By Tony Erha

“Agha tot’ ikolo, t’ amen mie ede”; A Benin idiom holds sway that; “When the earthworm dominates a discussion, the rainfall would be all day long”. For the Museum of West Africa Art (MOWAA), whose skewed establishment had resurfaced about 2018, dominated global discourse and has reached a peak. Day in, day out, there is intense global indignation, bothering on an alleged swindling of the museum’s artefacts and huge accrued monies, which were under the care of the immediate-past governor of Edo State, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, alongside some of his political and business associates, which many commentators presented to be a f monumental fraud. As already claimed, it could as well have been called MOWAA-gate!

This article, being the second and last stanza of the first, published two weeks ago, was predicated on the decimating crisis of MOWAA. A condensed recap of the said article was partly anchored on a lavish reportage by swamps of Nigerian and foreign press, which largely implicated the Obaseki’s government, as inept in the due processes of MOWAA’s setup. MOWAA is a charitable entity, which sprang up on global funding and other resources of the state government, whereupon a case of undue diligence was allegedly stressed on Obaseki and his government.

There is a threesome public inquiry, thus raising a gummy accusation of indecency, especially when the ex-governor Obaseki’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had been voted out by the All Progressives Congress (APC), with Senator Monday Okpebholo as the present governor. And the MOWAA-gate is getting messier as Governor Okpebholo and the state’s House of Assembly, the lawmaking arm, had each set up a probe panel. Disturbed that the MOWAA-gate is earning the nation a bad name, the National Assembly, from a far-away Abuja, the nation’s capital, also instituted another probe.

”The returned looted Benin artifacts, like other sacred art work of Benin provenance, are not just superficial or ornamental, but infused with the mystical command and supernatural energy of the Benin kingdom of great antique. The key to correctly identify, classify, and position the authentic totems, in time and space, lies in the Royal Benin Palace, under the power of the Oba of Benin”. Sampson Ebome, a lawyer and perceptive cultural activist, uttered, postulating further;

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“In every other society as Japan, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Britain, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia and Morocco etc., royalty holds a choice-place in preserving the unique cultural and corporate identity of the society and its governance. It is no co-incidence, therefore, that even in today’s Europe, there are about twelve statutory monarchs in its advanced democracies. Perhaps, the grave error of Godwin Obaseki’s administration was to proceed on the false logic that a concrete divergence existed between the government and the Benin kingdom, the very source and origin of the history, dialects, cultural identity and heritage of all the people of Edo State. To have persisted in this gargantuan ruse, an original artifice of the colonising powers of Europe, was always bound to be destabilising to the spiritual and socio-political equilibrium of the state”

In the state’s legislative’s probe, cans of worms are being revealed on MOWAA and the Reddisson Hotel construction, said to have been Obaseki’s conduit pipes. And there is intense firework by the contending parties. Chief Osaro Idah and some of the Oba’s palace chiefs have dragged MOWAA to the law court, a development which Oyiwola Afolabi SAN, MOWAA’s lawyer said had jeopardised the appearances of Godwin Obaseki, Osarodion Ogie (former Secretary to State Government) and other MOWAA’s executive at the House of Assembly summon.

“Even khiri-khiri keke udemwen idan ere ogbakhian”. “Fierce wrestling is a companion to violent thuds”. And the fight is now more forceful as no man will leave his leg for an opponent to grab. “Emwin na ma ru ese, to si itale emwen”, a Benin parlance for; “That which had been tardily or slyly done is bound to cause disaffection”. And so, the fight ranges whilst the onlookers are left to mock he that is already falling!

“Ovbi ekpen ere otolo ekpen ehae”. “Osayomore Joseph, the late music crooner and a soulmate, had often reminded me about the age-long Benin axiom; “It takes only the Cub – heir, to tickle the forehead of a Leopard. Instructively, HRM, Ewuare II, the revered Oba of Benin, with the Methuselah of wisdom at play, narrated the seizure of the artefactual ownership and benefaction, as he stoically alleged the undue conscription of his heir into the corporate board of Edo Museum of West Africa Art (EMOWAA) by ex-governor Obaseki. His son had also attested to that. The claim was also buttressed that EMOWAA was an inordinate scheme evolved by Obaseki and his associates to wrestle the returned looted artefacts and supplement payment from their foreign sources.

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The Esans of Edo would say; “Ehun no ho obhiaha emoen, avava uwendin, ole odia”. “The sharp fart that disgraces the bride perches in-between her buttocks”. Once upon a time, Governor Okpebholo, on the heels of his final governorship declaration by the Supreme Court, which Obaseki and his protégé, Dr. Asue Ighodalo, the PDP candidate had dragged him through, was swayed by the of Senator Adams Oshiomhole insistence on the probe of Obaseki and his government. But Nyesom Wike, the flammable minister of Abuja, had dissuaded a pliable Okpebholo. But, Obaseki wasn’t mindful that he had escaped the expected probes, until he caused it with his usual foibles.

“Asua gha sua egile, oya danmwen ekpatu; eighi ye ebe gue egbe”. In a Benin folktale, it’s about the adventurous snail that crawls up the tree and soon crash to the ground, failing to cover itself from its hunters. The headstrong former governor, with the braggadocio of a ‘diaspora governor’, has taken the fight from ‘iya’ (valley) to ‘oke’ (mountain top). All we now see is the continuation of a “filaga filogo” (a street brawn with broken bottles and cudgels), now that ‘slappers and bone breakers’ fight wherever they meet in Europe and America. It is a bitter reminder of Obaseki’s heydays of masterminding the ‘Torgbas’ fighters’ gang that fought the APC’s ‘Tokpas’, which had earned him aliases like ‘Emanton’ (Iron Rod) and ‘Isakpana’ (the god of anger).

Whilst Nigerians and humankind watch the ‘filaga filogo’ and shame emanating from the Nigeria’s ‘heartbeat’ state, the very man who was called the ‘Wake and see Governor, may be laying down in the foreign climes the same landlines, that he laid on his home’s pathway that makes him to go into self-exile’.