Zik of Africa

ZIK: A Tribute from Ukpabi Asika

As at December 1968, the Nigerian Civil War was still raging. In January 1969, I came to London as a member of the Nigerian Government delegation to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Meeting.

 At the time, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was resident somewhere in London. Our delegation was staying under very close security at the Royal Kensington Park Hotel in Knightsbridge. The British Security detail was quite tight. There was concern especially for my safety and wellbeing. It was in that context that Dr. Azikiwe sent a courier to me with the suggestion that we should meet.

I should remark that quite apart from the fact that both Zik and myself are native sons of Onitsha and that as improbable as it was, I was even then not a stranger to Zik. In 1954, as a young unemployed school leaver, I had the rare privilege of being a house guest of Zik in Enugu’s Premier Lodge for a period of about two weeks. I was naturally sensitive to the opportunity our meeting could yield and I was anxious to meet. In the circumstances of the time, I couldn’t very well expect Zik to call on me at my hotel or to meet me at the Nigerian High Commission.

A neutral venue was indicated and happily the British journalist who had served as Zik’s courier to me offered his home. This was agreed, a date and a time was fixed. I thereafter informed General Gowon in Lagos of the glad fact of Zik’s initiative and he gave me his blessing. On the appointed day we met, alone for about 2 hours of full and frank discussions. It was agreed that the contact should be maintained and I offered to seek to mediate his return to Nigerian legitimacy.

On my return to Enugu we exchanged several letters with Zik before he finally traveled down to Lagos. He was warmly received in Lagos by the Government and the public at large. Thereafter, he traveled to Enugu to and together we visited Federal troops and their front locations and saw as much of war battered East Central State as was possible.

The welcome address which follows was made at the end of the visit. It was made as a tribute to a great man. Now that it is time to say goodbye, we do so in humble thankfulness for the privilege of having come close to one of the greatest citizens of the 20th Century. Zik as Owelle Onitsha is an immortal.

In 1985, I was initiated into that rarified circle of immortality, Ndiichie Ume, as Ajie Onitsha. I now seek to say goodbye. Azikiwe Owelle, I greet you. Nnamdi Azikiwe, onye awale, ọ bụ Asika Ajie na-ekene yi: ka o mesie! 

Last week in commenting on the message broadcast by our honored and most distinguished returnee, I drew attention to the unique stature and significance of Zik, not merely for [the Igbo] and all Nigerians but indeed for all Africa.

I do not know how one accounts for a unique personality except to say that his uniqueness is a result of many things. Whatsoever the elements, they must surely include his very personal odyssey to America; his long sojourn as a private student in Jim Crow America during the terrible years of the Great Depression. Forged in such a terrible furnace he acquired that elusive but proximate quality of the intellectual which as Spinoza tell us, that “man can be an adequate cause of his own history.”

He acquired that true intellectual vision, which as the poet says is to see things steadily and see them whole. And because he had this transcendental awareness he was among the very first to recognize the organic nature of our colonial situation as a structure of alien hegemonic dominance in political, economic and cultural matters.

So on all these aspects he battled mightily to show us the light, to achieve decolonization not just of [the Igbo] or Nigerians but of the African, the Renascent African. His many ideas, so brilliant and often intuitive in conception, have affected all sections of Nigerian life. His own personal example served as the beacon for several generations of Nigerians to go overseas to seek the Golden Fleece.

Even if it be the judgment of history, and this is a very iffy preposition, that not all his seminal ideas were as brilliantly executed, then one will be merely saying that Zik too is a man and not a god. It is not my purpose to give an account of Zik—I am hardly qualified to do so. But as a serious student of our society and one who can claim that his knowledge has been deepened by more than two years of war, I seek to pay tribute to a great man, a greater politician, statesman, banker, journalist, scholar, poet and educator.You are welcome Sir. 

Today we visited the scene of one of his brilliant ideas—the University of Nigeria at Nsukka. A University whose name tells the story of Zik’s abiding hope, faith and trust in One Nigeria, one country, one destiny, and one people. We visited a scene of desolated tragedy and waste. We visited an abortion, not a reality. But let me promise here on behalf of the Federal Government and on my own behalf that Nsukka will be rebuilt and will be reborn. 

Perhaps after the present baptism of blood and fire, it would then be able to fulfill the aim of its founder as a place where the sons and daughters of the New Africa—the Renascent Africans—can study and develop as autonomous cultural individuals and not as bastardised products of a colonial cultural hegemony. The tragedy of Nsukka is the tragedy of my generation.

The failure of Nsukka is the failure of my generation. It is no secret that hardly any of my contemporaries understood or sympathized with the philosophy of Nsukka. We laughed at it and derided it; we poured scorn on its founder. Yet when it suited us, when we abandoned or fled the universities at Lagos, Zaria and Ibadan, we took over Nsukka as our own, but threw out its creator. It was the most ungracious act of a thoroughly contemptible episode.

In the end, we are the losers. In rejecting the guiding hand of Zik, Nsukka lost the essential humanizing influence and Nsukka turned from trying to be a seat of culture into a camp of militiamen and into a bastion of neo-nazist ideas about an I[g]bo Herrenvolk. Nsukka became Biafra in all its splendid illusions and its stark and desolate reality. But as I have said, Nsukka will be rebuilt and will be reborn. It is my hope that Zik with his return to service and sacrifice to the nation he gave birth will also be able to preside over the final acts of this baptism. 

The return of Zik marks an important and definitive chapter on our road to national reunion. We take pride, great pride in being associated with this great occasion. But let me say quite openly that contrary to all stories to that end no one, least of all myself, is responsible for Zik’s return to his country. When many of us were yet to be conceived Zik had conceived, propagated the idea of one Nigeria.

No child can teach its grandmother how to suck eggs. No one can teach Zik how to be a Nigerian. He is in many ways Mr. Nigeria. I say this because I want to stress the singular courage and integrity and above [all] the transcendental commitment to the service of his nation which are involved in Zik’s decision to come home. There is nothing, absolutely nothing which my generation can offer him—he has already enjoyed the highest office and the highest honour which this or any country can give to a son. There was nothing in his recent experience to indicate that if he offered to help such help would be uniformly or greatly welcomed. 

Many of us here recall his last public appeal before the present holocaust, when in late 1966 he called for mediation by elder statesmen in order to save the nation from further pain. Main of us will also recall the withering scorn with which his appeal was greeted not only by Ojukwu and his minions but also by some of the press of Lagos. Yet today we turn to Zik, as we turn to a father, to help us save ourselves even as he discovered us more than thirty years ago. As an elder statesman, he could quite properly have remained in his retirement and watch us struggle with our failures. But he is here, today amongst us. And he is here not as an Igbo leader but as a concerned human being and Nigerian statesman. Let us salute a hero and a servant of his people. You are very welcome Sir. General Officer Commanding, Officers, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the 1stPresident of the Federal Republic of Nigeria—the Zik of Africa and Mr. Chukwuemeka Ayodele Azikiwe, a true son of his father.