Title: Ugwu Nwasike: The Man, the Name, the Monument
Author: Chijioke Ngobili
Publisher: Aaron & Hur Publishing, Lagos
Year: 2022
REVIEWER: Henry Akubuiro
“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history,” says Carter Woodson.
Some great men achieve immortality in their lifetime. Others achieve it after they have gone. Without biography, it’s hard to fully appreciate how great men walked an unfrequented path to create a matted lawn.
Geographically, Ugwu Nwasike denotes Nwasike’s hill. If you are conversant with the old Onitsha-Enugu Road, probably you must have climbed that hill in Ogidi that was once the terror of lorry drivers, yet it used to be the paradise of a great man, Warrant Chief Timothy Muodozie, whose accomplishments as a community leader, Christian leader and an entrepreneur is legendary. Ogidi, lest we forget, is the hometown of legendary Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe.
Beyond its historical compass, the authorised biography of Warrant Chief Timothy Nwasike entitled Ugwu Nwasike, the Man, the Name, the Monument, doesn’t leave any fog in the brain after reading it as regards Ogidi’s pride of place in Igboland, especially its role in the spread of Christianity to the Igbo hinterland.
Over the years, the biographer has exhibited a remarkable passion for and chronicle of Igbo history. In this book that adroitness shows. Ugwu Nwasike… takes us a little bit back in time, chronicling a zeitgeist that is bewildering and stunning.
Prof Okey Ndibe, in the foreword says the book “is a compelling exemplar of the kind of social history that’s sadly missing and sorely needed. It’s as if the writer and subject found each other…. In a painstaking manner, the author traces the fascinating contours of a man who lived a deeply consequential life.”
It should be noted that the biographer’s spellings of Igbo towns are different from the anglicised versions we all know. In the book,
Chief Timothy Nwasike is presented as a remarkable personality who mediated between the British colonial adventurers in his part of the world and the mostly illiterate population. He was a byword for ingenuity, exemplified in the expertise he exhibited in businesses with tentacles across Igboland.
In the first chapter, “Tracks and Origins”, the author signposts Nwasike, Ogidi and Igboland’s historical trajectories from the cradle. Ogidi is “a town located in the east of Onicha (Onitsha) and about six miles from the banks of the famous River Niger which has been described in history as the premier ‘highway’ of European Christian evangelisation, trade and colonisation in Nigeria” (p. 2), he writes.
Ngobili recalls Igboland in the nineteenth century, where there were no cleared roads let alone tarred roads, except tall bushes and narrow, ancient footpaths. He reminds us about the havocs of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Igboland, which lasted for 230 years, between 1670 and 1900, resulting in the forceful displacement of a plethora of Igbo men and women.
He points out the Aro and Nri spheres of influence in Igboland from the seventh century till the Igbo encounters with the colonialists. Besides, the author details the Igbo origin of challenge vis: the oriental theory, the homeland Igbo of Nri/Oka, Olu/Okigwe/Owere axis, and the Niger/Benue confluence axis.
Timothy Nwasike, writes the biographer, was aged thirteen when the first missionary arrived from Onicha to Ogidi in 1892 with the first set of Igbo converts. Young Nwasike was attracted to Christianity through his own curiosity in the new Iyi-Enu Anglican missionary outpost, and was converted in 1904. He was the son of a wealthy, respected man, and locals were surprised how the son of such a prominent Ogidi man would mingle with Christians who were rated very low then.
The biographer chronicles how Timothy cut his career path early in life as an itinerant carpenter and builder, who regularly travelled across Igboland. His legacy across Igboland, including St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Umunze, built in the 1950s, is still standing. We get to learn that Mozie also taught at the famous Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha.
From his marriage to Sophie Etukokwu Nnoba in 1914 to the 1950s and upward, Timothy’s new palm cottage industry has blossomed and his eye-popping, hilltop residence has become a beehive of activities at Ugwu Nwasike.
In the sixth chapter, the author dwells on the life of Timothy as a warrant chief and community leader, his social life and church representation. Among others, this chapter offers those born after this era the opportunity to look back into the past on the workings of the fazed out British administrative system, especially the Improved Era of the Warrant Chief System (1931-1959) when Timothy held sway in Ogidi.
This biographer also details achievements of the warrant chief and his colleagues in the 1940s when the Ogidi post office was built. As the warrant chief of Ogidi, who was most active in the 1950s, the author tells us that he presided over several civil cases between Ogidi parties and non-Ogidi parties.
A man of many parts, Timothy also acquired some commercial vehicles which plied Ogidi-Onitsha route daily. He was involved, too, in real estate, and owned properties in highbrow areas of Enugu. The book ends in the ninth chapter with sad recollections of the genocidal war of late 1960s in Nigeria and its excruciating aftermath.
Less than a year after the end of the war, the famous Timothy Nwasike gave up the ghost on November 24, 1970, to bring to an end a glorious lifetime with resonant achievements, captured painstakingly by a brilliant biographer. This is a titillating read for all.