Chief Chukwudebe Sylvester Ojukwu is the late Biafran warlord, Ikemba Dim Odimegwu Ojukwu’s 56-year-old first son. Since his father’s death on November 26, 2011, the retired Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) has had running battles with other family members. His name was also conspicuously missing in the controversial will read on November 30, 2012. In this interview with Assistant Editors, LINUS OBOGO, GBENGA ADERANTI and SEGUN AJIBOYE, Debe insists he is the true son of his father, throwing a challenge at those who doubt the veracity of his claim. He also dismisses the will as a fraud. Excerpts:
You graduated as the best cadet officer of the Nigerian Police Academy in 1985. One would want to ask, why not the army, navy or air force, why the police?
I joined the Nigerian Police not as a cadet. I enlisted as a police constable. My life and that of my father have always intertwined. He joined the army as a private. So, everything about his life played out in my own life. I joined the police as a recruit constable in 1976. In 1977, I went for the cadet course 22 at the Police College, Ikeja. The former Inspector-General, Hafiz Ringim, was my course mate and he worked under me. People like Audu Abubakar, Yar’Adua, were all my course mates. Along the line, those of us that joined the police force with our school certificates figured that I would not measure up to be actually my father’s son, if I was not a graduate. All of you know about his elocution.
So, there was no way I would want a situation where his son became an AIG and when you ask him for statistics, he could not deliver it fluently. So, I fought hard to gain admission into the university, University of Nigeria Nsukka in 1981, on study leave. I did the course for four years, graduated in 1985, went to the law school and was called to the bar in 1986. When I was called to the bar, the Nigerian Police started being jittery because by becoming a lawyer, I was far ahead of my mates of course 22. So, they felt that this Ojukwu was going to be very fast, and the force devised a way to slow me down. That was why they delayed me for two years before I went in for the cadet course. Actually, by the time I graduated in 1985, I was entitled to what was called in public service, Notional Promotion.
Since they were afraid, each time we went for interview, they would always think that my father sent me to police to finish up where he left off in the army. But I always told them that it was not true. But somehow, the then Inspector-General of Police, Mohammadu Gambo, delayed me for two years. So I proceeded to the cadet course in Kaduna then. It was the first time police academy came to Nigeria. It was in Kano but we started with two campuses, Kano and Kaduna. So, we finished the course and I graduated as the best all round. I became the first police officer to get a Presidential Commission, not Gambo’s commission. I got a Presidential Commission, the same commission that military officers get. It became also very turbulent, because if they had promoted me in 1985 when I graduated, they would have given me a notional promotion, I would not have been the first Nigerian Police officer to get Presidential Commission. So the problem became that how can an Ojukwu be the first name in Police Academy? It caused a little bit of trouble at the academy in Kaduna.
The person that sorted it out was Fidelis Oyahkilome, who was the DIG. He stepped in and put his feet down, challenging the person they wanted to give the award. The man they wanted was a Hausa man who was 18th on the basis of performance and how could 18th be the first? This was because they were insisting that somebody from the North should be the first over all in the academy register. But Oyakhilome’s insistence made it possible for me to have the award. If you go to the police academy now, I am the first name on the honours’ list.
And then you asked me why police? I am somebody that loves challenges. The root in the military was already built by my father. If I went into the military, some of the people he taught, some that hated him, some that liked and loved him, might be very sympathetic to me or might be very aggressive towards me. So, I didn’t want that to happen. So, I decided to go to a place where he did not have such root. And the police was it. It could have been the customs, the prisons, immigrations, but I chose the police because among the whole spectrums of army, navy, air force, police, customs, that is the place where you have true nationalism.
When I was starting this interview, I did tell you that I had course mates as Ringim and others. And anywhere I go in Nigeria, I have my mates there. They are all over the place. If I go to the Yar’Adua family, I have friends there and everywhere. And the best place to make friends is in the war front. Outside the force, some people can camouflage when things are going well. Some people can see you in a very exotic car, well dressed and all that and get attracted. But in the war front, you are forced by the situation to be the human being you are. If things get so bad, you might even see that man you are very afraid of going stack naked. That is why the best friend you can make is in the trenches, in the war front. That was what triggered up the Nigerian independence from the colonialists. A lot of Africans had respected the whites but after the Second World War, where Africans also fought, they discovered that the same white man cried like blacks when injured. They discovered that they were also human. That was what led to the agitation for independence.
Considering your successes in the police force, your father must have been proud of you?
He was. I am his clone. He did not do anything without me.
It seems you have so many things in common with your father. do you speak Hausa like your father, too?
There is one thing you should know about Hausa. Do you know why the NDA is located in Kaduna? The NDA being in Kaduna, most times officers speak Hausa. There is no where you can have training three years training there without you understanding the language, even in passing. So, having trained in Kaduna, there is no way I would not have understood passable Hausa.
You retired from the police not as DIG or AIG, would you say that you had a fulfilled career in the police, especially when you consider the fact that some of your colleagues either rose or have risen to the zenith of their career, would you say that you had an accomplished career in the police?
I was accomplished. I was the best of the best. And then, my uncles came to the police and entreated me to come and manage my grandfather’s assets. My grandfather had acquired certain things in terms of estate. And I was told that the things he gathered were perishing. They used that and entreated me. They asked me to leave the police to manage the assets. I felt it was right. I cannot keep on gathering when the ones my patriarch had gathered were wasting away. So, I had to go and manage them. At the time they asked me to manage them, there was no hope and my uncles were quarrelling with my father. In the interest of peace, because they told me that they needed everything to be together just as the old man had it when he was alive. I left to do just that without even knowing where I was going. But God being on my side, what I went into blind-folded became a success story and became very substantial. It is on the basis of all these, that they are fighting me and you see my name allegedly missing in the will.
Why was your name missing in such an important document as the Will of your father?
Will, Will, Will, that was not my father’s Will. He did not write that Will. All the things that have been written are within the realm of speculations. The media have been writing without seeing the Will. I took pains to get the Will because it concerns me. I am giving you a copy of what they said is the Will so that the public can get educated. It is not my father’s Will. It was forged. You can see the signatures are different. The signature on the Will is not that of my father. I am a trained police officer. You can take a look at the letters he had written to me and other documents I showed you, the signature on it is different from that which is on the Will. I know what I am talking about. His true signature is in the archives of the Federal High Court. And my father that you are talking about was a former Military Governor of the Eastern Region. He signed edicts, laws. So, his signature is within the domain of public records.
And because I knew him, he was not the type of person that took rubbish. They went and forged the signature. If you check all the documents, you will find out that the signatures on them do not correspond with that on the will. My father was such a person that when he signed a document, it was like Ikemba. And Ikemba moved straight. Ikemba moved like lightening. If you see his signature, it is deliberate. It is never shaky.
With the demise of your father, Ikemba Dim Odimegwu Ojukwu, an apparent leadership vacuum has been created in the Igbo nation. What does this portend for the Igbo as a people?
The Igbo are a unique people. And there can never be a vacuum in leadership. As long as there is exclusion in the polity, where the Igbo perceive themselves to be excluded from the national scheme of things, there will be something like a supernova. There may be jostling for power, but eventually, as biblically promised, God will never leave His children without a champion. And champions emerge because of circumstances. Champions emerge as a result of challenge. If there is a challenge of oratory, God will provide a leader for the Igbo leader who is given to oratory. If it is a challenge of marshal war, which was what produced my father, the Lord will provide such a champion. The situation that created my father was very marshal. So, it will require the same circumstances to have somebody of my father’s stature. So, a leader will emerge. There will never be a vacuum in Igbo leadership.
We don’t wish for that, but do you foresee a similar circumstance in the future to necessitate the emergence of such a person like the late Ikemba?
Yes I do. The circumstances that happened then were circumscribed by injustice. The only way to obliterate or prevent a repeat of history is to learn from the past. You know, history is very simple. So, those who fail to learn from history will repeat it. Once we have a situation of injustice again, we will have a repeat of history. But if we make sure that there is justice and equity, there would be no need for that. It is very simple. It is only the human nature that corrupts leadership. If for instance, there are 36,000 kilometres of roads to be constructed across the country and provisions have been made in the capital expenditure for that project, if you make it clear and transparent for everyone to see that each state of the federation gets 1,000 kilometre, nobody will question it. There would be justice. And our leaders would walk on the streets without security. Our leaders would sit down with everybody without fear. It is only when we do not do the right thing that problems will arise because there is an injustice.
If out of the 36,000 kilometres of roads, somebody decides to take 5,000 to Ondo State simply because he or she is from there, there is no amount of preaching you will do that people will listen to you or be convinced that you have not perpetrated injustice of the highest order.
An instance is when you have a government official who earns N5 million a month and there is another Nigerian who is earning a miserly N5,000 per month, how do you expect peace to reign? There will certainly be no peace. That is why a leader must rationalise all these contradictions, which is what leadership is all about.
Given your analysis of the Nigerian situation, would you say there is justice and equity in the land?
Definitely no! We do not have justice and equity today and that is why you have pockets of dissent all over the place. There is the Boko Haram, the MEND, MASSOB, the OPC. If there is justice and equity, there will be peace and all the ethnic militia springing up will be in their houses sleeping.
With regards to your exclusion from the Will by your father, what further claim can you still make to the late Ikemba as being your father, as the outcome of the testament has revealed your rejection as Ojukwu’s son?
My exclusion from my father’s Will does not smack of my rejection legally. As a lawyer, I know that you have the power to Will your property to anybody legally. But being a son or a daughter to someone is more sacrosanct, and so it is. It is not something you can wish away. It is so natural. So, a man’s exclusion from a Will is as far as property goes. And with regards to disinheritance, the law provides that if you want to disinherit your son or daughter, you must state in black and white that you are disinheriting your son. And since the Will did not state that I was being disinherited, there is nothing like disinheritance. What has happened is what could be regarded as an unmentioned child. That is the position of the law. So, that is the way it is.
You have only tried to employ legalese to explain away the unfortunate development arising from the Will. But the true position, as we speak, is that your father disinherited you and which culturally could be interpreted as his outright rejection of you as his son. Are you still insisting this is not the case?
No, it is not disinheritance. It is simply exclusion, and by law, it is allowed. If you go to people like Chief Sunny Odogwu, Chief S.N. Okeke and the rest of the elders who were his friends, who had been with my father and me, they know my relationship with him as a son. So, the picture you have painted is not the case. It is only those who are his enemies that are playing this up.
Why are you (The Nation’s team) here today to interview me? You are here because you have seen a trace of him in me. So, does the current situation not smack of irony that those who claim to be his brothers want to throw away the best representation of Ojukwu? It is because from ab initio, they hated him.
As the first son of the late Ikemba, why were you prevented from burying your father, which was against the Igbo tradition?
I took them to court for not allowing me to do ‘dust-to-dust’. I am still in court and that is why the Will suddenly surfaced. The Will came to kill the case in court. There was a build-up to what is now unfolding. I was into the management of my father’s property. My grandfather had told my father not to go to court over his property. That was the injunction he left for everybody. I was mindful of this since I learnt of it from my father before he died.
When my father was taken to England for treatment, those who claimed to be his brothers went to Abuja to swear to an affidavit that he had become a vegetable. According to them, my father should not count in the management of OTL (Ojukwu’s Transport Company). My father was not happy about this, even on his sick bed.
I returned from England, where I was with my father to discover that I had been sued. So, you can see that they were the first to run to court over the property of my grandfather in complete disregard to his (my grandfather’s) instruction. They broke my grandfather’s covenant. In any case, I did not shy away from the suit they instituted. The court, however, dismissed their case while upholding my own case over the management of OTL.
When they realised that the case over my management of the transport company was still subsisting, they had no defence and they had to threaten me to withdraw the case before I could be allowed to play the traditional roles allowed by the first son in the burial rites of my father.
When they did the funerals of my father and I did not perform the rites because they prevented me from doing so, it was then people began to see through their antics. Again, they realised that I was not cowed.
Their next trump card was the Will, which they forged purporting that it was done by my father. It is rather curious that if you had to debar someone from performing the ‘dust-to-dust’ ostensibly because he was not the son of the man, how did you know that he was not the son of the man when you have not seen his Will? Or did they see the Will before his burial? Does it not sound strange to you?
Chukwuemeka junior claimed in some media reports that the Will purported to have been read was not the original Will of the late Ikemba and you are claiming also that what you have given to us was the Will read. Which one are we to believe? The one your younger brother said was yet to be read or the one already read?
When there are many Wills and there is a contention, it means there is no Will. The answer is that there is no Will. If my brother claims he has a copy of what he deems the original Will and which he is not supposed to be in possession of, that again is fake or warped in itself. He is also challenging the Will which was reportedly read, which I insist was a concoction. I have given you a documentary evidence to prove to you that what was read was a concoction.
Part of it is that I was not mentioned. I must be mentioned because I am his child. And if they claim I am not his child, then the correct test to determine all that is a DNA. This is not something anybody can wish away. The Will they read would have been sacrosanct if it mentioned my name but that nothing was given to me. So, for it (Will) not to mention my name, means it was fake and somebody has to prove to me that it was the original Will of my father.
That I was barred from performing ‘dust-to-dust’ was discriminatory and it is against Section 42 of the Nigerian Constitution, which says that no child should be discriminated against on the basis of circumstance of birth.
There was a report that a DNA test was done on all your father’s children before he died. How true is this and were you part of it?
Well, they said there was a DNA test. But the lawyer who wrote his Will claimed that he did not see me. According to him, when he came back in 1982, I appeared and disappeared for 30 years. The lawyer who said he wrote the Will said that. This was somebody who said he did not include my name because I fought him over JAMB office. The lawyer who said that was supposed to be the lawyer who wrote the Will. What he said has been proven to be mendacious. So, for a lawyer who could fabricate all this, how is he supposed to be believed? The so called DNA test was said to have been done in secret. But how can a DNA test be done in secret? A DNA is usually done and made public. I doubt strongly if this was so. Everything is a grand conspiracy.
What is it about you that your siblings and uncles seem to be so afraid to warrant what you have called a grand conspiracy against you?
Let me give you one hypothesis to make you understand. I made an approach to you and told you I had bars of gold deposited under the seabed and I asked you to try and retrieve it for me. I also told you that if you retrieve them, you will be entitled to 50 per cent of the value of the gold. You are being given 50 per cent because of the inherent danger in going under the seabed. Of course, I am making you this offer because I did not expect that you will succeed. So, I decided to increase the percentage to 60 percent. But unknown to you and me, providence would smile on you as you get closer to the bank of the sea and suddenly a mermaid throws the bars of gold at you even before you dive into the sea. It means that you no longer need to go as far as the seabed to fetch them.
After that, you tell the man who sent you, here are the bars of gold. Can I have my 60 percent of the value as you promised? He suddenly begins to dribble you because he thought you might not make it or that you would die in the process. The man begins to tell you that the 60 percent you charge was too much. The scenario I painted captures my experience and my current ordeal in the hands of those trying to tell the world that I am not the son of Ojukwu. When I was given the brief or contract to try and recover the property of OTL, nobody thought I would succeed.
I could jolly well have left the police force to recover the property and ended up not recovering them. And that would have meant that I would not have anything to fall back on up till now. But because I succeeded, they suddenly remembered that the 30 per cent I was given was too much. The 30 per cent meant that I was richer than those who even had shares in the company. If you give someone 30 percent, you will agree unarguably that that person is going to get something big out of the deal.
They are fighting me because of what they thought I made. So, that was why my siblings and the rest of them felt that allowing me to stand before President Goodluck Jonathan to collect the N1 billion the Federal Government was to give would add up to my already filled sack of money I already had. But they forgot that a labourer deserves his wages and not inheritance. Even the Bible recognises the fact that a labourer is worthy of his wages. Does it not surprise you that the same people my father was in court with are the same people I am also in court with? It is clear that I am fighting his war.
You were also reportedly quoted in the media to have said that you are richer than your father. Are you actually richer than your father and how much are worth?
I did not say that. You know, you journalists have a way of colouring stories in a way that makes it appear different from what the true situation is. I remember saying that the assets I have are more than what they are fighting me for. It is not about property but about one’s lineage. And if I leave without challenging it in court, 40 years down the line, somebody will look at my son in the face and ask him, when this thing was done, what did your father do? So, one has to go court to prove that you are his son. You can have one million naira today and robbers can snatch it from you but nobody can snatch your lineage from you.
It is what I made of my disengagement from the police that has paid off and turning others’ heads against me. The decision I took some years back has paid off for me as wages and some people are trying to take it away from me.
Your father is believed to have brothers who are professors, engineers and what have you who are established in their chosen field of endeavours. Why are they not rallying round and supporting you as their brother’s first son who needs to be supported? Why does everyone, including your uncles, seem to be supporting your younger sibling against you?
Their grouse against me, essentially, in their thinking, is that I am cornering everything. But the truth is that if I turn over the estate to them, they will in turn, turn round to sing alleluia to me. But they fail to realise that the estate would not have gotten to them in the first place, but for me.
Remember that the entire estate was given back to my father by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. And if the estate were still in the hands of my father till today, it would have been one of the estates Bianca would be suing for in the last suit she instituted. And the case would have remained in court for 20 years. So, by extricating the estate and keeping it, they want to take it from me, but without at the same time giving me what is due to me. And that would be tantamount to enriching them.
Why do you think they are aligning with your brother against you?
That is because I am holding the ‘goat’. Chukwuemeka forgot that we were out with our father driving on the highway and suddenly, he (Chukwuemeka) found himself driving into the bush. He remains my younger brother. But he must come out from the bush so that I can show him the way. I cannot meet with him in the bush because I do not know if there are traps. He was also excluded from the funeral rites of our father. He was not part of the burial committee.
According to Igbo tradition, when a man dies, his first son is expected to inherit his Obi. In the case of your father, who inherited his Obi, you or Chukwuemeka junior?
It is Emeka because those using him against me encouraged him to inherit my father’s Obi, all in a bid to slight me. I recall that when Emeka’s mother died, my father told him to his face and right in my presence that ‘you are not my eldest son’. He had to beg me to attend his mother’s funeral with him. He cannot deny that he begged me to attend his mother’s funeral. He phoned pleading with me to attend his mother’s funeral.
In what capacity was he begging you to attend his mother’s funeral?
Of course, as his elder brother! When our father’s mother, that is our grandmother, was still alive, he took all of us to her homestead in Agbaru and she was asked who were these children she brought home with her? She said ‘they are my grandchildren from where I got married.’ And the elders said bring the first child let us bless him. And our grandmother pushed me forward to be and I knelt down and they blessed me before Emeka and others. Could the mother of our father be lying that I was the first son of her own son? All the text messages Emeka sent to me when our father was sick are still in my phone. And each time he inquired about our father, he would always ask ‘how is dad today’? why did he not say how is mom today?
How is your relationship like with your step-mother, Bianca?
She remains my late father’s widow. She is also trying to fight for her children. That was why she ensured that the all property my father acquired when they were married went to her. Of course, nobody begrudges her. But for anyone to go a mile extra to say my name is not in the Will is not something that will go unchallenged.
Have you ever been bothered about what is happening in the family and tried to settle all these differences without fighting dirty in the media?
I am one person who believes in the truth. And for me, if you err and recognise the fact that you erred and you are ready to show remorse, there is no reason why forgiveness should not come. But when you try to grandstand, there can be no settlement in sight.
What role did your father play in the burial of your mother because there are insinuations that your mother allegedly led some federal soldiers in a failed bid to capture him in his bunker during the civil war, a development that reportedly made your father to turn against you and your mother?
That is also another lie. My mother was a primary school teacher and the most peaceful person you could find on earth. She was teaching in a Roman Catholic convent. It will also interest you to know that my father met my mother as a virgin. That is why I am an exact replica of my father. I was born with purity. I was the child of his strength.
As for the role my father played in the burial of my mother, I was with my in-law when I heard that my mother was dead. So, immediately I rushed to my father to tell him what happened. He wanted to go for her burial, but he was too frail. I prevailed on him not to stress himself. He drew me closer and hugged me and started shedding tears. So he sent Bianca and his Chief of staff, Colonel Nwobosi, to represent him at my mother’s burial. He told him to go and make sure that Sylvester was doing the right thing. His Chief of Staff returned and told him that from what he saw, he was sure that I had taken care of everything. My father surprised me when he ensured that Bianca was at my mom’s burial.
My mother made one statement about my father to the effect that he was a very principled man. My father, before he died, regretted not marrying my mother. She was a woman with pure love.
