“I guess you already know my name; what’s yours?” Ojukwu asked me. “I’m Wole Olaoye,” I answered.
It was the roaring eighties. I was editor-In-Chief of Monthly Life magazine. The month’s cover story had been assigned to a senior staff writer, but the Subject had insisted that he would speak to no one else but the editor-In-Chief. I had to take the interview in the company of our venerable columnist, Chief Cyprian Ekwensi.
He struck me as a man who knew he was intelligent and wouldn’t suffer fools gladly. Several times I had to remind him that I was supposed to be the one asking questions because he would suddenly turn a question around on its head and ask me my opinion. It was such a delight sparring with him. It was a testimony to his stature that we reprinted the edition of Monthly Life in which the Ojukwu cover story appeared three times within two weeks.
It was a mutually beneficial engagement: We broke the ice on Ojukwu’s comprehensive marginalization by both government and media, making unprecedented cover sales in the process; and he lifted the interview for use in his book, Because I Am Involved.
Now the Iroko tree has fallen and all kinds of ants are crawling all over it. The elephant has expired and different shapes and sizes of knives are showing up to carve a chunk. I insist that every human life has a lesson to teach, if only we look closely enough. Love him or hate him, adore him or deride him; Christopher Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu will be recognized by history as a man who rose up to the challenge facing his people at a crucial period of Nigerian history. Yes, his was the face of the rebellion, the face that the federal propagandists taught us to hate. We must however not forget that both he and Yakubu Gowon were thrown up by forces of history.
When I asked Ojukwu about his relationship with Gowon and his former colleagues from Northern Nigeria, he said he did not nurse any animosity against any of those who found themselves on the federal side during the 30-month civil war. Specifically he said of Gowon: “That Gowon and I did not see eye-to-eye on certain issues was as a result of our different perceptions of the situation at the time. These were perceptions built into our being in Nigeria. If I were from the North my perception of the situation would have been entirely different, just as if Gowon had been from the East. In leading the war we both postured. For anyone therefore to try and extend this posturing and make it permanent on the national stage, to my mind, is sterile.”
Ojukwu was quite generous in his assessment of Nigeria’s First Republic leaders, even if he didn’t agree with their ideological persuasions. On Sir Ahmadu Bello, Premier of the Northern Region, he said: “Whenever children, the heirs of our today, read the history of Nigeria the one name that must command admiration and one which will, without doubt, attract the largest fan club would be that of Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto…. He perceived Northern Nigeria as his domain and proceeded by sheer force of character to pull up that section of Nigeria from its bootstraps….”
He also admired Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe for different reasons and in varying degrees. He said Zik was his childhood idol and a close friend of his millionaire father, Sir L.P. Odumegwu Ojukwu. There were so many things he admired about Zik, but he felt that the great nationalist could have done more for the region of his birth. On Awo he complained that the Nigerian press had not given him credit where it was due. Striking his massive chest, he declared that it was he, and not General Gowon, that effected the release of Chief Awolowo from Calabar prison in 1966. He reminded me that he was the Governor of the Eastern Region at the time and he could have done as he pleased if he had other motives. Indeed he said he released his father’s Rolls Royce to ferry the former premier of the Western Region from prison.
The least one can say of Ojukwu is that he was a man of his convictions. He stood for something. Born into wealth and privileged to have the best education money could buy in his day, he took on the challenges of leadership of his people at a difficult period and I consider it unfair to demonise him permanently on account of that. No one can turn back the hands of the clock. Mistakes were made by all concerned. Ojukwu was as fallible as his next door neighbour. If there is anything to learn from his life, it is that each section of the country must be careful how it treats others; what starts as a socio-political boil can become a fratricidal and cancerous ulcer. We should be generous to him in death.
“Death is more universal than life”, says Albie Sachs; “everyone dies but not everyone lives.”
Christopher Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu lived – which is more than can be said of many of us.
The world favours the wicked (Author Unknown)
Dakota Native American tribal wisdom, passed on from generation to generation, says: “When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount and get a different horse.”
However, in government and corporate Africa, more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.
5. Lowering the standards so that the dead horse can be included.
6. Re-classifying the dead horse as ‘living impaired’.
7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse’s performance.
10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance.
11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overheads and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
And of course…
13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position, so that some other horse does the job on its behalf!
If you understand the above, then you are obviously residing in Africa…
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