TheCable

BY TAIWO LAWRENCE ADEYEMI

Prelude to the landing operations of the Allied Forces on Tuesday, June 6, 1944, in Normandy during World War II, General Dwight ‘Ike’ Eisenhower was the most powerful person on earth. He was the supreme commander of Allied Forces.

The Western Allies of World War II launched the largest amphibious invasion in history when they assaulted Normandy, located on the northern coast of France.

Operation Neptune & Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe. The operation was commonly known as D-Day.

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“Leadership is an elusive concept defined by many, but achieved by few” — John w Stanko.

Jide Omokore is the chairman and founder of Energy Resources Group; Atlantic Energy Brass Development Limited and Atlantic Energy Drilling Concepts Limited, one of Nigeria’s largest privately held conglomerates. ERG has interests in oil trading and exploration, haulage services, steel, dredging engineering and property development. The group’s annual revenue exceeds $400 million.

He was once a ‘Kaiser’, ‘chimera’. He bestrode Kogi state’s political landscape like a colossus. King of Kogi state roads! These are the trails of Jide Omokore. Once on the road, no driver dares overtake his convoy of armed and overzealous mobile policemen. Smart Adeyemi appointed his younger brother as a special assistant during his tenure as a senator.

There was a particular scene in my country home; Ejiba, Yagba West, Kogi, where a car in Omokore’s convoy broke down. His overzealous and armed mobile policemen blocked the entire Ilorin-Kabba federal highway for hours [no going and no coming of vehicles] from either Ilorin or Kabba axis of the highway, shooting sporadically in the air causing and creating panic into the minds of the already depressed community] until the car was fixed.

It was a nasty eyesore of the highest, yet Omokore sat all through in his Toyota Escalade jeep enjoying the madness and nasty eyesore action. The armed and overzealous mobile policemen in his escorts held the entire community to ransom for hours. Drivers and commuters were also kept hanging in their respective vehicles in the forced hostage. Who dares come down and challenge the ‘Kaiser’ of Kogi state will be shot and nothing will happen. These are the unlimited power[s] Omokore had when he was Diezani Allison-Madueke’s errand boy.

Feeding on the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] cauldron of lootocrazy, Omokore was lord of money, affluence and authority. These were the times and seasons of Omokore’s fiefdom in Kogi, while federal road; Ilorin – Kabba highway he plied was in total despair and neglect, he cared less as long as he rode in his state-of-the-art Toyota Escalade jeep, with armed and overzealous mobile policemen as escorts and pilots. Omokore was in cahoot with power brokers!

How time flies? Omokore was ‘narcissistic’, noted for claptrap. At public functions, occasions and launching, he displayed flamboyancy and narcissism. As an errand boy of Diezani Allison-Madueke, (Nigeria’s most celebrated looter), Jide Omokore had unfettered access to Nigeria’s oil money. He was junketing and crisscrossing the globe in private jets (on the bill of Nigeria’s taxpayers’ money and the oil money), lavishing Nigeria’s oil money on parties, frivolities and jewelry. Alongside his cohort, Kola Aluko, shutting down a Dubai International Hotel in a show-of-idiocy’, which prompted the then president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to remove the then Group Managing Director of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Engr. Austin Oniwon, who incidentally hails from Igbaruku, Yagba West LGA, Kogi state (Jide Omokore’s federal constituency).

Ilorin – Kabba federal highway remains an eyesore, a pain in the neck of drivers and commuters that ply the road for business and traveling. Yet,Omokore with his closeness to Aso Rock then and powers that be, turned a blind eye to this important gateway, as long as he plies the road in his bump and pothole-proof Toyota Escalade’ jeep, the rest of the people can sleep on the road, sink and drown in the bump and pothole-ridden highway.

How times flies? Omokore remains an embarrassment to Okunland nay his adopted community, Isanlu, headquarters of Yagba East LGA. He cannot point to one project, foundation or initiative he established to help the hapless and helpless Yagba sons and daughters while he displayed affluence and intimidating madness while he dined and wined with powers-that-be.

Will and can the present political bootlickers and jobbers learn and take a cue from this narcissistic & claptrap politician called Jide Omokore, who once bestrode Kogi state’s political landscape like a colossus? According to Mahatma Gandhi, “he who makes peaceful change impossible, makes violent change inevitable”.

Omokore’s political trails, legacies and antecedents in Kogi state, Okunland and Yagba-land, in particular, rea like a ‘chaff that had been blown away by the winds’, N-E-V-E-R to be referred to and remembered in history.

What an irony of Julius Caesar, Jide Omokore; he came, he saw, he was disgraced and consigned to the dustbin of history!

Winston Churchill, British statesman, author, and prime minister from 1940-1945 and 1951-1956, said, “Politics is almost as exciting as war and quite as dangerous! In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics many times. The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.”

Vince Lombardi quipped, “The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That’s real glory. That’s the essence of it”.