The Silent Dr. Julius Takeme Noised Everywhere

By: Enewaridideke Ekanpou

Silence is golden. This  is a universal affirmation often appropriated metaphorically like a roadside pepper to suit any situation however uncanny it looks. Golden as silence is, it is also disastrous  - sowing seeds of fruitless allegations of mal-administration, corruption, unaccountability, fund-mismanagement and developmental incapability and aridity targeted at Burutu Council, undaunted by the fact that Burutu Local Government Area is evidentially propelled by transformational ideals injected into it by the Council Boss  -  because it is a virus-carrier.

Silence becomes disastrous when it becomes the nursery, the proliferation site, of image-reduction folktales and rumours carefully nurtured with a pathologically futurological aim to demarket a targeted people against their marked growth in social and political life. Somebody has just gone silent here without justification. It is Chief Hon. Dr Julius Takeme.

Currently, the silence of Dr.  Takeme, the current Burutu Local Government Chairman, has become the proliferation site of folktales packaged and sold in sachets as believable stories bandied by masters of ripple-creation. Quickly  ponder on this. Dr. Takeme actually merits some punitive measures for being silent over his own development issues in Burutu Council, particularly when these development issues are being  strategically echoed and amplified everywhere to demarket him. Perhaps, it has not struck Takeme that the whole story of hunting either in the sea or in the forest will always be told in favour of the hunter without the rosy aspects that favour the lions and the sharks. For Chinua Achebe, the hunting history of man told will always bring glory but only to the hunter until the lions  have engaged their own historians to tell their own story when he says: 'Until lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter'.Takeme must be questioned here for not having his stories told by his own historians rather than by the hunters themselves who have their own interest buried in the stories bandied as a teleguided political history of non-performance.

There are core development issues in Burutu Council that demand immediate attention. In line with his own vision, these development issues  are being tackled by Dr. Takeme him along a  conceptualised trajectory. Disastrously, Takeme does this without his own historians talking. This historical lacuna becomes a subject of exploitation by folktale-merchants who tell moonlight tales to demarket him.

No wisdom resides in Takeme's uncanny silence over his two major development projects that are moving steadily in tune with their conceptualisation. There is no political theory, philosophy and ideology in which deliberate silence is nobly clothed as golden and honourable.The First Lady of Delta State, Her Excellency Deaconess Tobore Oborevwori, stormed Kiagbodo in Burutu Local Government Area of Delta State with her pet project You Matter Charity Foundation on 6 August 2026. Driven by the philosophy of 'everybody is somebody', the You Matter Charity Foundation performed  remarkably in Burutu Council in its outreach programme. Free medical treatment and  medical consultation services were generously  extended to children afflicted by autism and allied special medical needs. Elderly persons, caregivers and many other vulnerable households had free access to all health, humanitarian and empowerment services rendered by the foundation. Specifically, 120 bags of rice were given to vulnerable households, 21 wheelchairs to persons with mobility challenges, N5m  to 27-old Ombe Egbaseimokumo for hip replacement surgery. The visit was a huge success.

The First Lady was warmly treated to the historic unity, hospitality and entertainment of Ijaw people, followed by their age-long culture of appreciation shown to the Governor's wife for her remarkable free medical, humanitarian and empowerment services rendered to Burutu people. The Anchor for the success of this visit was Dr. Takeme who co-ordinated and massively mobilised party faithfuls, councilors, community leaders, traditional institutions,  religious bodies, civil society groups, stakeholders and  the good people of Burutu to Kiagbodo to give the Governor's wife the august treatment she deserves as the wife of the developmentally audacious governor in the South-South geopolitical region.

Shockingly, even after this huge succes recorded on 6 August 2026 at Kiagbodo in Burutu Local Government Area, Dr. Takeme would not roll out his own historians to tell the story everywhere. This is the gap exploited by the hunters who tell the story of the hunting expedition without a glorification space narratively  carved out for the lion and the shark. This is why ripples of distraction have been created by accredited masters of ripples in the river of development in Burutu.

Takeme's silence is  questionable.He ideologically clothed himself with transformation as a central focus when  he was sworn-in as the Executive Chairman of Burutu Council in July 2024.To avoid being invisiblised by disassociation or distanciation from this transformational ideal launched as a pivot right from the assumption of official duties in Burutu Council, he quickly embarked on ultra-modern Council Secretariat and a gigantic Legislative House as two major projects. Steadily, these two massive projects are moving towards completion through the marked stages of execution which only civil engineers can explain with believable accuracy. By this developmental audacity demonstrated through these multi-billion naira projects, Takeme has become the first Executive  Chairman in Burutu Council to walk on this path.

Expectedly, Takeme would  become a subject of constructive criticism based on how he would engage the two highlighted projects and fruitfully bring them to completion because his chairmanship story will eventually be told around these two projects when his tenure is over. With these visible major projects, journalistic sensationalism must not be weaponised as the enablement of politically programmed eschatological projection built vindictively around the political career of a remotely targeted politician of Dr. Takeme's kind.

Epistemologically tempted and  pressurised , I dare sound a gong  here  that you know I know that without even being activist in advocacy against power rot and financial mismanagement at any level of government, accusatory seeds of financial recklessness and developmental incapability grow naturally as a verdant vegetation when funds allocated to key projects are not matched by visible evidence of development at the end of a given budgetary year, or at the end of a given tenure of governance.This can only be arrived at after a statistically verifiable evidence of non-performance in the identified areas. When this happens, it must be in a situation devoid of political rivalry, political calculation, political  rancour occasioned by calculated deflection from any supposed agricultural pact of monthly or yearly fertilisation of lands afflicted with soil fertility-depletion in progressive order  - however a monthly or yearly fertilisation channelled only in human dimensions to the comfort of those associated with ripple-creation in the river of governance and development.

Every developmentally deviant government demands correctional verbal bombardment devoid of  alignment with any  subterranean political calculation or force. When allegations of power rot and financial recklessness are channelled to the public alongside a propelling undercurrent likely to be tamed through dancing agreeably on the required playground of the accusers, the accused turns 'debele' through complicit u-turn to the accusers, prioritising  their personal growth over the infrastructural development of the people of Burutu. 

Any sensationallised volcanoes of complaints against specific persons, inextricably  tied to known needs of the advocates to be pacified, must be ideologically ignored with a flourish. They must be ideologically ignored with a flourish because such accusers are advocates of their individual transformation. This is the case in Burutu Council where sensationalised volcanoes of complaints erupted recently to demarket Dr. Takeme whose development plans are clearly defined within steadily phased execution timelines.
For  true analysts of development in Burutu Local Government Area of Delta State, they  are not bothered by the volcanoes of complaints against the Burutu Council Boss because they are obviously powered by known undercurrents of vindictiveness, malevolence, malediction and sustained political rancour.

Virtually in every political gathering, the sustained refrain of Dr. Takeme is that his pact with Burutu people revolves around his two major projects  -  the ultra-modern multi-billion naira Council Secretariat and the Legislative House. The Council Boss  must therefore be shielded against  distractions rooted in  volcanoes of complaints of non-performance when his first tenure is yet to come to an end, when he has not violated the terms of the development pact with the people of Burutu. Verbal volcanoes stubbornly  occupy the secular space because Dr. Takeme works quietly in Burutu Council without any inclination to break into the  'kekudu kekudu' dance and song of a restless squirrel that embarrassingly creates a cacophony out of every movement in the forest   however healthy it is  -  even if it is a ripe palm nut falling occasionally off the palm tree.


In a deliberately strategic parlance that carries echoes of some paragraphs above, it must be stressed here again and again that between Takeme and Burutu people there is already an oath. One part of the oath is that Takeme must be given the needed space to complete his gigantic projects without ripples vindictively created in the river of development.The second part of the oath is that Takeme must successfully bring his two major projects to a fruitful end. Where Takeme fails in this task, he must be verbally pulverised and   asked to account for funds allocated to these projects. Based on this oath of development,  he has willingly become the punch bag of Burutu people where failure creeps in   -  knowingly or unknowingly. 

Like the  reverberating voice of a professional town-crier whose duty it is to gather the people through his drum, bell and voice, let it be known that  now that ripples are vindictively created in the river of development when Takeme has not abandoned these projects, the architects of these ripples must be held responsible for distracting Mr. Chairman. Takeme has not broken his developmental oath; only some people have broken their own part of the oath by creating ripples in the river. Public pronouncements such as Mr Chairman will not complete his two projects; Mr Chairman is not ready to develop Burutu Council and many other diversionary verbal outbursts are the ripples currently created by some persons in Burutu Council. This is a clear violation of the oath between Dr. Takeme and the good people of Burutu.

The distracting  ripples intentionally created by some persons in Burutu Council are compounded by Takeme's silence. If Takeme had not chosen silence over his own visible developmental steps being captured by the ongoing Council Secretariat and the Legislative House projects, ripples would have been left without a branch to perch on like passeurine birds deprived of a place to stand on during the 2012 flood because everywhere had been submerged and swallowed gluttonously by furious waters. Takeme's silence has become the engagement /employment platform for ripples now parading like hunters telling the story of the history of the hunting expedition without inclusion of the roles of the lions and the sharks that constitute inseparable components of the history of the hunting expedition.

The time has actually come for the ripples to stop. I mean the ripples masterfully created by some persons to distract and demarket the Chairman of Burutu Council. For the ripples to be stopped and dispelled like threatening clouds hanging in the sky, Dr. Takeme must shake off his silence enclosure like a cobra that parts way with its skin at biologically appointed times and engage his own historians to tell his developmental stories in phases in line with the steady progress his beloved major projects are making at the site. Burutu deserves to know the steady progress on the gigantic Secretariat and the Legislative House from his own historians. 

In the timeless wisdom of the great philosopher Timiebi Maika,  'a mouth that is not routinely engaged to speak or talk,  only stinks'. Performance and talking must now become the new philosophy of Dr. Takeme. When projects in steady progress are accorded adequate publicity, vindictive ripples are drowned without being felt by the people. Let Takeme speak out through his own historians so that even Governor Sheriff Oborevwori will know that he (Takeme) is making a steady progress in Burutu Local Government Area developmentally through his two major projects -  the ultra-modern Council Secretariat and the Legislative House.

Again and again, it must be anchored repeatedly that Dr. Takeme must be epistemologically awakened from the border of working genuinely for the good  people of Burutu in 'graveyard' silence to the border of talking like the coucal  bird, always prompt in time-communication in the forest as a guide for foresters who  have no  wristwatches to tell them if they are  close to the 'disaster-carrying six o'clock' of Youpele's eschatological creation. Governor Sheriff Oborevwori can only know that a developmentally audacious person is in charge of Burutu Council when Dr. Takeme's story of development is meticulously told by his own historians who are armed with the authoritative knowledge of when, where and who to glorify in Burutu Local Government Area without being immersed in the creation of political rancour-propelled narratives strategically planted to demarket  the Council Boss and gloatingly toll a death knell on their own imagined political course or dictation for Dr. Takeme in the unknown political tomorrow  -  a mystically impenetrable tomorrow already pregnant with a child without a known  designated gender.

Dr. Ekanpou writes from Akparemogbene, Delta State