late Dim Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu who has become a kind of perennial victim. In this interview with PAMELA EBOH, the first son of the late Biafran warlord, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu Jnr, speaks on how his father’s name and image have been abused Former Anambra State governor, Mr. Peter Obi, saw your late father as his political mentor and APGA as a political party made Ikemba the leader. Today the trend has continued and even during the build up to the 2010 governorship election, your late father raised Obi’s hand as his last wish that he should be elected for the second term. Are you comfortable with the controversy this has caused? I do not think it will be wrong for anybody to say that Mr. Obi’s emergence as a political force is directly linked to the backing he received from my late father. I know what you are referring to and I’ll not want to go into the issue of who raised whose hands because we all know he was ill at the time. The fact still remains that Obi was Ezeigbo‘s choice for that election. On whether I am comfortable or not, I am not. This is as a result, amongst other things, of statements being made by Bianca and others at Governor Willie Obiano’s campaigns. Is that why you have chosen not to join Obiano in his campaign for the second tenure even when, according to my sources, he had severally invited and approached you to join him and even now that a lot of activities are ongoing for Ezeigbo’s birthday celebration? It is one of the reasons. In the last three years, has Anambra State celebrated Ezeigbo’s birthday? Have they celebrated the anniversary of his death? Has any memorial been put up in his honour? Has any edifice or institution been named after him? Now on the eve of the election, it has become expedient to celebrate his birthday. To be honest with you, the stench of the hypocrisy has become nauseating. I was hitherto an unwilling participant in this charade and I can no longer abide by it. You have a situation where my father’s memory was invoked to help usher him into office and once elected, all things Ezeigbo were promptly set aside. Billboards with his pictures were taken down, new party clothes and materials were printed without his image while the incoming governor was focused on creating his own identity. Now, three and half years later, Ezeigbo’s pictures are back in full effect in an attempt to use his image yet again for some people’s personal political ambitions. Yes, I am aware of the invitations and I shall take my time in choosing to take a stand with the candidate of my choice. The truth is, I cannot go on a campaign with Obiano for one final reason, and that is because of some of the people he has chosen to associate himself with- people who speak from both sides of their mouth as long as it serves their own interests. Who are these people or such people that you are talking about? I know that you are aware of what Bianca has been saying and I do not want to associate myself with her. This is a woman who wants to create an impression that she loved Ezeigbo, but while Ezeigbo was sick, she chose not to take care of him and rather pleased herself. She had made many disparaging remarks about the former governor, Obi, in an attempt to curry favour with Obiano, forgetting that when Ezeigbo was gravely ill, Obi, with the help of his friends, was able to get a private jet and took my father to England, so that he could get the medical attention he received. She forgets also that it was Obi and other well-meaning folks who were instrumental in persuading the then President Goodluck Jonathan to accord my father what was, in essence, a state funeral. I remain grateful for what he did for Ezeigbo and for the family. Keep in mind that regardless of whatever support my father may have given to him, it was not mandatory that he extend himself in that manner. After all, his name is Obi and not Ojukwu. What do you mean that she chose not to take care of Ezeigbo? When Ezeigbo had a stroke, he was being ‘treated’ at home. He was neither given a CAT scan, MRI nor subjected to any of the standard procedures applicable to a stroke victim. She insisted on having him treated in his bedroom by her doctor, against the wishes of the family, for two weeks! At some point, family members were stopped at the gate from inquiring about Ezeigbo’s condition. On several occasions, I had to force myself in to see him. So all this grandstanding that Bianca is putting up is just to create a false impression about her relationship with my father and unsuspecting members of the public are buying into it. But we understand that Bianca was with your father when he was flown to England and made efforts at taking him from Wellington Clinic to another hospital known as Lynden Hill Therapeutic Centre? All the evidences are available and well documented. First of all, the air ambulance provided only had room for one family member and it was decided that she should go with him in the ambulance. You are right. Certain changes were made in terms of treatment centres. Lynden Hill Clinic was the third place he was moved to. We were dismayed by the decision, because you have to understand that throughout his treatment, he required 24-hour nursing care, and that particular centre was illequipped to handle a patient in his condition, even with 24 -hour nursing. That was why he was transferred, yet again, to the Royal Berkshire when his health, predictably, deteriorated. Several members of my father’s immediate and extended family, including myself, made a concerted effort to have him moved to a neurological rehabilitation centre, where he would receive the sort of treatment he needed. But again, Bianca blocked our efforts, and on the 25th of November 2011, a date I will never forget, without reference to the family, she had him discharged from the Royal Berkshire and transferred to yet another ill-equipped nursing home, this time in London, where he died a few hours later. Coming back to politics, for a minute, I remember that she was allied with the former governor while he had problems with Chief Victor Umeh, the former national chairman of APGA and now she is on the side of Umeh against Obi? Your question itself speaks volumes. Perhaps, this seeming flip-flop is due to the expediency of the moment. What I can tell you, again, is that it seems that at a point, it became expedient to her, for Ezeigbo’s treatment to be discontinued. As far as I am concerned, I know a man must die sooner or later. But in the case of my father, but for her actions, he would not have died that day. In fact, his remains were not immediately released to us until an investigation was conducted, because the circumstances of his death were deemed worthy of further investigation. We were told that because he had been ill for so long, a specific cause of death could not be ascertained and the result of the investigation was therefore inconclusive. But as far as we are concerned, she is … I wish to say that out so that my father’s spirit will allow me to rest and that is why I have refused to show up at any event having to do with Obaino’s re-election campaign in which she features prominently. Going by your statements, would you support APGA in this election? A political party is like a vehicle and the essence of joining a vehicle is to get to your destination. If the driver is not going to your destination, or if you are not comfortable with the passengers, then it’s either you have no busiess in that vehicle or you work hard to effect a change in leadership and attract the new members and or disenchanted people who left. When Peter Obi left APGA, I spoke up against his move publicly. However, having said that, I was not in the meetings and discussions that led to his leaving the party. So in retrospect, I have to admit that you must walk in a man’s shoes before you know where it pinches him. So my support for APGA is not automatic. It depends on what APGA stands for. If it turns out that the party has been hijacked by some people due to personal interests and their ideals are not in tandem with those of my father and the original direction set for the party and change cannot be effected, then perhaps it is time to look elsewhere. Do you think that Ojukwu’s image even in death would better the fortunes of APGA presently? Most people who are using his image these days did not know Ezeigbo. Obiano did not know Ezeigbo personally. As I said before and I say it again, there comes a time when the stench of hypocrisy around the use or rather the misuse of his name and image becomes nauseating. The notion that Ezeigbo is the property of APGA is wrong. Ezeigbo is not and was never the property of APGA. He saw himself rather as the property of Ndigbo in particular and Nigerians in general. Ezeigbo did not fight the war for APGA; he fought the war for Ndigbo and for Nigeria. You will recall that when Ezeigbo came back from exile, he did not join the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP), which was popular in the South-East at the time; rather he joined the National Party of Nigeria (NPN). This was because his underlying goal had always been to bring Ndigbo into the centre. So, APGA is a means to an end not an end in itself. Back to the 2010 campaign, your father at a time endorsed Emeka Etiaba instead of Peter Obi. Can you speak on that? What happened was that Emeka Etiaba and his group reached out to Bianca and had an agreement with her, which made her support them. Obi reached out to me about what happened and he sent me with his convoy to my father. When I got there, Bianca was upstairs and I asked Ezeigbo why he had abandoned me and he asked me what I meant by that. I told him that he asked me to go and work with Peter Obi as his eyes and ears and without reference to what he told me, he endorsed Emeka Etiaba. I knelt down at his feet and said why did you abandon me? He asked me to get up and I did and he asked ‘Where are my shoes?’ And Col. Emma Nwobosi helped us find them. We got up and we left with the convoy provided by Peter Obi. We were at Dubem Obaze’s office and had a press conference where Ezeigbo endorsed Peter Obi for the second tenure. This was one of the reasons among others that I started having problems with Bianca. It appears that you had a running battle with Bianca from when Ezeigbo was alive to his death and even during the funeral? Actually, she and I had a good relationship earlier, which later deteriorated and then severed to a point of no repair after the circumstances of my father’s death. At the funeral, Bianca did not want me to bury my father. She claimed to be the chief mourner; a claim which I rejected outrightly and it took the intervention of elders, especially Prof. ABC Nwosu, former Minister for Health, who stood by me, saying that such a thing will be an abomination in Igbo land and she had to accept her role as the ‘griever’ while I buried my father as the first son. Even when my mother, Njideka Odumegwu- Ojukwu, died, Bianca insisted that she would not be buried in my father’s compound and asked Ezeigbo to get a place outside our compound to bury my mother. But my father and I refused. Again, the same elders intervened and that was why I built a guest house and buried my mother in front of it, next to the main house. Culled: Newtelegraphng]]>
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