NIGERIA: 2015 Presidency: 'I Weep For The Southeast People'

GUARDIAN NIGERIA INTERVIEW BY SAMSON EZEA & NKECHI ONYEDI

PROF. A.B.C Nwosu, former Minister of Health and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), speaks on the state of insecurity in the country, Igbo Presidency in 2015, corruption and other issues.

The Igbo are clamouring for the Presidency in 2015, do you think it would be possible?

People get the leadership that they deserve, but the Bible also says that where there is no vision, the people perish, I weep for the Southeast and beyond, I won’t say more. There are people who promised the Ohanaeze leadership that power will go to Southeast in unbroken succession in 2015 from the Southsouth, that was their solemn word and that was what the Ohanaeze leadership told Ndigbo last year. So, we must hold them to their words if not, and the people should disgrace them thoroughly, because if we don’t disgrace them, another set will come up again. When a leadership says this is what they will deliver and they don’t deliver it, the followership should sanction them.

What were the factors that hindered previous moves by the Southeast to clinch power in the country?

The Igbo got the first Presidency of Nigeria, but it was a ceremonial president during the time of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. It has not always been like this with the Igbo. After independence, it was Azikiwe until 1966. The situation changed when we had the executive president in 1979, after the civil war had intervened. There is a school of thought that believes that the Igbo, having fought the civil war, should never be allowed to be President again until centuries have passed. There is also another school of thought that says ‘no, the Igbo have paid their dues and are entitled to the exercise of their full citizenship rights, including the Presidency’. The Igbo believed they must produce the President and in 1979, they came near it with Chief Alex Ekwueme as Vice President. Perhaps, if the military hadn’t intervened in 1983, Ekwueme might have become the President at the end of Shagari’s second term, but the military intervened and later there was June 12 presidential election, which was won by the late Chief MKO Abiola. Because of that, in 1999, it had to be exclusively Southwest issue.

Now, the Igbo are saying that they also need to become part of the equation and they reached an agreement with the Southwest, South-south in 2007 that the we didn’t mind if a Southsouth was, that was why some of us gave Dr. Peter Odili our best support in his presidential quest in 2007. Now that the Southsouth has produced the President, the only people who have not produced president is Southeast and we are saying we should produce. We are not anti-anybody, we are just pro-Igbo.

I respect the Yoruba the way they canvassed, pushed and held on to June 12. They are a people, they didn’t have to agree, but they made June 12 an issue and Nigeria recognised that June 12 was an issue. They presented a credible threat and were recognized.

I salute people like Chief Edwin Clark, though I will not go with him, but I salute him for his spirited defence of his people. He is a soldier of his people and a defender of Ijaw rights and I respect his tenacity. Because of that and the resource control issue, they also presented a credible threat and have become a force in Nigeria and Nigeria has recognised them.

But my heart bleeds when it comes to the Igbo, and then I weep again for the late Ikemba Odimegwu Ojukwu. And I ask, when will some leaders emerge from Igbo and say, ‘this is us, we mean no harm, but we are citizens of Nigeria and are entitled to full citizenship as a right’.

Not for people to be looking for where they are sharing porridge and running into the place, collect plates of porridge and vanish. It has always been an issue and each Igbo man must choose what he wants.

What is your view on the proposals submitted by Ohanaeze leadership on the amendment of the country’s constitution?

I needed a tranquilizer when I saw the president general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo presenting a proposal to the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.

I have four issues with that; if you are presenting a proposal on my behalf, at least, I ought to know what it is, it was in the pages of the newspapers that I heard that it was a six-year single term and I know it flies in the face of what Ndigbo has been asking for. My first quarrel was: why don’t they let our people see what they are submitting their behalf? How did they arrive at the decision? They can’t just wake up and begin to act as if nothing else occurred before now? I saw the one submitted by Delta State which was published in the newspaper. It was specific that Federal powers must be devolved to the states and it quoted specific sections of the constitution that they want to be amended.

I am not saying that they shouldn’t do it, but it will be easier if they carry everybody along and publish the proposal on the pages of the newspaper. Nothing will be lost because this thing is not a secret document. The Igbo people are not seeking something that is anti-Nigeria.

Many believe that corruption has worsened in the country since 1999 and the government is not doing enough to curb, do you agree?

I was shocked on May 29, 1999 when President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed me as Political Adviser and brought me into his government without knowing me.

We had never met as at that time, he had never seen me and I remembered that we went into the small room in the Villa after we congratulated him. I told him that I am Prof A.B.C Nwosu, he held me and took me into the small room and said, he wanted me to work with him and he had two bills with him that day he was sworn in. The Bill on Niger Delta Development (NDDC Bill). I will always say the truth, if anybody says it is an afterthought from Obasanjo, it is not true. He came to the Presidency determined to set up the NDDC to redress the injustice meted to the Niger Delta. How he ended up, he will be in the best position to tell us, but I know he showed me the Bill.

The second bill he showed me was the Anti-Corruption Bill, and he wanted me to do a research on how countries of the world had dealt with corruption and set up their anti-corruption agencies and the kind of powers they have.

The most charitable thing I can say is that corruption is still with us, and it illustrated what the Igbo man wrote on his motor that ‘to be a man is not a day’s job’. To fight corruption in Nigeria is not a day job, because corruption will fight back. So we have to fight it, if we don’t fight it, it will undo us as a nation. It diminishes our sovereignty and ability to fulfill our destiny in the world, so we must fight it.

Let’s forget yesterday, let’s start from today. This current Senate has identified wrongdoings in the privatization; we can fight it by doing something about that. We can look at the report, it is a report from our Senate, we can deal with it, we can deal with the corruption witnessed in the pension probe, it is mind-boggling. That brings us to the subsidy scam. What can stop corruption is that anybody who is caught in corruption is arraigned and jailed in accordance with the law. That is why you see people looking for General Muhammed Buhari; he sentenced people to unbelievable jail terms which they served some. If you catch a person, you send him to jail and make him forfeit some of those property and people see it.

What is your reaction to the state of insecurity across the country today with the killings in Jos and Boko Haram?

Everybody is worried, including the security agencies. My problem is that worrying about this cannot give us security. It is doing something about it that will give us security and I want to suggest that we can do something about it by engaging traditional rulers. Not just in places where we have security problems, but also all over the country.

I am convinced that we all have a firm resolve that the security problem cannot go on anymore, because I don’t think there is anybody who is benefitting from it. The problem is diminishing Nigeria’s sovereignty.

For somebody who witnessed the civil war, it is frightening. The thing has gotten out of hand and out of control and the only way to control it is to engage the traditional rulers and the various stakeholders. It is not of religion, and it is a matter of sovereignty, nationhood and citizenship.

We need to be firm about how the coercive agencies of the state are handling this matter. Murder and arson are criminal offences of the worst order. We have a proverb that says, “ If a small child craws and bites an old man without respecting the grey hair, the old man should craw back and bite the child on the buttock without respecting whatever he sees there.”

So if these people kill and maim people, the coercive agencies should use maximum force to establish the sovereignty of Nigeria. This insecurity issue has gone so far that it has to be dealt with decisively now.

Is the high rate of unemployment in the country a contributory factor to the problem?

Unemployment is a major factor because an idle mind is the devils workshop. The level of unemployment is intolerable and nobody is happy with it, but there are people who are paid by government to think out programmes that will keep people employed in a sustainable manner.

We cannot import tricycles popularly Keke NAPEP from India and tell a graduate of Chemistry to be driving and say it’s employment. What we are facing in the world is not new, America and Britain have gone through depression and a major way of creating employment in a sustainable manner is through massive investment in public works.

If government decides now to build one million housing units in Nigeria today, do you know the number of people who will be employed? Not Keke NAPEP for God’s sake. Or this thing they are doing, call young boys and give them lectures, after the lectures, they give them N5 million and ask them to go and be entrepreneurs and employers of labour. That again to me is again laughable. We should have a way of encouraging small and medium scale industries in a measurable way.

The Nigerian market is huge, we don’t have to export, we have over 160 million people. If we make enough quality goods and people buy into it, it is enough to create employment. The one that my heart bleeds as I drive to Enugu is the Ajaokuta steel. There are so many buildings that have passed lintel level, they have been wasting away for over 20 years. Ajaokuta is not only a steel factory, it is steel city. That is why you have hospitals, residential quarters and others there.

Ajaokuta Steel can conveniently absorb thousands of unemployed youths. Why should we leave the fate of people like that to some nonsensical privatization which every probe has found wanting.

I was one of the authors of the PDP manifesto, we believed in private sector-led economy, but we did not say that we would auction off the entire economy to whatever private sector. We have no national carrier, how many countries do you know that don’t have national carriers? Because of private sector, they go and bring 30-year-old aircrafts into Nigeria airspace. That is a shame.
This is 13 years of Democracy in Nigeria, do you think we have done well?
I laugh whenever I hear that US spent 200 years before they got to where they are today. The issue is that people learn from people’s experiences, so that you don’t have to go through the same thing. We have more than enough time. What are we learning that nobody should rule another person without the persons’ consent? When you rig the election, you are ruling without the consent of the people, is that what you need 500 years to learn? Do we need 500 years to draw up people’s constitution?

Igbo Can't Be President

By CHIDI NNADI, SUN NEWS ONLINE


Former Director-General of the National Orientation Agency, Dr. Ifeanyi Chukwuka has picked holes on the power rotation principle of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party(PDP), saying it was designed to keep the Igbo out of power. Chukwuka, a medical doctor and politician of note, who is now based in the United States of America, also spoke on his political antecedents among other issues. CHIDI NNADI brings the excerpts:


Political tutelage:

When General Ibrahim Babangida dissolved the 13 political parties formed then, and established the National Republican Convention(NRC) and Social Democratic Party (SDP), being a progressive, I quickly registered in the Social Democratic Party (SDP), where I contested and won the state publicity secretary of the SDP in the old Anambra State. Discharging that position with dexterity and unparallel amiability, I became popular with all governments and served in various capacities both in political parties and the government of my state.

At the Jos convention that produced the late Chief MKO Abiola, I won the post of Assistant National Publicity Secretary, but when the convention was cancelled and the re-run election ordered at Abuja Sheraton Hotel, I lost that opportunity to national limelight to the political organogram of the late Alhaji Shehu Yar’Adua. Not deterred by this, I went back to Anambra State, and was later appointed by Dr. Ezeife as cabinet consultant on Health Matters.

Later Colonel Mike Attah appointed me the director general of Bureau of Information and Culture; then Dr. Mbadinuju as Special Adviser on Lands, Survey and Urban Planning, Media and Publicity and Managing Director of ANSEPA. Later, the then President, Chief Obasanjo appointed me the Director General, National Orientation Agency (NOA) when Professor Jerry Gana was the supervising minister. Finally, I worked with Dr. Chris Ngige as Senior Special Assistant on Mobilization and State Orientation.


Passion for politics;

Regrettably, politics has not at all times presented a bed of roses for me. My worst period in politics was when I was dropped as the DG of NOA in Abuja. No sooner was I appointed to the job of orientation than that appointment was lost in a mysterious circumstance which till today remains inexplicable to me. All I know was that my Personal Assistant continued to warn me to hide my intelligence, that Abuja politics is not Anambra politics. Of course, I ignored him to my own detriment.

Yes, Abuja politics is dirty. If you are smart, you will be schemed out of the system. They need idiots, half-baked fools, embryonic politicians that are initiative barren. They hate those who are inherently endowed with visions and dreams to move this nation forward. This is the political quagmire that has for many years stagnated the progress of this nation. Realizing that the orientator has to be orientated in Abuja politics, my PA bought me a book called “The 48 Laws of Power”, which opened my eyes to the fact that my intelligence will soon have a negative impact and cause me to lose my job.

Categorically, he opined that if he was the president of the country, and witnessed what I did at the podium, he would simply drop whoever was the Minister of Information and immediately appoint me in his place. All my pleas to him to take it easy with me fell on deaf ears. He promised to call my minister to remove me as I was after his job. Surprisingly, two days after that encounter, I lost my job in the most mysterious circumstance. No reason was given. That is Abuja politics and I do not regret the impact I made as DG of NOA. If you go to NOA today, I am well respected. My stay in office was barely a year, but the impact was reverberating and the echo and ripple effect were felt in all nooks and crannies of this nation.

So, at what point did you leave the country and why?

Since Dr. Ngige lost his governorship seat in the court in 2006, I travelled to America to study their system, and also disappear from the scene. Having worked in their hospitals, taught in their nursing schools and taught mathematics in their higher schools, I have come to the conclusion that Nigeria is a country endowed with individuals with high acumen. Our children are by far more intelligent than an average American child in secondary school.

Unfortunately, the country is still dangerously verged on a perilous pathway heading to absolute collapse and decay, if something is not done soon. In 2010, I visited my country from USA where I boasted that Nigeria has more agreeable, sagacious and astute politicians who can’t compromise on issues of nation building than the GOP and Democrats in America. But the level of infrastructural deterioration and decay in almost all sectors of the nation is not only humiliating, but an outrageous insensibility on the part of the government to the plights of the common man of this nation that voted them into power.

Impressions about Nigeria;

Let me begin with the road infrastructure. From Shagamu to Benin, Lagos to Ibadan, Enugu to Abuja, Enugu to Onitsha, Enugu to Port-Harcourt, Enugu to Nsukka, Ore to Ondo to Ife to Ibadan, the roads have been ignored by successive governments of this nation is not only criminal, but wicked. I wonder what is in resurfacing a road. Billions of taxpayers’ money are every year appropriated for these roads and yet nothing tangible is done. It is indeed shameful for anyone to call himself a senator or member of House of Representatives, or president, or governor in this nation when these roads are crying and begging for reconstruction. Obviously, our highways have posed terrible nightmares to commuters and road carnages have assumed an unprecedented dimension in the history of this nation. Consequently, I make bold to suggest that all senators, governors and presidents of this nation should as a matter of criminal negligence to their duties resign their positions if they cannot cater for the people and provide adequate amenities for the citizenry.

When Chief Obasanjo came to power he promised that power outage will be a thing of the past within six months of his being in office. Eight years later, he left the country in a comatose state. Power outage became worse than before. As a matter of fact, no nation can develop technologically when electric supply is not predictable. No industries can be sited or built in this nation when power is on and off. The use of computers for global networking and indeed information processing cannot prosper in a paralyzed energy sector.

Today, Nigeria has the most backward police force the world over. Created to control crime and protect the citizens, our police force unlike what I saw in America, is a caricature of crime control mechanics. With shameful roadblocks mounted here and there, sometimes in every kilometer, the police have reduced their status to mere illegal tollgate collectors, and yet everyone ignores this corruptive tendency. As a matter of fact, the road blocks have achieved nothing in crime control.

The Police Force in this nation is begging for reorganization and should be made lucrative. Government should abolish police barracks and allow police to live in neighborhoods for ease of busting and controlling crime. Since the roads are bad and may not be repaired anytime soon, police should now use power bikes to control crime. They should patrol rather than mount road blocks to collect illegal tolls and cause untold hardship to road users. Government should pay police salaries that are commensurate to the job of crime control and the risk involved. This is common sense. Give the police the necessary equipment and tools to perform their duties and reap the imponderable benefits. We can do it. Yes we can, if we have the will and zeal.

Igbo president project in 2015:

The Igbo are finished politically in this nation. It will be difficult in the present political dispensation for an Igbo man to be the president of this country. The present political computation and permutation as arranged by Chief Obasanjo of the PDP does not favour the Igbo who have been marginalized by Obasanjo’s crafty political equation of South South plus South West plus North Central plus North West equal to a win-win for him. That is why in the PDP National Working Committee, no Igbo man is even appointed a sweeper or a messenger. However, all hope is not lost since the Igbo man is as incompressible as water. We surely will rebound at the appropriate time. We have the capacity, capabilities, ingenuity, sagacity and political maneuver to scale this political man-made hurdle and reintegrate ourselves into the national political stream. We refuse to be condemned and confined to the present political incarceration. Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo should wake up and lead appropriately.

We Don't Discriminate In Admission - UNN Don

A VANGUARD NEWSPAPERS INTERVIEW

Dr Emmanuel Igbo, a Professor of criminology at the University of Nigeria and a major stakeholder in Imo State in this interview with Godwin Oritse said that the expectations of the people of the state are very high and called on the new Governor of the state to ensure that the grass people are carried along in the process of governance. Excerpts:

We hear the management of the University of Nigeria discriminate against non- Igbos when application by students are being considered, is this true?

The University of Nigeria as far as I do know, and I stand to challenged by anybody is very transparent in its admission policy and even handed in the sense that the University follows religiously to the letter the instructions from the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB).

In the admission policy of the University, you have a percentage of those who come by merit, then you have those that come by catchments area of the University, then you have what we call the educationally disadvantage states.

The University of Nigeria, I do not know about others insist very strictly that you adhere to this, if you do not your admission in that department will cancelled.

Merit is merit, if you get admission by merit, nobody is interested in looking at the names in the list.

If the merit is 45 percent for example, you just calculate it, if 45 percent of the quota you have is 20, then you count from one to 20 and rule off, then you come to catchments area , then you go to educationally disadvantaged states then how do you know now discriminate in the admission process?

Anybody who qualified to be in the merit list cannot removed from the merit list or somebody who is qualified to be in the catchments area list you cannot discriminate against the person.

In fact, we are looking for people to fill the spaces in educationally disadvantaged areas.

Anybody who tell you that the University of Nigeria discriminate on its admission process is perhaps is ignorant of the entire process.

What is your impression on the accreditation of courses in Nigeria Universities because this has been a problem that affects nearly all the universities?

Much as we know that there are many candidates at home who want to gain admission into the universities but there are limited spaces available.

What these students do is that once they see an institution, it could be a building or a few building put together and it is called a university and you see students trooping there .

What students should do is to find out whether these universities have the blessing of the National University Commission (NUC), that is very important.

Even the old universities are periodically being accredited in terms of their department, their courses, their lecturers and the infrastructure in place.

Even our law department failed accreditation and was stopped from admitting students.

Even our medical and surgery department failed accreditation and we have stopped admitting medical students.
Relevant Links

Those that complain are those that are actually deficient in almost everything like staff with requisite qualification, in infrastructure.

If you say that you are doing a course like pharmacy, you must have infrastructure like laboratory and these facilities must be inspected and approved by the NUC and Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria just like the medical profession, they have what is known as minimum standards and you must meet these minimum standards.

So those who are talking about not being accredited or asked to go home should find out if the NUC recognize the university and whether they can go there and obtain the certificates.

Do you have cultists in this university?

Yes but their activities are not pronounced because that is how the University's authority want it.

My intention is to contribute to the writing of the romance genre in Nigeria – Myne Whitman

A VANGUARD GROUP OF NEWSPAPERS INTERVIEW


By McPhillips Nwachukwu, Vanguard

Myne Whitman is a Nigerian born and United States based writer, poet and blogger. Recently, she came out with her first novel, A Heart To Mend, a fictional narrative, which seeks to revive the fading romance form in nation’s narrative oeuvre. In this e-mail interview, the novelist, Nkem Okotcha, who prefers to write with the Pen name, Myne Whitman, a transliteration of her real names, brilliantly and critically responds to some engaging issues raised from the deep journey around her narrative universe. She spoke to McPhilips Nwachukwu.

Nkem, tell me about yourself, about your world of childhood and growing up and how the experiences helped to shape your adult visions?

I am a Nigerian blogger, writer and poet. I am also the author of A Heart to Mend, my first novel. I live in Seattle with my husband and write full time. I write mostly romance and love poems though recently I have been trying my pen at literary short stories. I am currently working on my next novel, also a romance. ..

I was born at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Enugu, Nigeria and I grew up in that city till my middle secondary school. I attended Ekulu Primary School, Queens School Enugu, Special Science School Agulu and Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka.

I remember as a child studying a lot, reading everything I could lay my hands on, and then trying to play the rest of the time. My mother was a school teacher and my father worked for the electoral commission, so the love of reading and education came from them and from the environment of Enugu, which is a part an academic and civil service city.

This early background made me very cosmopolitan because I went to school with people from all across the country and outside. Reading a lot makes me sometimes come across as quiet but I do like a good loud debate too, having watched my father and his friends talk politics and football. In three words, I will describe myself as friendly, caring and fun-loving. I realized early on through books that it was possible to be whoever and do whatever you wanted to do. I learnt to stretch my wings even further when I first left the country. I have been a teacher, NGO consultant, banker, skate-hire attendant, and researcher and have worked for the government both in Nigeria and Scotland.

Your real name is Nkem, which in Igbo means Mine. Etymologically , nkem in Igbo pre-supposes both affection, if you like, deep love and possession. And also the title of your work is A Heart to Mend. What have names got to do with your story and whose heart is being mended?

LOL…let me say here that none of my characters is based on me or anyone I know in particular but on a cumulative of my experience. My name has nothing to do with the story, and as you can see I did not even publish under my real name. That said, I love my name and what it means. There is a longer form of course, but I have been called the short form for as long as I can remember by everyone around me including my parents. It was funny when, as I grew older, I realized that it was also a term of romantic endearment between couples.

In A Heart to Mend, the hearts being mended are those of my characters, Edward and Gladys. They’re just people of my imaginings, though since I try to make my stories as real as possible, they also share our fears and hopes, our victories and our pain. Some people say they seem free from some of the usual constraints we real persons face, but if you look closely, you may even recognize one or more of them. For these readers who also identify with the book and the themes/characters in it, I hope their hearts will be mended too.

At another level, locations have a way of affecting one’s state of mind and heart. How has both your home and diaspora experiences helped in shaping the tenor of this narrative?

The narrative of A Heart to mend is very instinctive, you know, from my heart and from my head too. I believe my writing has been shaped more from growing up in Nigeria than the few years I have lived outside the country. You should bear in mind that I am practically a novice at writing. I entered this writing business, really, from outside. My entire background has been in sciences; I studied biological science for my first degree, then public health research for my masters. I’ve never had any formal training in writing. So what I write is from my own personal makeup, and less from what I have picked up in writing books and online courses, which go more toward the craft.

Who I am, my identity, has been more influenced by my Nigerian experience. There was so much to draw from especially in terms of storytelling. There were so many books around me, from the children’s stories in Sugar Girl, Eze goes to school, born with a Silver Spoon, etc to Pacesetters and through to the African Writers Series.

There were also the soaps we watched like Checkmate and ripples and of course Nollywood. The western worldview crept in not through my time outside Nigeria but via the works of Enid Blyton, the Lady Bird fairytales, Mills & Boon, James Hadley Chase and the movies I saw, from both Hollywood and Bollywood. I always had that storytelling instinct, and through all these channels, I always looked for the story. So now, when I write, what I do is to find the kernel of a story and then tell it.

Why did you write A Heart To Mend ?

First and foremost I wanted to write a story of love and finding oneself. I also felt that there were not enough romance novels set in contemporary Nigeria, and that I could do something to change that. Therefore, a lot of these themes in A Heart to Mend are motivated by events or stories I’ve heard or read about in real life Nigeria of the last few years. The characters and issues dealt with in the book are therefore meant to be relevant for contemporary life and relationships.

Again, I have always been intrigued by the principle of unconditional love. When I started reading the Mills and Boon Romance novels as a young adult, their stories had a big influence on me and my writing. My imagined and written stories changed from adventures to romance. So now that I decided on full time writing, I was moved to go back to that genre.

In a world that is plagued by unquantified hate tendencies, with wars and rumours of war becoming familiar ring tones. Tell me, from where does one begin to mend afflicted hearts?

I agree with you about the sort of world we live in nowadays. This stress of this tumultuous life has indeed led to many people experiencing heartbreak in one form or the other. In my opinion, one can begin to mend these broken hearts through talking or writing about love.

Romance novels are all about love, in its various manifestations: between parents and their children, between siblings and most importantly, between a man and a woman. As so many songs say, love is truly beautiful and it does make the world go around. When one strips basic human behavior to its barest form, you find that we’re all looking for love in one way or another.

You might be surprised that what you wrote as a simple romantic form is giving rise to some socio political reading. But seriously, can there be a real love story in what seems to be a hopeless and hate inhabited world?

Yes there can. In a romance novel, the two major characters cannot develop satisfying, romantic relationships between each other unless they have some understanding of love. The love story starts from when they lack love but desire it for themselves to when they have full knowledge of it and their lives have been changed. It is the same in real life.

Also, if we say there can be no love stories, do we mean that all the people that get married everyday do not love each other? I don’t think this is so. Therefore, love and romance give hope and makes life worth living. Love is the only way to overcome hate and hopelessness.

By the way, I understood that your story is set in Nigeria. And from the reviews I have read about the novel, it does appear that the entire tapestry and universe of the story is Nigeria and about Nigerians. What are your intentions in doing this?

The primary intention was to contribute to the writing of the romance genre in Nigerian literature. I grew up reading books like Evbu, My Love of the Pacesetters fame, written by Helen Ovbiagele but they disappeared along the line. There has been a sort of renaissance in the writing and book publishing industry in Nigeria and I wanted to add my voice in a unique way.

May be home sickness? you want to use the narrative thread to heal home nostalgia?

Well, I won’t deny that I get homesick for Nigeria and my family and friends back here but my writing is not about that. I have been writing long before I relocated which was just a few years ago and I know that I can always visit when I want. The nostalgia that has a hand in my writing has to be that of reading books set in Nigeria and written by Nigerians. I read a lot of those and I want the younger generation to have that experience too which I believe is a good one, even as we talk about rebranding Nigeria and recreating a positive national identity.

One would have really expected to read your Diaspora experience about love. Don’t you think it is high time African writers began to write trans Atlantic narratives?

Of course there are African writers who write about their diaspora narrative. For example, a lot of the short stories in Chimamanda Adichie’s collection, This thing Around Your Neck, are from her immigrant experience in America or a fictionalized version of it. Several other writers, including Seffi Atta, Teju Cole and Jude Dibia have also explored the theme in their novels.

The truth is that each writer has to seek for a voice that matches their world view and mine, as I have come to see, comes out best writing about Nigeria and Nigerians. That said however, the narrative in A Heart to Mend, has the major characters travelling between Nigeria, London and New York.

That was exactly what classic hate writers of Europe like Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary, Ridder Haggard and their brothers did in such novels like Heart of Darkness, Mister Johnson, King Solomon’s Mine, She among others. Is there anything wrong about writing back to them, through such experiences as yours?

Such Experiences as mine? LOL…I don’t understand what you mean by that o. My experiences in the United Kingdom and the States have been quite good. Apart from that, my novels are not autobiographies, so it’s not about me. Also, I do not write to add to the hate and discrimination in the world but to add love and romance. For now, I will leave political writing and rebuttals of racism to others who choose to do so.

Also I choose to go forward instead of backwards. You see, those writers you mentioned wrote for the days they lived in and I believe the world as a whole has moved on from those days. I read Rider Haggard’s king Solomon’s Mines and She as a teenager and they were basically adventure stories. Of course the rise of the civil rights movement in America in the sixties and seventies meant that those writers received a lot of flak for their portrayal of Africans in their books. Chinua Achebe wrote “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” in 1975 as a response to Joseph Conrad. All this was before I was born.

How’s the novel doing in terms of reception?

A Heart to Mend has been very well received indeed as the mails continue to pour in from different parts of the world. One of the advantages of Authorhouse as a self-publishing company is that they have a very wide reach. So A Heart to mend is available from Canada, to the United States, England, India, and from South Africa and Indonesia to Australia. The publishers called me recently to encourage me to hurry up with my second book because they want us to ride the wave this one is creating. I told them that this is just the beginning, lol…

To what extent has the new communication media of facebook, twitter and blogging helped in promoting the novel?

Having a blog, (which recently won several awards including Blog of the Year at the Nigerian Blog Awards) really helped me in my writing especially with the feedback and critique I got from my readers. The fact is that the world has come to terms with the internet age and other less conventional means of getting a book to an audience are beginning to take root. Talk about eBooks, kindles and Nooks and other such technology.

Also my blog was part of the reason I decided to publish. I had such a loyal following that I wanted to give them a chance to read the complete story. Most of them had been following it on my blog and were very supportive. It was through the support of fellow bloggers that I did my first blog tour and all the publicity that came with that. After that I joined Facebook and Twitter and the following has been growing since.

What is your program for the novel for the home market?

A Heart to Mend had a public presentation in Lagos in April and was very well received. There has been several articles and features in the daily Newspapers in the country since then and the Nigerian Publishers are doing their best with the distribution. So far they are very happy with the reception the book has been getting. They have fans calling them up or metting them half way in order to get the book. A lot of them had found out about the book online from my blog, Youtube, Facebook or Twitter.

The book is currently available in several cities including Lagos, Ibadan, Ife, Abuja, Maiduguri, Onitsha, Port Harcourt and some Nigerian online resellers like Walahi.com, Kalahari.com.ng, Naijareads.com, among others. I get emails from some people who have read it praising it and asking for more.

Jonathan's Ambition, a Threat to Igbo Presidency - Udenta O. Udenta

Leadership Nigeria/All Africa

As the pioneer National Secretary of the defunct Alliance for Democracy, AD, Udenta O. Udenta is an intellectual power house, whose disposition to national issues has won him recognition. He recently had a chat with journalists and joined in the raging debate over zoning, as he calls on President Goodluck Jonathan to respect the zoning principle of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP. He stresses that not doing so, will be a hindrance to a South-East presidency in the near future. Stanley Nkwocha was there. Excerpts:

You just launched a campaign for an Igbo presidency come 2015. What is the drive?

In my booklet "Rotation of power and Igbo possibility", I argued that 2015 is the realistic year for the realization of a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction. There are a number of reasons for making this assertion. On the basis of the principle of rotation of power and the zoning of political offices, at least in the context of the PDP, presidential power is expected to remain in the North till 2015. Three out of the five core Igbo states are currently controlled by the PDP, so we expect the South-East PDP leaders to honour the party's zoning arrangement and deprecate any attempt to deconstruct or distort it.

I am also of the view that flowing out of the 1998-1999 all parties' agreement on zoning, the other main parties like the AC, ANPP, and to an extent, the newly formed CPC, have also domesticated the idea and practice of rotation of power and the zoning of political offices in one form or the other. Their rotation of power thesis may not be as explicit as that of the PDP, but it is embedded in the structure of power relations within these parties. I am no prophet or soothsayer, but I dare say that the above named parties will most likely throw up Northern Presidential candidates and Southern running mates, and I expect their South-East leadership to endorse it and work in tandem with the core instincts and impulses that define their parties' being and reality.

Closer home in Igbo land, objectively speaking, I cannot see the viability of a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction emerging out of the APGA, and other South-East leaning parties in 2011. I am compelled to declare that these parties need time to merge forces, strengthen their organizational ranks, deepen their philosophical and ideological foundation and establish a network of strategic, inter-group understanding and partnership. All these can be accomplished between now and 2015.

Finally, there are existing limit-situations in Igbo land which need to be bridged and over come. Igbo Civil Society/Activist platform needs to be created, an engaging and compelling Igbo political blue print need to be constructed, Igbo political elite need to be re-united, Igbo political base will require re-constitution and the Igbo political possibility need to be canvassed across the country, among political, ethnic and cultural stakeholders so that they will appreciate its harmlessness, buy into it, and collectively work towards its realization.

In the text of the pamphlet , you argued that a Jonathan Presidency in 2011 will endanger the cause of the Igbos for President. Can you buttress this claim?

My statement is axiomatic; it is self-evident. It is self-declaratory. President Jonathan became Vice-President in 2007 on the premise and perimeter of zoning. He is a product of zoning. His current presidency is a child of circumstance. The South-West have had their chance, under Obasanjo, and in the context of the PDP, between 1999-2007. If President Jonathan contests in 2011 and somehow, wins the election, he may be inclined to pass the presidential baton to the North, maybe not even in 2015, but in 2019. This will keep the Igbo in Perpetual wait for Presidential power, and in a national political environment in which zoning would have been rendered irrelevant. This is a clear and present political danger that nobody can wish away.

Assuming that the Igbo are not even desperate for presidential power, now or in the near future, nobody can take their support for granted. It will be naïve political thinking that because a new national chairman of the PDP has emerged, a few appointments made, and the governors speaking solely for themselves, one will assume that the Igbo support is a fait accompli, a done deal. This is a fatal and self-destructive political reasoning. The emerging signals are even very ominous. From the loss of NAFDAC chairmanship to the loss of INEC chairmanship; from the loss of NIMASA Director-Generalship to the loss of the Governorship of the Central Bank, and possibly from the potential loss of the Vice-Chairmanship of the NCC to the humiliation out of office, of a decent, hardworking, very competent Managing Director of NSITF, in the person of Chief Joe Okoli, in the name of sectional supremacist politics, and nothing more, the picture for the Igbo is grim.

President Jonathan has done nothing in this regard. Rather, he is systematically rendering the Igbo irrelevant in the polity. It is, of course, to be expected that this unbecoming scenario will not come to pass if a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction were to be in office. He will endeavour to safeguard that which is decently meant for the Igbo, and ensure that the rest of the country get their decent due also without discrimination. He will not, I suspect, allow the prevalent situation in the NNPC, Niger Delta Ministry, Ministry of Petroleum Resource, Foreign Affairs, and very many commanding heights of the nation's political and bureaucratic infrastructure which are now sectional properties.

Is the hue and cry generated over zoning not regrettable bearing in mind that it is an PDP's agenda? What is the role of other parties in the polity?

The hue and cry over zoning, as you put it, is not regrettable. The debate must go on, until the core issues around it are clarified and our people enlightened. We must move beyond myth and legend, beyond the illogic of instant gratification of power. And zoning is not only a PDP affair. It has always been, in one constitutional and administrative form or the other, a mechanism of achieving national integration, national consensus and inter-elite understanding. It is in the constitution in the form of the federal character principle and the constitutional provision that a minister who shall be appointed from a state must be indigenous to that state.

Regarding the other parties, it is no accident, but rather a solemn concession to the principle of zoning and the reality of rotation of offices that in the 2007 election cycle, Gen. Buhari's running mate, Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, is from the South-East; that Abubakar Atiku's running mate, Sen. Ben Obi, is also a South-Easterner, while the party's National Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande, is a South-Westerner. As for the PPA and the APGA, the respective running mates to Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu and Dim Odumegu Ojukwu also came from the North. And I am inclined to think that the choice of Governor Sambo as the Vice President to President Jonathan is a concrete validation of zoning because, in its absence, and with the only qualification for such high appointment being intellect, experience and competence, President Jonathan should have chosen any competent individual from his home state, and possibly his local government as his Vice President.

Would I be wrong to say that disunity amongst the Igbos has largely marred their chances in the past and may still pose a challenge to your struggle?

The question of the disunity among the Igbo political elite has been over celebrated. There is disunity among the political elite all over the country. There is disunity in Yoruba land, disunity among the Southern minorities elite, disunity among the middle belt elite, and disunity among the core Northern elite. The problem is that the Igbo elite are disadvantageously placed in the structure and dynamics of power relations in Nigeria.

They are completely marginalized, to the degree that the little space that is afforded them inevitably leads to a vicious scramble for relevance. From 1999 till date, no Igbo elite has been strategically placed in terms of the relations I mentioned above, in terms of fundamental nation-decision-making, and in terms of power and influence leverage. The six key national power positions-and I am talking of executive power have eluded them from 1999: President, Vice President, Chief of Staff to the President, National Security Adviser, Secretary to Federation Government and Head of Service. This last position was only occupied by an Igbo person for a few months.

Inevitably, when such an elite group are so marginalized, they begin to look inauthentic, playing nothing but secondary, marginal role. Inevitably also, they begin to quarrel among themselves for the dregs of power made available to them. I have already conceded that disunity among the Igbo political elite is a concrete limit-situation in the search for Igbo political possibility. It is a major drawback to the realization or affirmation of Igbo political goals. It requires principled agitation to overcome this, like the struggle against the institutional marginalization of the entire Eastern Nigeria which the Dr. Arthur Nwankwo led Eastern Mandate Union championed in the mid and late 1990s.

Today, I believe that it is the responsibility of the political wing of Igbo civil society leadership to lead the way in the re-constitution of the Igbo political base and in realizing Igbo political possibility. They can do this by unfurling their intellectual depth and ideological clarity, and tapping into their work in the area of political empowerment and voter mobilization. With all hands on deck, it will be quite possible to have a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction in 2015; a president who will lead the nation wisely, and with passion and patriotic favour. And a President who will abhor narrow-mindedness and supremacist sectional instincts.

You described the debate on the constitutional provision that the President can contest as puerile. Shouldn't the constitutional provision override party position and zoning in this case?

I state that those who confuse the issue of zoning and rotation of power with the constitutional provision on eligibility for the office of President are either puerile or out rightly mischievous. And they know this to their bones. Were Nigeria to be a one party state, one can even begin to take them half-serious. What we are practicing is multi-party democracy. If your party slams the door on your ambition at any particular time, you open another door. Afterall, there are 59 political doors to open in Nigeria today. The latest example is the Governor of Abia State and Senator Chukwumerije. Before them was Governors Ohakim, Yuguda and Shinkafi. Don't forget that Atiku Abubakar contested the 2007 Presidential election as a sitting AC Vice-President.

My point is that why the constitution is clear about the conditions any adult Nigerian can and must meet before he is elected President, the various political parties have a right to put mechanisms in place that will guarantee inclusiveness, party cohesion, national integration and respect of the nation's various diversities. Zoning of political offices and the rotation of power is one such mechanism. There is no conflict between them and the provisions of the constitution.

You are fighting a cause for the Igbos, but the PDP chairman - an Igbo man himself last week said the PDP has breached zoning over the years and it may no longer be tenable. Where lies your support?

I don't know the context under which he made that statement. I didn't even read that statement. However, when a breach occurs, you repudiate and sanction those who caused the breach. You enforce party discipline to ensure that future breaches are curtailed. You don't cast over board or distort a party principled position because someone has breached it. You don't, forever, deconstruct our constitution because it has been breached. You punish the breachers.

Lets talk about the imbalance even in zoning. The North West is being accused of playing pranks with the entire North. Is this infraction not a threat to zoning itself?

Who made the accusation? In our democratic journey this far, the North-East produced the prime Minister between 1960-1966, not that there was any conscious effort to zone that position to it. During the second Republic the North-West produced President Shehu Shagari. Between1999-2007, the South-West produced Olusegun Obasanjo in the first real zoning exercise. President Yar'adua, now late, came from the North-West. On the basis of zoning in the PDP, it will be the entire North that must rise to the occasion and throw up the best possible candidate they have for the job.

You have said without zoning an Igbo presidency may be difficult, but if competence and acceptability becomes yardsticks over zoning as canvassed, can't the Igbos throw up a competent and acceptable candidate?

There is no conflict between zoning and competence. Every village and hamlet in Nigeria has very competent people in all human spheres. If you zone a particular position to a particular zone, it is the responsibility of that zone to go for the best material they have. It is not for me to tell them how to go about it. Like I stressed earlier, President Jonathan's zone, or even state, has very competent people. He should have chosen any one of them to be his Vice-President. It is on the basis of this that zoning will make the Igbo Presidency project an attainable ideal. Without zoning, it becomes very difficult, just like without zoning it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, for President Jonathan to have become Vice-President in 2007.

The South East governors have announced their non intention to either vie for the Presidency come 2011. Is this not damping your agitation?

When I heard that Statement I wept. I can't believe any South-East Governor will be so un-Igbo to utter that kind of rubbish. They spoke for themselves, the five of them. They didn't speak for Ndigbo, neither for the leaders nor the people. They are on their own, and must be made to retract such an insult to the collective integrity and stature of Ndigbo. If it is possible to attain the presidency in 2011, the Igbo will go for it. If it is possible to achieve it in 2015, the Igbo will go for it. Ndigbo know who their leaders are. They cannot be deceived or distracted from the historic mission of producing a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction in as short a time as possible. South-West, South-South and the entire Northern Governors have not even taken a stand on this issue, and five individuals, without consultation, without discussion, want to lead Ndigbo on a path of political perdition. Unless and until that statement is comprehensively disowned by the governors, I and millions of Ndigbo would have lost any respect we have for them.

You called on the Igbos to vote for another candidate with Igbo running mate if the PDP's emerge out of disrespect. Is this tenable under the complex politics of the South East?

It is quite tenable, but it is a bridge we have to cross when we get to it. It requires mass sensitization and mass mobilization work, but its achievable.

You called for an Igbo leadership summit. The North just had its summit. Won't these regional summits threaten the unity of the nation?

No. These regional summits will rather strengthen Nigerian unity. Consultation, reaching out is the stuff democracy is made of. Democracy is dialogue. You cannot shut down the space for discussion, for inter-change of ideas. It is by so doing that you can aggregate the instincts, impulses and passions of our diverse people and channel them for the consolidation of our democracy, and sustainable social and economic transformation and development.

My mandate was to bomb oil installations and destroy Nigeria’s economy – Captain August Okpe

A PUNCH EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW -- BY NONYE BEN-NWANKWO AND ADEOLA BALOGUN


Captain August Okpe (rtd) was the Chief Pilot of Biafra during the civil war. He tells ‘NONYE BEN-NWANKWO and ADEOLA BALOGUN about his childhood days and his experience during the war.

Why did you decide to write the book, Last Flight, almost 40 years after the war?

I was taking my time. The Igbo say that whenever a man wakes up is his morning. But I don’t even understand it when people talk about the years. Books on the Second World War are still being written. Every now and then, somebody comes up with a fresh angle. What is the big deal about years? The book has been written; let’s just read it and know what it is all about.

Why did you title it The Last flight?

The title is derived from some components of the book. It has to do with what happened towards the end of the Nigeria/Biafra war. The book is written specifically to convey what happened in the air aspect of the Nigeria/Biafra war. Remember that a lot has been written about the ground war but nothing about the air war. I was actively involved in the air war, and it is only natural for me to write about it. I have the facts and figures. All I needed was to collate them and ensure that accuracy is maintained in terms of time. I am not writing a kindergarten book or fables for my children.

How long did it take to you write it?

It is difficult to say. I don’t know when it started and I don’t know when it finished. The important thing is that the book is out. What you want is information. It doesn’t matter how long it took to write the book.

Was there a reason you got enlisted in the Biafran Air Force?

I did not enlist in the Biafran Air Force. I was in the Nigerian Air Force and the crisis started. So, automatically, I had to join my own region. The upheaval, the national crisis, moved people. At one time in Lagos and the North, there were virtually no Easterners.

You look so young one would hardly know that you are in your 60s...

Are you jealous? I am 66. I am sorry, that is my age.

How did your parents take it when you decided to go into the military?

Everybody had grown up and left the house when I was born. My parents got married in 1915 and they didn’t have a child until 1925. Everybody told my father to remarry but he didn’t. I respect him so much because he lived an exemplary life. He made some of us look untidy by comparison. He was castigated and told that he married a beautiful ‘man’. But he ignored all the castigations. Later, they started having children until my mother got to her 50s. She thought she had malaria; she didn’t know she was pregnant. She went to the hospital and she was told that she was pregnant. Eventually, I showed up. I went to very good schools and decided to be a pilot. My mother was opposed to it. She couldn’t understand why I chose a profession that is full of danger. I persevered and went to Canada. When I finished training and came back, she didn’t know whether to cry or smile. There was a reception when I came back, where she told people how I was born. She said that since she took a lot of malaria drugs because she thought she had malaria, maybe the drugs affected my brain. Otherwise, she said, I would not have thought of becoming a pilot.

You trained in Canada. Why did you come back to Nigeria?

I came back to fly for the Nigerian Air Force that sent me there. You cannot go and train on your own; the Air Force sends you. When you finish, you are expected to come back and fly for the government that sent you.

How did you escape to Biafra during the war?

It is in my book. It is not something I can say in two or three words. It was very traumatic. The title of that chapter in my book is Fugitives from Injustice. We ran. We tried a lot of things. At a stage, we escaped by air planes. Food was not the problem. To reach a place of reasonable safety and stay out of harm’s way was paramount in our minds. We even grew beard so as not to look as armed forces personnel, because we didn’t want to be identified and we didn’t want to walk with erect. We tried not to show that we had anything to do with the military so that we would not get noticed. They were looking for us then.

Given the chance, would you want to be in the military again?

If I reflect on the experience and advantages I garnered from being in the military, I will do the same thing again for obvious reasons. It gives you a lot of discipline. I am the youngest in a family of six children. Like I said earlier, my parents didn’t marry on time. And when they did, they didn’t have kids on time. By the time they had me, my siblings had left. I grew up as an only child. People always felt I was spoilt until I got into the military. The military beat the spoilt brat thing out of me. Today, I see myself as an alert and very positive individual that has got the benefits that are derivable from the military. I got a lot of training from the military. They weren’t counting the cost; they just wanted result. With all the academic training I got in the military, I think I am a made person. I am very happy about it. The way I look, my gait, the way I speak, I have the military to thank for all this. In terms of physical regiment, they encourage sports. Up till tomorrow, I play squash, I swim and I play tennis. I am not likely to have the pot belly everybody is carrying about.

What was the war experience like?

I was trained for it. I was a military pilot. I wasn’t trained to just carry passengers in comfort. This one, you will be trained to recognise that you can be fired at and you are trained to use weapons of destructions; bombs and every other thing in between. The war came and we had to put them into practice. The unfortunate thing was that we were using the acquired practice against ourselves. That was the sad part of it.

Your father fought in World War and your son is also in the US army. Does it run in the family?

My father fought in the Second World War. That time, it was a world war. In one way or the other, people got involved whether they liked it or not. Nobody gets into the arm forces with the purpose of fighting a war. You don’t normally expect it. But after training as a pilot, I found myself in a regional war. My son is in the US army. He was in the 1991 war for the liberation of Kuwait from Iraq. He fought the war and came out with meritorious awards.

After the Nigeria/Biafra crisis, you were not reabsorbed into the Nigerian air force…

No.

Did you feel bad about it?

Not necessarily. They probably felt my activities were too prominent. You don’t fly an aeroplane and expect not to get noticed. My activities were reported in a lot of books. One book referred to me as the Chief of the Biafran Air Force, which I wasn’t. I was the Chief Pilot. I quarreled with them over that. I complained and automatically, the Federal Government saw me as a very senior rebel. It attracted a lot of prejudice against me in terms of many things. Some of this information was available to the military tribunal. Probably, that influenced their decision not to recall me. They recalled a lot of my colleagues, like Rear Admiral Kanu, Rear Admiral Madueke, Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe and others.

But in 2006, you were eventually granted pardon and your sack was turned into retirement. Did you expect it?

In Nigeria, you don’t know what to expect and what not to. But the important thing is in the interest of restitution and peace and also for the country to move ahead. Since it was said it was a fight between brothers, one must expect such dispensation; no victor, no vanquished. It is okay to expect it. I turned my back on it anyway. If anything happened, fine. But it came that way and I thanked God for it.

During the war, did it occur to you that you could be killed?

It could have happened to me. The human system reacts to threat to itself. It is only natural to worry. I don’t think there is anybody who does not worry about threat. You will worry but your mind still has to be in control so that you can evade the forces that are trying to kill you. It is just like in the aircraft; when there is a problem, you do not go crazy in the plane. You get worried, I agree. But you have to be in a frame of mind to handle the reaction to emergencies. To have courage does not mean there is absence of fear. It is how you handle fear that matters most.

Why did you choose to be a pilot?

I have always wanted to be a pilot. That craving got satisfied when Nigeria decided to start an air force. I saw it as an opportunity to fly except that it was in the military. I joined the military as an air force pilot. Years later, I continued as a civilian pilot. After the war, when I was asked to leave the air force, I went and got converted as a civilian pilot. That was what I was doing until I retired in 2000. I have been flying aeroplanes since 1963. I have done nothing else since then.

We hear that people who are involved in war usually suffer a major trauma after the war. Have you experienced any trauma?

I don’t think I have any post-traumatic stress syndrome. If I have, it is not manifest and I don’t feel anything. Some of the soldiers, even those that are stoic and tough and unyielding are prepared to say that they are suffering from post-traumatic syndrome. It may be because they feel good about it or to get some compensation from the government. I don’t think I have it. I never knew what it was until they started talking about it. I think I am all right.

Do you still remember some of the horrible experiences of the war?

You can call them incidents or events, but not in the traumatic sense. At times, you might dream that you are crashing an aeroplane or firing or being fired at. But I don’t see them as nightmares.

Were you married during the war?

I got married just a month before the war started. It was okay. Flying in a dangerous zone as a married man and later as a father, I don’t know what to tell you about that. But we had to do what a man is supposed to do. It gave me more impetus to carry on the way I did to protect these children that I have produced during the same war. I hope that didn’t make me overdo it any way.

Was there a time you tried raiding oil wells in Port Harcourt?

Of course, yes. Any time the Nigerian forces overran a particular area and occupied it, we tried to deprive them of their resources there. My instruction from the Biafran high command was to inflict economic damage on Nigeria, to deprive them of the resources they used to buy armoured vehicles and the aeroplanes which they used against us.

As a civil pilot, was there a time you were almost involved in a crash.

There was a time something like that happened but luckily, there was no loss of life. Once you are a pilot, there is always that possibility that anything can happen. If everything is done well, short of the unexpected, flying is the safest means of transportation.

It is generally believed that military men are promiscuous…

I wouldn’t have entertained such question, but since you are a woman and women are always probing the men, I will answer. I want to disabuse your mind of the notion of promiscuity by the military. My colleagues in the military are very disciplined and moralistic individuals. My case is even worse because I am an airline captain. People say pilots are promiscuous. We are not promiscuous. One thing you must remember is that people in uniform look very attractive. If they appear to be promiscuous, it is the women that are disturbing them. Airline captain uniform is even very provocative.

You are yet to remarry since your wife died.

I am looking for another person. If I see, I will get married to her. Even my aunt asked me if I am still mourning my wife. I told her I had not seen the right person. If you see her, let me know. I want to remarry. I am told that married people live longer. Since I want to live long, I want to marry again. I am looking for the right person. Lots of women want to marry me. I can compete with any younger guy. A man is as old as he feels while a woman is as old as she looks. I may remarry any moment from now.

I have an insatiable appetite for books - Joe Irukwu

By Yemisi Adeniran/Compass Newspaper

For Professor Joe Irukwu, age is neither a barrier. Rather, it is a gracious blessing. Apart from the wear and tear of his physical being, he remains admirable in his indebtedness to intellectual

meaningful and beneficial. While he admits the speedy tickling of the clock of life, especially where he is concerned, he gets more relentless at leaving a worthwhile legacy for generations to come. In this interview with YEMISI ADENIRAN, the learned elder statesman and leader of the Ohaneze Ndigbo, goes down memory lane on his childhood days, his aspirations in life and what he would want to be remembered for. Excerpts:

What is your childhood background like and how did it influence your adulthood and success in life?

I was born into a modest African family with a solid Christian background. My earliest recollection is that as children, we grew up in a typical African village environment in which all families were, in effect, their brothers’ keepers. As children, we were taught the traditional African values of respect for our elders and institutions as well as the importance of hardwork, discipline, education, character and integrity. In those days, families seemed to be in competition in their effort to ensure that their own children were the best disciplined and the most well-behaved in the community since each family was judged on its character and the character and behaviour of its products or offspring. As with all other children of my generation, my family and childhood background naturally affected my adult life in practically all respects.

What childhood pranks would you say you played?

I did not have a long childhood. I was the first child of my parents and they were most anxious to see me grow and become a responsible “adult” so as to influence my young siblings in a most positive manner. As a result, they did not allow me too much time to remain a child and I responded accordingly. The only little childhood pranks that I remember vividly were that I occasionally feigned or pretended to be ill so as to gain some attention, especially from my mother.

What are your memorable moments as a child?

My greatest childhood adventure took place when I was an infant around the age of seven or eight during the 1940s. My parents were passionate about Western education and we lived in a small town, Zonkwa, in the present Kaduna State. There were no schools in Zonkwa and the nearest school was in Kafanchan, about nine miles South of Zonkwa. In their determination to ensure that we do not miss out on our education, our parents sent me and my brother, Sochi Ogan Irukwu, to live with a distant relation who was working as a railway clerk in Kafanchan so as to attend the Anglican Holy Trinity School in Kafanchan. This was our first time of living away from our parents. Following what we saw, in our young minds, as acts of injustice and ill-treatment from our host and guardian, especially his resident girlfriend whom we thought disliked us intensely, we decided to return to our parents in Zonkwa. Encouraged by my brother who was bolder and more adventurous than I, we walked the nine miles journey on the rail track from Kafanchan to Zonkwa back to our parents who had to make other arrangements for our schooling.

Can you lead us into some of the experiences?

I will tell you a particular one. It was that which we suffered from our aunt. When it was time for us to go to school and we were still in bed, you know being children and in a chilly environment, we were bound to cling more to our beds than normal. Instead of waking us up, she would pour cold water on us even when it was the harmattan season.

Why did you choose to become a lawyer? And if you had not become a lawyer, what else would you have been?

My choice of profession was influenced by my early childhood background as well as my basic family philosophy. Our family motto is: Faith in God and Service to Humanity. I settled for the legal profession, Insurance and Risk Management, because of my firm belief that these professions would give me the opportunity to serve humanity in circumstances that provide me a sense of personal satisfaction and fulfillment. As a family, we have an acute sense of justice in the sense that we detest any form of injustice. The independence of judgement offered by these professions have helped me in the pursuit of my professional and business activities in an atmosphere of relative freedom and sound professional judgement. Furthermore, I am convinced that my passion for justice and fair play as well as my family’s commitment to faith in God and service to humanity can best be served by a foundation that rests on a sound legal mind. Incidentally, out of my five adult children, four are lawyers and pastors.

In answer to the second leg of your question as to what else I would have done if I had not settled for law as one of my primary professions, my response is that I probably would have been a policeman, a teacher, a clergyman or an economist. As a matter of fact, before I went to Britain to study Law in the 1950s, I had been admitted to Fourah Bay College in Freetown to read for an honours degree in Economics. I had to abandon the idea when it dawned on me that this was not my real calling.

You once said you loved to be a policeman as a child. What made you change your mind?

When I was a little boy in the 1940s, I was fascinated by policemen, especially the great power, authority and influence that I thought they wielded, in my infant eyes. At that time, policemen were highly disciplined and I thought their uniforms were very attractive so I wanted to be one of them when I grow up. Subsequent events in my early life made me abandon my desire to become a policeman. At the age of 12, my desire to be a policeman had been replaced by my passion and desire to become a lawyer when I grow up.

How fulfilled are you as a lawyer?

I have been a lawyer for almost 50 years, having been called to the English Bar in 1962. I feel a total sense of fulfillment and satisfaction with my choice of professions. If I have another chance in my next life, I will repeat the process. What was your most embarrassing moment. I’m asking this question against the backdrop of the information that one of your lawyer sons wanted to become a barber after school. In the course of our lives, we all go through different kinds of unusual, strange and unexpected, awkward and embarrassing situations. One such awkward situation within my immediate family took place in Lagos when my first son, after a first class education in Nigeria and the United Kingdom, resulting in his having qualified as a lawyer, suddenly announced to me, after his law school year in Nigeria, that he wanted to set up in business as a barber or hairdresser in Ikoyi. To my surprise, his mother and my wife who naturally loved and adored her children, especially her first son, supported this strange proposal. Luckily, God intervened and terminated this strange and awkward desire. Today, this son of mine, after a successful period of legal practice and corporate work in Lagos, finally settled for an excellent missionary work in London where he is being fully used by God to touch many young lives in a most positive manner and to the glory of God.

What has old age taken away from you?

Apart from the normal wear and tear in the form of changes in my physical appearance, age has not taken anything away from me. I am still mentally and intellectually active. I still write my books and I give my lectures periodically in Nigeria and overseas. Next week, I am one of the guest speakers at an important national conference in Kaduna being held under the auspices of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) as part of its 10th anniversary celebrations.

When did you marry and what attracted you to your wife? And how big is your family?

I got married in 1964 as a very young Lagos lawyer. I settled for the young lady I married because she was my kind of woman - from a respectable family with the right kind of values. I met my mother-in-law before I met my wife. She was a great and gracious lady in every respect and I told her that I would marry one of her daughters. She had four daughters and I settled for one of them and we have been blessed with five outstanding children, two boys and three girls.

What would you say is responsible for failed marriages?

Marriages fail for different reasons, ranging from intolerance, immaturity, incompatibility to economic and financial reasons. Also, the absence of mutual love and respect can be responsible. Marriage can be wonderful if you are lucky to get married to your real friend and soul mate who will accept you despite your weaknesses and inadequacies, since no one is perfect. It can also be hellish for the two people if the reverse is the case.

You are intellectually inclined. What’s the inspiration?

People regard me as intellectually inclined because of my visible commitment to the endless pursuit of knowledge and learning. The pursuit of knowledge is a natural way of life for me and I will only stop learning when I die.

Your love for writing books is great. How fulfilled are you and what are your views on the decline in our reading culture?

I have an insatiable appetite for books. I read a lot of books and I have done so since my early teenage years. I also write a lot of books on diverse subjects. My first book on Insurance Law and Practice in Nigeria was published in 1967 by Franklin Book Programmes. Since then, I have written a total of 19 published books on diverse subjects and disciplines. One of the greatest impediments to our national development is the virtual absence of a reading culture in Nigeria and the continuing decline in our reading habit, especially amongst our youth. This is a serious national problem that should be tackled collectively now before we become a nation of virtual illiterates in the 21st century.

What is your view on the current state of education in the country?

In the past, the general standard of education in Nigeria was quite high and favourably comparable to the standard in Europe and America. Unfortunately, like most things, our standard of education has suffered a serious decline in recent years. This is one of the major challenges that must be collectively addressed as part of our national reformation exercise.

What factors are inhibiting the ambition of the youths of today?

One of the prevailing national tragedies today is the continuing decline in the behaviour of our youths on key national issues. Although there are a few shining stars amongst our youths who have managed to overcome the weaknesses of the present Nigerian society and have excelled in their chosen fields, there are many who are content to remain loafers and troublemakers, without any desire to become gainfully employed. Unfortunately, the prevailing high level of corruption, societal degradation and massive youth unemployment are not helping matters and the leadership elite seem unable or unwilling to offer inspirational leadership to these young ones. This is another critical problem that deserves our collective attention before it gets out of hand.

SANship has been described as a cash and carry thing. What’s your view on this?

The elevation of highly accomplished senior barristers to the status of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) is a decent and respectable practice which is in line with the practice in other civilised nations. It rests on the same principles that apply in the United Kingdom in the context of Queen’s Counsel. As a matter of fact, it was introduced in Nigeria when we abandoned the Queen’s Counsel concept with the country’s assumption of a Republican status as the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The first Senior Advocate of Nigeria then was Chief Rotimi Williams, who was already a Queen’s Counsel under the British Colonial arrangement. Over the years, Nigerians have accepted the Senior Advocates’ concept as a respectable and worthy honour enjoyed by deserving senior members of the legal profession. To the best of my knowledge, the vast number of the 300 or so senior barristers that fall into this category are worthy of the honour and prestige attached to the status. Since no human institution is perfect, it is possible that a few undeserving individuals may have been admitted to the group as suggested by your question and as expressed in some of the negative media comments on the subject in recent times. The solution to the problem is not to discredit this honourable institution in totality, but rather to encourage the relevant authorities, especially the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee, to note the criticisms and to take positive steps to ensure that only the best who are qualified in every respect are admitted into this prestigious body of Senior Advocates. I understand that this was done in England several years ago when the issue of Queen’s Counsel was the subject of similar criticisms.

What is your view on Insurance and the new move to re-orientate the people and to revamp the industry?

In the context of risks and risk management, Insurance is the most ingenious creation of the human mind. No modern economy based on the monetary capitalist system can survive or prosper without the existence of a viable and disciplined insurance industry. This is why most modern governments attach such great importance to the regulation and control of the performance of their insurance industry. Considering that modern commercial insurance has been practised in Nigeria for almost 100 years, my view is that our insurance industry has not done as well as it should have. The level of insurance awareness and insurance penetration in Nigeria is still one of the lowest in the world. In most developed and some developing nations, the banks and other financial institutions are owned by the insurance companies because of the large insurance funds they generate. In Nigeria, the reverse is the case. Unfortunately, most Nigerians, including most of our policy makers and the political leadership, do not fully realise the full potential of insurance and how to utilise the insurance concept as a vehicle for social and economic transformation.

It is refreshing to note that the present administration has taken an active interest in reforming and restructuring our insurance industry and the regulatory system to strengthen the industry and promote insurance awareness and penetration in Nigeria. We were relieved to note that the minister who was motivating and propelling this exercise was not dropped or reassigned during the recent ministerial reshuffle. I am in full support of the insurance restructuring exercise. As a matter of fact, I was the chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee set up by government last year to work on this subject and we sincerely hope that this exercise will ultimately lead to a more efficient and productive insurance industry. To this end, we sincerely hope that the National Assembly will respond promptly and appropriately in enacting the necessary legislations.

You are close to your root – Igbo. What’s the affinity?

I am a Nigerian of Igbo extraction from Bende Local Government area of the present Abia State. My family and my ancestors are highly respected in our community. Not so much for their wealth but for their integrity, courage and reliability and we are very close to our roots and our traditional values. The people of my area and their neighbours regard themselves as the traditional custodians of the ancient Igbo Spirit and values of hard work, enterprise, creativity, industry and integrity. From time immemorial, my family has steadfastly related to these values. As custodians of the Igbo Spirit and values, our people are adherents of the ancient principles of Igbo social justice and enterprise. During my active leadership years as President of Ohanaeze, we resurrected and promoted these principles of social justice, which has its roots in the concept of Egbe bere Ugo bere, which simply translates to ‘justice for all.’ And the response from all parts of Nigeria to these principles was quite positive.

Ohanaeze Ndigbo was rocked by crisis when you held sway as the president. What went wrong?

My book titled: Nation Building and Ethnic Organisations – The Case of Ohanaeze in Nigeria, has addressed this issue. Ohanaeze is to Ndigbo what Afenifere is to the Yoruba. Ohanaeze was born early in the 1970s after the Nigerian civil war and its first leader and President General was the great and legendary missionary doctor, Dr. Akanu Ibiam, of blessed memory. This outstanding elder statesman was my own role model. Professor Ben Nwabueze was its Secretary-General for almost 20 years. I was unanimously elected President-General of Ohanaeze in November 2003 and we assumed office in January 2004. I became the head of Ohanaeze at a most challenging period in our national history and at a turbulent period in the organisation’s history. At that time, there were divisions in Ohanaeze primarily as a result of a major disagreement between the two eminent leaders of the organisation, its President General, retired Justice Eze Ozobu, and the Secretary-General, Professor Ben Nwabueze. This disagreement resulted in the filing of a civil action in a Lagos High Court by Professor Nwabueze in which he made several claims and allegations against Justice Ozobu. The crisis mentioned in your question was probably a spillover from this and other earlier crises situations that we inherited. In any event, my election was designed to promote unity and reconciliation within the organisation and beyond. I accepted this leadership challenge primarily for two reasons: The first was to unify the people and to promote harmony and mutual respect within and amongst the Igbo leadership elite. The second was to use the opportunity to build solid bridges of goodwill between Ndigbo and the leadership of other ethnic groups in our overall national interest. On balance, I believe these objectives were largely achieved, despite the divisive effects of partisan politics, visionless and self-centered leadership of ethnic organisations in our political environment today as illustrated in my book mentioned earlier in this interview.

What is your view about corruption in Nigeria?

Corruption is a universal problem, which exists in varying degrees in all human societies. It has become a major problem in Nigeria today because it has reached an alarming and destructive proportion, to the extent that it is now threatening our survival as a nation. It has damaged all aspects of our national life because it exists at all levels of our society in a most destructive manner. Our greatest problem is that some of the leadership elite, instead of helping to curb the negative effects of corruption, are seen by most Nigerians as the primary engines of corruption and promoters of massive corruption directed against our overall national interest. This is an alarming situation that calls for urgent and collective action designed to eliminate or reduce the destructive effects of corruption in the country. In the past 30 years, every administration has paid lip service to the so-called war against corruption. But there are no signs of victory. On the contrary, corruption has continued to increase, to the extent that Nigeria is now being described by the international community as one of the most corrupt nations of the world, despite our many anti-corruption seminars, workshops and conferences.

The only little hope and comfort is that some seemingly serious state agencies such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) have been created to “fight” corruption. But the so-called “Nigerian factor,” an expression coined by our present cynical society, is impeding the efforts of these anti-corruption agencies. It is also heartwarming that some independent national organisations are making more positive anti-corruption declarations. We hope that all these efforts will lead to the practical reduction or eradication of this tragic canker worm.

Nigeria has been described as a terrorist state. Do you share this view?

We may have our political, economic and security problems, but Nigeria is certainly not a terrorist state. Despite the unfortunate and isolated event on Christmas Day (December 25, 2009) involving a young Nigerian from a respectable family, who was not based in Nigeria, which made some people to associate Nigeria with terrorism, no one who really knows Nigeria would rightly describe it as a terrorist state.

Which book are you writing at present?

I am writing two books right now. One on Corporate Governance and the other on Leadership. The book on Corporate Governance is virtually completed and should be available to the reading public before the end of the first half of this year. The book on Leadership will follow much later.

What’s your advice for the nation?

Nigeria is a potentially great nation and under the right leadership, it has the capacity to become a world power. It is one of the most highly endowed nations in the world. Despite our chequered political history, I am convinced that it is in the overall interest of all Nigerians that we should preserve this country as one great and viable African nation. As a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious developing nation, with more than 200 ethnic nationalities, our strength lies in our cultural diversity and the collective strength of the different ethnic nationalities that make up this potentially great African nation. We are now at a critical stage in our national history. My advice for the nation is that we should endeavour to save this potentially great nation from disintegration by working for a true federal constitution that is fair to all Nigerians and one that would create reliable and efficient national institutions that will produce selfless leaders of integrity who will sacrifice their personal interests for the collective good of all Nigerians. At present, the greatest challenges facing the country’s political leadership are the issues of constitution review and electoral reform. How we resolve these critical national issues will determine the future direction of this nation. My hope, advice, prayer and expectation is that God should give our political leadership, especially the National Assembly, the wisdom, not only to adopt the key recommendations of the Justice Muhammadu Uwais’ Electoral Reforms Committee as advocated by millions of well-meaning Nigerians, but also the vital constitutional amendments that would reflect the genuine aspirations of all Nigerians.

What is your comment on 50 years of Nigeria as a nation and 10 years of democracy?

You have just raised two formidable issues and it is difficult for me to do real justice to these subjects in the limited time we have for this interview. Luckily, I have written three books on these subjects in recent years. The books are: Nigeria at The Crossroads, The Challenge to Nigeria; and Nigeria: The Last Chance. I hope you will find the time to read these books. We were students in England 50 years ago when Nigeria became an independent nation on October 1, 1960. As patriotic students, we celebrated our independence with a great sense of achievement and satisfaction. We welcomed with pride, the birth of our own nation, free from what we saw as the indignity of colonialism. We had very high hopes at Independence. These high hopes were inspired by our vision of a great African nation that would be a source of pride to all Nigerians and the African continent. These high hopes, expectations and aspirations were proudly sustained during the first few years of independence.

During those early years, the pattern of governance under the Federal Parliamentary System was simple, dignified and inexpensive. The political leadership protected and respected the interests and wellbeing of the people. The term 419 was only known by lawyers and policemen as a section of the Criminal Code. Violent crimes, ethnic and religious conflicts, abuse of office and social injustice were virtually unknown. As a result, we enjoyed a good measure of political and social stability, as well as national unity and cohesion. Although we were not a rich country and had not yet embraced the “oil boom,” the country enjoyed a measure of social and economic development. Poverty was not a problem then as most ordinary Nigerians were well fed and met their basic needs. Because the quality of leadership was generally high and selfless, the people responded appropriately. The Nigerian society at federal and regional levels, were, on the balance, more humane and better disciplined than what we have today. Quality education with character building was very much a part of our national culture, especially for those aspiring to leadership positions at regional and federal levels and Nigerians were respected internationally.

This is not the position today. Since then the country has witnessed several political upheavals, a vast decline in our traditional values, 30 years of military rule and a destructive civil war. As a matter of fact, the genesis of our political problems was that the democratic process was stifled in its infancy when our post-independence political stability had not been firmly established. As a result, we experienced many traumatic and destabilising political upheavals, climaxing in a tragic civil war. This civil war marked the beginning of our decline as a nation and the virtual collapse of our value system. It was the beginning of the invasion of the country’s leadership by individuals who were not equipped for democratic leadership functions. Fifty years after independence, it would be reasonable to state that we may have witnessed some limited development in some respects, but the truth is that we have not yet achieved the level of social, economic and political development that we deserve, going by our vast human and natural endowments. Furthermore, the truth is that we are still a long way away from the achievement of the great African nation of our dream at independence.

In answer to the second leg of your question as to how we have fared during our 10 years of democracy starting from May 1999, my direct response is that the greatest achievement in this regard is the fact that we have managed to sustain the democratic process and its institutions without the intervention of the military, as was the case in the past. This in itself is a major achievement. But we still have a lot to do before we can claim to have become an efficient and reliable modern democracy. We must strengthen our democracy, especially our electoral process and our judiciary, as well as the democratic institutions to ensure that those who preside, govern and direct our affairs and political institutions are men and women of honour and integrity who will place our national interest and the wellbeing of the people, including the handicapped and disadvantaged, above their personal and sectional interests.

How do you unwind?

I used to play table tennis and walk around before. But now that my house is close to my office, I don’t take such a walk again because of the risk of getting embarrassed by people around. I stopped playing table tennis because once I clocked 70, I realised that time was against me and saw the need to begin writing for posterity sake. That is the only way I believe I can leave a worthy legacy for the generations coming. I only walk when I’m in the village. There, I don’t get bothered by any unnecessary questioning from people around.

In recent time, you have come to be identified by your cap. Why the sudden attraction?

For many years, I have noticed that a lot of people take me too seriously. So, I decided to tone it down my own way. The intention is to divert people’s attention from that seriousness to the hilarious part of me. To make them think that I have some sense of humour. I have them in different colours and I guess they are just good for me.