News Rendezvous

It is a very great privilege to have been asked to chair such a distinguished group of highly resourceful, eminent persons with a proven track record as passionate Comrades across the nation who believe in the power of collective work and the Spirit in steering the arc of progress of a nation towards shared prosperity .

I thank God that I have been asked to captain such a brilliant team.

I want to express my deep appreciation to Comrade Marcel Ngogbehei and his team for all the very hard work they had put in to get us going. They have been involved from the onset, assisting the OBIDIENT movement and now a guiding light for the reconciliation of all the aggrieved members, which has brought the Reconciliation team into being.

They have worked tirelessly, as all of you will know, in making arrangements for this first gathering since the February 2023 elections. We have come to know them as great leaders and gifted organisers and the entire Obidient Movement Community are grateful to have them.

Thanks too, to the Comrades from the Diaspora for their unstinting help.

May I say in a kind of parenthesis that my style of operation as a leader is through consensus and delegation. I like to play to the strengths of my team, letting each person blossom by doing the sorts of things at which they are good and feel confident in doing. That way one ends up almost invariably with a winning side and you are always perceived to be a good captain when you captain a winning side. And I know I have been given precisely such a team.

By and large, remarkably so, the composition and structure of this Obidient Harmonization Team has found general and favourable acceptance by all, across the country and I have reached out individually to every volunteer to confirm their acceptance of this appointment. It means we have credibility, ready for the task ahead and we must do all we can to enhance that credibility.

Everyone is aware that we have been assigned a delicate task whose execution, success or otherwise, will have critical and far- reaching consequences for our land and nation in the coming years. It is an awesome responsibility.
It is important to bear constantly in mind the title of the act that has brought us into being – the Promotion of Peace, Unity, Reconciliation, Harmonization and grassroots mobilisation.

Absolutely central to our concern in the work of our Team is helping our land and people to achieve genuine, real and not cheap and spurious reconciliation. Some view the Team with considerable misgiving and indeed suspicion and even hostility because they have convinced themselves that the Team is going to degenerate into pursuit of selfish interest and not promotion of all interest and the assumption is that it would be miscreants from one side only.

We must scotch that rumour or suspicion from the outset. We are meant to be a part of the process of the healing of our people, party and nation, all of us, since every OBIDIENT has to some extent or other been traumatised with the EMILOKAN CAPITALIST ECONOMY. We are a wounded people because of the failure of the past and present leadership, no matter on which side we stood. We all stand in need of healing. We on the team are no superhuman exceptions. We too need forgiving and to forgive ourselves to be able to wrestle the oppressors holding this country captive since 1960. I hope that our Comrades across the country will be able to provide inspiring leadership as we forge ahead into the promise land. We are the servants Nigerians have been waiting for not these political businessmen who have sulked our nations treasury like mosquitos.

We are privileged to be on this team to assist our land, our people to come to terms with our dark past once and for all. They say that those who suffer from amnesia, those who forget the past, are doomed to repeat it. It is not dealing with the past to say facilely, let bygones be bygones, for then they won’t be bygones.

Our country, our society would be doomed to the instability of uncertainty – the uncertainty engendered by not knowing when, yet another scandal of the past would hit the headlines, when another skeleton would be dragged out of the cupboard.

We will be engaging in what should be a corporate nationwide process of healing through contrition and forgiveness. To be able to forgive one needs to know whom one is forgiving and why. That is why the truth is so central to this whole exercise.

But we will be engaging in something that is ultimately deeply spiritual, deeply personal. That is why I have been appealing to all our people – this is not something just for the committee or team alone. We are in it, all of us together, Muslim and Christian, North and South, we this rainbow people of God. That is why I will appeal to our different communities of faith (Christian, Muslim) to uphold the Committee in fervent prayer and intercession that we may be showered with the divine blessings of wisdom, courage and discernment.

We have seen a miracle unfold before our very eyes and the world has marvelled as OBIDIENTS, all OBIDIENTS, with how they made a statement in the last most controversial elections in the history of our great country. The end of oppression and evil in Nigerian leadership is near, and we hope that we all can work together with common dream and purpose to create a New Nigeria.

The miracle must endure. Freedom and justice must become realities for all our people, and we have the privilege of helping to heal the hurts of the past, to transcend the alienations and the hostilities of that past so that we can close the door on that past and concentrate in the present and our glorious future.

We have it in us as OBIDIENTS to become a scintillating success. God bless us in our high calling.

In addition to our strategic plan #POWEROF10 , we will be holding a Summit that will be cantered on the role of the youths in Nation building and economic policy that is socialist centred soon, bringing all OBIdients together; once a again…… to celebrate that which binds us together. I encourage everyone to get involved in the building of our nation.

Let’s get to work, let’s mobilise ourselves in unity, let’s build a New Nigeria for our Children.

Thank you all.
God bless OBIdients.
God bless labour party.
God bless Nigeria.

SIGNED

Comrade Joseph Enan Maigari
Chairman, Obidients Harmonization Committee (OHC