Unlike many Nigerian businessmen and politicians who would take advantage of every opening to syphon public funds, candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Delta State, Olorogun Barr. Kenneth Gbagi, has narrated how he stood headlong against pressure to steal taxpayers monies while he held sway as the Chairman of the Delta Development and Property Authority (DDPA).
If the Criminologist wanted to make quick money, like some politicians who today are running for the governorship race with him in the State, Gbagi had plenty of openings under the late Abacha, who appointed him to coordinate a Federal Government Committee to develop Gwarinpa Estate, Abuja.
Again, like the DDPA experience, Gbagi rejected the bribes military officers and businessmen offered him running into millions of naira to perpetuate injustice.
The industrialist who spoke on Delta Scoop, a Personality Programme, narrated how Air Commodore (retired) Ibrahim Kefas, wanted him to share about N940 million proceeds of DDPA, he raked in less than two weeks, “I have a very serious disrespect for Nigerians or people who wants to put their hands into taxpayers money, I see them as idiots and people who have no head because Nigeria, is such a blessed country that if you put your mind in doing anything right, you will get it done”, he said.
Determined to serve the purpose for which he was appointed, Gbagi, honoured an invitation to meet with Kefas in Asaba, only to be disappointed with the request to transfer N600 million of the N940 million to Citizen Bank with account name AK Anguyu, a name Kefas preferred to be called.
Gbagi, an upright man, replied: “but you know that is not right, I will not do such a thing”, but a man whom the gods want to destroy do not listen to calls asking him to retreat, Kefas ordered Gbagi to go and do his bidding, a directive that never saw the light of day. Some get-rich-quick politicians particularly the present crops we have in Delta who never saw the four walls of school would rush to carryout what they would call ‘the last order”.
Despite the N214 million attached to the directive as benefit from the criminal order Kefas gave to Gbagi, in order to hurriedly effect the transaction, Gbagi, a man with a deep rooted christian background, dashed the expectations of the then military administrator.
Gbagi further responded after he was offered another largesse of a massive land, he said: “Administrator, I wasn’t brought up like this. My father Robinson, will kill me if I do such a thing. Its not possible”, he (Gbagi) never carried out those instructions.
“Two weeks later he called me again that I should come and then I went, So, when I got there, he asked me if I had done what he said I should do but I told him that administrator I told you that I will never do it, that is stealing. I wouldn’t do, I don’t benefit from taxpayers properties. He asked so you won’t do it? And I said no”.
Again, in Gwarinpa, where Gbagi was later posted, about 22 houses were offered him but he rejected them, till date Gbagi has no house in Gwarinpa, a decision he took for Nigerians and Deltans.
As the 2023 general election particularly the governorship draws closer, I call on Deltans to look in the direction of Olorogun Barr. Kenneth Gbagi, an upright man moulded to transform anything he lay his hands to do. A just man, a creative and an innovative mind.
A man who do not attach anything to himself except that he wants people around him to succeed, be known and be heard. Gbagi is the man that the governorship cap fits.
It would be a miscarriage of destinies of many Deltans and children yet unborn if criminals, people with questionable characters, those who cannot travel out of the shores of the country to woo investors, people who cannot appear before a governorship debate penel, drug addicts and people who would arrange others to defend them for one criminal act or the other to be governor over the elites and a complex state like ours that past and present governors who are schooled find difficult to govern.
