- The Esama of Benin, 90, by stellar personal achievements, has planted his native place on the national map
Per Wikipedia: “The title Esama traditionally means the ‘son of the people’, with responsibilities including assisting the poor in menial, monetary and private venture forms.”
Chief Gabriel Osawaru Igbinedion, the famous Esama of Benin, who turned 90 on September 11 (he was born on September 11, 1934), has lived that Esama duty with aplomb. From routine charity to the less privileged, he has built many churches, among them, a Grand Catholic Cathedral.
But the Esama legend surpasses just philanthropy. Indeed, the Esama sits at the crux of the contemporary legend of Okada, by which Chief Igbinedion’s plaudits and solid achievements have rocketed his Okada home town into national consciousness.
When Nigeria Airways — the lone monopolist in Nigeria’s domestic aviation market — held air travellers by the jugular, his Okada Air was the first to jump into the market fray. That was in 1983. Other rivals soon followed. At its zenith, Okada Air had no less than 40 aircraft (air planes and choppers).
Today, Okada Air is defunct. But so too is Nigeria Airways. Nevertheless, Okada Air marked the first branding, by Chief Igbinedion, in the national consciousness, of his native Okada Town. Besides, Okada Air’s pioneering spurt showed who, between the government monopoly and a private investor, had the rightful vision for aviation.
But Chief Igbinedion’s pioneering spirit — or that of the native that always returned to honour his roots — was not limited to aviation alone. Tertiary education is another.
As Okada Air, the Igbinedion University (IU) was, when founded in 1999, Nigeria’s first private university. This time, the university took the name of its founder. But the location — Okada — would take no less prominence, for it was another bold stamping of Okada on the national consciousness.
Education-thirsty students, from all over the country, streamed to Okada to taste new private university experience. Today, IU isn’t listed as the best private university in town. But it holds its own, while holding, for keeps, the bragging right as the very first of its species.
How Okada ended up as the bitter-sweet pan-Nigeria name for the country’s chaotic — often suicidal motorbike commercial shuttle, is not clear. Might it be a figurative dazzler to compare how reckless ‘Okada’ biker-drivers pull dangerous stunts to beat traffic snarls, with a skilled pilot’s manouevres in the skies?
Whatever it is, that adds a seedy side to the Okada legend — maybe a guilt by association? Chief Igbinedion had no link with the chaotic ‘Okada’ bike shuttle.
But a fairer Okada/Esama de-marketing was Esama politics, mainly through the activity — or lack of it — of his offspring politicians. Prime among these offspring is Lucky Igbinedion, the Esama’s first son.
Though Igbinedion, the son, was a two-term elected chairman of Oredo Local Government, in Benin, the Edo State capital, and also a controversial two-term governor of the state, his impact was underwhelming, if not near-disastrous.
Indeed, as the younger Igbinedion, self-made unlucky after an indifferent first term, campaigned for a fresh term, the street-wise father outed with the sardonic joke-appeal: if they say Lucky failed in his first attempt, why not give him a re-sit to correct and make up? The Edo voters didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry! Lucky indeed got a second term. But it would only cement his lack of performance that birthed the much better Adams Oshiomhole years.
These troubling years from 2008 — with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) loss of power in Edo, and the so-called godfathers politically “slain” by the new Oshiomhole-led sheriffs in town — coincided with the Esama’s trouble with the Edo palace. Although the Oba of Benin never publicly declared the Esama as palace enemy, the Esama was suspended from palace duties in 2008. But happier times would come on June 13, 2012, when the palace lifted that suspension.
Still, in all of those vicissitudes, the name Igbinedion retained some glow and affection, particularly in their native Ovia Local Government Area. Indeed, Omosede Igbinedion, formerly married into the Akenzua Edo ruling family, still got elected into the House of Representatives, after brother Lucky’s gubernatorial debacle, perhaps mainly by the goodwill of their colourful paterfamilias.
Chief Igbinedion, thick or thin, has lived an impactful life; adding value to his immediate Edo environment, the extended Nigeria community and the global business universe, with his investment in the media, in a bank, aside diamond, gold and marble mines elsewhere in Africa.
The Esama is a worthy elder worth toasting at 90. We wish him and Lady Cherry, the family’s matriarch, the very best in the years to come.
