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Dirge
to a Stormy Wilberforce
By TONY IYARE
In my formative
years in the political movement at the prestigious Ife varsity,
I had to discharge this burden: Get the fiery political adviser
to the President, Dr William Wilberforce Chuba Okadigbo for a lecture.
I took my brief seriously, hopped into a taxi on the busy Ibadan-Ife
road to Lagos and was soon before this ebullient political philosopher
who had won notoriety for his vitriolic tongue. As a budding political
science student, I found the first close encounter with this former
don of University of Nigeria engaging. Though I was initially enraged
at his often caustic and brash language on Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and
Chief Obafemi Awolowo, two revered elder statesmen, I got stuck
to him from the first meeting in the early 80s.
He was such
an interesting scholar always desirous to run his guests through
a mill. Okadigbo indeed had a predilection for putting people through
their paces. After taking you through an intellectual excursion
from Kant to Hegel, Marx and Lenin, you see the radiance of an intellectual
guru who prefers to live in his books. In a country where many will
spend fortune on clothes and owambe and would hardly spare thought
for a book in a year, I found his demeanour interesting. I had to
apply the brakes as I pleaded with him at the then Ribadu road office
of the president not to exhaust his gunpowder and wait for the lecture.
It became obvious he had too much in his arsenals on political thought
as he reeled and reeled. Our paths later crossed once more when
I took up a job as staff writer in Platform, a high brow monthly
magazine then published by the former Senate president in 1988.
With a highly
resourceful team that included Okey Ekeocha, now a staff of Shell,
Chido Nwangwu, Rita Ese Eda, Emeka Ekemezie and this writer amongst
others and edited by a powerful literary mind like Chidi Amuta,
the Platform which had its office in the secluded Majaro street
in Onike,Yaba became an intellectual powerhouse. If the Platform
was short in other areas, it certainly wasn’t discourses. The magazine
was enmeshed in too much of it. Even when it inched dangerously
into production time, discourses covering wide areas of knowledge
were sustained. In spite of haven ended my short romance with cigarettes
and will hardly pass as a lover of the bottle, I never border with
time in the company of Dr Okadigbo. I doubt whether even the most
rabid hater of such pastimes will find his company revolting. He
was indeed full of life. The late Senate President was like a professors’
professor. He had so much to teach from his fountain of knowledge.
We may need to confront how to ensure that the likes of Okadigbo,
the running mate to General Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential candidate
of the All Nigeria Peoples’ Party (ANPP) remain on campuses in future
to stem the tide of half-baked scholars that now dot our academic
space. His detour from the academia to full time politics may have
been tempered in a society where intellection glows. But ours is
one that thrives on a systemic casting of specks at the intelligentsia.
We live in
a society replete with so much contempt and hate for intellection.
That’s why the President can make merry and dance himself lame over
his phyric bout with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)
when campuses are shut for months. He even had the temerity to propose
Professor Babalola Borishade, a failed Education minister for second
term. Does it jolt you that we are prepared to spend billions of
dollars for COJA and will not care a hoot about the decrepit state
of education. Okadigbo like so many other brilliant scholars smelt
the rot on the campuses at the incipient stage and decided to take
a bow. If he stuck to radical scholarship and got embroiled in the
grindstone of building a revolutionary movement, his story would
have been different. He would have been in the league of Mokwugo
Okoye, Claude Ake, Bjorn Beckman, Eskor Toyo, Segun Osoba (former
History don at Ife), Oladipo Fashina, Omotoye Olorode, Eddie Madunagu,
Ola Oni, Yusuf Bangura, Omafume Onoge and a host of others. . Long
after I jumped ship and flirted with different magazines and newspapers,
we kept our contacts alive. As a political correspondent, Okadigbo
was useful in providing insights.
He was a reporter’s
delight. His abode in Lagos, Abuja, Enugu and rural Ogbunike was
a Mecca. You neglect him only at your peril. Okadigbo was a stormy
petrel in virtually every major political scheme. Flashback to the
plot of the 57 senators that opened the floodgates to the removal
of Dr Iyorchia Ayu as Senate President in 1993. Immediately I arrived
the lobby of the serene Nike Lake Hotel, Enugu venue of the meeting
of the plotting senators led by then deputy Senate President, Albert
Legogie as a Newswatch reporter, Okadigbo would not let me go. Like
was his tradition, he would ask after my wife, children, work and
general welfare. Not done he had to canvass the anti-Ayu agenda.
As the strategic arrowhead of the plot, his attention was needed
to provide logistics and to oil the cudgels of the rebelling senators
but he was immersed in a protracted discourse with this writer.
Okadigbo knew my leaning. I was hardly sympathetic with the apparent
state inspired scheme to cut down Ayu, a former chairman of Academic
Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at the University of Jos by this
hired band of senators from the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and
National Republican Convention (NRC).
He was however
undaunted as he sold the idea to me. No dice but he persisted. He
virtually jumped protocol next day just to exchange pleasantries
with this writer as he walked on the aisle of the banquet hall of
Hotel Presidential, Enugu with then Governor, Dr Okwesilieze Nwodo,
Dr Ahmed Kusamotu, chairman of the National Republican Convention
(NRC) and Legogie. I sought an escape route to avoid the backlash
from some visibly angry senators. The plot succeeded and Ayu was
removed but Okadigbo had sown the seed of his own ouster as Senate
president when he emerged against the permutation of the presidency
in 1999. His deputy, Haruna Abubakar effectively played the role
of the mole. I’m not likely to be a convert of Okadigbo’s romance
with the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) nor ANPP, both far right
parties but may conceed to him just like Alexander Pope that he
does have a right to be different. What we could not take away from
him was his fervent resolve to raise his finger against orthodoxy
and the growing civilian dictatorship, which may make mincemeat
of our struggles against the military. He was not given to vacillation
about his strand.
Even as Senate
president, he would attend the wedding of the daughter of radical
Lagos lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi without watching his shoulders.
When this writer did a piece titled Olusegun Abacha in the National
Interest early in 2001, Okadigbo who had tasted the bile as Senate
president called and said it amounted to some concrete signal that
the late dictator, General Sani Abacha may have reincarnated in
agbada. Those who thought I was crying foul too early now know better.
I mourn his death greatly and do feel a sense of profound loss of
my beloved former boss. As we sing Mount Ephraim to this fallen
incisive political philosopher and thinker, we may not be necessarily
inclined to believe the strange tear gas story in Kano. But the
regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo has a lot to convince the
court of public opinion that late Okadigbo was not gassed as part
of the grand design to whittle the opposition’s gauntlet against
a farcical and controversial second term victory.
First published
in The Guardian (Lagos, Nigeria) on Wednesday, October 29, 2003.
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