A Lecture by
Chuks
Iloegbunam
on the occasion of the
2018 Grand Alumni/Friends Homecoming
of the Faculty of Arts
April 26, 2018.
*Iloegbunam
“Our history strongly suggests that we need to moderate strength and
power with discretion and diplomacy, not only among our leaders but also among
the generality of our people. It is not weakness to recognize the value of
discretion. It is foolhardiness to choose death (or something close to it) in
place of life.”
– Michael J. C. Echeruo.
– Michael J. C. Echeruo.
I decided to open today’s discussion with the above quote
from Professor Echeruo’s A Matter Of
Identity, his November 1979 foundational lecture of the Ahajioku Lecture Series. The reason is
that it encapsulates the theme of my presentation, which is that E’kesia n’obi, ekee na mkpuke.
But, first of all, permit me to deliver to protocol its
due. I count myself privileged to stand before you today, even if to do a job
outside my professional territory of operation. I am a journalist who, by
virtue of political appointments, has operated within governmental circles in
the last 15 years. I have never been a teacher, not even a nursery school
teacher. Yet, I have been pressed into service here, to deliver a disquisition
to those whose primary and professional responsibility is the impartation of
knowledge. In my view, it is like taking coal to Ngwo ,
Nigeria ’s Newcastle
Now, let me take us to the clay that molded this day. It
first came in the innocuous form of a text message I received on Sunday
February 2, 2018 from a functionary of this institution. This was what the
message said:
“Good evening sir. I’m Professor
Tracie Utoh-Ezeajugh, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Nnamdi Azikiwe
University
I considered the message for a few moments and concluded
that there must have been a mistake. It certainly was meant for someone else
but got accidentally texted to my number. My first disposition was to ignore
the communication, convinced that the sender would realize her mistake and
quietly make amends. On second thoughts, however, I decided otherwise. Although
I couldn’t remember ever personally interacting with Professor Utoh-Ezeajugh, I
wasn’t unaware of her existence. I often read The Creative Artist – A Journal of Theatre and Media Studies, of
which she is a coeditor. This led me into thinking that she probably was
someone I could do business with. Still, I decided to approach the matter on a
tentative note, by responding to her message in the following mode:
“Greetings, Prof. You’re in total
freedom to call. But, wetin I wan talk?
And whosai I go begin? Best regards.
Chuks.”
She gave me a ring thereafter. We discussed the matter,
and I accepted the invitation to be here. There is, of course, a second reason
for my presence today. I should leave mentioning it until the tail end of my
presentation.
The Allure
Allurement comes in multiple fashions. As a matter of
fact, it is doubtful that there is any aspect of life in which it is not
present, if not dominant. This makes it imperative to discuss some of its
ramifications, especially in so far as they are relevant to my argument. We
have the moth’s allurement to fire. If you lit a storm lantern, you would
within seconds have around it swarms of moth trying to make contact with the
lantern’s flame. The predictable outcome of such contact by any moth is its
instant incineration. It happens with human beings, ready examples being the
lunatic’s irresistible temptation to strike a match in an ocean of highly
inflammable gasoline, and the too determined child that would, Superman
fashion, leap from the father’s fifth floor flat to the shiny automobile down
in the parking lot. The lunatic will set off a conflagration to extinguish his
miserable life and raze much more. The pull of gravity will drag the child to a
thud on metal that would leave only the remains of gore and blood. These sorts
of suicidal allurements are self evident in everyday life, even when those
involved are folks believed to be perfectly sane.
There is the natural allurement. A biologically healthy
adult is normally drawn to the attraction of the opposite sex. The young,
fashionable female will see no reason why the make up or makeover should not be
a distinct part of her daily routine. The adolescent will be drawn to the ball
game, or to pugilism or to Ping-Pong or to some other sport. The old man with
the tired limbs may resort to short walks or the game of Chess or Draughts or
Ludo or Whot. In all of these allurements, there is hardly ever cause for alarm
because they are natural.
In the arenas of learning and application, a number of
problems inevitably arise. Learning begins from childhood. This learning may be
partial to the Humanities. A child, consciously or otherwise, begins to learn
languages, music, fashion, literature and sport. All these are in the
Humanities. But, where a child’s first allure to learning is in the realms of
quantum physics or quadratic equations, that would be an aberration. The child
would be a prodigy. Even if a child unfortunately has boxing sparing partners
or quarrelsome ones for parents and thus learns aggressiveness and garrulity from
an early age, his learning, at the last word, would still be situated in the
Humanities. The contention here is that the Allure of the Humanities is
primarily and essentially human. All other broad branches of learning come only
a distant second, or third or fourth, as the case may be. In essence, all
humans are schooled in the Humanities as a matter of course whereas swathes of
humankind pass through life with scant affinity to the sciences of fetal
surgery and rocketry. Please mark the learning in question by various degrees
on a 100-percentage index.
The Allure of
Learning
As a child grows, inherited genes and environmental
circumstances determine to what specific areas of learning and/or occupation
the Allure would drag them. That explains why today we have at the Chelsea
Football Club in West London a wing half
called Marcos Alonso. His brothers are all professional footballers. His father
was a professional footballer. And so was his grandfather. Soccer runs in their
family. When I was on the staff of the Vanguard
newspapers in Lagos , I used to spend time at the
newspaper’s Enugu Obiagu Road
In some cases, people whose progenitors had nothing to do
with formal education end up following the academic path, or at least finish
off with university degrees. My father, for instance, was a carpenter, my
mother a petty trader. Rear Admiral Alison Madueke’s father had to flee from
his Inyi home in order to make four years of primary education. He ended up a
successful businessman, whose nine children all benefitted from tertiary
education.
Now, as a child grows into adolescence or adulthood, he or
she decides the course of study or formal training to pursue. They could delve
into the Humanities because, from earliest days, they were exposed to it. Or
because, their secondary school experience was diffident in the sciences. They
could elect for military school because the parents lived near an Army barracks
and it was common to see smartly dressed soldiers marching elegantly to the
tunes of brass band music. The young fellow could turn their attention to Law School
or Medical School
or Business School
The Allure of the Humanities makes it natural for there to
be in universities what is known as English 101 or the Use of English. No one
requires proficiency in the English language to become an accomplished medical
doctor. After all, medical courses in Argentina Russia
It is not only in the matter of the language of rendering
that the Humanities “intrudes” in other disciplines of learning. For instance,
the Anthropology of Medicine is vital for medical students. But, that is not because a good doctor cannot
emerge who has no knowledge of anthropology. No. The consideration is simply
that doctors practice their profession best in settings they understand the
culture and lifestyle of their patients best. A gynecologist in Kano
Learning the
Humanities
Take Mandarin, the official Chinese language spoken by
more than 750 million people. There was this young lady who gained university
admission to study Mandarin. Her father believed that fate had dealt him a
particularly bad card. Mandarin! Of all subjects, he moaned. Indignant, he
asked the daughter what she expected to achieve in life by taking a degree in
the Asian language. Because the young lady insisted on going ahead with her
chosen discipline, the father threatened to withdraw his sponsorship of her
further education. More than that, he summoned an extended family meeting at which
he derided both her daughter and the language she would study. Fortunately,
there were in the meeting some people with commonsense who told the old man to
back off.
Take now the English language. No one requires it to
become a pilot. But because English is the international language of aviation,
it is near impossible to be the aviator of a jetliner without knowledge of
good, old English. A pilot from Yangon , Myanmar , on an international flight to Ecuador is going to have to communicate with air
traffic controllers in Quito Suriname
intending to land in Anchorage ,
Iceland
The question could be posed. Why do we, in fact, even talk
of the Humanities? It is because it is the foundation of human knowledge. The
ideas we formulate in the acquisition of human knowledge are what we employ to
organize the state and its interactions with other societies. There are people
who think that when we study English it is in order that we blow grammar. That
happens not to be true; that’s far from what we do. In reality, English studies
means we are studying the literate culture of what constitutes the English,
including to various degrees its mathematics and sciences in all their
documented forms. In studying English we interrogate English ideas. We examine
the Colonial project, London
A Nigerian graduate of English should know and understand
better than his friend in a non-Humanities discipline why London behaved the
way it did in 1984 when there was a botched Nigerian attempt to kidnap and
crate the politician Alhaji Umaru Dikko from London’s Stansted Airport to
Murtala International in Lagos. The unquantifiable learning that accrues from
learning and fully grasping the nuances and peculiarities of a language
explains why those in the Humanities formed the bulk of Foreign Service
officials deployed by Whitehall
Can we now say that the premium placed on language and the
Humanities still plays out today in the affairs of Nigeria
Language gives us the key to balanced analysis of society.
When we create structures of memory relating to our literature, our theatre,
the film industry, the very narrative of our sojourn as a people, our
historical foundations, we use these to create. People must tell their stories.
If you don’t preserve your story, your disappearance is only a matter of time.
Nobody would remember you. Your culture will not be preserved. Culture is the
way people make an image of themselves. People who have no image of themselves
invariably become forgotten. We give a proper definition of ourselves by the
level of seriousness we attach to the Humanities.
Teaching the
Humanities
So far, we have tried to demonstrate the central place of
the Humanities in the affairs of man. A natural question follows. Who might
teach the Humanities? In a broad sense, the answer is All. Everyone is
naturally a student of the Humanities. Everyone is also a teacher of some
components of the broad discipline. Of course, if a student required a
Bachelors degree in the Humanities, they would need the services of a degree-awarding
institution. But Queen Theresa Onuorah of the Egedege Dance Troupe in Unubi
controls our minds and excites our dancing abilities without our registering
for formal academic courses in folk music. The white man understood from the
beginning that knowledge does not reject impartation or expansion because the
harbinger of such an action cannot boast as many degrees as a thermometer does.
A few examples are apposite here. In 1985 when Paul Simon,
the American singer-songwriter, was working on a solo album that featured an
eclectic mixture of musical styles, it struck him that he needed to visit Nigeria
Each time Muhammed Ali (Cassius Clay) was mentioned,
people remembered him first and foremost as a former world heavyweight-boxing
champion. But he was also a poet, a poet good enough to be nominated by two
dons for the post of Professor of Poetry at the centuries old Oxford University
This is the kind of poetry that Ali wrote:
Everyone knew when I stepped in
town,
I was the greatest fighter around.
A lot of people called me a clown,
But I am the one who called the
round.
The people came to see a great
fight,
But all I did was put out the
light.
Never put your money against
Cassius Clay,
For you will never have a lucky day.
That was in 1962. If your yardstick for poetic entitlement
were J. P. Clark Bekederemo, or Wole Soyinka, or Chimalum Nwankwo, or Obi
Nwakanma or John Donne or W. H. Auden, you probably would not consider Ali’s
name worth mentioning, not minding that he always strove to achieve rhymes at
the end of his lines. But informed people found some merit in his verse to
nominate him for that largely ceremonial but highly regarded position. Now, if
a resourceful Unizik undergraduate took the pains to go to Amanuke not far from
here, to collect and translate into English the songs and verses of that town,
would his volume make the Long List of the LNG Literature Prize? Or would the
experts pronounce the volume a collection of doggerel? The point is that it
takes the absence of cant, and an eye for exploration and experimentation, for
the Humanities to march on with dignity and achievement.
In 1989, my friend, Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, a poet with a resonant
voice, found himself at the University
of Pittsburgh in the United States Africa ,
Uzoatu was in a position to introduce something novel in his interpretation of
the works that came from his continent of origin, especially Arrow of God that
is of his Igbo ethnic group. In some countries, the students would have
revolted and disdained tutelage from a novice! Faculty members would have filed
a petition, claiming that Brutus had introduced dilettantism in the teaching of
the Humanities. Again, if Morocco Maduka suddenly got appointed to a
professorial chair in the Music Department of a Nigerian university, would some
of the more educated members of the institution aggregate to hire the services
of a witchdoctor to inflict insanity on the minstrel? Or would they?
But Mr. Uzoatu’s experience was even
more astonishing in Canada ,
where he had been invited as a distinguished visitor, and from where Brutus had
asked him to look in at Pittsburgh University
of Western Ontario
The place of
caution
It is important to stress that the mere fact of a general
teaching field for all cadres should not mean a free-for-all. People should
teach the Humanities. But they should teach only in those areas that they truly
have something worthwhile to offer. General teaching should never mean general
dabbling. Unfortunately, that is what is often on offer almost everywhere. And
this is so primarily because little attention is paid to the consequences of
square pegs in round holes. To demonstrate just how dangerous the proposition
of meddling is, a number of questions are apposite. How many women here would,
if pregnant, willingly submit themselves to caesarian section after learning
that the scalpel had been abandoned to the devices of the butcher at the local
abattoir? How many people here would happily board a flight after discovering
that a fellow whose previous flying experience was of kites had stormed the
cockpit and seized the plane’s controls? Yet, scary as these scenarios are,
they happen on a daily basis because, in matters especially to do with the
Humanities, nearly everyone strikes the pose of an expert.
As someone interested in the game of soccer, I can claim
knowledge of the technique employed to strike a penalty kick in such a way that
the goalkeeper is sent diving to the negative corner while the ball hits the
back of the net. But, in my autumnal years, do I still possess muscles powerful
enough to imbue the ball with enough velocity to send it spinning quickly away
from the one delegated to stop it? If the answer is No, why should I play
Cristiano Ronaldo, the dead ball expert, by grabbing the ball and insisting on
taking the spot kick the moment the referee’s whistle goes? Is it not in the
overall interest of humankind if reason prevailed and people played only in
their appropriate wings?
Let me expatiate. Most of my working life has been
media-related whether in government or out of it, whether at the state or at
the Federal level. My experience is that if you put out a press statement, voices
would rise in the thousands, charging that your message had not been delivered
in the right key. Why were you not solicitous, seeing that you were dealing
with a disagreeable or unpredictable audience? Why were you groveling when you
represented accredited political authority? Not only that, busybodies with
access to the Governor or the President would contact him to vehemently protest
your crippling lack of professionalism! Meanwhile, all the protesters would be
fulminating from a standpoint bereft of the inside knowledge that informed the
tenor of your press release. If you were a singer and rendered your song in
contralto, the meddlers would become agonistic, alleging that you were singing
a part written specifically for bass. That’s the way it is with the Humanities.
How many people ever heard the all-knowing protesters chanting that a
spacecraft had gone into orbit on defective propulsion? How many ever swore
that a satellite circling the moon was doing so at an angle guaranteed to make
it come apart in less than half the lifespan conjectured by the manufacturers?
No. Hi-tech and the pure sciences are not the domain of all-comers. Yet, the
grouse is not really that people protest what they wrongly think or believe is
out of place. The problematic is that, oftentimes, people abduct issues outside
their competence – to the negation of the guiding spirit of the Humanities, to
the scuttling of hopes and aspirations, and to the tune of ruinous complication
of straightforward questions. The flipside is that, against the stipulation of
commonsense, experts in the Humanities often escape into nonchalance, rather
than actively contributing to the resolution of matters crying for enlightenment.
The guru’s role
If we assumed for one moment that meddlers and pretenders
would surrender some space to the Humanities, the allure of the vast field
would pertain essentially to the gurus. The guru in the Humanities is the one
that has received proper – not necessarily classroom – training in the faculty.
He or she may have listened masters in the field. They probably kept a good
library or had access to one, the contents of whose tomes they could boast
considerable knowledge of. A guru is not in the Humanities because he belonged
to a religious order antipathetic to sin and its deleterious consequences. But,
because the Humanities humanize, the allurement to the discipline carries the
burden of promoting a healthy and stable society indexed on human values,
especially those celebratory of the ethos of justice, equity, fair play and
good conscience. The guru is doomed to precise pronouncements on Black and
White. If he took the attitude that something was white, it would only be
because he possessed the instruments to demonstrate its whiteness. He dares not
make a declaration on blackness without the facility or intention to delineate
the pigmentation of the colour. For him, there could be no question of dawdling
in Gray as a ploy for escapism. The temptation of the guru to perch in the
shade of Gray must be in order to establish verisimilitude between the two
primary colours of Black and White, nothing more.
Bearing this burden in mind, it was something of a shock
to read recently that the ban on the teaching of history in our schools had
been lifted. My apprehension is tied to a number of questions. Was the ban on
history teaching not motivated by the considerations of blatant political
partisanship? If so, are the architects of this blinkered evacuation of history
from classrooms likely to rehabilitate the subject without first putting in
place adequate means of attaining the objectives that informed the ban in the
first place?
Let us spare a moment in considering the catastrophic
consequences of a people not knowing where the rain began to beat them. This
post came recently to me by WhatsApp:
Biography of Thomas Sankara.
Thomas Sankara was Burkina Faso
Thomas Sankara began by purging the
deeply entrenched bureaucratic and institutional corruption in Burkina Faso Burkina Faso
Thomas Sankara would not let his
portrait be hung in offices and government institutions in Burkina Faso Upper
Volta to Burkina Faso ,
which means Land
of Upright Men
Thomas Sankara’s achievements are
numerous and can only be summarized briefly. Within the first year of his
leadership, he embarked on an unprecedented mass vaccination programme that saw
2.5 million Burkinabe children vaccinated. From an alarming 280 deaths for
every 1,000 births, infant mortality was immediately slashed to below 145
deaths per 1,000 live births. Sankara preached self-reliance. He banned the
importation of several items into Burkina Faso Burkina Faso Burkina Faso ,
telling his country people to quit eating imported rice and grain from Europe . “Let us consume what we ourselves control,” he
emphasized.
In less than four years, Burkina Faso
Living way ahead of his time, within
12 months of his leadership, Sankara vigorously pursued a reforestation
programme that saw over 10 million trees planted around the country in order to
push back the encroachment of the Sahara Desert. Uncommon at the time he lived,
Sankara stressed women empowerment and campaigned for the dignity of women in a
traditionally patriarchal society. He also employed women in several government
positions and declared a day of solidarity with housewives by mandating their
husbands to take on their roles for 24 hours.
A personal fitness enthusiast,
Sankara encouraged Burkinabes to always keep fit, and was regularly seen
jogging unaccompanied on the streets of Ouagadougou
In 1987, during a meeting of African
leaders under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity, Thomas Sankara
tried to convince his peers to turn their backs on the debt owed western
nations. According to him, “debt is a cleverly managed re-conquest of Africa . It is a re-conquest that turns each one of us
into a financial slave.” He would not request for, nor accept aid from the
West, noting that “…welfare and aid policies have only ended up disorganizing
us, subjugating us, and robbing us of a sense of responsibility for our own
economic, political, and cultural affairs. We chose to risk new paths to
achieve greater well-being.”
Thomas Sankara was a pan-Africanist
who spoke out against apartheid, telling French President Jacques Chirac,
during his visit to Burkina
Faso Burkina
Faso
Few young Africans have ever heard of
Thomas Sankara. In reality, it is not the assassination of Thomas Sankara that
has dealt a lethal blow to Africa and Africans;
it is the assassination of his memory, as manifested in the indifference to his
legacy, in the lack of constant reference to his ideals and ideas by Africans,
by those who know and those who should know. Among physical and mental dirt and
debris lie Africa ’s heroes while the younger
generations search in vain for role models from among their kind. Africans have
therefore, internalized self-abhorrence and the convictions of innate
incapability to bring about transformation. Transformation must run contrary to
the African’s DNA, many Africans subconsciously believe.
Africans are not given to celebrating
their own heroes, but this must change. It is a colonial legacy that was
instituted to establish the inferiority of the colonized and justify colonialism.
It was a strategic policy that ensured that Africans celebrated the heroes of
their colonial masters, but not that of Africa .
Fifty years and counting after colonialism ended, Africa ’s
curriculum must now be redrafted to reflect the numerous achievements of
Africans.
The present generation of Africans is
thirsty, searching for where to draw the moral, intellectual and spiritual
courage to effect change. The waters to quench the thirst, as other continents
have already established, lies fundamentally in history – in Africa’s forbears,
men, women and children who experienced much of what most Africans currently
experience, but who chose to toe a different path. The media, entertainment
industry, civil society groups, writers, institutions and organizations must
begin to search out and include African role models, case studies and examples
in their contents.
For Africans, the strength
desperately needed for the transformation of the continent cannot be drawn from
World Bank and IMF policies, from aid and assistance obtained from China , India ,
the United States or Europe . The strength to transform Africa lies in the
foundations laid by uncommon heroes like Thomas Sankara; a man who showed
Africa and the world that with a single minded pursuit of purpose, the worst
can be made the best, and in record time too.
I am still searching for the original author of this
Sankara tribute, so as to accord due credit. What the piece demonstrates is the
failure of the Humanities by the African, but particularly by the Nigerian.
Because Thomas Sankara is hardly mentioned anywhere on the African continent,
his memory and legacy are deliberately being extinguished. Is the case not the
same with such Nigerian greats as Obafemi Awolowo and Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi? Of
course, it is fantastic that this great institution is named after one of Africa ’s greatest nationalists. But how many students of
this university will readily retell the signposts of Dr. Azikiwe’s greatness?
What would be your reaction if I recall that a Yoruba journalist friend of
mine, who earned a Masters degree in the Humanities from a British university,
went on record to say that, because he was pivotal in the enthronement of the
Buhari presidency, Bola Tinubu had done more for his ethnic group than Awolowo
ever managed?
Look
at Michael Iheonukara Okpara. He was the Premier of Eastern Nigeria from 1959
to 1966. He died a poor man, without using his political position to amass
wealth, without being corrupt, without even owning a decent house of his own.
Apart from leading by the personal example of rectitude, Okpara’s greatest accomplishment was that he faithfully continued
his predecessor in office, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s programme of economic
restoration, indexed on the Eastern Region Reconstruction Programme of 1954 to
1964. When Okpara took charge in 1959, he saw to the inauguration of the University of Nigeria College of Agriculture Eastern Nigeria the country’s breadbasket
by 1965. It is a matter of public record that, by 1965 school children were
having an egg each for their breakfasts in Eastern schools as a result of the
quantum of eggs produced in the region. Under Okpara’s watch, industrial
centers were created in key Eastern Nigerian cities. Aba, Calabar, Enugu,
Onitsha, Owerri, Umuahia and Calabar had industrial layouts designated
Factory Roads, but far more crucial was that artisan and technical skills were
so high through the many Technical colleges and training centers established by
Okpara’s administration. The result was that the East virtually had dominance
of skilled workers and artisans nationwide. Okpara also built on Azikiwe's
school programme, so that by 1966, the East had the highest number of secondary
schools in Nigeria; the highest number of Teacher Training Colleges; and the
highest school enrollment in West Africa; the highest number of Community
Health centers and hospitals in Nigeria, and better still, by 1964, it was seen
as the fastest growing economy in the world, ahead of the so-called "Asian
Tigers" that later took over.
The Nkalagu Cement Factory came on stream under Okpara. He
built the Turners Asbestos Cement Company at Emene. He built the Presidential
Hotels in Enugu and Port Harcourt
Let me put a question to this audience: Was it not in
front of all your eyes that some Igbo politicians, acting in the name of
partisanship, set ablaze bales of cloth imprinted with Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s
image? This leads me to a number of critical areas in which, instead of
speaking out, our gurus respond with deafening silence. Take Chief John Nnia
Nwodo, the President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo. Chief Nwodo was at the Grand
Hotel in Asaba on Saturday October 7, 2017, for the 50th anniversary
of the Asaba Massacre. Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State 125 kilometre
journey from Enugu to the Delta State 6.25 kilometres !
Chief Nwodo lamented that the largely peaceful South East
geopolitical zone had been turned into a vast cantonment of checkpoints,
something absent in the other five geopolitical zones of the country. He didn’t
discuss the permanent chaos that passes for the Onitsha
end of the Niger Bridge Onitsha is far
from Nigeria 950
kilometres to the northern tip of the country in
Katsina. It is 510
kilometres from Badagry to the west. It is 354 kilometres to
Calabar on the Atlantic . Yet, it appears to be
the main operational base of the Customs!
Vehicles coming into Anambra State Niger Bridge Rogers
Chief Nwodo demanded the dismantling of these checkpoints.
His outrage raises a couple of fundamental question. Why are security personnel
and checkpoints massed in the Igbo country when, as President Buhari recently
revealed, waves of Libya-trained terrorists are breaching our borders from the
Sahel and inflicting death and destruction on the entity? Why are these
checkpoints not teeming in the North-East geopolitical zone where Boko Haram
terrorists are still on their killing and kidnapping sprees? Why are our people
carrying on as though Nwodo is the only tongue that ever tasted salt and
pepper, the only pair of lips that could ever part to insist that, the monkey’s
hand not being human, it should be removed from the soup pot?
Take in addition four faulty interpretations of Nigeria Biafra , and
the fourth during the years that immediately preceded Nigerian Independence in
1960. I bring them up because, as Ndigbo insist, “It is always advisable for
elders to keep a watchful eye on the homestead, so that children do not roast
and eat the vulture for meat.”
(1)
Richard Osuolale Abimbola Akinjide is 87 years old. He was
the Federal Minister of Education in the First
Republic , and the Federal Minister of
Justice in the Second
Republic
Question: Did anybody raise any
objection?
Akinjide: Of course, we asked
him (Major-General Aguiyi-Ironsi) and he said just to keep us safe. We didn’t
ask him to come. We didn’t need your security but he kept coming. Right then,
we smelt a rat. Later on, I must tell you that I got a report, very big report,
from foreign intelligence that in fact Ironsi was the leader of that coup.
Question:
But Nigerians believe it was Major Kaduna Nzeogwu who was the leader of the
coup?
Akinjide: No, no, no. I was
given a bulk report on Ironsi’s involvement in the coup. As said, we didn’t
know where the Prime Minister was but Ironsi was going left, right and centre.
We discovered later that he was indeed the leader of the coup. He now asked us
to hand over power to him for safety. I said why do we have to hand over power
to you? You are the head of the army, keep the country safe. But he insisted
and ‘forced’ us to hand over power to him at the cabinet meeting. Power was not
handed over to him but he took power from us by force.”
(2)
Alhaji Abdul Ganiyu Folorunso Abdul Razak is 90 years old. He
was the Federal Minister in charge of the Nigerian Railways in the First Republic Northern
Nigeria . He was in the meeting at the Parliament in Lagos
(3)
Brigadier Victor Adebukonuola Banjo was executed in Enugu Biafran State
“Victor Banjo (April 1, 1930 –
September 22, 1967) was a Colonel in the Nigerian Army. He ended up in the
Biafran Army during the struggles between Nigeria
and Biafra . Victor Banjo was mistaken for a
coup plotter against the Nigerian Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, by the
Government of Aguiyi Ironsi (according with the book "Why we struck"
by Adewale Ademoyega) He was alleged to have staged a coup plot against Biafran
President Odumegwu Ojukwu and was executed as a result. It took a second
military tribunal judge to sentence Victor Banjo, because Odumegwu Ojukwu's
first military judge stated that there were not enough evidence to convict
Victor Banjo of coup charges. There has been no third party verification of
Victor Banjo's involvement in the Nigerian Coup nor Biafran Coup. His alleged
involvement in both coup plots has been based on unsubstantiated hearsay.”
(4)
About a week before the burial of General Chukwuemeka
Odumegwu-Ojukwu on March 2, 2012, Owelle Rochas Okorocha unveiled the statue of
the ex-Biafran leader at the Heroes
Square
A string of subterfuges connect the above points. I will
deal with them all, beginning from point Number 4, in order to set the
records straight for posterity. The information that Ojukwu was only the second
commissioned graduate in the Nigerian Army is false. The information that Major
General Olufemi Olutoye was the first graduate to receive an Army commission is
misleading. For the purposes of this paper, I asked a friend in Owerri to visit
the Heroes Square Imo State
According to the
Supplement To The London
But according to the
Supplement To The London
What the above official entries from London
The information from Owerri is that Governor Okorocha is
replacing the old Ojukwu statue. He should be told to correct his government’s
earlier mistake. Beyond this counsel that Okorocha sorely needs, it deserves to
be stated that this matter represents a failure on the part of our Humanities
gurus. They looked the other way as the tethered goat writhed in labour. There
are at least five tertiary institutions in Imo State
We come to the issue of Victor Banjo. The Wikipedia post
on Banjo is a horrendous amputation of history. It is not true that a first
tribunal had acquitted him, following which an unsatisfied Ojukwu appointed a
second tribunal that returned a guilty verdict. There had been only one
tribunal in the trial of Banjo, Ifeajuna, Alale and Agbam – the one headed by
Justice G. C. Nkemena, which had Brigadier U. O. Imo and J. Udoaffia as
members. The Wikipedia post on Victor Banjo remains an affront to history that
must be dismantled. The certified true copy of the verbatim report of the
trial/verdict of the Justice Nkemena Tribunal is in the public domain. In fact,
it is the basis of a book by the renowned journalist Nelson Ottah, which has
the uncanny distinction of appearing under two different titles. It was first
published in 1980 by Fourth Dimension, Enugu
Let me now address the mater of Alhaji Abdul Razak. I met
with this eminent Nigerian when I was writing Ironside, my biography of General Aguiyi-Ironsi, nearly 30 years
ago. The story he told me then, which appears in Ironside, is not exactly in sync with
Chief Akinjide’s tale. Chief Akinjide claims that he questioned Aguiyi-Ironsi
on why he was at the Parliament on the morning of the coup d’etat. No previous
account of January 15, 1966 credits Akinjide with vocalizing any exception to
Ironsi’s hearing. But Akinjide declares 52 years after the event that he had
expressed outrage to Aguiyi-Ironsi himself! This is hardly surprising because
every first-person account of the events of those days has invariably cast the
raconteur in the mode of a superhero!
Of graver concern, however, is that Alhaji
Abdul Razak had revealed to me that he had kept in his possession the document
in which he and other Cabinet members/Parliamentarians of the First Republic
Although I count (Dr. Reuben) Abati
[who called January 15 an Igbo coup in an article] as a friend, I had tagged
him “a conceited ignoramus” in my 2011 piece (refuting his claim).
Today, the temptation is overpowering to dub him a recalcitrant recidivist.
But, I will resist it and, instead, introduce specificity in my challenge to Nigeria
The original copy, and
exemplifications, of the Magna Carta, the charter of liberty and political
rights that rebellious barons obtained from King John of England Nigeria Nigeria
Also, 50 years after the event, the
document by which parliamentarians handed over power to the military remains in
the private hands of Alhaji Abdul Rasak (SAN). He should be persuaded to
relinquish it to the Nigerian state.
It
is because Nigerians make a joke of historical facts and documents that Chief
Akinjide could claim preposterously in 2017 that he “got
a report, very big report, from foreign intelligence that in fact Ironsi was
the leader of that coup.” Under what auspices was the “big report from foreign
intelligence” handed over to Akinjide? Who exactly did the handing over of the
document? Why has Chief Akinjide kept this “bulky” intelligence report
concealed for 52 years? After claiming that he had it, why are other eyes still
prevented from reading it? Could it be because the fabulous intelligence report
exists only in the octogenarian’s fertile imagination? In parenthesis, I may
just add that, until Akinjide’s astonishing interview, no one had warned that
“going left, right and centre,” which he accused Aguiyi-Ironsi of, amounted to
a capital offence!
Every country places a moratorium on classified documents for a
given period. Thereafter, the documents are declassified. In the United States United Kingdom
But Akinjide claims possession, since 1966, of a bulky
foreign intelligence report that placed General Aguiyi-Ironsi at the leadership
of the January 1966 coup. Yet he will not release it for public consumption! It
shows that, to varying degrees, people like Akinjide, Abdul Razak, the
ghostwriter of the Wikipedia balderdash on Victor Banjo and the statue-monger
of Imo are, deliberately or inadvertently, in the service of the grand schema
to keep Ndigbo permanently demonized as a justification for perpetually holding
them up for opprobrium, marginalization and thralldom.
It was, of course, natural for such an upheaval as
grotesque as January 15, 1966, to give vent to numerous interpretations. Some
said it was a coup plotted and executed to institute and drive the machinery of
Igbo domination of Nigeria
But for the reflective, it all boils down to licking one’s
lips or letting harmattan into the destructive job of doing the licking. It
brings me back to theoretical formulations in the earlier stages of this
presentation where I stated that, “People must tell their stories. If you don’t
preserve your story, your disappearance is only a matter of time. Nobody would
remember you. Your culture will not be preserved. Culture is the way a people
make an image of themselves.” This is the point at which to bring into
consideration the wisdom inherent in the advice from Professor Echeruo that
prefaces this paper:
“Our history strongly suggests
that we need to moderate strength and power with discretion and diplomacy, not
only among our leaders but also among the generality of our people. It is not
weakness to recognize the value of discretion. It is foolhardiness to choose
death (or something close to it) in place of life.”
The alternative to the macabre choice of death or
something close to it is to be found in entrenching one’s identity. To be sure,
it is not the kind of fire a man stands astride in order to warm himself. This
is because the flames of this fire are of the leaping variety that licks the
testicles! It is not the sort of dance one engages in with their palm cupping
snuff. Otherwise, the black, powdery stuff scatters to the four winds. The
instruments required for this operation are discretion and diplomacy. Diplomacy
and discretion that are channeled into telling our story for the irreversible
entrenchment of our identity! You can inscribe this on a wall where it is
unlikely to be effaced by seepages from rainwater: the threat against us is
less of super-structural savagery than it is of the insidious self-denudations
of our identity by conscious and unconscious acts of commission and omission.
We long abandoned our definition to the devices of voices emitting nothing but
howls of execration against us. Who does not know that the consequences of this
collective self-abnegation are too hazardous to contemplate? Who does not know
that the continued preservation of geographically tiny Israel in the midst of
hostile neighbours is due more to the uncompromising sustenance of the Jewish
identity than to the state’s legendry military prowess? Is it not given trite that
identity and centripetality are conjoined?
I am no prophet of doom. I do not believe that any
objective classification would lump me with people who would tell the seeker of
direction that there was a roundabout two kilometres away, without going one
better to advise the sojourner to turn left or turn right or move straight
ahead on getting to the roundabout. I aver, therefore, that there is a panacea
to the contingency of ethnic suicide. The late, great poet, Christopher Okigbo,
told us how to go about it 52 years ago. In “Hurray for Thunder,” the fourth
movement in Part of Thunder: Poems prophesying war, Okigbo gave us this
couplet:
The eye that looks down will
surely see the nose;
The finger that fits should be
used to pick the nose.
My proposal toes that line. In the journey of life, there is
always an ambience in which all opinions are freely aired. But, when the deluge
has risen from the ankles and become neck deep, the gurus must play
significantly in the position of ideas and the mechanisms for obviating the
contingent catastrophe of drowning. This dismisses what obtained in the recent
scenario that posed the all-important question of where, between our homes and
Rockland, we should wake up each morning. We witnessed the avoidable babel that
ensued, especially in the social media. We also saw to our chagrin the Grim
Reaper disregarding age and remorselessly transporting youth to demise by
various vehicles, including drowning in mire!
My attitude is that the babel is a natural consequence of
the abdication of responsibility by the gurus. Our gurus must return to the
noble and self-preserving task of lighting the torch in order that the people
will see through the labyrinthine pathways of life. The ostrich option must be
jettisoned. Individuals in the know may not indulge in the escapism of
nonintervention, which is like roasting and feasting on rodents while the
homestead is on fire. At the collective level, a good way of maximizing the
functions of our gurus is by setting up a non-tuition university, a well-funded,
properly equipped and competently administered research citadel where our
eggheads both at home and in the Diaspora will often retire, especially during
sabbaticals, to study our multifarious challenges and posit informed options
for sustained existence in dignity, safety and security. Ndigbo are in dire
need of such a Think Tank! Its realization cannot be as onerous as the
mastering of rocket science.
Conclusion
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen. I am now in the final
lap of this race. To redeem my promise, I will now reveal the major reason why
I accepted the invitation to be here today. More than a decade ago, I found
myself as a geriatric student in this university, doing a Masters programme in
English. Two university professors, both of them female, averred that I could
do with the diploma. I thought differently. But, insistent, they dragged me,
kicking and screaming, into the course. The reason I disdained returning to
school wasn’t because I had suddenly developed Boko Haramic tendencies. No! But
I was antipathetic to the idea of reengagement with formal education because of
a 1983 experience that had left me traumatized. I was then on the staff of The Guardian newspapers in Lagos. The
paper’s Editor deployed me to the old Cross River State, to cover the
presidential election. I had the option of doing the trip to and from Calabar,
the state capital, by air. But, because I would be away for about two weeks, I
elected to drive.
Well, I covered the election all right. The Federal Electoral
Commission (FEDECO) declared Alhaji Shehu Shagari duly returned for a second
term of office. On the journey back to Lagos flattened tyres abandoned me at
dusk somewhere not far away from Odogbolu in the Yoruba country. While trying
to plot a way out of my predicament some armed men surrounded me and yanked my
car keys from me. By some miracle I escaped and fled into surrounding bushes,
my fear of adders and vipers temporarily extinguished.
At the scene of the robbery the following morning, the car
was still there. I had, prior to the bandits’ arrival, disabled it by removing
the rotor. But other valuables had gone, including the dissertation for a
University of Lagos Masters degree in Mass Communication that I had almost
completed, and the typewriter I was using to write the treatise. [We didn’t
have palmtops and laptops and desktops in those days.] I decided it was
farewell to formal education, and stuck to the resolution until the two ladies
that weren’t even acquaintances at the time railroaded me right back to Unizik
auditoriums and classrooms.
I later regretted acquiescing to their importunity. The
Masters programme was to last an academic session. But it took many more years
to accomplish. While at it, my daughter caught a flight for the United Kingdom
and returned twelve months later armed with a Masters degree in her area of
specialization. Not only that, my son who was a Unizik undergraduate soon left
with a science degree. Beside myself with indignation, I vowed to expose the
morass that had forced us into dawdling for years for an MA in English. I
mobilized fellow journalists for muckraking, only for us to hit outcomes that
left everyone pleasantly surprised. We found that what had happened to my
course mates was no more than an unfortunate blip, an aberration. We found that
Nnamdi Azikiwe University, especially the Arts Faculty that we had specifically
targeted, was acquitting itself creditably in terms of its raison d'être. Academic sessions were progressing with the
efficiency of a chronometer. Following our eventual graduation, some of my
course mates registered for doctoral work in the same English Department. Upon
the invitation to be here today, I did a onceover of the Arts Faculty. My findings
were exhilarating.
I found that the Faculty has 10 solidly established Departments,
thus:
1. Chinese.
2.English Language and Literature.
3. History and International Studies.
4. Igbo, African and Asian Studies.
5. Linguistics.
2.English Language and Literature.
3. History and International Studies.
4. Igbo, African and Asian Studies.
5. Linguistics.
6. Modern
European Languages.
7. Music.
8. Religion
and Human Relations.
9. Philosophy, and
9. Philosophy, and
10. Theatre
and Film Studies.
Further, since the inception of the university in 1991,
the Arts Faculty has graduated some 4,189 students that undertook regular
studies and 748 that underwent Part-time programmes. The Faculty has awarded
271 doctorate degrees, 816 Masters degrees and 36 Postgraduate diplomas. It
currently has under tutelage some 2,611 regular students, 451 Part-time
students in undergraduate work, and a total of 485 students pursuing postgraduate
diplomas and MA and PhD degrees. In my book, this distinction is stunning. As
someone who prefers to learn from the titans, I had no option but to say a
resounding yes when the invitation came for me to share my thoughts with you.
That is the Allure of the Humanities.
I thank you for your time.
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