IT is dark. No one denies that it is dark,  neither does anyone pretend that the Heavenly bodies decree the darkness. Yet, it must be dark and darkened so the labourers would be known and crowned deservedly. There would be no coronation without darkness; darkness reinforces hopes of coronation. Therefore it must be dark, very dark, for all buzzing showy creatures to get the crown and find their roost.

Great writers have distinguishing marks. Great writers are a rarity anywhere in the world but in Nigeria great writers can be spotted in any part of the road, engaged in selective analysis. Hon. Rotimi Amaechi’s vindictive moves towards the cancellation of the Nigeria Maritime University, Okerenkoko, the incarceration of Nnamdi Kanu without bail, the violent 2015 Bayelsa State governorship election, the serial violation of court orders by the Federal government, the resurgence of Niger Delta restiveness, dwindling crude oil prices and the missing 2015 National budgets are national issues which merit the objective analytical commentary of great writers/columnists.

Intellectually engaging these issues, asserting purposive prescriptions, would guide the government towards the formulation of a clear policy direction to the comfort of the wailing Nigerians. It scalds like a steaming kettle of water that the great writers, so ideologically obsessed with the pulverization of the Jonathans, Dasuikus, OKonjo-Iwealas and the Tompolos, they have metamorphosed into Tuomo Iguanas blind and dead to the consuming craters, blazes in the national discourses on good governance.

Therefore, on daily basis, we have become slaves to the pseudo-intellectual distractions of buzzing showy creatures whose motivations and HOLY GRAIL centre on qualification as the megaphone of the anti-corruption government, and may be for the occasional temporary aggrandizement tantalizingly standing as the windfall.  To be so honoured and entrusted with this patriotic national task, towering far above toddling intellectuals and writers like Gulliver’s Travel’s Broddinaggs, we have to applaud their achievements everyday and sincerely pray for inspiration for them so that no hiatus would invade their task and endanger the entire country.

Obsessively, most clearly situated among the great writers is Tabia Princewill whose cream of commendable inspiration shows all elements of immersion in, and subservience to John Dryden’s  ‘Mac Flecknoe’. Both intellectually and historically she strikes a chord when she hysterically cast Tompolo as the cause of the  impoverishment of the Niger Delta who was economically empowered by former President Goodluck Jonathan without any corresponding extension of same empowerment to the ordinary Niger Deltans.

In a logically disconnected article dominated by feeble, limping sentences in the Vanguard of 27 January 2016 entitled ‘Can Nigeria teachers still teach?’ she  coughed  disgustingly like a hunter poised to fire an antelope at close range in the forest that: ‘The likes of Tompolo etc. according to recent allegations were enriched by the past government, with no benefits to the common man of the Niger Delta. So when will said common man in the creeks, living from hand to mouth, stop hiding and defending the people who are the cause of the region’s poverty?’

It is pointless and vague to say that Tompolo was enriched by the past government without evidential base provided. Does any known law or tradition prohibit human capital empowerment? Or if it had just become intellectual obsession for Princewill to discourse on people enriched by past governments, why didn’t the non-Niger Deltans who have been made STINKINGLY rich with oil blocks by past governments feature in her tendentious article of famished sentences.

When super-rich oil magnates are deleted from an article supposedly partly devoted to the analytical categorisation and minimisation of personalities enriched by past governments, then we must listen to the tutoring voice of Wole Soyinka’s in The Interpreters as this would expose the true undisguised motivations of Princewill: ‘When a club yields right of way to an antelope, first look and see if Father Leopard is not a few trees behind’.

The pernicious ideological obsession of Princewill perpetually dances to hysterical filete steps. In her second article of disjointed communication, she admitted the existence of ethnic sentiments in the UK. It was also part of her admission that Nicola sturgeon who was the leader of Scottish National Party was known for his advocacy for projection of an undiluted Scottish voice in parliament. Perhaps, the commendable advocacy role of Nicola Sturgeon parallels the emancipation advocacy role of  Tompolo, who inspired by the fosilled words of Soyinka  in The Man Died that ‘The  man dies in all who keeps silent in the face of tyranny’, has  sacrificially laboured to bring developmental illumination to the Niger Delta, though armlessly.

Reading the article logically  one would have expected Princewill to foreground the parallel between sturgeon and Tompolo and analytically justify the emancipatory  sacrifices of Tompolo and the Niger Delta State struggle but rather illogically, she coughed  intermittently and ululated that Tompolo, Asari and Jonathan were the agents of underdevelopment in Nigeria and the Niger Delta in particular, and that this domineering triumvirate had perfected the art of barricading talented Niger Deltans from the South-South who could LONDONISE Nigeria and the Niger Delta.

In an article in which no part is devoted to a discourse on talents and personalities from the South-South geopolical zone, this signals the peak of compositional illogicality, intellectual casuistry, intellectual self-aggrandisement, hubris, analytical prejudice, analytical incapability, intellectual self-confusion, analytical cul-de-sac, etc. it is Princewill’s article published in the Vanguard of 13 May 2015 entitled ‘UK general election: Regional and popular interest in Nigeria and UK Politics’ which embodies this vindictive analysis: ‘Indeed, ethnic, or regional sentiments exist, even in the UK. Scottish National party leader Nicola Sturgeon has been advocating for a clear Scottish voice in parliament.

Talents from the South-South who could have brought real development to ordinary people in the Niger Delta were sidelined by the Asari Dokubos and Tompolos of this world, who besides loud often comical pronouncements, have not, like their Principal, lifted their home towns, their people  or Nigerians at large, out of poverty’.  The coronation of Princewill as a great writer, even more talented than Soyinka, Achebe and JP Clark, is fast approaching.

The coronation Committee demands that whether or not she would be crowned depends on the number of trophies or laurels garnered; the number of laurels would be determined by the pulverization power and range of her obsessive pen and so to merit the crown, she has grown indiscriminate, destructive and insolent in the empowerment of her pulverization machine, deliberately moving away from analysis of developing issues, matters to infliction of bodily wounds, assaults on targeted personalities.

Nowhere is this analytical deviousness or bifurcation more eloquent and purposive than this when verbal gamalin 20 was remorselessly poured on former President Jonathan in this article published in the Vanguard of 2 September 2015 entitled ‘The  disservice of Jonathan’s men’: That he didn’t know of their activities is frightening: who then was in control? Many feel it is the untenable  defense of a village boy who unexpectedly came to power and wanted to act as the ‘big boys’ did  before him, “chop and clean mouth” but without the networks, or the devilish cunning and sophistication of a maradona to get away with it’.

A virus, not attenuated or emasculated, destroys indiscriminately beyond control. The Ebola virus once reigned but was killed by Jonathan government. Today, it is the Lassa fever that threatens though there are corresponding moves by President Muhammadu Buhari to curtail it. On the intellectual space, the articles of Princewill are viral proliferations, intellectual analytical abnormalities which demand attenuation and elimination.

By Ekanpou Enewaridideke

*Mr. Enewaridideke  a public affairs analyst, wrote from  Akparemogbene, Delta State.