By Gab Ejuwa

“When a man has learnt to wash his hands well, he is sure to wine and dine with the patriarchs._ ” Yoruba proverb 

The aforementioned proverb, most germanely delineating the approbatory fictional dynamism of Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s  *Things fall apart`*, in a word engagingly parallels the auspicious self-projecting summation of Chief. Joel-Onowakpo’s fortune on our _terra fima_, indeed the myth-making facts and figures describing his humanistic stride along the slushing and sometimes fact-burning sands of time.

This legendary corporate boardroom icon and political preceptor seems to be perpetually living what in every way compares favourably to a charmed life, in direct opposition to the fictional character’s and the deeply sociological Achebean archetype and phenomenon, who, apart from the giddying highs of his secular life, also suffers some of the most horrendous geocentric reverses in life.

So Joel – Onowakpo has been the wonder-working cerebral intellectual and bureaucrat who almost effortlessly fixed in the bolts and nuts of the taxation superstructure in the heady but also challenging days of the Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan administration, a material moment in mining time when the corporate taxation blueprint had arrogated to itself the pristine musty obsolescence of some Augean stables and cocksuredly defeated any attempt at revolutionary regulation and innovation.

Therefore it is self-evident that this quintessential personality has cut teeth in both the public and private sectors His distinguished leadership acumen demonstrated in his private business life and public office triggered the Federal Government to engage him as a coordinator of Delta, Edo and Rivers states at the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, in 2016, where he worked as a team with other experts in taxation and recorded the nation’s N4.03 trillion generated revenue in 2017. During this period, he served in different capacities such as member, Professional Conduct and Building Committee. Chairman Technical Appraisal Committee and Tax Identification Number (TIN), thereby distinguishing himself before his resignation as a Deputy Director to contest the 2019 Isoko North and Isoko South Federal House of Representatives Election.

Perhaps this leads inexplicably to one of the most enthralling and sublime developments arguably in the man’s public life, his eventual election as the Senator-Elect for Delta South Senatorial District. In sharp contrast to the great American President and statesman, Abraham Lincoln, who had to contest seven different elections before bagging the diadem of victory in grand style, by winning the greatest election of his life, the American presidential election.

Winning in the most recent election symbolically foretells more electoral successes for Onowakpo in the not-too-distant future. Who knows?  Maybe he could go on in this very manner to become even the President of the nation someday. Only time, the master griot with it’s ever-moving chariot wheels, can tell what blessed fortune is in stock for this macho Man who dares to dream and aspire.

Besides, Joel-Onowakpo has the requisite qualifications, experience, knowledge, charisma and other ancillary competences that the prime citizen of this great country should possess.

Without doubt , one particular quality that is bound to make Joel-Onowakpo Thomas a rallying point and perhaps one the most visible poster – boys of the Tinubu Administration is his bridge-building tendency, which is evident in his affable familiarity with fellow politicians, bureaucrat, and businessmen in his native Delta state and the country at large. Even right from the start, this man had been around, fraternizing with all stakeholders, down to the present era. 

•Ejuwa writes  from Warri, Delta State