PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

Chief Barthemeus Emenike Uwagbana: 1920 – 2011

ndajika@yahoo.com

Over three years ago, on October 24, 2007 to be precise, I wrote a compliment of sorts on these pages for my friend, Chief Ikechi Emenike, Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, Development Economic Resource (DER) Ltd., publishers of Annual Meeting Daily, the official publication of the World Bank/IMF annual conferences, and the African Economy, among other titles. The article then was, however, not on his career as a successful publisher. Rather it was about his the new-found career as a politician.

The background to the article was his failed attempt in 2003 to become a senator for his Abia North constituency on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party. He’d won the party primaries handily and looked set to win the senatorial election itself possibly even more handily. However, before the results of the primaries could be announced the Abia State PDP Establishment apparently had a re-think about the man’s pliability, given his reputation as a self-willed person; the local party establishment convinced the chaps from the national headquarters in Abuja to declare the primaries a stalemate and order a re-run. Predictably Ikechi lost the re-run.

During the run-up to the 2007 general elections he decided to go for the state governorship even though he knew he would be up against at least two formidable opponents, one backed by the serving governor, Chief Orji Uzo Kalu, the other backed by the Federal might. And as if these were not enough obstacles he left the PDP to join the opposition All Nigeria Peoples Party.

Not surprisingly Ikechi lost as ANPP’s governorship candidate. I believe more than his two most formidable opponents he’d worked hard to cultivate grassroots support. But then who didn’t know that the 2007 elections were the most un-free and unfair in Nigeria’s history?

Never a man to give up a struggle easily, Ikechi went to the election tribunal to contest his loss. His hope was to kill two birds with one stone; his rivals, his lawyers argued, had each been indicted by a panel of enquiry and so were ineligible to have contested the elections based on Section 182 (1) (i) of the country’s Constitution.

Again not surprisingly in a world where justice did not always go to the afflicted, he lost his petition. He then appealed to the Court of Appeal.

It was at this stage that I wrote my article in question which I entitled “Emenike, the best governor Abia may yet have.”  I was sceptical about his chances of wining his appeal – and said so in the article.

“I have my doubts,” I said in my conclusion, “that he will win his appeal. But with his spirit of never say die, I have little or no doubt that Chief Ikechi Emenike, successful journalist and publisher, will, sooner or later succeed in becoming the best governor Abia State may yet have.”

My friend, I came to know in due course, was none too happy with my conclusion. Some of his friends had even told him that I could not claim to be his friend and yet express doubts about the success of his litigation. Even then he did not let his unhappiness with my doubts get in the way of our friendship. He was apparently sensible enough to know that your best friends were not necessarily those who always told you only what you wanted to hear. Quite the contrary, they were the ones who told you what you did not want to hear at a time when it was probably the only cure for one’s predicament.

The knowledge that your best friends were those who always told you the truth no matter what was one of many lessons Ikechi was to learn at the feet of his old man, Chief Barthemeus Emenike Uwagbama, who passed away on January 28, aged 91.

Last Saturday Ikechi, along with his five brothers and two sisters, and in the midst of other relations and friends, buried the old man at his residence in Umukabia on the outskirts of Umuahia, the Abia State capital.

The burial was preceded by a well attended service on the grounds of the community’s primary school, a walking distance from the senior Emenike’s residence. Present among Ikechi’s many friends were the grand-daddy of Abia politics, Chief B. B. Apugo. So also were Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo, former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Professor Sylvester Monye, the Director General of the National Planning Commission, Dr. Akin Arikawe, former Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Chief Niyi Akintola, SAN,  and not least of all, his erstwhile nemesis, Chief Orji Kalu, the two-term governor of the state.

Needless to say there was also in attendance a galaxy of the clergy from his Methodist Church lead by the Archbishop of Umuahia Archdiocese, His Grace, Most Reverend Dr. S. I. O. Agwu, and the host bishop, His Lordship, Rt. Reverend Lawson O. Elom.

At the end of the service, Ikechi moved the vote of thanks on behalf of the family. It was a vintage performance as he moved effortlessly from English to Igbo and back, seizing the opportunity of saying thank you to the multitude but orderly crowd that graced the occasion to deliver a few homilies about politics and life in general, all of which, he said, were lessons he picked up from his father.

The biggest lesson, he learnt from the old man, he said, was never to tell any lies. “I discovered very early in life that he demanded nothing short of the truth...If you told him a lie once, he would not believe a million subsequent truths from you.”

Because the man believed politicians were the greatest liars he detested politics and politicians no end. Which obviously made Ikechi a predicament of sorts for the old man until he died; he strongly objected to his second son, who was very much a chip off the old block, becoming a politician, especially as he was doing well for himself as a journalist and publisher. Yet, he could not counter his son’s argument that it would be immoral to complain about politics becoming the prerogative of villains when those who believed they were good people shunned politics.

In the end he had no choice but to bless the son in his new career and pray that he never learns the politicians’ stock-in-trade of “speaking from both sides of their mouth,” as he was often fond of putting it.

Chief Emenike’s 91 year-old journey was a chequered one. It started in Umukabia in 1920, through Jos in the then Plateau Province from about twenty years later, and ended back in Umukabia in the last two decades of his life.

In Jos where he had all his six children, he was a pioneer staff of CFAO, the French auto trading company. He set up his own auto repair shop in 1947 in protest at the action of his French boss who thought none of the African staff was good enough to take charge while he was away on holiday. Instead he had handed over the shop to a visiting relation who was not even on the payroll of the company.

From an auto workshop in 1947, Chief Emenike started Emenike Motors in 1950. Thus began an auto business which was to grow into one of the biggest indigenous transport companies in the North before the civil war.

The civil war saw the man return to the East like virtually all Igbos. He did come back to Jos after the war but the war seemed to have mellowed the man’s adventurous disposition. Instead, he contented himself with a modest means of livelihood which was enough to allow him train his children and a few relatives into becoming their own men.

Many tributes were paid to the man who was a pillar of his community both at home and in diaspora as he made his last journey on earth. For me, none of these was as touching as the one from his favourite son, Ikechi, who said it never bothered the man if those who benefitted from his generosity showed ingratitude.

“I didn’t do it for them but for God and humanity,” he would say in such circumstances.

There can hardly be a better epitaph for the end of life that was lived ever so happily.