OJUKWU, GONE WITH THE WAR MEMOIRS

Icheoku says procrastination has once again cost Nigerians and the world an authentic rare insight into the Biafran war courtesy of the man who lead the three year Biafran effort. He promised the world a true account and memoir of the Biafran war, detailing its causes, prosecution, successes and failures as well as the final suspension of hostilities following his forced exile to the then Ivory Coast. Like William Shakespeare said, the good are often interred with their bones and so has this great forensic expose` into the soul of Biafra, unfortunately, died with the man who was Biafra alter-ego and its chief protagonist. Regrettably many Nigerians alive then and now, as well as future generations, have been robbed of a first hand percipient account of what truly happened during Biafra. According to his former ADC, “there’s virtually nothing that happened during the war period that he didn’t know about. He was determined to get justice for the people of the Eastern region. He laid his life down for our people, but unfortunately, many people did not get to know more about him. He never went to war for personal aggrandisement. At all times during the war, he was concerned about his people.”  


Icheoku says this is what has been missing since the cessation of firearms hostility over thrity nine years ago - an account of the Biafran war by someone who actually knew something about the Biafran war. Unfortunately, the world may never know as death has permanently deprived humanity of such golden opportunity at history. Ikemba Nnewi and DIkedioranma of Igboland, the Peoples General Odumegwu Chukwuemeka Ojukwu has died with his memories of the Biafra war which he prosecuted without getting the opportunity to chronicle same. He said he was going to write a memoir of the war but never got to doing it; except a manuscript exists somewhere to be published post-humus? Icheoku have noted and is writing an article on the lack of or not readily available chronicled history and/or biography of some very important Nigerians who changed or helped change the course of history in Nigeria while they lived. Sometimes Icheoku wonders what history professors at various Nigerian universities history departments are doing amidst such unexplored wild Alaskan history of Nigerian greats needing exploration? Good professors worthy of their pay and tenure would have produced several books on these subjects courtesy of handed assignments to their students and scholars. Term papers, projects and dissertations on these prominent Nigerians would have been enough with little proof-reading to make up so many books on the lives and history of these great men and women of Nigeria. 


Take a look at the Nigerian landscape and you could hardly find historical books on Gani Fawehinmi, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Rotimi Williams, Tunde Igiadgon, MKO Abiola, CC Onoh, Balarabe Musa, Maitama Sule, Wole Soyinka, Tai Solarin, Beko Ransome Kuti, Sam Mbakwe,   Ken Saro Wiwa, Sani Abacha, Muritala Mohammed, Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Tony Anenih, Theophilius Danjuma, Ibrahim Dangote, Muhammadu Buhari, Shehu Shagari, Alex Ekwueme, Ojukwu, the brains behind Ojukwu Bunker, Ojukwu bucket, Uli airport lantern-illuminated landing strip and such other numerous life-changing events that took place in Nigeria. Such mimeographs would provide insight into these men, their challenges and how they overcame and resolved them and in turn provide a reference point for future generations. Icheoku asks where is the future in Nigeria when the past always dies with their actors without anything ever being transferred to posterity via books of how things were done, who did what,  and why? It is called recorded history and biographies; and Nigerians are not doing well upholding this department of their society. 


So as Icheoku and the rest of the reasonable and rational humanity in Nigeria particularly mourn the loss of the great one, in as much as we shall miss his colossal presence, the thing that will be sorely missed more is that promised excursion into the experience called Biafra which he never realized before he transited. Chief Odumegwu Chukwuemeka Ojukwu would have done a terrific job educating Nigerians and the rest of the world about the futuristic Biafra as only he could have done; having led that heroic effort. Icheoku says Ojukwu was a man above men who was born before long before his time. He saw in 1967 what is happening in 2011 Nigeria as the wanton killing of Nigerians by their fellow Nigerians has not abated but is still taking place in Jos Plateau State Nigeria. What a man with audacity who called the bluff of the Northern bloody marauders,  committing ethnic cleansing of the Igbos in Northern Nigeria and defended his manhood to protect his people. Icheoku states, without being immodest, that every Igbo man and woman, including the minorities of present day South-south, owe their freedom which they enjoy today to the bravery of the man who stood up to be counted when it mattered most. Chief Odumegwu Chukwuemeka Ojukwu looked into the eyes of genocidal Yakubu Gowon and told him, the SLAUGHTER OF THE IGBOS MUST STOP and went to war to stop it. But for his bravado, Igbos would have either become extinct or conscript Allah-worshippers in Nigeria today. However all his war exploits are, but for few excerpts, forever lost due to his inability to get to the promised war memoir before death denied him the opportunity to truly and correctly state the case of Biafra. What a best seller this book of the Biafran War, a true account; from the man who should know, having led the effort would have been. 


Anyway, the Ikemba is gone and with him, his Biafra War memoirs; but his spirit lives on in the hearts of millions of his admirers.  The consolatory news is that the cloud of his death shall someday lift  to reveal the way forward for Igbos of Nigeria without their beloved Ojukwu. After rain comes sunshine, dawn follows dusk and the Igbos shall survive the death of their beloved Ojukwu and emerge stronger. They are now made aware of their place in the entity called Nigeria as Ojukwu revealed to them what it means to be an Igbo man in Nigeria. The apostles survived the death of the risen Christ; the Yorubas survived the death of their Papa Awolowo and history is replete with such historical larger than life personalities that shaped and molded opinions, whose death to their beloved people, sounded like the end of the world. But from their death-ashes, rose a phoenix of a more dogged and determined people, championing the course which was imbibed in them by such their departed heroes. Igbos of Nigeria shall survive and have survived; and it does not matter what the genocidal Yakubu Gowon thinks or that the Otta deity shall wait for eternity for an apology for Biafra which shall never come or that the Theophilus Danjumas of Nigeria are mad that Ojukwu died a natural death and not a violent one as they would rather he did. Icheoku says it simply does not matter what any of these munchkins think, as Nigeria has become a joint project for all, with Igbos fully participating and going no where soon any longer. Nigeria is now Igbos own country and they will do better for am. So long, Dikedioranma of Igboland.