The Handshake with Rt. Hon. Dr. Julius Pondi

By: Enewaridideke Ekanpou

Weeds are characteristically pushful. They are characteristically pushful because they have their own  ideology of annexation as their directional substratum. The ideology of weeds is to proliferate and annex an area that is not theirs. Annexation-bent they rapidly multiply the number of their invasive soldiers through growth as creepers, undergrowth, shrubs and giant trees criss-crossing the hitherto weedless and treeless land and changing the existing identity of the land.

The ideologically targeted proliferation of weeds and trees assumes a height the true owners can hardly find and geographically define  the identity of their entire landscape, having being  swept into progressive distantiation and loss of the land for some reasonable length of time.To ward off this progressive debordering  imposed by weeds and years of intellectual grazing,  it becomes a personal moral obligation to clear the land of proliferating weeds and open up spaces for rebordering because borders are required for meaningful identity construction and integration into the society where politics has become the bridge of development in both human and infrastructural dimensions.

Between Pondi and I in some historically traceable years in the past there  were  no borders when interacting together in search of roadmap to societal challenges. All that changed dramatically, followed by borders between us. Over the years weeds have grown and purposely defaced the borders beyond meaningful interaction. The borders came into being when we went our separate ways in search of intellectual greener pastures for better connection to the society where only emerging complex dynamics of change can be detected. 

Julius Pondi migrated to the Western part of Nigeria while I migrated to the Eastern part of Nigeria. We were all on doctoral journeys to build ourselves intellectually. This intellectual grazing affected our borders of interaction for years. Precisely, I was away from  him for over three years  - a relatively long period exploited by the weeds to proliferate and deface the land beyond border-connection and interaction.

The period of hegemony on the land enjoyed by the weeds while the intellectual grazing lasted, there were tales that the border between us had disappeared for good like the BERMUDA TRIANGLE. This means political interaction and connection between us would be a mirage. Home from the intellectual grazing - a time somebody told me he was also home - I visited Pondi at home. It was a visit to confirm stories and address the border challenges occasioned by temporary intellectual 'migrations'. Whispered everywhere that he was through with his doctoral Programme in Marine Transport Management at Futo, I engaged him convivially on it. He confirmed he was now a PhD holder in the field of Marine Transport Management. After a pause punctuated by smiles of being intellectually transported to another border through intellectual grazing, he asked if mine was equally completed in the field of English and Literary Studies. I nodded affirmatively. We immediately shook hands standing, eyeballs directly at each other.  Eyeball-to-eyeball gazing, photographically captured, simply pointed to the simultaneity in the completion of our doctoral programmes, only distinguished by the months of July and August within the same year of 2025. It was a passionate handshake marked by wordless congratulations to each other after years of separation caused by weeds and intellectual grazing.

The location where we were not indifferent  like Wole Soyinka's 'Telephone Conversation', questions directed at him were not anchored in a hurried pace. Like ripe mangoes that fall to the ground after a fruitful life, I asked Pondi if he was still interested in seeking re-election to represent Burutu Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives in the 2027 election. This question was specifically asked against the backdrop that there are uncountable ballads, songs, madrigals and vuvuzelas in Burutu North and South passionately calling for him to walk on the representational path again. 

Deafening calls for Rt. Hon. Dr. Julius Pondi to re-appear like theatrically inspiring Shakespearean actors are rooted in the number of development projects legislatively influenced by him in his constituency. These were projects his predecessors carefully shielded from the prying eyes of the ordinary people and grew disgustingly fat on this systematic exploitation. A hitherto blind man cannot forget the man who restored his sight no matter the challenges. The relationship between Dr.  Pondi and Burutu people is like that of the blind man and his healer I have just injected here anedoctally. I waited for Pondi's response like the speaker in Soyinka's 'Telephone Conversation' waiting for the landlady's response on the revelation that her would-be tenant is black.

Dr. Julius Pondi's response came at last without a 'cigarette-holder pipped'. There was no 'red booth',  'red-pillar box' and 'red double-tiered omnibus squelching tar' and so I was not 'caught foully', neither was I caught silent 'for spectroscopic flight of fancy' until the unvarnished truth emerged. He said he was ready to journey on the representational path again because he had been overwhelmed and overpowered by deafening calls from Burutu North and South that he must seek re-election and sustain the tempo of his representational effectiveness. 

The inhabitants of Burutu North and Burutu South are like fishermen. No wisdom-laden fisherman abandons a lake of fish from which a bountiful harvest is guaranteed every year. With futurologically grounded  congratulatory thoughts and wishes for electoral victory  , I firmly shook hands with Dr. Pondi again. The friendly entanglement of hands in the handshake lasted for two days. For two days Dr. Pondi and I gazed at the eyes of each other without words, only giving off vibrations of twitches and smiles.

The two-day handshake with Dr. Pondi was a historic one that provided answers to significant questions. It has revealed that Pondi's PhD in Maritime Transport Management is a harvest from his intellectual grazing in the Federal University of Technology (Futo), Owerri, and that Pondi's readiness for re-election journey to the House of Representatives is a product of response from the political encores deafeningly scattered everywhere by Burutu North and Burutu South  like the 'broken China' of JP Clark's creation in his poem, 'Ibadan".

The historic meaning-laden handshake with Rt.Hon. Dr. Pondi has eventually  removed the border challenges/crisis caused by the weeds and intellectual grazing. Both the ideology-driven weeds and the intellectual grazing have lost the border battle. Now the borders , within their social construction, would be meaningfully engaged by Pondi and I as sites for interaction, integration and  identity construction within the matrix of social and political belonging in the 2027 elections in Nigeria. Naysayers and prayer warriors of border crisis and division are now at liberty to weep and gnash their teeth as one would when thrown into blazing fire reserved for lovers of collusion and darkness.

Dr. Ekanpou writes from Akparemogbene, Delta State