Former President Goodluck Jonathan has eulogized the virtues of late Madam Ani-Gunn Rhoda Ikiogha (91), who went on hunger strike after the 2015 electoral loss to former President Muhammadu Buhari.
Late Ma Ikiogha was the mother of a former Chief of Staff, Government House, Yenagoa as well as Commissioner for Agriculture in the Bayelsa State, Chief Diekivie Ikiogha.
Speaking at the service of songs for the nonagenarian in Yenagoa, Jonathan said the matriarch was kind hearted and generous, recalling how she used to receive him and his friends whenever they arrived Bayelsa from Port Harcourt when the state was newly created.
The ex-president equally recounted how after losing the presidential election in 2015, Ma Ikiogha was so saddened by the outcome that she went on hunger strike for days.
He thanked God for sparing her life till the age of 91, adding that her little contribution to society would last the test of time.
Governor of Bayelsa State, Douye Diri, disclosed how Jonathan’s political calculations influenced his political journey to the Nationa Assembly and eventually his present office.
He stated that Dr. Ikiogha and himself had been political sons of Jonathan even before he became president and worked together until their political interests failed to align.
He said: “I have come a long way with Chief Ikiogha. We worked together at some point when he was chief of staff, Government House and I was deputy chief of staff. We have been in politics over this period mostly working together.
“But there was a time he left me because we had a conflict of interest. We were very clear on what we wanted and then our leader was in Abuja as president. So, we plotted our political graph with the former governor, Senator Seriake Dickson, who was our boss here.
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“We agreed that I should go to the Senate and Chief Ikiogha to the House of Representatives. We even bought our party’s nomination forms. But we knew that our boss in Abuja will have his own agenda, which we cannot stop and can only collapse ours into his plan.
“Eventually the former president came with his agenda and it consumed all of us. We had agenda number two and that was when my friend, Ikiogha, disagreed with me and for the very first time we parted ways.
“That agenda was what paved the way for me to be elected as a member of the House of Representatives in 2015 by virtue of the Senate position being zoned to Yenagoa and Ikiogha could not get the ticket.“
Gov. Diri however noted that Ikiogha contributed greatly to his re-election in 2023 to the point of being a target of the opposition, who attacked his residence because he left their camp to work for him.
He stressed that in all that transpired, the late Ma Ikiogha was a rallying point for her son and his political associates, including those in the opposition, noting that she was always accommodating.
He urged the family to take solace in the fact that she left glowing legacies as a devoted Christian and that her life was being celebrated for touching lives in different ways.
