Redefining Our Shared Values Through The Eyes of An Elegant Amazon -By Tony Osakpamwan Agbons

There comes a time in the history and life of a people when there is fundamental and organic change in their narrative. Such seismic shift does not just happen overnight but by a deliberate galvanising effort of statesmanship, strategy, craft, and tact. Edo state is a land steep in culture, royalty and traditions that dates to centuries. The Edo people carry an air of pride, arrogance and gait that remains the envy of many of our brother and sisters from other parts of Nigeria. The average Edo man or woman is savvy, industrious, mercurial, and conventionally wise.

The circumference of the building blocks of any developed society is never accidental. The foci of communal ascension are a combination of natural, material, and human resources. The foregoing when mixed with visionary leadership is a trajectory that is unrivalled. Take a bow an illustrious daughter of Edoland, bestriding the landscape like a colossus, a force of nature, beauty, brains, and an elegant amazon – Loretta Oduware Ogboro-Okor.

The poster girl of a new Edo narrative, Loretta; an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist as well as a Clinical Simulation expert, is an alumna of the prestigious University of Benin, Nigeria. Further academic laurels followed at the Universities of Edinburgh, and Sheffield Hallam in the United Kingdom. She recently received the coveted humanitarian Global Goodwill Ambassador Award in the United Kingdom.

This articulate and passionate Edo daughter has become a rallying point. Her tenacity, sense of purpose, drive, panache, and personae is second to none. Her openness, humility, honesty, and integrity are outstanding. She became the leading face of the struggle to rewrite the Edo narrative encapsulated in the `umagba ne Edo ne`(Edo unity has come to fruition).  Loretta is transversing the frontiers of Edo state, nay Nigeria with uncommon ‘effervescent charm’.  She is our pride, jewel and the `gravitas` that pulls not just Edolites in the diaspora together but even those domiciled at home.

In a world where values are fast eroding, Loretta seeks to share her unique experience growing up in Benin City, with her parents. Her fast selling book, “My Father’s Daughter” is a true inspirational story of the experiences of a little girl, a young lady, and a grown woman, seeing the world as it could be, through her daddy’s eyes, experiencing the world as it is after he was no more, the betrayals, the hardships, the resolute resolve, and finally, a tale of love, of a woman accomplished, drawing from the strength of character instilled in her by her loving father, so many years ago. In redefining our shared values as people, we must celebrate the cerebral and quintessential qualities of our own, the type exemplified by this kind-hearted and radiant Edo daughter.

For Loretta, impossibility is not in her lexicon. Her intellectual sagacity is all-encompassing and worthy of emulation. There is no gain saying that this elegant amazon galvanized Edo people both at home and in diaspora with an endearing aura during the last Edo State governorship elections. With Nigeria in desperate need of organic leadership, the likes of this extraordinary Edo daughter certainly do come in handy. There are no doubts whatsoever that younger generations of Edolites especially the girls can look up and find her as a role model. From the Hippocratic oath of medicine to the poetic vim of literature and warm grandeur of motherhood, Dr Loretta Oduware Ogboro-Okor is blazing the trail, for the systematic re-engineering of the mindset of our people cum total transformation of our landscape from the mundane to the ethereal. Indeed, the redefinition of our shared humanity is well and truly on course. We are all because you are Doc!

Dr. Agbons writes from the United Kingdom