Jammy Egbe: The Shining star in Yala nation

Amb. Jammy Egbe

 By Ogar, Fidel Allow-Gold

History, destiny and providence finally consummate their marriage on December 31, 2019, with pomp, glitz, power, and fireworks at Yahe in Yala local government area of Cross River state with the gathering of the world to coronate their own and two of a kind in Ambassador Gabriel  Odey Egbe, Registrar, University of Calabar, Calabar  and magistrate,  Godwin Onah by the highly revered Edebia Traditional Council of  Chiefs /Chieftaincy Stool and Yahe Youths of Edebia Chiefdom, Yahe and all the sons and  daughters of the land, home and in the Diaspora.

Amb. Egbe was consequently crowned as Chief Oyamee 1 OF Edebia Chiefdom, Yahe (doer of good to all), while his lordship and counterpart in humanitarian pursuit in the society, Magistrate Godwin Onah, was handed the diadem of Ohonyetaa 1 of Edebia Chiefdom, Yahe (saviour of all) which presupposes his unwavering pursuit for equal justice, equity and equalitarian society to all.

Earlier, a pan-Yahe-Yala Think-tank/Intelligentsia Group called Ayi-Odey Ge Jee, born in Calabar and spear headed by a young university don, Dr. Ben Oko of Education Department, University of Calabar, had crowned Amb. Egbe for his unparalleled and selfless service to humanity.

Similarly, it could be recalled that on September 19, 2019, the Senate of the University of Calabar, Calabar, South-South Nigeria, celebrated one of their own after a fierce battle of wits, high wired politicking/electioneering process.

Ambassador Egbe, finally, emerged as the university registrar and secretary to the council of the university under transparent atmosphere to succeed Mr. Moses Abang.
Born in 1965 at a  rural agrarian village of Okpenehi-Yahe  in Yala local government area of Cross River state by agrarian parents and the then Yala musical maestro/infant prodigy of Cultural Renaissance Singer in Sir Okala Egbe of blessed memory and Mrs. Egbe, a woman leader of all time in the service of humanity.

Back in the 1980s, on Amb. Egbe leaving the St. Stephen’s Primary School, Okpenehi, Yahe, he found himself cutting his academic teeth and horning his intellectual prowess at Yala Secondary Commercial School, Okpoma (YASCO), before proceeding for higher intellectual pilgrimage at the prestigious University of Calabar.

In his early years, Egbe was already an enigma of sorts. Egbe’s stroke of genius and wizardry became contagious, breeding hundreds of his clones and mentoring same in an austere milieu where only privileged few could ostensibly afford high school education due to lack of benefit of hindsight or perhaps dunghill of poverty stricken homes.

But it was Egbe’s personal inner will, that naked power of perseverance/iron cast determination, sticking like a sore thumb that drove him into scholarly madness, like Okonkwo’s fear of failure in “Things fall Apart” of Chinua Achebe that finally brought light to the supposedly intellectual backwaters of our world today.

It was still that power Egbe single handedly combined with his then alter ego, Mr John Okache, as young minds in the University of Calabar, to give birth to the great defunct Yahe Students Union (YASU), a symbol of rude re-awakening that lightened the ember and inferno of student unionism, which finally brought the sleeping giants to the path of intellectual orbit.

It is people like Egbe that literary giants across board had attempted to personify in their work of arts for the world to ponder. For example: Ngugi’s political work on “Petals of Blood” eulogised Abdullah, Munira, Wanja, Karega, Nyakinyua and the Donkey for the saving IImorog so his  “Weep Not Child” uses Ngotho as a revolutionary leader that carried Mau-Mau to the forest on the final battle to defeat imperialism in Kenya.

Also, the play, “Trial of Dedan Kimathi” co-authored by Miceri G. Mugo speaks of “Kimalthi” as the “Black Jesus” who saved the nation of Kenya and lastly “Animal Farm” by George Orwell sees “Boxer” as a universal figure and salt of the earth in whose work the human good side of Amb. Egbe is completed.

In all of the character depiction presented here, without biases or subjection to personal whims and caprices, Registrar Egbe fits in perfectly in his own way as a revolutionary machismo of his time/history and as a New World Oder across Yala nation/beyond. But all of these he owes to his well bred life of equanimity, suave and electrifying personality.

Interestingly too, of mention for the purpose of history is the entrant of the quintessential, African lioness of Yala modern breed and intellectual connoisseur in Mrs. Beatrice Ocheke Igwe, Bursar, University of Calabar, whose entrant is not a historical accident or a misrepresentation, but for her scholarship, divine calculation based on her life of denial/frugality, robust extension of hand of amity that have affected the deprived, the disgruntled and the dislocated across board. Beyond rhetoric, Mrs. Igwe has opened her hands to serve humanity, making her fit to walk under the shadow of the great Mother Theresa.

Doubtless, the time has come for the university community/world to support the duo to do more exploit, for the road is still long.