April 03, (THEWILL) – The Erelu Okin of Orile Okemta, Pearl Chidinma Ogbulu, talks about the truth behind her involvement in the petrol souvenir saga, her chieftaincy title and other matters, in this interview with IVORY UKONU. Excerpts:
For giving out petrol as souvenir to guests at your party, people now call you ‘Erelu Petrol.’ What is your reaction to this?
When something happens without a prior plan or arrangement, you have no choice other than to align with it. People catch a lot of fun by calling me that. I am not going to tell them not to call me by that alias. After all, I did give out petrol as souvenir at my chieftaincy installation party. But I didn’t bring it into the hall where the party took place. I was at a party recently and the music artist on the bandstand was hailing me ‘Erelu petrol’ and I was spraying him money and laughing. There is nothing I can do about it. If that is how they want to know me, all is well and good. But it would be better if I am known more for my philanthropic deeds.
From videos and photos shared on social media, the petrol was obviously inside the hall. Wasn’t it?
I didn’t bring it into the hall. That is the truth. Some people probably got excited about the whole thing, took photographs and made videos of the petrol in jerry cans that were in the hall. It was a new phenomenon and that gained traction in the media. But we were in a crisis. There was scarcity of fuel and many of the prominent people I had invited to the party told me they wouldn’t be able to make it because they were unable to get petrol. I had to do something about it. I wasn’t going to let fuel scarcity deny me the company of my invited guests at my own party. In fact, it was almost beginning to look like a norm that each time I decide to have a party, something always happens that nearly ruins everything. For example, the #EndSARS protests started on the day I held the dedication party for my daughter, Jasmine. More than half of the people that bought the aso ebi for my party were stuck in traffic for hours. By the time the party was ending at past 10pm, people were just getting to a junction where they could turn back to their houses. So when it seemed like there was going to be a repeat of what happened before, I had to think out of the box. I realised that people won’t come if I don’t give them an incentive. So I told those who couldn’t get petrol to find any means possible to be at the party. I promised to give them something to at least power their cars back home or for their electricity generators. Besides, people were really going through a lot staying on the queue for hours to buy petrol. From the bottom of my heart, I decided to share the few litres of petrol I had in my house with my guests. I was going to travel immediately after my party and I knew I wasn’t going to leave fuel in the house. So I decided to give it out.
How many litres of petrol did each jerry can contain?
I had 50 and 20 litres of petrol brought separately to the event. I don’t know how many jerry cans had petrol dispensed in them. I wasn’t there but I had given instructions that fuel be despensed in the jerry cans. About four or five litres of petrol was poured into several 10-litre jerry cans. The initial plan was to give it to the selected guests as they were leaving the hall at the end of the party. How the petrol was brought into the hall is something I do not know about. From what I gathered, the security men at the venue of the party had stolen some of the fuel when it was placed outside the hall. The people that I put in charge of it challenged the security men and an argument ensued. A member of the music band that I hired to entertain my guests at the party tried to intervene in the matter and they said they were taking the fuel for themselves. Despite informing them that it was a souvenir for some selected guests, they remained adamant. In the resulting confusion, the fuel, already dispensed into jerry cans, were taken into the hall and kept beside the stage where the band was playing. His Royal Majesty, Oba Adetokunbo Tejuosho, who conferred the title on me, drew my attention to this. He asked me what the musician was singing. The musician was praising me in Yoruba language for sharing petrol.
I went to the stage and whispered to the musician to instruct his boys to take the fuel out of the hall. And he said and I quote, ‘Erelu, if you want me to love you for ever, you have to give us our own fuel because my boys didn’t have petrol to come here.’ I promised to sort him and his boys out and that was how they were taken out.
Don’t you think that with a highly inflammable liquid like petrol, safety should have been top priority?
If you ask me what my first instinct was regarding this, safety didn’t come to me initially. I didn’t think that anything could happen. It didn’t even cross my mind. I just didn’t want the prominent people I had invited to go into a chaotic situation. I didn’t want people leaving and sulking that they didn’t get petrol, you know people can be quite funny with retaliations. Besides I didn’t even have a lot to give out, maybe like 22 jerry cans at the end of the day. I don’t know how many were stolen and unaccounted for. My only concern was how to avoid a chaotic situation and that was why I said it should be taken out of the hall. Thank God nothing negative happened.
A few people are of the opinion that sharing petrol at your party was to ridicule the government for not making fuel available in the first place. Is it true?
It doesn’t make any sense for anyone to think that I did it to ridicule the government. Why would I do that? A lot of people are running power generators in their homes half of the time. If you came to a party and enjoyed yourself in an air-conditioned hall and when you are about to leave, you think of the last drops of petrol in your car, not knowing where to get at least five litres to power your generators at home for at least three or four hours, you will be grateful if you get a jerry can of fuel as souvenir. Don’t forget that most petrol stations selling fuel were not dispensing in jerry cans. The few that were willing to do so were charging extra money. To buy fuel at the black market, you had to cough out more money. Surely, one will be grateful for the little they got at the party. So I had no reason to ridicule the government with my kind gesture.
You were reported to have been arrested, charged to court and granted bail. How did you resolve the matter?
No I wasn’t arrested. I thank Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, the Attorney-General of the state, Moyosore Onigbanjo and the people that were involved in the matter. The matter was settled amicably. I am happy that I was used as a deterrent to others so they can understand the implication of things like this. When I was invited, I wasn’t in Lagos, but the Commissioner of Police called me and said he wanted to see me. I obliged him when I got back and he asked me to go make a statement at the jurisdiction where the party took place. This I did. I also wrote and personally delivered letters of apology to the governor, the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Gbenga Omotosho and the Director-General, Lagos State Safety Commission, Lanre Mojola. The venue of the party, an events centre, had been sealed and the owners were agitated. So I had to take full responsibility for what happened because both the owner of the events centre and the people who took the fuel into the hall did not do what they did with safety at the back of their minds. There was no way I could start pointing fingers. I had to bear the brunt alone.
What lessons did you learn from this?
That no one is above the law and one should bear the consequences of one’s actions, regardless of who you are. I am now all about preaching safety to people. Looking back, I should actually have thought safety first because if something negative had happened, I won’t be pointing fingers at people or shy away from the problem. I thank God that nothing happened.
As an indigene of Abia State, how did you manage to bag a core Yoruba title, Erelu Okin?
I want people to understand that everything I have ever gotten in life is by merit. My Erelu title, the Queen Mother, is by merit. It is based on what I have done for the Orile Okemta community in Odeda Local Government Area of Ogun State. By virtue of what I have done for the children in that community, I became their Queen Mother, the goddess of beauty. Okin in Yoruba means peacock and peacock blooms with so much beauty. I brought beauty into that community. My mission as Erelu Okin is to beautify lives.
What exactly did you do for the community that earned you the chieftaincy title?
I have positively affected the lives of most communities and people around me. During one of my visits to Orile Okemta to get forensic data, I came across some children who would walk 10 kilometres to school. Some of them walked to school barefoot on a road that had just been graded. So I bought shoes for some of them, distributed about 5,000 exercise books to them over a period of time. I was passing one day and discovered that they didn’t have clean water. There is a stream where they get water to bathe, drink, swim and wash their clothes. They don’t even have a local hospital and have to walk a long distance to neighbouring communities to get medical treatment. I feel the government can only do enough. We as humans should be able to distribute our milk of kindness. I dug a borehole for these people so they can have clean and potable water.
The king of the community learnt of what I had done for the people and he started searching for me. When I went to answer his call, he asked if I had any ties with Orile Okemta, which I didn’t have and even if I had any roots in Yoruba land, it would probably be Osun State. After the borehole was completed, the king sent for me again, prayed with me for over three hours and finally pronounced me the Erelu Okin, the Queen Mother of Orile Okemta. We held an installation ceremony at the palace with my parents in attendance and thereafter, I decided to hold an installation party with my friends who couldn’t make it to the ceremony. That was how everyone got to know about me, courtesy of the petrol I shared as souvenir.
What did your parents think of you being made a chief in another land?
They were excited. At least, they have a daughter who has everything going well for her. However, my mum, who is a pastor, by the way kept saying I have to be prayerful about me being a chief.
Was there any ritual involved?
No, it was just the pouring of libation with dry gin and kolanut shared among the chiefs. Each chief individually prayed for me as the new chief. The title is an honorary one. I am not a community chief, but I am required to attend every chieftaincy meeting at the palace. I can also be sent as a palace delegate anywhere.
I guess you are now stuck with the Orile Okemta community as you will be expected to now play a real motherly role to them
Yes. Royalty is a lifetime thing. This propelled me to set up the Erelu Okin Foundation and I am going to do a proper homecoming in my father’s state, Abia, my mum’s state, Akwa Ibom and even as far as Uganda, Ghana, South Africa, America, etc. My mission is to impact as many lives as I can. That is what a Queen mother does. I do the same charitable work as I did in Orile Okemta in Lagos. Lagos has something called Project Zero Initiative, which symbolises Zero Tolerance for Out-Of-School- Children project. They pick up children from the streets, trenches, slums, who are of school age and put them in school. I support in my own way by going to these schools, finding the zero-project people and empowering them with school supplies like bags, shoes, exercise books, writing materials, toiletries and snacks, etc.
The government can’t do it all alone. But I am not doing this in conjunction with them. I do not know if they are aware of what I do but I do not need validation from them to help those who need it.
How do you plan to get funding for your numerous charitable works?
God will provide the funds. As I make money, I give 10 percent to God, 10 percent to charity, 15/20 percent to my parents and I keep the rest.
Have you always been this charitable?
Yes, this is who I am. I have always impacted on people around me, but now I have a bigger platform to do it and to touch more lives. I want to live a life where when I am gone to be with my maker, they would say, ‘if Pearl was here, things would have been different.’ I want my presence and absence to always make a difference.
Does the Erelu Okin title necessarily require you to always wear white clothes?
The Queen Mother title connotes that you should always wear white clothes. But I think wearing white now has always been a long time coming for me. I just never understood the intricacies of it or how it would eventually manifest. I like it because white signifies purity.
You run a fashion outfit. With your new position as the Erelu Okin, will it still be operational?
Yes, my bridal atelier, La Pearl’s Bridal, is still very much operational. It is in the heart of the Lekki area of Lagos. We are the best bridal makers in Africa, no cap. I still have time to run it, I go there all the time to oversee the business. I have to create the time even though I have workers who run it, bridal experts particularly. It is my source of income. When I was a decade old in the fashion business, I switched to making wedding dresses. I got tired of making traditional clothes, ready-to-wear and all that. I can’t exactly tell what gave me the courage to start doing bridals. I just wanted to have something to do with white and I started doing bridals. But I do know that when I get into the building that houses my fashion business, it is all white; the dresses, the furniture, interior décor, etc. They are all white and it makes me excited. I didn’t know something else that involved white was coming.
You also run an oil and gas firm, Pearl Hydro. Does this explain why it was easy for you to distribute fuel at your party during the scarcity?
Not really. I got into the oil and gas business because it was the in-thing at the time. I had no idea how it worked. I tried to be subtle at first with my first Department of Petroleum permit, concentrating on the logistics and hospitality aspect of it. But I later got the hang of it after learning from veterans. Oil and gas is a very lucrative and interesting venture, no doubt.
You studied Petrochemical Engineering, so I guess it isn’t out of place that you are into oil and gas
Well, it would have been out of place because it was by chance that I went to the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, to study Petrochemical Engineering. Unfortunately, I never finished. I left. I wanted to study theatre arts, but my father was against it. He wanted me to become a lawyer. I started considering it because I love to engage in conversation with people, but I hated the fact that I had to finish school and still go to law school. I was afraid I would never pass the examination. So I chose to study Petrochemical Engineering, started, left it midway and went to study Economics. I made a First Class in Economics. I obtained other degrees thereafter, including an honorary doctorate from the European American University. I’m going to be honoured with another one soon.
Do you have any political ambition?
Yes, I plan to go into politics soon.
What would you say must have significantly shaped you to be who you are today?
Love has shaped me. I fell in love with the father of my children. He made me a better person. I don’t take that love for granted.
