Heroes of Yesterday: Sir Wilson Ipoli Bigha — The Intellectual Hurricane of Ofunama

 

Heroes of Yesterday: Sir Wilson Ipoli Bigha — The Intellectual Hurricane of Ofunama

By Prince Agbedeyi O. D. for Egbema Egberi Media International

Before Google became our lecturer, and before motivational speakers discovered “grit,” there was one man in Ofunama who singlehandedly made scholarship fashionable, political activism honorable, and humor... well, unavoidably native. His name? Sir Wilson Ipoli Bigha — teacher, thinker, crusader, footballer, carver, comedian (without trying), and the unofficial commissioner for wahala in any academic discussion.

A Scholar with a Sharp Mouth

Forget the toga of Vice Principal or his degrees in Agricultural Economics. What really set Sir Bigha apart was his supernatural gift of turning even a boring staff meeting into a TED Talk garnished with Izon-style sarcasm and gospel truth.

He wasn’t just smart — he was dangerously intelligent. The kind of man who could quote Karl Marx in a village meeting and still make it rhyme with an Ijaw proverb. Once, he told a lazy student:

You say education is hard? Wait until life shows you pepper without tomatoes.

Till today, nobody knows if that student ever recovered.

The Unsuspecting Matchmaker of Academic Destinies

Personally, this is the man who took my struggling dreams, dusted them off like his old chalkboard, and boldly said:

Go to Delta State University, Abraka. You go learn book, but make sure say book no learn you!

And just like that, he set my academic compass in motion. He didn’t give me money, oh. But he gave me something better — direction, validation, and enough grammar to confuse any JAMB official.

Founding Father of Egbema’s Academic Renaissance

In the early 1980s, Bigha, along with Late Mr. Ajosanmi Ajemiri, founded the Scholars Union. You’d think it was a reading club, but no — it was more like an intellectual cult mixed with theatre rehearsal. There were debates that shook the creeks, prose recitations that made village goats pause mid-chew, and quiz competitions where wrong answers earned you more embarrassment than missing the ferry.

EAWA — the Egbema Academic Welfare Association — was another of his brainchildren. The man simply refused to allow brilliance to go extinct in the Niger Delta. He wanted every child in Egbema to carry a pen like a sword and defend their future with GPA instead of G3 rifles.

Activist with a Chalkboard and a Conscience

Bigha wasn’t just a classroom genius — he was a freedom-fighter in disguise. Long before “resource control” became a political buzzword, he was already disturbing peace in peace meetings. He asked uncomfortable questions like:

Why is it that oil passes under our feet, but knowledge never enters our heads?

Nobody answered. Most just started avoiding his compound.

Footballer, Actor, Carver… and Unofficial Village Consultant

His football skills were legendary, although controversial. Let’s just say he dribbled better than he passed — both on and off the field. As an actor, his stage presence was so powerful, it was said that even when he played a dead man, the audience still feared he might stand up mid-scene and start quoting Shakespeare.

As a carver, he believed every tree had a story. As a socialite, he believed every drink had a thesis. And as a man? He believed every youth had potential — even if buried under laziness, peer pressure, and too much dancing during praise and worship.

Final Whistle, Last Lecture

Sir Wilson Ipoli Bigha passed away on May 29, 1999, but his voice still echoes in every classroom chalked with dreams, every youth rising from the Niger Delta’s muddy waters to pursue excellence. He didn’t die — he merely submitted his final thesis to God.

So today, as we remember him in this “Heroes of Yesterday” series, we raise our pens, our brows, and our heads in honor. Because to forget Wilson Bigha is to forget the man who gave Ofunama not just education, but swagger with sense.

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