Obahiagbon @ 63: A Tribute to a Peculiar Wordsmith

By Ernest Omoarelojie

On one fatefull morning, Saint John Bosco’s Grammar School assembly ground was in full swing. Tension was high because the principal, Mr Ukpan, a dsiciplinarian, was set to unleash the wrath and power of the cane on a number of erring students for commiting sundry infractions. Regular assembly niceties done, it was time for the names of those on his hit list to be formally read out, before being ordered to come out just so that their case would be dispensed for the day’s normal academic activities to commence.

Just before proceeding to read out the names, the principal sought to know from the students what time it was, perhaps to ensure that proceedings were as brief as possible.

“What time is it Patrick,” he asked. With flourish, the young lad, a standout from the crowd for his natty appearance, raised his arm to chest level and announced;

“The chronometre is 7:30.”

Even before he dropped his arm, face dead pan, the tensed assembly ground erupted in an uproar. Welcome to the world of the one and only Patrick Obahiagbon, better known as Igodomigodo who, while still a very lad at the Saint John Bosco grammar School, Ubiaja, headquarters of then Agbazilo (but now Esan South East) Local Government Area, served noticed of what would be his trade mark-ground breaking semantic ingenuity.

Studious, rather taciturn but handsome in ways that induce jealousy, young Patrick would rather be found dead than not being with a book or two, one of which must the English Oxford Dictionary. For the principal and most of his teachers, he was the copy image of a focused student, a fact many of his peers never disputed anyways. In any case, he was the postal boy of a well behaved student particularly in a school that had the one of the healthiest crops of unruly set of errant student characters at the time.

Obahiagbon was brilliant, always gentle, always easy-going and was always neat even while majority of his peers saw nothing unusual about the state of their school uniform, cringed or outright dirty. How nattily and jauntily dressed he was!

Though St John Bosco’s Grammar School was originally not mixed, except for a brief period, he was the unsaid darling of girls from neighbouring Sacred Heart College, who made no bones starring at him during the once in a year get-together event, with a reverse edition at the all-girls secondary school. But it was difficult to put on finger on whether the ever shy-looking young man took advantage of the unabashed interests from the girls.

Obahiagbon’s determination to become a wordsmith of no mean repute did not come by happenstance. It was one he deliberately picked up and nurtured to full bloom as the years rolled by. Notoriously however, his peculiar verbosity came to statewide attention when he served as a member of the Edo State House of Assembly.

In one instance during a particularly rancorous plenary, he rose to address the Speaker, noting sadly that the hallowed chambers had become the centre of ‘Fila ‘Ga, Filor ‘Gor’ In their reactions, his colleagues and members of the public who sat in the gallery to watch proceedings, rose in guffawed unison as the chambers eraptured in an uproar, woken up by his uncanny deployment of the native Bini language to humourosly capture the state of affairs in the hallowed chambers.

For the unitiated, ‘Aga’ in Bini language means chair, while ‘Ogor’ means bottle. To ‘Fila ‘Gar and ‘Filor Gor’ translates to mean chair and bottle throwing. By interpretation, the Edo House of Assembly had become a chair and bottle-throwing centre, rather than the law-making chamber it was supposed to be. “Fila ‘Ga, Filor ‘Gor” became an anthem in particularly Benin City for years, so much so that ordinary citizen, who hitherto had no interest in whatever transpired in the house made it a duty to follow it on television from thence, hoping to get a dose of his ever hilarious and highly sensible grammatical coinages.

It is on note that Obahiagbon raised the ante when he easily won the election to represent Oredo Federal Constituency at the House of Representatives in 2007. Asked to advise young Nigerians on how to live responsibly and successfully, he has this to say:

"Unfortunately, our youths of today have gone completely bonkers and haywire. The permissiveness of the social media has not helped matters. They all want to become plutocrats without hard work these days. Our degenerate society that eulogises worshiping at the shrine of mammon over and above hard work has also been a disservice. The Olympian aloofness of parents should also be deprecated.

"My advice for our young lads is to imbibe the values of hard-work and righteousness, but this must be in juxtapose with leaders also becoming an exemplum of puritanical values. A society where the rulers and leaders pertinaciously pursue moneocrism as if they are rushing to enter into Noah’s ark before departure is insidious and unacceptable."

By the time he left the lower chambers after four years, Nigerians across the six geo political zones, kept asking to know why voters in his constituency opted to elect another individual in place of the highly colourful Igodomigodo. Suffice to say however, that for being such an inspiring icon in the unique wordsmith sphere, they decided to amuse themselves by creating replicas of his peculiar verbosity each time an issue of national discourse came up. Even though they were mostly manufactured and purported to emanate from him, they were mainly mimickery of his verbose ingenuity. In any case, the pieces never failed to put a smile on the faces of even the most traumatized. He is such a talisman.

A gentleman of the highest order, Obahiagbon has another trait he wears like his flambouyant verbosity. He would never be found without his trade mark smile, one that often create a baby aura around him. It is such that no matter the level of provocation he may be contending with, he still manages to wear his smile without fail.

Obahiagbon is a trained lawyer where his talent would appear tailor made. But it is not certain if he had as much fulfillment in the profession as he did being a wordsmith. It is even more doubtful that his millions of fans would have him any other way. Born on 12 April, 1960, apparently a senior to the country itself, he has actually been more involved in politics than his legal career paths.

Aside being an elected a law maker both at the Edo State House of Assembly and House of Representatives, he served as Chief of Staff to Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole. Since then however, he has been more engaged in social and political commentaries.

Obahiagbon’ is a year older birthday. Let’s raise and cling glasses in his honour. 

Happy Bornday bro!