On the late Uche Chukwumerije

In the post-colonial coliseum, one ethnic group’s hero is another ethnic group’s villain. Since the passing of the late Abia senator and fabled Biafran propagandist, snooper has received several calls and a few mischievous prodding to make his views known about the passing of the marximally bearded one. Up till this moment, columnist has declined citing rising tension of an ethnic nature. It is not the business of a responsible columnist to exacerbate or fan the embers of ethnic unease.

But now that the mortal remains of the man known as “Sikiru Meje” among Lagos market women during the June 12 crisis has been committed to mother earth, we are in a position to divulge one or two things.  Snooper was an early but not a later fan of Uche Chukwumerije. There are certain indiscretions that can be understood and forgiven when placed in proper perspective but not completely forgotten.

When words reached us in the US that Comrade Chukwumerije had become a senator of the Federal Republic, snooper had wondered aloud whether there would have been a senate to go if the market had shut down as he pronounced in the course of his virulent hate-filled campaign against the validation of the June 12 presidential mandate.

The pity of it all was that Uche’s metamorphosis from sterling Stalinist to a mesmerizing messenger of military mendacity caught everyone by surprise, particularly some of us his ardent fans. As a youthful youth corper serving in his village in 1975, snooper remembered kneeling down before the mighty statue of Chukwumerije the elder at Mbala, Isuochi and thanking god for blessing the nation with such an illustrious clan. From the size of the compound and the statue, it was obvious that Uche was the scion of a prosperous lineage.

By 1993, snooper has crossed swords with Chukwumerije in the heat of the annulment of the presidential election. As the on the ground columnist of the underground newspaper, Tempo, yours sincerely came down on the comrade, dismissing him as “a psychological hooligan” for imposing what was recently described by Olatunji Dare as a “psychosis of fear” on the entire country in a NAZI-like psych-op.

In 1995, yours sincerely found himself in Mbala once again after a twenty year absence. This time it was attend the wedding of an old classmate and bosom friend, Patrick Ndukwe. His brilliant career cruelly terminated by early death, Ndukwe was easily one of the most accomplished scholars of Linguistics ever thrown up by this country. Although there was plenty of time and ample opportunity to do so, visiting the Chukwumerije homestead was the farthest thing on one’s mind. The pain and poison lingered.

Yet it was a tribute to elite integration in this country that outside of his immediate family, the two close friends who attended Pat’s wedding were myself and the inevitable L.Y Shalangwa as at then the Deputy Postmaster General of the federation. These are the redemptive resources of elite consolidation and cohesion that we carelessly throw away in this country as a result of futile ethnic sabre-rattling and inordinate elite greed.

There are extenuating circumstances for Chukwumerije’s conduct during the June 12 palaver. First was a belief prevalent among the Nigerian left at that point in time that the entire Babangida Transition programme and Abiola’s purported triumph was a classic instance of bourgeois chicanery with no bearing on the country’s real problems. It can be argued that the late comrade was only being true to some deeply held ideological conviction.

The second was what was widely perceived as the post-civil war isolation, alienation and failure to rehabilitate and restore to national parity of the most significant sections of the Igbo intellectual class. Despite great strides, there are people who believe that the imbalance persists till date with the wounded and affronted roaming the wild in dark and paranoid fury.

Whether this was enough justification for what Chukwumerije did remains to be seen, and whether his subsequent starring performance as a senator in the same “bourgeois” parliament he had tried to abort in vitro can atone for his earlier infraction is left to history to judge .Let the comrade now depart to meet his maker.