I CANNOT recall when and how I first met Edidem Bassey Ekpo Bassey II. He came across like an elder brother I have always known. Over the last quarter of a century, we met mostly in Lagos where he frequented, and in the last few years, in Abuja where I moved base.

Only on the  few occasions I visited Calabar did we meet in that beautiful city Bassey loved so much. It was a city over which he governed as the popular and democratically elected Municipal Government Chairman in 1988 and 1989; in later years, he was to stake an unbreakable claim as the Obong of Calabar.

In between our meetings, we had endless conversations and debates on telephone. Ideologically, we seem compatible, but we mostly disagreed on strategy. For instance, while I would not touch Ibrahim Babangida’s seven-year fraudulent ‘Transition Programme’  with a ten-foot pole, he always tried to engage it.

That was what saw him in office as a Local Government Chairman, and  his campaigns for Chiefs Olu Falae and Moshood Kashimawo Abiola in their presidential bids, and Alhaji M D Yusuf his “political leader”.

A few months ago, I decided to start gathering materials  on the pro-democracy struggles in the country in the 1990s. Aware that he was an inexhaustible source of information on the politics of that period,  I began on phone, a series of discussions, and of course, arguments  with him  on the issue.

By Owei Lakemfa
Although he campaigned for Abiola in the 1993 presidential elections, Bassey did not have a high opinion of him. He thought that the struggles to actualise the June 12 mandate should have been tilted more towards the removal of the military than  the attempt to install Abiola in power.

In  a rejoinder he made last year to a columnist, Bassey, citing Chiefs Olu Falae and Ebenezer Babatope as witnesses, argued that Abiola and Babangida  set up “the farcical  election of June 12, 1993 which has, for totally inexplicable reasons, come to acquire the tag of the fairest in the nation’s history”.

He portrayed Abiola as  an imperialist stooge and Paschal Bafyau, the Nigeria labour Congress(NLC) president  for five years from December 1988, as a principled labour leader who admittedly worked for military regimes. He wrote that Abiola did the same and that both Bafyau and Abiola  acted out the Babangida script.

I was interested in investigating this angle and we agreed to meet  for an interview where he would substantiate his claims and the role he played in the Babangida-Falae-Abiola politics  and how the sly  General Babangida out-foxed  his two friends. We fixed Tuesday  June 29, 2010 for our meeting in the Maitama area of Abuja he was living.

I was ushered into a sitting room and sat for some time. Bassey was not a man given to protocols  and even after making a strong claim to the Obongship, he would still readily walk up to you. I concluded that perhaps he had some meeting going on upstairs. Eventually, I was asked upstairs.

Nothing prepared me for the sight I beheld;  the tall, Bassey with strong features  had shrunk and was on a wheel chair! I had not realised that he was ill and that  he must have exerted himself during our long  conversations on phone. Yes, I had  heard in passing that he was not feeling fine, but I had thought he’d gotten over it.

He saw my shock and tried to reassure me that the worse was over. He said he had some hip problem which had been  treated in Cairo but had suffered a relapse. He planned to go to Port Harcourt and then return to the Cairo hospital. We discussed for a short while; sensing my reluctance, he assured that it was alright to go on with our plans.

I said no; yes we can chat, but the interview will be conducted only after his return from his medical trip. He agreed but that he needed to give me some information which I could build up on before he returned.

He mentioned those he claimed supervised the failure of the 1992 presidential primaries, and masterminds of some coups in the under-developed world. When I noticed that he was beginning to exert himself I decided to leave.

I took one last look at him and he smiled and waved saying he looked forward to our meeting. I spent the next few days re-living our encounter.  I had met Bassey  after the Cross State Government had rejected his being crowned the Obong of Calabar.  He was  decked in his royal regalia with some palace guards and accompanied by some Efik chiefs,  including Dr Ambrose Akpanika who was with us in the pro- democracy  campaign.

The Bassey I just saw was quite weak but  the fire still burned in him and his powerful voice was unmistakable.

Bassey had preceded me into journalism and had  been Deputy President of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ).  When in 1989, the Labour Movement decided to hold a conference of radicals to determine their  role in the transition programme and whether they should float a political party or not, it was held in Calabar where he as Municipal Government Chairman was the chief host.

Following the attempted “Orkar” coup of April 1990, Bassey was detained and hauled before the Military Tribunal  to be tried as a coup plotter. The NUJ waded into the matter  and  we succeeded in snatching Bassey and four others from the jaws of the vengeance-seeking soldiers.

All these memories  flooded back when I heard that this unrelenting fighter of the people  made his last stand on Friday November 26 in far away Cairo.

I also recall the New Year message he sent me: “As  the aggregate of human affairs continues its majestic march, from lower to higher forms of social  organisation, may we in 2010 find the courage  and the voice to locate Nigeria in the liberating path of apprehended necessity”. I will never again receive such an encouraging message from him but his powerful voice shall resonate over generations.