It is not very clear where these gentlemen who once rocked their world while in public service could be at the moment. ELEOJO IDACHABA writes.
Halims Agoda
Halims Agoda is a former lawmaker who represented Ethiope federal constituency of Delta state in the House of Representatives thrice. The first was between 1999 and 2003 on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before he joined the All Progressives Congress (APC) a few years ago. It can be convenient to say that this ex-lawmaker is one of the politically-spent forces in the present political dispensation as his several attempts at returning to political reckoning had always met a brick wall. This is because, as the saying goes, his time has passed. For example, in the last election, he made attempt to return to the lower House in order to represent his constituency on the platform of his new party, the APC, but the matter ended in a litigation which has not seen the light of day up till now. In his attempt to probably seek the favour of the APC before now, Agoda, in 2015, hosted some party loyalists in his Jesse country home shortly after the party’s victory at the national level. That attempt, according to political analysts, is because he could no longer find a solid foot in his former party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), where he once commanded popularity.
Chamberlain Oyibo
Chief Chamberlain Oyibo is the 10th group managing director (GMD) of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). He was appointed by the head of the former Interim National Government (ING), Chief Ernest Shonekan, where he served until the tenure of the late Gen. Sani Abacha who later removed him from office in 1995, precisely after two years in the saddle. Since then, he has been away from public office into a private life, but this man has had over 40-year experience in the oil and gas where he worked all through his working experiences. First, he began with Texaco Overseas just a day he graduated from the University of Ibadan where he studied Geology. From there, he moved to the Ministry of Petroleum. He also worked as general managers in almost all the refineries before he was appointed the managing director of then Nigeria Petroleum Development Corporation (NPDC). In 2002, he declared his intention to contest in the 2003 governorship election of Rivers, his home state, on the platform of National Democratic Party (NDP) but he could not scale the fence of politics because as analysts put it, “He was not a grounded politician who understands the science of winning in an election.” Besides, analysts said he used a wrong political platform hoping to secure the position, but Rivers is traditionally a PDP state. That was how that ambition died. Even though this man has been around playing his role in a private oil firm, not much of him has been heard in the recent past.
Moses Fasanya
Colonel Moses Fasanya (retd.) is the former military administrator of Abia state under the late Gen. Sani Abacha as head of state between 1996 and 1998 and later as administrator in Ondo state between 1998 and 1999. He, along with other military adventurers in Nigeria’s politics, was advised in their own interest by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to voluntarily retire from the military because of their long-year involvement in politics. Like Fasanya, many of them were unprepared by this development, but for those who saw the hand writing on the wall earlier, they helped themselves with public funds while leaving office. As administrator in Ondo, he allegedly caused a stir through the clumsy way he handled the election of the traditional Owo leader, a development that led to chaos and mass destruction of property. The outcome of this was that as at October 1998, hundreds of people were killed in clashes between local Ijaw in the Akpata region and Ilaje Yoruba who were seeking daily work on a newly-found oil field located there. The administrator found it difficult to seek a lasting solution to the problem in order to stabilise the situation. At the end of the day, he deployed soldiers and police men to the area in an attempt to impose peace. In February 1999, Fasanya’s aides manhandled 15 journalists covering a meeting of state administrators of the Odu’a Investment Company in Akure, a development that further dented his reputation. On his retirement from the military in 1999, he was said to have gone into a private business, but not much was heard about him until sometime in 2009, when he was said to have lost some printing equipment during a tanker accident that occurred near a warehouse that the equipment was kept close to the Lagos State University gate. He has been away from every public outing for years now despite the political activities going on in the country.
