Catherine Eke did the same at the Glasgow
2014 Commonwealth Games.
The first President of Sierra
Leone was Christopher Okoro Cole. He was also the last Governor General, Chief
Justice of the country and also Chief Justice of the Gambia. We had Justice
Ebenezer Ayoola train at Fourah Bay College before making it to the Gambian
Supreme Court.
Nigeria’s Inspector General of
Police, between 1939 and 1942, Arthur Stephen Mavrogorda was Commissioner
of Police in Sierra Leone. Most of the Court Clerks in Colonial Nigeria came
from Freetown. General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi was brought up by a Sierra
Leonean.
I can understand why the Obassey
Ceesays ( Obasi Cisse ) Mohammed Kanus and other Sierra Leoneans think
Nigeria. One of them gave me his postal address as P. O . Box 2023, Freetown,
insisting that P. O. represented Peter Obi and pleaded that the Labour Party
leader should visit Sierra Leone.
Well, I will send a message to
Chief Livy Uzoukwu to grant Obi leave to visit Sierra Leone. He is wanted
in that country urgently as an icon of neo African democracy. His Obidients
cannot disobey this order from the home of Fourah Bay College.
*Obasi is a commentator on public issues
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