Three months after he passed on, the epitaphs shower still like confetti and the epithets rain down without let. A big, very big, masquerade has left the carnival square leaving behind a hushed echo and wistful sensation in the stands.
If he may be described in those terms, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu was the Ijele of his race. A multi-splendored wonder, he bestrode the bewildering stage of contemporary Nigerian history with memorable swagger to affect a forceful imprint of contradictory emotions: admiration, praise and awe, as well as censure and derision tinged with envy and regret. These conflicting reactions describe the man whom many loved to hate and many more loathed to admit that they admired, even loved and envied for his intimidating confidence and presence of mind.
The tributes resounding from Sokoto to Eket, Badagry to Maiduguri capture in their varied undertones, the signal dimensions of this most engaging personality. Together, they make the astounding, yet pleasantly ironic statement that in Emeka Ojukwu, arch rebel and enfant- terrible of the civil war, Nigeria may have found the first nationally acclaimed hero of the post-civil war era. How did this alluring transformation come to be?
ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ
'Ojukwu foresaw all this’, his fellow Igbos chant as in a dramatic chorus to underline their collective helplessness at the confounding challenge of ethno-religious conflicts around the country. More to the point though, other Nigerians concur! Who could have foreseen all this in 1966?
The first tentative brush strokes of this fascinating political makeover occurred thirty years ago in mid-1982 when the NPN government of President Shehu Shagari announced the unconditional pardon of the former Biafran warlord and brought an end to his 13year exile in Cote d’ Ivoire. The political calculations of the NPN-led government in loosening the bonds of his banishment are routinely taken for granted, but not even the most astute political analyst could have predicted the tsunami of emotions and wild jubilations which greeted this final act of reconciliation.
From the first landing of his plane at Murtala Mohammad Airport, to Enugu, Nnewi, Owerri, Ahiara and Umuahia where his motorcade passed en-route to Arochukwu, Ndigbo turned out in tens of thousands to cheer their champion and hero. Onye ije nno! they screamed. “Welcome home, sojourner!” But even as the huge entourage sped along the, highways and dusty lanes from Enugu to Arochukwu and native cannons boomed in salutation and honour of the famous returnee, a festering wound of distrust and disunity opened in Igboland.
Ojukwu was caught right in the centre of political disagreements between NPN stalwarts in Anambra State who sought to milk every drop of political gain from his executive pardon, and the NPP administration in the state which felt deliberately snubbed by the protocol arrangements for his reception.
The nation was yet abuzz with the roar and excitement of his return, what with two titles in his kitty: Ikemba Nnewi, “Strength of Nnewi” from the Igwe of Nnewi, and Dike di Ora Ndigbo Nma, “Mighty Warrior in whom the People are well pleased”, by the assembly of traditional rulers from all the Igbo speaking states, when the man showed his stubborn side. Urging the Igbos to join the ‘mainstream’ of Nigerian politics at the time, the NPN, Ojukwu enrolled as a member of the party.
Few people grudged him the right to show gratitude to the government and party that granted him unexpected and unconditional pardon. But earnest entreaties from all and sundry, asking him to play only a non-partisan and unifying role for the furtherance of Igbo political and economic interests did not impress his self-willed heart. Ojukwu joined the partisan fray and grabbed the party ticket for the Onitsha senatorial seat. His full throttled drive on the campaign trail was powered by the Ikemba Front: a quasi-ideological outfit that proved its mettle in rowdy face-offs with thugs of the opposition party. But his stout hearted drive for the senatorial seat smacked of a poorly disguised attempt to ride on his popularity and beard the great Zik, right in his Onitsha political den.
Still, his gambit for a senatorial seat did not feature in the script by the elders of the NPN. They ceded the election to the NPP candidate, Dr. Onwudiwe. Publicly, the irrepressible Ikemba appeared to take his defeat in good faith. He likened the campaign to a wrestling match. He had been thrown in the dust by his opponent, he affirmed, and could live with his defeat as a sportsman. Privately though, he seethed like a wounded lion at the devastating betrayal.
In later years, when the bugle sounded afresh for political activities to resume, Ojukwu jettisoned the call for mainstreams and elected instead to make of APGA, a powerful regional party. In this, he sought to copy the South West political intelligentsia who have consistently maintained a regional agenda in their approach to national politics. Remarkably, Ojukwu had lampooned this strategy when the NPP controlled the South East in the Second Republic. At that time, his supporters defended a pragmatic need to repay President Shagari and the NPN. But as the Babangida transition programme dragged on, Ojukwu threw his weight behind the political stratagem codified as a “handshake across the Niger.” The proponents of this idea appeared intent to lay the ghosts of the deep distrust that had marked the political intercourse between Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe in the First and Second Republics.
ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ
The ironies compound themselves, for Zik, the Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Owelle of Onitsha, doyen of the nationalist struggle in Nigeria and first President of the Federal Republic was a close friend and business partner of Sir Louis Ojukwu, the father of Emeka Ojukwu. He knew the young Emeka as a little boy and the story is quite popular about his influence in getting the transport magnate to take the lad back from Fagge, Kano, into his home in Apapa, Lagos, after Sir Louis’ estrangement with Emeka’s mother. Later on, Zik would earn the contentious reputation of the only man ever to best the wily transport magnate in a business deal.
There is no doubt whatsoever, that Ojukwu followed Zik’s political career with interest. At various press interviews after his return, he told of his great disappointment at the outcome of the 1959 elections which saw Zik clutching the short end of the victory baton in the NPC/NCNC coalition. His famous inquiry to fellow officers during the 1964 constitutional crisis, asking to know who was commander-in-chief, the president or prime minister very likely had its source in a sympathetic urge to provoke a proper evaluation of Zik’s rightful place and role in the power equations of the immediate post-independence era.
Clearly, their ways parted at the collapse of the First Republic and Ojukwu’s ascendancy to the political seat where Zik had been regional premier a decade earlier. Under him briefly, a freshly graduated Ojukwu had served as assistant district officer before joining the Nigerian Army to become the first graduate and first officer to receive a direct Nigerian short service commission.
According to Emeka Ojukwu, he joined the Army to escape his father’s overbearing influence in his life and be his own man. However, others allude to a more vaulting move. Trevor Clark, biographer of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, reports that when he opted out of civil administration in favour of the military, the governor general, Sir John Macpherson had warned him in the presence of Sir Louis: “If you think you are going to be a Colonel Nasser someday, put it out of your mind because, Nigeria would never accept it.”
Ojukwu also shared with various Nigerian friends in London, his strong views about the inevitability of military intervention in the politics of many African nations. The politicians who would fill the shoes of the departing colonists were largely inexperienced and impractical theorists, he maintained. Various other sources indicate that he did not make a secret of his views on the redemptive role of the military in national affairs. Did he carry this condescending view of the political class into the office of military governor? Yes, and Zik could not have been unaware of this sentiment. In later years, Ojukwu’s conceited opposition to the old man smacked of a deeply held intent to avenge Sir Louis’ loss of face in the fight for control of the West African Pilot. Inevitably, the stage was set for a major falling out between the ex-president and the military governor, which did not abate even at the height of the civil disturbances that led to the war and even during the horrendous sway of the conflict.
Kinder analysts concede that even though the Oxford graduate of modern history had read well the political future of his country and sought to position himself properly to take advantage of it; he did not partake of the events that pitched him forward into the national limelight: the coup of January 15 1966.
A famous saying avers: Some men are born great; others achieve greatness while some have greatness thrust upon them. It is a mark of the complexity of the Ojukwu mystique that all three categories apply to him.
The circumstances of his birth as a son of the transport magnate, Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, reputedly Nigeria’s first millionaire placed him from birth at the top of the privileged class in a largely provincial, pre-independent Nigeria. The wilful assault on the white principal of King’s College during a students’ riot, most probably a psychological transfer of childish anger against another white man in Fagge Kano, did little to shield him from social attention. Public education in England and a degree from Oxford University further entrenched him at the pinnacle of the indigenous upper class of the emergent nationalist state. By these marks alone, he had achieved sufficient ‘greatness’ to count among the movers and shakers of society. If he had taken to the family business or the civil service as his first career path indicated, he could have been a permanent feature of the Who’s Who in Nigeria from 1958 to ’66.
Still, fate searched him out from an obscure military posting in Kano where he ruled as battalion commander, and thrust him into public limelight as military governor of the Eastern group of provinces.
Thus, it fell on him to protect the myriads of displaced Easterners, turned out of their places of residences in the North and West after the counter coup of July 1966. His administration had to provide refuge, comfort and counsel to the widows, the orphans and the wounded who shrieked in sheer agony at the numbing injustice of their situation
.
ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ
That said, the jury is still out there on Colonel, later General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu’s leadership of Eastern Nigeria and also, Biafra. His brusque style manifested early when he put his predecessor, Dr Michael Okpara behind bars and reeled out draconian orders to clip the wings of senior civil servants.
Later, his rightful stance on the proper hierarchy in a post-Ironsi government pitted him irrevocably against the coup plotters of July 29. Critics contend that his refusal to accept a de-facto situation was nothing short of impractical. Even so, his haughty demeanour, those critics further allege, did not allow for a compromising meeting of minds. His posh accent quite apart, Ojukwu exhibited enough intellectual arrogance to alienate even his most sympathetic opponents. At Aburi, he showcased this annoying demeanour to the exasperation of Hassan Usman Katsina, who retorted, “Shut up, Emeka. If you went to Cambridge, I have my school certificate.”
After the meeting at Aburi, Eastern propaganda crowed that Ojukwu had so bamboozled the other side that Gowon apparently did not quite understand the document he signed till the technocrats at home pointed out the details to him. Zik takes a different view in his book of poems, Civil War Soliloquies:
The bearded soldier who ruled the East
Asserted that the concord they had reached
Was to split the nation and share the swag
So that each Mandarin might reign and rule
…
The beardless soldier on the other hand
Believed that all they did in Ankra’s land
Endorsed the status quo with minor change
Therefore, there was no need upsetting things (p.36)
If we ever needed proof of Ojukwu’s disconnect with sections of Igbo leadership, this is it. His oft-stated political ambitions receive full treatment here and would haunt him throughout the war and afterwards. This reading of Ojukwu was shared by many of his closest comrades-in arms.
Nevertheless, he stirred the Eastern Region, by sheer oratory and agitprop critics allege, to a raging frenzy. None may deny however, that the wounds of the pogrom in the North rankled deeply and Gowon’s repudiation of the Aburi Accord was the last bitter pill Easterners could swallow.
Zik, soliloquising still, recounts
Give us the guns to blast the foe,
They yelled and yearned to strike a blow
…
A clever leader saw his chance
To spur greenhorns to do death’s dance (p.15)
Zik’s cynical, even anti-Biafran sentiments had its source in Ojukwu’s dictatorial, Lone Ranger tendencies.
In his book, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, Alexander Madiebo, the Biafran Army Commander, states: “Ojukwu dispensed with the inner confidence of military experts and highly experienced political leaders who could have perhaps helped him save our people from the greatest calamity that ever befell them…It is my view that Biafra never had a government but merely operated under a leader.” (p.379)
This telling indictment sums up our hero’s greatest flaw. Arthur A. Nwankwo, writing in Nigeria: The Challenge of Biafra, agrees with Madiebo: “The Biafran leadership had one significant infirmity from the onset- Ojukwu’s contemptuous disregard for politicians of Nigeria’s First Republic…The bulk of the people who had Ojukwu’s ear were mostly civil servants, new political upstarts and a brigade of ‘rediscovered’ political leaders.”(p.46)
Nwankwo further declares that Ojukwu “was stubborn with a rich, sometimes unbridled imagination. He was impulsive, which made it difficult for him to benefit from the advice of men of exceptional integrity, such as Sir Louis Mbanefo, Prof. Eni Njoku, Dr Akanu Ibiam and Dr Pius Okigbo.” (p.56) Corroborating Madiebo in many respects, Nwankwo’s report card attests that Ojukwu was ill equipped in many ways for the great task that fell on his muscular shoulders.
Zik, expounding on the theme in his Soliloquies, suggests,
“The works of Bede and Chaucer they will cram
Without a thought of Igbo discipline
Ideas of Marx their slavish minds will ram
As was exposed at Ahiara clean” (p.17)
Zik may rightly be charged with utter cynicism arising from wounded pride, but the evidence from various disinterested sources is disquieting. The rampant corruption in the land and profligate misuse of scarce resources aside, the list of Biafrans who suffered detention including Michael Okpara and Zik at various times, Colonel Hilary Njoku and Justice Araka among several other well-meaning persons, under the spurious accusation of being saboteurs surely heightened the instability of the fragile republic and jeopardised its survival.
Soon after Ojukwu’s death, various press reports indicated that Olusegun Obasanjo, the federal military commander who received the Biafran surrender documents from General Philip Effiong had advised Ojukwu to apologise for his role in the civil war! Those reports must be very galling still to every true blooded Easterner. Those who should apologise are the felons who killed, maimed, raped and dispossessed their fellow citizens of property merely because they could only say ‘tolo’ in place of ‘toro’.
Those who must apologise are the military officers that planned and executed the mass butchering of their brother officers and comrade-in-arms on the simple grounds of a “revenge mission” for the death of five politicians and four military officers. Accordingly, the apologists must also include their civilian collaborators in high places, who masterminded the ethnic cleansing campaigns of July and September 1966 throughout the length and breadth of Northern and Western Nigeria. They should all apologise for throwing the grenade of civil strife unto the path of an innocent Colonel Ojukwu, thus allowing him to take a justifiable lob at the worthy goal of emancipation for his long-suffering people.
From Sagamu through Onitsha to Zango-Kataf, Gombe, Maidugiri, Jos, Barkin Ladi and Madalla most recently, the shame and stench of 1966 remains yet with us as Nigerians continually lament the flare of ethnic cleansing campaigns against Nigerians by Nigerians. Who should apologise? Leaders past and present, including Olusegun Obasanjo, who have failed to rise to the challenge that a nation must protect its citizens or risk periodic descent into bloody confrontations.
That is why people now acclaim, with more than fanciful nostalgia, that the bearded hero of the Biafran struggle was a cut above his peers in diagnosing the potent social and political distortions that bedevil Project Nigeria. Even a rabid Biafra-hater like Ken Saro-Wiwa came around in time to the surgical necessity of true federalism as developed and canvassed by the Eastern Mandate Union in 1993. Who can say with any certainty that his fateful meeting and supposed rapprochement with Emeka Ojukwu at the EMU conference of that year, was not the bold move that sprang the tragic lock of his date with the hangman?
The refrain is loud across the land today about a sovereign national conference. Was not Emeka Ojukwu its pioneer ideologue?
ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ
More disturbing perhaps to Ojukwu’s numerous admirers is the fact that he never did outgrow his impetuous and disagreeable side. In the post-exile years, he appeared unable or unwilling to find accommodation within any grouping of Igbo leaders where his views and person did not dominate every other. Instead, he aligned himself to several neuveu-riche Igbo personalities with whom he canvassed various controversial ideas to destabilise the entrenched order in the South East.
A case in point: the great hullaballoo about an Eze Ndigbo Gburu Gburu, “World-wide Igbo Chieftain”, which the mischief makers appropriated to him as his rightful title. To further this ploy, they went about creating irrelevant chiefdoms among diaspora Igbo in every town, village, neighbourhood and hamlet in Nigeria, till they attained the ridiculous limit when even university students crowned their own Eze Ndigbos. Somehow, these charlatans wanted the gullible masses to believe that their spirited grab for social relevance amounted to the elevation of Igbo cultural standards and ethics.
Lamentably, our much vaunted Eze di Ora Ndigbo Nma, denied himself the worthy spectacle of a public crowning and went into an obscure sitting room in Enugu to receive his elevation to Dim aka Eze Ndigbo Gburu Gburu, from a disputant to the throne of Eze Nri, the ancestral roots of all Ndigbo in Nigeria.
From Ohaneze Ndigbo to the Eastern Mandate Union etc., our hero seemed better attuned to operating from the fringe than within, where he could be a rallying point. Though he continued to speak out valiantly for nationalist causes, as he did at the Constitutional Conference that enunciated the present six-zone political structure for the country, Ojukwu cast the image of an iroko always. No other big tree could thrive underneath him, nor could he share space with any tree of comparable size.
From this vantage point, we can readily appreciate his contradictory nature and understand why he was probably the most misunderstood Nigerian of our time.
In the end, APGA proved the only platform where he could hold ground as maximum leader with no discernable rivals but countless minions and carpetbaggers who could readily count on his huge popularity to win them heavy harvests of Igbo votes at the polls.
ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ
Who then is a hero, we might ask, and does Ojukwu qualify to be so labelled? Why is he respected by large sections of Nigeria, and worshipped by the masses of the South East?
Ojukwu deserves all the accolades accruing to him, because a hero is not necessarily a saint though saintliness does have its heroic dimensions. A hero may not even be a devoted husband or a good leader. Rather, a hero is just another human being, flaws and all, who in a very trying time steps bravely forward to confront some palpable danger on behalf of another person or group of persons.
At a great historical moment, Ojukwu stood up to be a symbol of the quest by Eastern Nigerians for national survival. The dream may have died but nothing can ever kill the pride of the people at that valiant stand. Therefore, his numerous faults notwithstanding, Ojukwu is the people’s hero and they would be at his funeral in their teeming numbers to show it.
Our great masquerade has danced its way out of the festive square and gone to a deserved rest. Wistful apprehension reigns all round; whence comes another Ijele?
ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ ᴥ
This poser offers a handy lens by which to examine the quixotic power play by the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). Deriving from attempts to thwart a purely social effort by Ndigbo in Ikorodu, Lagos, to express themselves culturally through the celebration of the New Yam Festival in 1998, MASSOB has grown into a quaint socio-political experiment.
The Ayangburen of Ikorodu and his palace chiefs could not have imagined the outcome. But when they ruled against the desire of the vast membership of the Central Igbo Community in Ikorodu to celebrate their New Yam festival in grand style, they set off a wave of strong emotions. The CIC had ordered its teeming members to close shop on the scheduled Saturday for a mini carnival complete with masquerades, dances and Igbo cuisine, to which the Ayangburen and his chiefs were invited as special guests of honour. Chief Guest of Honour too was Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. On Thursday evening, the Ayangburen sent notice to Chuma Adichie, president general of the CIC, that the Palace could not allow the festival to hold, because it would be a travesty of Ikorodu culture for masquerades to perform in daylight! Detachments of riot police drove noisily around the town to show the determination of the authorities to enforce the ban.
Chuma Adichie and his able secretary, Malachy Ezeilo had depended on a few stalwart fellows like one Ralph Uwazurike to secure the attendance of the Chief Guest of Honour. This being the era of the mushrooming of diaspora Ezes, Uwazurike had a title in his kitty as Agada (The Lock or Gatekeeper) of Ijesha, the drab shanty neighbourhood adjoining Surulere and Mushin on the Isolo Expressway. The controversy over the Gburugburu title was brewing mildly and a minority group on the CIC did not seem too keen on Ojukwu as a choice for Chief Guest. Yet it rankled deeply that the Ayangburen could be so mean. Two years earlier, the entire Igbo nation had rallied in Ikorodu with masquerades and dances from all over Igboland to give deserving last honours to Adeniran Ogunsanya at the late politician’s funeral. The CIC worked hard to secure the Trade Fair Complex at short notice. Adichie and Ezeilo with Uwazurike and others as facilitators convinced the Chief Guest of Honour to honour the appointment and save their fractured festival.
Led into the venue by the pulsating drums of Igba Ndi Eze, Ojukwu took his place on the dais and made a speech recommending that the different ethnic groups of Nigeria must dialogue to understand and appreciate each other’s cultures for increased unity and social harmony. Thereafter, observers noticed an increasing rapport between the Eze Gburugburu and his trusted Agada. By the turn of the century, after Ojukwu’s routing in yet another election but this time as a presidential candidate, Uwazurike had succeeded in moulding a peculiar freedom charter for politically aggrieved Igbo men and women. Avowing a non-violent approach, the dream of its members is to wrest independence from the Nigerian state by the steady rousing of baffled Igbo youth and die-hard Biafrans through various forms of civil disobedience. After first glance, the close resemblance of its name to the cause of the Ogoni ethnic nation provoked cynical comment everywhere. The constant deployment of barefaced misinformation and downright falsehood by MASSOB propagandists did not endear them to discerning Ndigbo.. Nonetheless, sympathy for the organisation is huge among segments of the Igbo ethnic nation. Few Igbos dare challenge the MASSOB vision because, for many, the Land of the Rising Sun evokes profound sentiments.
The question to ask is this: How could Ojukwu allow Uwazurike to use his name for the spurious MASSOB agenda? Consequently then, who was really using who: Uwazuruike or Ojukwu? Similar queries force themselves into contention as we review our hero’s strident march across the national stage. In the hysterical months leading to the declaration of Biafra, did Ojukwu manipulate the idealistic students of the University of Nigeria and other tertiary schools in Eastern Nigeria, or did they use him? Did he use the yuppie politicians of the Ikemba Front into supporting his drive for Zik’s senatorial front yard? Or did they feed his gargantuan ego with plenty hype to delude him into believing that the position was his for the asking? Did he use Peter Obi and the members of the APGA political family to create a platform for lifelong political relevance or did they ride on his credibility to assume the political offices they now hold?
Everyone’s guess is as good as his neighbour’s.
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