Tonye Princewill: What Is Political Being Generous?

Prince Tonye Princewill

In my Igbo tribe we do say that why there is always an elder in the enlarged family compound is to guide children against catching vulture and misplace her for kite, oblivious that vulture was not meant to be eaten. It is on this foundation that I want to add my voice in the news making the rounds that the affably Prince Tonye Princewill was being generous for political reasons. Ordinarily, I do wave such bunkum with the wave of the hand, but for the records.

It is very bad to give a dog a bad name in other to kill her. Assuming that Princewill's generosity was political, please can anybody tell me what is wrong with it since political scientists have characterised humanbeing as a political animal? You don't throw the child with the bath out of sheer envy. Please, can somebody tell me what is not political in our world ranging from school to church, from family to village, from state to country? The list is endless.

Nevertheless, Princewill in his always gentle disposition had cleared the air that he was not showing generosity to people because of anything attached to politics; I think he explained this to untie the definition of 'politics' some Nigerians have given to his uncontrollably gesture in helping people in the society that he does not even know majority of them.

Was it also politics when Princewill was taken from in the event of the 2007 gubernatorial elections in which he contested and finally went to court with the PDP-declared winner of the election but later withdrew from the court peaceably when the present governor was after months announced winner of the election by the Apex Court? Is it also politics when a man chooses to be civil without entangling himself with the crude way many of our countrymen do Politics?

If Princewill was bias in the way many people play their own politics here, perhaps Rivers State would not be experiencing any forms of peace as can be felt presently in the state. This is a man who has seen that politics should be played above tribal and state sentiments.

Was it also politics and he did not keep-up with his fellow Ijaw brother during the event of the 2011 presidential elections but kept up with a northerner? If people think that his being generous was political, then it should have been felt by only Rivers people; but his long hand for generosity even extends beyond the shores of Nigeria, let alone, Rivers State.

What happened when his fellow Ijaw man won the presidential election? Princewill congratulated with him and used his hard-earned money to draw nomenclatures in the media how he feels the president can contribute to the growth of the country. Princewill did not show any animosity against the president. If he were some people, they'll not be talking to the president till now. But this is not Princewill. Why have nobody said that Princewill's none political outing five years after he contested the guber race is also politics?

Princewill is one man who has incessantly used his hard-earned money to gather journalists and stakeholders in Rivers State to brainstorm on the ways forward that could assist the present government in moving the state to the next level. How many people noticed him when he preferred to be poor while the comment on his lips was, “Rivers State is important to me than anything”? Was that also not politics?

As a man who has shown that he is not pursuing self-seeking agenda, he had advised that “Politics is too important to be left for politicians.” If anybody thinks that Princewill was being political with his generosity, the person can hear this he had said and borrow a leaf from it: “I am not supposed to be playing politics but I cannot be watching what is going on around me and fold my hands and say that that is for them.”

Anybody who is slandering Princewill because of his kind-heartedness is just being unfaithful to nature; although, I had known that slander is the vengeance of cowards. Those who are fighting Princewill should understand that slanderers only succeed in building their ruins on the fame of another man. There is no gainsaying that Princewill is famous today and I do not think that he concerns himself with these flying ludicrous words against him, because as an intelligent man, he had known that whoever that is angry at slander makes the slanderer true.

It behooves well-meaning Rivers residents to support Prince Tonye Princewill in lure of attempting to pull him down. Let people stop being enemy of progress. Those whose stock-in-tread is to vilify the personality of others without any evidence should listen to what a Tryon Edwards was quoted as saying: “To murder character is as truly a crime as to murder the body: the tongue of the slanderer is brother to the dagger of the assassin.”

Prince Tonye Princewill should not be deterred by the vituperation of slanderers. I hope he knows what one Immanuel Kant Q was quoted as saying: “Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; ere long she shall appear to vindicate thee.”

***Odimegwu Onwumere, Poet/Author, is the Coordinator, Concerned Non-Indigenes In Rivers State (CONIRIV); he contributed this piece right from Umuahia, the Abia State capital. Email: [email protected]***