Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1933-2011)

“Our struggle is a positive commitment to build a healthy, dynamic, and progressive state which will be a bulwark against neocolonialism, and the pride of Black men the world over. The failure of the Nigerian experiment was a tragic result of a refusal by both Nigeria and the world to recognize, accept, and accommodate the obvious and painful fact that Nigeria was not and could never be a nation. The nations comprising the Federation lacked all the necessary factors for cohesion, and her peoples the necessary will. The center, therefore, could not hold.”

----------------------Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, 1969

Mississi, ele ebe umuazi gara? where have the kids gone, my father would ask my mother upon his return from his daily routine of trading at Mokola market in Accra, Ghana. My father never called the woman (my mother) he spent his lifetime savings to marry, by her first name until death did them part. It had always been mississi, and my father never added the letter “m” to lay a claim. It was just respect for the lady who bore all his children. Mma and Mpa, we hope you are all doing well out there in the environment only our Creator knows, and, still, beyond our reasoning.

We talked a lot about a country and ethnic group we knew nothing of; just that our parents spoke the language to us even though we talked back sometimes in Ga, having identified themselves as a people with distinct language and culture, way far from where we lived.

We were little brats, diversified in culture and ethnic origin, growing up, playing together on the playgrounds and amusement parks at Ruga, Nima and Kanda Estates. We watched all the television movies and knew all the casts by their names, including the sports telecasts--Bonanza, High Chaparral, “Marverick,” The Lone Ranger, The Saint, Ghanaian National Football League engagements and often times, the Black Fire card playing games in our neighborhood--together with my childhood pals; Theodore Onyeji, Eugene Onyeji, John Bull and Hellistus and on occasions, with Chukwu Egbejimba.

While growing up in that multi-ethnic, multicultural and multireligious community, I watched my father and his Igbo kins in the neighborhood, gather and talk about developments in their homeland, the fate of their brothers, sisters and relatives. I had noticed something out of the ordinary brewing in my native-land as my father’s gestures and expressions obviously indicated, which as it appeared, was full of uncertainties. It was not to be pleasant; the consequences would be ominous when Yakubu Gowon’s-led genocidal campaign against the Igbo nation was all over.

Afrter my first experience during the time Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in Ghana, February 1966, some five weeks before the military juntas carried out a coup that would fail in Nigeria from around which the Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and a few northern Nigeria politicians and military personnel lost their lives. My father and his kinsfolk within the Accra metropolis wore troubling looks, and had been restless on what they have been hearing over the air waves and reading all along from the news reels, including the speculations which spread all over, in form of propaganda about declaration of war.

Major General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi had been flogged, kidnapped and brutally murdered in a counter coup, organized by a Murtala Mohammed-led northern Nigeria military mutineers, six months after taking the nation’s affairs of state, during which time he sacked the regional administrations and appointed military governors, promulgating new decrees, particularly Decree no. 34, also known as the Unification Decree in attempt to unite the country after the January 15, 1966 coup.. Lt.-Col Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu was assigned to the Eastern Region. “Decree 34 was intended to establish a National Executive Council for the whole country with the regional military governors as members and to unify the top cadres of the civil service to ensure the efficient administration of the country for the duration of the military regime. Ironically enough, it was this decree that sparked off widespread rioting and violence directed against the lives and property of Eastern Nigerians in Northern Nigeria. It did not seem to matter to the leaders who planned the riots that Eastern Nigerians were in a terrible minority (3 out of 9 members) in the Supreme Military Council that took the collective decision.”

But the pogrom which would erupt in the aftermath of Ironsi’s assassination by the bloodletting nihilists would be a case of a shocking realization to my father and his kinsfolk who had become worried on the sudden about face in the country’s state of affairs that would place Nd’Igbo in fear, being sought from place to place, persecuted and murdered in the most brutal way; and, which would eventually lead to the thirty-month civil war.  Igbos would be desperately starved to death, outnumbered, plundered and demolished.

While my father and his folks focused on the next line of action as to the fate of their country men all around Nigeria, coupled with the fear of what was unfolding; we, the little kids, also, wondered what was going on, even though we were clueless of what had become of my ancestral home, especially on relatives in a far away land we knew nothing of or have seen, and yet to encounter.

However, it came to a point when we got the drift--that war had broken out between the federal Nigerian vandals and a newly created sovereign nation of Biafra. The chant of Biafra begun to fill the air in our neighborhood with my father and his folks clung on to the transistor radio my father used to check for updates and the goings on in and around a war torn Biafra-Nigeria world. A new nation had been born and, Ojukwu had justified the declaration of Biafran nationhood from series of consultation with the international and diplomatic community; his regional kith and kins; the Consultative Assembly and Council of Elders and Chiefs; and a war-mongering Yakubu Gowon-led federal Nigerian invaders and vandals who would not respect and uphold the decisions reached at Aburi, Ghana.

Ojukwu was born on November 4, 1933, in Zungeru, Northern Nigeria, a very small town the colonial administrator Frederick Lugard picked as capital over Jebba and Lokoja on the basis Zungeru was in the center. Before the crisis of 1966, many Igbo people lived in its proximity. Zungeru, also, the birthplace of the Great Zik of Africa, the nation’s keystone founder, as well, had a population of about 3000 by then.

Ojukwu’s military conversion took place in 1957 when he joined the Nigerian Army as the first indigenous university graduate. He would enter Eaton Hall Cadet School in Chester, England, that same year, and would be commissioned with the rank of second lieutenant. He would later attend officers courses at the Hythe and Warminister and would return to Nigeria in 1958; and would be appointed Company Commander of the Fifth Battalion of the Nigerian Army, in Kano, immediately. In May 1969, he was promoted to general by unanimous decision of the Biafra Consultative Assembly. Upon his return from the Ivory Coast on unconditional pardon by President Shehu Aliyu Shagari in 1982, countless honors were bestowed on him. Among the honors, the first title granted an Igbo by his kith and kin, the Ikemba 1 of Nnewi; Dike Di Oranma 1 of Igboland; Eze Igbo Gburugburu and numerous other titles as title holding in Igboland had become paramount.

Ojukwu had been the subject of uncountable literary works by writers, journalists, documentaries and scholarly projects. Practically everything known about Ojukwu up to his return to Nigeria from exile through his jail time under the despotic Muhammadu Buhari-Tunde Idiagbon military juntas, had been based on what he said and wrote in his books, and countless newspaper articles by writers and journalists; and speeches and interviews.

And like in his book “Biafra: Selected Speeches and Random Thoughts,” (Harper and Row Publishers, New York: 1969), he talked about a Nigeria the Igbo had given much to in order to make it work only to be faced with bigotry and hatred by a collaborative Hausa-Fulani-Yoruba and foreign backed nihilists who had proclaimed Igbos to be the nation’s problems. Nevertheless, as it was clearly known that the Hausa-Fulani northern Nigeria had been the architects of secession with a mandate to opt out of a Nigerian national state they had said was not workable, until they ate up their words from a British guided thinking to stay put with the opportunity to take control of the fabricated nation, in its time of crossroads and foreseeable conflicts leading to the pogrom of May 1966 through Declaration and then a terribly costly civil war which by all accounts could have been avoided had Gowon and his murderous gang heeded to the genuine mandate at Aburi.

And despite all the efforts for Nigeria to work, avoiding the current trend of friction in the country after the July 29, 1966 murder of Ironsi and a continuous pogrom that followed, which had begun to spread all over the country from region to region as Igbos flee wherever they were and a federal Nigeria guaranteeing no Eastern Nigerian lives, the Consultative Assembly and the Advisory Committee of Chiefs and Elders of eastern Nigeria in its ever tasking assignments after its August 31, 1966 session, passed the following resolution:

1. We the representatives of the various communities in Eastern Nigeria gathered in this Consultative Assembly, hereby declare our implicit confidence in the military governor for Eastern Nigeria, Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, in all the actions he has so far taken to deal with the situation which has arisen in Nigeria since May 29, 1966.

2. In view of the grave threat to our survival as a unit in the Republic of Nigeria, we hereby urge and empower and advise him to take all such actions that might be necessary to protect the integrity of Eastern Nigeria and the lives and property of its inhabitants.

3. We advise constant consultation by His Excellency with the Consultative Assembly.

4. In view of the gravity of the present situation, we affirm complete fault in and urge the need for solidarity of eastern Nigeria as a unit.

On September 12, 1966, Ojukwu’s broadcast with regards to the Eastern Region delegation to the regional conference in Lagos was seen as a move to seek mediation to the crisis in the country and possible agreement on agitated confederation. As it turned out, all said and endorsed was negated by a preplanned Gowon’s-led nihilists, erupting a new cycle of pogrom in Makurdi, Minna, Gboko, Kaduna, Kano and several other cities against folks of theEastern Nigeria region, killing thousands of people in a body count that included women and children.

It was not until January 1967, that after much bloodshed and, looting and coercion and theft of Igbo properties by the bloodthirsty cannibals of northern Nigeria, that another mediation was sought by the international community on advisory and, on how the pogrom could be brought to an end; giving peace a chance. Gowon’s-led genocidal campaign to wipe out Igbo from the face of the earth had agreed to submit to a meeting that probably would amount to cessation of the widespread killing of Igbos in the north and elsewhere in the country with resolutions seeking and mandating moderate ways and means to living as neighbors. Ojukwu had organized his entourage in an occasion to be chaired by Ghana’s Joseph Ankrah, who had called for the meeting in Aburi, Ghana. The meeting was well attended and a resolution reached after presentations were made from both sides.

I remember the time when the federal Nigeria delegation  and Ojukwu’s-led Eastern Nigeria entourage had arrived Aburi, and my father and his kinsfolk listened and watched each other talk about the conference, and the ongoing conflict in Nigeria; being bold and confident that a presentation so compelling and posturing brought along by Ojukwu and his eastern Nigerian delegates presenting its case of pogrom, an act carried out on a wholesale enterprise to eliminate the Igbo nation, would come to an end and both sides could move on until a path to good and normal governance was generated. But that wouldn’t be the case; Gowon and his murderous gang would change their minds disagreeing with the decision, and would fire the first shot to declare a full blown assault on the Eastern Region.

Even as little kids, we were conscious of these things and able to read the dailies including the late editions. I remember the day Teddy’s father walked in one evening with a copy of the “Evening News” its headline read, “Ojukwu wants Gowon.” I had read out loud the headline as Teddy’s father held the newspaper. Teddy’s father was uplifted in spirit though somehow astonished that a kid my age could read and perhaps knew more about the forbidden war.

The year was 1967, and Biafran troops, in a minute, on August 9, had overrun Benin, and had mounted a flag, proclaiming the Midwest a republic of its own, the Republic of Benin, with Lagos, its next target of invasion to end the unnecessary war, had a simple resolution held at Aburi was respected and upheld; which was what begun all the betrayals. First, the Igbos were determined to distance themselves from their Igboness by collaborating with a federal Nigeria initiatives to put to stop what was going on. That did not happen. There was an agenda. Igbo must be eliminated.

The case of one of Igbo intellectuals in the likes of Anthony Ukpabi Asika who had taken up the assignment of administrator of the East Central State Gowon had mapped out as war strategy to plunder and demolish the Igbo nation, was a typical example of intellectuals of Asika’s magnitude who succumbed to gullible, vulnerable rhetoric in a situation their own people were massacred anywhere they were found by the British-Russia backed federal Nigeria vandals. Asika was in Lagos as absentia administrator of the East Central State when his own very kith and kins had been denied access to the outside world, capsuled and destroyed beyond comprehension, Ojukwu compassionately mentioned of those who had betrayed “our” confidence in a blink of an eye to wipe out Igbo in its totality, and from its existence. Asika would turn out to be the worst thing ever to happen to Igbo people when he had returned to Enugu after the war to sit in as administrator on his own slogan that “onye ube ruru le ya rachaa” which was the beginning of bribery and corruption in post-civil war Igbo nation.

The Lagos government of Gowon had panicked on Biafra’s fast pace development in catching up with federal Nigeria war of annihilation which extended to the military governor of the Northern Nigeria, Lieutenant Colonel Usman Hassan Katsina, “not ruling out compulsory military service for Northerners” bragging Biafra would cease to exist in “a matter of hours.” A very long war and the most blood soaked event in the entire continent’s history, would continue apace, even when the Midwest governor Lieutenant Colonel David Ejoor had sworn while addressing Asaba people, said he would not live to see a Midwest turned into battlefield, while Gowon, in his so-called “tactical move” warns against tuning in to Biafra radio, arresting “500 people” in its violation.

The external service of the Broadcasting Corporation of Biafra (BCB) was indeed a powerful tool by way of its efficient, effective and thorough broadcasting, announced by Ikenna Ndaguba, among others. My little neighborhood on the outskirts of Accra would be unusually spooky and normal when Ndaguba is on the air proclaiming that:

“Nigerian troops had entered Ogoja. Chief Awolowo, leader of of the Nigerian delegation to OAU meeting in Kinshasha, leaves Lagos for Congo. He tells the press that before the end of the meeting Biafra will be crushed and the Biafran government will be overthrown.”

Though such announcements did not fly, it was something serious and a more formidable, strategic Biafra, well placed to resolve the drama, ending the war after Major A. Okonkwo had made the “Declaration of the Republic of Benin.”

But there would be an interference in that major breakthrough which gave Benin its sovereignty as Biafrans were western hinterland bound to Ore and then in a move that would have closed the ugly chapter. On September 20, 1967, the Biafran Liberation Army under the order of Brigadier Victor Banjo would withdraw Biafran troops from Benin to Agbor for no apparent reason which would bring about the fall of Benin to federal Nigerian troops, shattering all the hopes of liberation and “ceasing hostilities” by “offering peaceful settlement and by publishing proposals for a future relations bewteen Nigeria and Biafra.”

With the unfolding events as Ojukwu had prepared to present to OAU in its next meeting to be held in Kinshaha, Congo, a coup plot would be uncovered to overthrow the Biafran government through a high profile Biafran intelligence. Lieutenant Colonel Emmanuel Ifeajuna who would collaborate with Banjo and two others in their command, would be apprehended while leaving the compound of the British High Commission. During the course of Biafran intelligence work, thousands of Nigerian pounds would be found at Banjos apartment given to him by the British High Commission as fee to mastermind the overthrow of the Biafran government, with intention to abrogate the sovereign state of Biafra.

As it happened, Ojukwu would make a national broadcast with the notification of the fall of Benin because of the “deliberate withdrawal of our troops by the coup plotters.” On September 23, 1967, the four major actors of the coup--Banjo, Ifeajuna, et al.--would be court-martialed and summarily executed, which begun a whole new chapter in a war that was almost done with a Biafran victory--liberation, jubilation and celebration.

Upon the summary execution of Ifeajuna and his sabo-colleagues, traitors, the name Ifeajuna instantly became a notoriously household name as the brother who sold his own brother on the way to fight the enemies. There was a song for it: “awee mu na nwanne kwuru gaa ogu, Ifeajuna di na uzo ree nwanne ya...”

Ifeajuna had fled to Ghana on the warmth embrace of Nkrumah (who had applauded the first coup of January 15, 1966 masterminded by Ifeajuna and his colleagues in the Nigerian Army) but would return home an Ironsi’s amnesty.

As seemingly the war would drag on accounts of Banjo, Ifeajuna, et al. betrayals conniving with the Gowon-British High Commission deal, and the recapture of Benin by federal Nigerian troops, Ojukwu, before addressing the joint meeting of the Council of Chiefs and Elders, January 27, 1968, to introduce Biafra’s new currency in circulation, compiled the following in his diary:

December 25, 1967: Pope Paul VI sends two representatives to Lagos on a peace mission.

January 1, 1968: Gowon gives March 31, 1968, as the deadline for crushing Biafra...Lagos government announces change of currency as an economic measure against Biafra.

January 5, 1968: Gowon boasts about his “biggest military machine in Africa” which is to crush Biafra by March 31, 1968.

January 6, 1968: Collin C. MacDonald, Headmaster, Hope Waddell Training Institute, Calabar, in a letter to the London Times, accuses the Lagos government of not providing the “fundamental requirements” of security of life and property of law abiding citizens. This letter arouses protest from the International Red Cross against the conduct of the war by Gowon’s troops.

January 16 1968: Poisoned foodstuffs being smuggled to Biafra by Lagos government are seized by Nigerian troops at Ena Ora (Midwest) and mistakenly distributed to areas in Benin, Western Nigeria, and Okene in the North. Cases of death.

January 22, 1968: Nigerian currency notes cease to be legal tender in Biafra.

January 27, 1968: Biafra new currency introduced at meeting of the 7th Session of the Consultative Assembly and the Council of Chiefs and Elders.”

The nasty war would, however, rage on; losing all options to have overcome a British-Russian backed vandals, until formal ceasefire in January 1970. The war, would be declared “no victor, no vanquished,” by the leadership of a blood-lust Gowon. Ojukwu would leave and seek exile in the Ivory Coast, where he would spend thirteen years.

In Accra, the reactions was a cold feeling for a lost battle, and warmth feelings of euphoria for a bitter war begun from the pogrom, eventually ended with staggering casualties. Without much ado, my father summoned meetings, like he had done during the course of the conflict, to monitor and analyze the effects; but this time around by which the war ended, the meetings had been on body counts, family loses and what would be next step to follow. Apparently, every of my father’s kins residing in the Accra metropolis lost at least one soul to the civil war. Some had left immediately back to homeland while some had stayed for one  reason or the other. My father did not leave for reasons behind his children’s education until he was able to figure something out, especially for this writer who had to be homeward bound; and getting to know a people whose history had been unique and profoundly rich in culture, and whose history would turn out to be of political impotence and violence, of late.

As the relative discourse of the war and the wondering of Ojukwu’s plight which took center stage in every aspect of life among my father’s kinsfolk, and with the mental exhaustion of a pogrom-civil war era, and a downsizing Ghana’s workforce and collapsing economy due to an inept, corrupt and mismanaged Ghanaian resources by the Emmanuel Kotoka-Joseph Ankrah-Akwasi Amankwaa Afrifa-led military juntas, upon overthrowing Nkrumah’s administration, most Igbo residents in Accra made up their minds to leave with their families back home and start life anew or seek life elsewhere.

Ojukwu would arrive Lagos on the coach of Chuba Okadigbo, the presidential adviser on Political Affairs to Shagari, and who also had been Ojukwu’s personal friend and counsel, and chief negotiator and spokesman on matters of pardon to the erstwhile Biafran leader. Okadigbo had left a legacy during the political debates and series of television interviews that led to Ojukwu’s pardon. And when asked why Gowon had to be pardoned before Ojukwu on the basis Ojukwu was the first casualty of the nation’s most wanted men. Okadigbo, in a nutshell, came up with the riddle of the African continent where big trees falls on one another, on the road, and that lifting the one on the ground one must start from lifting up the one on top of the one on the ground.

Lagos had to be “bursting loose” upon Ojukwu’s return clouded all around the coast by Igbo men and women from all walks of life, gracefully appreciating a pardon and return that was seen in some circles as politically motivated. Ojukwu’s pardon was preceded by that of Gowon, who, too, had been declared a fugitive for masterminding on February 13, 1976, the brutal murder of Mohammed, who had relieved Gowon of his post in a coup, six months earlier, and had begun the immediate purge of the civil service that had no sense of purpose and mostly corrupt.

Within the trend of inexplicable events, Ojukwu would register his membership with the ruling party, National Party of Nigeria (NPN) that granted him unconditional presidential pardon, declaring his senate candidacy for Nnewi Senatorial District, his home base, on the platform of the NPN. There would be shouting matches, fights organized on political thuggery, deadly gangs, road rage in bitter political campaigns at Nkpor Junction, incitements of division among the Igbo elite, and all sorts of friction between Ojukwu and his political opponent, Dr. Edwin Onwudiwe, in the senate race.

Ojukwu would lose in that bitter election, and the administration that had granted him pardon would be overthrown in a bloodless coup three months after the incumbent, Shagari, was inaugurated for a second term.

Ojukwu’s political rebirth would surface again in the Fourth Republic when the Abdulsalami Abubakar’s-led military juntas had lifted the ban on political activities. In Ojukwu’s political reawakening, Chekwas Okorie, who had founded a new political party, All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) with the intention of an Igbo stock, had shopped around the United States for a Igbo Diaspora alliance and stalwarts to add flavor to the party’s agenda. I was in many of the meetings on the arising matters regarding the direction of APGA before Okorie went back home to place APGA’s agenda on the table and ballot for the presidential election.

As it also happened, Ojukwu was nominated APGA’s presidential candidate and a shot at the presidency with incumbent President Olusegun Obasanjo, and numerous other parties’ presidential candidates. Ojukwu lost the presidential election to Obasanjo and would henceforth be active in all Igbo-related politics which came with making political enemies along the way, typical of the saying, politics makes strange bedfellows.

Ojukwu would be struck with a major stroke and would be flown to a London hospital for treatment. On Saturday, November 26, 2011, Ojukwu died after more than a year battle trying to recover from the stroke. He was seventy-eight years old.


Ambrose Ehirim