She set out early in life, as a teenager, to research into the make-up of the average black man and African leaders. Today, the octogenarian author and politician, Chief (Mrs.) Adaobi Uzorka Whyte, is not amused by what she saw while in the field as a top politician and women leader. In this interview with Assistant Editor, Yetunde Oladeinde, she shared her disappointments with past and present Nigerian and African leaders, including fellow octogenarian, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. Excerpts
You wrote story books before this, why is your new book different?
The story books just came because of some crisis in my place. Mainly, I started by lamenting, I am an African woman lamenting the destiny, the slave mentality and wickedness of the black man. I started with my first book, which is the abuse of the Nigerian child and the second was the plight of the Nigerian woman. These are the things that have bothered me so much when I watch the Nigerian environment, which is my own environment in Africa. As I started growing up, I didn’t understand the life of the black man, so I started to research my environment. I started to document from those two books, that was in 2002. This is just an extension of my lamentation about the destiny, slave mentality and the wickedness of the black man.
What inspired all these?
Apart from my personal experience, which if we really want to talk about the Nigerian environment, you find out that I am one of the luckiest. I see my fellow Nigerian suffering in the midst of plenty. When we talk of tradition, I worked in my area, among the men, to become a chief. Then, I saw what was going on in the community; I saw that the majority of our traditions tend to punish the people. In fact, as a youth, I really got inspired to write what I saw in widowhood, traditions and divorce. I now see that whatever we are doing, we always want to cheat our people. As a teenager, I started watching the environment, the governance and as I was growing up, I heard about white men and colonization.
Having compared all that from my village in Ndoni, Rivers State, I was taken to Jos at the age of eleven. From Jos, I came to Lagos in 1961. From that point, I started making comparisons. At the initial stage, I was angry with the White man for colonizing us. I was angry with them for making us to lose our identity. As a young girl, I got baptized in the Catholic Church and I was given the English name Suzanna but by the time I clocked 20 years, I dropped that name. However, at a point I had a great challenge over my marital name, I decided to add my father’s name, Uzorka and I was bearing Uzorka Whyte, yet, it didn’t remove anything. As I continued to watch the governance of Nigeria, to watch the action of our religious leaders and our political leaders, I have discovered that the white people have done us good. They gave us better life because apart from that colonization, they conquered us; they scrambled over us and decided to rule us. All the things that you can think of that brought development were brought by the white man.
What motivated you to become a female chief in the midst of the men?
The life that we are living today, not just today, from the beginning, is for men. From my youth, I saw that women are negative, men are more positive, so in our community, I became a founder of the Ndoni Women Organization. I now found that our women are not interested in anything related to community development. Hence, I decided to join the men in the group known as Ndoni Community. It is open to men and women. I was 18 years when I joined them and attended the first meeting in my uncle’s house in Jos. Here, I discovered that those men were more positive, more active in community affairs than the women. I tried to find out why our women are so negative but till today I have not been able to get an answer.
I am talking about the grassroots and you find that whenever there are positive things to do, the women are more interested in uniforms. Where two or three women are gathered, they want to make uniform. Men can wear their tee shirts, shorts and finish the job. So, you find that from the grassroots to the Federal, women don’t really know what is happening in Nigeria. From that early stage, I continued to get involved in politics. I continued to drag our women. When we go to the political meetings, you would find that there were no women on the high table and once I called my Woman Leader to ask why this was so and she could not give me a tangible answer. I found that our duty was to sing choruses and dance for them. I became worried on the political side but in my community, I still continued with the community meetings. It was because of my working with them and being activists, fighting social ills in the community. In 1993, I was elected the Deputy President-General and later became the President- General of the organization.
At what point did you join mainstream politics?
In 1999, I became very active in PDP but before PDP I had joined other political parties. I worked with CNC, under Dr. Olusola Saraki, the father of the current Senate President. I led my people under him and I admired him because I saw that he cared for the poor. But when I left his group, I started working with other groups. It is my involvement in politics that made me to know that the black man is wicked and that is what I have documented in my books. Why I say this is because government money is not meant for individuals; it is for the people. It is to develop the country, develop the communities and the states.
But unfortunately, as I got involved in politics, I started attending political programmes and I was sad about the things that I saw. All our politicians do is during elections, they go to the grassroots, rural areas, all the corners of Nigeria, giving peanuts to those poor people and after that they go away with their votes, take the votes to the Government Houses and from there they continue to gather all our contracts, money that is supposed to be used for development. All they give us are abandoned projects, all over Nigeria, from Lagos to Abuja. As I continue to see things, I continue to do my research and I found out that the black man had been wicked from the onset, before the white man came.
Our politicians have established themselves as slave masters; they have taken over from the white. They came and met us in indigenous slavery. Before they came, we were exchanging 20 human beings for one horse; we were castrating the strong slaves to be eunuchs, so they can preserve the harems for kings to protect their wives. But we try as much as we can to hide our secrets and expose the white people. By the time they came, we were already enslaving our people and that is why today, after many centuries, we are still kidnapping our brothers.
You would turn 80 in two months, which means you are in the same age bracket with Gen Olusegun Obasanjo, how would you assess his performance in politics?
I came across him because of the way he was coming to Rivers State during Peter Odili’s regime. Then Obasanjo made Rivers his second home; he changed his wardrobe to Rivers wardrobe. When you see him then, he was only wearing our outfits. I only came in contact with him during programmes organised by Peter and Mary Odili. As a politician, Obasanjo has disappointed me. In this new book, I have written about him because by the time Obasanjo was becoming president, I was full of great expectations. I named Obasanjo the favoured general because God favoured him. He was a man who had the opportunity for the first time to rule Nigeria two times. He was the man God granted the grace to come out of prison to the palace.
