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He had a personal motto that guided his life and this had an influence on virtually every major action he took while he lived

Only his close and trusted friends knew he had a motto: “To thy own self be true,” This dictum guided his life for most of his 78 years on earth.  He was true to himself from the beginning of life to his exit November 26. That was what mattered most to Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, former Biafran leader and presidential candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, in the 2003 election than what his father, brothers, relatives, friends and the world thought of him. That also explains why he returned to Nigeria after being trained as an English gentleman and shunned the affluent lifestyle into which he was brought up.

His attitude prompted his auntie to ask him: “What have we done to you?” For years we have been looking forward to having our own “been to;” our child that has been there and back. But now you are back, you don’t look like a been-to. You don’t dress in suits. Nobody sees you doing the fine things that been-tos do.”

Odumegwu-Ojukwu had no easy answers for his troubled auntie. He, however, continued to follow his personal inclination much to the chagrin of his father. This more than anything else ensured that he left his footprints in the sands of time. Nowhere was his influence felt more than in the horrific circumstances that led to the Nigerian civil war where he was a key actor. Therein, he also incurred self-inflicted pains which he would have avoided had he decided to live the normal life of the noble man that Louis Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, his multi- millionaire father, wanted for him. But he shunned his father’s ideas and followed his own instincts which must have caused him a lot of inconvenience even though he did not confess so to anybody.

The story of his chequered life started on November 4, 1933, at Zungeru, in northern Nigeria, where he was born to Odumegwu-Ojukwu, a businessman and Nigeria’s first millionaire from Umudim, Nnewi in Anambra State. His father was in the transport business; he took advantage of the business boom during the Second World War to become one of the richest men in Nigeria.

Ojukwu, the father, had decided that his son should have what he was not privileged to have – a first-class education. So, Ojukwu, the young boy was sent to St. Patricks School in Lagos, the youngest of his year. From there he went to the C.M.S Grammar School, again at an age much younger than the rest of the boys. At the age of 10, in 1944, he moved to King’s College, Lagos, as the youngest ever to attend the school. It was in King’s College that Ojukwu caused a stir that attracted national attention. At the school, after a student protest in 1944, Ojukwu was briefly docked for slapping Slee, a white British colonial teacher who was humiliating a black woman at King’s College in Lagos.

The incident generated widespread coverage in local newspapers, especially after a court session where Ojukwu and Taylor Cole, his co-accused fell asleep in the dock while the court hearing was going on. U.J. Alex Taylor, their lawyer, who led the Lagos Bar Association which supported the students, drew attention to this when he lifted Ojukwu on his shoulder dramatically and told the court: “Look at the child being sued. Here is the dangerous person. Look at him fast asleep.”

At 13, his father sent him overseas to study in the United Kingdom, first at Epsom College, Surrey. He was at Epsom for six years, becoming more of an Englishman. Frederick Forsyth, who wrote the biography of Ojukwu in 1982, noted that he grew up quickly while at Epsom, reaching a height of six feet; heavy and big shouldered with it, and all bone and muscle. He was fast, a sprinter on the athletics field and a wing player at Rugby football. He played Rugby for the school and easily won the spring javelin-throwing and discus events on athletics field in summer.

On the academic side he was neither behind the rest, nor brilliant, but had no trouble at the age of eighteen in gaining a place at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he duly went in 1952. It was shortly after arriving at one of the great universities of the world that the first clash occurred between the strong-willed father and his equally strong-willed son. The father wanted his son to read law to become a lawyer. He wanted to read Modern History. It was the first of the series of confrontations of will power between the two men who now resemble each other in almost every way. His father taunted him that he was not brainy to read law and that was why he chose to read Modern History. To prove his father wrong he sat for law exams and passed. “They looked alike, spoke alike; and when they did not agree on something, sparks flew. Emeka won. He spent one year reading Law, then switched of his own accord to Modern History,” Forsyth wrote.

He returned to colonial Nigeria in 1956. Instead of accepting his father’s invitation to join his enterprise, Ojukwu chose to work in the public service because he felt that he would contribute more directly to the rapid development of all parts of the country, despite the modest salary of an assistant divisional officer.

Forsyth also wrote: “The first problem to confront him was the realisation that although an Igbo on both sides of his parentage, he was an Easterner in name only. Born in the North, his infancy spent in the West, his education in England, he had hardly ever been to the East. He spoke English like an Englishman, fluent Yoruba and passable Hausa, but only a smattering Igbo. While on exile in Ivory Coast, he also learnt how to speak French.

Those two years in Igboland so affected Ojukwu that he finally realised in some way that he had come home, really home, and that his presence elsewhere had been but a visit, a preparation. It was in the country east of the Niger River that he found for the first time the land of his ancestors. “I became aware,’ Ojukwu said later, ‘that I was an Igbo, a Nigerian, and an African and a black man. In that order. And I am determined to be proud of all four. In that order,” he said.

According to Barth Nnaji, minister of power, Ojukwu would have joined the Northern Nigerian civil service but for the increased regionalisation of Nigerian affairs in the late 1950s as the country inched towards self rule. “He was thus compelled to apply for a job with the Eastern Nigerian service, and was posted to what is now called Udi local government area in Enugu State. Udi was then a collection of villages with minimal features of modern development, yet Ikemba felt much at home with the rural folks in their rustic communities, directly involved in building roads, sanitary facilities, bridges, markets and other basics of modern society,” he said. Ojukwu’s “nationalist vision of Nigeria” led him to leave the Eastern Nigerian service for the more challenging military career. The minister said:  “As the statesman himself explained in a major interview with the defunct New Breed magazine in 1978,  he chose to serve in the army because the armed forces were one of the few institutions that remained truly national as Nigeria was about to attain independence in 1960.”

“Ojukwu was the first university graduate to join the Nigerian Army. Despite obtaining a Master’s degree in Modern History from Oxford, he joined the military as a Non-Commissioned Officer, NCO, otherwise called recruit, which made him undertake such less fancied chores as cleaning of toilets and bathrooms.”  For three months, Emeka stuck it out. He did this square-bashing with the rest, ate like them with his fingers and like them kept the barracks swept and spotless with broom and swab-cloth. For light relief, he was put to scraping clean the insides of toilet bowls with an old razor blade. The British officers knew who he was, and that their orders from the governor-general were to make it rough for him so that he would quit. He refused to quit. The affair finally blew up due to a marvelous sergeant called Moussa Fort-Lamy. Sergeant Fort-Lamy was lecturing the recruits on the parts of the Lee-Enfiled .303 rifle. When he had named the parts, in his extraordinary brand of English, he tested the recruits. As Forsyth chronicled: The Sergeant pointed to the safety-catch:

“You” he said to Emeka, “What am dat?”

“The safety-catch,” said Emeka.

“Wrong,” said Sgt. Fort-Lamy. ‘Dat am Saplika”

“Actually,” said Emeka, “it’s pronounced safety-catch”

That was enough for the sergeant. He put Ojukwu on a charge and marched him in front of the commanding officer.

“Charge?” asked the Englishman.

“Mis-pronouncing English” said Ojukwu, standing to attention in front of the desk.

The officer could not believe his ears. When it was explained to him, he burst out laughing and marched Ojukwu away for an interview with depot commander. The English colonel heard the story with the same reaction.

“Right,” he said finally, I have had enough of this comic opera. Governor-general or no governor-general, you are applying for an officer’s commission and that’s an order”.

Ojukwu moved up rapidly in the Nigerian army and served in different formations and had assignments in different countries including Congo. He was the first Nigerian quarter master general who reformed the system he met making it more efficient and effective. He did not bargain for the events that happened subsequently in the Nigerian army; the first military coup d’etat in1966 which he helped to foil in his base in Kano, because he never believed in military incursion into politics. He served the Nigerian army diligently and patriotically.

Describing as a grand historical irony circumstances which made Ojukwu take up arms in the late 1960s against a country he loved so dearly, Nnaji noted that most people regard Ojukwu’s leadership of Biafra as marked by profound sacrifice and selflessness.”This is why he remained a cult hero to his people up to the end,” he said.

People have always wondered why the Igbo love Ojukwu and that no other person could take his place. Forsyth provides an inkling. “The answer lies in what he learned in those two years between 1955 and 1957. It lies in the fact that so many of the “been to’ Nigerians” (those who have ‘been to’ this school or college) he never came back so full of his own importance that he had no time to spare for the people of the land. He always had time; time to listen, time to discuss, time to palaver.”

Ojukwu believed in his people and country and never believed in betrayal. As he said: “You cannot, you simply cannot, abandon, betray or sell, a people who have put their trust in you, and remain an honourable man.” This statement is germane in recalling the events that led to the 30-month civil war: the 1966 coup, the horrific massacre of the Igbo in the North after the counter coup of 1966, the reprisal killing and the inability of the federal authorities to end the pogrom, the Biafran secession, the surrender and his subsequent 13-year life in exile.

The strain of the exile told in many ways in Ojukwu’s life. He was penniliess in exile and later borrowed money to start a transport business. The business prospered. But before that in 1973, his marriage to Njideka ended, a state of affairs brought about first by frequent and extended separations occasioned by the war and later the exile. In 1976, he contracted a second marriage to Stella Onyeador from Arochukwu. That too ended before he fell in love with Bianca, a lawyer and a beauty queen, who bore him four children among others from other wives.

There is no doubt that Ojukwu’s death has sobered everybody who knew him,  especially the Igbo to whom he was their undisputed leader. Nnaji asked all Nigerians to be sobered by Ojukwu’s commitment to the common good by always placing public interest above personal comfort. “Service above self is the only way to go.” he said.

 But that’s not all. Ojukwu’s death at this point in time is a big blow to the Igbo. As Senator Chris Ngige, former governor of Anambra State, said: “A great void has been created in Igboland.”