Ominira:
I'm currently writing the biography of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, and my intention is to extend work already done by Zik himself in his My Odyssey, and by his other biographers K.A.B Quartey-Jones (Cambridge UP, 1962) and Vincent Ikeotuonye (Macmillan 1964) as well as the work by Miriam Ikejiani and P. Olisa Esedebe. Basically, my biography of Zik aims to complete or fill the gaps that Azikiwe, who promised a sequel to his autobiography, did not eventually fill. My Odyssey tells Azikiwe's story from his own voice up till 1960. Mine is to provide the larger context of Azikiwe's life as a 20th century icon of the African Liberation movement, up to his death in 1997. So, I'll suggest that you wait for my book, and buy it when it comes.
I do not wish to waste my time on this matter in this forum. If it would stimulate debate, that would have been a different matter. It will however just be another Igbo-Yoruba penis-measuring that would drown the issues in pointless, inconsequential polemics. But one thing I can tell you is that Azikiwe's footprints are all over the place, in the public and personal archives in Ghana, the UK, USA, Nigeria, and in his own published and unpublished papers secured in his own extraordinarily rich library which still has his papers. You can be certain that I intend to tease it all out. Now, some character calls me a "comedian" and proceeds to talk about Ilupeju and Ikeja industrial estates, and all manner of hokum. And you wonder why Nigeria's current national intellectual culture is prostrate when those employed to teach in her universities seem incapable of abstraction and coherence.
I choose not to engage in this debate with great depth because I have written about this many times and it is tiring to engage brick walls in a debate. But I will place my position in a summary context: I have asked this question of the likes of IBK many times without coherent answers: what is wrong with Azikiwe choosing to work with the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) in a pragmatic alliance rather than with Awolowo? It is clear that Azikiwe foreswore his personal ambition for the sake of the nation. A lesser man would have taken the shorter, more convenient road, and that would have cost Nigeria the entire North of Nigeria as at 1957 and 1960. Zik chose integration and nation-building over the "area-scatter politics" that later led to wild, wild west. About Azkiwe and Lagos: perhaps we should start with these point: Azikiwe's father was Lugard's clerk in Zungeru. From Zungeru he was transferred to Calabar, and by 1918, to the Government Secretariat in Lagos. Azikiwe grew up in Lagos, not Awo; Azikiwe went to boarding school in downtown Lagos; not Awolowo. Azikiwe was elected to represent Lagos in the Legislative Council, not Awolowo. Azikiwe established his flagship newspaper, the West African Pilot, that spear-headed Nigeria and West Africa's political and cultural renaissance from 1937-1957, in Lagos, not Awolowo; Zik Enterprises was located in Lagos; Azikiwe Athletics Club was located in Yaba, Lagos; Azikiwe's political life was staged in Lagos; Azikiwe's party governed Lagos, and anybody who wishes to understand the impact of the NCNC as the governing party in the Lagos City Council should look at the record of public work in Housing, Municipal Services and Infrastructure carried out in Lagos from 1954 to 1966. Now, Obafemi Awolowo had a certain disdain for Lagos; he did not feel comfortable in its cosmopolitan space. He placed this on record in his own memoirs. Until he served in Gowon's cabinet from 1967-1972, he never had a life in Lagos. He had no political influence in Lagos, and he had absolutely nothing to do with the policies that shaped Lagos. Azikiwe was deeply involved both in the cultural, economic, and political life of Lagos at the top floor. Of this, only the ignorant can dispute. Anyone who wishes to understand the impact of Azikiwe's contribution to Nigeria and West Africa's political and economic transformation from 1937-1957, should read George Padmore's letter to him in 1956 from London, still in the files on Azikiwe at the British archives on Kews Garden. Zik resurrected an already politically dead Herbert Macaulay, retired from politics by the defeat of his NDP by the NYM, until Azikiwe brought him back to life.
Zik formed the NCNC and put Macaulay at its head. At Macaulay's death in 1944, Zik gave him a rousing funeral never seen before in Lagos, and assumed undisputed leadership of the NCNC. With his contacts with T. Akunna Wallace-Johnson and George Padmore, Azkiwe provided Michael Imoudu the blueprint for organizing Nigeria's first major Labour strike against colonialism in Lagos, and nationally. Until Azikiwe started his newspaper chains, there was o such thing as "National Politics." The network of Azikiwe's papers literally "imagined" Nigeria into being for the first time and defined the contours of modern Nigeria as a national political space. If there was any other person in their generation who could stand shoulder to shoulder with Azikiwe in that period, it was the brilliant H.O. Davies. But he was bought out in 1946 by the colonial government with a job in the Customs Services. In 1946, as a result of his sustained opposition, Arthur Richard's was compelled to invite Azikiwe to say, basically, "okay, what do you want?" and it was Azikiwe who articulated and itemized the demands that set Nigeria towards declonization, starting with the convening of the Ibadan Conferences by 1951 & 2; the establishment of the Elliot Commission and subsequently the founding of the University of Ibadan in 1948, and the Nigerianization of the Administrative Services in 1946/7 ( For further elaboration, go read Michael Crowder's The Story of Nigeria, if in in doubt;).
What did Azikiwe do for the East? Well, the first thing Azikiwe did on becoming premier in Enugu was to design the Eastern Nigerian Economic Reconstruction plan (1954-1964) as the blueprint for Eastern Nigerian development. It is now on record that published accounts placed the Eastern Nigerian economy as the fastest growing economy in the world by 1964. It was based on the Zik plan that the Industrial Estates at Enugu, Trans-Amadi (PH) and Aba were built. The Agricultural and industrial policies later implemented by Okpara was at the core of that program. There was not a single city in the East that did not become an industrial hub - from the Modern Breweries, Ceramics, and so on in Umuahia, to the first integrated Gas plant, the Niger Gas, or even the Niger Steel plant, which was billed to be integrated with the proposed Onitsha integrated Steel corporation that was later moved to Ajaokuta, as the first of such in the continent, and which was, with the Tri-city industrial Gas pipeline already laid between Port-Harcourt and Aba, with the Owerri end at foot, to be the hub of Eastern Nigerian Industrial and Technological development. All these were destroyed by the Civil war. The Eastern Nigerian Pharmaceutical Laboratories and Corporation, which later partnered and became Pfizer (WA) was established in Aba by Zik. It became Pfizer's West African Operational Headquarters until it was moved to Lagos in 1970 at the end of the war. You must know that as at 1967, Aba stood on same footing with Lagos as an industrializing city: whatever industry was established in Lagos was also established in Aba - the Nigerian Breweries, Nestle's first production Hq, Lever Brothers, Proctor & gamble etc; all had Aba operations to serve Central West Africa, all because of Zik. The Nigerian civil war and later Federal policies targeted and destroyed the East's industrial and economic growth. For starters, I will recommend Harry Gailey's book, The Road to Aba (New York U Press, 1970) to you to get some picture of what I'm talking about.
As for the constant comparison with Awo's achievements in the West: I will certainly take UNN over Redifusion Radio and TV; I will take the first modern library system ever established in Africa over Television House (never mind that Eastern Nigerian TV also came on air, only one year behind WNTV on October 1, 1960. But the West under Awo, did not have the kind of library network existing in the East.) I will certainly take the Onitsha Modern Market emporium, which made Onitsha for sub-saharan Africa, what Dubai is today, over Cocoa House. Why? The Onitsha modern market is regenerative investment, the skyscraper (Cocoa House) was a white elephant project that cannot even maintain itself. It speaks certainly to the attributes of those two certainly remarkable men. But above all, a powerful, often ignored fact: Azikiwe gave the fishing rod to the East, rather than the fish itself. Using the ACB from 1954 and later the Cooperative Bank of Eastern Nigeria, Azikiwe's government provided incredible access to credit to Eastern traders and businessmen for the first time. Before Zik, British Banks refused to lend to indigenous businesses. It all changed with Zik. The creation of a vast Eastern network of small scale Eastern businesses and trading activities, the very core of the formation of the vast Igbo middle class today owes something to Azikiwe's economic nationalism. We continue to see the impact even today in the fact that the East is a force to be reckoned with as entrepreneurs. Igbo businesses owe much of its start-up to Azikiwe and his program of empowerment through strategic access to credit to these businesses. I will just leave it at that. I have said much more than I intended to say on this. But there you have it.
Obi Nwakanma
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2015 22:59:22 +0300
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Baboon of the Lagoon
From: ibk2005@gmail.com
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
I'm currently writing the biography of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, and my intention is to extend work already done by Zik himself in his My Odyssey, and by his other biographers K.A.B Quartey-Jones (Cambridge UP, 1962) and Vincent Ikeotuonye (Macmillan 1964) as well as the work by Miriam Ikejiani and P. Olisa Esedebe. Basically, my biography of Zik aims to complete or fill the gaps that Azikiwe, who promised a sequel to his autobiography, did not eventually fill. My Odyssey tells Azikiwe's story from his own voice up till 1960. Mine is to provide the larger context of Azikiwe's life as a 20th century icon of the African Liberation movement, up to his death in 1997. So, I'll suggest that you wait for my book, and buy it when it comes.
I do not wish to waste my time on this matter in this forum. If it would stimulate debate, that would have been a different matter. It will however just be another Igbo-Yoruba penis-measuring that would drown the issues in pointless, inconsequential polemics. But one thing I can tell you is that Azikiwe's footprints are all over the place, in the public and personal archives in Ghana, the UK, USA, Nigeria, and in his own published and unpublished papers secured in his own extraordinarily rich library which still has his papers. You can be certain that I intend to tease it all out. Now, some character calls me a "comedian" and proceeds to talk about Ilupeju and Ikeja industrial estates, and all manner of hokum. And you wonder why Nigeria's current national intellectual culture is prostrate when those employed to teach in her universities seem incapable of abstraction and coherence.
I choose not to engage in this debate with great depth because I have written about this many times and it is tiring to engage brick walls in a debate. But I will place my position in a summary context: I have asked this question of the likes of IBK many times without coherent answers: what is wrong with Azikiwe choosing to work with the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) in a pragmatic alliance rather than with Awolowo? It is clear that Azikiwe foreswore his personal ambition for the sake of the nation. A lesser man would have taken the shorter, more convenient road, and that would have cost Nigeria the entire North of Nigeria as at 1957 and 1960. Zik chose integration and nation-building over the "area-scatter politics" that later led to wild, wild west. About Azkiwe and Lagos: perhaps we should start with these point: Azikiwe's father was Lugard's clerk in Zungeru. From Zungeru he was transferred to Calabar, and by 1918, to the Government Secretariat in Lagos. Azikiwe grew up in Lagos, not Awo; Azikiwe went to boarding school in downtown Lagos; not Awolowo. Azikiwe was elected to represent Lagos in the Legislative Council, not Awolowo. Azikiwe established his flagship newspaper, the West African Pilot, that spear-headed Nigeria and West Africa's political and cultural renaissance from 1937-1957, in Lagos, not Awolowo; Zik Enterprises was located in Lagos; Azikiwe Athletics Club was located in Yaba, Lagos; Azikiwe's political life was staged in Lagos; Azikiwe's party governed Lagos, and anybody who wishes to understand the impact of the NCNC as the governing party in the Lagos City Council should look at the record of public work in Housing, Municipal Services and Infrastructure carried out in Lagos from 1954 to 1966. Now, Obafemi Awolowo had a certain disdain for Lagos; he did not feel comfortable in its cosmopolitan space. He placed this on record in his own memoirs. Until he served in Gowon's cabinet from 1967-1972, he never had a life in Lagos. He had no political influence in Lagos, and he had absolutely nothing to do with the policies that shaped Lagos. Azikiwe was deeply involved both in the cultural, economic, and political life of Lagos at the top floor. Of this, only the ignorant can dispute. Anyone who wishes to understand the impact of Azikiwe's contribution to Nigeria and West Africa's political and economic transformation from 1937-1957, should read George Padmore's letter to him in 1956 from London, still in the files on Azikiwe at the British archives on Kews Garden. Zik resurrected an already politically dead Herbert Macaulay, retired from politics by the defeat of his NDP by the NYM, until Azikiwe brought him back to life.
Zik formed the NCNC and put Macaulay at its head. At Macaulay's death in 1944, Zik gave him a rousing funeral never seen before in Lagos, and assumed undisputed leadership of the NCNC. With his contacts with T. Akunna Wallace-Johnson and George Padmore, Azkiwe provided Michael Imoudu the blueprint for organizing Nigeria's first major Labour strike against colonialism in Lagos, and nationally. Until Azikiwe started his newspaper chains, there was o such thing as "National Politics." The network of Azikiwe's papers literally "imagined" Nigeria into being for the first time and defined the contours of modern Nigeria as a national political space. If there was any other person in their generation who could stand shoulder to shoulder with Azikiwe in that period, it was the brilliant H.O. Davies. But he was bought out in 1946 by the colonial government with a job in the Customs Services. In 1946, as a result of his sustained opposition, Arthur Richard's was compelled to invite Azikiwe to say, basically, "okay, what do you want?" and it was Azikiwe who articulated and itemized the demands that set Nigeria towards declonization, starting with the convening of the Ibadan Conferences by 1951 & 2; the establishment of the Elliot Commission and subsequently the founding of the University of Ibadan in 1948, and the Nigerianization of the Administrative Services in 1946/7 ( For further elaboration, go read Michael Crowder's The Story of Nigeria, if in in doubt;).
What did Azikiwe do for the East? Well, the first thing Azikiwe did on becoming premier in Enugu was to design the Eastern Nigerian Economic Reconstruction plan (1954-1964) as the blueprint for Eastern Nigerian development. It is now on record that published accounts placed the Eastern Nigerian economy as the fastest growing economy in the world by 1964. It was based on the Zik plan that the Industrial Estates at Enugu, Trans-Amadi (PH) and Aba were built. The Agricultural and industrial policies later implemented by Okpara was at the core of that program. There was not a single city in the East that did not become an industrial hub - from the Modern Breweries, Ceramics, and so on in Umuahia, to the first integrated Gas plant, the Niger Gas, or even the Niger Steel plant, which was billed to be integrated with the proposed Onitsha integrated Steel corporation that was later moved to Ajaokuta, as the first of such in the continent, and which was, with the Tri-city industrial Gas pipeline already laid between Port-Harcourt and Aba, with the Owerri end at foot, to be the hub of Eastern Nigerian Industrial and Technological development. All these were destroyed by the Civil war. The Eastern Nigerian Pharmaceutical Laboratories and Corporation, which later partnered and became Pfizer (WA) was established in Aba by Zik. It became Pfizer's West African Operational Headquarters until it was moved to Lagos in 1970 at the end of the war. You must know that as at 1967, Aba stood on same footing with Lagos as an industrializing city: whatever industry was established in Lagos was also established in Aba - the Nigerian Breweries, Nestle's first production Hq, Lever Brothers, Proctor & gamble etc; all had Aba operations to serve Central West Africa, all because of Zik. The Nigerian civil war and later Federal policies targeted and destroyed the East's industrial and economic growth. For starters, I will recommend Harry Gailey's book, The Road to Aba (New York U Press, 1970) to you to get some picture of what I'm talking about.
As for the constant comparison with Awo's achievements in the West: I will certainly take UNN over Redifusion Radio and TV; I will take the first modern library system ever established in Africa over Television House (never mind that Eastern Nigerian TV also came on air, only one year behind WNTV on October 1, 1960. But the West under Awo, did not have the kind of library network existing in the East.) I will certainly take the Onitsha Modern Market emporium, which made Onitsha for sub-saharan Africa, what Dubai is today, over Cocoa House. Why? The Onitsha modern market is regenerative investment, the skyscraper (Cocoa House) was a white elephant project that cannot even maintain itself. It speaks certainly to the attributes of those two certainly remarkable men. But above all, a powerful, often ignored fact: Azikiwe gave the fishing rod to the East, rather than the fish itself. Using the ACB from 1954 and later the Cooperative Bank of Eastern Nigeria, Azikiwe's government provided incredible access to credit to Eastern traders and businessmen for the first time. Before Zik, British Banks refused to lend to indigenous businesses. It all changed with Zik. The creation of a vast Eastern network of small scale Eastern businesses and trading activities, the very core of the formation of the vast Igbo middle class today owes something to Azikiwe's economic nationalism. We continue to see the impact even today in the fact that the East is a force to be reckoned with as entrepreneurs. Igbo businesses owe much of its start-up to Azikiwe and his program of empowerment through strategic access to credit to these businesses. I will just leave it at that. I have said much more than I intended to say on this. But there you have it.
Obi Nwakanma
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2015 22:59:22 +0300
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Baboon of the Lagoon
From: ibk2005@gmail.com
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Obi Nwakanma,
You have returned with your opportunistic misinformation and distortions of history. What did Zik who preferred Ghana do to develop Lagos? What did he do to develop the East talk less of Lagos.
You always want to claim credit where you have contributed nothing. Soon you will claim Igbo votes secured Buhari's victory in 2015.
Zik was an opportunist who saw the old Herbert Macaulay as waning and he came to take over all the old man's hard work and turn the NCNC into a rabid Igbo party. He was too envious of the Yoruba that when in 1959 Awo offered him the Prime Minister and he become the Minister of Finance he rejected the opprtunity to become the most powerful politician in Nigeria.
Instead he chose to become a mere figurehead to the Balewa government that he ended up betraying and running away from by guise of a Carribean cruise holiday when he knew his boys would strike.
Look you can spread your lies but it will not hold any water.
Cheers.
IBK
On 9 Apr 2015 19:15, "Bode" <ominira@gmail.com> wrote:
I am interested in this. Can you elaborate? I ask because I was just saying to my cousin who is visiting how much I wished Zik had become the first Premier of the Western Region, that ethnic relations in Nigeria would have been different especially between the West and East. His response was unexpected: what did Zik do for the East as Premier? UNN? But Awolowo is immortalized for what he was able to accomplish for the West, still without equal. So, you see why I am interested in Zik's contributions to Lagos?On 4/9/15, 12:22 AM, "Rex Marinus" <rexmarinus@hotmail.com> wrote:Azikiwe contributed more to the economic and cultural development of Lagos than Awolowo, for instance.
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
No comments:
Post a Comment