“When beggars die, there are no comets seen. Heaven themselves even blaze forth the death of Princes”.
When the legendary Shakespeare uttered this epic quote in “Julius Caesar” his locus classicus of all-time acclaim – through Calpurnia, wife of Julius Caesar the celebrated Roman Emperor on whom the book was titled – it was as if she had in mind,the great Zik of Africa,one of the most intriguing prodigies and indomitable libertarian warriors ever to have emerged from the black race.
Although this epic quote issuing from Calpurnia emanated within the scary context of her attempt to warn the Great Caesar of the horrible nightmares, she persistently had to contend with as an ominous augury which in its aptly prophetic exactitude was to unfold in the gory assassination of the great Roman Emperor – however the significant essence clearly held out in the fore-going consists in the important role of celestial bodies in fore-telling episodes of significant import to humanity – just as authoritatively revealed by griots of oral history – as contained in Zik’s autobiography titled “My Odyssey” that a Comet was cited to have dashed through the rustic sleepy horizon of Zungeru on November 16 1904, the very day the Great Zik was born exactly 121 years ago today ; signifying an auspicious augury for the glorious future that was later to unfold in the heroic life of this newly arrived Child of Destiny
Little wonder therefore that at the height of his fame and glory this legendary Nigerian leader and amazingly intriguing stormy petrel in the battle against the British Colonial suzerain,bestrode the libertarian agitation for independence like a colossus.
Imagine for instance Kwame Nkrumah;his ebullient stature not only in the African continental politics but across the vast global space. Could one believe that in the early 1930s when Zik first settled in Ghana as a Newspaper editor after his eventful academic sojourn with enviable strings of degrees from America, Nkrumah was merely a primary school teacher in Ghana.
Zik’s towering charisma, iconic larger than life imagery, erudition and riveting oration proved an irresistible inspiration for Nkrumah who in emulation of the great Zik, also hearkened abroad for a hallowed acquisition of the golden fleece which of course eventually proved an enabling platform for his leviathan grip on the Ghanaian political firmament coupled with his supreme sway on the African continental canvass, and of course his remarkable presence in the global political order.
Such was the inspirational exudation from the great Zik that Nkrumah decided as a deliberate matter of course,to attend the same Lincoln University as had earlier provided the formative crucible for the enviable intellectual outpourings of this remarkable son of Africa.
So awesome was his presence in those memorable era which proved such an irresistible inspiration;that inevitably pitted him as a rallying point commanding a cult followership of dynamic, fearless and overzealous group of youths proudly identified as Zikists – prominent amongst which were the likes of Osita Agwuna,daring and militant;Tony Enahoro,Oged Macaulay,eldest surviving son of Macaulay before his death;Chike Obi, later a globally renowned Cambridge educated Professor of Mathematics;Chike Ekuyasi,the cerebral Mokwugo Okoye,M.C.K.Ajuluchukwu.,Fred Anyawu,Smart Ebbi,and a diversity of Yoruba elements like Aliyu Babs Fafunwa later a Professor and Minister of Education,Dr.Tunji Otegbeye,a foremost marxist revolutionary intellectual; Proprietor Ireti Group of Hospitals and member of the Constituent Assembly during Abacha era and Adewale Fashanu,whose children John and Justin Fashanu both born in England later rose to be celebrated footballers playing for England in the heydays of their soccer careers.And of course,Raji Abdallah an Ebira-born Northerner, distinguished for his courageous activism and vociferous outspokenness against the colonial British overlords in those days.
A tireless war-horse,Zik’s anti-colonial skirmishes engaged at the battle of wits and intellect was terrific.In this regards,one recalls a symposium which held at the famous Glover Memorial Hall,presided over by the legendary Herbert Macaulay – which incidentally marked his last public appearance.
The symposium which featured journalists from Zik’s group of newspapers delved into varieties of critical themes – like C.U.M. Gardener of the West African Pilot who spoke on “Exile Can Have No Sting”;M.Odunewu of the Eastern Nigerian Guardian who did a comprehensive discourse on “The Guillotine Cannot Destroy Man’s Ideal”
Others included G.I.Mbadiwe of the Daily Comet who discussed ” Firing Squads Cannot Destroy Man’s Ideals” A. Adeneye, of The Southern Nigerian Defender,dwelt on “Concentration Camp Cannot Cramp Man’s Conscience,while Editor of Nigerian Spokesman,A.Y.S.Tinubu spoke so brilliantly on “Stone Walls Do Not A Prison Make”.
Such was his strategic intellectual combativity that kept the British colonial overlords stiffly on the edge in those memorable heydays that saw the Great Zik in the best of his elements in terms of his valorific spartan ardour in the battle for national liberty.
In those days,when the great Zik spoke,he electrified his audience stiff and held them spell bound with his oratorical dexterity as the teeming generality of Nigerians surged forth in hysteria to hear him speak and adore their treasure vault of vocabularies with pyro-technical lexicons like “egalitarianism” “el-do-rado” “determinism” “risorgimento” amongst his inexhaustible surfeit of jaw-breaking neologisms delivered with impressive demagogic artistry that were then his familiar identifying hallmarks.
Particularly ringing a nostalgia of fond memory was an article the Great Zik wrote in a Sunday Times edition of either 1973 or 1974 – I really can’t remember precisely – in which he proposed the theory of Diarchy.As a Secondary school student, then,I had the privileged advantage in those days not only to have read but also endeavored as much as possible to guzzle the content as much as I could – courtesy of my Dad a Railway man of blessed memory who would often regard it as an abomination to miss out on regular purchase of any edition of the Daily Times in those days.About Fifty-Two years later,I remember still as if it were yesterday,formidable lexical arsenals like “hypothetical syllogism” “Ouod Erat Demonstrandum” among several others now forgotten in the evanescing vapour of memory.
I remember a particular occasion when a crop of Airport Correspondents took him on in a chat as he was just arriving from the U.S.where he had traveled for treatment over his failing health.I was dazzled by the amazing spark of scholarship of this remarkable man of learning who in an admirable show of erudition turned the interface with the news-hounds into a lecture theater narrating in response to a particular Nigerian question raised by the Aviation reporters – a comparative analogical metaphor of the Italian war of Unity – a subject that often irresistibly tickled my fancy, during my A/Level studies – quoting formidable actors in that memorable saga such as Mazini,Count Cavor,Victor Emmanuel.
Former Chairman of Daily Times, Laban Namme heard one of his electrifying speeches delivered in 1946 at the Glover Memorial Hall during the heydays of the nationalist ferment.So overwhelming and irresistible was that experience for young Laban Namme that he veered into the exacting world of politics and journalism in emulation of the great Zik.
At this juncture, one essentially recalls an exhilarating narrative by no less a personality than Walter Carrington,former American Ambassador to Nigeria,who attested – at a ceremony of tributes I personally covered as a reporter at the Law School Auditorium Lagos in 1996 – to how children of his late uncle who worked with the Nigeria Railways during the colonial era and later coming back home after their father’s retirement reeled out exciting real tales and legends of the great Zik in terms of his charismatic erudition and his gripping demosthenic oration in those memorable good old days.
His rabidly implacable agitation for independence commenced in earnest at the Nigeria Youth Movement which paraded dynamic, vibrant and intelligent youths in the persons of the highly cerebral Ernest Sesei Ikoli, H. O. Davies, Ladipo Solanke, Obafemi Awolowo, Samuel Akinsanya, later the Odemo of Ishara, Kofo Abayomi,Akinola Maja, Professor Eyo Ita among others.
These determined younger elements cut a departure from the more learned but conservative elderly crop of intelligentsia in the mould of Sir Eric Moore,J.T.Caulcrick,Sir Adeyemo Alakija,Sir Kitoyi Ajasa,an intimate friend of Lord Lugard;and Dr.J.K.Randle who though their contemporary;was however an exception being an inimitable critic and activist who fought the colonial overlords and the prevailing injustice of the time with such aggressive vigor that he was dismissed from public service in 1893.
A particularly notable moment in his chequered Odyssey came about in 1941, following an intensely sustained insurrection in the West Indies, consequent upon which the then British Prime Minister visited the U.S.A. where he met President Delano Roosevelt at Placenta Bay Newfoundland in August 1941.
There the two leaders signed what in popular reference was known as the Atlantic Charter, which among its eight cardinal points conceded to the right of any group of people to choose their own form of government.
Acting on the fore-going which comprised the third clause of that charter, Zik sent a cable gram to Churchill asking him to give an official confirmation to that statement – but astonishingly, Churchill in a reply that fumed with anger, fired back that he (Zik) had not become the king’s first minister to preside over the liquidation of the British empire.
In reaction, an intensely agitated Zik fired back “I can see no hope for a more prosperous and contented Nigeria under the present colonial status”
Again in 1943,Zik was at the head of eight journalists on itinerary mission from West Africa to London as guests of the British Council.The delegation seized the opportunity to submit a memorandum composed by Zik.In the memorandum titled “The Atlantic Charter and British West Africa” the delegation tabled four demands expectedly anticipated to accelerate the attainment of Independence. However the British authorities would not see any need to dignify the demands at least with a reply.
On returning to Nigeria, an agonized Zik expressed in passionately unmistakeable terms to the then President of the Nigeria Youth Movement, Dr. Akinola Maja :
“Nigeria has very few friends in England…. so far as our political aspirations are concerned… we must close ranks, work co-operatively and carry forward any reconstruction that is practicable…. show that we are able to rise beyond our minor internal differences…. most of our critics use that argument to prevent the realization of our aspiration. ”
A particularly momentous period in his vociferous crusade for liberty was the memorably historic national strike of 1945 led by the redoubtable Labor veteran Pa Michael Omnibus Imoudu,in a development that paralyzed and shut down every spheres of activities even as marketmen and women all stayed indoors in unshaken empathy with the protesting mass of Labor force.
Lasting out for a protracted span of forty-four odd days and fifty-five days in some parts of the country,a huge pall of darkness enveloped the geo-political landscape. In the midst of the unfolding conundrum suddenly burst a distress announcement from Zik that the colonial government was on to a diabolical scheme to assasinate him.
Although a cross-section of cynics especially his erstwhile colleagues in the NYM dismissed the claim as a pretensive propaganda hype aimed at whipping up sentiment for political self-aggrandizement – but no matter the controversy hinging on the veracity of the claim, the incident however succeeded in spawning the Onitsha-born Journalist-politician on to a greater political clout and gravitas than ever.
As it would also turn out,the general strike coupled with Ziks scurrilous commentaries and pestiferous editorials in antagonistic condemnation of the British colonial suzerains which at the same time exuded an open support of the defiant striking workers,contributed in no mean measure to accelerating the momentum of the independence struggle as the colonial authorities came forth with constitutional reviews conceding at least in its own little ways, to gradual democratic reforms which commenced in earnest with the 1946 Richard Constitution, Oliver Lyttleton Constitution of 1951,the Macpherson Constitution of 1954 which presaged an accelerated succession of Constitutional Conferences in London that eventually ushered the long awaited attainment of Independence.
Looking back in retrospect,it was on account of his remarkably restive ardour and rising populist appeal that his political path crossed in collaborative synergy with the legendary Herbert Heelas Macaulay,with whom he co-founded the NCNC in 1944. As it would turn out,Zik’s appointment with destiny began for the first time,to find a poignantly definitive maturation with the formation of NCNC of which Macaulay, became the pioneer Leader,and Zik the Secretary-General.
In those days,Macaulay’s love for Zik knew no bound for which reason he had often left no one in doubt that the illustrious fellow Nigerian compatriot should as a matter of course, succeed him,in the event of his terrestrial departure for the heavenly.
In this regard,it needs be recalled that barely a day before his earthly transition,the legendary Macaulay in a poem personally addressed to Zik,wrote:
Keep the flag flying
The flag of Liberty
Keep the flag flying
Soon I shall be no more
I’ll have passed through the door.And meet those gone before.
Keep the flag flying
Flying in great delight
I’ll soon be in the land of
With my Theo-do-lite(light keep the light flying)
Earlier at Glover Memorial Hall, April 18,1946,at a symposium presided over by Herbert Macaulay,the grand old man spoke in a statement that portrayed a special
formal anointing on the Great Zik : “Here you have a great man,a full blooded African, being persecuted and run after,but they can’t catch him.We are for him and so long as we stand by him, nothing will happen to him……My dear countrymen here is a hero,whose age my own doubles doing such marvelous work for you.Some people say that he hates the Yoruba people.I don’t believe them… He is a Nigerian,an Ibo,a Yoruba,an Hausa…..”
What in essence does the fore-going indicate one might ask? It consists of course in the clear indication that Zik’s erudition and oratorical prowess,while they actually availed as assets to his meteoric political ascent, a particularly crucial and fundamental factor which foremost above others, tremendously catapulted him to the commanding apex of fame, in the political arena, during the pre-independence era, was indisputably the Herbert Macaulay factor on whose larger-than-life stature Zik rode to the summit of fame and acclaim.
But what did Zik inherit power for,one might ask? Like a tragedy waiting to happen,the NCNC from its mammoth cosmopolitan national breadth – immediately petered into an ethno-tribal apparatchik of Pan-Igbo nationalism in which the Ibo Union,a powerful Ibo Socio-cultural organ acquired an incontestable primacy as the motivating prime-mover tilting the machinery of party authority in partisan all-inclusiveness of Igbo particular tribal concern in which other ethno-tribal interests discountably counted for sheer,trifle expendable.
If sheer verbal denotation is anything to go by,then one recalls in this regard,the lamentable chauvinistic epigram by Zik at the Ibo State Assembly,held in Aba on June 25 1949 to the effect that “The God of Africa has specially created the Ibo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of ages.”
We would also remember in ample corroboration of this epic quote in bigotry – by Charles Onyema a member of the Legislative Council,who in an imperial fit of ethno-tribal grandstanding emitted in 1945, the unpardonable heresy that “The domination of Nigeria by Ibos is only a matter of time”.
It was therefore not surprising in predictable determinism from the doctrinaire Lebensraum of Igbo imperial hegemony with Zik and Onyema as earliest authoritative confessor – that the same Zik negotiated a frantic incursion into the portals of Premiership of the Western region following the impressive showings of his NCNC-led party at the 1951 Western Regional election.
He was otherwise as good as coasting home to victory as the first Premier of Western Region, but for the adroit master-stroke that was eventually to countermand the move considered as an absurdity of unprecedented proportion for a non-native of Igbo extraction in inquilinary political occupation of yoruba geo-political satrapy – more-so at the elevated and sensitive hierarchy of Premiership – given the tribal geo-politics which had been a dominant factor in the prevailing power dynamics of that era of intense mutual distrust at that vertical ethno-tribal dimension.
At this juncture, I shall proceed to expound three signally illustrative instances – which though a common staple of popular knowledge – yet bears re-stating – if only for its illuminating relevance to the moment at stake – in which the defective strabism of Igbo leaders, Zik and Ojukwu in particular, in terms of their myopic preferences of political alliances, had not only draggled the larger mass of their collective filial kins into the excruciating marginalization conundrum, celebrated over the years, by a good number of our Igbo brothers in inconsolable crocodilean canticles, but also in the process, dragooned the collective Nigerian nationhood into its contemporary socio-political tumult.
However, let me affirm, right before the narrative just about coming on the heels, that the old dispensation as earlier just recounted evidently belonged strictly to the past,and does not in any way, vitiate a jot, the credible moral force, latent in any attempt at a fraternizing parley with at least a better enlightened North, as currently extant – contrasting in its progressive paradigm – with the feudal fascism of the era of old; for which Awo desperately needed fellow progressive fraters in collaborative synergy; for ultimate libertarian triumph, of the Northern Talakawas and the entire mass of down-trodden commoners across the vast national space ; in an avowed visionary pursuit which unfortunately footled to failure for lack of a willing mate in response to the clarion call, for a cohesively unified front, particularly from the strategic North.
Going down the memory lane,1959 to be precise, one recalls that Awolowo advanced an alliance overture towards Zik, premised on the logic that a combination of the Action Group, led by him, and the Zik-led NCNC, will overwhelm the Hausa-Fulani NPC, whose narrow feudal bent was clearly ill at variance with the vision of a united and virile Nigeria, and the liberation of the down-trodden, especially the highly pauperized Talakawas of the north.
Zik was crystally enamoured of Awo’s unassailable logic, or so it seemed. But dramatically, all of a sudden, Nigerians woke up one day, only to discover that the great Zik had indeed gone with the Hausa-Fulanis! Of course,Zik’s preferential cohabitation with the Hausa-Fulani NPC was ostensibly inspired by the prejudicial particularism to canalise the benefit of the union for a vantage upper-hand leverage of his fellow Igbo kinsmen over the Yorubas considered by him as arch rivals of his Igbo brothers.
Thus did the Hausa-Fulani NPC seize power, and promptly grabbed it as a much-awaited opportunity to annihilate Awo.Needless to emphasize of course that throughout the elastic time space of
this fledgeling era of the First Republic – Yorubas now ruthlessly ostracised from the scheme of affairs – suffered a draconian yoke of marginalization amidst the collaborative governance of the Igbo-dominated NCNC and of course the Hausa-Fulani NPC on the other hand.
In this regard,one recalls just a poignantly narrative – albeit tip of the iceberg – in which the rational canon of equity and fairness were unabashedly thrown to the dogs as Kenneth Dike and Eni Njoku were both foisted as Vice Chancellors of Universities of Ibadan and Unilag respectively – in the Yoruba indigenous South-West which availed with a harvest of world renowned scholars and erudites – riding on the chauvinistic tribal clout of their kinsmen Zik and Aja Nwachuku the then Minister of Education and of course Dr. Nwafor Orizu the then presiding Senate President – but deeming it irrationally contrary wise to apply the same parameters of non indigenous V.C.in the context of University of Nsukka.These were just a particle of the overwhelming enormity of the draconian yoke of marginalization this immensely strategic region was fatedly emburdened to contend with.
Of course, those who knew at that time, would easily recall Akintola’s machiaevillian deployment, being a willing myrmidon of the north, for a head-on collision against Awo, his erstwhile leader – as inspired and engineered by the Hausa-Fulani oligarchs, animated by a subterranean cant for a greater Lebensraum and hegemonic racial continuity – and the violent conundrum in the West; eventually culminating in the January 15,1966 military coup, master-minded by a cross-section of Igbo-born army officers, and the assumption of power by Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi, as the first military Head of State, after the gruesome assassination of the then Prime-Minister of the federation, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, and the then premier of Northern region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, a direct great grandson of Shehu Usman Dan Fodio.
Needless to express at this juncture that as the contagion of violence festered in its tremulous quake,the great Zik dramatically capsized in supine stupor – into a jelly; extremely lacking in the liver to checkmate the Frankenstein Monster earlier unleashed through his unholy dinner with the devil of the Northern political alliance – it was therefore no wonder that seeing the handwriting visibly etched on the wall,he swiftly aligned his feet for an exilic marathon abroad disguised in clever decoy of medical tourism to address a supposedly failing health.
The violent and bloody January coup was to inspire the July 29 coup, spear-headed by the Hausa-Fulani elements in the army, in inconsolable revanche against the killings of Balewa and Ahmadu Bello,amongst other Hausa-Fulani elements then extant in the army.
Of course, the then ruling military Head of State, Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi, among sundry top army officers of Igbo extraction, also lost their lives in the retributive backlash against the Igbo-dominated coupists and
a good number of Igbo
military and civilian elites which in disastrously fatal turn, catalysed a massive wave of violent inter-tribal killings
between the Igbos and Hausas;triggering the declaration of Biafra, by Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, and the inevitable
consecution of a civil war; a gory celebration of blood bath, in which an estimated two million souls perished.
In yet another ominous turn, 1979 would again witness an unfortunate rehash of the same charade, as Awo again made an alliance overture to Zik, ostensibly premised on a mutual synergy between the Awo-led Unity Party of Nigeria ,on one hand, and the Zik-led Nigerian People’s Party, aimed at counteracting the Hausa-Fulani-led NPN,a feudal ideological resurgence of the Northern People’s Congress of the First Republic. Again Zik as in the First Republic, pretended as if Awo convincingly had his good ears, little knowing that he had all the while,been running with the hare,but hunting with the hound.
Dramatically as usual,the entire nation woke up one fateful morning, only to discover that the Zik-led NPP had unabashedly flocked along, in mutual parley with the Hausa-Fulani NPN, a feudal re-incarnation of the First Republic Northern People’s Congress – all in the pre-meditated bid to exploit the alliance as a competitive cutting edge gambit for his Igbo kinsmen over the Yorubas – which as later to unfold; of course fetched the Igbos the privileged slot of Speakership of the House of Reps and choicy ministerial appointments and Chairmanship of juicy parastatals – in a government in which an Igbo also had an added plume of the exalted position of Vice President in the person of Alex Ekwueme who was then second in command to Alhaji Shehu Shagari the then Executive President of the Nation.At this juncture,it becomes pertinent to note again that as in the First Republic,Yorubas languished at the unreckonable backwaters of national affairs,with an excruciating yoke of marginalization, collectively hung on their lean neck.
Of course, we could all well attest to the manner in which the alliance fortified the NPN, which having ripped off on their fortune-hunting partners, the NPP, to install their men into principal offices in the legislature – now embarked on pleasurable binge of massive tyranny, as unfolded in the politically motivated mass killings of the Bakolori farmers in Sokoto, the deportation of the Majority Leader of G.N.P.P. Alhaji Abdul-rahmam Shugaba, the terrifying tomfoolery of the 1983 elections, and the devastating quake and tumult, coupled with the demonic prodigality in public spending; a saturnalian frenzy of high-wire corruption, which again was to culminate in the Buhari-Idiagbon coup of December 31,1983.
Of course as an intensely agitated Zik cried out, following the massive electoral chicanery,in which even his party the NPP was robbed of Plateau State then under its governance – by the ruling NPN throwing every honor of mutual friendship to the dogs – we would all recall the horrifying reckless rant of the notorious rantipole, Chuba Okadigbo, who unsurprisingly typical of his coprolitic gutter-rant style, which would go down as a locus classicus in intellectual hooliganism, dismissed the rightful democratic remonstrance of the great Zik as” the ranting of an ant”
Looking back, one could well affirm without any shred of doubt,just as earlier stressed,that Zik’s preferential cohabitation with the then Northern People’s Congress at the time in question, was motivated by a pathologically embedded narcissism that he could use the benefit of an alliance with the then feudal Northern People’s Congress,to acquire greater leverage for his fellow Igbo brethren over the Yorubas, then renowned for their elevated notch of superior education. Unfortunately, as it would turn out on each occasion, none else, but the Igbo, came out the greatest losers as patently expressed in an unremitting pathos of mournful dirge,ever oozing in their lachrymal canticles on marginalization.
This unimaginable faux pas of history would also derive an unfortunate replication in the inexplicable choice that saw the Ikemba of Nnewi, Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu who on his return from exilic sojourn in Ivory Coast, now Cote D’ivoire, had sought for a political party to enlist in, and found none, except the Hausa-Fulani NPN, thus betraying an arrant lack of grasp of the causative dynamics of history.
On what note does one therefore reckon with such big goof in cognitive dissonance, emanating from a supposedly learned Oxford-educated historian of an elevated Master’s degree cadre, as the Ikemba of blessed memory, one may ask?
Not until the devastating defeat he suffered in the Senatorial duel from Dr. Onwudiwe of the NPP, just as his party, the NPN, barely did reckon with him, did it eventually dawn on him that he was already demystified and his terror-value which hitherto had stared the Northern feudal oligarchs inwardly scared stiff, effectively defused.
Similarly, in a back-track reminder as might pertinently well be deemed for strategic emphasis, we would all witness the manner in which Zik had jettisoned two crucial and strategic overtures for progressive synergy, as advanced by Awo, firstly in 1959,and secondly in 1979, exactly twenty years after; and the catastrophic aftermath unleashed on each occasion for corporate national existence.
In this regard,it becomes particularly apposite to remember that at that decisive moment in 1959,Awo emphatically told Zik in unmistakeably no uncertain terms that he was sure ready to concede the leadership mantle to the great Zik in the impending dispensation of the Independence First Republican era;but Zik with his elevated exposure, erudition, intellect and leviathan activism in the Independence struggle – animated by petty chauvinistic tribal scheming at Pan-Igbo Superiority over the Yorubas,would rather condescend to the relegating back-row of puerile Ceremonial Governor-Generalship in deference to the lesser enlightened mass of Hausa-Fulanis who as reactionary bastion of feudal anachronism fired by the conquistadorian vision of universal Pan-Islamism, supremely rooted in the vast Nigerian terra firma,were devoid of any practical motivation for a united virile and progressive Nigeria.
Indeed looking back in retrospect,one recalls a particularly distressing moment when the then Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) as it was then known,demanded relevant tax receipt from Zik,as evidence of tax compliance.While Awolowo had all his Tax receipts clean and intact,Zik had practically little or nothing to show.
Seeing that the development cast a pall of gloom on his electoral eligibility as a presidential contestant,in view of the ominous signals emanating from FEDECO, the entire nation was thrown into a confounding wave of shock as the Great Zik condescended from his towering Olympian Statesmanship – and African continental stature – in a woolly sentimental outcry that the power that be had concluded arrangement using the FEDECO to disqualify him from the hippodrome of the presidential race,because he was an Ibo.Imagine the lamentable diametrical plunge from the tower of African continental renown to an atrophied Pontiff of trifle tribalistic catechisms
Remember that in the wake of the declaration of Biafra,the same primordial filial recurrence could not but occupy a better part of the Great Zik who with unbridled zest and gusto transmogrified into the motivating dynamo of the Biafran propaganda machine whose dexterity in the art almost drowned the Yakubu Gowon-led government of the Federal government in popular global reprobation
However, the very moment the Great Zik saw the swing of pendulum in irreversible rubicon against the fickle Biafran tide he chickened out pronto;condemned Biafra and immediately declared for the Federal government.
In this regard, it needs be recalled that Sir James Robertson, the last British Governor-General of Nigeria, during the colonial era, did write about this great Nigerian,in his memoir as ” an odd variable character with great charm on occasions,but on others, difficult and unpredictable….found it far from easy to follow his changing mood ” while the Late Professor Ayodele Awojobi, the engineering genius of blessed memory described him categorically as ‘”consistently inconsistent”.
Now pray: in taking recourse to the feudal
Hausa-Fulani NPC, and NPN in 1959 and 1979 respectively, exactly 20 years after, whose interest was Zik – or to rather reference him in deservingly honorific terms – the Great Zik of Africa – whose interest was he serving? National interest or the interest of his Igbo kith and kin? As for national interest, he could well tell that to the marines!
Yet as earlier recalled on a lamentable note of irony – but still bears with purposeful repetition if only for added emphasis – Zik actually rode to dominantly prosilient fame and eminence, on the political war-chest of the legendary Herbert Heelas Macaulay – the then leader of the NCNC, at a time that Zik held forte as the Secretary-General – who at various public fora, openly expressed his passionate love for Zik, as his beloved son, in whom he was well pleased – which is to say that the wider national
appeal which the Zik-led NCNC enjoyed after the demise of Macaulay
was due in the main,to the immense populist clout and formidable political war chest of the towering larger-than-life imagery of the legendary Macaulay, who at the zenith of his fame and glory, bestrode the Nigerian political hemisphere like a colossus.
It was a “tribute”to these grave political miscalculations of the great Zik, that no less a personality than former Premier of the Eastern region, Dr. M.l. Okpara of blessed memory, recanted in agonizing lament, that he will regret till his dying day, his failure to have advised Zik, to rather go with the Awo-led Action Group, as against the parochial expedience of the Hausa-Fulani feudal NPC.
In this lamentable faux pas by Zik one clearly discerns the inability of the erudite libertarian warrior of the colonial era to attune in cognitive reckoning with the inspirational word-on-the-marble of Thucydide the celebrated Greek historian in his epic book on the Peloponnesian War,that “Identity of interests is the surest of bonds,whether between States or Individuals.”
Of course did he also fail in the same vein by his inability to adhere to his own precept “to rise beyond our minor internal differences…. most of our critics use that argument to prevent the realization of our aspirations.” – as contained in his letter as earlier mentioned – to Akinola Maja in expressing his dissatisfaction with the disappointing attitude of the British Colonial powers to Independence during the critical epoch of the Independence struggle.
Unfortunately, by the time the Zik-led NPP would negotiate a corrective ideological repentance for the progressive configuration, of “The Twelve Progressive Governors” – collectively comprising two governors from the G.N.P.P.;two from PRP; five from the Awo-led UPN and two from the Zik-led NPP – which was Awolowo’s brain-child in progressive synergy, which Zik had twice rejected, initially in 1959 and again in 1979,it was already too late in the day, as the looming surge of anarchy, had irrepressibly waxed beyond redemption, and could thus not avail as a viable counter-force to rebuff the incursion of the Buhari-Idiagbon duo, who on December 31st 1983, sprung forth to upstage the apple-cart of the corrupt and purulently decadent Shagari-led civilian administration of the second republic.
The pertinent question that needs be asked if only for emphatic reminder of an erratic shortcomings of gravely fundamental import that severely impinged the very basis of unity justice and equity is – why would it take so long for Zik to realise the need for a progressive synergy for the overall interest of the nation,rather than an expedient self-serving marriage of convenience with the NPC – a reactionary partisan outfit woven in an oppressive ideological Feudal contexture – animated by a parochial visionary beneficence of his Igbo kith and kin at the expense of a pivotally strategic Western geo-political bloc.
And in the case of Ojukwu, we would all recall, how having been politically demystified and deflated sequel to his attendant fiasco at the Senatorial election, he,in angered repudiation of his erstwhile Hausa-Fulani allies like Zik his kinsman, recanted with spirited vigor, to a doctrinaire proselytism of an East-West understanding fanatically propounded and propagated as a counter-force to the monolithic geo-political behemoth of the north.
Unfortunately, and on a tragic note of paradox, the average Igbo man would see nothing wrong in the political leaders of their own genitive breed, let alone the discerning cognitive acumen that essentially exposes these two key leaders of the Igbo tribe, in the context of the endemic faux pas in their choices and preferences borne of narrow personal and at best, tribal promptings, in terms of their dialectical linkage to the conundrum prevalently etched for decades, with increasingly progressive virulence on the polity; of which the Igbos were to come out the worse, arising from the seminal outpourings of the blighted vision of their own leaders.
Many years ago,I stumbled on an interview Chief Richard Akinjide granted in the Vanguard newspaper,in which he ascribed blames on Awo and Zik for their inability to collaborate in navigating the ship of nationhood to the glorious harbor of destiny it rightly deserved in proportionate terms with its staggering geo-political expanse and vast endowment in human and natural resources.
Dissappointingly however he failed,whether overtly or covertly to apportion the blame to appropriate quarters rightly deserving; because while Awo was animated by sublime transcendental cosmopolitanism of an egalitarian Nigerian Nationhood;Zik a supposed statesman and Father of the nation was immersed in petty surreptitious but frenetic obsession, with petty competitive nationalism of Pan Igbo Superiority at the expense of the Yorubas.
It was undoubtedly on this score that the Great Zik disappointingly
failed the test of Leadership because as Richard Nixon rightly observed :
“It’s not enough for a leader to know the right thing. The would-be leader without the judgement or perception to make the right decision fails for lack of vision;the one who knows the right thing but cannot achieve it,fails because he is ineffectual.The great leader needs both the vision and the capacity to achieve what is right.He hires managers to help him do so but only he can set the right direction and provide the motive force”
Zik’s crass display of visionary deficit especially for a leader of his remarkably vast exposure as visibly sign-posted in a misalliance animated by a chauvinistic Pan Igbo nationalism as an aptly deserving response to Richard Akinjide could not have been more amply found in Emmanuel Nwobosi,the Army Officer who during the January coup of 1966,led the Ibadan operation in which the Premier of Western Region,S.L. Akintola lost his life.
In an interview granted the Sun Newspaper,marking his 80th birthday,the Igbo-born military officer remarked:”If it were an Igbo coup,then we must have planned to put either Zik or Okpara as the next Prime Minister. They were there,but instead we decided to put Awolowo not because he was Yoruba,not because there were no Igbo person to put there,but Awo had a track record because when he ran the West,his administration was good.He made a revolution in the place that everybody was envious of and we wanted him to replicate that in the whole of Nigeria and that was why the choice was Awo”.
It wasn’t that Zik did not know.He knew better, but unfortunately,the patriotic vision as would have enabled the Great Awo to replicate the miracles in the Old Western region on the larger national canvass,as fervently as the patriotic January 15th coupists would have wished would unfortunately not be,obviously for Zik’s subterranean Igbo agenda as earlier rightly expressed.
Indeed,on this,no less a person than Awo did actually attest in a statement I personally encountered on reliable first hand authority from the newspapers in which Awolowo did admit on the eve of the 1983 election that Zik actually held out the prospect of spoiling his chances in Imo and Anambra just as he quickly added the rider that that staring eventuality in the event it happened,would ironically add not a single jot of value to Zik but would rather spell even for him, a tragedy in terms of a lamentable reductionism of his hitherto towering stature from” Zik of Africa to Zik of Imo and Anambra.”
Dr.Tunji Otegbeye, the fiery marxist intellectual,respected figure in the Soviet Union and intimate friend of that Communist Super Power in the heydays of his activism – on one of my regular visitations to him as a Reporter – at his Ireti Hospital Complex in Ebute-Metta Lagos – couldn’t help but endorse Awo’s unimpeachable commentary that Zik deliberately came to play what he described as a spoiler’s role for Awo” especially during the critical phases of the First and Second Republic – quoting him verbatim.
At this juncture,one cannot help but comment on an unfortunately lamentable note that at that decisive moment of the struggle for independence,the great Zik shone beyond a megastar – only to be found grossly out of depth at the crucial moment that duty beckoned for inspirational leadership essentially requisite to pilot a nation of great potential like Nigeria to the Canaan of its destiny.
Looking back,it would appear as if the Great Zik was severely bedevilled by inherently severe limitations as reflected in his wanton lack of the forensic reflexes, tenacious grit, gut,resilience and will power to ride on the crest wave of his heroic exploit in the agitation for sovereign national determinism during the colonial epoch to navigate the pluralistic complexity of a heterogenous multi-lingual,multi-religious,and ethno-tribal diversities of the Nigerian polity at the particularly critical moment of Post-Independence that the nation eagerly yearned for his visionary intervention to lead the nation from the doldrum to the egalitarian yearning of the massive body of his fellow Nigerian compatriots.
It was therefore not surprising in view of the fore-going,that by the beginning of the independence era,Zik had tremendously receded in fame,glory and influence as Awo, thoroughly well grounded in the requisite competencies for the rigorous business of statecraft – soared in stature, gravitas and influence to become as expressed in the befittingly deserving epigram by the then military president,Ibrahim Babangida as “The Main Issue In Nigerian Politics” – just in the same salutary note, surprisingly emanating from a very unlikely quarters like the ex Biafran warlord Odumegwu Ojukwu,who described the same Awo as the “The Best President We Never Had” – inspite of his kinsman – Zik who ordinarily could well have been expected as aptly deserving of it, even if by the magisterial indices of woolly tribal sentimentality.
Similarly, following the vengeance coup of July 31,1966,led by the Northern elements in the army,Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon,the then most senior officer,who assumed the mantle as the Head of State would have no option than to release Awo from prison only to appoint him not only as Minister of Finance, but also the Vice-Chairman Federal Executive Council – inspite of Sardauna’s intense dislike for Awo – which was a celebrated fact of common knowledge.
Remember that General T.Y.Danjuma and General Murtala Mohammed who spear-headed the coup were all beneficiaries of Sardauna’s deliberately cultivated policy of massive enlistment of Northerners in the army.To that extent,they and indeed the entire soldiers of northern extraction otherwise owed an unreserved loyalty to the Sardauna for whose cause in the first place, the coup was staged in vengeance.
They could easily well have been persuaded by the divisively prejudicial dictum:”The enemy of my friend is my enemy;and there-by kick vehemently against Gowon’s “sacrilegious” co-option of Awo – yet,they refused to countenance that parochial sentimental fault line.
Thus could we see that on whichever side;whether on the dimension of the Igbo-dominated coupists of January 15, 1966 or the Hausa-Fulani-led vengeance coup of July 31, 1966 – the positive unanimity of attitude – as expressed on either divide, was to throw up Awo for primal position of leadership.Here lies the legend of this unforgettable Great Sage.
At this point,one cannot but recall,with affectionately treasured evergreen memory,and bewildering spell of awe,
Awo’s brazen defiance in putting his life on the line,ransacking virtually all nooks and crannies of the northern bastion of feudal anachronism – in those era of grim darkness,when the North was virtually a no-go zone where even angels feared to tread, conscientizing the people on the egalitarian value of freedom from poverty,squalor and misery – just as he extended a hand of friendship at strategic personalities from the relatively backward region,just as he also did with spirited fervor in the South-East, but none would give it a thought,let alone budge.
Today,the fall-out of these cruel political ostracism of this sage of immortal memory,reeks in the sweeping bee-hive ubiquity of the Almanjaris over the vast northern landscape, only to metastasize in malignant cancerous ravages in the savage wave of Boko Haram banditry initially confined to their own indigenous local universe in the north now compounded by the superior savage demogorgon of ISWAP superintending over a special spectral apocalypse in which Nigeria is fast turning to a huge mass of cemetery in which the few living will envy the dead and of course in the cannibalistic blood letting,and celebrative killing spree in the South – East rippled in the rapacious ogre of anarchy and chaos and where a puerile cry of marginalization has continued to echo and resonate more than ever before – beyond the heavens simply because they lacked the resilient backgrounding of the Awo genre of visionary transformative leadership.
At three critical epoch in the chequered annals of these unfortunate nation of destiny – the Igbo dominated NCNC and Hausa-Fulani joint government of the First Republic;the same Hausa-Fulani NPN and Igbo NPP government of the Second Republic and the Jonathan administration – Yorubas were ruthlessly marginalised.But far from them;the jeremiad pathos of lamentative remonstrance,the inconsolable crocodilean canticles and empty celebration of the lachrymal,usually typical of others.Why? Of course because of the impregnable institutional fortress and human inner resilience for which the Great Awo will forever remain immortalised.
It is in the wake of this cogent awareness that one becomes lost at sea as to imagine whether the collective spirit of the Yoruba race will ever forgive Awo in particular if Zik or any other person even of Yoruba indigeneship,other than one imbued with the visionary dynamism and transformative alchemy of the Great Awo – could by whatever stroke of happenstance have had an unfettered incursion into the portals of the Western Premiers Lodge in those critical formative years in the transformative evolution of the Yoruba race.
This disquisition will however not be complete without due allusion to Chinua Achebe who would not allow any moment to slip by without a paludal inveighing of Awo as the ominous harbinger,paving the fenestra for the demonising incursion of the tribal monster into the political firmament.
In an inexplicable quibble at revisionism,the unrepentantly arch tribal bigot who was so quick to the post harassing Awo as the primordial agent of dispersal of prejudicial tribal infiltration – advancing a rather meretricious make-believe that this revered statesman of the Yoruba stock it was – that engineered the parliamentary cross-carpeting that put paid to Zik,in oppiliating his visionary misadventure for the leviathan Premiership of the Old West.
Lamentably his curious quirk for selective amnesia would least avail to advert in reference to the doctrinaire chauvinism of the great Zik as of course unfolded in his reprobative heresy of the “god of Africa…….” pontificated way back in 1949.
Still on the same question of Igbo anti-yoruba obsession, as a legacy issuing from the Great Zik – now
with reference to Achebe whose world view begins and ends with Igbo
nationalism – as the fore-most exemplar – this celebrated literary figure would again be seen to be taking the lead as signally evident in the retrospective play- back,thirty-nine years ago,when in the wake of the frabjous ambience heralding the exhilarating announcement of the Yoruba-born literary genius he (Achebe) ascended the roof-top with an unwarranted gaffe that the global literary diadem was by no implicit assumption a caveat for the Asiwaju title of African literature
Even Soyinka himself in an article personally written years ago,in an edition of This Day newspapers could again not help but lament a conspiratorial wave of propaganda insurgently saturating the public space – then championed by an Igbo-born professor who animated by a weirdly hunch of diabolism,had mischievously sought to forge an interpretatively suspicious link between Achebe’s fatal accident that rendered him mortally crippled shortly after a particular edition of his birthday anniversary, to the gift of a life cow presented to him on that particular occasion by Soyinka, ostensibly as an
innocent well intentioned goodwill gesture to a comrade in the literary fraternity but which the supposedly enlightened professor had in an unguarded magisterial whims effectively poisoned the vulnerable willing herd of fellow arch tribalists who in their malicious flight of fancy,had come to construe in the grotesque coloration of occultic wickedness.This I personally read (I repeat for emphasis) in an edition of This Day Newspaper personally written by no other than the very horse mouth of Soyinka himself.
Yet this was the same Soyinka whose sacrificial immolation for the Biafran cause,in the thick of the Biafra war, earned him a harrowing twenty-eight month ordeal in the gulag by General Gowon who dubbed him a Biafran agent on a surreptitious mission of espionage against the Nigerian government.
Eminent Ghanaian statesman of blessed memory, Joe Appiah remarked in his autobiography, in which he exposed Zik as the veritable fugleman providing the primeval irritant for the irruption of the anti-yoruba racial hate, uncontrollably festering the collective Igbo psyche.
Going down the lane of history, Appiah then a pioneer member of the West African Students Union ( W.A.S.U.) who later rose to become President of the sub-regional union of West African Students – recalled the historic moment of the formation of Egbe Omo Oduduwa in London, and the conflagratory rhetorics immediately following on the heels, as a highly inflamed Zik in an uncontrollable fit of emotion thus issued via the vantage medium of his West African Pilot,the provocative cassus belli: “Henceforth, the cry must be one of battle against Egbe Omo Oduduwa, its leaders at home and abroad, uphill and down dale, in the streets of Nigeria and in the streets of London and the residence of its advocates”.
As narrated by Appiah in that epic memoir,the unimaginable reaction from Zik inspired such a shock waves to the mass of non Nigerian members of the group, then resident in London – he inclusive of course – that they began to harbor intensely festering fears for the ominous portent that Zik’s abrasively tribalistic war tirade held out for the future unity of a post-independent Nigeria.
A celebrated Igbo intellectual,and renowned literary figure, Professor Chinweizu Ibekwe, remarked in an amazingly dispassionate commentary:“the testimony from a Ghanaian, who for many years, was a member and president of W.A.S.U in London, should give Igbos pause about the version of the Igbo-Yoruba cold war they had accepted. The key point is that the Ibo Union had been in existence before the Egbe Omo Oduduwa was founded. Yet Zik declared war on Egbe Omo Oduduwa. Why? If it was because the Egbe Omo Oduduwa was not pan Nigerian, then what of the pre-existing Ibo Union?”
“In other words, it wasn’t the Yoruba who introduced tribal unions and tribal politics into Nigeria but the Igbos. But whatever his reason, Zik was the one who declared war on the Yorubas; he was the aggressor”.
“With that aggression as background, the carpet-crossing becomes an understandable response to Zik’s declaration of war. If somebody who declared war on your people arrives to govern your homeland, what should your leaders do? Welcome him and let him govern or drive him out by any means necessary? The carpet crossing accomplished just that, and Igbos following Zik, the instigator of the response, I commend the Yorubas for defending themselves against aggression”.
“Zik’s conduct is an example of how Igbos can act without thinking of how their actions might look to those their proposed action might adversely affect. That is a weakness Igbos should be on guard against and should work to eliminate by extra self-awareness and constant self-criticism.”
“For seven decades we have paid for Zik’s aggression against the Yoruba. The cold war, which Zik started, made it possible for the British to install the NPC in power in 1959 when Zik refused to join with Awo to form the federal government. He explained it away by alluding to his distrust of Awo that stemmed from the carpet crossing affair. In other words, Zik is ultimately responsible for our disasters and oppression under the caliphate. But the pertinent issue at this time is that we, not the Yoruba, are responsible for the Yoruba-Igbo feud. We are not the innocent victims of Yoruba tribalism and hatred. That fact should inform our attitude in seeking rapprochement with the Yorubas especially now that we need a Yoruba-Igbo alliance ……”
Please note that this inestimable gem of a remarkably illuminating comment is coming not only from a fellow non-partisan
Igbo man,but a consummate intellectual and celebrated literary figure of no mean acclaim,in the person of Chinweizu Ibekwe who who in all accounts should know what he is talking about.
*KOLA JOHNSON IS A WRITER AND JOURNALIST.
N.B.This article was intended to coincide with the Post Humous Birthday of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe but unfortunately coming belated for unavoidable reason.
