Duke Ophori (Ph.D) is a professor and Chair of Environment and Earth Studies of the Montclair University, Montclair, New Jersey in the United States of America.

Duke Ophori

He is a respected voice of the Nigerian Diaspora in the USA. A frontline member of the Diasporan community of Delta State that has been actively involved in the Delta Diaspora Direct programme, Ophori who was on holidays, spoke on the administration of Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan and why Deltans at home and in the Diaspora should support the Governor.

You witnessed the recent re-run election in the state. What’s your impression of it?

I was in my room most of the day because I was scared right from the beginning that people don’t move around on election day so, but occasionally I came out to see what was going on and from what I heard in previous elections, there was a lot of violence and things like that so I didn’t go too far.

But I think it was peaceful this time and I am happy to observe that. The people have since shown that they are brothers and sisters and friends, people are not completely satisfied but from what I heard and observed about this re-run, there is a lot of improvement but we need to improve some more and get it to where we want.

When you return to the United States what message will you convey to your people in the US about the trend of politics in Nigeria now?

From what I saw though I cannot claim that I saw everything but from what I saw I think things are improving and I pray they improve more than this.

They could be better but I think they are improving and we should encourage whoever is doing it to go ahead and do some more for us.

What I believe in though is, when somebody does something little for you and you thank that person for doing it, it is only then you can ask for more but when somebody does something, no matter how small, if he feels you don’t value it and you don’t thank him for that then he is not encouraged to do some more.

So, I think we need to thank whosoever is doing it at this time for what they have done so far and then ask for some more to be done.

What is your perception and those of Nigerians in the US about the President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration?

I think people are generally happy that some new breed is coming up. We need to give some room to the new breed, the people who tried in the past have tried their best, they did a lot for us but I think it is time to change the band wagon and let some other people handle the mantle and let us see something new in the horizon. So, I think generally they are happy with Dr. Jonathan and pray for him to succeed in this election.

One little example that I want to cite is that every year that I have been coming here for the past ten years, at the Christmas time there have been queues, queues on gas and petrol and that has been troublesome up till last year.

I remember buying one litre for N200 some time back because it was scarce and there were so many long lines. But President Jonathan said there would be no queue last year and I did not see any queue, it was beautiful. We like that and hope he will continue with things like that.

What is the feeling of Nigerians in the Diaspora when you hear of violent crimes like bombing, kidnapping and stuff like that in Nigeria?

It is very, very, sad. Nigeria was not known for things like that. We used to hear about them from foreign lands. I don’t know what is bringing these but we are really disappointed in the United States to hear things like these happening in Nigeria and we hope with Dr. Jonathan there, and the leaders that they can work hard to put an end to this. Whatever is causing it, let them study and go to the root of the cause of all this and try as much as possible to eliminate it.

From your background, what would you suggest for an improvement on the health and environment sector of Nigeria?

Let me start with the environment: The environment is not good enough and we need to start from the grassroots and move up. Let us not even think about the high level climate change and all that the people are saying, if you look around us there is a lot of garbage around, we can start from something very little.

Cleaning up the State, cleaning up the Country and this is where I have to give some credit to Governor Uduaghan. Like I said, I am not a politician but when I see things I see them the way they are, I want to give some credit to Dr. Uduaghan. He came to the United States looking for Deltans in Diaspora to come home to help and they picked some of us in different areas.

The people who organized it picked me from the environment and I presented a few things to him on the environment, the way I see the Delta environment when I come home here.