BY VINCENT UJUMADU

Senator Ben Obi is the special adviser to the president on Inter -Party relations. He was also the chairman of outreach and contact sub-committee, as well as member of the steering committee on the burial of the late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. He spoke in Awka on how the burial committee pulled the strings that resulted in the state burial given to the late Igbo leader. Excerpts:

The burial has been celebrated as a huge success. How were members of the committee selected?
The committee is a 40-man body established by the governors of the old Eastern Region. I will like to express our appreciation to them. And we also express at close quarters the appreciation of the committee to the chairman of the Forum, the executive governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, who took time to participate with the steering committee which, whenever they ran into a hitch, would fly into Abuja, fly into Lagos, fly into anywhere to help resolve those teething problems.

I want to say that a few times when it seemed we were at dead end; when we didn’t know what to do, we were financially handicapped, but whenever we called him and told him our problems, he responded.

So the success that you people are referring to can be easily credited to Ndigbo in general because every Igbo man participated in its success. I, as chairman of outreach and contact, when I had to visit Cote d’Voire, Zambia, Ghana just to inform the presidents of these countries because of their personal relationships with Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, of his demise, I had the full support and backing of Governor Peter Obi.

When I spoke with Prof Wole Soyinka, saying ‘you will speak in Enugu on your friend’, he said to me, ‘look, Ben, consider it done.’ It wasn’t more than two minutes of discussion. In fact you will like to know that Wole Soyinka flew in from Los Angeles, arrived Lagos on the 27th, and was in Enugu on the 29th. In fact, on the 27th when he arrived Lagos, Wole Soyinka took ill and I called my governor and I said, ‘look, the Nobel laureate has taken ill and he was hospitalised’. So he said I should go and see him in Lagos.

I tried because that was the day we arrived from London, but I couldn’t, but I reached his good friend, Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi, who was sitting by him and he said he was recovering. That night he called me and said he would arrive Enugu on the 29th and he arrived. The chairman of the occasion in Enugu, Ebitu Ukiwe, told him to just go and rest. This is the kind of interest people from outside Igboland also showed.

When we went to see Gov Fashola that we were coming to Lagos, he set up a committee directly in his office to arrange for what you saw that happened in Lagos. The same thing with Babangida Aliyu of Niger State, the same thing with Rotimi Amaechi, Liyel Imoke – all the governors.

Everywhere we went it was total participation. So you see, I do not know really where to rest the success but I have told you the commitment up to the last minute, the commitment of the governors. You saw what happened in Owerri, you saw what happened in Enugu.

The local organising committee was directly in touch with me because they were dealing with the contact committee. So they were very prepared, they were very committed. Those who even made their own personal contributions did so without complaint. The man who passed on was certainly our best and brightest star. No question about that.

How much did the burial cost the committee and how did you source for the funds?
I’m not the Financial Secretary or the Treasurer of the committee. All I can say to you is that contributions came basically from the governors of the old Eastern Region. They agreed among themselves that they were going to contribute some amount of money and the governor of Anambra State who was the one coordinating took the responsibility to make sure that all the governors paid their dues.

The governor of Delta State felt slighted that they did not include him. So when they went to Asaba he said to them, I’m part of this, after all I have more than one third of Igbos as the population of my state. So he immediately made his own contribution.

So I want to say that we had an estimate of what we wanted to do beyond the burial but then there was this advice across board that we drop it and do the burial after which we go out and do what we planned for the great man. So I don’t have the mandate to speak on anybody’s roles in this assignment because if I tell you now that A brought so much or B brought so much, some people may feel I have ignored them.

Sen. Obi

Did the committee decide on how to immortalize Ojukwu?
We’re thinking about how the people’s General can be immortalized. We don’t want a situation whereby we start a programme or a project aimed at immortalizing him and then fall short of not completing the project. Any project that we decide to do to immortalize him, you can be rest assured it will be completed.

At what point did the Federal Government get into the picture?
I will like to place on record the total commitment of the federal government in these burial activities. We did not go as a committee to see the president, but the chairman of the South East Governors’ Forum, (Obi) was meeting directly with Mr. President. Whatever support that was required, we got.

When we wanted to involve the Army, I was the one who went to see the Chief of Army staff under the directive of the Chairman of the Central Burial Committee and the Chief of Army Staff set up a Committee in his office to advise them and all other requests we made, were passed from the Chairman of the Central Committee to the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.

There was no request that we made that we did not get. We wanted to use the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium, we got the approval; you can all testify to the full participation of the military. So these are all the support that we got from the President. It is also to be placed on record that on our arrival from London, the Vice President, Arch Namadi Sambo, stood in for the President from beginning to the end.

Enugu, the Vice President was there. On Friday (burial day) the President decided to come and perform the burial rites and you all heard when he spoke; how Ikemba came for his (president’s) father’s burial in Otuoke and how from that moment he virtually adopted Ikemba as his father. So you can see there’s no level at which the Federal Government did not give us maximum support.

It’s not a question of Ben Obi saying; it’s what we all saw. I don’t know where the Vice President attended a burial twice within 96 hours. You heard the President say he had never seen any burial like this in the world. I don’t think anybody will be buried this way again in the country. Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Ezeigbo Gburugburu, has confirmed even in death that truly he was a leader.

Many people are already talking of a likely successor to Ojukwu. What is your comment on this?
Ikemba did not just get up one morning to say he is the leader of the Igbos, no. For me the committee never lost sleep for one day about those who are scampering to be leader or leaders. Igbos are a complete republican natured people. You don’t impose yourself on them. At the appropriate time the man who will lead them will emerge and then we will follow him the way we followed and adored Ikemba.

So, all those flying the kite will be shocked because it’s not a business of just getting up and saying you want to be a leader. It’s not done. You have to go back and look at the antecedents of Ikemba; how he started, you know, and then see where he took the Igbo nation to.
It’s difficult for a people not to have a leader. God in His infinite mercy, never created people and then abandoned them and made them leaderless. Circumstances will always throw up true, genuine leadership. It was the circumstances of the crisis in 1966 that threw up Emeka Ojukwu. He was not a member of the Ifeajuna-led coup but after that he became governor of the Eastern Region and after that happened, circumstances again made him leader of Biafra and the rest today is history.

When you look at the Igbo nation, there are quite a number of people who are around and who we don’t even know until they come out to take responsibility of leadership and then you start to see certain qualities and begin to imagine that they too truly can play a role in the lives of the people.

You may not have the kind of visionary, courageous leader like Emeka Ojukwu to come up again. But then somebody may come up to play one role or the other in due course but it’s not by imposing yourself on the people. Igbos never recognize imposition. It has to evolve.

There have been claims and counter claims on how Ojukwu’s hospital bills were paid. Who actually picked the bills?
Again that is thanks to the Anambra State governor and chairman of South East Governors’ Forum. When we met (with) the Governors’ Forum, they told us that they mandated the governor of Anambra State to take full responsibility and that, along the line, they were also going to make their own contributions.

So it is basically contributions from the governors but of course more of it was from Anambra State because as it stands, uneasy lies the head that wears the crown and that crown is squarely on the head of my friend, Gov Obi. The young man is carrying it with great admiration, I must say. The committee has expressed profound gratitude to him for everything.