Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe PhD, DD
Odogwu of Ibusa
President, International Coalition against Christian Genocide in Nigeria (ICAC-GEN) Email: Nwaezeigwe.genocideafrica@gmail.com visit us at https://icac-gen.org for more information and your donation
Excerpts from Chapter Six:
“THE MACABRE DANCE OF IGBO LEADERSHIP AND POLITICS OF SECOND REPUBLIC: The Sprouting Political Mushrooms from a Culture of Decadent Leadership” from THE BIAFRAN SPIRIT AND THE ROAD TO FULANI POLITICAL ARMAGEDDON—Anatomy of Political Disorder in Nigeria (Forthcoming)
Not long after officially joining the NPN, Ojukwu formed a militant squad named “Ikemba Front” (I.F.). The Front was constituted into three specialized groups, namely: Action 83, Mandate Group and Fifth Square.
In what looked like a replay of the famous Battle of Nkpor Junction in the Abagana sector of the civil war, which saw the Biafra forces dastardly routing the advancing the Federal troops in which their Commander, the then Col Murtala Mohamed only escaped by the whiskers, Ojukwu himself then at the head of his Ikemba Front ambushed the State Governor, Jim Nwobodo with his entourage then on a campaign tour, at Nkpor Junction on Tuesday July 26, 1983.
Unfortunately, the expected replay of the Biafran “Air-Raids” exploit of the civil war fame could not materialise for the Ikemba Front. In this pseudo melodramatic replay of a battle spiritedly planned and executed by one of Biafra’s finest field-commanders Col. J.O.J. Achuzia, Ojukwu was said to have stood on the rear bumper of a moving Mercedes 230 Jeep clinching a pistol, personally directing the attack.
He and his “troop” were however dislodged by the more spirited Jim’s Vanguard then under the command of the State Governor, with Ojukwu himself narrowly escaping unhurt. It could be recalled that the Jim’s Vanguard, which was formed as a preemptive counter-group against the Ikemba Front. In the course of the battle about ten members of the Governor’s entourage were inflicted with severe matched cuts and concentrated acid bath.
Fortunately for the Governor, possibly acting on a tip-off, he had swerved off the main route and so missed the battled by an inch. The Command was eventually entrusted to Chief Frank Okoro, later Senator of the Fourth Republic. In a broadcast to the people of the State on the incident the same day, the Governor stated in part:
“Before Ojukwu’s return, Anambra State had remained a comparatively quiet and peaceful, indeed tranquil State. During our last Council of State meeting, Anambra and Imo States were both adjudged two of the most peaceful States in the Federation. But the return from exile of Ojukwu changed all that. We then began to hear of squads, fronts and heaven knows what else in the name of politics.”
Barely twenty-four hours after the Nkpor junction episode, the Front again attacked a member of the NPP State legislature, Honourable Felix Ogbuagu destroying some Government vehicles, in addition to killing two persons and injuring some people. The Governor was billed to attend an NPP rally in the town and on account of this, preparations were being made. As the time of the Governor’s visit approached, some members of the Ikemba Front blocked the Enugu-Ukwu/Abagana main road through which the chief executive was billed to pass. However, the Governor had to cancel the trip.
One spectacular fall-out from the event of Abagana confrontation was the on-the-spot resignation on the screen by a newscaster with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Enugu. The following day, after the incidence, Mr. Chuma Edozie was, as usual directed to read “The News at Seven.” One of the high-lights of the news was the second Ikemba Front attack at Abagana, in which the NTA twisted the facts to read that it was indeed the members of the NPN that were attacked by the NPP at Abagana. As this humbly created son of his father read through this irrepressible mendacious and propagandist garbage, viewers noticed that his voice automatically changed.
He might have before then been reading lots of falsehoods and anti-government propagandist machinations brewed by the NPN on the express instruction of the NTA, Enugu authority, all for the sake of his daily bread, but on that fateful day, self-pride over-ruled both the fear of powers that be and the unholy quest for sustainable daily bread. As the Satellite later commented, “we can suffer deprivation if need be, so long as we remain together as one family with our heads held.”80Thus on this particular day, Chuma Edozie could not bear the burden in his heart over his role as a carrier of insane and hate-filled falsehood.
Thus, as the news progressed, and in what appeared as one of the bewildered scenes of a Hollywood-style film, the young Igbo patriot stopped mid-way as he read out this particular news item and spectacularly announced his resignation from his Job there on live television screen. He at once stopped reading the news and handed down an announcement to his viewers stating: “I can no longer continue to read falsehoods. I hereby resign.”
For nearly ten minutes after it was like an eclipse had suddenly fallen on the Television station as he stepped out of his seat, walked towards the exit door and left, leaving an empty seat and table for the viewers. The situation was later brought under control when, after an apology for the “unwarranted break” Mr. Chike Ubaka, the Manger of News and current Affairs and the veritable spokesman of the infamous NPN sponsored “Federal Presence in Anambra State appeared on the screen and read the news all over once again.
These enthralling activities by the Ikemba Front elicited reactions from different sections of the populace. Professor Chike Obi, the renowned Professor of mathematics reacted in these words: Ojukwu gambled with lives of millions of people without caring a hoot. Once a gambler, always a gambler. He is at it again and he (Ojukwu) is ready to spill blood without any remorse.83 For the Satellite it was usual an occasion that needed no equivocation. In a leading commentary titled “ Ojukwu and Violence” the paper put it this way:
We have never minced words in telling the people of this nation that Emeka Ojukwu’s rabid entry into the morass of party politics on return from a 13 year old self-imposed exile is a dangerous omen and portends evil. Those who had disagreed with us all along now realize that they had not been in touch with reality. There is no difference between Ojukwu and violence: Ojukwu is simply violence personified. Prior to his return from Ivory Coast on June 18, 1982, there was nothing like political violence in the Igbo-speaking States of Anambra and Imo. No sooner had he joined front incorporating such terrorist groups as Action 83, Mandate Group and Fifth squad which have been sending letters of death threat to members of the Nigerian People’ party (NPP)….
It is a colossal tragedy that such a man who midwife a holocaust that bedeviled the nation should be allowed to hire known criminals who carry arms in public as leaders of his political front. Where else can this happen except in Nigeria where one who yesterday stole the walking stick of the blind is today glorified as a messiah?84
To Chike C. Ezerioha, it was indeed a different thing. In a satirical tune which needs quotation at length, he wrote: The drums have started their melancholy tunes again. The drummer a war time man of timber and caliber, whose children are safely tucked away, blinded by ambition, full of hate, very irrepressible, sustained by unforgivable brutality is unleashing his anger in the citizens again of a little above teenage. That is why they dance the tune as if there would be no tomorrow! They have been fed fat with a checking overdose of hate and destruction oriented indoctrination and killer instinct. For the drummer, power is the bait, the means and the end. The dancers are merely the tools. Those who may die dancing have no further claims to make because they have already been paid prior to any session. In any case, they have been properly trained to do the East. It is here in Anambra to be exact. Something we have not witnessed since the history of civilian politics in Nigeria. Something we have not witnessed until the return of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu to Nigeria.85
Such was the climate of fear and chaos generated by Ojukwu’s entry into politics. Although both Dr. Azikiwe and Chief Nwobodo eventually lost their respective bids to the Presidency and Governorship, the score-board did not record Ojukwu as the determinant factor as was proven by his later political debacle. In fact, the major fitness test to Ojukwu’s acclaimed Igbo leadership was to come in the Onitsha Senatorial contest between him and Dr. Edwin Onwudiwe.
Having declared formally for the NPN and the subsequent appointment, or rather election, as the Party’s National Vice Chairman, Ojukwu’s other main target, having lost out in his bid to unseat Vice-President Alex Ekwueme as President Shagari’s second-term running-mate, was the Senate. Unanimously nominated to contest under the NPN, Ojukwu’s opponent was likened to the biblical tender-looking David marching confidently against the imposing fully-kitted Goliath. Dr. Edwin Onwudiwe, former Commissioner for Health in Governor Nwobodo’s administration, arch-rival and kinsman to Ojukwu’s “personal assistant” Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, was like saying in the manner of young David, “you come to me with a gun and Federal might; but I come to you in the name of the God of hosts, and the ancestral spirits of the Igbo nation, whom you have defied.
As would be expected by those who fully understood the kernel of Igbo patriotism, Dr. Onwudiwe, with an overwhelming majority votes defeated Chief Emeka Ojukwu. As the African Guardian later put it: The voters, not being revolutionary as Ojukwu did not vote with their feet. They, being old-fashioned used their heads and hearts in telling Ojukwu 12,000 times to shelve his senatorial ambition.86
The defeat of Ojukwu by a virtually unknown Onwudiwe was a full expression of the people’s rejection of whatever leadership the claimed to occupy among the Igbo. The political defeat of an erstwhile but remorseless former rebel army General was a welcome relief to many people both within the territorial Igboland and without. As the Merverick Francis Arthur Nzeribe put it: Justice has been done. You can’t bite the fingers that fed you. The Igbos supported Ojukwu during the war; he abandoned them at the crucial moment but came back after 13 years to fight the same Igbos. He deserves the fate. He is now finished politically; he cannot claim any popular acceptance. However, I wish Ojukwu had come to the senate so that I could deal with him squarely. But the will of the people is more important than my personal wish.87
In his reaction, the erudite Nduka Irabo then writing for the Guaridan newspapers stated: Outside the NPN, Odumegwu Ojukwu had been seen as a puppet to be used for his party’s presidential triumph and then abandoned because his political ambitions are considered too vaulting for a man just emerging from the shadows of disgrace. His defeat should put to rest any eastern threat to the 1987 presidential ambition of Party Chairman Adisa Akinloye (Oyo State), Senate President Joseph Wayas (Cross River) and Mr. Maitama Sule (Kano).88
But the thrilling and soul-searching aspect of the comments came as usual from the stylistic Satellite. In a post-defeat commentary titled “As Ikemba crashed”, Roy Eze wrote at length thus: There is no doubting the fact that the outcome of the elections of August 13 ruptured the blown up confidence the people of Anambra State had in themselves. To their counterparts particularly the people of Imo State, the Igbos of Anambra were in the main composed of Didymi, Judases and mostly Jacobs (sic) who for a mess of pottage have mortgaged their conscience, their love and cardinal inheritance – the right to exist as a people with outstanding natural endowments ….
Like the people of Zion, the Igbos of Anambra lived in a captivity for seven days. There cannot be doubt that everyone wants to regain his liberty…. The fall of Ikemba is like the legendary fall of Amalinze the cat during the sensational wrestling bout. The people of Anambra State particularly those of Onitsha Senatorial district, woke up to watch the end of the sensational wrestling bout between the Ikemba of Nnewi Emeka Ojukwu, the supposed political king-maker; the deliverer of political goods and Amalinze the cat, the goliath of this political experiment, and lowly political dark horse, the David re-incarnate Edwin Onwudiwe. It was an incredible fall. Also incredible was the exciting spectacle of a tiny Eddy Onwudiwe mounted solidly on the colossal Ikemba…. Dr. Edwin Onwudiwe is a title holder both in his town and Senatorial district. He is the OTIGBU IKEMBA I of Anambra.89
CONCLUSION
The revolution in Ojukwu’s defeat lies in his inability to understand the proper pattern of Igbo leadership. Leadership among the Igbo is by emergence. It is not by force. And one does not just emerge from nowhere. Every true political leader among the Igbo in his emergence must be borne by a particular circumstance. For instance, talking of the old traditional Igbo setting, a community might be confronted with a threat or actual warfare from a neighbouring group. In the ensuing crisis that followed such circumstance a warrior might emerge from the community who would lead the people to victory. The position would be that immediately after the man’s triumph, he was ennobled and extolled by all and sundry. He subsequently reverts to his former status as an ordinary citizen. Any further attempt by such a man to then assume that by such acclamation he had become a de facto leader in his community would be strongly resented.
The Igbo spirit of freedom, individuality and republican democracy cannot sustain any leadership that thrives by imposition, intimidation, and violence. Ojukwu’s thrust into the saddle of Igbo leadership was circumstantial in one sense, but in another lacked the proper traditional Igbo fomular of emergence. His appointment as the Military Governor of Eastern Region was not in the first instance based on merit. First, his contraposition against the Nzeogwu-led coup clearly informed General Aguiyi-Ironsi of his reactionary instincts, hence a proper tool to be used for the ensuing circumstance. Otherwise, he was not the most high-ranking and qualified senior Igbo officer for the position.
Secondly, the influence of his father, Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu who was Dr. Azikiwe’s confidant played a notable role. Major-General Ironsi, then owing his position to the NCNC lobby was no doubt compelled to reciprocate. Thus, Ojukwu was appointed to the exalted Military Governorship of the Eastern Region by the twin forces of his counter-role in the Nzeogwu coup position as a senior financier of NCNC. But then, there was to arise a circumstance that later tried to legitimize Ojukwu’s leadership. The pogroms against the Igbo in the North and the subsequent 30-month civil war, all added to entrust on Ojukwu the circumstantial leadership of the Igbo.
The defeat of Ojukwu in a mere Senatorial election only proved to his mentors that he was not that kind of leader that could in one swoop undermine Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s leadership. The tumultuous reception that greeted his return was not meant to welcome him as a substitute Igbo leader to Zik. It was a nostalgic expression of the living memories of the civil war.
For Ojukwu to have thought that with the flash experience of a 30-month crisis-ridden leadership he could displace a leadership that emerged out of decades of time–tested nationalist experience was in fact an experience in the in futility. Beyond that defeat however was an emergent schism among the Igbo leadership created by that very episode of Ojukwu’s return. Dr. Azikiwe was abused and somewhat politically demystified in a manner that clearly defined the collapse of Igbo reverence to age and achieved status.
Ojukwu also received the same dose of political demystification as his defeat obviously revealed the hollowness of his invincibility. The subsequent demeaning treatment of Dr. Alex Ekwueme by the rampaging Buhari regime, in which he was clamped in detention at the kirikiri Maximum Security Prisons in deference to Shehu Shagari’s cozy detention mansion, underscored the Igbo loss of value and respect in the emerging political life of the nation.
