PARAGON OF VIRTUE: An Account About The Personality Of Distinguished Senator Ibrahim Yahya Oloriegbe By

I am grateful for the opportunity to read your biography: I learnt not only how history shaped your life, but also how the Editors have nicely captured the relevant contextual conditions that shaped and gave inspiration, positive meaning, and direction to your richly textured life. It has enabled you to navigate your way through the ebb and flow, the high and the low points, of the contemporary history of Nigeria, defined primarily by the search for national identity, in the form of civil religion to promote the building of a virile, stable and progressive indivisible and indissoluble Nation. Of course, historical and sociocultural context matters in determining how we choose to live together. For me, it cannot be done once and for all because it is a time-defined political process of rescue and preservation of lives of citizens, of reversals and renewals of hope in our common destiny as One People in One Nation.

2. Your development as a gusto kid with a sense of honour, self-dignity, and an endowed private morality with a lachrymose tendency, has made it imperative that you regularly engage and review your understanding and use of history as a public figure, particularly, in terms of interpretation of power, ideas of social cohesion and the weaknesses of one’s inherited precepts and practices in our environment of deep inequalities. Today, our leadership cadres need to promote a better vision that focuses on the social movements of a shared society and a vision to deepen the economic development of Nigeria and reduce the destructive prejudices of our diversity.  

3. Your biography underscores the following attributes that define you. You are a personality who is reliable, skilful and trustworthy. You are more of a technocrat than a politician. Above all, you are an educationist who understands that the urgent issues raised by our domestic terrorism revolve around the necessity for change in our cultural, political, and socio-economic fabric. The composite portrait of you painted by the biography shows you as a leader who is ready to face and address the challenges of our environment. Of course, with your humility and brilliance, you already know what you want; and you know to navigate the array of challenges facing the governance of NIGERIA if the leaders are ready to create a more equal and tolerant society for her citizens. 

4. Since your life has been a journey of self-discovery, permit me to ask:  what have our citizens been witnesses to, and what have they seen and lived through in our political public culture? As a distinguished and seasoned Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, you are now a full-time politician, whether in Ilorin, Kwara or Nigeria, whose mission is that of PEERING into the FUTURE of Nigeria, as a mover, facilitator, and TRUSTEE of the change our country badly needs. Today, the CONTEXT is about POVERTY, INEQUALITY and quality of LEADERSHIP and the urgent need IS to understand the relationship between religion/ethnicity and politics. “Òtò Gé” is in my understanding social injustice and the burdensome socio-economic INCAPACITIES being suffered by citizens in Kwara State and across our beloved Nigeria.

5. What the country needs is spelt out in Chapter II of our 1999 Constitution: a social restructuring of our political economy along the lines of social democracy or social welfarism as a middle way between unbridled socialism and uncaring capitalism. It rejects the imperfections and inhuman face of the capitalist market economy, but embraces its human face: it rejects the overbearing face of the State under socialism, while it embraces its human and caring face of social and contributive justice. The essence of the middle way is the ideological twin that overturns the lifestyles of our aristocracies of privilege and enhances the need for distributive justice caused by the socio-economic stresses of the citizens.  

6. Given the current centrality and urgency of diverse identities (Ethnic, Religious, Culture, Zonal, Regional and generational lifestyles) our politics is in search of a vision for building new common purposes that deal with a governance culture that has allowed powerful citizens to get away with anything? Hence the need for Politics of relevant political ideology that can elevate national civic virtues and values that focus on our common needs and which also requires an appropriate role for the Mass Media Institutions with the power of digital technologies for better interpretations of the underlying needs for non-blame inclusive dialogues for greater devolution of agencies of governance.  Today diversity has assumed a dangerous radar while digital Technology has become instruments with that which to undermine and even underpin citizens' reliance on the information in the conduct of democratic governance; more so, in an environment where  Politics has shifted to digital Networks of Technologies. So how can our governance use Technologies to win the hearts and minds of our citizens who are caught up between the ideological imperatives of Socialism and Capitalism to effectively address our contentious history of weak governance, criminality, and poor industrial and education infrastructures? Today, leadership greed, poverty and inequalities of opportunities have become the arsenal of social ills that are undermining our social cohesion networks as well as triggering inflexions in the democratic governance of Nigeria. 

 Distinguished and seasoned Senator, I thank you for this opportunity and I also thank and extend compliments of the Ramadan season to the audience, who are friends, admirers and supporters of your commitment to a better NIGERIA.

GOOD LUCK