(Flashback):DIM ODUMEGWU OJUKWU IN ABA: RE-VALIDATING THE CREDENTIALS OF IGBO NATIONALISM.

I spent the whole of last night praying for my dear country, Nigeria. At two significant moments during the course of that prayer, two intentions won my total commitment. The first was the repose of the soul of Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu and the need to re-validate the credentials of Igbo Nationalism. The second was in reference to the struggles of my late elder brother Mr Charles Chinyere Enyereibenyen Evurulobi for self-actualization in a decadent, occult-infested traditional society and the challenges this present to the faith of the 21st century Igbo Christian believer. At the point where these two intentions met and embraced each other, the Exodus 15 song of the Israelites after they had crossed the Red Sea played some ironic contrivances against my lips that were already poised to sing a dirge. I had to invoke the qualities both of a theologian and that of a nationalist before this paradox could be resolved. 

My findings and experiments along this line of prayer, in confrontation with Dele Omotunde’s piece “OJUKWU, the Okonkwo of Biafra” (TELL, March 5, 2012) inform the core issues addressed in this write-up here.

Admittedly anger and frustration worked hand-in-glove to upload some discordant jingles of dirge in my head as I followed Dele Omotunde into the two seemingly diametrically opposing worlds of fiction and reality in an effort to have a peep “through an indiscernible aperture” into Biafra and its dramatis personae. Whether it was an unsavory sketch that propped-up, like pop-corn, from the over-stretched imagination of, or the excitements expressed by the playwright, the historian or the social critic totally immersed into his own world – and there could be many of such worlds – pursuant, as it were, to an “uncommon” goal, Dele Omotunde’s write-up “Ojukwu, the Okonkwo of Biafra” (TELL, March 5, 2012, pp 78-79) is disdainfully quixotic.

 

Okonkwo, the lead character in Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart,  bestrode the land of Umuofia like a colossus, and with a personality that overbearingly eclipsed all around him save as they queued up behind him lest they be overridden by his hot temper. Thus, immediately Umuofia came into the picture in Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart  as the horrendously disvirgined  land donated by Okonkwo whose zeal was ruled by an overt cleverness and a certain cultural rigidity without much reference to natural wisdom; and as the triad of permanence, change and novelty evolved and came to assert themselves in an interactive fashion as inclusive and elucidating factors of reality in the land of Umuofia, the frustrations that always lie in ambush against those who trivialize, or neglect, or pretend to be ignorant of the sarcastic imports of this triad  were no longer a product of mere conjectures but instead presented the real textures of a tragic ode.

What Okonkwo did with the laziness of Unoka was quite evident in the way he rode to fame and popularity through sheer determination and hardwork. Unoka, Okonkwo’s father, held tightly to a despicable impotency that was gradually building itself into a family tradition and could have succeeded save the dissatisfaction and determination shown by Okonkwo.  But it is not easy to say exactly what he did with some paradigmatic souvenirs of elderly counsel. “That boy calls you father, lay no hands at his death” counseled one of the elders in reference to Ikemefuna’s inexorable fate. Somewhere else, Obierika asserted “….we can no longer act like one…”

Nobody banished Okonkwo from the land of Umuofia. He banished himself. Nobody betrayed or killed Okonkwo. He betrayed Ikemefuna and later on went ahead to hang himself. “That man was one of the greatest men in our community. It was Okonkwo’s personal tragedy that he will be buried like a dog” regretted Obierika.

 

Okonkwo’s greatest undoing was his rash resolve to constitute himself into some form of barrier to the force of change. Strange though as this force appeared to be, he was merely reactionary and less – very much less - adroit   in his bid to confront those who, like Nwoye and his new found friends, had shown some determination in a way much different and possibly opposed to Okonkwo’s own ways. And for the people to remain safe, it required that Umuofia takes a regimented but hurried exit from the world of might and rigid infractions to the new world of freedom, rights and commensurate responsibility – an undertaking Okonkwo considered too cowardly.

Exploiting the ontological significance of personal “Chi” in Igbo traditional world view with a view to ascertaining the type of human being Chinua Achebe’s God intended Okonkwo to be and drawing from the wider concept of destiny to unravel the type of person Okonkwop actually became may appear quite shoddy  and out of place here. But suffice it to mention that the Okonkwo tragedy fits the Nigerian identity and leadership experience more than it fits the experience of the Ojukwu of Biafra. 

Okonkwo is the microcosm of the Nigerian factor about identity crisis and leadership ineptitude. The refusal by Nigerian leaders to confront realistically the challenges which a new Nigeria has thrown up or their indifference in this regard tends to excuse the primitivity and cultural rigidity that reduced Okonkwo to a pitiable victim of social engineering taken captive by tradition.

Yet, Okonkwo was not infected with the virus of corruption - the real factor that scores him higher than all those occupying elective positions in Nigeria today.

The role played by Okonkwo does not share any semblance with that played by Ojukwu of Biafra, and any effort deployed to this end cannot but be regarded as an unmitigated mockery and a bag of insult smuggled into the hall of fame from the aperture erected at the behest of flamboyant arrogance and profligate intellectual internship. At no point in time does Ojukwu’s personality dissolve entirely or even tangentially into that of Okonkwo. Every attempt to draw some similarities or parallels between the Ojukwu of Biafra and Okonkwo, the lead character in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart will definitely send Dele Omotunde’s elegant narratives about Ojukwu plummeting irremediably into a narcissistic odyssey. Unfortunately, Dele Omotunde is a victim of his own experiment.

If Ojukwu’s return from exile was not an official bargain of the Biafran people but an amnesty issued by the punitive thrusts of abominable violations in a collapsible time framework as in Okonkwo’s  case, then Ojukwu could be said to have been on the run from the gods of Biafra. Omotunde did not insinuate this however. But, unlike Okonkwo’s compulsory seven-year sentence to be spent in an exile, Biafra yearned everyday for the return of its hero and benefactor.

War has never been an option in conflict resolution. If at all it is, then it is a very remote one. No wonder Ojukwu opted to come to dialogue table resulting in the “Aburi Accord.”  And even as some “honorable men” - to borrow a phrase from Mark Anthony in Shakespear - could not honor agreements thus necessitating the need for an armed struggle, Ojukwu would not like to be remembered for violence.  In this regard, and in respect of the prodigality of some Igbo sons and daughters of the “Abuja Establishment” whether this derogatory acronym is in reference to the violence, kidnapping, political harlotry, etc that dictated and is still dictating to a post-war Biafran youths and agitators; or whether it is in reference to the defeatist attitude sponsored by the selfishness of some prominent politicians of the Igbo extraction against the “Biafra of the mind,” Obierika, not Okonkwo cuts a sharp image of the Ojukwu picture in a Nigeria that has been tragically reduced to the size of the village of Umuofia where people like Unoka and Nwoye have been lethally ordained into the new administrators of our common patrimony.

 The complex network of interactions, relationships, commitments, associations and followerships that define and shape the pattern of life, rights and obligations in contemporary Igbo society is highly trajectory, and with this, it may appear very reluctant to permit itself be reduced to the old war prism of Igbo consciousness which unapologetically unearthed and sponsored the vision and mission of Dim Odumuegwu Ojukwu, the Ikemba Nnewi and Eze Igbo Gburugburu before 1966. But that the last moments of Dim Odumuegwu Ojukwu seem to chronicle and at the same time re-negotiate and re-launch the natural accoutrements and paradigms that form the heart and appeal of true federalism is a strong rebuke against the senile antics that have come to be associated with some Traditional Rulers in Igbo land who view the traditional stool, especially in its egregious infraction into politics as a mere expansion of a private patrimony. This rebuke is very necessary today if the Royal Stool is not to be allowed to transform into those already conquered and phased-out colonial fiefdoms.

Unfortunately, most Igbo elites still appear amorphous and inorganic – mere sarcastic extensions of the colonial ergo, or alternatively, a polished affirmation attending to some issues in selfish reconnaissance and polluting intellectualism. 

I doubt whether it has ever occurred to the members of the elite body that many of them have incurred the cynicism and contempt reserved only for oppressors, predators, militants, kidnappers and cultic pacifists in their costly experiments in innate despotism and atavistic despondency, and that their silence has supported the perpetuating of a system where the appurtenances of medieval tyranny are made to determine, in a proactive fashion, the sharp edges of administrative and remunerative patterns at work in modern Nigeria and the arising pathologies.

On Febuary 28, 2012, the remains of Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu arrived Aba, the Enyimba City. Aba and other of its prototypes in Nigeria are very popular for providing accommodation, a legitimate hiding place and protection for the poor while at the same time celebrating success, commitment and excellence that define the character and the punctuating mark associated with the spirit of Igbo enterprise. But after ten years of uninterrupted democratic activities, these cities have become more degenerate and less evocative of their old precedents in terms of growth and developments, and have instead groaned and mourned under the yoke of corruption and despotic maneuvers associated with governance in Nigeria.

Chief Dim Odumuegwu Ojukwu held  some credentials in academics that dwarfed those of his so-called superiors in the Nigerian military formation. Added to this was the privileged position which his father’s wealth held out for him. Given a combination of these facts, and had he opted for it, Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu would have been one of the richest Africans that ever lived. But Ojukwu’s avowed vision and mission for his country, and the significance this would later assume for his Igbo kinsmen compelled him to willingly and readily ignore the princely embrace, in a grotesquely business and bureaucratic manner, of some crispy naira notes, and at the same time urged him, albeit prophetically, to examine the struggles for justice, freedom and fair – play as timeless values for the future of Igbo society. But the oppressive structures of the Nigerian federal arrangement did not oblige him any option save to fight through the barrels of a gun that were, more or less, products of an indigenous Igbo technology.

Chief Ralph Uwazurike may have rested his premise of Ojukwu being the Jesus of the Igbos on the basis of selfless service. But his refusal to tell us whether this statement is made in its co-relative significance or is to be taken in its analogical mold has made it very hard to follow up such a statement and give  theological flesh to it in the light of Igbo nationalism. Whether as an attribute or a compliment, Chief Ralph Uwazurike’s remark depicts a necessary synergy, though with a syncretic bent, of the divine and mundane, eternal and temporal, spiritual and material in Traditional Igbo society, and at the same threatens to illuminate the root causes of the decay that have come to govern the life and ambition of many Igbo sons and daughters in their quest for survival and self-actualization since after the civil war.

 However, the fullest realization that the life of an average Igbo man, despite the huge strides that have been achieved in education, politics, economics, religion and in the socio-cultural platforms, has been strewn with some over – arching pretensions and contradictions, and that the attempt at the systemic integration of the diversity of Igbo interests have consistently met with failure are issues which compel us to admit the fact that, the burial of Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu re-assert the need to re-validate the credentials of Igbo Nationalism.

What then are the re-validating factors of the credentials of a true Igbo Nationalism today? This question has remained one of the many inchoate infractions into the practice of the faith, and one I have tried to put through compulsory conformity with my vocation as a priest. The evolution has been painful – very painful indeed, but the risk is worth it, just like the civil war undertaking by Dim Ojukwu.

That Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu lived as a great Igbo warrior and leader but is being buried today as a great Nigerian is historically instructive and progressively assertive for the evolution of the credentials of authentic Igbo Nationalism. To regard Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu as Igbo warrior and leader only is to perpetuate the injustice for which this worthy Igbo achiever fought the oppressive federal structures in a civil war. The truth is that Nigeria has never come to properly identify, acknowledge or reward her heroes and leaders. 

Again, I find it still more convenient relying on the Akinkuotu’s musings to drive this point home.  In the Random Jottings column of TELL (see current edition of TELL, March 5, 2012 on sale. P 86), Mr Ayodele Akinkuotu muses aloud: “If 42 years after the civil war ended, “the Igbo people still feel marginalized…if in spite of having a minority from the Niger Delta as President of the federation millions of youths from that region are still restive…if the anger in the North, which has produced more heads of state than the South in the over 50 years of the country’s existence can fuel the Boko Haram insurgency…if the Youruba are today thinking of regional integration; should it not be crystal clear that all is not well with the nation”. 

If this is true about Nigeria as a nation, then Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu lived with a revelation, a vision and was committed to a mission that were superior to those of his contemporaries irrespective of the credentials they parade as nationalists. 

Despite all these, the Nigerian arrangement remains abysmally decrypt.  And to have come to realize that the numerous options which the Nigerian leaders, both past and present, have exploited in their efforts to deal with the Nigerian problematic have consistently backfired tumultuously is an indictment on the psyche of those who have held on to the monadism of the Nigerian colonial establishment and a plus for the war Ojukwu fought. But that all these other ethnic blocks have come to this realization, no matter how lately, has done much to retrieve the option of war as an item in the Igbo agenda for liberation and compulsorily tasks all the stakeholders to come to the discussion table. Thus after this historical step accomplishing the burial rites of Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu, the next important step is to go into the hall for a Sovereign National Conference.

 However with the Executive, Legislative and Judicial arms of government already constituted validly in a constitutional manner and still in place as evidenced by the official inauguration of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan administration few months back, the character of “sovereignty” attached to such a conference becomes a product of nationalistic engineering, constitutional imaging and conundrumic innovation if the efforts and sacrifices made in this regard are to be spared the corruption and betrayal for which the PDP led government have been known for too long. And if the Presidency, the National Assembly and the Judiciary are representatives and sincere bearers of the people’s WILL, and if a Sovereign National Conference is considered by the people to be the only avenue through which their WILL can emerge and find a more adequate articulation especially given what the people themselves have regarded as subversions and bureaucratic prodigality as registered in the January mother of all strikes, and if this WILL– the will of a poor and oppressed people - is supreme and remains the only validating and legitimizing factor of every government,  then for the Federal Government of Nigeria to neglect this agitation and still go on to assert itself as legitimate and constitutional is a contradiction in terms.

The Federal Government of Nigeria is playing with a Boko Haram time bomb to the detriment of every other Nigerian for no other reason than to maintain the scandalous financial accoutrements and privileges they have criminally cornered for themselves. There is no other reason which the Government can advance for objecting to a Sovereign National Conference other than this. This objection rather than attempt to mitigate this demand for a SNG seem to credit it all the more because, among other things, the attitude of government about this long overdue exercise in Constitutional re-orientation has become not only worrisome but also imperative for a re-validation of the credentials of all those in government and the legitimacy of the machinery of government itself. May our son, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, who incidentally also is my brother please oblige us this need. And does it need to be re-emphasized that whoever is opposed to a Sovereign National Conference does not have the interests of the Igbos at heart.    

 The re-validating factor of the credentials of authentic nationalism has been found to reside with the people and not with the despots who occupy the State capitals as well as the F.C.T., Abuja in Nigeria. 

In the Random Jottings column of TELL, Mr Ayodele Akinkuotu continues:

“For African despots one thing is certain, no matter how long they may cling to power, there comes a day when at sunrise in their countries their era would have become history.”

I believe somehow that this day has come in the history of Igbo nation as the remains of Dim Odimegwu Ojukwu are committed to mother earth. The events marking the burial of Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu constitute inexorably a strong rebuke and umbrage against the many pockets of despots that have usurped the seats of government both at the state and federal levels respectively. Ojukwu spoke in life. But even in death, Ojukwu still speaks, this time with a voice that is, unmistakably, that of the gods.

 The warrior and the leader in Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu are disdainful of the present federal structure and greatly task the Igbos to the evolution of constructive ideological presuppositions and a home-grown Igbo formula that is very sensitive and critically open to global and institutional frameworks which are prerequisites for growth and development in today’s world. 

What we owe Ojukwu is to pray for the victory and the eventual triumph of the Biafran spirit over the dictatorship, corruption and prodigality that continue to hold Nigeria captive. And if this feat is possible, then those who think that Ojukwu is, perhaps, the Okonkwo of Biafra may be forced to do a rethink. 

And with an added value that goes beyond the demands of conversion to rest on the history and origin of the Igbo people, the person of Jesus Christ is a powerfully re-occurring factor in an effort to evolve and ratify such a formula.  

Cast in this mold, Aba, the Enyimba City, nay the Igbo nation as an integral part of one indivisible Nigeria serves the requisite need for a place that can be regarded as “a home for all” in the 21st century African renaissance and emerging global integration.

Indeed he who fights on side of freedom can never be a looser. Even in death, he is a winner forever. Adieu, Eze Igbo Gburugburu!