At a time like this, Ndigbo, would say: ka madu n’akwa onye ozo, ka ona akwa owe ya. This roughly translates: ‘as one is mourning the dead, so he is mourning oneself’. The burial rites of Dr Alexander Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme (1932 – 2017), Ide Aguata, who died last November, naturally heralds deluge of eulogies from far and near for Ekwueme was a star. As William Shakespeare wrote, in Julius Caesar: ‘When beggars die there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes’.
Yes, Ekwueme was a prince, an exceptional prince, indeed; but he remained connected to the lowly. He had friends among the high and mighty and the economically dispossessed across the country. One of his greatest legacies remains his scholarship programme, mostly to study abroad. A programme he started before he ventured into politics. Ekwueme loved education and was a genius who earned degrees in diverse fields as architecture, law, philosophy, sociology and history.
In spite of his numerous laurels, Ekwueme remained very humble. That humility enabled him to serve under a less academically accomplished President Shehu Shagari as Nigeria’s vice president from 1979 to 1983 without fuss. Materially and mentally wealthier than his principal, he never disrespected him or projected his stardom to undermine him – a trait which our present intellectually sagacious vice president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo shares. Indeed, I was moved by Osinbajo’s eulogy at the funeral of Dr Ekwueme which underscored the importance of that noble asset.
Perhaps, it is that trait that threw up Ekwueme, first as gubernatorial aspirant in the old Anambra State and later a vice presidential candidate and vice president to Shagari just like Osinbajo in the present dispensation. As Ekwueme recalled in an interview, he was pressured at a reception in his honour after his doctorate degree to come home and vie for the governorship candidacy of National Party of Nigeria (NPN), which he lost to Chief C. C. Onoh, Okaa Omee Ngwo. But when NPN zoned the vice presidency to the old Anambra and Imo states, his compatriots choose him, in absentia.
Clearly effusive, Ekwueme is not like most of his compatriots who hire trumpeters to remain relevant. After the Shagari regime was toppled, he suffered an undue long detention in and out of prison; yet he never made an issue about it. Many in his shoes, would have tried to blackmail the country, at every turn, after the Uwaifo investigative panel came out with the report that he did not enrich himself, as a vice president. Nothing but his sense of proportion stopped him from constantly reminding Nigerians that having been wrongly detained and denied ascendency to the presidency, following the 1983 coup, it was his turn to be president, at every political circle.
So, though he was very learned, he was never bombastic, or tried to impress, cheaply. Unlike many other politicians, he didn’t make a din of his intellectual contributions, like the six geo-political zones, which will serve the country better, if entrenched into our constitution. The need to restructure Nigeria along the six geo-political zones, which he championed at the 1994/95 constitutional conference, has continued to reverberate as the solution to the myriad of problems holding Nigeria by the jugular and trying to strangulate her.
He also proposed rotational presidency, and a vice president from the six geo-political zones, which many taunted as below our democracy. Yet, when President Umaru Yar’Adua passed on, while on the throne, the entire country was almost brought to fracture, just because, the section of the country where Yar’Adua came from, could not contemplate the presidency leaving that zone, without enjoying two terms. The same scenario reared its ugly head, when President Muhammadu Buhari fell ill last year.
With degrees in sciences and arts, Ekwueme was a pragmatic politician, but not a coward. After suffering detention for years in the hands of the military following the sacking of democracy in 1983, he stayed away from politics for better part of the former military President Ibrahim Babangida’s transition brinkmanship. While Babangida was playing on the intelligence of the political class, with an unwinding transition programme, Ekwueme stayed away. But when Sani Abacha, who snatched power from the interim Head of State, Chief Earnest Shonekan, tried to transmute to civilian president, through treachery and deceit, Ekwueme threw in his hat to save Nigeria.
Despite the grave risk in confronting Abacha’s brutish dictatorship, Ekwueme led a group of eminent Nigerians to call for return to democracy. This group which metamorphosed into the G-34, later birthed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). While he laboured to build the party, it was not his lot to win the presidential candidacy of the party. At the 1998 Jos convention, after he lost to Obasanjo, he delivered a well-mannered speech congratulating the winner and pledging to work for the success of the party.
True to his promise, he raised funds for the election campaign of Obasanjo, and worked for the party’s success at the polls. Unfortunately, once Obasanjo emerged President, Ekwueme’s importance began to dim. Many in his shoes would have worn their misfortune like uniform, but not Ekwueme, who took it in his chin and exhibited his cultured manners. He never left the party, nor sponsored an alternative platform, to put pressure on the party.
He never avariciously threatened the party, nor engaged in such mendacity as campaign of calumny against its leadership, whether at the federal or state level. While his influence in the party loomed large in Anambra State, where he hails from, he was never openly in a fight over who would gain one position or favour. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he was not always in the trenches over who will be governor, or who will occupy one office or the other. While he had his preferences, or even candidates, it was not a do-or-die affair, for him.
No doubt, Ekwueme’s departure has created a vacuum in the leadership hierarchy of Ndigbo. While his presence did not electrify, like Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Owelle of Onitsha; nor elicit worship, like Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Ikemba Nnewi; Alex Ekwueme, Ide Aguata, laid his sagacious intellect and cheerful leadership skills, to serve Ndigbo, just as he did for his country. At the critical junctures of Nigeria history, he stood taller than other tall trees. He was a single Iroko that was a forest. He never wavered nor sold a cause, for pieces of silver.
Now that Ekwueme has joined his ancestors, it will serve Ndigbo, to relearn his skills and immerse in his style. Nigeria, also needs to heed the wise counsels of the avatar, if she desires to depart from the gory of death and hatred. As Ekwueme said: “Nigeria should become a nation rather than a country. Ghana is a country. The type of massacre of people from certain groups that takes place from time to time in Nigeria won’t happen in Ghana….”
