Handshake Across the Niger: The Legacy of Chuba Okadigbo

By

Ogbonna George Nwogu

ogbonwogu@hotmail.com

" 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