With Dim Chukwuemeka? Odumegwu Ojukwu out of the way, Ndigbo’s path to the realization of their political aspirations in the larger Nigerian political spectrum may be rough, writes MIKE UBANI.
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When Dim Ojukwu, Eze Igbo gburugburu? (King of all Igbos), went to Aba, the commercial nerve-centre of Abia State, in February 2003, to flag off his presidential campaign on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, the entire city was completely shut down.? Almost all the traders in the legendary Ariaria and Ngwa Road markets refused to open their shops in solidarity with a man considered to be the heart and soul of Igbo politics.? Beyond that, primary and secondary school students in the area stayed at home, even when no public holiday was declared, apparently to catch a glimpse of Ojukwu.? Ironically, Abia was then a PDP-controlled state, yet support for Ojukwu’s presidential ambition was unprecedented.
Ojukwu and his party APGA came third in that election, obviously due to the massive rigging of that election. In the five? south-east? states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo,? the election was deliberately rigged to favour the candidate of the PDP, Olusegun Obasanjo.
In 2007, when APGA re-nominated him to contest that year’s presidential election, Ojukwu’s electoral performance was relatively worse, just as the conduct of the election.? A few senior party officials attributed the failure of the party’s presidential candidate to make an appreciable electoral impact to his falling health.? But even then, he remained the indisputable Igbo leader in the hearts of millions of his people who saw him as a veritable liberator of a marginalized and traumatized people.
As head of state of the defunct Republic of Biafra, Ojukwu remained steadfast in the prosecution of the civil war which followed his declaration of the former Eastern Region as an independent and sovereign state of Biafra.? A son of a multi-millionaire, Sir Phillip Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Ikemba Nnewi reportedly deployed his father’s vast resources to the prosecution of the war.? A man of uncommon courage, Ojukwu went on exile in 1970, when it became obvious that Biafra would collapse.
Ojukwu came back to limelight when the former National Party of Nigeria, NPN, civilian administration led by? Alhaji Shehu Shagari granted him amnesty.? A native of Umudim, in the highly industrialized town of Nnewi, in the present-day Anambra State, Ojukwu lost the senatorial election in 1983 to a political neophyte, Dr. Edwin Onwudiwe, of the Nigeria Peoples Party, NPP, led by the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe.
His electoral defeat was said to have been masterminded by the same party that brought him back to the country and gave him a ticket to contest the senatorial election on its platform.? It was gathered that some hawks in the then NPN felt that Ojukwu would constitute a threat to national unity and cohesion if allowed to go to the Senate.
Though his political rating dropped following his association with the conservative NPN government, Ojukwu came back to political reckoning after the military dismantled the civilian government of Alhaji Shagari on December 31, 1983.
And during the almost 16 years of military rule which culminated in the handover of power to a democratically elected government in 1999, Ojukwu remained a confidant of the military and a darling of his people.
His popularity among Ndigbo apparently explained why the founding national chairman of APGA, Dr. Chekwas Okorie, approached him to fly the party’s presidential flag during the 2003 presidential elections.? He proved his mettle during that widely controversial election, and has remained a rallying point of Ndigbo since then.
Until his death in a London hospital in the early hours of yesterday from complications arising from stroke, Ojukwu remained the official spokesman of Ndigbo.? He was unwavering in his support for the real re-integration of Ndigbo into the mainstream of Nigerian politics, economics and social life.
Following the announcement of his death, there was widespread fear that Igbo politics would never be the same again.? Essentially, the consensus on the major streets of Igboland is that? Igboland has literally become a fishing pond for all manner of political parties.
They may be correct.? Ojukwu’s party, APGA, has remained factionalized in the last six years, with Victor Umeh, former national treasurer of the party, leading one faction, and Dr. Okorie at the head of the other faction.? It is felt that Ojukwu’s inability to reconcile the warring factions before he fell to the cold hands of death would cause a bigger gulf in the party, which may ultimately lead to its extinction.
It was gathered that Ojukwu had handed over the baton of Igbo political leadership to Ralph Uwazuruike, leader of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, before his death yesterday. Some people say that Uwazuruike is yet to muster the charisma needed to lead Ndigbo.? Beyond that, the MASSOB which he leads is generally seen by outsiders and even several Igbo elites as a controversial, and even a secessionist, organization.
According to Hill Ezeugwu, a Biafran war veteran, it will take several years for Ndigbo to produce another? personality imbued with characteristic traits that? Ojukwu was known for? – a man who will muster the courage to speak fearlessly for the interest and welfare of Ndigbo, and who will not sacrifice the interests of his people after collecting crumbs from Abuja.
According to James Ndukwe, Enugu-based public affairs analysts, what happens to Igbo politics in future will depend on the ability of Igbo political elites who have the interests of Ndigbo at heart to reconcile Umeh and Okorie.? The thinking here is that since APGA was deliberately formed as a political vehicle to project the interests of Ndigbo in a larger Nigerian political spectrum, the surviving Igbo elites should put hands together to ensure the survival of the party.? And failure to do so could, according to Ndukwe, spell doom to Igbo politics without Ojukwu.