Handshake Across the Niger: The Legacy of Chuba Okadigbo By Ogbonna George Nwogu "
All great orators of the world had similar fate. They killed Socrates in
400 BC, They killed Abraham Lincoln in 1863, they killed Mahatma Gandhi
in 1948, and they killed John. F. Kennedy in 1963 and they killed Martin
Luther King Junior in 1967. They were all great orators, they were all
great speakers, and they all had similar fate, slaughtered, murdered and
assassinated.” – Sidi
George Alas,
in Nigeria, we have found a unique weapon of choice to use in shaping
the fate of a great orator of the world – Teargas. Chuba
Okadigbo’s legacy goes beyond his profound rhetorical pedagogy.
Chuba used great words to present us with his vision of what
Nigeria could be. He did it in an eloquent way to inspire us and touch
our emotions in such a way that we might transform his dream into
reality. Throughout history, there
were other great orators and poets, Plato, Socrates, Shakespeare,
Lincoln, and Churchill. These men we acknowledge with powerful words,
changed the history of man and helped mankind with its growth forward.
All of them piqued our consciences with their wisdom, and allowed all of
us to search our souls for agreement. In 19th century America
with his nation divided and in the midst of a great civil war, Abraham
Lincoln held steadfast to his mission to keep his country together and
to fulfill "the proposition that all men are created
equal." In dedicating the cemetery to those who fell at
Gettysburg, Lincoln said, "we here highly resolve that these
dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by
the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Lincoln’s great words helped preserve the United States of America. A
century after his country banned slavery, Martin Luther King spoke from
the mountain top, saw
the promised land, and dreamed "that one day this nation will
rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold
these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.’ I
have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former
slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down
together at the table of brotherhood." The Civil Rights Act was
to follow, and blacks were allowed to exercise their God-Given rights in
America. Likewise, Chuba’s legacy will lie in whether Nigeria will use
his great words like its counterparts in Europe, America, and India to
buttress our resolve, open our hearts, and rally around his philosophy
of Handshake across the Niger. Chuba
coined Handshake across the Niger in order to underscore the need
for unity in Nigeria. He used the expression initially at the palace of
the Ooni of Ife when efforts were being made to reconcile the National
Party of Nigeria (NPN) with the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN). This
philosophy is anchored on the imperatives of de-emphasizing the things
that divide the people of Nigeria and emphasizing the things that unite
us. He was a true apostle of this philosophy, and this formed the basis
of his politics and actions. His detractors failed to see and understand
that part of him. That is why his acceptance of the ANPP
Vice-Presidential slot, was derided by certain critics as a personal and
self-serving dream. Chuba was to point out that his action amounted to
political sagacity, designed in Zikist tradition to move the nation
forward. Forget the fact that British Lord Ashdown once said, “I have
always thought that words are the battleground of politics.” Forget
the fact that great words have been used throughout history to move
mankind forward. We saw it with Gandhi in India and Churchill in
Britain. The onus now lies on us Nigerians to move the country forward
by becoming practitioners of his pragmatic philosophy of Handshake across the Niger. Herein lies the true legacy of an
erudite orator. There
is no doubt that Dr. Okadigbo was Nigeria’s foremost consummate
political theorist, philosopher, and strategist, the likes of whom
Nigeria will never see again for a very long time. His political
philosophical profligacy is the result of the confluence of his
Nigerian, Eastern bloc, and Western bloc training, and exposure as a
young man. He was a strategist who shunned political illusion for
pragmatism. He illustrated
this by pointing out Zik’s sacrifice for the unity of the country by
teaming up with the NPC to form the NCNC government that ruled Nigeria
at independence. He noted that “it is a sign of political sagacity
to understand political arithmetic in order to achieve political
strategism to be able to bring together brothers and sisters vertically
and horizontally for the purposes of achieving political victory” to
explain his decision to become the ANPP Vice-Presidential candidate.
While the Igbos were holding on to the non-feasible idea of an Igbo
President in 2003, he articulated and presented his strategic decision
as the “shortcut to the Presidency” since Buhari would have served
one term if elected. This move
and his numerous clarion calls for the drums of change and the gongs for
rotation of the Presidency were part of his belief in this
“handshake”. We saw this philosophy when he was the Chairman of the
Foreign Relations Committee. When President Obasanjo submitted his first
list of Ambassadors in 1999, he refused to confirm everyone on the list
because some regions in the country were not represented. He called for
a modification, and in the end, EVERY state got an equal representation
of Ambassadors. That, my friends, is practicing what one preaches, and
represents this “handshake.” In his analysis of the Ndigbo and
Nigerian problem, Dr. Okadigbo had the following to say at the Igbo
Summit in Enugu on January 19, 2001: “There
exists an intricate dialectic between the Igbo problem and the Nigerian
problem. After all, what affects a part does affect the whole. When you
point a finger at someone, four fingers are pointing at you. When you
denigrate hard work and thrift by or in one section, it rubs off
adversely on the whole. If you dehumanize a part of Nigeria, the country
suffers the impact. A nation in quest of progress and development must
not cheat itself by deliberate neglect of any sector. This is what the
whole human rights movement throughout the world is all about. And
Nigeria must be in sync with universalism.” We
thank him for his substantive contributions to Nigeria’s political
landscape. The words that he brought into the polity’s lexicon will
stand as an enduring tribute to a great son of Nigeria. We have him to
thank for those words and expressions such as Hidden Agenda,
Marginalisation, Political Arithmetic, Political Sagacity and Strategism,
and Handshake across the Niger, words that are now part of our everyday vocabulary. Despite
his political strategic skills, Okadigbo committed some blunders. One of
them was his “rantings of an ant” comment in referring to Zik of
Africa’s commentary. He later repositioned himself on the issue, and
pointed out to the fact that Zik had been his mentor in his early years.
He also miscalculated strategically, and this led to his impeachment.
Each time his luck was down, Okadigbo got up and picked up the pieces
because he felt that it was imperative for a man to stand up after a
fall, dust off, and move on. He said, “When
you rise, try to hang in there but never abandon principles.” Apart
from leaving us with his philosophies on politics, life, and notable
quotes, he leaves us with questions (that speak to the nation’s state
of affairs) in the manner of his exit from this world. The excesses of
Nigeria’s corrupt-ridden Police Force are too many to recount. We have
seen it in the killing of an innocent bystander by the security detail
of the erstwhile Deputy Governor of Lagos State because moving cars were
too slow to give way to her convoy. We have seen the beating into a coma
of a photojournalist for wanting to take a picture of the
Vice-President. We have seen it in the killings of road travelers for
failing to give bribes at checkpoints, some for as little as 20 naira.
Yes 20 naira! We now have the excessive use of teargas to add to the
list. The state of our medical services has also been called into
question pertaining to the lack of the use of ambulances and trained
paramedics that could make a difference in a life and death situation. Dr.
Okadigbo is gone, but we will all remember his flamboyant ride through
the political landscape of Nigeria. Adeyeye Joseph wrote in This Day, “While
he lived and politicked, Okadigbo bestrode the scene like the only
survivor of a fast diminishing race. He was eloquent, savvy,
charismatic, flamboyant and bold….Only few, very few, commanded the
attention and presence of those who preceded them. And it is sad that
one of these very few ones just departed. Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo was
a cross between the nattily attired and bombastic politicians of the
1960s and the power hungry and driven baby politicians of the nineties.
But for Okadigbo and his flair for the baroque and the controversial,
the politics of this era would have been drab, dull, and colorless.” Dr.
Okadigbo once noted that “The nation suffers a poverty of heroes,
the symbols around which children could
be educated. It seems that it shall be very, very difficult, if not
impossible to produce another Nnamdi Azikiwe, another Ahmadu Bello,
another Awolowo in Nigeria.” To
that list I add the name Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo, The Oyi of Oyi. Ogbonna
George Nwogu Chicago, IL |