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Parables of Rio
THERE have been controversies
over the hosting of the Olympic
Games. In fact, there have been mass
boycotts. For instance, most
African countries boycotted the
1976 Games due to the non-expulsion
of New Zealand which maintained
close sporting links with Apartheid
South Africa. Four years later, 62
countries, led by America, boycotted
the Moscow Olympic Games on the
excuse that the then Soviet Union
intervened in Afghanistan. The latter
retaliated in the 1984 Los Angeles
Olympic Games by leading a 22-
country boycott using security
concerns as excuse.
There were no mass boycotts at the
Rio Olympic Games which ran
From August 5-21, 2016. But this was
not due to lack of controversy about
Brazil, the host country. The
controversy was mainly contrived by
some developed countries and their
citizens who do not expect a Third
World country to be able to hold
successful games. In any case, to
them, Brazil is a bad example: a
Third World country rising in
industrialisation and wanting to use
its newly acquired strength to
reshape the world. Worst still, it is a
major convener of the Brazil,
Russia, India, China and South
Africa, BRICS, Club which is trying
to counter-balance Westerncolonised
institutions like the IMF
and World Bank.
The primary campaign against
the Rio Olympics was over the
mosquito-borne Zika virus. A lot of
noise was made about the expected
500,000 spectators and athletes from
abroad contacting the Zika virus. In
fact, some threatened to sue the
organisers over the disease. A second
strand of the anti-Rio campaign was
that Brazil is too polluted to be
allowed to host the games. There
were unsubstantiated claims that
the Guanabara Bay in Rio, venue of
the sailing events, was so
contaminated that athletes will be
seriously affected by diarrhea and
vomiting. A third campaign was that
Brazilian cities were so congested
that disease could spread, affecting
the visitors. Another political
argument was thrown in: that the
country was too politically volatile,
more so with mass protests by
opposing forces which led to the
May 18 suspension, or what is
actually a slow coup against
President Dilma Roussef. Of course
the issue of crime rates was also
employed. When the latter card was
played up, I giggle and told myself
that at least in Brazil, unlike in
Europe, bombs are not going off and
terrorists are not running around.
That unlike America, you do not have
deranged minds carrying out
unchecked massacre of people,
including children. There was also
the attempt to hang on Brazil, a
moral blackmail: that the games
will cost 16 times the country’s
annual budget which is indefensible
for a country with a large number of
poor people. British Sports
Historian, David Goldbalt,
magisterially declared preparations
for the Rio Games a disaster.
Based on these campaigns, 150
European health experts actually
But for the bronze
won by the
Samson
Siasia-tutored
football team,
Nigeria at the Rio
Olympics would
have been like a
snake passing over
a rock, leaving no
footprints
issued a joint petition against the
games venue. A few athletes,
especially golfers, went ahead to
boycott the Rio Games, but these
campaigns were of no effect: they
were like a spider spinning a yarn to
prevent the elephant from moving
forward. Brazil obviously would
have learnt from a similar campaign
against it when it hosted the June
2014 World Cup. There were
complaints that the stadia would not
be ready, accommodation will be
a problem and that the cities were
overcrowded and expensive. To
worsen matters, there were protests
against the costs of hosting the Cup.
At the end, an harassed Brazil - a
football super power - was thrashed
7-1 in the semi-finals by Germany.
This time, Brazil concentrated
better beating Germany on penalties
to clinch the football gold medal and
netting six other gold medals. It
pulled off beautiful Opening and
Closing ceremonies and a generally
successful Olympic Games.
To me, a major highlight of the
Games was the victory of 25-year -
old South African, Caster Semenya
in the 800 metres. But for her
indomitable spirit, she would have
been crowded out of sports long ago
after years of humiliating tests to
prove that she is female and not male.
As in the case of Serena Williams,
when powerful forces in sports feel
constantly beaten by an athlete they
do not favour, they try to cast doubts
in the minds of the public. Her
countryman, Wayde van Niekerk, set
the tracks ablaze with a 43.03 Second
in 400 metres which earned him the
gold medal and a new world record.
But by far, the event that showed
the Olympic spirit was the 100
metres Butterfly Swimming in
which 21-year-old Singaporean,
Joseph Isaac Schooling, defeated his
childhood idol and swimming
legend, Michael Phelps in a record
50.39 Seconds. The race showed
courage, determination,
sportsmanship. In defeat, Phelps
showed grace. He won five
additional Olympic gold medals,
bringing his total Olympic medal
haul to 28: 23 gold, 3 silver and 2
bronze. This may qualify the “Flying
Fish” as the greatest Olympian
athlete of all time. Although he would
have to contend with Usain Bolt
the best Olympian sprinter of all time
who has a lot of charisma and is
champion in the very popular track
events, particularly the 100 metres.
There were other major
developments, particularly the
participation of the Refugee
Olympic Team, and the maiden
appearance of tiny Kosovo and
South Sudan, whose civil war is
illogical.
The United States won 46 of the
306 gold medals up for grabs
followed by Britain and China.
Africa’s 10 gold and 19 silver is a
sad reminder that our continent
continues to be a backwater in
almost all indices of human
development. We have Kenya to
thank for covering Africa’s shame
with its six gold, six silver and one
bronze; South Africa for giving us
two gold and six silver medals. Cote
D’Ivoire’s Cheick Sallah Cisse gave
our continent a surprise gold in the
89kg Taekwondo, another Ivorian,
Ruth Gbagbi gave a bronze while
Niger which had its last Olympic
medal 44 years ago, gave us a silver
in Taekwondo. Nigeria, Africa’s
giant, the most populous Black
country and the continent’s leading
light got a bronze medal to be able
to register a medal presence at an
event where 918 medals were won.
But for the bronze won by the
Samson Siasia-tutored football
team, Nigeria at the Rio Olympics
would have been like a snake
passing over a rock; leaving no
footprints. It is instructive that while
Siaisia and his boys were sweating
it out in Rio to secure what I call a
‘golden’ bronze medal, there were
characters at home castigating and
running down the team for allegedly
travelling on a non-funded pretournament
tour of America and
forcing the country to pay for extra
tickets for the team. The football
team was the rejected stone that
made Nigeria proud.
Comrade Elijah Okougbo: A colossus of
Labour movement (1945–2016)
By Ikhide Erasmus
SOMETHING tragic happened to the
Nigeria state on the road to its Third
Republic political struggle. The record is there
in the history of the combative labour
movement and civil society groups which
presided over the ouster of the military boys
and chased them back to barracks.
Military dictatorship, wherever it is found,
goes with dehumanisation and punitive life
style. It belongs to a sect of brutal and blood
thirsty kaki wearing men and women whose
devilment predates the Stone Age. Military
regime as a system of government breeds
tyrants, men without economic conscience and
moral imagination. It bristles with history of
disorientation and predatory corruption, of
brigandage, of banal suppression of the human
spirit and, incapable of reflecting on its own
real reason for existence.
From the period of colonial rule to the time
of military era, the Nigerian state is replete
with courageous voices from the labour
movement, which demanded for
independence, democracy, social justice, equity
and fairness. The voices of the likes of Pa
Michael Imoudu, Hassan Sumonu, Frank
Kokori, Joseph Akinlaja and Elijah Okougbo
have been consistent as the northern star.
The height of the evil of the time was when
the “Evil Genius” yielded power to General
Sani Abacha, the diminutivebut unrepentant
dictator. The madness climaxed at what was
tagged the ‘June 12 protests’ with hundreds
losing their lives across the country. It was a
startling regression that equates with animal
barbarity.
The crises heightened and assumed a life of
its own on June 11, 1994 when Chief M.K.O
Abiola declared himself president of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria on the eve of the
first anniversary of his aborted June 12, 1993
presidential mandate. He went into hiding
after the declaration for fear of being arrested.
By June 23, 1994, the Federal Military
Government arrested Chief M.K.O Abiola on
charges of treason.
Despite the ravages of the military pillage,
despite the tyrannical occupation of streets by
the agents of darkness, there were avatars,
particularly from the oil unions, who heroically
stood between the oppressed and the
oppressors. July 5, 1994 readily comes to mind
in this regard. On that fateful day, the National
Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers,
NUPENG and Petroleum and Natural Gas
Senior Staff Association, PENGASSAN,
began the longest strike in Nigerian history to
protest the annulled presidential election. The
nation was plunged into a monumental fuel
crisis, causing untold hardship to citizens. This
was followed by riots on July 8, 1994, in the
Southwestern states, especially Lagos, Oyo,
Ondo, Ogun as well as Edo State. The Nigeria
Labour Congress, NLC, merely called for
solidarity strike in support of NUPENG and
PENGASSAN on August 3, 1994.
I asked the elder statesman, Comrade Frank
Kokori, not too long ago in Abuja how he was
able to keep on the struggle while in the gulag
at the same time sustaining the non-violent
agitation for the validation of the June 12
mandate on the streets of Nigeria?
He responded thus: “The heroes and titans
of that era are Comrades Elijah Okougbo and
Joseph Akinlaja, both retired Secretary-
Generals of NUPENG and Comrade Wariebi
Agamene”. He painted moving pictures of the
derring-do spirit of Comrade Okougbo, a
shrewd negotiator, as one of the greatest men
ever thrown up by the labour movement.
Comrade Kokori’s treatise on Comrade
Okougbo reads like the magical Simon
Schama, the famed historian, at the most
sublime summit of his expository art. It is not a
permissive or primitive adulation.
Comrade Kokori, however, regretted the lack
of cohesion on the part of the progressives to
form a formidable political party to contest
elections and form the government at the
centre. That was long before I had anything to
do with NUPENG. He castigated those who
profited from the blood of innocent Nigerians,
occasioned by the military ruination of the
nation. This people, he lamented, who leaked
information on his hideouts and that of his
loved ones to the military boys, were the first
persons that were rewarded by the same system
which they antagonised.
Comrade Kokori said the history of Nigeria
can never be told without the role played by
the likes of Comrade Okougbo. Courageous,
impeccably well-mannered, well-bred, with
absolute touch of toughness and thoroughness,
Comrade Okougbo and his colleagues
organised punitive strikes against the military
goons who were determined to keep the nation
underfoot while he was kept in detention. The
life and times of the iconic Comrade Elijah
Okougbo is one whose immense contributions
to modern Nigeria’s search for political
determination, institutional building,
education, nation building or nation
becoming, self-retrieval and continental selfvalidation
will not escape the inquisitive pen
of historians.
Comrade Okougbo was a giant in size and
in intellect; even among giants of all strides.
He stood out like a
supreme exemplar for his
exceptional courage, his
indomitable spirit, his
intimidating brilliance,
stupendous energy,
entrepreneurial wizardry
He stood out like a supreme exemplar for his
exceptional courage, his indomitable spirit, his
intimidating brilliance, stupendous energy,
entrepreneurial wizardry. Thanks goodness for
the immutable hand of destiny which
permitted him to witness the birth of the Fourth
Republic. It was important that he saw we were
finding our ways out of the debris of aborted
nationhood, even though we are not there yet.
My chance encounter with this man of
excellent spirit made me believe he will walk
into God’s Kingdom without judgement. The
reason is that I am a strong believer of ‘Religion
of Humanity’, which for me, is the highest
religion. As a detribalised humanist, who daily
agonised about the condition of the poor
people in the society, he strove relentlessly to
pave the way for those qualified to be gainfully
employed in the oil industry and elsewhere.
And he assisted so many people in the oil sector
in their hundreds to access jobs.
Therefore, my divine meeting was not just
an icing on the cake of my moral search for
formidable platforms to agitate and fight for
the rights of the underclass, the oppressed,
downtrodden and the victimised: the father/
son relationship which marked the turning
point of my life, created an opening for me in
NUPENG, which lasted till the day he breathed
his last.
His life reads like a magical adventure or
some African version of Robinson Crusoe. He
was born on March 27, 1945 in his maternal
home of Ujemen Ekpoma, a second child to
Mr. and Mrs. Isaiah Unuigbe Okougbo of the
noble family of Okougbo Ocheimen of Uhuen-
Idogun-Idumogo, Iruekpen Ekpoma, Esan
West of Edo State Nigeria.
After his education and distinguished career
marked by outstanding achievements, he
retired on May 31, 2012 to private life, and
passed on June 26, 2016 at the age of 71. My
only wish has always been that Nigeria has
men/women of Okougbo's stature without
which there can never be the Nigeria of our
dream. Adieu Comrade Elijah Okougbo.
*Mr Ikhide, a social activist, wrote from
Lagos, Nigeria.
C
M
Y
K