BY Norbert Chiazor
“Some broken hearts never mend, Some memories never end, Some tears will never dry.” Country crooner, Don Williams 1977 hit song surged in the psyche, as one read Zik Gbemre’s malicious piece on Governor Sheriff Oborevwori and the Okuama incident.
Who is Zik Gbemre? No relation with the great Zik – Nnamdi Azikiwe, please!
Zik Gbemre is a man with an incurable spleen on Senator Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, Rt.Hon. Sheriff Oberevwori and, in fact, anyone successful.
Gbemre, red-faced and notorious for corrosive tantrums, had been making reckless pronouncements against predecessor and successor, peaking his uncivil lamentations in the wake of Oborevwori’s ascendancy as Governor.
His bitter bile brews from an excruciating pain – his paymaster and benefactor lost the 2023 Delta governorship elections.
Worst still, since the 1990s, he had always supported losers in Delta political debacle. A stark reminder of the sad character, in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” Santiago – an ageing fisherman who spent 44 days in the Gulf Stream, trying to catch a giant Marlin but ended in frustration with the carcass.
Gbemre told the world that Sheriff would lose the “March 18, 2023 polls.” He went home like Santiago!
Today, Sheriff is his Governor. Chukwu is Oghene, not man.
Gbemre clouds his uncouth acidic social commentaries, especially on Delta ruling authorities with a deceptive mantra “We Mobilize Others To Fight For Individual Causes As If Those Were Our Causes”.
But even the least perceptive observer would easily detect that it is all guile, forged altruism. Nothing but sour grapes.
Overwhelmed by an endemic loss of self perpetuation and extended grief, he finds it difficult to expel disorder from his being. This explains the biting malignance of his disillusionment and virulence of his criticism.
Otherwise, how would any person of goodwill fault Governor Oborevwori for the inauguration of a Management Committee for the resettlement of Okuama indigenes, because “the camp is yet to take off” according to Gbemre. A most vicious, jaundiced viewpoint he concocted, even when it is in the public domain, that the Governor had promptly released take-off funds for the exercise.
Baying in his characteristic bad blood, Gbemre further raged that the governor inaugurated the “Ogbodo-led Committee at Asaba “instead of “Ewu”, betraying the meanest of pettiness, laced with his pathological tribal bigotry.
Stomach-wrenching malevolence is a hard dilemma to subdue, but no one expected a man gloating over the Okuama tragedy to be this insensitive.
His penchant to unjustly call out Oborevwori, at any opportunity is bizarre.
Writing on the reported movement of some courses of the Delta State University of Science and Technology, Ozoro to Orerokpe, Gbemre fired an absurd proposition: “Sheriff should have moved the Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Law to Abraka since a University has been established in Ozoro”
“Burnout” Elders was what he once labeled Delta State Advisory Council, a respected body of eminent Deltans set up by government, charged with maintaining peace and oneness among people of the multi-State. Among the members are personages like Professor Sam Oyovbaire, Alaowei Broderick Bozimo, Chief Chris Agbobu, Dr. Roland Oritsejafor, Dr Esther Uduehi, Chief Iduh Amadhe and so on.
What has been the contributions of Gbemre to Delta, nay Okuama? Grudge, war-mongering, ethnic hatred, incitement, and divisiveness.
Given his loathing for the fortunes of constituted authorities, no one is persuaded by his sanctimonious propaganda, mouthed in obscenities. Everybody in Delta is a “nonentity”, only Gbemre is noble! How nice is narcissism?
With Oborevwori working hard to transform Warri with Julius Berger mega bridges and roads, execution of vital projects across Delta, N40 billion pensions for Local Government retirees, recruitment of about 2,000 LG personnel, payment of N5 billion promotion arrears to civil servants among sundry initiatives, the Governor is too busy to notice Gbemre’s blah blah blah.
Let him keep fishing!