KAYODE KETEFE
By the time you are reading the piece, all preparations for the historic interment of the late Biafran warlord cum Nigerian statesman, Dim Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, will have been made, to pave way for that substantive final ash to ash rite, which is the most emotive moment in human cultural symbolism of mortality. This writer has never overgrown the emotion of being awe-stricken and perplexed in soulful transportation at the sight of a funeral, especially at that very somber moment filled with aura that stirs the pensive tunes in the heart, while a corpse is being lowered into the final resting place – the grave.
Whenever the eerie subject of death is the theme, all men succumb to some sort of emotions which underline the paucity of human knowledge on the mystery - the uncertainty of what lies beyond the grave.
Yesterday, a man was full of life, zestful, up and doing and today he is completely immobilised by the great leveler whose cold, lethal hands do not discriminate between the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the wicked and the righteous etc.
The announcement of the death of Dim Ojukwu on November 26, 2011, was initially taken with a measure of skeptical cautiousness, this being the natural emanation borne of earlier false reports of his demise, as the old warrior was callously being ravaged by sickness in a London hospital, but all doubts were soon dispelled and it later became evident that the death of Ikemba Nnewi was for real.
Then the torrents of tributes began to pour in honour of one of the great historical icon of modern Nigeria. People extolled his virtues in deluge of adjectives and flowery epithets. If there is one thing Nigerians are good at, it is crafting reflective tributes and moving elegies that would make even Shakespeare green with envy; we rarely celebrate our hero when they are alive but we never stint the praises in appreciative hagiography when they are gone.
Born on November 4, 1933 in the northern city of Zungeru and brought up in Lagos, Ojukwu, a highly socialised polyglot who spoke Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa fluently, was an advocate of egalitarian society where everyone, irrespective of ethnicity, would be free to live, thrive and pursue happiness. It is the erosion of this virtue in the troubled first republic and the pogroms leading to the callous killings of his kinsmen that inspired Ojukwu to secession project. He himself said the secession which he declared on May 30, 1967, was not a war on Nigeria but a declaration of the right of Igbo people to self-determination.
The obstinacy with which the Igbo nation under Ojukwu withstood the federal might for three good years in spite of overwhelming odds is a symbolism of Ojukwu's sterling character.
Ojukwu exhibited the same principled unyielding temperament when three years after his 1982 return from exile, the military government forcibly ejected him from his father residence at No. 29, Queen's Drive, Ikoyi, known as "Villaska Lodge".
The military government in 1985 wrote to Ojukwu of its intention to confiscate the building describing it as one of the "abandoned properties" of the Nigerian civil war, the title of which had reverted to the government. Ikemba filed an action in court to contest the confiscation and while the action was pending, the then military government of Lagos State sent 150-strong armed men which callously threw "the people's general" out of his father house.
Never a man to be cowed, Ojukwu defied the inclemency of the weather and other discomforts and stayed days on end in his vehicle right in front of the building, having vowed not to give up until he regain the possession of his father property.
His resolve eventually yielded dividend and Ojukwu got back his father's property through judicial intervention.
Such was Ojukwu's tenacity and uncompromising resolve. He was a dogged fighter, a man irrevocably committed to the actualisation of his ideals. Today, whenever the name Ojukwu is mentioned, it is evocative of virtues like courage, self discipline, erudition, forthrightness, outspokenness and charisma. When criticisms trailed the way he ruled as the Head of State in his in short-lived Peoples Republic of Biafra, especially regarding his ordering the death, through tribunal, of his once able and trusted lieutenants like Col. Victor Banjo and Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Ojukwu pleaded military necessity. He said "I did not permit personal friendship to intervene in my duties as Head of State"
On the Nigerian civil war, he had this to say "The civil war was a stage. Some might say an unnecessary stage, some might say inevitable stage, in our march to nationhood. Whichever way, it was a stage and a mile post in our agglomerate development. We cannot wish it away"
In a brief summary of his personal achievements, Ojukwu bypassed all apparent great accomplishments one may attribute to him and put his entire life achievements in a simple manner thus "My achievement is that whenever I speak, I am taken serious by Nigerians, the people I want most to serve."
Adieu, the People's General, Ikemba Nnewi, Dikedioranma Ndigbo, Odenigbo Ngwo, Ezeigbo Gburugburu, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu.
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