The Ironies in Tompolo's Manumission Struggle

By: Enewaridideke Ekanpou

Vassalage to obscurity is unacceptable. No activist contemplates vassalage to obscurity. Tompolo would have long been a vassal of obscurity but for the occasional skirmishes between haulers and hailers who have respectively positioned themselves in the life of Tompolo. So from time to time  ripples are created by haulers and hailers in the life of Tompolo. Tompolo needs haulers as much as he needs hailers who interpret him using varied lenses. While haulers are excited by destruction and lies, hailers are excited by construction and truth in the life of Tompolo as regards the manumission struggle.

No one interprets Tompolo better than the haulers and the hailers in the life of Tompolo. These are haulers and hailers whose beloved activities have uncannily created a kind of  symbiosis in the life of Tompolo, as their activities oppositionally  take two different routes and later merge into one when sufficiently awakened. Differently, these haulers and hailers are driven majorly by benightedness and re-awakening  in their oppositional engagements.

The first dance of a hauler is to throw stones at High Chief Dr. (h.c.) Government Oweizide Ekpemupolo Tompolo. The attraction, the inclination, the predilection, for this deadly dance could be borne out of pure misunderstanding and benightedness; it could equally be borne out of envy and dreams of hegemony extended to the border from which Tompolo operates without being a threat to the known symbolic borders. Where Tompolo sees his operational border as a site to interact meaningfully and integrate people to actualise their varied dreams in life, the pureblind haulers only ignite the borders through hegemonic calculations situated in unseating Tompolo through deadly stones thrown at his development efforts and reputation.

Ironically, these haulers become hailers in their moment of epistemological awakening. At this moment they realise and recognise that they have wronged Tompolo in the past when they threw stones drunkenly without a known transgression committed by Tompolo. From Saul to Paul, these haulers labour daily to remove the stains they had ignorantly planted on Tompolo's name. These are the unstoppable haulers who have sworn to themselves individually never to err on the path of deadly stone-throwing. There are also hailers who are hailers without any metamorphosis. They are the core believers who inhale and exhale Tompolo right from the Garden of Eden.These hailers occupy a class higher than the hailer-turned-haulers.

Sometimes haulers and hailers switch positions. It is great when haulers become hailers because this is purely a product of dialectical thinking, aided by epistemological awakening. With open hands haulers must be admitted. It is dangerous when hailers become haulers because this is purely a demonic metamorphosis borne out of envy, ingratitude and malediction, driven by deflection from the principle of appreciation expected of a normal human being whose faculties are still healthy.

The metamorphosis from haulers to hailers is rationally commendable; but the metamorphosis from hailers to haulers is illogical, irrational and condemnable because  it is rooted in ingratitude and unhealthy desires and expectations from a mere mortal whose capabilities have their own cosmically  defined limitations. This metamorphosis occurs because the hailers fail to recognise the limitations of Tompolo''s capabilities. This metamorphosis occurs because the hailers see Tompolo as God who can meet all the demands and expectations of man however complex and irrational. When this illogical characterisation of Tompolo does not come to reality, the hailers turn haulers  and throw deadly stones at Tompolo's reputation. This is the time they  imaginatively create stories that are even too childish to be told as folktales. 

The  hailer-turned-haulers of Tompolo are the plague of this society. They are a plague more lethal than Covid-19 and Ebola because they are epidemiologically beyond any medical  prevention or arrest as they pose a grave danger and challenge to modern medical science. They constitute a new medical phenomenon that demands researches to know if endoscopy, biopsy and laboratory analyses could be scientifically drawn on to detect the constant affliction of these haulers and hailers which predisposes them to mutation between haulers and hailers in their public pronouncements targeted at Tompolo and Tantita. 

Sadly, Nigeria does not have such medical facilities to confront the constant affliction of these haulers and hailers. The only hope lies in deliberately created distance from such haulers. A quarantine, maybe, if it could be activated and enforced!  Such distances must be congenitally created so the imaginative powers of these haulers and hailers  would be emasculated from birth.

Those who had associated with Tompolo and enjoyed him to the fullest in every dimension are today the haulers who daily anchor the anti-Tompolo propaganda from the creeks of Niger Delta to the roads, flyovers and cities of Nigeria. To demarket Tompolo and to demarket Tantita is their daily obsession. They are not telling the public that their media campaign against Tompolo is not borne out of Tompolo's insensitivity to their plight, but it is borne out of their desire to unseat and take over his position even where they lack the capacity and moral purity. It is a media campaign borne out of envy but they would not reveal this to the public. From the camp of hailers they have shifted to the camp of haulers in pursuit of their own selfish ends. Those who were once loyal to Tompolo belong to this obsessional class of haulers on rampage everywhere like ravenous wolves looking for people to devour.

Some persons have shamelessly become objects of mutation in Nigeria .Those who have moved from hailers to haulers, ravenously poised to gore and devour people are the Judas Iscariots of our time who were once with Tompolo working as devoted disciples. However these haulers collude and labour to demarket Tompolo and Tantita, they shall not be believed because they are traitors  who are merely envious of Tompolo and his unbeatable achievements in Nigeria. 

Known to the public is the fact that among the haulers of Tompolo we know of no one who was not a beneficiary of Tompolo. This means the media campaign is a product of betrayal and envy. To move from hailer to hauler shows Tompolo is originally a good man who has no haulers but who only had haulers when the hailers became suddenly afflicted by the virus called Judas Iscariot.

The moral purity, the spiritual purity, the goodness,  the commendable steadfastness of Tompolo , is foregrounded  when the haulers and the hailers of Tompolo skirmish from time to time. With the height attained by Tompolo in the manumission struggle, skirmishes between haulers and hailers are expected. Without the cauldron heated by the skirmishes between the two oppositional forces of haulers and hailers, Tompolo would be a vassal to obscurity. From the skirmishes the public become more clearly  awakened to the true compositions of the haulers and the hailers and align themselves with the positive forces of Tompolo  - who are the hailers. However, as they skirmish from time to time, it is the haulers who have turned hailers that must be believed. To be believed also are those who have been hailers without a shift of position from their original spot right from the cradle of Tompolo's manumission struggle.


Life rhythmically strikes a dull note when it is devoid of Ironies. Part of the joys of life lies in its Ironies. Tompolo's entire life is devoted to the struggle to  free Niger Deltans from chains of oppression, exploitation, enslavement and underdevelopment. After all these sacrifices, it is the constant skirmishes between the haulers and the hailers that have popularised the performance  story of Tompolo and Tantita Security Services Limited Nigeria in Nigeria. Whenever the haulers and the hailers are at war, that Tompolo and Tantita are doing a great job is always clearly communicated to Nigerians. It is interestingly ironical that Tompolo's manumission struggle  is daily crowned with ennoblement and commendation whenever the haulers and the hailers skirmish on the media space for recognition and judgement of the public.

Tompolo and Tantita should no longer be bothered by the activities of the haulers and the hailers anywhere on earth because they are their best promoters. They are their best promoters because Nigerians have known that the haulers of Tompolo and Tantita are inverterate liars driven by selfish calculations in their sustained media campaign. At this time   we are confronted by recollections of haulers like Ezebu Danbalaowei, Azuzu Shooter, Ogogorowei, Tebe Embeleowei, Gbanaghaowei and Nomowei Edebu who were the greatest beneficiaries of Tompolo and Tantita yesterday but who are today shameless haulers.

Dr. Ekanpou writes from Akparemogbene, Delta State.