OVIBEL MEDIA DEEP WALK INTO URHOBOS EYEING GOVERNOR’S SEAT IN 2023 (KENNETH GBAGI ON THE SPOTLIGHT)

By ovibel media

Chief Kenneth Gbagi was born 22nd September,1958 in Sapele, Delta state in a Catholic hospital by the Cemetery at Ogodo road.He hails from Oginibo,an Urhobo city in Ughelli South LGA of Delta State.

He attended Bishop Johnson Memory Primary School also in Sapele. Kenneth was born into a polygamous home where his father decided that only the first child of each wife, out of his 21 children, will be sent to school. Being his mother’s third child, he wasn’t sent to school by his father. Kenneth struggled to pay his way to school by doing the worst of jobs.

He left home at the age of 11 to become a sailor. After completing his primary education, he landed in Argentina, traveled to Montevideo and some other countries. But his thirst for education prompted his return to Nigeria where he succeeded in enrolling in a secondary school even when his mates were already in class 3.

The ex-minister was already 14 years old when he attended Kosofe Secondary School, Mile 12. Interestingly enough, he sponsored himself to secondary school through working as a bus conductor. Upon finishing his secondary education, Kenneth worked with a Foreign Service before travelling abroad to further his education. While in Hong Kong, he shot a movie titled The birth of Hong Kong in 1993. This gave him some money to pay his tuition fee.

He gained admission into one of the oldest universities in the world, Sans Thomas University in Philippines, to read political science. He left Sans Thomas University and graduated as a criminologist from the Philippine College of Criminology. He returned to Nigeria for his National Youth Service. He served with the Police Force and taught many important persons in the Police Force.

He received his first appointment as a lecturer at the advanced wing of the Police College, Ikeja because the Police Authority was impressed with his performance during his Youth Service program.

They discovered that he was a very sound criminologist with foreign ideas. Along the line, he went back to School and made distinction at the faculty of law, University of Lagos. Later he went to the Law School and returned. Afterwards, he registered a security outfit and grew it to a highest point in Nigeria. He accepted and worked with the legal aid council in Nigeria. He became the Minister of Education, while making millions of naira through his security outfits, which helps banks with their security operations nationwide

He is the proud owner of a security company called GKO Security Nig. Ltd. He supplies security materials to banks and to the high and mighty in the society. He has investments in real estate with over 700 properties to his name. His Robinson Plaza, Warri branch, is a magnificent work of art; ten times bigger than the popular computer village in Lagos state. It has over 500 shops that generate billions of naira yearly.

His properties alone is worth billions of naira. He singularly built two churches, his hotels, cinemas and other businesses too numerous to mention. According to him, “my properties are so many to the extent I do not even remember some of them. Just the other day, l asked my manager to bring out a file of my properties, I couldn’t recognize some of them!” Kenneth Gbagi is the owner of WoodRidge hotel in Warri, Delta state; he is also the owner of Geekay Hotel, Warri.

Recently, he became the first man in Warri to invest in a 5-star hotel when he became the owner of Golden Tulip hotel franchise in Warri. He also has a franchise that established the Silverbird Cinemas at Warri. He has lots of business plazas that he rented out and which rake in billions of naira yearly.

Kenneth Gbagi has invested a lot in tourism. He has so many hotels in the 3-7 star classes. The Woodridge Hotel, Warri is worth N50-N60 billion. There is also WoodRidge hotel, Lagos, The Woodridge Cottage, Abuja. The Golden Tulip, Effurun, Warri is not less than N6 billion in construction alone. The Diamond Tulip, Abuja in aviation village still under construction is expected to cost about N72 billion.

He has provided jobs to so many youths, being one who believes in showing a man how to catch fish instead of giving the man fish to eat. He has employed these youths at his several companies, hotels, and establishments. He runs a scholarship scheme where 2000 students are sponsored to various schools and trades yearly.

Kenneth Gbagi sees himself as a car freak, saying he has driven all sorts of automobiles, including planes. To him the inside of a vehicle may just be the only reason for buying a particular car as he loves amazing interiors. His garage is quite an entertaining spectacle for the eyes as they hold cars like the jaguars, the Lexus SUVs, the Range Rover SUVs, the Mercedes 560 SE SUVs and more

Olorogun Kenneth Gbagi, former minister of states, Education, no doubt, is one of the richest lawyers in Nigeria without taking any loan from any bank in the world.

He has made billions of hard-earned naira as a business mogul. He is an hotelier, attorney, criminologist and a politician who is living a dream of a fluence while providing jobs for the youths.

Kenneth Gbagi may not be fully appreciated by those who do not know him, but he has afffected the lives of people in Delta State and beyond.

Through his deep-rooted humanitarian gesture, scores of ailing persons ranging from traditional rulers to clergymen, and many others, have been flown abroad for treatment.

Documented evidence shows that the ex- minister who refused ministerial appointments twice accepted to serve as a chairman of Legal Aid Council where he went physically to wash prisons, vaccinate prisoners and release illegally detained prisoners all over the country by quashing the obnoxious law of “with-holding charge” Through his several business outfits, he has empowered youths who are in need of it.

His yearly charity programmes are presently helping so many children and youths go back to school, graduate, and become useful people in the society. As a Rotarian, he became the first black man in the world ever to have donated more than $250,000 to help eradicate polio as a humanitarian gesture to become an AKS member of Rotary worldwide.

In 2018,Olorogun Kenneth Gbagi, enthralled the people of Oginibu, his country home in Ughelli South Local Government Area of Delta State, with philanthropy, as he celebrated the 40-year remembrance anniversary of his father and hero, Pa Robinson Ajerigheye Gbagi (aka Odoziaku) by donating through his foundation a 40-bed Cottage Hospital to the community and officially unveiled the Pa. Robinson Ajerigheye Gbagi Civic Center, Oginibu, donated to Ogbinibu community, along with 500 plastic chairs after stakeholders officially endorsed the change of the name from Oginibo to Oginibu.

Other gestures embarked on by the Gbagi Foundation include award of scholarship from primary to university level to 49 indigent children of Oginibu, who performed during a cultural dance at the ceremony and placement of the most elderly man of the community on a N50, 000 monthly stipend and also paid N5 million electricity bill accrued by the community and carried out free medical outreach for eye screening, cataract surgery, cervical test and immunisation for children within and outside the community.

On 18th September, 2020, the social media was on fire over an alleged case of striping naked some of his staff at the signatious hotel,a hotel owned by him.Chief Gbagi denied the allegation while declared that he did not strip anybody naked as portrayed by political detractors in some trending videos and photographs, saying the people involved were having sex among themselves when a fight broke out among them.

In September 2021,Chief Gbagi was later discharged of all the allegations by a High Court, sitting in Effurun, which has established that neither former minister of State for Education and governorship aspirant, Olorogun Kenneth Gbagi, nor Signatious Hotel and Suits Limited, Effurun, near Warri, undressed a female worker, Okemute Diaghwarhe, as alleged in a suit by the applicant.

Applicant’s case
Diaghwarhe had, in a suit seeking enforcement of her fundamental human rights, alleged that she was assaulted, stripped naked, property forcibly seized, and abducted by the respondents.

The applicant had sought a declaration that the act of the respondents in compelling her to strip naked and shown to the public and members of staff of the hotel “is a gross violation of her fundamental right to dignity of human person, private and family life, movement and personal liberty.”

She also prayed the court to make a declaration that Gbagi is not a fit and proper person to occupy any office of public trust, and sought the payment of N3 billion ‘as special, general, punitive, exemplary damages’ in her favour against the respondents ‘as a result of the various gross violations’ of her fundamental human rights.

Photographs didn’t show naked women
Delivering judgment, presiding Judge, Justice Emmanuel Dolor, who dismissed the suit on grounds that the application for the enforcement of her fundamental human rights lacked merit, said: “I also find as not proved in this proceeding, the applicant’s allegations that she was stripped naked by or on the orders of the 1st respondent; that she was paraded in her naked state before the hotel staff and customers and before the son of the 1st respondent; that the 1st respondent’s son made photographs and video recordings of the applicant in her nude state and that the 1st respondent’s son uploaded the recordings of the naked applicant on WhatsApp and Facebook platforms.

“Now coming to the four photographs tendered collectively as exhibit TP.3 and described by the applicant as the nude photographs posted in the social media by the 1st respondent’s son, I cannot fail to notice that two of these photographs do not answer to the description given to them by the applicant, since they are not photographs of naked women at all.

What I saw
“Rather, they are, as much as I can see the photographs of a pretty and decently dressed young woman whom I perceive to be the applicant, although I cannot be certain about this since the applicant did not demonstrate to the court the identities of the different persons in the four different photographs that she tendered as exhibit TP.3

“Am I to believe that these two photographs of decently dressed women were uploaded on social media by the 1st respondent’s son too, as alleged by the applicant? If so, to what end was it uploaded by the 1st respondent son’s social media account, his phone or to any other device used by him.

In this Information Communication Technology, ICT, age characterized by rebounding electronic sophistication and ease of authentication of facts, proof of the matters in respect of which the photographs were tendered in this proceeding should have been made of sterner stuff, and I so hold.

“As the photographs currently stand, they in view subtly diminish the credibility and bonafides of the applicant’s claim. After considering the matters before me in his human rights case, I cannot say that the applicant proved much in the case.

Unquestionable facts
Justice Dolor noted: “In the case on hand, the undisputed facts and the logical inferences to be drawn from them viz-a-viz the present enquiry are that on 18/9/2020, a case of shortfall in monies due to be remitted to the coffers of Signatious Hotel was uncovered; that the facts and circumstances of this discovery were such that they raised a reasonable suspicion that offences, including the offence of stealing, had been committed and was either still in the process of being committed by a syndicate squatting within the premises of Signatious Hotel or was about to be committed.”

“That rightly or wrongly, the applicant was implicated in the activities of the suspected syndicate resulting in her offer to refund certain unremitted or missing funds belonging to Signatious Hotels, i.e. the 2nd respondent; that with this suspicion of involvement in crime hanging over the person of the applicant, the 1st respondent confined and detained the applicant somewhere within the premises of Signatious Hotel while he reported the matter to the police at Ebrumede and invited them to come and pick up the applicant.

“That the police responded to the invitation and came to Signatious Hotel premises where the respondents handed over the applicant to the police; that the applicant was handed over to the Ebrumede Police on the same day on which she was confined/detained by the respondents; that following the arrest or re-arrest of the applicant by the police at Ebrumede, she was charged to court for the offences of conspiracy and stealing in charge no. ME/147C/2020, although the course of time, the police withdrew the charge and same was struck out by the trial magistrate’s Court.

“The trial magistrate consequently discharged the applicant but with a rider that the discharge was ‘not on the merits’.

“Flowing from the facts and circumstances recounted above, I have no doubt in my mind that the requirements and modus procidendi prescribed for a valid arrest/detention by a private person under the Constitution and the administration of criminal justice legislation as set out above were scrupulously or substantially complied with by the respondents in their arrest/detention of the applicant in this case, and I so hold,” Justice Dolor said.

“The evidence before me, however, does show that the applicant was subjected by the respondents to some form of temporary confinement or detention on 18/9/2020

Undue rush to court
“It would appear, as frequently happens in these human right cases, that in the build up to this case, the applicant succumbed to the temptation to be dramatic and sensational.

“It would also appear that the applicant was in so much hurry to go to court that she failed to watch her back or do her homework well. For a three billion naira suit, methinks the applicant did too little and should have been more painstaking, more clinical and intentional in her approach to the case; after all, time does not really run against an intending applicant in fundamental rights actions.

“In the light of all foregoing, the substantive issue for determination which I set out to resolve at the outset of this judgment shall be resolved against the applicant, and it is hereby so resolved. Specifically, I find that none of the applicant’s fundamental rights has been, is being or is likely to be infringed upon by any of the respondents, and I so hold.

Application dismissed
“The application filed by the applicant for the enforcement of her fundamental rights is lacking merit, and is hereby dismissed,” the court stated.

Chief Kenneth Gbagi his happily married to Justice Sybil Gbagi and are blessed with five adorable children.

Finally,Chief Kenneth Gbagi is one of the Urhobos Eyeing Governor’s seat in 2023 and his profile suggested that he is qualified to govern the oil rich state.

Like and follow our page on ovibel media deep walk into Urhobos Eyeing Governor’s seat in 2023.

Source: Vanguard

• 

• 

• 

• 

More from Editor Picks

---