Few issues concerning the Igbo nation
have provoked profound debate and lengthy discussions than the vexed
question of leadership. There is this otiose conception among our people
that the Igbo have no ‘eze’. I think this is a wrong assumption.
The Igbo have ‘eze’, perhaps not in the sense other cultures like the
Yoruba or the Hausa/Fulani express and institutionalize their own
kingship patterns. Unfortunately, most of our people have bought into
this rheumy impression upon which basis they impugn their very best and
ridicule them before the public.
The present
travail of Orji Uzor Kalu, the former Governor of Abia State is a case
in point. The man who succeeded him and who incidentally was installed
by him has made a past time in rubbishing Orji Uzor Kalu. He has gone to
extreme lengths to cast Kalu in the mould of a pariah; a cheat and
corrupt man. This is most regrettable. I have never met Kalu in person
but I have followed his activities like all other Igbo titans and I do
not think he deserves the raw deal he is getting from Theodore Orji
today. The latest of the travesty against Kalu by Theodore Orji is the
purported cancellation of his degree certificate by the Abia State
University, Uturu. According to reports, the certificate was cancelled
because Orji Uzor Kalu allegedly did not complete his course. This
allegation is not only frivolous but underscores Governor Theodore
Orji’s pettiness to drag Uzor Kalu to the mud. Incidentally, Orji Uzor
Kalu has maintained a dignified and respectful silence in the face of
this executive cannibalization of his persona and integrity. This is
commendable essentially because the Igbo man has this belief that if you
are taking your bathe by the riverside and a mad man comes along to
take your clothes you will be regarded as another mad person if you run
after him naked.
That Orji Uzor Kalu is a towering leader
is not in doubt. That he was a successful business man and
philanthropist ever before he ventured into politics is also not in
doubt. That he was not lifted like a cripple and put on the executive
seat of Abia state is also evident. That he has defended the Igbo
interest even at the risk of personal safety is equally not debatable- a
struggle that has brought great admirers and vicious enemies within and
outside; a struggle that has threatened to scuttle his business empire.
In this struggle to defend and protect his people Orji Uzor Kalu has
had security operatives unleashed on him; his home and offices turned
inside out by these security operatives like maggots rummaging the inner
anatomy of a putrefying carcass. He has been cursed and discussed;
analyzed and scandalized. The enemy is mad and he is happy. The battle
rages on and that is just the way he loves it. For any person to think
that this man of destiny and history would be thrown into the dust bin
of history in the form of a footnote is not only a crass permutation but
also supine intellectual and ethereal assumption. For people like Orji
Uzor Kalu, the Holy Bible has this to say: For whom He did
foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His
Son, that he might be the first born among many brethren. Moreover, who
He did predestinate, them He also called: And whom He called, them also
He justified, and whom He Justified, them He also glorified (Romans 8:
29-30).
Nothing is more remarkable in the
affairs of men than the surprising places in which God Almighty finds or
deposits great men of destiny and of history. Interestingly, this has
been so throughout the ages. For instance, when God wanted to raise the
greatest king that ever sat on the throne of Israel, he passed through
the great cities of Palestine and through the Aristocratic families of
that period and also the stately and majestic sons of Jesse to anoint
David, the shepherd boy, who will eventually become the nemesis of
Goliath of Gath. At a time when the nation of Israel was overwhelmed by
the darkest night of national backsliding, at a point when that nation
faced the consequences of collective immolation on account of leadership
inertia, apostasy and political brigandage, God went through the cities
and civilizations of the time into the obscure village of Tishbe, east
of the Jordanian city, to appoint Elijah. This was the same mystery
surrounding the emergence of people like Amos- the herdsman of Tekoa and
the gatherer of Sycamore fruits; Elisha, the plough-man, miracle
worker, the counselor of kings and princes and the guide of national
revival.
What God has done yesterday, He will do
again today. We know that God has raised great men of history in the
past to point the way forward for their people; he will do it again even
in our circumstance to raise a man of vision who will inject new verve
into exhausted possibilities, fire an ember from a heap of ash and lead
the people out of their cul-de-sac. No wonder God loves to laugh
at human pomp and arrogance and set at naught human calculations;
bringing the unexpected to happen. Today God is still in the business of
making such great men. The reason for this is that the strongest trees
are not usually found in the sheltered nooks of the mangrove forests but
very often in the most exposed deserts and savannahs of the earth where
the storms sweep with fury and relentlessness. Nor do the hardiest of
flowers grow in lush houses but on the mountain sides in close proximity
to the glacier and snow. God’s great men may not always be found in the
laps of the luxury or opulence. Men of destiny, irrespective of their
backgrounds have always had to strive hard to arrive at the top and such
struggles to be the best in whatever they do has always quickened their
inventiveness and inspired their resolution.
My assignment in this paper is fairly
simple. That assignment is to focus attention on the one issue, which
every shade of opinion in this country has come to appreciate as a
fundamental problem and challenge to the Igbo nation. That singular
issue is the question of credible leadership. Today, I have no doubt in
my mind that Ndigbo in Nigeria are standing at a crossroads; the type
that Bennet Lerone Jr., would describe as critical in the evolution of
any society. In his epic work captioned “The Road not Taken”, Lerone Jr. remarked thus
“A nation is an amalgam of crucial folks on the road. A nation is a
choice. It chooses itself at the fate-forks on the road by turning left
or right; by giving something or by taking something, and in the giving
and in the taking, the nation becomes. And ever afterwards, the people
and the nation are defined by the forks and decisions that were made
there, as well as the decisions that were not made there. For the
decision, once made, engraves itself into things; into institutions,
nerves, tendons, and the first decision requires a second decision, and
as second decision requires a third, and it goes on and on”.
As new configurations and calculations
emerge on Nigeria’s political landscape, I am minded to note that Ndigbo
are today confronted with the stark reality of making a
destiny-changing decision concerning their fate in Nigeria. I am
constrained to believe that the decision we make for our people today, sans emotion,
would bear greatly on our future as a distinct people. As student of
history and an ardent scholar of the concept of leadership, I have come
to the conclusion that the great empires of the world that collapsed did
so because it neglected the one basic factor that would have driven
them to the pinnacle of their glory and that is leadership. I have also
come to understand that leadership is more spiritual than temporal as we
have been led to believe all this while. Leadership is not the result
of expansive study of all the literature on leadership, or one’s
position or even power. Every man is basically a spirit being and the
nature of a person’s spirit dictates what nature that person manifests.
Albeit, until a person’s spirit is
changed, that person will remain fundamentally unchanged. Leadership,
therefore, begins with a person’s spirit, i.e. the person’s inner
decision and commitment to do what is good to man and to God and to use
the authority entrusted to him to do good. In that circumstance, when
the spirit of leadership comes alive in a person, it produces an
attitude that separates the leader from the followers. To that extent it
is given that leadership, for instance is not an exclusive club for the
few elite in Igbo land who delude themselves that they were “born with
it”. Every human being has the instinct and capacity for leadership but
not every person has the passion and courage or will to cultivate it.
This is the missing link in Igbo leadership today. This is one basic
truth that has eluded us as a people since political independence.
Honestly, I cannot but agree totally with Professor Chinua Achebe when
he insists that good leadership like good money is difficult to come by.
In the Igbo context, this is absolutely true.
Today, as we get set to chart a new
course for our people, I want to say that we are at the threshold of
history. For us the Fanonian proclamation that “every generation, must,
out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray
it” should be quite instructive. As a matter of fact, it is wake-up
call; a clarion call of sort for us to awaken from our slumber; from the
suffocating vice-grip of pettiness and character assassination and
embrace the dawn of a new era.
Today, our generation is in the dock of
civilized sensibilities, not as an accused but as an accuser of all
those Igbo leaders who betrayed the high destiny of our people. Standing
accused, with the accusing finger of Ndigbo pointing against them are
all those persons, who for selfish and pecuniary interests; political
expediency and outright cowardice to stand up for the sake of the Igbo
nation, find such centripetal socio-political forces fertile grounds for
spawning the carnivorous fish that eats up the fingerlings.
I have always asked the question: what
has this kind of politics done for us? We do not have to look far to see
the fruits: a 30-month old civil war that was fought with every ounce
of vengeance, bitterness and viciousness; a Niger-Delta brimming with
youth militancy and youth restiveness; a thoroughly corrupt public
service; a lame duck judiciary that has taken justice far away from the
common man; cities littered with the corpses of victims of religious and
ethnic crisis with their blood crying out for reparation from a country
that held out so much hope but gave so much pain and frustration; and
so on and so forth. For how long must we continue to dance this dance
of the spirit; this surugede dance of death? How long shall we
continue like this? Today history beckons us to rise up to the
challenge; to strive to rediscover our collective destiny and move
Nigeria to the next level.
I have no doubt in my mind that in Igbo
land are men and women of distinction in all fields of endeavour who I
believe are driven by a common desire and passion to chart a new course
for our people in the Nigerian project. I am indeed happy that we can
count on such vast array of patriots both at home and abroad essentially
because the political independence of this country was fought and won
by mostly Igbo men and women of conscience who had enormous hope for the
new nation but which high destiny has been frittered away by the rabid
currents of ethnicity, religion and sectionalism.
As we proceed with the task of
rebuilding Nigeria, we cannot avoid taking stock of our past- a past
that has done very little to make the present meaningful; a past that
has seen brothers take up arms against their brothers in several moments
of indiscretions; a past that has seen us deride every moral value held
sacrosanct by our founding fathers. We are also bound to take
cognizance of a situation where a minority cabal, on account of its
monopoly of fire power and arms and influence can usurp power and
proceed to bully the majority of Nigerians to the point of seeking to
subdue them by sheer brute force, ruining the country in a relay-like
military dictatorship and impinging on our rights with medieval
savagery.
If the outside world would be disposed to wink at this extreme form of 21st
century barbarism, then it is only a matter of time for Nigerians of
all walks of life, irrespective of origin or faith, to come into their
elements and resolve to rescue this country from this socio-political
decay and denigration. It is not yet too late for these feudal suzerains
and their backers to retrace their steps if they hope to escape from
the wrath of Nigerians that would be inevitable in case they continue to
be petulant and incorrigible. Our generation is determined to locate
our mission as a people and fulfill it. We can no longer keep quiet and
wring our fingers in despair and anguish while our homesteads are being
consumed by a raging inferno.
Orji Uzor Kalu has pointed the way
forward in this connection. The determined strides of Orji Uzor Kalu
since he emerged as an Igbo political leader are very refreshing and
enervating, for it shows that even in the midst of our confusion, there
are still God-fearing man with conviction and commitment to credible
leadership. As we enjoy our democracy today, the younger generation must
energetically begin to take an increasing interest and part in matters
affecting the destiny of blessed Igbo nation and by extension that of
Africa and the rest of the world. This has become necessary because of
the interdependence of mankind- a phenomenon we have come to refer to as
globalization; and because we must unite with progressive forces all
over the world so as to fertilize the soil of human relations for the
healthy growth and development of our democracy.
In recent times some of us have become
too busy with our self-appointed task of ‘finishing’ Orji Uzor Kalu so
much so that very many of us have also lost all sense of inquiry into
the ethics and real meaning of leadership. Only last week in Enugu, a
young man asked me this question: Sir, with the death of Ikemba Nnewi,
do you really believe that Orji Uzor Kalu is capable of leading the Igbo
to political battle in Nigeria and providing leadership to Ndigbo? Out
of curiosity, I asked him to explain to me what motivated him to ask the
question and in all innocence he replied, “Since most of those who are
running the man down are the same people he installed in power, I would
like to know why they think that after destroying Orji Uzor Kalu, they
would emerge as the messiah Ndigbo have been looking for”. This is the
typical spirit if inquiry and curiosity, which is now surging in our
youths and is creating consciousness and intellectual ferment among
them.
I must confess that during the dark days
of military rule in this country and the dreary days of pro-democracy
struggle, one poem sustained me spiritually and raised my morale so much
that I no longer bothered to count the losses or even reckoned the
casualties sustained in those giddy days. Today, that poem is as
relevant as ever. It was one of T.M Servoss’ poems and I shall proceed
to reproduce the three stanzas of the poem to you:
“Be glad and rejoice; All ye that are
upright in heart; And ye that have made God your habitation; Bid
sadness and sorrow depart;
What tho’ in the conflict for right; Your enemies almost prevail; God’s armies just hidden from you; Are more than your foes
Though darkness surround you by
dayYour sky by night be o’ercast; Let not your spirit be dismay; But
trust till the danger is past”.
Today democracy has come and the
world is rejoicing with us. For people like Orji Uzor Kalu who fought
for the restoration of this democracy and were the founding fathers of
the almighty PDP, you have proved to be worthy ambassadors of human
freedom in Nigeria. What remains for us to do now is to dedicate our
energies to the challenging task of nation-building as we resolve to put
behind us our past bitterness, rancor and recriminations. The future is
before us and great opportunities and challenges await the wise and the
brave.
THE ORJI UZOR KALU ALTERNATIVE
There is no gainsaying the fact that the
issue on the front burner and for which Governor Theodore Orji is
hypertensive is whether it is right or appropriate for Orji Uzor Kalu to
come back to the PDP, which incidentally he was a founding member. All
those who frown at his coming back into the PDP fold brandish the
so-called formation of a rival political party to PDP as their only
reason. Incidentally, none of them in Abia has acknowledged the fact
that it was on the platform of the so-called rival political party that
they all assumed political power. They all went back into the PDP.
Incidentally nobody has come out to say that Orji Uzor Kalu should not
rejoin the PDP because he is not so-qualified or because he is such a
poor leader.
There is one point which all of us are
agreed on, that is, the dearth of credible political leadership in our
political space has become a painful reminder of our failures as a
people. We are also agreed that there is need for us, like the
professional surgeon, to perform a painful operation in order to
extricate this painful ailment. On this point we do not have a choice.
We either resolve to radically cure this illness without really caring
whose ox is gored or we will be ready to die in and with it. We must
first of all resolve to say no to bad leadership and its apostles before
we can say yes to the dawn of a new era of good and qualitative
leadership.
Leadership inertia or ineptitude has
very often been fingered as one of the major factors militating against
our development as a people. This, to me, is simply hitting the nail on
the head. Leadership is the soul of society and governance. Like the
head engine in the locomotive, when it moves it drags all the other
coaches along with it. Credible, effective and responsive leadership has
the capacity to wade into the catacombs of society to give verve and
energy to dead organs of social existence; credible leadership means the
injection of new ideas into exhausted possibilities; firing an ember in
a heap of ash and creating a path through a cul-de-sac for the people.
In the presence of credible leadership, hitherto dormant possibilities,
which have been slumbering, will gradually begin to uncoil and inch
towards the collective goal. This is a critical factor in societal
evolution. Has it not been said that a society is like its leader. The
leader sets the agenda.
This is a basic ingredient that has been
lacking in the Igbo political space. In this context it would therefore
be improper to continue to blame other sections of Nigeria as the cause
of our problems. There is no doubt that they may have contributed to it
but the truth is that we have had enough time to get our acts in order
but had done nothing tangible to change our situation. Rather we have
unleashed contradictory socio-political forces in our system and they
have generated so much entropy in the system so much so that we are now
being threatened with collective immolation.
In Nigeria, Ndigbo have frittered away
every opportunity we had to recreate our political roadmap and launch
our people on the path of sustainable and inclusive political
development. Reading Orji Uzor Kalu recently, I had no doubt in my mind
that before now he had had developed a road map towards making the Igbo
nation a truly great force to reckon with in Nigeria’s political
equation. That roadmap is encapsulated in the Orji Uzor Kalu myth. Take
a look at all those casting stones at Orji Uzor Kalu; check their track
records even as former COS in Abia State and you will come to the
conclusion that a man whose palm kernel was broken for him by a
benevolent spirit would not appreciate another person’s superiority over
him. Orji Uzor Kalu remains our best alternative in our present
circumstance and the only credible person to redeem the Igbo hope. He is
young, energetic, intelligent, focused, visionary, detribalized in
words and deeds; and above all God-fearing. On my part, I will always
encourage him to do what he must do for Ndigbo not minding the
recrimination, antagonism and even hate. I hope you will stand up to be
counted in this patriotic task? All that remains to be done is for us as
Ndigbo to rise up to the occasion to demonstrate that spiritual
resilience, which has enabled us to survive the onslaught of the past.
With faith in the eventual success of our adventure, we can look forward
to the future with hope and goodwill to our fellow people in the
knowledge that we have run the good race and that our crown of glory is
awaiting us. Only then can we, in the words of Langston Hughes, exclaim:
“We have tomorrow
Bright before us
Like a flame
Yesterday, a night gone thing
A sun-down name
And dawn today
Broad arch above the road we came
We march”.
Let me conclude this paper with a
statement made by Napoleon Bonaparte” about China, which bears
repetition here. He said, “China! There lies the sleeping giant. Let her
sleep. When she wakes, she would move the world”. One question that
should always bother us is “will Ndigbo ever awaken from their slumber
and they do wakeup, will they move the world?” Or have we been doomed to
learn geology the morning after the earthquake? I have written for
Ndigbo and the generations unborn; for the absolution of my conscience
and for the good of our people. He, who has ears, let him hear. In spite
of the conspiracy against the Igbo by the rest of Nigeria and the
depravities and humiliation we have suffered as a people in Nigeria,
Orji Uzor Kalu has proven through his vision, selfless service to
humanity, passion and commitment that the mills of Igbo patriotism grind
still.
I thank you all.
By Ochie Malachy Chuma
Senior Research Consultant and Public Affairs Analyst
Enugu
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