By Ikeddy ISIGUZO, Chairman Editorial Board
TWENTY-THREE years after the Civil War, Comrade Uche Chukwumerije’s stint as the Minister of Information (1992-1993), unearthed echoes of his role in Biafra as the Director of Propaganda – such is how sublime he was. He was deep – prided himself as a thinker – and he often deployed solutions that played above the commonness of a fray.

Chukwumerije

He was a comrade and proud of his association with labour, the socialist front, where it existed, or he created it even as a student.

He graduated in Economics at the University of Ibadan, in 1961, worked as a journalist in West African Pilot, Daily Times and Radio Nigeria, but left radio as Head of News at the beginning of the war. His war contribution resonates almost 49 years after. The longevity of the memories that generations now have of him, testifies to the profoundness of the comrade.

Chukwumerije embodied passions that shunned ordinariness. His commitments and mental discipline shone through whatever merited his attention. Did he learn that from martial arts, religions or his socialist inclinations? His outputs were too engaging to permit time for speculations about the sources of the depths from which he drew. His management of the propaganda machinery of Biafra was just an

example. I call him Commander of the Propaganda Forces. Though Enugu went under within weeks of the first shots of the war being fired in Gakem (in today’s Cross River State), Radio Biafra that was hoisted on a jeep, until it was captured at the end of the war at River Nwangele in present Imo State, sustained a blitz that over-stated the ferocity of the Biafra army.

Those shots in the morning of 6 July 1967 dislodged the Biafran soldiers who were camped on the Ushara hills of Gakem, a settlement near Vandekiya in Benue State. The war began and Radio Biafra fought it with a consuming zest that Biafrans imbibed. Radio Biafra had all its broadcasts from “Enugu” until it “fell” at Nwangele. Institutions like the University of Biafra, Biafran Law School, and Bank of Biafra, and even markets, were in perpetual movements as the war progressed, but Radio Biafra “located” them in Enugu, creating a dissonance that sometimes made some believe that Biafra controlled at least parts of Enugu, or the loss of the capital was momentary.

A major task of the federal troops (federal vandals according to Radio Biafra), was to capture the radio. After they did at Nwangele, they realised that human resource, more than equipment made Radio Biafra.

Possibly one of the most important voices on Radio Biafra was Okoko Ndem, a polyglot, who rendered the news and its analyses in flawless Igbo and enjoined Biafrans to be vigilant to the point of sleeplessness because enemies surrounded them. When Okoko Ndem (always his full name was rendered) passed on in 2003, Ndigbo gave him a hero’s burial in his native Akwa Ibom. Radio Biafra was the biggest mobiliser for the war.

The people depended on it to learn about the latest exploits of the Peoples Army and war contributions they needed to make. Thousands of young people scrambled to join the army, unconcerned about tribulation or death, Radio Biafra called everyone to make sacrifices whether in the Peoples Army or the Land Army (farmers); it cemented a people’s resolve to fight for their lives.

Chukwumerije and his team internationalised the propaganda.

The war was about oppression of Ndigbo, the blockade had reduced thousands of children to skeletons. It was genocide, it was deliberate, and it had to stop. The international media witnessed these and the Directorate of Propaganda never missed a chance to portray the justness of the Biafran cause. Biafran propaganda remains a subject of research interest in institutions abroad.

After the war, Chukwumerije founded Afriscope, a magazine that projected his socialist and pan-African views. It circulated internationally. Politics found him in the camp of Aminu Kano’s

Peoples Redemption Party. He was National Publicity Secretary, then Secretary General. From 2003 until his death, on April 19, at 75, he represented Abia North in the Senate.

His war memoirs are in drafts and so are his ploys that torpedoed Olusegun Obasanjo’s thirst for a third term as president. His biographer was to have an appointment with him for Tuesday. He passed

two days earlier.

While the socialist movements, politics, labour and journalism would claim him, Chukwumerije in his final years belonged more to sports, where he single-handedly financed and encouraged his son Chika to win a bronze medal in taekwondo at the 2008 Olympic Games.

A deep voice (not just measured by timbre) has departed. A commander, a comrade, who counted, has completed his course.