It is the day after and I haven’t seen nature rupture, no disturbance. No turmoils in the heavens. The rains graciously pouring over man and the verdant in most cities across Nigeria. It’s the day after and the earth hasn’t rived in extravasation in response to the revocation of Lukman Akemokhue’s appointment as the Okuopkpellagbe of Okpella by the Edo State government. Across the length and breadth of Okpella, especially in the hearts and brains of its people, there is a breathe of fresh air, there is a uniform normative strange and sudden burst of life, the celebration of a new dawn in the clan. Yes, this morning of the first day of the month of May, 2025, the day after the revocation of Lukman Akemokhue’s purported kingship appointment, the sun rose in its usual effulgence, lightening the Egbhakokomeh Mountain in Afokpella and the entire Okpella clan in vivid radiant resplendence. The clan is not halted in befuddled extinction. There’s no threat of any withering community. Everything is calm amid the huge celebration of the triumph of good over evil. It’s the day after the triumph of the progressives and the fall of the renegades. It’s the day after the great fall from the Himalaya Mountain and the obviously tired, weary and frustrated local population in Okpella are taking a deep sigh of relief; they are so overwhelmed with joy by the news of the revocation of Lukman Akemokhue’s purported appointment as the Okuopkpellagbe of Okpella by the Obaseki administration in Edo State in 2024. It’s only on Wednesday 30th April, 2025, that the Edo State government in a government special announcement approved the revocation of Lukman Akemokhue’s apparently as the Okuopkpellagbe of Okpella for failure to comply with the Declaration of Customary Law regulating succession to the throne, as enshrined in the Bendel State Legal Notice 132 of 1979. The announcement letter, signed by the secretary to the Edo state government, Umar Musa Ikhilor, Esq, explained that following the revocation, modalities have been set in motion to begin the process of selecting a new Okuopkpellagbe of Okpella in line with the Extant Law. The piece of good news immediately sprouted jubilation across the entire Okpella, particularly in Afokpella also called Ukhomunyio community from where Lukman Akemokhue hails. From the looks on the faces of the jubilating crowd of people one could see that the old pains, and fussing had rapidly disappeared, vanishing with the same savage fury of their onslaught since the day Lukman Akemokhue was announced as a king over Okpella clan. One could feel the pangs of joy and excitement tearing violently through the people’s bodies and souls. The clan was indeed agog with celebration and gratitude to God and governor Monday Okpebholo for their great righting interventions. Lukman Akemokhue’s fall was welcomed with much rejoicing, pump and ceremony. The fall had long been expected. The fall had long been predicted by the pen ‘Shamans’ in Okpella who have been acting as the medium between the visible and spirit worlds. The Shamans knew that the September 27, 2025 appointment of Lukman Akemokhue was a joke taken too far. We knew that Lukman Akemokhue was a mere rue, an irritant similar to poison ivy which must be used with great caution –he must not be patronized beyond the surface or initial stage. No doubt, Lukman Akemokhue and his gang had become the incubus in Okpella who have violated the natural order of things and desecrated our land with their infamy.I recall that when Lukman Akemokhue received his kingship allocation on Friday 27, September 2024, he didn’t approach his beloved Okpella people–his supposed subjects–in manners depicting him as a ‘King’ ready to offer the clan a steadfastness and a dependability for which the people yearned after the death of Alhaji A.Y.E. Dirisu, the first Okuopkpellagbe of Okpella in 2019. The late monarch, to most Okpella people, was a courageous, steady, loving, caring, and believable king. Such attributes and more are what Okpella people need in anyone who will ascend to the throne as his successor. The dictates of modernity and current realities demand that a credible person is installed as the Okuopkpellagbe of Okpella to better the lives of Okpella people and help to create an environment that enables them to lead a more distinguished life. How sad to recall that Lukman Akemokhue and his army of jobless, ignorant village orchins and characterless chiefs and elders didn’t hide their contempt for civilized and cultured reasoning and populist traditional administration. Their overt disdain for orderliness, peace and unity as well as respect for Okpella values and traditions was repulsive and yet stinks. Lukman Akemokhue’s current travails remind one of the Igbo saying that, “If a deity becomes too powerful, those that invoked him shall point to the tree from which it was carved.” Don’t be deceived, Lukman Akemokhue’s current travails and his parlous journey to the throne of the Okuopkpellagbe of Okpella is a stark reminder that time catches up to even the most seemingly invulnerable people; we must also realize that beyond the verdict of men, there’s the verdict of history and there’s also the verdict that would be handed down by God. I just think that what is left for Lukman Akemokhue and his followers to do now is to bend their ears very close to the mouths of the wise elderly people in the clan and not the class of opportunistic old and foolish men and women who misled him up to the exalted throne of the Okuopkpellagbe of Okpella. Isn’t it shameful that these same people cannot now prevent his fall from that throne let alone save him? Maybe what Lukman Akemokhue and his ‘council of chiefs’ should try to do now is to, first, tender an unreserved apology to the entire Okpella people via all known news channels available to our generation and, then proceed to make some appeasement of the deities and gods of Okpella, if ever they would listen to them. Do I sympathize with the overtly ambitious young man? Yes I do because the Lukman Akemokhue I know has a proud belief in himself and this may never allow him to sufficiently gauge what has happened to him and try to realine, as many wise people in history have been forced to do. One only hopes his council of wise men and master strategists who convoyed him to Okpella in 2024 will remember now to help him solve the current problem –the riddle of a fall off the throne is usually difficult to answer. Let me remind us that, “the major lesson of life is that, just when you think you have understood things, something happens to turn your understanding upside down,” according to my literary friend, Stephen Fry. I have continued to say it loud and clear that if men without their consciences purchased, forget the need to uphold tradition and defy the ancestors, that’s left for them and their God, but the pen ‘Shamans’ must tell their story -Truth is eternal. I welcome my fellow compatriots and the majority of Okpella people to a new dawn in the clan; the struggle continues. God bless our dear Okpella clan and its people.