Between 1988 and 1989 I was the Managing Editor of a vernacular newspaper called Abaver a Tyô. The highly cerebral and vocal university administrator and public commentator, Dr. Bem Ugoh, now 52, was a teenager at the time. He had just completed secondary school education at Government Secondary school Gboko.
In those days, there were a lot of cultural activities in Gboko, the most prominent of which was the Tiv Day Celebration. The BCC Lions Football Club was also at the zenith of its glory.
Dr. Ugoh, who hails from a prominent family in Ipav community in Gboko local government area, loved these public occasions. One day he saw me with a bundle of the Tiv language newspaper and offered to collect and sell them for me. Time has passed and I cannot recollect the exact occasion. Yet I do remember that I employed him promptly as one of my vendors.
Over time our paths have crossed so many times. Our abiding mutual interests seem to be politics and traditional cultural activities. At the beginning of the current democratic dispensation, Bem Ugoh was State Secretary of the All Peoples Party, APP, between 1998 and 1999. I was appointed Chief Press Secretary to Governor George Akume who had been elected Governor on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party. Our paths crossed once again.
At one time, Bem was a prominent member of the Benue Proactive Coalition, a group that put the Akume administration on its toes and gave us some tough time. While he was an attacker on the other side, I was a staunch defender on Akume’s team.
Later however, we have come to play on the same team on the Tiv traditional cultural turf.
Between 2017 and 2022 we have played joint roles in hosting and celebrating Tiv oral performance legends.
On 25th August, 2017 we hosted Pevkyaa Zegi at Mrs Hembadoon Agashua’s Villamart in North Bank, Makurdi. Unfortunately we lost the legend the very next year and Bem Ugoh accompanied me to deliver his body to the family in Zaki Biam on 30th November, 2018. Zegi died at the Federal Medical Center in Makurdi on the second of the month.
On 20th October, 2019, Dr. Ugoh invited me to witness his presentation of musical equipment to the legendary Swange maestro, Neeyum Kaor, better known as Udoo Mbalagh, when he retired from the Benue State Council for Arts and Culture. On Saturday 2nd July, 2022 Dr Ugoh, with a few friends including myself, celebrated Udoo Mbalagh at 86, at Kanshio, a suburb of Makurdi. The Swange legend had clocked 86 in February this year but the birthday anniversary had hitherto not been celebrated because the celebrant had relocated to his village in Mbalagh, Buruku local government area.
On that day we had the opportunity to interact on other issues especially on Benue politics. Dr. Ugoh was incisive and insightful, his analysis of political developments in Benue State was unassailable. For instance, he described the current political circles in the state as political occultism where only the masters and a few subservient pawns on their chessboard comprehend their moves.
Come to think of it, Dr. Ugoh had the privilege of political tutelage under the best masters in the state including Paul Unongo and Abu King Shuluwa. As far back as 1990 these two exposed my former newspaper vendor to the current major players on the Nigerian political field. He was inducted into Shehu Musa Yar’adua’s Patriotic Front, PF, in the late 80’s.
He personally met several prominent players including General Yar’adua himself, Atiku Abubakar, Senator Bola Tinubu, Senator Iyorchia Ayu, and a host of others of blessed memory like Rev Fr Moses Adasu, M.K.O Abiola, Chuba Okadigbo and Arthur Nzeribe. Dr. Ugoh has been on talking terms with most prominent political leaders in Benue State including Senator Barnabas Gemade, Senator George Akume, Governor Samuel Ortom, as well as the paramount ruler of the Tiv nation, Professor James Ayatse.
The former vernacular Newspaper vendor graduated as a member of the pioneer set of the Political Science Department of the Benue State University in 1996. He went on to acquire two masters degrees in International Relations and Strategic Studies as well as Political Economy and Development Studies. Dr Ugoh crowned his academic pursuits with a PhD in Political Economy and Development Studies at the Nasarawa State University, Keffi.
The Tiv maintain that mushrooms sprout where previous ones had grown. The late Matthew Ugoh, father of the vendor, had been admitted at the Ahmadu Bello University to read Law alongside the late Barrister Joe Omaku, Solomon Lar and others. However his love for music made him join Bongos Ikwue and his band which preoccupied him such that he left without the law degree.
But he later picked a degree in Music from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and ended up as a journalist with the New Nigerian Newspapers.
The late Matthew Ugoh who was a contemporary of the late Paul Loko, Alhaji Ibn Anyamikyegh and Elder Simon Shango at the New Nigerian in Kaduna was the one who set up the Benue State office of the newspaper in Makurdi.
Later he served as a pioneer member of the board of the Benue State Council for Arts and Culture under Professor Iyorwuese Hagher. One can now see where this mushroom, Dr. Bem Ugoh, now a senior staff of the Registry Department of the J. S. Tarka University has sprouted.
Meanwhile, this newspaper vendor, a philanthropist and community as well as political mobilizer, has been on the move ever since we met over 30 years ago. He marks his 52nd birthday anniversary on August 25th, 2022.