RIGHT OF REPLY
EVERY event has a season. Agere fruit, the staple fruit of birds in Amasuomo forest in Burutu Local Government Area of Delta State, has its own season of bloom and harvest. So, it is with mortals, particularly mortals who have marked their footprints in the sands of time.

It appears this is a season of vilification for Chief E. K. Clark the lawyer, administrator, Ijaw national leader, nationalist, and leader of South-South Peoples Assembly. A season recalcitrant sons have chosen to belittle the labours of their father who cleared the virgin forest for unperturbed hiking and rambling. A season fathers regret their labours for their sons. A season in which some amnesia-struck political sons of Chief E. K. Clark have morphed into born-again Christians of derogation and arrogance in search of relevance now on the run.

The hard-earned credentials of the man called Chief E. K Clark have just suffered derogatory inversion in the hands of a verbal voyager whose ideational confusion is announced and reinforced by the metamorphosis of the byline from Daniel Alaowei-Green to Reno Omokri in the Vanguard of June 3, 2013 and the Vanguard of June 4, 2013. I feel challenged to clear the deliberate undulations injected into the portrait of Chief E. K. Clark so that the verbal attacks do not occupy ossified space as quotable reference points in our daily public communication and commentary.

The story of E. K Clark can best be told by a true son of Ijaw, not a person whose claim of Ijawship is falsely suggested by obvious forced adoption of the name Alaowei. Both in words and in actions, the Ijaws demonstrate an easily identifiable aura anywhere they feature and this is an aura far beyond simulation by any manipulator. Clearly, Alaowei lacks this identifiable aura mystically and traditionally associated with Ijaw people the world over.

E. K. Clark is a scion of the Bekederemo family of Kiagbodo (not of  the Clark family of Kiagbodo) whose contributions to national growth and development paved the way for his appointment first as Commissioner in the mid-Western days (1968-71)and later as Federal Commissioner for Information in 1975.

These appointments are indicative of Clark’s contributions and relevance to national politics In Nigeria.  However, in a manner suggestive of linear political progression, Clark was electorally enthroned a senator in 1979. There is no historical record which traces the senatorship of E. K. Clark to the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida. In fact, E. K. Clark’s activism, political voyage and national relevance began in the First Republic of Nigeria.

The liberation struggle of High Chief Government Ekpemupolo and other recognisable freedom fighters whose culmination point was the offer of the amnesty in 2009 by President Musa Yar’Adua is comparatively a recent development.

Clark’s nationalist struggle, political involvement and activism far preceded this Armed Niger Delta struggle ably represented in this present circle of history by High Chief Ekpemupolo.

The Niger Delta struggle of Tonpolo and others merely constituted reinforcement tools for Clark’s activism and vociferous advocacy for developed Niger Delta and United Nigeria, not as tools that lubricated his ascendancy to national politics and relevance. Again it is noteworthy that Clark’s move against Chief James Ibori is a principled stand borne out of his age-long activism and vociferous advocacy for a more transparently developed DeltaState.

It is sycophantic and laughable to give Clark’s move against Chief Ibori the disgusting colour of harassment because the facts of this apparent titanic struggle are open to appropriation for anyone’s analytical engagement.

The public should know that Elder Godsday Orubebe is from Ogbobagbene, not Ogboagbene, and that Ogbobagbene is geographically far from Kiagbodo in Burutu Local Government Area. However, there is nothing suicidal and sacrilegious about Clark’s   position that Elder Orubebe cannot be the governor of Delta State in 2015 and better still, he has not even chosen somebody in this direction.

The vituperations and verbal inanities against E. K. Clark on account of this position, which he is constitutionally entitled to, are baseless. Anybody uncomfortable with Clark’s position is entitled to demand a discourse on why Orubebe cannot be governor in 2015 and I am sure Clark will give you a dissertation on this. Similarly, people are also entitled to demand from Orubebe a discourse on why he wants to become a governor in 2015 in DeltaState.

It is up to Chief E. K. Clark and Elder Orubebe to convince the people and win their unsolicited applause above identifiable political cant in their respective discourses. Only congenitally untutored minds let loose acidic lethal verbal arrows on Clark on account of his conviction concerning Orubebe’s political conviction. And we know E. K. Clark; we know Elder Orubebe. The discerning ordinary people know where the ominous wind howls between the two.

Ethnic jingoists and chauvinists are easily recognised anywhere they are found: Their thoughts, preoccupations, prescriptions and public pronouncements distinguish them. It is such ethnic champions who are pathologically marked by streaks of hesitation when they want to throw stones into their domain with deadly accuracy. E. K. Clark is not an ethnic jingoist as he is ever ready to throw stones even into his domain when the realities necessitate it.

On this plane it is, therefore, sacrilegious to derogate Clark with the deployment of lexemes like ‘chauvinist’, ‘jingoist’ etc, and skillfully but casuistically engage hesitating words to instigate Chief Alamieyeseigha Diepreye, Mujahid Asari Dokubo, Ateke Tom, Henry Orkar and Others against Clark. Even Egbesu, the Ijaw god of war, can bear witness to the fact that Chief E. K. Clark was a dependable supportive pillar on the physical plane while the liberation struggle lasted. For this deliberate inversion of facts, may the inverterate liar enjoy the soothing supplicatory incantations of Egbesu!

Predicated on available historical data, the likes of Chief Harold Dapa Briye, Chief E. K. Clark, Major Jasper Isaac Boro and others variously played significant roles in the Ijaw struggle and the struggle for united Nigeria. These are personalities who could be correctly referred to as the ‘leading lights’ of the Ijaw struggle. It would be a historical and semantic misnomer to cast Henry Orkar, John Togo, Soboma George and others mentioned as the leading lights of the Ijaw struggle.

The leading lights of the Ijaw struggle are the personalities who intellectually built the framework for the struggle and actually played remarkable roles in the 1950s. Maybe Alaowei is fired by an irrational sycophantic zeal to inveigle or ingratiate himself into the favour of Chief Alamieyeseigha, Henry Orkar, Ateke Tom and others, forgetting the fact that sophistry is a fragile bridge to the hearts of these personalities. Only the undiluted truth helps in matters like this.

The son of E. K. Clark, Ebikeme, electorally sought to be a member of the Delta State House of Assembly in 2011 on the platform of DPP but he was electorally murdered by the voters. Ebikeme and E. K. Clark are differently destined as both parade different credentials which the people draw on for their evaluative judgement. Ebikeme’s electoral failure has nothing to do with E. K. Clark’s leadership credentials; it does not even demean or diminish him as a national leader. In a very swift dance of homage to some conservative, reactionary and coveted selective positions, E. K. Clark is a god who can bring the Heavens down if he so desires.

If this all-powerful attribution is a true reflection of E. K Clark, it is a measure of his exemplary leadership quality that he allowed the masses to analyse and give their electoral verdict on his son Ebikeme. May be this is the much-touted enigma of Chief E. K. Clark and if this is it, then the man deserves accolades for this feat, not vituperative vilification carefully teleguided and authored by antagonists who have benefitted from the man’s magnanimity.

Every struggle goes with its own sacrifices. Clark’s engagement of the Ijaw struggle has always been from intellectual angle, not violence. In the struggle against exploitation and under-development, it is natural that Clark produces both friends and enemies. It is only genuine struggle that is bound to attract both companionship and antagonism from the people who have different opinions. Whether or not E. K. Clark has enemies or friends, they are the natural emanations from his activist immersion in the struggle, not emanations from his ‘unregulated and unrestrained verbal attacks’. Attacks against who?

Opinions writers should learn to validate statements made when writing to convince readers. Alaowei’s piece is replete with unsubstantiated statements. For a writer who painted E. K. Clark as an insolent man with unrestrained verbal attack… surprisingly ended up being more verbally directionless and anomalous than E. K. Clark. To portray E. K. Clark as an insolent man, I guess Alaowei must be one hundred years old-far older than Chief E. K. Clark. Let opinion writers of Alaowei’s species henceforth befriend fact-based analytical portrayal of personalities because only factually verifiable portrait benefits and nourishes the readers and that a writer should not be more guilty of vices over which he points accusatory fingers at perceived enemies.

And maybe possibly because E. K. Clark is an enigma as derogatorily confessed by Alaowei-Green, this is a special season dedicated by the likes of Alaowei-Green to the vilification of Chief E. K. Clark without a factually verifiable platform. Then there is a danger in being an enigma. Then enigma itself is too polygamous.

Then being an enigma is a creation borne out of Alaowei’s ideational pathology and so the enigma in Chief E. K. Clark identified by Alaowei-Green is not the enigma in E. K. Clark. Chief E. K. Clark can only be enigmatic in a season of vilification pathologically created by the likes of Alaowei, casuistically thrust on untutored minds as a product of dialectical engagement.

Mr.  EKANPOU ENEWARIDIDEKE,  a commentator on national issues, wrote from Warri, Delta State.