By Abia Onyike

THE passage of Victor Eke Kalu on  December 27, 2016 was a rude shock to his friends, family and numerous admirers. The iconic scholar, polemicist, author and writer was a man of steel. He was a generally healthy fellow and was seldom sick, hence people were rather taken unawares by his sudden demise.

Victor Kalu was a prodigious intellectual, exceptional writer, professional biographer, occidentalist, journalist, poet, licensed grammarian and creative genius. He was trained and inspired by the post–colonial, first generation political scientists of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Such pioneer intellectual pathfinders who groomed and influenced Victor Kalu included Dr. Kalu Ezera, Prof. Eme Awa, Prof. Okwudiba Nnoli e.t.c. He graduated from UNN in 1976. Other university dons who made waves in the social sciences then included Prof. Ikenna Nzimiro, Prof. Inya Eteng, Prof. Uzodimma Nwala and Prof. Asisi Asobie. Victor’s intellectual leaning was with the left – wing scholars. He was a student of Marxist dialectics and in his lifetime became a leading revolutionary scholar of international reckoning. His gift of oratory and poetry placed him in the same class as Chinweizu (Nigeria), Frantz Fanon (Algeria), Amilcer Cabral (Guinea–Bissau), and Abdulrahman Babu (Tanzania).

His poetic interpolation with Marxist analysis made him one of the greatest Nigerian prose–masters in the social sciences, in the same class like Omafume Onoge and Inyang Eteng (two highly gifted Sociologists who taught students in the Nigerian University system from the 1970s to the beginning of the 21st century). The duo died a few years ago.

Victor Kalu was born about seventy years ago. He hailed from Amaekpu Ohafia. The Ohafia community is reputed as being the home of several cerebral Igbo intellectuals and it is generally believed that the area is part of the intellectual headquarters of the Igbo nation. Ohafia is also regarded as the home of warriors. The Ohafia intelligentisia, who have made their mark in Nigerian and world affairs, include Dr. Kalu Ezera, Prof. Eni Njoku (once described by Tai Solarin as the most intelligent man in Africa), Dr. Uma Eleazu, Eme Awa, Dr. K. U. Kalu, Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu, Justice Agwu Anya, Chief Okwara Osonwa, Prof. U. U. Uche, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, Rev. Uma Ukpai, Paulson Kalu e.t.c.

Victor Kalu had his primary education at Isiama Ohafia and attended a Catholic institution, the Coronatta Secondary School, Asaga Ohafia before proceeding to UNN for his degree programme in Political Science, in 1972.

Five years after his graduation, he had written several books. Getting him to sit down for further studies became rather difficult because he had developed in such a way that his intellectual explosions could hardly be contained by ordinary or average minds. He lecturer Political Science at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka for years.

He had more than thirty books to his credit. Some of his works include Racism in World Politics, Season of Reason, The Nigerian Condition, The Leadership Question: Power and Poverty in Nigeria, The Military Question, Obastancles Obstacles Soviet Union in World Politics, Civilicy: A theory of Civil Military Relations, The Angry Generation, From Revolt to Rebellion, Born to Rebel e.t.c.

In the area of journalism, Victor Kalu showed enough class to confirm that he was a maverick and polyvalent intellectual. He was Editor of the New Outlook Newspaper, published by Arthur Nwankwo in the early 1990s. He was also a Columnist and Editorial Board member with the Abuja Today Newspaper, published by Abidina Coomasie in the mid – 1990s. He was also the Chief Media Strategist and tactician to Comrade Uche Chukwumerije in the 1990s. With the return to civilian rule in 1999, Victor created an outfit which he called the “Next Generation Commission”, which he used to explore African perspectives on Peace, Planning and Development, with special emphasis on people, politics and power. He delved into the writing of the biography of Nigerian leaders and succeeded in writing and publishing the biographies of the following: Melford Okilo (The Bridge Builder), Mahmud Waziri (A Profile in Political Courage), S. G. Ikoku (Larger than Life: Ikoku in Nigerian Politics), Ghali Umar Na’aba (The Angry Generation), Martyns Yellowe (The Path of Honour), Ojo Maduekwe (Service and Sacrifice),  Martin Elechi (Service with Integrity) e.t.c.

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Writing on the Leadership Question in Nigeria, in 1995, Kalu accused Nigerian leaders of having a “necrophilic passion for oppression, evidenced in the tough and repressive manner the people are laid off in their employment and added that, since they possess neither respect for the sacred institution  of the family nor any sympathies for the material condition of the dejected, their affective neutrality enables them to ignore, without compunctions, the great majority who have been made to suffer from irreversible price hikes in the cost of basic foodstuff with which they sustain their minimal existence”.

Writing about the abject poverty pervading Nigeria’s rural communities, in the year 2000, Kalu stated that: “Poles and cables move straight from the cities, igniting a few privileged homes, passing through the thatched homes of the majority, without a spark, into the Gothic architectural homes of the new rich where they literally spill naked flames. Native lands have been confiscated by government without compensation or bought off by invading land speculators in the mad rush for industrialization.

“The result is that the natives go without land for subsistence farming; their major occupation now is the hawking of commodities such as vegetables, bread, palm kernel, native beans, tapioca, maize and garri, purchased in a variety of ways. Batchers called hotels or beer parlour, and managed by mainly women of easy virtue are many. Here food and alcoholic beverages are sold mainly to clients and customers whose majority comes from hire–purchase taxi drivers.  The diverse wares are transported into the communities in ramshackle taxi–cabs and mammy wagons which ply the ill–maintained routes on a daily basis”.

On the learning environment in rural schools, Kalu used his poetic licence to interrogate the deprivation taking place there. “Pupils of the several primary schools are as unkempt and skeletal as their teachers. Their school uniforms are isolated shreds that have been joined together by thin but resistant layers of thread.

Onyike writes from Lagos

The children receive their lessons, sitting on the rough edges of un-plastered floors with the un-ceiled roofs of ramshackle buildings hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles. Yet every morning, they chant the National Anthem and recite the National Pledge. The pupils are not exempted from the payment of extortionate levies and are regularly forced out of school when their dehumanized parents fail to comply with the financial obligations of an invisible authoritarian government”.

What I have paraphrased above is only a tip of the iceberg.  It is the minutest illustration of Victor Kalu’s literary genius. With his demise, a major eclipse has occurred in our intellectual horizon. It is like a library being set ablaze, as the sage once put it. Adieu our dear Comrade, Victor Eke Kalu, the Murray of our time! May God grant his soul eternal rest and to his wife, Mrs. Patience Victor Kalu, their Children and grand–children, the fortitude to bear the loss.

Onyike writes from Lagos