Under Ojukwu, the APGA didn’t need any seawide manifesto to reach their base. Ojukwu was everything, including the symbol and the platform of the party.
Emma Okocha
“Female monarchy is against the will of God… God has revealed that it is more than monster in nature That a woman should reign and bear empire above man.”
– John Knox, the first Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous government of women
Scottish author John Knox was not alone in his opposition to the realm of Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603) archetype, and the first feminist of the liberation of feminine power. Her epochal reign had paved the way in the mind of mankind about the capabilities and possibilities of women that culminated in the modern women’s right movements. Indeed, in 1570, Pope Pius V had excommunicated Elizabeth and theoretically deposed the Queen issuing numerous decrees calling for her death. Ten years later, in 1580, the Vatican put out a contract on Elizabeth’s life and, in the words of the Papal Secretary, it decreed that “whosoever sends her out of the world with the pious intention of doing God service not only does not gain sin but gains merit.”
The APGA was founded with the express approval and blessing of the Ohanaeze when the African Philosopher King and constitutional expert, Professor Nwabueze was the Secretary General and Dr. Pius Okigbo away from the limelight controlled the Ohanaeze. Dr. Okigbo was the only Igbo in those days who could look General Ojukwu in the face and tell him to either calm down or go to hell. When before the Oputa Panel arrived Enugu and the Odumegwu was not going to take the lead witness stand, Okigbo advised Nwabueze to unleash the best of the Igbo to take the stand and call Ojukwu’s bluff. There were luminaries: the late Barrister Ikeazor, Philip Umeadi, Mbazulike Amaechi, Professor Anthony Modebe, who staggered the panel’s secretary, Father Kukah, when he thundered, “I am Professor Anthony Modebe, a 1958 Professor Modebe, a 1958 Professor of Agricultural Sciences, University of Ibadan. All the Nigerian problems started before me in Ibadan.” Father Kukah asked him to repeat his opening statement. “You are Professor Modebe and in 1958 you were already a professor at the University of Ibadan?” After the productive outcome of the Ohanaeze testimonials at the Opute Panel, Justice Ozobu, Prof. Nwabueze Ohanaeze leadership added another feather to their cap when it received the APGA proposals asking for Ohanaeze’s blessing and support to form a party that would fly and protect Igbo interests in the Nigerian federation. Ohanaeze, led by Professor Nwabueze, would prefer Ohanaeze was out of politics. When the proposal was forwarded to the Ohanaeze Strategic Committee, headed by Senator Uche Chukwumerijie, an unrepentant Ojukwu student, and before we made our recommendations, I had argued that we would be in a better position and APGA would gain a lot if the Strategic Committee would in the first place define what’s the Igbo primary interests as a contending and cooperating group in the Nigerian federation. Initially, late brilliant Clem Nwankwo was intellectually on my side and we went to work. That sojourn was aborted and the whole Ohanaeze deliberation was sent to ecstasy when the name Odumegwu Ojukwu was announced as the presidential candidate for the APGA organization. Nwabueze, true to his principles, packed his bag and baggage. Dr.Okigbo, like many others, abandoned Nwabueze and rooted for Odumegwu, and General Odumegwu Ojukwu, who was never a member of the Ohanaeze for the third time in his memorable life, was crowned King of the Igbos (ps. see details in Emma Okocha, The Jews of Africa).
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Under Ojukwu, the APGA didn’t need any seawide manifesto to reach their base. Ojukwu without any more tommyrot was everything, including the symbol and the platform of the party. When the Odumegwu took his last salute, the APGA had shrunk and it looks now that the Igbo party is losing its people, and in a federation of dwindling expectations the other prominent groups have been able to stabilize, employed accepted political parties, to hold fast, claim their territories and whether by their own brutal demands or by their own strategic alliances protected their own at the centre.
In an era of voter apathy, why is the third biggest party in Nigeria hunkered down in Anambra and on one hand allowing its secretarial in Abuja to be overtaken by defecting former members of PDP?
Who is APGA’s presidential candidate and why a retired Nigerian Army General?
Why is APGA not preparing to run and win elections in friendly base environment like in Delta State, especially in Anioma areas?
Why has APGA up till now no scientific policy paper for Biafra?
Why is the APGA headquarters not sited at Aba the soul city of the Igbos?
Why has the APGA allowed the Igbo mammy water, the fair lady, whose beauty like Helen of Troy caused Kings and Princes to go to war, why has the party following her Senatorial bid stood akimbo and allowed her name and her golden Odumegwu Ojukwu status and legacy defamed and put to shreds?
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The perfect killing of Chima Ubani
From Independence to the last decade, very few Nigerian student leaders could carry the shoes or even toe the footprints marked in the sands of time by the dare-devil activities of Isaac Boro, UNN Emmanuel Ifeanina U.I. and my unforgettable Ogun State-born student leader who mobilized all Nigerian students and after weeks of strident stand-off against the military succeeded in sacking the Federal Minister of Education in the famous street epic of “Ali must Go!” if you don’t know the name of this student leader who came from Teacher’s Training College, you will then understand why our campuses are now peopled with the Axe, and the Scorpion cults fighting, killing and dying for the mundane.
From UNN, Boro died in the battle for Port Harcourt after he founded the movement for the liberation of his down-trodden oil-producing Ijaw nation. There were other student leaders but it was Chima Ubani who, like Boro, continued to sacrifice, to fight the Nigerian decadent society after his graduation; September 21, 2005, there was a reported auto accident along Bauchi-Maiduguri Road. Ubani, as the executive director of Civil Liberties Organization, had gone to the North, leading others and labour to protest Obasanjo’s hiked petroleum prices. He was a practicing Marxist and even the government knew he was incorruptible. He was already cleared to fly to Kano, when the labour leader sauntered unto the plane. Ubani, out of respect, gave up his seat to the labour leader and it was decided he would ride to Kano that same night in the labour leader’s Four-runner. That was his last ride for, according to Sahara com 2007/08/02, when Chima was killed as corroborated by the CLO’s independent report 2007, Chima’s “accident,” which was caused by a tyre blowout was a marine story. The civil rights advocate’s death was rather a “perfect kill” as conspired and planned by labour and operatives in the Obasanjo Federal Government who wanted the gallant, incorruptible Marxist out of the way to enable them raise the petroleum prices.
Last week, Chima Ubani would have been 52. On behalf of the remaining tail-biting few, we salute your memory and at your graveside we come to say Aluta, Aluta … we shall overcome!!