CELEBRATING
AJIE DR ANTHONY UKPABI ASIKA CFR @80
1936-2004
AJIE ANTHONY UKPABI ASIKA
80TH BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE
COMPILED AND EDITED BY ED EMEKA KEAZOR
TRANSCRIPTION: DACE BICEVSKA
©UKPABI ASIKA FOUNDATION 2016
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
AJIE ANTHONY UKABI ASIKA CFR SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Early years: From Barkin Ladi to Ibadan
Anthony Ukpabi Asika was born on June 28 1936, in Barkin‐Ladi, in the Plateau Highlands.
His father, Edward Obiozor Asika, was from Ogbeoza, Umuezearoli. Onitsha. A Surveyor‐
employed by the Colonial Posts and Telegraphs Department, he was one of an elite group of
Nigerians holding senior appointments in the then colonial civil service. His mother Enyi
Rebecca Nwabunie Asika, was born in 1913 to the family of Ononenyi Chukwudebe and
Omunwanyi Chukwudebe, from, Umuase, Onitsha.
He grew up in a large, loving family in the idyllic multi‐cultural settings of Barkin Ladi, which
had grown as a Mining settlement centred around activity in the Tin Mines , home to
hundred’s Immigrant workers from all over Nigeria. The young Ukpabi made his first journey
to his ancestral home at Onitsha in 1940, with his mother and siblings. This visit to Onitsha
was significant in engaging he and siblings with their ancestral roots‐ the start of a love affair
with Onitsha which was endure throughout his life.
After his primary school, he was admitted to St Patrick’s College, Calabar, a strict Catholic
school, run by Irish Priests, with a reputation for rigorous academic and moral discipline. He
was later transferred, at his father’s request, to Edo College Benin in 1951, where formed a
strong friendship with his dormitory‐mate, a young Tayo Akpata. At Edo College, he
developed the Intellectual and social confidence that was to characterise his life. A popular
sportsman and an excellent academic, he presented such a confident and charismatic air
that he was nicknamed “Don Ameche” by his school‐mates, after the suave Hollywood
actor.
This however masked tragedy he had experienced a year earlier in 1950, with the death of
his elder brother Evarist. A Lawyer and First Class Graduate of Cambridge, he had returned
barely two weeks earlier from the United Kingdom, when he died suddenly from a Malaria
attack. He had been so deeply affected by this loss, that he had said silent, solitary prayers
of mourning in Church for the soul of his brother. This was one of the last times, he
displayed any overt signs of piety.
This loss was to be compounded a year after his admission to Edo College, by the death of
his father in June 1952.The effect of this combined loss was devastating for a young
teenager and more‐so for a closely‐knit family, who had enjoyed the devoted but firm care
of this strong but loving and provident patriarch.
The young Ukpabi, however soldiered on, mindful of the responsibility that now lay before
himself and his older brother Edmund, a student of St Gregory’s College at this time. The
two Asika sons, left secondary school in 1955 and 1956 respectively, compelled to take on
paid employment, as a result of the loss of the father who would ordinarily and competently
have taken on the financial responsibility of their higher education.
Ukpabi Asika moved through a succession of jobs between 1953 and 1954, firstly the
Onitsha Town Council in 1953, from where he moved to the Department of Marketing In
Lagos after three months and finally to the Northern Nigeria Marketing Board in 1954‐ all in
Clerical positions. His restless movement clearly showed a man less than content with
pursuing a life‐time career in Clerical positions. He was mercifully spared this fate by his
gaining admission to the University College Ibadan, in 1956, to study Economics.
Ukpabi Asika settled into life as one of the pioneer student of the Economics Department of
the University College Ibadan, in September 1960. He was resident at the famous Kuti Hall,
famed for its inmates whom one may describe, for want of better words, as being of a
radical bent. These included Christopher Okigbo, Uche Chukwumerije, John Pepper Clark,
Leslie Harriman, Ukwu I Ukwu, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Sam Agbam and many others.
Exceptionally articulate and raging with Intellectual energy they were the Kings of Kuti Hall.
Their gatherings were a lightning rod for other like‐minded non‐residents, some even
Graduates, like Chike Obi (then a Lecturer), Bola Ige, Wole Soyinka (naturally) and many
others attracted to this vibrant melting pot, raging with Intellectual energy and youthful
angst.
Ukpabi Asika settled naturally into this surreal, dangerously exciting environment, whilst still
maintaining his own unique individual reserve. He was said by his close friends Ukwu I Ukwu
and Anya Oko Anya, to have fully enjoyed the varied and exciting social opportunities UCI
and Ibadan offered. Nonetheless he was a naturally gifted, though unconventional
academic. He graduated with First Class Honours Degree in Economics, winning the
prestigious Prizeman for the best graduating student in 1960.
The Asika family. Onitsha, 1940. Ukpabi Asika, 2nd left.
Edward Obiozor Asika c. 1948
Evarist Asika. C. 1949
Ukpabi Asika c. 1950
Ukpabi Asika and sisters. c. 1953
Ukpabi Asika. 1956
Ukpabi Asika, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Michael Echeruo and Sam Agbam University College Ibadan c. 195
Ukpabi Asika graduation, 1960.
TO CALIFORNIA AND BACK: LOVE, MARRIAGE AND REVOLUTION
After graduation he enjoyed the luxury of choice of Scholarship opportunities for Postgraduate training (the
natural course for an exceptional academic), spurning an offer from Oxford University, for a placement at the
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) as a Rockefeller Scholar. This had been influenced by the persuasive
efforts of James Smoot Coleman, Political Scientist, Director of African Studies at UCLA and a committed
Africanist who had written the legendary work “Nigeria‐ Journey to Nationalism” two years earlier, as a
Professor at Harvard University. Coleman and Asika later formed an easy friendship, based on mutual respect
and something of a paternal instinct from Coleman, which was to endure throughout their lives. Coleman’s
Influence was palpable in his choice of Post‐Graduate study‐ Political Science, for which he was enrolled at
UCLA.
A natural mixer, in‐spite of his natural reserve, he made friends from across all ethnic spectra, with his close
circle, consisting of names like Ben Magubane, (later an academic and South African nationalist), Arthur Wina
(later Zambian Finance Minister), Alfred Opubor (Nigeria’s first Professor of Mass Communications), Jerry
Bender, Syl Whittaker (both later Professors of Political Science) and PriyaRamrakha (later to become a world
renowned Photo‐Journalist). He was elected the President of the African Students Association of Southern
California, which without more clearly underscored his natural charisma and leadership qualities.
His unconventional academic disposition found a natural home at UCLA. He famously managed to complete
only two questions of the written examinations for his Masters Degree. Yet the said answers were of such
quality that he obtained a High Pass grade and left such an Impression on his examiners that they excitedly
referenced them in the Oral Examinations, some of his classmates faced afterwards. His PhD dissertation was
on the Southern African Liberation Movements and he had settled down to the business of completing this,
when in late 1964, a friend Okwudiba Nnoli made an introduction to a young man, the same of which was to
define the rest of his life’s journey‐she was Chinyere Edith Ejiogu.
Chinyere Ejiogu was the eldest daughter of one of Eastern Nigeria’s foremost Educationists‐ Nathan
OkeomaEjiogu. An exceptionally intelligent and independent minded young woman, she like Ukpabi Asika,
came from a large family. She had just graduated in Government and History, from the prestigious Mills
College, an exclusive all‐ladies College in Oakland, California founded in 1852. Their meeting whilst seemingly
innocuous to outsiders, had actually been latent with a strong mutual attraction between the two. This was to
find vent later, upon her enrolment as a Post‐Graduate student of Government at UCLA, they reconnected and
a deep friendship and romance blossomed.
Their shared Intellectual passion and family backgrounds were counterparts to a strong emotional chemistry.
He succeeded in convincing her to change her Post‐Graduate course from Government, to Information
Technology as a Major, and Library Science as a Minor. A substantial change of academic discipline, which the
exceptionally bright young woman managed, successfully graduating with a Masters Degree in 1965‐ the first
Nigerian woman to achieve this. As she prepared to return to Nigeria, she was stunned with a Marriage
proposal from Ukpabi Asika which she accepted. The couple married in a Registry Ceremony at the Los Angeles
County‐Court House in July 1965. She returned to Nigeria to work as Assistant Librarian at the University of
Ibadan in August 1965, whilst Ukpabi Asika returned in December 1965. At the stern demand of Nathan Ejiogu
they had to perform a Church Wedding, which took place in December 1965, at Egbu‐Owerri. The couple then
settled down to life at the University of Ibadan, he having also been recruited as a Senior Lecturer in Political
Science.
Their marriage was barely two months, when a group of young Army Officers, overthrew the Government of
Prime Minister Tafawa‐Balewa, killing the Prime Minister, the Premiers of the Northern and Western Regions,
the Finance Minister and several senior Army Officers.
The result of the abortive coup attempt was a chain of events that led the assumption of office by the General
Officer Commanding the Nigerian Army‐ Major‐General J.T.U.Aguiyi‐Ironsi. The political crisis deteriorated
from May 1966, when riots in the North resulted in the deaths of persons of Eastern Nigerian origin. A second
coup took place in July 1966, which once again, resulted in the death of Major‐General Ironsi, Colonel Fajuyi
and several key Army Officers. The core of officers, led by Colonel Murtala Mohammed, installed General
Yakubu Gowon as Head of State. There were further riots in Northern Nigeria, in which several persons of
Eastern Nigerian origin were once again killed.
This resulted in the exodus of several Easterners back to Eastern Nigeria, including Ibadan where the couple
lived. The political crisis worsened, with Col Odumegwu‐Ojukwu and General Gowon engaging, for several
months in a fragile political contest that ended in the creation of 12 new States on 27 May 1967 and the
declaration of the Republic of Biafra on 30 May 1967. On June 30, 1967 the couple travelled to Tanzania,
towards finalising his PhD research into the Southern African Liberation movements. In Tanzania and later
Zambia, they spent time with ANC members in exile, often attempting to cross into then Rhodesia, with the
ANC activists. They later moved to Kenya, at which time, Ukpabi Asika decided to return to Nigeria‐ without his
wife. It was a difficult decision for the young couple, but mutually agreed. She remained in Kenya, while he
returned to Nigeria at the end of September 1967.
Ukpabi Asika. California, 1962. Image by Karen Courtenay
Ukpabi Asika UCLA 1963. Photo by Priya Ramrakha
Chinyere Asika c. 1963
Ukpabi Asika arriving for his wedding. Egbu Owerri, 1965
Nathan Okeoma Ejiogu arrives for the wedding.
East Central State 1967‐1975
On return to Nigeria, he travelled to Ibadan to meet a campus desolate of his Igbo colleagues, and a full‐blown
armed conflict raging. Biafra had steadily lost territory and Enugu was now under threat of a Federal
advance from Nsukka. The Federal Government faced with the problem of establishing Government presence
in the recaptured territories, had been searching unsuccessfully for several months, for the right
candidate. Ukpabi Asika had been a contributing writer between 1966 and early 1967, to the Nigerian Opinion,
a political journal published at the University of Ibadan, some of his co‐writers including Professor Billy
Dudley and Tayo Akpata.
His articles in the course of the crisis, had been powerful, insightful and provided detailed sober
analysis of the crisis. They had somehow come to the notice of those involved in the search for an
Administrator for the recaptured Biafran territories of the Central Eastern (later East Central) State.
Having returned, he was approached and his willingness to undertake the task was ascertained. He was
then introduced in succession, to Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo, and later to General Gowon at Lagos.
General Gowon having satisfied himself he was committed to the challenging and potentially dangerous
task, offered him the position, which was later confirmed by an Instrument on the 15 October 1967.
He resumed his duties immediately concentrating on establishing a rudimentary administrative structure
and preparing for what was in his mind, the inevitable outcome of the war and the very real
infrastructural and administrative challenges that would present later. Working initially at the Cabinet
Office, Lagos, he attempted continuously in speeches made throughout the war, to reach out to
Biafran’s on the futility of the war.
One of his most famous speeches being the iconic Enough is enough delivered at his first press conference on
10 November 1967, with the telling line “ ͞...but we cannot forget, that even in the conflict of ideas it is people
who die. Come forward now and let us stop this war...͟” This was a simple summary of his philosophy. He was
also part of several diplomatic efforts at resolving the conflict, including the Kampala and Addis Ababa, Peace
talks.
His wife Chinyere returned shortly after this, still conflicted by her own ideological view‐point on the war,
which was quite opposite to her husband’s. On the family front, there were other distractions, she was shortly
after her return to deliver the couple’s first son‐ Obodoechina (Obi). In eternal tribute to the sheer courage of
Biafran Armed Forces, the war lasted longer than many in the Federal Government had envisaged, however
by January 12, 1970 Colonel Phillip Effiong, broadcast to a war‐weary people, the surrender of Biafra
and three days later the surrender document was signed at Dodan Barracks, before General Gowon.
Ukpabi Asika had earlier proposed the policy of No victors, no vanquished, which General Gowon willingly
adopted in his broadcast, during the surrender ceremony. Ukpabi Asika and his team commenced work,
undertaking the gruelling task of rehabilitation and reconstruction in the East Central State, contending
with over 7 Million displaced and needy people, In a landscape destroyed by war, with no internally generated
revenue. The dedication and selfless commitment of his eventual cabinet, of which 80% of the
constituents were ex‐Biafran Armed Forces officers, was to tell in the progressive and rewarding work at
hand.
The team in the five years between 1970 and 1975, rebuilt 638 kilometres of road, and built 488
kilometres of new roads, rebuilt public utility systems to performances exceeding pre‐war estimates for the
whole former eastern Region, re‐established Agricultural capacity to record levels, re‐built schools such
as the University of Nigeria and built new educational centres of excellence, like the University of
Nigeria Teaching Hospital Enugu, Institute of Management and Technology, Alvan Ikoku College of Education
etc. They rebuilt old Industries and recapitalised Banks, thus increasing Commercial capacity.
It was not always easy, he faced difficulties at the Supreme Military Council from elements who did not
believe that reconstruction of the State was a priority, However with the support of General Gowon, Asika
and his cabinet soldiered on. He also served the Federal Government as Envoy to Senegal, Sudan,
Tanzania and Ethiopia. He was also one of the architects of its pro‐active Southern Africa Foreign Policy. On
July 29 1975, exactly 9 years, from the second coup d’etat in Nigeria’s History, the Government of General
Gowon was overthrown in a bloodless coup by a group of Army Officers, who installed General
Murtala Mohammed as the new Head of State. This signaled the end of Gowon’s administration and
indeed Ukpabi Asika’s eight year stewardship of the East‐Central State.
Mr and Mrs Asika. Ibadan, 1966
Press report on appointment as Administrator October 1967
Ukpabi Asika and General Gowon, October 1967
The Supreme Military Council 1970
Ukpabi Asika and Major‐General Olutoye. Amsterdam, 1968
Ukpabi Asika and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, 1969.
With Emperor Haile Selassie Enugu.
UNN convocation, 1973., front. Dr Taslim Elias, General Gowon and Ukpabi Asika
Ukpabi Asika and members of pioneer set Rangers Football Club. 1970
Ukpoabi Asika and General Gowon. OAU conference 1971
Chinyere Asika and Cyprian Ekwensi at launch of Otu Olu Obodo
At the re‐opening of Onitsha Market 1973
With Nathan Ejiogu, Enugu 1971
Ukpabi Asika and Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo. 1971
Obi and Nkiru Asika, 1972
At bedside after the birth of Uju Asika
Enyi Rebecca Nwabunie Asika.
Life after Government service 1975‐2004
For Ukpabi Asika and his family, the immediate aftermath of life after Government, was to be a sea‐change in
circumstance, which would greatly test the family’s resolve, but from which they emerged stronger as a unit.
Ukpabi Asika experienced a torrent of verbal and written attacks from citizens of the East Central State,
that appeared to have been previously restrained only by his occupation of office as Administrator. In
simple terms, a large majority of Igbo’s had not forgiven him for his role during the Civil War and clearly the
opportunity came to vent their ire. The family was even at one stage, compelled to send their
children Obodoechina and new additions Nkiru and Uju, (aged 9, 7 and 4 respectively) to school in the
United Kingdom in 1977, sponsored initially by their Grandmother, to escape the verbal assaults and
threats they faced constantly, from ostensibly responsible adults.
The succeeding Government in the State headed by then Colonel Anthony Ochefu, Instituted a slew of Panels
of to investigate almost every segment of the Asika Administrations activities. This was duplicated at
Federal level, with the Federal Military Government instituting an Asset Investigation Panel, to
investigate the propriety of assets owned by public officers of the Gowon administration on 16
September 1975.
It made its recommendations on 29 November 1975, allegedly identifying a difference between Income and
expenditure amounting to N200.689, between 1967 and 1975, whilst curiously failing to consider that the
expenditure figure included properties purchased by his family Investment Company‐ Bladi Investments
Limited, with Mortgage Loans. The irony being that he, as Guarantor remained personally liable to repay the
Mortgage Loans, which were finally repaid in 1998. In‐spite of the difficulties, the family pulled together and
slowly Ukpabi Asika stoically emerged from the pall of false accusations and condemnation, to rebuild his
and his family’s life. He was greatly assisted by the kindness and support of close friends and associates‐ such
as the late Chief Adebayo Adeleke, who once offered him a job in his company in 1975, on a salary of N15, 000,
just to enable him cater for himself and his family. He later ventured into business, founding one of the first
Indigenous Information Technology Companies, alongside other ventures.
Throughout his tribulations, he never lost his deep love for Nigeria and a sense of hope for its future, in spite of
its own difficulties. In the Second Republic (1979‐1983), Mrs Asika’s proven skills of women’s mobilisation
were called to service, when Governor Christian Onoh of Anambra State, appointed her Special Adviser on
Women’s Affairs in 1983. The first woman in Nigerian History to hold such an appointment.
He was to experience some form of vindication, when the regime of President Babangida, in 1993,
rescinded the 1976 instrument seizing some of his assets, as a result of the Asset Investigation Panel Enquiry of
1975. This was interpreted by some as Babangida’s usual political manoeuvring. However for a man firmly
convinced of his innocence and who had fought for years behind the scenes for justice, this was plainly
irrelevant. The Lagos State Government was to call on Ukpabi Asika’s experience, by his appointment
as a member of the New Towns Development Authority, which recommended the development of Ibeju‐Lekki,
Aja and Eleko areas. He had before this in 1985, served as the Team Leader of a Presidential Delegation to
Niger, Chad and Cameroon to re‐Open Nigerian Borders.
He was honoured in the same year 1985, by the Obi and people of Onitsha, with his appointment and
installation as the Ajie Ukadiugwu of Onitsha. The third highest title and the ceremonial Warlord of the
ancient Kingdom. The signal of its importance to him, being that he refused to take any other Traditional title
for the rest of his life.
The family once again experienced tragedy in 1994, when Ajie Ukpabi Asika suffered a massive stroke,
which left him unconscious for several months. He however recovered from this and regained most of his
facilities. He was to tragically suffer a second stroke in 1999, which left his speech impaired. He
however remained active, communicating by writing and keeping constantly abreast of events by
voraciously reading newspapers and journals. He was lovingly and conscientiously cared for, by his
wife Chinyere, assisted by his daughters Nkiru and Uju, whose selfless sacrifice of affection and sheer effort,
brought deep joy to an ailing man.
His son Obodoechina, had by this time, taken on the mantle of leadership of the family, running the
family business and performing the functions of the Head of the family, in his father’s forced absence.
Ukpabi Asika’s condition however deteriorated and at this stage, the Government of President Olusegun
Obasanjo, took responsibility for his care and had him brought back to Nigeria.
The Nigerian Government in recognition of his contributions to the nation, awarded him the National
Honour of the Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic in 2002. His tears and those of President
Obasanjo, during the award ceremony, formed one of the most moving moments at a State event. The
country he loved unconditionally and which at certain moments seemed to have repaid him unkindly had
finally paid a debt of gratitude‐ which only matched the gratitude he likewise felt to his nation for its gracious
gesture. He passed away peacefully on September 14 2004.
His funeral was attended by a massive throng of dignitaries and citizens alike. His former associates and dear
friends‐ General Yakubu Gowon, Theophilus Danjuma, Ahmed Joda, M.D.Yusuf, Ukwu I Ukwu, Chu Okongwu
and many others were present to bid farewell to a true friend and great Patriot. His wife Dibueze Chinyere
Asika’s words in tribute to her late husband are a fitting epitaph to the story of the man‐ Ajie Ukpabi Asika. “At
the worst moments during the Civil War, and many other serious problems which we all faced from
time to time and when everything seemed hopeless and when all of us would become despondent and
down hearted, discouraged and tending to give up in desperation, the one to first recover and urge us
on was always Tony. May his soul continue to rest in peace.”
At installattion as Ajie
of Onitshaa
Ajie Ukadiugwu of Onitsha
Ajie Asika and Nnabuenyi Edmund Asika
Ajie Ukpabi Asika, Owelle Nnamdi Azikiwe, Col Akonobi and General Gowon
At Uju’s graduation ceremony. 1996
Ajie Anthony Ukpabi Asika CFR at conferment of National Honour
Funeral cortege, 2004
General Gowon signs the condolence register.
A SELECTION OF SPEECHES AND WRITINGS 1960‐1996
1. A Great Nationalist ZIK: Selected speeches of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe.
Published by Cambridge University Press.1961.Reviewed by Ukpabi Asika
When last November, Dr. Azikiwe made his inaugural address as Visitor to the University College, Ibadan, he
was wildly applauded by the students, who shouted, “more, more!” This is a way of saying that Zik has been
the most successful public speaker this side of the world – his genius lies in suiting his speech to his occasion,
without ever lowering the quality of the address. It is therefore a happy thought that inspired the publication
of this book. Of course you do not get full effect here; inevitably certain elements are missing ‐ the rich voice,
often intimate in its address, the quiet laughter in that voice, the winning smile, the twinkle in his eyes, the
forefinger delicately poised for emphasis and always the great bursting excited crowd with their chorus of,
“Zik, Zik!”, all of which gave so much character and vitality to these speeches.
The speeches in this book range over a generation, from Zik’s days in America until just before independence,
and they have been carefully grouped under useful, if slightly arbitrary, sub‐headings. “Zik in America”; “Zik on
colonialism”; “Zik on Africa” etc. etc. Many of the issues discussed in these speeches are of course no longer
topical; most of the points have since been won. But in this lies the real value of the book – that most of the
issues he fought so eloquently have since been won, is the greatest testimony to a great career of devoted
nationalism.
But there is something essentially negative about colonial nationalism. Zik’s role was however more than
merely negative. His greater contribution lay not in fighting imperialism, but in his efforts and success in
reviving in the African an appreciation of his own intrinsic value and a will to assert his rights. In this task his
tongue, no less than his pen, was an invaluable asset. As one reads through these speeches, one could feel the
presence of a brilliant and cultured mind; a man who fought imperialism on all fronts ‐ political, economic,
cultural – intensely, relentlessly and successfully, yet was able to maintain a serene detachment that saved him
from bitterness or racialism. A man who even in those early days when freedom was considered utopian, was
able to inspire his great mass of followers with his own vision of certain victory: “let there be no mistake about
our future, we are determined to be free, and history is on our side………………… God knows we hate none on
account of race or colour, but we love our country, and we want our country to be free, and we shall be free.”
Over the years, two major criticisms have been made against Zik. Firstly, it is held that his views on the
constitutional development of Nigeria lacked consistency ‐ the major charge being that he vacillated from
advocating a unitary constitution to preaching federalism. From these speeches it is quite clear that this
criticism is wholly incorrect. As early as 1948, Zik had been urging federalism; what he opposed, and often very
brilliantly, were arrangements that seemed to smack of eventual Pakistanization.
The second criticism is that Zik was an unabashed “Ibo jingoist” and in support of this a speech (included in
this selection)that he made in 1949 to the Ibo State Union Assembly has usually been quoted. In spite of this
however, it seems quite clear that a broad construction must be placed on his talk about “the establishment of
an Ibo State” and other “linguistic and ethnic states.”In the first place, the overwhelming evidence of this book
shows quite definitely that Zik was a crusader for Nigerian unity par excellence. In the second place, at least in
his own enlightened self‐interest, Zik or any other Ibo, had to advocate national unity. Spread all over the
country, the Ibo as a group, had the greatest stake in Nigerian unity. Socially mobile and assimilative, the very
natural and very pregnant demand of the Ibo as they thrust their way all over Nigeria, was for national unity.
But Zik can be criticized validly in connection with his leadership of the N.C.N.C. In the section” Zik on
N.C.N.C.”, there are some speeches delivered at the periodic crises that seem a perennial feature of that party.
Zik, a great leader, paradoxically did not seem able to work with the more able and intelligent of his followers,
and whatever might have been the reasons, some blame must attach to Zik for their alienation.
In some of these speeches, Zik recognised that, “the leadership is confused and the followership is very much
perplexed” in the N.C.N.C, but he did not really succeed in rectifying the position. The point is that N.C.N.C. has
never outgrown its Congress origin, and therefore has failed organise properly. The party seems to operate as
an ad hoc body and in the past derived its strength from Zik’s charismatic leadership and the solidarity of
sectional groups. If one accepts this organisational failure of the N.C.N.C, then Zik must come in for blame.
Finally, while the N.C.N.C. has undoubtedly created loyalties and interests which completely transcend tribal
boundaries, as Zik claims in one of these speeches, they have to a great extent however, won support only
through associating with and in result, emphasising local rivalries and tensions.
In a short review it is not possible to examine all the varied aspects of Zik’s life and work as evidenced by these
speeches. It would be inexcusable however not mention his great contribution to the education of the
‘renascent African.’ His own personal achievement inspired many Nigerians to seek the ‘golden fleece’ in
America and elsewhere. But perhaps his most permanent achievement in this field is the University at Nsukka.
In ‘Zik on the University of Nigeria’ he postulates certain clear and progressive and very acceptable ideals for a
university in a developing country. But (and it is with some hesitation that I make this next point though it must
be made either here or elsewhere), one bane of Nigerian public life is the average politician’s belief in his own
omni‐competence. Zik is of course much less guilty of this than most, but even Zik must recognize his
limitations. University autonomy is not just an ideal, but also a necessity here in Nigeria. If these very
progressive ideas, which he has so clearly stated, are to be implemented, sufficient responsibility must be
delegated to the University authorities – the people who by training and experience are most able to apply
these or any other ideas.
Lastly, what picture of the man emerges? Mostly that of the fighting nationalist, but one who was never bitter;
a great sportsman, often intense yet without emotionalism, and yielding ground gracefully when he had to;
one who in his varied career as nationalist, politician, statesmen, journalist and banker was primarily
concerned with ‘reviving the stature of a man in Africa.’ As he says somewhere in these pages: ‘I cannot always
be right.’ But his heart was always in the right place – which is what really counts.
2. LETTER FROM UKPABI ASIKA TO JERRY BENDER
JUNE 1 1967
Dear Tammy & Jerry,
You have heard our sad, our tragic news. A great people have elected to commit themselves and others to a
path of certain horror and calamity. At this my saddest moment I seek some solace in history; and I find some
comfort in the knowledge that the future beyond need not be mortgaged. I regret, bitterly, the necessity that
makes conflict and bloody violence inevitable‐‐but I accept the fact that Nigeria must be saved from breaking
up, even at great cost. I regret, more bitterly, the present circumstances that separate me from my family, and
put me in apparent opposition to the people from whom I was born; but I will pay this price and more, for the
hope of a greater tomorrow.
Chinyere is still here with me, but I don't know for how long. Her appreciation and commitment to a Nigerian
reality is unhappily, but understandably, different from mine. Understandably, but alas tragically for me, she
does [not] wish to be cut off from her family and to be put in opposition to her people. On the other hand, I
now recognize and accept the necessity to fight, more actively, for the survival of my country and hence in
apparent opposition to my family and my Ibo kinsmen. But one cannot escape his history. The present tragedy
may, therefore, force a separation between us, though our love remains strong and I hope will long endure. I
am trying to delay the separation, if it must be, as long as it is safe to do so. More than that there is nothing I
can do. It is all so very sad and painful.
So far, in the country the forces are being mobilized but the first shot has still to be. I wish it were possible to
avoid violence, but I fear that such hope is now too late. We must do what has to be done to save the country.
In the meantime, we continue business as usual. The University is now doing its final exams ... it is excruciating
to watch the many fine Ibo students, men and women, who have stayed on because of our example wilting
under impossible pressures. But their fortitude, at this moment of our greatest tragedy, is the beacon of future
hope for man in Nigeria and Africa.
The struggle ahead is going to be nasty, long and dreary. But I hope we shall fight with honour and with
compassion in our hearts. The fine Ibo people so tragically misled by an immature, irresponsible, opportunistic
and wholly amoral leadership has in fact suffered terrible deaths and terrible privations in the past year. It is a
tragic irony that they, and all the rest of Nigeria, will have to suffer many more horrible deaths and
unspeakable horrors. Perhaps out of this cataclysm there will be a rebirth, and future generations of Nigerians
shall celebrate this moment as one in which men in Africa made new beginnings. And as they read our tragic
story it will be a permanent lesson and a warning. And they will resolve, forevermore, to establish an ordered
society in which the individual man or woman will find their fulfillment in the glory of his neighbours and the
plenitude and serenity of his community. And perhaps they will begin the reversal of the tragic course on
which men everywhere have been set, ever since man decided to lose his humanity in the pursuit of a
perverted and unbridled individualism. The Nigerian tragedy, the Sinai desert, and the running sore of Vietnam
are so many tragic footnotes to a tragic history. One can only hope and struggle that in the end Man will
overcome.
You may have gathered from the above that I have decided that my present duty is to remain and fight the
good fight. I do not underrate the risks but I am more frightened by the prospect of failure. It is therefore the
duty of those of us, a minority at best, who know the stakes to give of our best. Of course, I cannot fight
physically, but I hope my training and whatever ability I have will not be useless to the effort. It is possible that
I may come to N.Y., but I do not know as yet. If I do, we shall be talking, if not seeing.
You, my friends, and the friends of Nigeria must wish her well. It is going to be difficult. It will be painful. But I
hope that in the end we would have kept faith, with honour and integrity.
Yours sincerely,
‐ Ukpabi
3.LETTER TO GENERAL YAKUBU GOWON ACCEPTING OFFER OF APPOINTMENT AS ADMINISTRATOR OF
EAST CENTRAL STATE
15th October, 1967
His Excellency Major‐General Yakubu Gowon
Commander‐in‐Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces
Head of the Federal Military Government
State House, Lagos
Your Excellency,
May I refer to the discussion Your Excellency had with me yesterday in connection with the setting up of an interim administration for the Enugu area of the East Central State. May I, Sir, re‐affirm my willingness to serve; I do so, not merely because of a considered decision, but also because of a realization and acceptance of my obligations as a citizen of Nigeria.
For myself, I ask nothing more than the assurance, which Your Excellency has already so graciously given, that I will be granted adequate personal protection for as long as this is necessary and that for as long as I am in office that I be treated with the usual confidence, honour and regard normal to all public officials. I recognise that the work will not be easy, that success will be difficult to achieve, and that even such success may be accompanied by other tribulations. Nonetheless it is a job that has to be done. I therefore undertake to do my very best to carry out my functions with honour, loyalty, integrity, justice, compassion and unequivocal but I hope enlightened, patriotism. I hope my mission is successful; as to the rest I am confident that history will absolve me. In this light, may I say that I am appreciative of the singular honour which Your Excellency has conferred on me by inviting me to accept this responsibility.
I wish Sir, with your permission, to make a few suggestions and to raise a few questions. I do so in the context of my understanding of the assignment as not merely administrative, but also a political, (in proper usage), and a psychological aspect of the present national efforts. I begin with the suggestions:
1) To start with I would need, at least, two hard‐working, efficient and reliable secretary‐typists; and one Dictaphone.
2) As an immediate problem I would require help with a full, but fast inventory of the available administrative physical plant at Enugu, and an estimation of needed physical and personnel resources. I suggest that at least four administrative officers, preferably with training and experience in Organisation and Methods be drafted to Enugu for this work.
3) As soon as the Radio Station at Enugu is functional, an efficient, imaginative and hard‐working broadcasting officer is posted. Also a carefully selected feminine announcer and programmer who should, a) be a fluent Ibo‐speaker, and b) have a good broadcasting voice that is relaxed, soothing and confidential. (In explanation, I may note that during the Korean War, the Chinese used such a feminine announcer in their programmes beamed at the American forces, and which according to American accounts, had a devastating effect on the morale of the American forces).
4) I would need a Press Officer on whose discretion, judgement and ability I can depend. Because his duties would be critical and affect my own performance, I think I should have discretion on his choice. Perhaps there is someone suitable that would be available from Lagos; if not, I suggest that consideration be given to the idea of recalling Mr Ampim Blankson who is presently on secondment to the United Nations Secretariat.
5) As a matter of urgency the restoration of essential services – health, sanitation, water and telephone communications should start. I suggest that for these technical services the staff be recruited largely, though not exclusively, from among Nigerian citizens whose homes are not in the East Central State. With the medical personnel there will be an advantage if they are able to speak Ibo.
6) I suggest the re‐opening of the press of the former Nigerian Outlook. Technical and editorial staff should be recruited and seconded from the national dailies, to enable publication of a new, and renamed newspaper as soon as convenient.
7) That there should now be a review and re‐examination of the role of information and propaganda media, both public and private, in Lagos and elsewhere – with a view to the present stage of the war effort and with regard to the consistency of such media with the informational and propaganda effort that will emanate from Enugu. I think the need for such consistency is obvious.
8) Finally, I suggest that a senior police officer be detailed to study the internal security situation at Enugu, with a view to advising on the procedure and timing for the substitution of military patrols with a police patrol, within the city. Such a substitution should contribute to the return of normalcy.
With these few suggestions, may I now, Sir, ask a few questions? Generally the questions relate to the need for some broad, but clear directives, with regard to government policy on a few issues.
What would be the broad framework for rehabilitation of civilian citizens who return to their homes? Within the framework of rehabilitation should I work towards the re‐opening of schools in the area?
What should be the policy with regard to civil servants who may return to Enugu?
What are the broad policies with regard to political amnesty, and for what categories of persons?
I recognize that part of my responsibility would in fact be to find and suggest answers to some of these questions. But some of the issues raised by these questions are among those one would expect to manipulate in the effort to win back the loyalty and confidence of the populace. For this reason it seems necessary to have some clear, but general principles within which one could then begin to operate.
I will await your further directions and instructions.
I am, Sir
Your Excellency’s Obedient Servant,
Ukpabi A. Asika
4. Welcome Address To Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, by HE Administrator of East Central State November 1967
Last week in commenting on the message broadcast by our honoured and most distinguished returnee I drew attention to the unique stature and significance of Zik not merely for Ibos 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 as 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 is, as Spinoza tells 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. Ad because he had this transcendental awareness he was among the very first to recognise 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 Ibos or of 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 judgement of history, and this is a very iffy proposition, 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 African and one of the greatest Nigerians of this or any other age. Nationalist, 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 Military Government and on my own behalf that Nsukka will be rebuilt and will be reborn. Perhaps after the present baptismof blood and fire it would then be able to fulfil the aim of its founder as a place where the sons and daughters of the New Africa – the Renascent Africa – can study and develop as autonomous cultural individual and not as bastardized products of a colonial cultural hegemony. The tragedy of Nsukka isthe 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 lumenizing 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 Ibo 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 re‐union. 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 this 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 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 other 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 generally 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. Many 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 Ibo 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 1st President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria – The Zik of Africa and Mr Chukwuemeka Ayodele Azikiwe, a true son of his father.
5. END OF WAR BROADCAST BY THE ADMINISTRATOR FOR THE EAST CENTRAL STATE, MR UKPABI ASIKA, OVER FORMER RADIO BIAFRA AT OBODO‐UKWU, ON 16TH JANUARY, 1970 AT 8.45 PM.
Fellow Countrymen and Women,
The Civil war is ended. Yesterday, the 15th day of January, 1970, a fateful date, I watched and participated in a simple but most significant ceremony which formally brought to an end the Nigerian civil war and thereby liberated the people of this country from the immediate fears and insecurity which caused and were promoted by the violent coup d’etat of exactly four years ago. The end of the war has not come a day too soon. Enough was indeed enough.
Yesterday at the Dodan Barracks five men, courageous and wise, Lt.‐Cols. Phillip Effiong, Patrick Amadi, David Ogunewe, Patrick Agwuna and Commissioner of Police, Patrick Okeke surrendered themselves to the Head of State and the Commander‐in‐Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, Major‐General Yakubu Gowon. They also on behalf of themselves and of the people they hitherto led, misled, and commanded surrendered the idea of secession and of rebellion; proclaimed the death of the so‐called Republic of Biafra and affirmed their loyalty as citizens of Nigeria under the authority of the Federal Military Government. Graciously, without rancour and without bitterness the surrender was accepted by the Commander‐in‐Chief on behalf of a grateful, relieved and long‐ suffering country. Thus our long nightmare is over.
The final act was not unexpected. It had been anticipated in my broadcast last Sunday morning; it was indicated by the many developments earlier this week; and the statement by the Lt. Col. Philip Effiong in which he ordered rebel soldiers to lay down their arms; declared the acceptance by the secessionists of the need to preserve the unity and territorial integrity of Nigeria while stating that they are disillusioned; and in which he asked for an armistice marked by the return of sanity and peace to the beleaguered sections of our nation. It is a vindication of all we have stood for and struggled for these past thirty months of anguish and pain and sacrifice.
I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the courage and the ultimate sense of honour of Philip Effiong and those other people who were with him in making this historic statement and in accepting responsibility in the way and manner in which they have done. It could not have been easy. I also follow the most gracious and magnanimous example of the Head of State, Major‐General Yakubu Gowon, to pay tribute to the valour, the courage and the resourcefulness of our brothers and sisters hitherto in rebellion but who have now accepted to lay down their arms. I also pay tribute to my comrades‐in‐arms, to the officers and men of the Nigerian Armed Forces.
As the civilian among soldiers I hereby bear testimony to the immense integrity, great courage, magnificent gallantry and wonderful compassion of the Nigerian Armed Forces in fighting this family war. Well done. Finally, let me salute the Head of the State, Major‐General Yakubu Gowon, a great man who has through the most difficult circumstances led his nation to baptism and rebirth with honour, charity, courage and compassion, and is thus truly the Father of the Nation. As we heal the Nation’s wounds let us go on with one Nigeria.
I appeal to Philip Effiong and his colleagues to accept in good faith and with honour the magnanimous terms broadcast by our Head of State. I appeal to all Nigerians, as we savour this decisive moment in our national history, a moment of great hopes, great opportunities and great trials, to join with me in a reaffirmation of the spirit in which we have waged our struggle and that there are no victors and no vanquished. In this our finest hour let us all humbly and solemnly rededicate ourselves to service and sacrifice of the nation today reborn through the anguish and tears and blood of so many of her children. Our problems are not over. Let us continue as we have begun: to do the right thing, to seek the good for all our fellow men. Now is the moment to begin to heal the Nation’s wounds, to comfort the anguished, to succour the needy. The tasks ahead call for even greater dedication and sacrifice. There will be difficulties; there will be errors. But with the combined will of all of us, now pulling in one direction, we shall overcome.
On behalf of the Ibo people in the East Central State I take this opportunity to thank once again the many institutions, governments and persons from various countries who have genuinely tried to help in relieving a human tragedy. May your tribes increase. However, I should also warn all other agencies and governments who have hitherto used the helplessness and tragedy of my people to pursue their own goals, that their game is up. For too long the fate of my people has been abused and misused by people in elevated and protected positions. We can no longer go on in this wise.
Such assistance as our friends, our genuine friends, give to us will always be welcome. Nonetheless in the end the relief of our brothers and sisters who are in need is uniquely our own problem and one which on filial, moral and political grounds we must tackle with the greatest despatch and compassion. Even before the dramatic and decisive developments of the last 96 hours, a serious, if hopeful situation had developed with the returnee displaced population. In Aba Division alone, well over one million persons had emerged before last weekend.
The great urgent needs of these people are obvious: food, clothing, shelter, medical care and the restoration of hope. The great urgent needs for immediate physical reconstruction in order to ensure the stable welfare of the people are equally obvious: the restoration of urban water facilities, restoration of electricity, the reopening of hospital facilities, and the generation of employment and income, the rebuilding and reopening of markets. We must advance simultaneously on these two needs: the provision of relief and urgent physical reconstruction. It is obvious that on its own, my government does not have the resources adequate to meet these urgent needs. I therefore hereby call on other State governments, more fortunately placed, on our public and private institutions and corporations and on all our citizens to come forward and volunteer urgent assistance in men and resources.
I require in particular the urgent services of medical doctors, nurses, trained welfare workers, water and sanitation engineers, civil engineers, electrical, mechanical and maintenance engineers. I require urgently various items of food, clothing materials, medical drugs, beds and bedding materials, motor vehicles and the offer of facilities for the transportation of such materials to the areas of need. All offers of aid and related inquiries should be directed to the officer‐on‐special duties, Office of the Administrator for East Central State, Victoria Island, Lagos; or alternatively and directly to the East Central State Rehabilitation Commission in Enugu. The needs are urgent; great sacrifice is needed. I am confident that I will not be let down and we can show to a sceptical world that we too are brothers’ keepers.
I seize this opportunity to repeat the appeal which I made last Sunday to all civilians in the area of the former secessionist enclave to please stay calm and in their homes and houses. Excessive movement of great numbers of people will only increase the confusion and the suffering. Arrangements are already being made to return displaced people to their natal homes in an orderly manner; the details and the implementation of such arrangements will be worked out by my divisional officers on the spot.
Until the situation is fully organized and functioning normally it will be necessary for all those who can do so to listen regularly to the news and other government announcements broadcast on the network of the N.B.C. To begin I am now going to make several announcements of special importance to all civil servants but also affecting all civilians in this State. It is the policy of the Federal Military Government and of the Government of the East Central State to reinstate all civil servants and other employees of government corporations and public institutions as soon as they emerge and report for duty. All civil servants and other such employees are hereby instructed to report and register either at the State Capital, Enugu or at the Divisional Office nearest to them and which have already been reopened on my orders. All officers in the administrative and accounting staff are required to report directly and immediately at Enugu for reinstatement and redeployment. All medical doctors, nursing staff and other medical personnel are required to report immediately to the Divisional Offices, whether or not such persons have been hitherto in government service. Those doctors and other such staff who were on duty at extant hospitals and health centre’s just before the collapse of the rebellion are hereby requested to go back on duty even as they arrange to register. All Judges of the High Court of the former Eastern Region are requested to report directly to Enugu as soon as they can. But the Magistrates and their Court Registrars are required to report immediately to Enugu. All former Nigerian Police Officers and men already have their orders to report to Enugu or at the police posts already reopened. Similarly all officers and Warders of the Nigerian Prison Service are hereby ordered to report immediately to the Chief Superintendent of Prison for Enugu. However, those prisons officers who presently have criminal convicts in their charge are required to remain at their posts and communicate with their headquarters. All persons otherwise detained in prisons on whatsoever grounds, without formal charge and the due process of law, by the defunct illegal secessionist regime and who have not yet recovered their freedom are hereby ordered to be released.
All engineers and allied technicians, whether or not they were previously in government service, are required to report directly and immediately to Enugu. However the staff presently manning operative water and power stations, are required to remain at their posts. All staff of the Federal Military Government or any of its agencies are also required to register and arrangements can then be made to return them to their posts in the prescribed manner. The faculty and staff of the University of Nigeria and other universities are also required to register, but additionally the heads of the various faculties and departments, as well as the
Registrars of this University are required to report immediately to Enugu. All former under‐graduates and other university students are required to register and to be ready to return to classes immediately. The university year is still quite young and there is no reason why they cannot spend a useful session. Arrangements will be made by Government to meet their fees and other expenses.
It is intended to reopen as many primary and secondary schools as quickly as possible so that our children who have been so long denied can resume their studies. All teachers, both primary and secondary, are required to register with the nearest Divisional Office. In view of our past and recent tragic history it has been decided that the management of all schools will be brought under one authority under the Government. For the avoidance of doubt I should state that one implication of this decision is that the management of schools will no longer be left to voluntary agencies, including religious ones. I will appoint in the next few days suitably qualified persons to serve on School Boards to be established at the State and Divisional levels and which will be responsible for management and operation of all schools. In thus establishing a uniform system of secular education we seek to realize more fully the goal of religious freedom and tolerance which is enshrined as one of the fundamental rights in our Constitution and which in all civilized countries is best preserved by the separation of the Church and the State. The need to do so now is one of the obvious lessons of our tragic but revolutionary experience. Nonetheless, Government will be anxious to encourage local religious bodies to arrange for the moral and religious instruction of their young adherents.
Fellow countrymen and women, the people of the East Central State of Nigeria I speak to you today at the hour of our greatest tragedy and the hour of our greatest hope. This is our state and it is up to us to develop and to rebuild our home. We have come through a deluge and we have survived. Some of our brothers and sisters, some of our mothers and fathers have not survived. Too many have died; too many for us to begin to count, let us remember them this day of national prayer. Let us pray that they shall not have died in vain. Let us all strive to deserve their sacrifice. Though we sorrow for our dead we shall not weep. Death is an incident in the accident of life. We must therefore carry on. In doing so, those of us who are educated, the leaders and the misleaders of our people must seek to make amends and some restitution to our aged and unlettered parents whom we have ruined, abused and misused. We must therefore be realistic in our expectations and in our demands. I should warn that it is not the intention of my Government to continue the pernicious distinctions in class and status and benefits which in large measure have been responsible for our present discontents. As I have already said all civil servants and other public employees will be reinstated as soon as they make contact. It is painful, very painful, that it is not possible to rehabilitate and resettle in this same automatic manner the farmers and the traders and the onyeburus, our widows and our mothers who have endured greatest suffering during the long months of this expiring tragedy and as a result of the misgovernment of many among those who were supposed to be public servants. I hereby solemnly pledge to these poor people that henceforth their interests will be fully protected and shall be the final measure of the public good. To this end in the weeks ahead I shall be promulgating various necessary, if stringent, limitations on the privileges and benefits hitherto claimed by civil servants and other state functionaries. We must all relearn the meaning of public service. With a little luck and with the combined effort of all of us we should overcome our difficulties. The war will become a forgotten nightmare and we can quickly begin our redevelopment and resume our progress.
Finally let me address a few words to our young men and women who have been studying and working in Europe, America and other foreign lands. I know that many of you, subjected as you have been to the intense propaganda of the rebel machine in the foreign press, believed in the illusion of Biafra and thought of Emeka Ojukwu as your folk and national hero. In pursuance of these beliefs some of you have done things you ought not to have done and said things you ought not to have said. I recognize also that the sudden revelation of the emptiness and betrayal of “Biafra”, by the abject and ignominious cowardly escape of Ojukwu must prove a shattering and most mortifying experience. There is, however, no need to despair. You are young and it is the privilege of youth to make mistakes, to learn by such mistakes and to mature into wisdom. The general amnesty which has been proclaimed also covers you all.
You are still the future, if not the present leaders of your people. And our people, more than any other time in their history, require the true and dedicated leadership of their children. The circumstances at home are not happy. Too many have died; but many more have survived. Too many are hungry. Too many are broken, but many more are willing to start again, given the chance. Many of you have since qualified and now have skills which can help give our people the chance. Come home now and give them the chance to hope again and perhaps in time they may learn to forgive and forget the many crimes which our generation of educated children committed in their names, against them and against others. Please come home.
I make this my end of war broadcast, through the channels of the radio station that was hitherto used by the defunct secessionist regime. It is a fitting and a symbolic end. The Radio Station has now completed its exile; it will be dismantled and re‐assembled in Enugu forthwith, where it will resume its legal functions of information, enlightenment and entertainment, as Radio Enugu, the Broadcasting Service of the East Central State.
Fellow countrymen and women, the hour of our destiny has struck. Let us move forward boldly with heads unbowed to grapple with our fate. It is a fate filled with promise, with hope and with greatness not only for us Nigerians but for all Africans and all Black people everywhere. We have now won our right to call ourselves Nigerians, a people mighty and just and proud. Let us continue.
6. SPEECH ON THE LAUNCHING OF THE THIRD NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN 1975‐80 EAST‐
CENTRAL STATE PROGRAMME AND BUDGET 1975‐76 BY HIS EXCELLENCY
MR .UKPABI ASIKA ADMINISTRATOR – EAST‐CENTRAL STATE
Fellow Citizens,
Monday May 12, 1975
It is always a privilege, an honour and a pleasure for me to address you. This morning we are here to launch
the East‐Central State Programme of the Third National development Plan and also to announce the Budget
for this government for fiscal year 1975‐76.
For five years now since the end of the civil war we the people of the East Central State have been engaged in
the tasks of recovery from the ravages of the civil war, including reconciliation with and reintegration into the
Nigerian community. Today as we embark on the Third National Development plan, it is a fact worthy of note
and celebration that we do so in full and equal partnership with our fellow Nigerians.
To underline the magnitude of that transformation, which we are all too apt to take for granted, I shall begin
by summarizing our performance for the period 1970‐75.
Economic Sector
After resettlement, the first priority of the Government was to restore the productive capacity of the people
so as to provide a basis for self‐sustaining recovery and growth. In this we succeeded beyond expectations. In
agriculture, efforts were made both through extension services and through direct production by the
Agricultural Development Authority to increase food production. The extension services have been able to
reach well over one million farmers. They have been supplied with high yielding varieties of rice, maize and
cassava, and assisted in the reclamation of 53,000 acres of palm plantation and 5,000 acres of cocoa. The
palm kernel, graded by the Marketing Board, has now exceeded the pre‐war level and the output of cocoa is
50 percent above the pre‐war output of the Eastern States. The Veterinary and Animal Husbandry Services
have handled over seventeen million animals. Our forest resources are being conserved and developed
systematically .Over the period, nine million forest seeds have been raised and 11,700 acres of new forest
planted. The Agricultural Development Authority is now well established as a major food producing and agro‐
industrial enterprise in this country. In all, direct government expenditure in agricultural development for
1970‐75 amounted to N36.8 million – N19.7 million on recurrent and N17 million on capital account.
Within this period all the major institutions and industries established by government before the civil war
were rehabilitated, modernized and expanded. Thus Golden Guinea Breweries expanded its capacity from
50,000 hectolitres to 150,000 hectolitres; Nigersteel from less than8,000 tons to morethan30,000 tons per
annum capacity; Nigergas has replaced the old plant with an entirely new plant six times the old capacity and
even the gigantic Nigercem is expanding its capacity 50 percent. In partnership with the Rivers State
Government, and with the support of the Federal Military Government, the African Continental Bank was
refunded, refloated and reopened.
The Co‐operative Bank of Eastern Nigeria which emerged from the war bankrupt and without an operating
licence, was refloated and refunded with an initial loan and massive and dominant participation in its equity
by government. Similarly the Universal Insurance Company, totally bankrupt at the end of the war, was
enabled to meet the new and more stringent licensing regulations and funded to resume nationwide
operation.
The Aba Textile Mill, a sorry example of how not to industrialize, has had to be completely rebuilt – with the
scrapping of all the old and obsolete machinery; considerably expanded, fully integrated in its processes with
a heavy injection of new funds by the Federal Military Government and this state government. The Textile
Printers of Nigeria at Onitsha in which government had only 15 percent of the equity and debenture stock
and which had a capacity to employ about 800 persons was totally destroyed and had to be liquidated. In its
place a new company was floated; the General Cotton Mill at Onitsha, a fully integrated and most modern
textile industry with an employment capacity of 5,600 persons and with the government as the largest single
shareholder with one‐third of the equity. The Modern Ceramics Industry has now been fully reconstructed
and will be re‐commissioned any time now. The Presidential Hotel, a sad wreckage of the war was completely
reconstructed, modernized, re‐equipped and refurnished. The former Progress Hotel chain had had its
facilities variously destroyed – Enugu was almost a total wreck – many chalets had to be rebuilt, all
equipment and furniture replaced; Onitsha was totally destroyed and a brand new, modernized and
considerably expanded hotel was built and equipped. Aba, Umuahia, Abakaliki and Owerri were also variously
reconstructed – Aba considerably modernized and expanded – and all were uniformly re‐equipped and
refurnished.
The burnt out shell of the former Pepsi‐Cola Factory at Onitsha had to be pulled down and a new, modern
and expanded soft drinks plant was built. The wreckage of the Onitsha Main Market was similarly removed
and a more modern and fully integrated market with a restaurant, banking and its own water supply facilities
was designed and constructed. The Nigerian Construction and Furniture Company emerged from the war only
with its name and a few personnel. Over the past five years it has been recapitalized, considerably re‐
equipped and honed into the most successful indigenous construction company in Nigeria; additionally its
furniture factory at Enugu was rebuilt and a new wood and metal furniture factory was built at Onitsha. The
Nigerian Water and Construction Company suffered such total destruction from the war that it had to be
abandoned; a new company, the Nigerian Water and Supply Company, was floated and equipped and it is
already successfully making its mark in the field of water construction engineering. The Modern Shoe Factory
at Owerri, although it was rehabilitated and reopened, could not survive its nebulous origins and eventually
had to be liquidated. A new and more integrated Shoe Factory has now been designed; most of its equipment
and machinery are on order and will shortly be established as the Standard Shoe Factory at Owerri.
In the industrial field not only did government achieve and exceed its goal of reconstruction of all previously
existing institutions, we have also undertaken new ventures during the last Plan period. New projects include
the Oriental Lines – with its modern, luxurious fleet of over sixty buses; Eastavision Nigeria Limited – a
Television Assembly Plant (now nearing completion); the Oguta Resort Project – a 100‐bed hotel and an 18‐
hole golf course are presently under construction; the Hotel Enyimba at Aba (now under construction). The
Projects Development Agency (PRODA) which is playing a critical role in the development of a technological
infrastructure. Its garri processing factory is presently undergoing test production at the Ezillo farm of the
Agricultural Development Authority. A brick factory and a mechanized glassware plant are now being installed
by PRODA, and a number of other industrial products have already been produced for use. A modern paint
factory – Ebony Paints is practically completed and is awaiting commission. A large glass and bottle factory at
Owerri for which all designs are completed and all equipment ordered, is to be installed. A new brewery, with
about 300 hectoliters capacity has been ordered and is to be mounted at Onitsha. The Central Trading Agency
has been established; there is also the Central Investment Company which has already invested in a pre‐
stressed concrete factory for the prefabrication of water tanks, culverts and spans for bridges, has bought one
million shares in the UAC of Nigeria Limited and is set to make other investments shortly.
he government has also brought about new industries in partnership with local entrepreneurs: Palmke
Limited – a palm kernel processing plant in which government holds one‐third of the equity; the Continental
Medical Complex – a medical textile factory in which government holds 30 percent of its equity; the Nigerian
Starch Mill in Ihiala in which Government holds over 20 per ent of the equity. Through the Fund for Small‐
Scale Industries (otherwise known as FUSSI), in which Government has invested significantly, over 70 local
industrialists have obtained loans to start or expand their industries. Others, including some large‐scale
industries like the Fausson Galvanized and Corrugated Sheet Plant, which has assisted to relocate in Owerri
from Port Harcourt, have secured liberal and massive guarantees from Government for bank loans.
In sum, direct government expenditure in the Trade and Industry sector for the period was N26.3 million, of
which N5.5 million was recurrent and 20.8 million on capital. But perhaps the reality of this State’s
performance in this sector is best shown by the following table –
Table1
Industrial Establishments employing ten or more persons
Social Overhead
In the Education sub‐sector the state has seen a transformation. At the end of the war the state inherited
3,628 primary schools, 266 post‐primary with a total of 915,000 pupils in primary and 78,000 pupils in post‐
primary. Today there are 1.3 million children in our primary schools and 136,000 in post‐primary institutions.
Over 90 percent of our children of school age are now in school compared with 50 percent before the war,
and about 40 percent of primary school leavers now enter the secondary schools. Thus 106,000 primary
school pupils took the First School Leaving Certificate last year, while 100,000 sought entrance into the
secondary school system. Apart from the rationalization of schools, rehabilitation has proceeded. The
construction of New Model Schools has been commissioned. The quantity and quality of teachers have been
transformed. In 1970 there were about 28,000 teachers in the entire school system; of these 51 percent in
primary schools were well qualified (i.e., Grade II Certificate or above), 41 percent of those in secondary
schools and 76.5 percent of those in Teacher Training Colleges were also well qualified (i.e., Graduates or
NCE). In 1974 there were approximately 38,000 teachers; of these 69 percent in Primary, 60 per cent in
Secondary and 94 per cent in Teacher Training Colleges were well qualified. Performance in public
examinations is evidence of the transformation of the educational environment of the state. Government
investment in Education accounted for 39 percent of total expenditure for the period and has prepared the
state to take full advantage of the coming Universal Primary Education.
Not only have we carried through a revolution in our Public Education System – transforming its structure
with its institutions, enlarging its scope and improving its quantity and quality, we have also been active in the
fields of higher and tertiary education. It may now be difficult to remember but it is nonetheless true that it
was through a deliberate act of policy, the investment of over N1.5 million in cash and resources that out of
the debris of a battle ground that was Nsukka we recreated, reconvened and reopened the University of
Nigeria in March, 1970. Later we were to be joined in this fateful enterprise by the government of the South‐
Eastern State and the federal government. Similarly it was out of the ruins and debris of the former Enugu
General Hospital that we founded, constructed and equipped the first University Teaching Hospital in these
parts, until it was certified as acceptable by the Nigerian Medical Council and admitted its first clinical
students – students who will in a few weeks time graduate as the first medical doctors to train and qualify
here. We not only re‐established and re‐equipped the Advanced Teachers Training College at Owerri, but out
of it we have created the Alvan Ikoku College of Education, easily the premier college of education in the
country with its expanding and excellent faculty and its teeming students. Furthermore, out of a motley
collection of students and buildings that made up the Enugu College of Technology and the Institute of Public
Administration, we created the Institute of Management and Technology – an Institute that has already been
identified as a fundamental and positive departure in the questing of Africans for an indigenized technological
civilization. Additionally, in the premises of the Institute of Management and Technology is housed a complex
of computer facilities – said to be the most up to date of its kind on this continent – the Eastern Data
Processing Centre – which represents the reality of our commitment to join in the cybernetic revolution, to
realize for our society and our age the fullest benefits of this revolution.
The restoration of the physical and mental health of a people shattered, disorientated and debilitated by war
was one of the most urgent tasks of my government. Starting from the massive rehabilitation and public
health programmes of the immediate post‐war years, we have proceeded to set new standards in health care
delivery systems rationed to the demanding realities of our times. For basic health sources we have aimed at
providing a General Hospital in every Division and have now created Hospital Management Boards to ensure
that these hospitals are managed by and for the community. The Enugu Specialist Hospital, which as already
mentioned was founded and completed by my government and handed over to the University of Nigeria to
become the University Teaching Hospital, has in its brief existence proved a centre of excellence. The Haile
Selassie Institute of Orthopaedic, Ophthalmic and Plastic Surgery has been commissioned. The Queen
Elizabeth Hospital, Umuahia now taken over by mygovernment is being converted into a Specialist Hospital; a
Specialist Chest Hospital is currently under construction at Nsukka, while new specialist hospitals have been
planned for Aba, Onitsha and Abakaliki. At the level of the local community we have generously supported
the rehabilitation and re‐construction of health centres. Health care delivery in Government Hospitals grew
from 495,000 out‐ patients and 58,000 in‐patients in 1970 to 1.2 million out‐patients and 125,000 in‐patients
in 1974.
Our expenditure on Social Services for 1970‐75 was N236.8 million of which N203.5 million was on recurrent
and N33.3 million on capital account.
Environment
The rehabilitation and reconstruction of the environmental infrastructure received the close attention of the
government during the period under review. The year 1970‐71 was concerned with survey of war damage,
design and planning of reconstruction. Between 1971 and 1975, the Ministry of Works and Housing has, in
addition to the routine rehabilitation and maintenance of state roads, completed major reconstruction of 638
km of destroyed road surface and built 488 km of new roads. In the last two years of the period, a major
programme of urban road development was mounted in Enugu and Onitsha and a survey for the redesign and
reconstruction of Aba roads and drainage was commissioned. Water has been restored to our towns and
boosted to nearly four billion gallons or 500 million gallons more than the total urban water supply for the
former Eastern Region. The change in the rural areas is even more remarkable, the rehabilitated, expanded
and new rural water supply undertakings in the East‐Central State today supply 1.5 billion gallons of water or
more than four and half times the total pre‐war output in the former Eastern Nigeria. In the Environmental
sector, government spent N84 million for 1970‐75, N38.8 million on recurrent and N45.2 million on capital
account.
General Administration
Although emphasis throughout the period was on the restricting of the economic base and social
infrastructure the need to improve the machinery of government and equip it with the tools to serve the
community better was recognized and provided for. The Divisional Administration system introduced in 1971
has by identifying the Community with the Government and involving the people directly in the public service
– OLU OBODO – canalized the spirit and energies of our communities into community development. It has
been my proud privilege year after year to call the roll of honour of outstanding communities in self‐
development. In the year 1974‐75 some of the remarkable achievements of the past were again surpassed.
Whereas in 1973‐74 a total of 499 community councils undertook community projects at an estimated N11
million; in 1974‐75, 552 community councils embarked on projects with N21 million. Actual expenditure in
each year were N6.2 million and N6.8 million respectively. When we realize that even at the peak of
community effort in the pre‐war years, the total value of projects undertaken in the former Eastern Nigeria
was under N2 million, the magnitude of the transformation can be better appreciated. Highlights of
performance in the last year include a community hospital project by the Isiama Community in Ohafia (N6
million), Rural Electrification Schemes by Nkwo‐Achara, Ibeku West, Umuopara and Ubakala communities in
Umuahia Division (N92,000), the Amakokwa community Council – a 100 feet span concrete bridge at a cost of
N20,000, Amasin community water supply project N11,000; Egede Community in Udi Division – water supply
project N12,300 and Obodo Ukwu – N80,000 for a modern market.
In all, various communities worked on 5,205 kilometres of roads, 276 bridges, 204 culverts, 149 water supply
projects, fourteen hospital projects, fifty‐three health centres, forty maternity homes and 661 civic centres.
With the successful integration of customary law into our legal system, the administration of justice has
attained a measure of authenticity and maturity. The Judiciary has been considerably enlarged, its facilities
reconstructed and expanded to cope with the challenges. With the commissioning last October of an
improved and wholly new two‐channel television network in the state, government facilities for information
and public enlightenment have been fully restored and enhanced. The Ministry of Information has been re‐
organised into a Ministry of Information, Culture and Youth and is building up the capability to direct,
organize and encourage our cultural awareness, and to provide for the welfare and rounded development of
our youth. A beginning was also made in the provision of adequate office space and equipment for public
servants. Total public expenditure on General Administration was N93.5 million of which N81.4 million was on
recurrent and N12.1 million on Capital account.
In the 1974‐75 financial year, which rounded off the post‐war era, our objectives were to consolidate the
work of reconstruction, further rationalize and stabilize the structure and organization of the services and
prepare the ground for timely and expeditious start‐up on the Third National Development Plan programmes.
The year marked the peak of performance in every sector of the public programme, recording 52 percent of
the performance on capital projects for the entire period 1970‐75 and bringing the total capital expenditure
to N128.6 million or 23 per cent above the original target of N104.6 million. The targets of the reconstruction
period have thus been largely met and in several sectors exceeded. Projects in hand have been reassessed
and integrated into the new forward‐ looking programme of the Third National Development Plan. The
present budget marks the beginning of the new Plan for the state. Its provisions have been determined by the
scope, size and challenges of that bold and imaginative programme mediated by the constraints imposed by
national policy and the mechanics of plan implementation, by the inevitable limitations of our resources
relative to our ambitions, as well as by the insights derived from the planning and operating experience in the
past plan period. I am confident that if everyone concerned plays his part well we shall not only fulfill our
programme but transform the environment and the quality of life in the East Central State.
Outline of 1975‐80 Development Plan
Our 1975‐80 Development Plan envisages a total capital expenditure of N724.1 million. I here and now do not
intend to give you the details of all the projects to be executed during this period. These can be found in our
published Plan document. But I will attempt a review of the sectoral allocations and give a few project
highlights of our Plan. The sectoral allocations of the Plan are as follows –
TableII
SectoralAllocations,1975‐80DevelopmentPlan
Transport and Communication
75,226,160 10.389
Commercial andFinancial Institutions
25,700,000 3.549
he Regional Development sector, which encompasses Water Supply, Sewerage and Drainage, Housing, Town
and Country Planning and Co‐operatives and Community Development as Sub‐sectors, receives the largest
allocation of N197.6 million. This is because of government’s intention to bring the benefits of development
to both town and countryside and for reasons which I will explain briefly.
With the civil war, East Central State, already the most densely populated region in the country outside
Metropolitan Lagos, is now experiencing one of the highest urbanization rates exceeded, if at all, only by that
of the City of Lagos. This rapid rate of urbanization puts severe pressures on what remains of our
infrastructural facilities.
At the same time and quite aside from our three major towns – Enugu, Onitsha and Aba – there has emerged
the phenomenon of new growth centre’s, such as Owerri, Nsukka, Abakaliki, Umuahia, Oguta, Afikpo, Abiriba,
Amawbia‐Awka, Arochukwu, Nnewi, Nkwerre, Orlu and Okigwe all over the State which are also absorbing
the rapid increment in population. In consequence, local diversification has intensified and the hitherto
islandic pattern of economic activities is no longer valid.
Although the rural urban migration continues and will continue, the new growth centres and rural areas have
been absorbing the rapid population increase. This absorption defines the growth centre’s as cities of the
future and renders invalid any strict demarcation town and country. An important aspect of this structural
shift is that both the urban and rural areas now have similar expectations and demand and require the same
amenities.
In consequence, these dramatic changes in the regional system have firstly, put tremendous, unexpected
pressures on the environmental facilities of the urban and growth centres, which facilities, as already noted,
were essentially deleted by the war; secondly, defined new demand pressures and requirements for
environmental facilities in what are usually considered rural areas.
Furthermore, the structural shifts or disequilibria within the economy have been accompanied by price‐
inflation and a widening of rural‐urban income gap. It is, therefore, the task of public policy to narrow this
gap. This consideration dictates balanced regional development in the programming of economic activities,
the location of housing and social amenities. For Water Supply, we have made a total plan allocation of N58.5
million. The highlights of this programme are as follows: New Rural Water Supply Schemes for various
districts N23.8 million; uncompleted Rural Water Supply Schemes N10.6 million; Improvement to Existing
Rural Water Supply Schemes N7.5 million and Reconstruction of Urban Water Supply Schemes in ten towns
N15 million. This programme should serve to better provide our rural and urban communities with water and
it is envisaged that every community council area will have pipe‐borne water.
In this connection, may I appeal to you all to appreciate the fact that it is not efficient for each and every
community to wish to have its own waterworks. It is more efficient for communities to share waterworks and
save themselves and government wasteful expenditures. I appeal to you to co‐operate with government in
ensuring that this programme is efficiently executed. To this end, a study and design of the best way of
meeting the needs of every community has been commissioned. Already the State Water Board has signed a
major contract for the construction of 200 new bore‐holes throughout the state and actual work has just
begun. The capacities of the state‐owned Nigeria Water Construction and Supply Company Limited have been
considerably built‐up to enable it play a full part in the total effort. A new concrete industry has been formed
– the factory equipment has already been ordered – for the prefabrication of pre‐cast concrete water tanks of
up to and including one million‐gallon capacity, among other things. In the formulation and prosecution of
our policy we believe that water supply is not an amenity but a necessity of every human community and that
it is a primary responsibility of government to provide it. However in thus stating the firm policy and
commitment of government, it is not the intention to discourage or reject the well‐known efforts of our
communities in this regard. On the contrary such efforts continue to be needed to ensure the expeditious
completion of our programme. All those communities which have contributed various funds already and all
those in the process of doing so should, at the first opportunity, pay over the amounts so collected to the
State Water Board. Such payment will be fully accounted for and will go towards meeting the costs and
charges of distribution within a community – the laying of pipelines and the erection of taps – from the
central State grid which the State Water Board undertakes to bring proximately to every community.
In the Town and Country Planning sub‐sectors, we have made a provision of N73.7 million. The major
activities in this sub‐sector will be the township roads, urban renewal and development, housing sewerage
and drainage. For the continuation of the reconstruction of our urban roads in 16 towns we have made a
provision of N49.3 million and much of this expenditure will be incurred in the first two years of the Plan. At
the same time, it is clear that we cannot reconstruct the urban roads and bridges as they are. New designs
and realignment will have to be made and integrated with drainage systems to take account of the changed
conditions and heavier traffic patterns and also to look to the future. It is in this sub‐sector that we have
made a provision for a project for the production of detailed regional studies for the entire state and
detailed Master Plans for 16 towns. The contract for this project has already been signed. For sewerage and
drainage, we have made a provision of N28 million. In the Housing sub‐sector, we have made a provision of
N20.5 million, the key projects in this sector being construction of new housing units ‐ N15 million; and the
establishment of a mortgage bank ‐ N5 million. It is hoped that the mortgage bank will facilitate the
liberalization of credit to speed up the development of housing. Additionally, government will encourage the
formation of municipal and co‐operative building societies. The Government Staff Housing Scheme, which
was in existence before the war, is being revived and the existing building materials industry will be expanded
and modernized to meet the demand of the housing problem.
In Co‐operatives and Community Development sector there is an allocation of N16.9 million. The key projects
in this sub‐sector are loans and grants to local authorities for rural development projects ‐ N8 million; grants
to co‐operative societies for the processing and marketing of agricultural products ‐ N3.5 million. I feel certain
that you will all share government’s appreciation of the importance of the efforts in the Regional
Development sector. In order to direct and vigorously execute some of these new programmes, government
has decided to set up a new Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.
or Primary Production, comprising Agriculture, Forestry, Livestock, Veterinary and Fisheries, we have made a
total Plan allocation of N116.9 million representing 16.1 per cent of the total Plan period expenditure. Having
regard to the opportunities and constraints that exist in this field, government will strive even more
vigorously than hitherto to promote our agricultural transformation. The direct production activities of the
Agricultural Development Authority (ADA) will be expanded and intensified, as will also the various extension
services of the Ministry of Agriculture. It is envisaged that by the end of the Plan period, the ADA should have
developed about 12,240 hectares of land for maize and cassava cultivation and 15,000 hectares for rice
cultivation. In addition, the ADA is expected to plant a total of 30,000 hectares of oil palm during this period.
Agricultural extension programmes include food and crop extension schemes, fertilizer distribution involving
21,000 tons of fertilizer, as well as World‐Bank‐supported oil palm rehabilitation and rice irrigation schemes
which aim at developing over 12,000 hectares of oil palm and 5,600 hectares of rice for small‐holders. For
crops, there is a Plan allocation of N94.9 million, covering food‐crop development (N35.2 million); tree crop
development (N40.1 million); and supporting services (N18.2 million).
There will also be increased production and improvement in the quality of livestock feed, using more of local
materials. A total allocation of N15.2 million has been earmarked for livestock development including
ancillary services.
The policies and programmes for the Forestry sub‐sector aim broadly at forest development in order to meet
the domestic demand for forest products by the construction industries and the proposed pulp and paper,
and particle board industries. A total allocation of N5.4 million has been made to this sub‐sector and it is
hoped that this, together with federal government financial encouragement, will serve to increase the area of
forest reserves to meet present and future demands for forest resources.
For Fisheries, there is an allocation of N1.4 million which should aid fishery development mainly through
investigations and extension services to the private sector.
Government has decided to reunify the present two Ministries of Agriculture under one command, but in a
reconstructed and rationalized Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Government fully expects that
with adequate support to the new Ministry, as proposed in the Plan, the new Ministry will more efficiently
discharge its functions to the society.
As regards Roads, the Federal Military Government has taken over responsibility for 1,240 kilometres of trunk
B roads in the state which will be reconstructed and modernized during the Plan period. The state
government is thus left with responsibility for the balance of the trunk B roads and for the trunk C roads
which we intend to upgrade into more permanent roadways. Our programme also includes the
reconstruction of bridges, purchase of plant and equipment and the organization of a transport survey.
According to the programme, which involves reconstruction and modernization of 1,660 kilometres of roads,
a network of all season roads will be spread far and deep into every community.
Reconstruction and construction of new roads will be conducted in light of the new economic conditions,
which therefore imply realignment and modernization where necessary. The total allocation for our road
programme is N73.2 million and this is quite apart from our programme for urban roads and bridges which I
have already mentioned in the Regional Development Sector.
For the Industrial sector, we have made an allocation of N69.3 million to cover mostly government equity
contribution in the various projects. I should say here that, as a starting point for including projects in the
Plan, an industrial survey of the state was undertaken with the aim of identifying the investment
opportunities and the resources, special attention being paid to inter‐industry relations and market
opportunities. In identifying industrial projects, priority was given to activities with effective linkage potential,
viable local resource base and high employment opportunities. It is estimated that our present industrial
programmes will generate no less than 8,122 direct employment opportunities and N10.1 million annually in
wages and salaries.
I cannot, of course, mention every one of our many industrial packages. I will only highlight a few of the
largest and the most significant ones: as already mentioned, participation in the Pulp and Paper plant to be
largely financed by the federal government; a new cement factory; a nitrogenous fertilizer plant with annual
capacity of 500,000 metric tons; a large‐scale petro‐chemical industry – Polyester and Filament Plant – with a
capacity of forty metric tons daily.
One project which is particularly vital to our future industrial development is an Integrated Complex for
Metallurgical, Machine Tools, Precision Tools and related Industries. This Complex will elaborate and adapt
foreign technology and establish foundries and forge plants, produce various machine tools and forming
machines, diesel engines, automobile engines, fittings, water pumps and various spare parts. The allocation
for this project is N16.1 million. The implementation has already started. We conceive of this project as the
essential basis for the cumulative and transformative industrialization of this society. In the current Plan, N5.2
million will be spent to continue the good work in the establishment of Industrial Estates at Onitsha, Aba,
Umuahia, Enugu, Owerri, Abakaliki and Oji River.
The existing Loan Schemes for Small‐Scale Industries (Fund for Small‐Scale Industries – FUSSI) will be
strengthened by the provision of N5 million in the current Plan period.
A Rural Electrification Board has been established and an allocation of N10 million has been made for Rural
Electrification.
In the Commerce and Finance sector the Plan, makes a total provision of N25.7 million for new and
intensified activities. The most important projects here are: firstly, continuation of the Hotels Development
programme at Enugu, Onitsha and Aba for which there is a provision of N11 million; secondly, the redirection
and improvement of the Phoenix Hotels with an allocation of N1 million; thirdly, the strengthening and
redirection of the Central Trading Agency for which there is an allocation N2 million; fourthly, the
development of the recently established Central Investment Company with a provision of N4 million, which is
expected to play a leading role in our investment activities; the continuation and expansion of the Oguta Lake
Resort Project for which there is a provision of N2 million.
Education remains our most important investment in the widest sense of the word. Even with the federal
government taking over responsibility for capital expenditure in respect of primary schools beginning this
fiscal year, our planned expenditure of N88.3 million in this sector represents a sizeable 12.2 per cent of the
total Plan allocation. The major programmes in this sector include the modernization and equipment of high
schools, under which we expect to expand 199 existing secondary schools, and to construct 151 new ones in
order to provide 12,636 class‐rooms out of a total allocation of N40 million. As regards technical and
technological education, it is proposed that technical schools and trade centres be modernized at an
estimated cost of N3.5 million and that the Institute of Management and Technology expand and intensify its
programmes for the production of medium‐level techno‐managerial manpower at an estimated total cost of
N20 million. Correspondingly, the Alvan Ikoku College of Education will be expanded with an allocation of N10
million in order to produce the necessary teachers and teacher educators.
For student financing in respect of various scholarship programmes, there is a provision of N10 million, and it
is hoped that through this effort the production of all cadres of skilled labour required in our industrialization
effort shall be met.
An allocation of N62.6 million has been made to the Health sector. Nineteen 200‐bed Divisional General
Hospitals will be built and equipped at a cost of N15 million. This programme will ensure that by 1980, every
Administrative Division in this State will have at least one hospital. In addition to this, government will
modernize and re‐equip all existing hospitals at a cost of N2 million. Furthermore, five 250‐bed specialist
hospitals will be constructed during this Plan period at an estimated cost of N10 million, while the Haile
Selassie Institute of Orthopaedic, Ophthalmic and Plastic Surgery will be further developed and more fully
equipped at a cost of N3.1 million. Three specialist 120‐bed psychiatric hospitals to be located at Enugu, Aba
and Onitsha will be constructed during the Plan period at an estimated cost of N6.6 million. A Basic Health
Services Programme – a bold and innovative programme of health care delivery – will be provided during this
Plan period at an estimated cost of N14.3 million. This programme will, among other things, provide health
centres and mobile clinics, to ensure that the benefits of improved health facilities come within the reach of
all in the rural areas.
A provision of N19.8 million has been made for Information Services during this Plan period. For the
development of arts and culture, a Cultural Complex will be built in Enugu from a provision of N7 million;
whilst the East‐Central State Arts Council will intensify cultural activities in the 39 Administrative Divisions of
the State from a provision of N2.4 million. Other highlights in this sector include a State Public Library in
Enugu; a modern Sports Stadium in Enugu, and a two‐way microwave link system for the ECBS (TV) to link Aba
to Enugu.
An important project in the Welfare sector relates to the continuing resettlement of the physically disabled.
As you all know, this has been a matter of great concern to government. It is a matter of both economics and
equity that we provide a permanent and responsible solution to the problem of the physically disabled in our
midst. A critical beginning was made in this regard during the last Plan period. This effort will be strengthened
by the construction of a vocational centre for the training of the disabled in such fields as bakery, carpentry
and such other activities from the provision of N1 million. This is quite apart from the Federal Military
Government’s programme in this regard from which this state will benefit.
In order to complete the modernization of public buildings in general and to provide much needed official
accommodation, the sum of N26 million has been allocated in this Plan for this project out of N36 million in
the General Administration Sector. The major project in this sub‐sector involves the renovation of the
Parliament building, the continuation of the New Secretariat Development Programme in Enugu, and the
construction of Divisional Secretariats and Sub‐Treasuries in the Divisions. An allocation of N11 million has
been earmarked for this project. Other projects in this sub‐sector include the construction of 39 Magistrate
Courts, nine High Courts and the provision of residential accommodation for members of the Judiciary. In
order to help ease the housing problem, an allocation of N4 million has been made to provide senior and
junior staff quarters in the urban and rural areas, particularly in the rural areas where the housing problem is
most acute.
The Federal Military Government has provided grants for Small‐Scale Industries Credit Fund, Secondary
Education, Model Industrial Estates, Advanced Teachers’ Training Colleges, and Shopping Centres which are
extra‐Plan projects. The total expectation for 1975‐80 is N67.6 million. These are designed to enable state
governments to implement projects which are additional to the programmes already approved in the Plan.
The extent of our implementation of these projects depends on our executive capacity to take full advantage
of the generous provisions made by the Federal Military Government.
The State Plan takes account of the fact that the activities of the public sector constitute only a small
insignificant proportion of the activities of the whole economy and that if the Plan is to succeed the private
sector must be fully involved. Several instruments will be used to attain this objective and I should like to
mention a few here. First, government will, wherever possible, co‐venture with the private sector. This way,
the enterprise, energies and experience of the private sector will be harnessed. In this connection, it will no
longer be a necessary aspect of government policy to maintain majority equity in industrial activities. Second,
government will more intensively consult with the private sector, for example, through the various Chambers
of Commerce and Industry and with local co‐operative societies to make available various services where it
has an advantage over the private sector. In this connection, the Ministry of Industries and the Institute of
Management and Technology will organize regular seminars to educate businessmen and provide a forum for
the exchange of views on new technologies and management methods. Likewise, the Projects Development
Agency, the Ministry of Industries and the Ministry of Economic Development and Reconstruction will assist
the private sector through the provision of consultancy services. Third, government will increase financial
assistance by way of loans to the private sector through the Fund for Small‐Scale Industries which I have
already noted and the Supervised Agricultural Credit Scheme. Fourth, government will encourage the co‐
operative spirit by directing its assistance to co‐operative bodies, partnerships and limited liability companies,
rather than to individuals. Here, the Ministry of Co‐operatives and the Mortgage Bank are expected to play
leading roles through loans to co‐operative societies. The institution of Industrial and Commercial Layouts in
the State will primarily benefit the private sector.
Financing the Plan
Because of the large size of the Plan, it is natural to ask how the Plan will be financed. Given the new revenue
allocation formula and financial prudence, internal resources are expected to finance about 72.90 per cent of
the total Plan, mainly because of increased Statutory Allocations from the Federal Military Government. The
other sources for financing the Plan, namely internal grants, domestic borrowing and external loans are
expected to contribute respectively 12.75 per cent, 11.05 per cent and 3.30 per cent. Federal grants are
expected to be the sole source of internal grants. These grants are for projects in selected sectors of the
economy which the Federal Military Government intends to support either because they are lagging behind
the rest of the economy or because the Federal Military Government wishes to place a greater priority on
them. The majority of these grants are given on a 50 percent matching basis. Out of a total of N92.3 million
expected during the Plan period as internal grants from the Federal Military Government, N67.4 million or
some 73.05percent will be for the Regional Development sector for Water Supply, Urban Road Development
and Sewerage. Also significant are the grants in respect of Post‐Secondary Technical Education, N10 million;
grants to Psychiatric Hospitals, N3 million and Fertilizer Promotion N4.83 million.
Domestic borrowing is expected to come mainly from public sector financial institutions, such as the Nigerian
Industrial Development Bank, the Nigerian Agricultural Bank, the Nigerian Bank of Commerce and Industry
and the Federal Mortgage Bank. Of course, efforts will be intensified to utilize regular commercial bank credit
facilities. The main point I wish to stress is that Plan projects in the primary production and manufacturing
sectors are expected to be financed largely from these national financial institutions. External aid is expected
to be a source of loans for Agricultural and Educational projects. The estimated total receipts for 1975‐80
expected from these international lending agencies is N23.9 million.
Plan Implementation
Most development plans have been marked by a wide gap between hopes engendered and actual
performance. It is a worthless exercise if so much effort is put into the preparation of the plan only to
disappoint the hopes of the people by poor implementation. Doubtless, failure in implementation is often
attributed to lack of discipline, ill‐conception of projects, poor plan supervision, inadequate executive
capacity and bureaucratic delays. It is the intention of my government that this Plan be effectively
implemented and measures have been taken to ensure that these obstacles do not impede the successful
implementation of the Plan. Some of these measures have been enumerated in the Head of State’s launching
address and they apply to this Programme. To this end, Plan discipline will be rigorously enforced. The Plan
document lays down specific guideline for deviations from the Plan and unauthorized variations will be
penalized.
To improve project appraisal and monitoring, the Planning Ministry is being strengthened and planning units
are being established in all the Ministries where they do not exist and strengthened in those Ministries where
they exist. As regards bureaucratic controls, which perhaps constitute the greatest obstacle to successful Plan
implementation, my government, in consideration of the size and complexity of the current plan, has found it
necessary to meet the problem squarely by decentralizing the implementation of the Plan. The details of the
decentralization procedure are fully spelled out in the Plan document. Here, I will only just mention that my
government will establish Divisional Committees with some responsibility for the execution and supervision
of projects at the divisional and community council levels. These Divisional Development Communities will
involve members of the communities including members of the Otu Olu Obodo. Ministries are also being
reorganized so that the officers at the divisional level will have varying levels of financial authority. As regards
tenders, the procedures have been revamped so that officials from the divisional officer level to the
Permanent Secretary level have increased and varying levels of financial authority. The decentralization
procedures will fully involve citizens at the local level including even the town and development unions, and
various committed and patriotic “sons of the soil” of ability and integrity. Let me stress that the main
motivation of my government in instituting these decentralization procedures is to more actively involve the
total population in the execution of our Plan and the modernization of our society.
THE BUDGET
For the year 1975‐76, my Government is providing for estimated receipts of N331.1 million against estimated
expenditure of N335.9 million. On the recurrent account, there are estimated revenues of N219 million and
expenditures of N201.3 million making for a budget recurrent surplus of N17.7 million of which N17 million
will be transferred to the Capital Development Fund. On Capital Account, other receipts of N112.1 million are
expected while N154.6 million has been appropriated, a budgeted capital deficit of N25.5 million. This budget
really marks a new level of operations, a level made possible by the improved economic circumstances of the
country as a whole, and the new system of revenue allocation introduced by the Federal Military
Government.
The size of the programme we can execute during the present Plan period will depend largely on the amount
of internal revenue surplus we are able to generate during each financial year. This means that in spite of the
improved financial position we have an obligation to control the size of our recurrent expenditure in order to
find the surplus necessary for our development programmes. For this reason we have, as far as possible,
restricted our increases in recurrent expenditure to those items necessary to provide the essential tools for
work during the year; but as far as possible, we have endeavoured to ensure that all sections of the East
Central State benefit from the provisions of the plan. In the phasing and programming of the capital projects,
we have also borne in mind the necessity to give preference to projects which mature early enough to
reimburse us with the essential funds to carry on. Emphasis is also given to projects which can attract external
funds from the Federal Government, local financial institutions or external agencies. We hope, particularly,
that during the period we would avail ourselves of the opportunities for financing many of the projects from
local financial institutions. Now more details.
Revenue
here has been a dramatic increase in the State’s Recurrent Revenue expectations from the N99 million
recorded in the 1974‐75 Estimates to N219 million in this Budget, but the large increases derive almost
entirely from the large contributions from federal sources which, including reimbursements, now account for
76 percent of the total. Internal revenue sources are expected to contribute N58.8 million including federal
imbursements in respect of Teacher Training Institutions. In view of the relatively small collection in revenue
from internal sources my government has been exploring ways of improving the efficiency of our revenue
collection machinery and in the course of the last financial year we were able to examine recommendations
of an expert committee on the reorganization of the Board of Internal Revenue. The recommendations of the
Committee headed by Professor Adedotun Phillips are being immediately implemented and it is hoped that
this will assist in realizing the internal revenue expectations of the State indicated in the current estimates. I
would like here, on behalf of the Government and the people, to thank Dr. Phillips and members of his
Committee for a job well done. With the introduction of Uniform Income Taxes throughout the country, it has
become necessary for us to review the existing level of other taxes in order to ensure that the spirit of the
Income Tax Management Decree is respected, and the tax burden lightened for every citizen. With immediate
effect therefore, the Capitation rates presently imposed by various urban and community councils in their
areas of authority are hereby abolished.
In their place, the existing Development Rate is hereby modified by the substitution of the following Schedule
–
The problem of inadequate revenue in the various community councils, divisional and urban councils has
been of great concern to us and it is therefore proposed to pass over in their entirety the whole proceeds of
the Development Rate less the attributed cost of collection, for development purposes to the community,
Urban and Divisional Councils. This, we hope, will ensure a sound fiscal base for their operations.
For capital projects, the main sources of receipts for this financial year are federal matching grants and
domestic borrowing.
Expenditure
The expenditure programme for 1975‐76 is tied largely to the needs of development. On the recurrent side,
the large increases in personal emoluments following the Udoji awards account for a high proportion of the
increased vote. The “Udoji” salary increases account for N50 million increase in the provision for personal
emoluments. However, the personal emoluments element in the 1975‐76 estimates is 64 percent compared
to 65.9 percent last year, emphasis having shifted somewhat to the tools of growth. However, the effort to
restructure the public service and provide tools for work has continued. There is therefore a provision for
properly staffed specialized new units in some key Ministries. As noted a Ministry of Housing and Urban
Affairs is being created. The two Ministries of Agricultural Extension and Agricultural Production and Animal
Husbandry are being merged into a Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources. A number of Ministries –
Economic Development and Reconstruction; Finance; Education; Information, Culture and Youth have been
considerably expanded on account of enlarged specialist service units. The process of decision‐making and
programme control are, as we have noted, being decentralized so that schedule officers can take greater
responsibility for their performance. For it is only with the exercise of initiative and drive that the ambitious
programme we are embarking on can be accomplished. This process of decentralization is being carried
further to the community level/ under the new Hospital Management Board system being introduced,
communities are to be involved in the management of State Hospitals at the Divisional level.
The total estimated Capital Expenditure for the year 1975‐76 is N154.6 million. The percentage shares of the
various sectors in the total appropriation for the year are shown in Table III.
= Total Plan Allocation 1975‐76
Percent Appropriation1975‐76 Percent
Manufacturing and Crafts 69,271,380 9.57 14,473,270 9.36
Land Transport –Roads and Bridges
73,196,160 10.11 14,498,070 9.38
Social Welfare and Sports 22,592,000 3.12 2,974,000 1.92
Town and Country Planning 73,706,000 10.18 19,303,010 12.49
Co‐operatives and Community Development
16,900,000 2.33 3,260,010 2.11
The variations of these percentages from the overall 1975‐80 percentage shares of these sectors in total Plan
allocation is explained partly by the need to ensure maximum utilization of capital receipts expectations that
have greater probability of realization, and partly by the observed stage of preparation of the various projects
in the various sectors. For example, projects with feasibility studies completed and accepted are given
preference in appropriation to those without studies or with only pre‐0feasibility studies. Also, projects which
provide backward linkages to other projects and which must necessarily be in a prior order of sequence, have
appropriation in the 1975‐76 fiscal year.
In order to streamline and facilitate plan implementation, it is intended this financial year to revert to the
normal practice of issuing a general warrant releasing the capital vote as soon as the appropriation is made.
This will put the responsibility squarely on the executing Ministries to programme their operations.
The appropriation for Livestock and Veterinary, Forestry and Fisheries sectors are N3.3 million, N1.9 million
and N0.25 million respectively. Because of the crucial position of livestock projects in the economy (as far as
food and animal protein production are concerned), and forestry products, (as far as inputs for forest
products in industries are concerned), reasonably substantial allocations have been made to all the projects in
these sectors.
In the Industry sector, an appropriation of N14.5 million is made. The appropriations for the various projects
represent in most cases the equity contribution of government to the industries. Feasibility studies have been
completed and accepted for some projects in this sector, whilst others are either being studied, or studies are
in the process of being commissioned. Substantial appropriations have therefore been made for those
projects that have been studied and accepted, and for which contracts have been entered into with foreign
partners and/or private entrepreneurs. In the Commerce and Finance sector, an appropriation of N6.2 million
is made.
In the Transport sector, an appropriation of N15 million is made. It is expected that the appropriations will
allow most of the roads to experience some construction activity whilst the others will have their preliminary
studies and designs completed and ready for construction activity in the next fiscal year.
In the Education sector, an appropriation of N21.4 million is made. Substantial allocations are made to all
projects attracting federal grants and the IDA loans. Two projects in this sector, High Schools Modernization
and Equipment and the Alvan Ikoku College of Education are expected to benefit substantially from Federal
grants designed to increase the programme already approved in the Plan for the State.
In the Health sector, an appropriation of N11.9 million is made. The projects attracting Federal grants have
substantial appropriations made to them whilst others which provided basic and essential health services are
also substantially provided for.
The appropriations for the Information and Social Welfare sectors are N4.4 million and N3 million
respectively.
Substantial federal grants are expected in the Regional Development sector, which contains the Water
Supply, Sewerage and Drainage, Housing, Town and Country Planning, Co‐operatives and Community
Development subsectors. In the 1975‐80 Plan period, federal grants expected for all sub‐sectors within the
Regional Development sector amount to 73 percent of total federal grants. It is therefore understandable that
projects within these sub‐sectors which are expected to attract federal grants are given substantial
appropriations in 1975‐76. This explains the relatively high total allocation of N43.5 million made to all sub‐
sectors in the Regional Development sector. This represents 28.9 percent of the total appropriation for 1975‐
76.
In the General Administration sector, an appropriation of N8.4 million is made. Substantial allocations are
made to those projects which are subsequent phases of continuing projects in order to provide the basic and
essential infrastructure for effective administration and management during and after the Plan period.
Examples are the projects for public buildings. Here, as in other sectors, the allocations for Staff Housing Loan
Scheme, Ministry of Justice/Judiciary Reference Library, Materials Testing Laboratory and Workshops, Yards
and Stores, either have reserved allocations or token provision to enable the implementing agencies come up
with well documented implementation schedules.
In the Energy and Power sector a reserved appropriation of N1 million is made for the Rural Electrification
Board. The Federal Military Government has agreed to lend to such states as may require it, sufficient funds
to meet their expenditure on primary education. My government is relying on this loan to release N58.1
million from the recurrent account in order to reduce the gaping deficit in our capital budget and bring the
effective capital programme nearer to the budgeted target.
Fellow citizens, the next five years are years of unprecedented and singular opportunities; unprecedented
because never before in our history has such a magnitude of resources been made available and furthermore
from our own resources to execute our Plan. Singular, because the opportunity for the transformation of our
socio‐economic conditions from a semi‐primitive to a modern state is truly in our hands. The programmes
which we have outlined today are the recipe for the revolution – if we can make it.
Let me stress that we alone stand between our resources and commendable achievement. Only our
preparedness or otherwise to meet the challenges of the future, our total commitment or otherwise to the
efforts directed at the accomplishment of our Plan, our ability or inability to rise to the demands of a modern
work‐ethic stand between our possibilities and their realization. Financial resources on their own do not
guarantee efficient services. Resources are only meaningful when they are deliberately and efficiently applied
to desired objectives. And it is the character of the actor and the action that ensure success or failure.
It is in recognition of the foregoing that my government decided to institute the structural and organizational
changes which we hope will provide our workers and our people with maximum opportunities to commit and
apply themselves to the execution of our Plan. We have every confidence that the people would verify our
faith in them. Already the women in Otu Olu Obodo have shown the way. It is fateful that the women, our
mothersand our wives have carried the torch. A little spark can light the forest fire.
Let me appeal to everyone, man or woman, in the public or private sector to realize that the fulfillment of the
present Plan means a radical change in our level and quality of existence. Plan fulfillment will mean wide and
smooth highways throughout the length and breadth of this state; it will mean enough water for everyone; it
will mean the spread of electric power to our villages; food in every household, improved medical care for
everyone, and education for all. It will, in short, mean a great and beneficent change in our tone of life. Most
important, it will mean a stronger and safer foundation for the future.
Let us, then, everyone, do our very best to seize the tide. Let us all pull together. As our people say “When
grasshoppers strike in unison they can break a pot.”
Fellow citizens, I thank you all.
7. LETTER FROM UKPABI ASIKA TO THE DAILY TIMES NEWSPAPER‐ OCTOBER 10 1978
People’s Parliament column: “Ukpabi Asika fires back”
It has not been my habit, nor is it my style to issue disclaimers to the many and frequent Press reports about
me. For one thing, such issues as have been raised, are best left to history‐ that is to our constantly improving
knowledge, understanding and judgment about men and events. On the other hand I had always known that
success in the unique, critical, but complex role I have had to play in our history, would not be easy to evaluate.
In a report (Daily Times, September 30), which had been advertised as a major reportorial scoop, your FEMI
OGUNSANWO, in full and blazing exercise of his rights, stated that “UKPABI ASIKA is a would‐be candidate in
the 1979 stakes, for the office of Governor, Anambra State”. This was the first time, I had come across the
suggestion. The idea had never occurred to me, even while dreaming. But just in case anyone begins to get
funny ideas, as a result of your publications. Let me state quite firmly that I am not a candidate‐ I have no wish
to become a candidate; I have no plans to become a candidate, and even if I am drafted by any group or
groups, I will not accept to be a candidate for the office of Governor Anambra State in 1979 elections.
I hope that covers it. If there is a more categorical way of making this disclaimer, please consider it as read. But
I am genuinely curious as to what could be the source of this story. I am aware of course, that Ukpabi Asika
makes excellent copy for the Press. (Regretfully I don’t own any shares in the Times Group, I could at least have
profited from the profligate use of my name! But there ought to be some consistency about some of these
stories. Surely Mr. Editor, doesn’t it seem rather improbable, that Ukpabi Asika‐ the “arrogant intellectual”
who governed, actually, ruled would be more accurate, since by the enabling law, all the legislative powers and
functions and all the executive powers and functions, of the Governor, the House of Assembly, the House of
Chiefs, the Regional Premier, the Regional Cabinet, and all of the Ministers as applicable to the former Eastern
Region, were combined and absolutely vested in the Administrator of the East Central State) as “his personal
empire” should now seek to return as Governor of Anambra State. Even an “arrogant intellectual” should know
that “no condition is permanent”‐ for one thing the powers of a governor in the second republic that is yet to
be born, are relatively much more circumscribed and Anambra State is less than, half of his erstwhile “Empire”
! Perish the thought!
To repeat, I am not and will not become a candidate for the office of Governor, Anambra State in the 1979
elections. Your story is a lie, an untruth. A pure, but dastardly unimaginative fiction. However in passing tribute
to the many successors I have had at Enugu and then at Owerri, ‐ some of them I am afraid, appear to have
been consigned to the indignity of a historical footnote’ (the phrase is probably Chesterton’s) ‐ Let me make a
quip on the well‐known platitude, “No condition is Permanent” but as the pig might have said to other animals.
“Some conditions are more permanent than others”. It is a thought for the day and for the endless tomorrow,
still ahead.
UKPABI ASIKA,
Enugu
8. LETTER FROM AJIE UKPABI ASIKA TO OBI ASIKA ON HIS 28TH BIRTHDAY. 3 OCTOBER 1996
Ojinnaka,
Twenty eight years ago this day, I returned from the Nigerian war front, the Port Harcourt/Owerri sector to
Lagos to find that you had already arrived at the island maternity Hospital. As I was driven to the hospital to
see you and your mum I had to think of what name to call you. The previous two days I had spent touring Aba
and Owerri I tried to go to Egbu but was dissuaded by my escort from the 3rd Marine commandos. They were
worried about the possibility of an ambush, especially around (the control post) the cathedral turning which
they had not yet secured.
Their worry was obviously well founded. A team of foreign correspondents which included Morley Safer of CBS
Television and Priya Ramakhandra (Ramrakha), a Kenyan who was an award winning photographer for Time
Life Magazines (Priya had been a friend from my Los Angeles period) had accompanied me on my visit. This
team asked for permission to return to the junction next day, in the hope of getting some action photographs.
They clearly ran into some action. Priya was killed at an ambush, Morley Safer was shot.
So as I picked you up for the first time, I named you Obodoechina. I named you for Priya and those others, too
many, who had died in the course of our family war, It was a confident statement that the death shall not have
been in vain. Your name seeks to say that in you our country shall not disappear‐you are a portent of her
continuance.
In each Obodo there are of course many Obi’s and the survival of the individual Obi’s is a prerequisite for the
effective defence of the Obodo. At 26 you were obliged to take up the reins and stand up for your Obi. You‘ve
done so with wisdom, brilliance and tenacity exuding amazing grace and compassion in the process. Thus on
the 28th anniversary of your birth I bring you greetings of congratulations; for the son you are for the man
you’ve become, for the leader yet to be. I wish you a happy Birthday with growing admiration, tremendous
respect and constant love.
Issued on behalf of the China Asika fan club, London Branch.
3. S
SELECTION OF POST‐HUMOOUS TRIBUTEES FOR AJIE UKKPABI ASIKA
1. TRIBUTE TO THE LATE DR. AJIE UKPABI ASIKA, CFR
BY GEN. YAKUBU GOWON, GCFR, PHD, JSSC, PSC.
“All the world is a stage and all the men and women merely players, they have their exits and their entrances”
and this is Ajie Ukpabi Asika’s exit from the world and the National Stage in which he played a prominent and
noble role.
It has pleased God that a friend, a brother and colleague, Ajie Ukpabi Asika should leave us to a new life
beyond. We shall all surely miss him in this mortal world, but will never forget him and the immense
contributions he has made to the unity, peace, stability and well‐being of his fatherland.
A consummate lover of his country and nation, he would sacrifice his life and all for the corporate existence of
his country, Nigeria. He passionately loved his country, Nigeria and her people and particularly cared for his
people, the Igbos and devoted his life to their well‐being and success.
A brilliant scholar and political scientist, an intellectual of no mean repute, he relished and understood the
Nigerian political scene and terrain very well and was known to read it with dexterity.
I recall our first meeting in late 1967 when I was looking for a suitable person to administer the liberated part
of East Central State. A young man who looked more like a “fresher” was brought in to see me. I was struck by
his enthusiasm and intelligence and later by the show of courage in accepting the monumental challenge put
before him – that of accepting the risky job and task of administering in a hostile environment. The courage,
zeal and confidence with which he accepted the challenge was disarming and endeared him to me. So felt
anyone who met him thereafter. He understood his assignment, to administer and reassure his people of their
rights and privileges as Nigerians and to ensure good governance for the people. He did just that and extended
his authority as an administrator to all the East Central State as it was liberated. He jealously guarded and
protected the interest of his people and ensured their well‐being.
Through the period, during the civil war and after, he dutifully carried out his role as a good administrator
reassuring the people and restoring their trust and confidence in their country, Nigeria. He undertook many
changes and reforms to ensure that the East Central State, the Igbo heartland was able to play their noble role
for themselves, the country and nation at large. This he did to the extent that soon after the end of the crisis
(war) and the implementation of the 3Rs (Rehabilitation, Reconciliation and Reconstruction), the East Central
State was sufficiently restored to enable the state to fully participate in the National Development Plan (1975
– 1980) as an equal with all the other states. That was indeed a real achievement.
I will also remember him as a great fighter and survivor. He loved life and fought to live. Many would have
given up when struck by serious illness as he was and few would survive it. He lived for many years thereafter
when most had given up that he would survive at all, he did so with his faculties amazingly intact.
Ukpabi is a special person, a truly detribalized Nigerian with friends throughout the length and breadth of the
country. He will be missed by all, especially the beloved and devoted family, Mrs. Chinyere Asika,
Obodoechina, Nki and Uju Asika and all other relatives, friends and colleagues.
Ajie Ukpabi Asika has indeed lived a full and rewarding life, he played his role well and left behind a legacy of
commendable service and achievements that should inspire generations to come.
Adieu, brother Ukpabi. Rest in Perfect Peace. With love and fond memories from Victoria, Ibrahim, Saratu,
Rahila, Yakubu (Jack) Gowon and all colleagues and friends.
2. UKPABI ASIKA: AN OUTSTANDING NIGERIA PATRIOT
By M. D. Yusufu
One of the people, who in his life became outstanding because of the farsighted and courageous way he stood
and fought for the preservation of Nigerian unity and the integration of Igbos into the fabric of the country,
after the civil war of 1967 – 1970, was the late Ukpabi Asika. He was called names and vilified by those who
wanted to break Nigeria, and reverse the process of the liberation and unity of Africa. But he is now already
seen, and he will over time come to be more clearly seen, as one of the most perceptive and patriotic scholars
and statesman of his generation.
I came to know Mr. Ukpabi Asika very well, after he became the Administrator of the East Central State in
1967. But I must admit that I knew him as one of the activist political science lecturers at the University of
Ibadan, through a critical and informative monthly magazine called the Nigerian Opinion. Apart from Asika the
group including, Tayo Akpata, Billy Dudley, Tekena Tamuno, Akin Mabogunje, Femi Kayode and others. The
Nigerian Opinion circle in Ibadan also included expatriate lecturers like James O’ Connell and R.J. Gavin.
This magazine seems to have come about, because some lecturers who were teaching social sciences, but
particularly political science became worried about the economic, political and social direction of our country
since the attainment of independence in 1960 and they wanted to contribute to bring about positive
developments. The Nigerian Opinion did not just create a forum for criticizing the Governments but made
effort to proffer reasonable solutions to each of the country’s problems discussed. In doing so, Asika and his
colleagues mobilized people from all fields of endeavour to contribute to serious debate about the key issues
facing the country.
The articles in the Nigerian Opinion were bold and frank and therefore the magazine attracted the attention of
the Federal and Regional Governments as well as politicians, public officers and academics outside the
University of Ibadan. What is particularly distinctive about the group making up the Nigerian Opinion was that
they hardly acknowledged authors of articles, expect when written by people outside their circle.
I have no doubt in my mind that the Federal Government identified Mr. Ukpabi Asika in 1967 from his clearly
patriotic Nigerian stand in this magazine and his other activities outside the University. He refused to be
cajoled into joining the secessionists and remained a Nigerian, right inside Nigeria throughout the period of the
crisis and the civil war. Indeed, he was one of the active Nigerians who spent sleepless nights seeking for ways
and means of stopping the 1966 crisis from exploding and when the civil war broke out, he led the Igbos to find
an honourable was to end the secession.
He was appointed the Administrator of the newly created East State on 28th October 1967. What he first did
was to appeal to the entire Igbo population to abandon the road to secession and take the necessary, but
painful steps to re‐unite with the rest of the Nigerian nation. This appeal was made in his maiden press
conference titled: Enough IS Enough: A Challenging Appeal to the Igbos of Nigeria. This press conference was
held in Lagos on Friday, 10th November, 1967. Mr. Asika was very frank and direct. He said.
Let me say a few words to the embattled and embittered people of the Central Eastern State. During the past
year, you, the Igbo people of the Central Eastern State, suffered either directly or indirectly from acts of some
of your brothers, especially in the former Northern Region. It is true the tragedy was not wholly unprovoked. It
is true that the tragedy occurred because of the dissolution of the established patterns of order and authority
which occasioned and was furthered by the initial coup d’etat.
He made special appeal to the Igbos to calm down, overcome bitterness and animosity and look ahead to see
the danger and consequences of the continuation of the civil war.
I ask you now, will ask you again and often, when next I speak to you from Enugu, you fathers of our families,
mothers of our homes, to call home from the battle‐field your sons, our sons and our brothers. Tell those who
ask you to send your sons to die that when all the sons are dead the lineages and the families die too. And that
the security, the only hope lies in the return to Nigeria, in the return to your friends, to your brothers, to your
sisters, to other Nigerians who are prepared and willing to welcome you back.
There were quite a number of Igbo leaders who like Asika believed in Nigeria but were unable to openly and
immediately come out to denounce secession, and join in leading the way Asika demonstrated; he also stood
up shoulder high above his colleagues, because his support for Nigerian unity was not built on office seeking.
He did not seek for the office of the Administrator of the East Central State, he was invited by Government to
take up and he accepted the challenge. When in office, he did not preoccupy himself with amassing wealth. He
was committed to public service and he served the Igbos, the wider Nigerian society and Africa, honourably
and decently.
Asika stood for Nigeria and was able to successfully show Igbos that the crisis of 1966 was a bitter Nigerian
family misunderstanding, which could be resolved without recourse to further violence. The success of Nigeria
over Biafra demonstrated that Ukpabi Asika was far ahead of most Igbo intellectuals and politicians in the
understanding and comprehension of society and history and how to go about resolving conflicts. He was
indeed, politically very perceptive. His ability to go beyond ethnic chauvinism and sentiments made it possible
for him to see, right at the onset that secession was not only a worthless path for the Igbos to take but was
doomed to fail. History proved him right. The Igbo intellectuals never forgave him for that into death.
He argued, discussed and cajoled to get the Federal side to adopt the no victor no vanquished policy, thanks to
General Gowon whose deeply held Christian virtues guided us to end the war and the national crisis in the way
it ended.
Ukpabi Asika was deeply Nigerian, lived in Nigeria, struggled for its unity and survival, died in Nigeria and it is
only appropriate he should now be buried in Nigeria with the country paying him the respect, which he clearly
deserves. He was truly an outstanding Nigerian patriot. May he rest in peace. May future generations learn
from his example.
3. AJIE UKPABI A. ASIKA 1936‐2004. By Osita Okeke
Anthony Ukpabi Asika had a mind of his own; analytical, dispassionate and coldly logical. For him there was no
room for emotional coloration in the reasoning process. Tony possessed a highly developed intellect (he often
distinguished between intellectuals and intellectual workers!), but this in no way made less poignant his
compassionate humanity, cultured mind and warmth of personality.
1966 was a trying year for most Nigerians. Events moved with lightning speed from one catastrophe to
another. For Easterners, particularly Igbos, the news was not so good. The Igbo community in Ibadan, town
and gown alike, felt particularly vulnerable as mass slaughter of human beings in Northern Nigeria replaced the
usual discourse and disagreements that hitherto characterized the relationship between ethnic nationalities.
Easterners who had lived all their lives in remote areas of Northern Nigeria were hounded – men women and
children‐like animals for the hunt, and wasted.
This experience naturally exacerbated feelings and several discussions, some furtive, others quite open, were
the order of the day. I remember one such encounter between Tony and me. This was after the September
29/30 slaughter of Igbos at Kano airport. Easterners were being evacuated from the North. They had
assembled in their numbers at the airport to be ferried to Enugu when bedlam was let loose and mayhem
ensued. Estimates of upwards of 30,000 deaths were touted. I felt enough was enough, and I said so. I thought
this was a final rejection of Easterners from Nigeria, and so I said I would leave Ibadan immediately for the
East. Tony was very logical. First of all he expressed his deep sorrow for the number of Igbo (and other Eastern
Nigerian) lives lost. He then went on to say we could not abandon the nation – Nigeria – because of the loss of
some lives. He dug deep into history to show how many peoples who had passed through a worse crucible of
human hatred and mutual slaughter, had finally emerged strong, united nations. Tony said that the loss of
30,000 lives was not too much sacrifice for one, united Nigeria. I was stunned but remained unmoved by this
postulation, which in normal times may have made some sense but which in the heat of the moment, with
reports of these gory activities flying all over the place, could not be countenanced. I packed lock, stock and
barrel and departed Ibadan for home, a couple of days later. Many Easterners left Ibadan and Western Nigeria
at this time with only a handful staying behind. Of these, many returned much later – some as late as April
1967. We learnt from the late returnees that Tony had relocated to East Africa. He would be recalled from
there later in the year to assume duties as the Administrator of East Central State of Nigeria.
Those who knew Tony could say without equivocation that he would be nobody’s lackey. As a matter of fact he
seemed providentially situated in the Nigerian hierarchy at the time, to mediate a less dishonourable re‐entry
into Nigeria for all Biafrans, at the end of the civil war. Thanks to his presence in the sanctum of governance,
the hawks on the Nigerian side of the conflict were denied what they considered “the wages of rebellion”. It
was through no mean effort that he secured for his bloodied kindred the post civil war status of “no victor, no
vanquished”. He pursued vigorously the 3 R’s – Reconciliation, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction – which
ensured a far more rapid and humane resettlement of war ravaged “returnees”. Civil servants and other public
officers were reabsorbed into Federal and State employment. He generously and selfishly reabsorbed his
erstwhile colleagues in academia into the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, promoting to Senior Lecturer status
with effect from 1st July 1970, anyone who had joined the service of any University in Nigeria before the
beginning of the Civil War and was still below the level of Senior Lecturer. Above all, Tony refused to adopt the
attitude of “I told you so” towards his friends and associates. He regarded all previous differences of opinions
in the pre‐war days as just that – differences of opinion, which he had no difficulty in shoving aside. All he
sought from colleagues and friends was “… come join me reconstruct our State and make the lot of our people
better”. With this attitude, he found no difficulty in attracting some of the harshest critics of his position.
As an economist and well‐grounded intellectual, it was not difficult for Asika to put his imprint on policy
formulated at the Supreme Military Council, the highest organ of Government in Nigeria, which was populated
except for him by professional soldiers, well trained in the art of warfare. For eight years, five and a half of
them after the end of the civil war, he led the East Central State of Nigeria, today’s five states of Enugu, Imo,
Anambra, Abia and Ebonyi. Unlike what was to happen in many administrations that succeeded Gowon’s, Asika
concentrated in first rehabilitating and reconstructing the infrastructure and projects damaged by the war,
before embarking on any new one. Nigersteel, Nigercem, Golden Guinea, Adapalm, Modern Ceramics, Turners
Asbestos etc were some of the projects resurrected. The University of Nigeria and other educational
institutions like the Alvan Ikoku College of Education, received serious attention. He fought, against
tremendous odds (odds constituted by those in positions of influence who were unhappy at the “kid gloves”
treatment extended to “secessionist rebels”), to attract allocations from the Federation Account to ameliorate
the lot of his people. This effort was quite often not helped by the attitude of vociferous Igbos, who literally
believed the slogan “no victor, no vanquished”, along with other similar propaganda one‐liners from Federal
Government operatives, and proceeded to proclaim and aggressively seek to appropriate certain “rights” not
yet firmly established!
Unlike the proverbial cock, which usually stood on one leg before it mastered the terrain, some of our people
plunged into the “task of exhuming the corpse, feet first”! Not one to suffer fools gladly, Tony reserved one of
his now famous quips for such errant knights. “General amnesty” was one of the propaganda one‐liners at the
time. Tony said, “General amnesty does not mean general amnesia”!! Of course those who had “ears to hear”
heard!
There are a couple of incidents which occurred during this period. They later became very well known and
often spoken about. Not so long after the end of the Civil War, several groups within the country began to
canvass for the creation of new states. One such state fervently sought after was Wawa State (what is now
Enugu State). The proponents of this State, like others, took out several newspaper adverts. Each advert for
Wawa state was signed by some of the leaders of the movement. Thus you had such signatories as Chief C. C.
Onoh, “Ex‐Chairman Nigeria Coal Corporation;” Chief B.C. Okwu “Ex‐Minister of Information, Eastern Nigeria”;
Chief Jim Nwobodo, “Ex‐Chairman, Nkanu Local Education Board” etc. In his budget speech for that year, Asika
took a swipe at these signatories, calling them “Ex‐this, ex‐that and ex‐everything else; people who would
rather be bosses in Hell than serve in Heaven”! His speech was directed at the campaigners for the Wawa
State. Unfortunately Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe had also canvassed in a treatise, for “Niger State” which had a very
peculiar configuration; starting up in Ndoni in the Niger Delta and trailing on to Oguta, Aboh, Ogbaru, Onitsha,
Asaba, Illah and branching off the River Niger along Anambra River into Anam land parts of Igalla, and ending
somewhere in Uzo‐Uwani.
Zik believed Asika was also attacking him as “Ex‐this, ex‐that and Ex everything else” – he was of course Ex‐
President of Nigeria, Ex‐Senate President, Ex‐Governor General as well as Ex‐Premier of Eastern Nigeria, among
other offices he held. Zik struck back in a newspaper article, calling Asika the “ex‐doctoral fellow, son of an ex‐
postmaster” and saying “no condition is permanent as can be read on the lorries that ply the ill‐maintained
roads of East Central State”. This made waves at the time.
There was also the matter of a special request for the piece of music “onye ube ruru ya racha ma”, (meaning
“he whose pear has ripened, let him eat it”) often wrongly attributed to Asika, when he was the Administrator
of East Central State. It was generally held that because he so enjoyed the perquisites of his office, he
requested this piece of music at a gala night. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In October 1972, Mr. Dan Ibekwe, at the time East Central State Commissioner for Works and Housing, was
appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria by the Federal Government. Asika gave a send forth party
for the late Justice. To open the floor with his wife at the party, Justice Ibekwe requested that piece of music
(by the Oriental Brothers; I think) which was a very popular piece at the time. It had nothing at all to do with
Ukpabi Asika!
As a student at the University College Ibadan, Asika was not very gregarious. He however cultivated several
friendships on individual basis. Most of these friendships lasted till the very end and were very deep! Apart
from his general interest in music, the arts and theatre, Tony indulged extensively in the game of chess. In
those days, you would see Asika and his co‐lawyers, including notably Ukwu I. Ukwu and Agwu Okpanku, glued
to the chessboard in the Junior Common Room at well past 2 am. One wondered when they found time for
their books, but it emerged that soon after their games, they retired to their rooms to swot! Tony would
usually miss the first lecture the following day! This in the end in no way affected his academic grades
adversely. He simply excelled.
Tony had an enormous capacity to commit things to memory. This is different from “cramming”. He would look
at a document briefly, and when you later discussed the subject matter with him, it would sound as if he was
mouthing verbatim what was in the document! His memory was photographic! It did not matter if the content
of the document was completely technical and outside his discipline.
Tony is gone! “When cometh there such another?”
ADIEU TONY!
4. AJIE UKPABI ASIKA: A TRIBUTE By Dunu Chu S P Okongwu
AJIE Ukpabi Asika’s work record and process as administrator of East‐Central State doubtless serve as a fitting tribute to this noble, if misunderstood, Igbo son. And so they should be faithfully documented, given the widest publicity and preserved in living archives for all and future generations to know. But they also do more. They prove, by a counterexample, the truth in the wise old saying that a people is only truly conquered if they acquiesce in their own defeat. They also validate two central facts of historical economic development. By extension, some thirty years after, they raise crucial issues for the constitutional architecture of the Nigerian system, particularly with regard to the political and economic spheres, and related public discourse. Paradoxically, this today would put him on the same side of the national discourse as Dim Emeka Odumegwu‐Ojukwu. How times change.
He was installed as administrator of East‐Central state on October 29, 1967 a few months after the outbreak of the civil war. By the end of the hostilities in January 1970 he was in the clearly difficult, almost impossible, situation of presiding over a vanquished people, his own (ethnic) people, dispirited and essentially demonetized by Federal policy and administering a territory shorn by deliberate central policy of significant natural resources contributing allocable revenues, and subject moreover to severe resource compression and uncertain revenue flows from the central distributable pool. [Note that essential demonetization still obtained because, with the declaration of the Biafran currency as illegal, although the Federal Military Government made a ‘currency exchange grant’ of some N13 million for expenditure on projects that would benefit the rural population and for helping to reactivate the more important industries, it paid a flat N40 to any individual depositing the Biafran currency.] The war itself was no different from other wars, with its destruction, dislocations and displacements, the disabled and the dispossessed. The war had consumed vital human capital and socio‐economic infrastructure. For some twelve months before military conflict there had been pogroms against easterners, particularly in the northern parts of the country. In result the bulk of Ndi‐Igbo resident in other parts of the country fled to the heartland that was to become East‐Central State. Furthermore, because of the population distribution the preponderant majority of the staff of the public service of the former Eastern Region was from East‐Central State. All these returnees combined with the resident population, in their teeming millions, had to be nourished.
The people viewed the new state as an IBOSTAN designed by the victors as a punitive measure to forever fix Ndi‐Igbo, in the same vein as the so‐called abandoned property issue and dismissals and retirements from the federal public service which the central authorities had superintended. It is thus easy to understand that, coming from their civil war divide, Ukpabi Asika was seen as a collaborator not only in their military defeat but also in their new constrictive geographical definition and fate. Though population statistics in Nigeria are treated like the sorcerer’s curiosa, there could not have been less than 7 million persons in East‐Central State at war’s end waiting for succour. From the ashes of the war, with this adversarial human material and yet massive pressure of needs, with depleted infrastructure, and in the parlous financial situation, Ukpabi Asika confronted the challenge of recomposing the state machinery and providing nourishment – social peace (law and order), opportunities for productive enterprise, maximal expression of initiative and self‐development, and public welfare – the essential responsibilities of the state for the citizens. To these pressures must be added the constraints of the presence of the army of occupation and the prejudices, obstructionism, and overriding specifications of the federal military authorities.
A less endowed individual might have been overwhelmed or deformed by the dilemma and the immensity of the problems. Undaunted, Ukpabi Asika placed before his people a derived composite challenge: Look beyond the present travails and unwarranted prejudices of fellow citizens who had been on the Federal side of the war;
� Be self‐confident;
� Commit to excellence and discipline;
� Commit to the acquisition of knowledge and skills;
� Love intelligent hard work; and ‘all hands on deck’,
� Release the beat of imagination and the twin spirits of enterprise and social cooperation;
� Found on the boundless energies and initiatives of the people;
� Embrace scientific‐technological dynamism.
His work process was equally striking. Discounting the IBOSTAN objectives and dynamics of the victors, and ignoring the initial ill‐feelings of hostility towards him, from even amongst family members, he reached out to his fellow Ndi‐Igbo. With amazing maturity, openness and class he extended a warm embrace to all. He brought into his cabinet and top echelons of the civil service and wider public service bureaucracy brilliant men and women virtually all of whom had been officers in the Biafran defence forces and scientific‐civilian war effort. These men and women were fully representative of East‐Central State. For him there was no localism. He attracted skilled Ndi‐Igbo abroad to return and join the domestic reconstruction effort. He stressed intelligent collaboration, intellection, thinking through together and coeducation as crucial for success. He saw, on the one hand, partnership between the central government and East‐Central State and, on the other, partnership between East Central State and the rest of the world as two crucial elements promoting domestic efforts.
Accordingly, intelligent cultivation of, and liaison with, the central authorities from Dodan barracks through the various ministries, and interfacing with external agencies, were at a premium. Federal officials were invited to visit East‐Central State and see things for themselves; in return East‐Central State offered ideas, where competent, to federal officials.
The ‘consultancy services’ were extended to some states of the federation, with the secondment of required personnel. In result, a more favourable view of the state and its problems came to obtain at the centre, at least at the official level, and this had a favourable impact on procedures and resource flows. (It may be worth noting at this point that this was no doubt the basis of the ignorant view held against him in some quarters that Ukpabi Asika became a political adviser to General Yakubu Gowon).
He placed before his people bold new initiatives. First and foremost, the people had to be fed and that meant robust agricultural revival, since the people were not the type to rely on hand‐outs of food aid. In the main, the agronomists, engineers, livestock and veterinary specialists, foresters and other expert staff of the Ministry of Agriculture and the remnants of the Eastern Nigeria Development Corporation, now called the East‐Central State Agricultural Development Corporation were pressed into service to rehabilitate and reconstruct agro‐infrastructure and to deliver extension services with the objective of facilitating farmer activities in food and tree crops. In particular agronomists and extension workers recovered the vitality so well demonstrated in the ante‐bellum period. This was the period of intense planting of seed yams, maize/cassava intercropping, rice, poultry and piggery development; wild oil palm groves, cocoa, rubber, and cashew plantations were rehabilitated with improved seedlings; marketing of agricultural produce revived and sent growth impulses to field production. Palm oil processing reinvigorated using pre‐war equipment. Voluntary organizations, caught up in the revival, opened their own agribusiness units. Reliable estimates of food crops output are not available but some indication of the revival can be gained by some data in relation to tree crops and graded produce. By 1974, through government assistance, farmers had reclaimed some 16,752 hectares of tree crops out of the 19,880 hectares identified after the war as falling under the 1962‐68 Plan period plantings. Palm oil graded by the Marketing Board in 1971 was
sevenfold the 1970 level, dropping thereafter, because of adverse received prices, and spilling into the more lucrative domestic exports to the northern parts of the country. Similarly graded palm kernel in 1971 exceeded fivefold the 1970 level, dipping thereafter only to recover by 1974. Palm kernel crushing and feedstuff production almost everywhere were boosted. Although the state was not noted for cocoa, nonetheless the agricultural revival had some impact on cocoa production: graded cocoa in 1972 was sevenfold the 1970 level and thereafter maintained an annual growth rate of 7.5% for the next two years.
Aside from agriculture, education had been the biggest industry of the people of the former Eastern Region before the commencement of hostilities. Then normal formal education had been disrupted and dislocated by thirty months of the hot war and before then at least another year or so of civil disturbances. To make up for lost time and to maintain competitiveness of the people and the state, it was therefore important for education at all levels to resume urgently and in accordance with an admissible plan. But where were the buildings, facilities, equipment, instruments, books, and supplies? These had been destroyed, damaged, eroded or looted. How, considering the pent‐up demand for education, would the desired investment in education be financed and implemented? How would the teachers be paid? How would teachers be appropriately motivated with adequate pay, service conditions, career prospects and generalized institution of teaching as a profession? How would students pay their fees and for any educational supplies, particularly in the conditions of essential general demonetization and given an uncharitable central government? And how would focus me maintained on the priority of education rather than ascription to religious denomination? These and related questions have not been thought through by vested interests or those wont to give facile resolutions with the benefit of hindsight. Ukpabi Asika’s bold solution was to implement a state takeover of all schools, enforcing a direct public‐private sector partnership in education, so that all needful pupils would attend standard schools paying only minimal fees, with the state bearing the responsibility for capital overheads, teachers’ salaries and other recurrent costs, and quality standards administration. Thus resulted the State School Board. The model was to be copied by other states. The disabled were not left out.
An automatic scholarship programme, covering education at all levels, was introduced to enable those wishing to go back to school to do so. This was supplemented by training and housing programmes at the Government Trade Centre, Enugu and the Oji River Rehabilitation Centre.
Two remarks are in order here. Despite its bureaucracy, the State School Board option had the advantage of creating, additional to the Education Ministry, numerous career prospects for teachers as professionals in the different cadres. Then in spite of the enormous fiscal burdens of the state, there was always prompt payment of salaries. Ukpabi Asika was always sensitive to the plight of public servants, particularly teachers, and did not wish to aggravate their burdens. Whenever a treasury financial difficulty loomed he ruled that teachers should be paid first before the civil servants; that way everybody was paid on time. In this regard, considering that these days salary arrears are usual at the state level and have appeared even at the central level, with the relatively enormous financial resources now available to governments, Ukpabi Asika’s administration can be said to have achieved a no mean feat.
As another first in the country, he collected the rump of the war‐time Biafran Research and Production (RAP) scientists and technologists, enlarged the personnel and empanelled them as the Projects Development Agency (PRODA) with own mandate to conduct applied scientific research and to interface with the private sector directly and through government and the education sector. His goal was rapid scientific‐technological transformation of the state. It is perhaps noteworthy that the central government after 1975 took over PRODA and, predictably, emasculated it. He established the Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu, as a coherent amalgam from the old Institute of Administration and the College of Technology, to produce techno‐managerial manpower in keeping with emerging realities. To better support scientific research, education and industry, and to provide a solid base for in‐sourcing of domestic skills by externals and for computer literacy in the state, he established the Eastern Data Processing Centre with a Control Data main‐frame computer and top‐flight analysts. This was three decades before the current IT craze in the country, testifying to his exposure and vision!
Community development was another area which he considered to be of primal importance, particularly as regards reconstruction of the rural areas where over 70 per cent of our population lives. Hence his concept of the Divisional Administration (Department), which he implemented two decades before the central government arrived at the point where it considered the local council a distinct third tier of governance. The natural philosophy of social cooperation – OLU OBODO – which motivated the work of the Divisional Administration Department was further specialized by Mrs Chinyere Asika in the mobilization of the women of East‐Central State under the OTU OLU OBODO empowerment organization. In turn, OTU OLU OBODO was a precursor of Better Life for Rural Women and Family Support programmes at the centre.
He maintained an accent on excellence and productivity, setting a personal example by his own amazing capacity for work and intellection, and rewarding those who produced. His cabinet meetings were characterized by free and frank expression of views, despite the wide powers of the Administrator. This attests to his maturity, goodness and humility. Totally lacking in intellectual arrogance, he insisted on thorough discussion of new workable ideas, and encouraged public servants to participate candidly, taking pains to set them at ease. The intellectual fireworks attending exciting new ideas and perspectives routinely commenced after midnight and sometimes lasted till breakfast time. It was said that people went to cabinet meetings to learn from each other. This approach helped to instill self‐confidence and cooperation among public servants and, not surprisingly, spurred the demand for continuing education.
To promote awareness and improve coeducation, he encouraged discussion of various aspects of social life – art, literature, culture, science and technology – in different forums statewide, leading some of the discussions himself. As a patron of the arts, he invited artistes to perform at Government House.
He sincerely believed in the Nigeria project. He repeatedly affirmed that Ndi‐Igbo were citizens of Nigeria, adding half in jest but with all seriousness that the exercise of one’s citizenship rights sometimes involves a fair measure of irresponsibility. By this he surely meant that the citizen was obliged to exercise his rights and attain self‐development regardless of any impediments
He charged the people to produce, to be maximally self‐reliant; and they responded, slowly at first. Success was infectious. Public servants, in particular, contributed to state finances and economic revival through payment of development levy. Reference has been made to the growth of agricultural output. Young Igbo men and women who had spent the thirty months of the war in the trenches or
the war effort were winning prizes for scholastic achievements in Nigerian Universities outside East‐Central State and in national competitive examinations. Despite the general essential demonetization and parlous state finances, the number of industrial establishment employing not less than ten people rose from 77 in 1970 shortly after the war to 420 by 1973, exceeding 150 per cent of the 1966 level. “Old” industries like the Nigerian Cement Company Nkalagu, Golden Guinea Breweries, Umuahia, and Aba Textile Mills, which were reactivated on a pauper’s budget and bank debt, not only attained but exceeded their pre‐war production capacities. Indeed, they seemed to be the only profitable public sector companies in Nigeria at the time. Golden Guinea, borrowing its bottles from a Lagos‐based competitor, was making inroads on the Lagos market, and expanding from 50,000 to 100,000 hectolitres. In order to capture some of the expanding national demand for beer, it planned expansion into a new plant of 200.000 hectolitres capacity at Onitsha; for this it could arrange financing and required only minor state budget outlay of N1 million.
Aba Textile Mills, using 1929 equipment, seemed to be the model of efficiency. General Gowon, the Head of State, was reportedly so impressed with the record that he decided to appoint the mill general manager the managing director of the Nigerian National Oil Corporation (NNOC), forerunner of the NNPC – a decision which reportedly caused him many troubles with his military colleagues.
All these activities and individuals contributed to revenue. In result, by 1972‐73 state revenue from internal sources (N25.9 million) was triple the 1970‐71 level, matched the state’s share of federally collected revenue (N25.7 million), and stood at 82 % of the state’s share of federally collected revenues in 1972‐73. Sound fiscal management of scant resources in such perilous circumstances was, as usual, both cause and effect of success. Meanwhile communities, private enterprises and public agencies everywhere worked tirelessly to restore and improve their damaged infrastructure, under the auspices of the Divisional Administration Department, state Ministry of Works (Works and Task Force Units), state Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and plant and equipment sales companies.
Although a lot had been achieved, much still remained to be done. Certainly, the spirit of enterprise and the confidence to build were there; what was lacking was the financial support. Thus the Central Planning Office in Lagos permitted itself to affirm that “It is obvious from our experience that there is still a lot to be done…given the necessary finance we believe that some of the projects could still be completed before the Plan period runs out.” [FMEDR letter No. 123/S. 27/Vol. III/766 of August 20, 1973]
Success bred further success, self‐confidence and enthusiasm. The state construction company, Nigerian Construction and Furniture Company, which had successfully reconstructed the Onitsha main market, was serving as an important engineering contractor for the Federal Ministry of Works as far as in Lagos state and Rivers state. It was later to execute the construction and extension of the Enugu Airport for the federal Government. The state Ministry of Works through direct effort reconstructed state roads including the 9th Mile – Nsukka road. Architects, engineers, economists, accountants and like professionals opened consultancy and construction firms to offer their services to federal and state governments, not to mention the private sector and international organizations. The enthusiasm, the confidence, and the more propitious revenue outlook, generated by both the central government’s adoption of a new more equitable revenue allocation formula and the virtual quadrupling of oil prices in the wake of the December 1973 Yom Kippur War, all animated the preparation of the State’s Third Plan component.
In launching the Plan, Ukpabi Asika, in his Forward of May 1975, expressed his hopes and assessment of critical factors making for success as follows:
“The vast transformation in our material conditions of life which would result if this programme is successfully executed should also be obvious. It is therefore with the full awareness of the implied responsibilities for us all that I enjoin all citizens of this State in both the public and private sectors to strive to their utmost to ensure that the hopes engendered by this programme are realized for the common good of all. This can only be realized through cooperation, hard work, discipline, a rekindling of the spirit of enterprise and the release of the boundless energies of all our peoples – qualities without which we cannot hope to exploit the unprecedented opportunities that now lie before us. “I therefore commend this bold programme of socio‐economic transformation to all citizens and friends of this State.”
So Ukpabi Asika succeeded in challenging the people to begin the journey on the road to deliberate self‐development. He proved thereby a key fact of historical economic development: Given correct leadership, deliberate economic development is only attainable by those societies which are imbued with self‐confidence, commit to discipline, excellence and the acquisition of knowledge and skills, and moreover maintain a warranted openness to new ideas.
Respect for truth obliges us to record that these successes were scored by the people of East‐Central State under Ukpabi Asika’s skillful helmsmanship in spite of the shriveling and eventual termination of the central government’s half‐hearted reconstruction and rehabilitation programme, indeed despite the policy strictures, over‐control and plain obstructionism of the central government. Aside from the failure to boldly reconstruct the physical infrastructure of East‐Central State, the Federal Military Government also signally failed to use the opportunity offered by the immediate post‐war period to resume the programme of robust rehabilitation of oil palm groves, on the basis of high‐yielding NIFOR seedlings – over two million of these improved variety were available – and rubber plantations. Evidently, given the burgeoning oil revenues, the Federal Military Government did not have sufficient interest because it was to happen in the south and had nothing to do with tree planting against desert encroachment in the north. The folly of the central government’s failure to support intensive oil palm rehabilitation on the basis of NIFOR seedlings and the food‐for‐work strategy only became obvious when, on the basis of the same seedlings, Malaysia, among other countries, became an exporter of palm oil to Nigeria from the late 1970’s.
The Third Plan
As regards the East‐Central State Development Plan 1975–80, it is difficult if not impossible in a few paragraphs to do justice to a development plan of such scope and serious intent, by which Ukpabi Asika clearly hoped to leave a legacy to the people of East‐Central State and future generations of Nigerians and indeed blacks everywhere. With all its limitations, the Plan document should be read and assessed by every interested person. The best that can be done in a few paragraphs is to note some highlights, bearing in mind that even the judgement as to what is a highlight is essentially subjective.
The Plan was of course a reconstruction plan, though Ukpabi Asika, not wishing to appear critical of the central authorities, liked to think of it with some justification as a modernization plan. The issue was not merely semantic: he rightly maintained that as regards the balance of the reconstruction programme it would be more meaningful and appropriate to reconstruct, realign and modernize in
the light of new and projected conditions; where existing capital is obsolete it should be modernized or scrapped.
So it was both a Modernization and a Development Plan, with a spillover of the physical reconstruction from the 1970‐74 plan and its extended life‐lease of one year. It envisaged a total capital expenditure of some N737.4 million then; that is equivalent to a capital expenditure of some N154,854 million today. It set clear physical targets for the major activities and aimed at meeting the following broad category of pressing needs:
• Vibrant and massive modernization of the state’s infrastructure;
• Increasing employment opportunities;
• Full rehabilitation of displaced persons;
• Restoration and necessary extension of health facilities;
• Increased and sustained productivity of agriculture;
• A major effort towards the solution of housing problem;
• Modernization of the educational facilities combined with the rationalization and consolidation
of the State’s education system;
• Attainment of a minimum real growth rate of 6 per cent per annum accelerating at the rate of
1.6 per cent per annum through the plan period;
• Balanced regional development;
• Progressive augmentation and application of the stock of technical knowledge (including management techniques) to the conduct of economic activity especially agriculture, industry and transportation;
• Attainment of a large measure of self‐sufficiency in the output of industries like building materials, fertilizers, livestock feeds and paper products.
As was to be expected, Agriculture took the lead with an allocation of N117.4 million (15.9%). The major efforts were: to change technology by introducing new inputs, including management methods through reinvigorated extension work and primary production; renewed emphasis on tree crops, root crops and grains; irrigation and drainage schemes; livestock and veterinary development; forestry regeneration and industrial wood production.
Next came Town and Country Planning and Housing with an allocation of N91.2 million (12.4%). If, however, we add Water Supply (N57.54 million), Sewerage and Drainage (N28 million) and Cooperatives and Community Development (N17 million) and view this composite sector as Regional Development, then we see that Regional Development has the largest share in the Plan (N193.8 million, 26.28%). Quite simply, Ukpabi Asika intended nothing less than a revolutionary transformation of (both the physical environment and the quality of life in) East‐Central State in the Regional Development context. The physical infrastructure (roads and bridges) of the three main towns and thirteen other towns and growth centres – Enugu, Onitsha, Aba, Abakaliki, Owerri, Nsukka, Umuahia, Afikpo, Abiriba, Amawbia‐Awka, Arochukwu, Nnewi, Nkwerre, Orlu, Oguta, Okigwe – were to be urgently reconstructed, while master plans and regional studies, which had been commissioned, would elaborate comprehensive development plans and town planning surveys in respect of the expected growth of these towns to the year 2010 for eventual action. Meanwhile, for example, at least the following reconstruction volumes should be accomplished: Enugu, 70.8
kilometres of roads and 6 bridges; Onitsha, 98 kilometres of roads and 2 bridges; Aba, reflecting its damage during the war, 103 kilometres of roads and 1 bridge. Similarly, improved water supplies and sewerage and drainage systems were to be provided for the major towns under a phased action plan. In the case of water supplies, the bulk of expenditure effort (71%) was directed to the rural areas, indicating his sensitivity to the preponderant majority of the population. In particular, he was keen that the balance of uncompleted water supply schemes from the First Plan (1962‐68), on behalf of which rural communities had made contributions but government had failed to meet its due share, should be completed without further delay. Depressed areas of the state which somehow had been neglected by past development plans were of great concern to him; he intended giving preferential attention to the following depressed areas through the programming of activities with regional balance in mind: Abakaliki‐Afikpo region, Do‐Anambra basin, Bende‐Arochukwu‐Alayi‐Ohafia region, Lower Niger flood basin, and Ukwa region.
In order to spur implementation, the use of the matching principle had been agreed with the Central Planning Office in the areas of water supplies and urban human waste disposal systems. The Central Planning Office also made a special concession in this regard: where because of financial difficulties a state could not come up with its initial 50% contribution, it would authorize release of half of the Federal Government’s contribution on the basis of verifiable tender documents so as to enable work to begin. In the Housing sector key importance was attached to the proposed East‐Central State Mortgage Bank which would link with the Federal Mortgage bank and aid the development of the housing mortgage instrument. This was additional to the programmed direct construction of new housing units. Under Cooperatives and Community Development, loans and grants were to be targeted at local authorities and cooperative societies to promote rural development projects. In particular, government was to assist cooperative societies in the storage, processing and marketing of food crops.
It must be recorded that, as was characteristic of Ukpabi Asika, the Centre for Regional and Urban Studies, the brain for the design and implementation of regional development programmes, was programmed to be located not at Onitsha, his home town, but at Aguobu Owa in Ezeagu. That should instruct present policy controllers.
The importance of a sound transport and communications network for the conduct of socio‐economic activities goes without saying. Under Transport and Communications 12% of the plan allocation was targeted at the reconstruction, realignment and modernization of 1,660 kilometres of roads, principally trunk ‘B’ road and upgrading of selected trunk ‘C’ roads, and bridges. The generation born after the civil war will not know that the former Eastern region, comprising East‐Central State, South‐Eastern State and Rivers State, enjoyed a highly developed road network, with probably the highest quality road density in sub‐Saharan Africa. These had been damaged or neglected during the war. Ukpabi Asika planned to reconstruct and modernize these. Action was also taken to upgrade and transfer to central government responsibility some trunk ‘B’ roads (1,240 kilometres) and to introduce some new federal highways and alignments (Enugu‐Port Harcourt and Enugu‐Onitsha expressways, Onitsha‐Okigwe and Onitsha‐Nsukka highways).
As well, the strategic role of education and skills acquisition in economic development was clearly recognized. The challenge here was enormous. By 1973 in fact, the primary and secondary school enrolments had doubled the pre‐war levels, and the pace of demand was explosive. N88.2 billion (12%) was allocated to the Education sector principally for the modernization, equipment and necessary expansion of secondary school facilities, expansion of technical education and skills acquisition centres, expansion of the Institute of Management and Technology for the increased production of medium‐level technical manpower, expansion and streamlining of teacher education at the Alvan Ikoku College of Education and the Umuahia Rural Education Centre, and the better provisioning of school libraries, education aids and scholarship programmes.
Manufacturing Industry received 9.4% of plan allocation. But this allocation should not conceal the strategic role in economic transformation assigned to it, since the state was to facilitate the key role of the private sector.
Ukpabi Asika expected that during the Plan period the state would re‐establish and exceed the sectoral compound growth rate of 10.6 per cent observed in the pre‐war period (1961/62 – 1965/66) by attaining at least 12%. Apart from the provision of employment, increase in value added of exports and strengthening of intersectoral linkages, key policy objectives were more intensive exploitation of the raw material base of the economy (long before the Structural Adjustment Programme), to lay a sound scientific‐technological base for future development, and to spur the rise everywhere of small‐and medium‐scale activities, thus making the economy more resistant to shocks. Accordingly, aside from the usual industrial projects, pride of place was given to:
(a) Metallurgical, precision tools and related activities for the capture, adaptation and elaboration of technology; this was planned to be initially implemented in two locations, Aba‐Umuahia axis and Ozubulu, and to link intimately with the private sector and PRODA;
(b) Schemes for industrial estates and layouts throughout the state and more vibrant small‐ and medium‐scale enterprises assistance scheme;
(c) Greater support for PRODA;
(d) Support for local building materials development, especially clay building materials (bricks, tiles) and cement (new cement plant); and
(e) Institutional reforms especially in the Ministry of Industry to improve industrial planning, revitalize industrial extension work, improve artisanal skills and collaboration with the private sector.
But the Plan had hardly been launched when on July 29, 1975 there was a military coup d’etat. General Gowon was overthrown and the Muritala Mohammed – Olusegun Obasanjo regime was installed. All state governors (and the administrator of East‐Central State) were dismissed. Immediately there was dispatched to East‐Central State a mandatary proconsul in the person of the late Colonel Anthony Aboki Ochefu. His assignment: the dismantling of East‐Central State. Col Ochefu dismantled the public service of East‐Central State. For good measure he declared that the mainframe computer of the Eastern Data Processing Centre was unnecessary madness, beyond the needs and interests of the State. It was summarily dismantled and relocated to the Ahmadu Bello University where it found a necessary sane needful home.
Everybody in East‐Central State, except Col Ochefu, elements of the army of occupation and their touts, was a thief; the hounding campaign was underway. Cheer leaders and coryphaei were not wanting in East‐Central State.
Then he proceeded to dismantle the state’s Third Plan. But this was in reality superfluous. His bosses had decreed that the Third National Development Plan, with a total capital programme of N30 billion – N20 billion of which was for the public sector, while N10 billion was for the private sector – was too bloated, wasteful and unrealistic, and directed through their command structure that the national plan and states’ components were cancelled with immediate effect; a more realistic, less expansive and wasteful plan would be produced in due course after review. Col Ochefu, however, took steps to collect the Federal Government’s advance of 25% of its matching grant in respect of water supplies which promptly disappeared, leaving behind as a testament pipes which adorned the 9th Mile Corner for well over a decade. By November 1975 Col Ochefu was dismissed from the army and military governorship with immediate effect.
By January 13 1976 General Muritala Mohammed was assassinated by a faction of the military, and General Olusegun Obasanjo was installed as Head of State, Commander‐in‐Chief of the Armed Forces. Soon the boundary delimitation began with the excision of Obigbo and its environs from East‐Central State, its relocation in Rivers State and then the state creation exercise train. In time the Revised Third Plan contained a public sector capital programme of N43.3 billion. Against this background the Fourth Plan proposed a total capital expenditure of N82 billion, of which N70.5 billion was allotted to the public sector. Enemy storm troopers could hardly have done worse to the economic plan and development process. The rest is now history.
And so the country slid through administrative and policy instabilities, profligacy, corruption and economic turbulence into external debt and economic failure, in stark contrast with the promise of its vast potentials. Thus the hopes of the people of East‐Central State, founded on their determination to successfully implement the Third Plan, essentially evaporated. This experience confirms another fact of historical economic development: self‐development is not guaranteed; even the best efforts of a society can be nullified by an impediment. And so it would appear at a primary level that Ukpabi Asika’s legacy to his people, to Nigeria that he served with so much fidelity and at great personal cost, is lost.
It is noteworthy that Ukpabi Asika, in his last address to members of his cabinet and senior civil servants after receiving news of the coup d’etat, expressed the hope that since the members of the new military ruling council had virtually all had field experience in East‐Central State they would be more sympathetic to the cause of the state and therefore assist the state to better pursue its development trajectory. But that was not to be.
The civil war can be regarded as a unique and significant development in the life and historical experience of the people of the then East‐Central State if not Nigeria as a whole. A post‐war reconstruction plan is more likely to be a valid plan designed with objectivity and realism to address the people’s needs for a return to normality and move toward sustainable socio‐economic progress. It can be said without fear of contradiction that the East‐Central State Third Plan, the real post‐war reconstruction plan, has established a solid base for the socio‐economic development of the region. Nothing better has happened to that region ever since. It makes eminent sense then that all the component states of East‐Central State go back to Ukpabi Asika’s Third Plan and use it as a foundation or reference point for any realistic reconstruction and development action. On its part, the Federal Government, in its necessary participation and lead in the reconstruction and modernization efforts in the region – to redress its scandalous neglect of the area for over three decades – should recognize the framework embodied in Ukpabi Asika’s Plan, and vigorously work to ensure its speedy implementation in the light of new realities.
To be sure, the Federal Government should lead in this endeavour. Such coventure leadership would signal moreover a welcome change of heart on the part of the Federal Government and the beginnings of true reconciliation. It is only in this manner that, even at this late date, the Federal Government can appropriately discharge its overdue debt to Ukpabi Asika and the people of East‐Central State, not by going through the rather fulsome motions of financing Ukpabi Asika’s last homeward journey and following him to his final resting place. This consideration may need stressing because the centrality of Ukpabi Asika in the process of Nigeria and the fact of Nigeria today is not often grasped.
The experience of the people of East‐Central State was of course acute, since they suffered immensely during the war and afterwards in the deliberate resource compression and neglect by successive central governments. Their experience, however acute, resonates in varying degrees in other parts of the country.
Accordingly, believers in the Nigeria project are entitled to ask, in behalf of the memory of Ukpabi Asika: How can the constitutional architecture of Nigeria be so organized as to:
• rationalize the relationship between the centre and component units;
• make the dynamics of the centre less disruptive to the socio‐economic process of the component
units; for surely those subgroups which may wish to march on even on their own steam and at
their own pace should be entitled to do so, without being held to ransom;
• make disruptions at the centre less turbulent and less probable, taking fully into account the
disturbances and corrosiveness of rents from petroleum;
• permit the Nigerian society to embark of a stable self‐development process.
Satisfactory resolution of such issues should help recover his legacy and be a fitting tribute to Ajie
Ukpabi Asika.
5. ANTHONY UKPABI ASIKA, CFR AJIE OF ONITSHA (1936 – 2004) By Alhaji Ahmed Joda, CFR
I made acquaintance of Anthony Ukpabi Asika in July, 1967 in the home of Mr. Allison Akene Ayida, then Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Economic Development. He had, just that day, been introduced to General Yakubu Gowon, Head of the Federal Military Government, Commander in‐ Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He had been brought from Ibadan by the then Lt Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo, then Rear Commander of the Second Division of the Nigerian Army based in Ibadan. He was offered and had accepted the position of the Administrator of the East Central State of Nigeria, then firmly under the control of Lt Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, leader of the rebel territory of Biafra consisting of all that territory which today is made up of Anambra, Enugu, Ebonyi, Abia and Imo States. The Civil War was raging and no one knew for sure how or when it would end.
General Gowon, had since May 27, 1967 been looking for “an Igbo man, mad enough to accept to take on the impossible task of governing the East Central State” which had been borne out of crisis. Everyone knew that it was a near impossible task and a heavy burden of responsibility bound to be unrewarding. He found one, who turned out to be the best person under any circumstance and who certainly proved not to be mad. This was something no one could expect in July 1967 from any part of Nigeria.
Tony’s courageous decision to take on the assignment was an act of faith and deep patriotism not found in ordinary mortals. I have frequently, silently, wondered to myself whether under similar circumstances, I or any of us who had become his colleagues, friends and confidants would have had the courage of our convictions to do the same. What really motivated him, I could not easily comprehend, until his death when I saw a letter he had written to a University friend of his in the University of Los Angeles, California on the first of June, 1967, five weeks to the outbreak of the civil war. In the letter he had expressed his deep fears for his kinsmen and for his country of birth, the likely course tragedy would take, the suffering that would be inevitable and the tragedy not only to his own people but to his country, both of which as the letter demonstrates, he deeply loved and continued to love until his last breath. In that letter Tony clearly expressed his strong attachment to the land of his birth, firmly stated his love for his people (the Igbos) and saw clearly that their future happiness and well‐being lay in ONE Nigeria which he was firmly committed to defend with his life and for which he was willing to sacrifice the family he loved and cherished.
Tony could not take his post in Enugu immediately, because, it was still not firmly in Federal hands. So he was obliged to operate as best as he could from Lagos. At the first opportunity, he moved to Enugu to set up Government from nothing, absolutely nothing. From the moment I met him and his wife, Chinyere, I liked and admired them both and I became a member of the Asika family. From then on I have been a regular and welcome visitor to their home wherever it was. We, along with our many other friends have shared the best as well as the worst moments of the history of our nation.
Throughout the period of the War, I visited regularly and was always their guest. We shared experiences; pained over the sufferings of our people in the war affected areas; dreamt dreams of a safer, more united and more prosperous Nigeria, free of ethnic and other divides. We spent evenings together and argued into the wee hours of the morning, only to do the same, the next day and the next time we met, until 1994 when he had a massive stoke which left him unconscious for months.
He survived that stroke and came out of it fighting. If it were possible for anyone to fight death and win, it would have been Tony. He not only survived this first challenge to his life he regained all his senses and, although paralysed on one side, he retained his full senses, kept abreast with political, economic and social trends in Nigeria and around the world with clarity, honour and understanding of all that was round him. He read newspapers, listened to the radio, watched television and surfed the internet. A second, but less severe stroke weakened him and blurred his speech. Even so he continued to fight gallantly. He recognised everyone and it was clear that he knew and understood all and tried to communicate forcefully.
Throughout all of my acquaintance with Tony, I have never known him lose his temper or his honour or to hold anything against anyone. He hated no one. I doubt that there is any one who can truly hate
Anthony Ukpabi Asika, the Ajie of Onitsha. He is the only one I have known who “turns the other cheek”. At the worst moments during the Civil War, and many other serious problems which we all faced from time to time and when everything seemed hopeless and when all of us would become despondent and down hearted, discouraged and tending to give up in desperation, the one to first recover and urge us on was always Tony.
The night the civil war effectively ceased I was with Tony until the small hours of the morning of 10 January, 1970. When we eventually went to bed I could only sleep fitfully. I woke up around four in the morning and could not go back to sleep. I switched on the radio and got the Voice of Biafra. The announcement that the “Head of State of Biafra, General Odumegwu Ojukwu” was going to broadcast to the Nation was going on repeatedly. I became wide awake and alert. I continued to listen until the broadcast was made to the effect that Ojukwu was going out of Biafra in search of peace. I instantly recognised that the thirty months of war was at an end. I dressed up and went to try to reach Asika, but the security would not allow me. I drove to then Brigadier T.Y. Danjuma’s house. He too had heard the broadcast, had dressed up and was coming down the stairs when I went into his living room.
Together we drove to Government House and went straight into the Administrator’s bed room and literally lifted him out of bed and told him that the war was over. He instantly became alert. We sat down on his bed and composed the broadcast he would make to the people of the East Central State and, as it turned out to Federal Troops at the War Fronts on how to receive, welcome and treat the liberated people into back into the fold. The now famous, often quoted words “No Victor, No Vanquished” were first uttered in that room. They came from Asika’s mouth. Danjuma and I had no problem in recognising the wisdom of those words and the effect they would have on the minds of people and the future of Nigeria. It was apt that these words were uttered by the bravest fighter for the cause of one Nigeria. I take pride that I played a part in preparing the speech. But most importantly, in importing these same words into the broadcast of the Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, whose contributions to the Nigerian nation during her most dangerous period of existence will, perhaps, be recognised by our history and fully documented. One of General Gowon’s abiding legacies to Nigeria was in finding, recognising and working with Anthony Ukpabi Asika.
When General Gowon was over thrown in a military coup d’etat at the end of July, 1975, well after the Civil War, Tony, along with all the former Military Governors with whom he had established deep and lasting friendships suffered humiliation of a scale never before imagined in Nigeria. Tony, clearly had not accumulated wealth, but what he had was confiscated. For years he had to live in a one bedroom flat, waiting for the good Lord to come to his rescue and that of his family. All that most of us could do for him at this, the most trying time of his personal life, was to identify with him and his family and remain his friends until “death do us part”, which mercifully sneaked in peacefully when he was asleep. God showed his mercies to a good man.
What is remarkable throughout this period is that Tony never exhibited any bitterness towards his tormentors. He remained steadfast in his beliefs and his faith in Nigeria and the Nigerian people. At the worst of times, when those of us who had not been affected by what was happening and were not suffering like he was doing, were critical towards the injustice of it all; it was always, the victim, Tony who could find justification for all that happens in the course of nation building and restore a sense of balance to the extreme views that were sometimes expressed. He never lost his cool or balance.
I only know one incident that occurred which forced him to express some anger. Shortly after the formal pronouncement of the end of the War, on the 15th of January, 1970, I had undertaken a tour of the newly liberated areas of the East Central State. At Orlu, I went to visit the Biafra transmitting
Station where the Voice of Biafra had operated. There was looting and vandalising going on everywhere. Afraid that some of the equipment would soon be vandalised, I ordered that the transmitters should be dismantled and transported to Milliken Hill where the Nigerian Broadcasting Station operated and from where Tony had made his famous broadcast marking the end of the war.
Obviously a report went to Tony that I had acquired the transmitters for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. A telegram was fired to the Head of State, General Gowon stating that “one man by the name of Joda had ordered transmitters which is the property of the East Central State Government taken away. This is intolerable”. General Gowon showed me the telegram and commented that he was certain that the “two of you can settle it”. I went to Tony and said: “Look, I have been shown a telegram apparently signed by you to the Head of State”. Tony laughed aloud and said: “We deserve a cold drink, don’t we?” The matter seemed settled. That was Tony.
Those of us, who knew him, have lost a great friend. Nigeria, our country, has lost a champion for her unity, strength and greatness.
May His Great Soul Rest in Perfect Peace.
6. RECOMMENDATION FOR NATIONAL HONOURS
Formal Citation Prepared on 16th May 2002 by Lieutenant General T Y Danjuma (Rtd) (then Hon. Minister of
Defence), that led to award of Commander of Federal Republic (CFR) to Ajie Ukpabi Asika in 2002.
1. Dr. Anthony Ukpabi Asika, the Ajie of Onitsha, was the Administrator of the then East Central State of
Nigeria during the turbulent years of the Nigerian Civil War. When we recollect the dire circumstances
of the country as this dark period of our nationhood, Asika stands out as one that must be
remembered in the annals of Nigeria’s history as a true patriot, a visionary leader and political
strategist whose most potent weapon was the belief that Nigeria must remain one. Indeed, very few
Nigerians would exhibit such level of patriotism given the inherent dangers thatwere involved, but
Ajie braved it all by going ahead to challenge the inevitable in the course of Nigerian history.
2. Asika is a consummate intellectual, a detribalized Nigerian whose sense of values is of the highest
grade; a distinguished Nigerian who recognizes excellence no matter where it is from. Born on June
28, 1936 at Barakin‐Ladi in Plateau State, Ajie is married to Chinyere Ejiogu, his devoted and loving
wife. Their marriage is blessed with three children.
3. Ajie was educated at St. Patrick’s College Calabar; Edo College Benin; University College Ibadan (now
University of Ibadan) and University of California (UCLA) Los Angeles. He earned a degree in
Economics from the University of Ibadan, 1960. He added a Masters of Science (MSc) and a Doctor of
Philosophy PhD in Political Science at the University of California in 1962 and 1965 respectively.
4. An intellectual of immense depth, Ukpabi Asika has won many academic honours and awards. Among
these is the prize man in Economics, University of Ibadan which he won in 1960. He won the Canada
Council of non‐resident fellowship for Economics in 1961. He was the Rockefeller Foundation Scholar
from 1961 – 1965. he again won the United States National honours Fraternity in Social Science in
1963. He was the President African Students Association, Southern California, USA – 1963 – 1965. He
was awarded honorary Doctorate of Laws by Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1970 and an honorary
Doctor of Letters by University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1971.
5. His working experience covered a wide variety of fields of human endeavours and at whatever level
he found himself he proved to be very competent and dedicated worker. He started his career in 1953
as a clerk in Onitsha Town Council. Later that year he served as a clerk in the Department of
Marketing and Export, Lagos. he also served as a clerk with the Northern Nigeria Marketing Board,
Kano between 1954 – 1956. After his academic pursuits he become a lecturer in the University of
Ibadan in 1965 where, until the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War in 1967, he rose to become an
Associate Professor of Political Science.
6. Historical antecedents do reveal that it is during crisis situation that the sterling qualities of great men
become manifest, and nowhere is this better exemplified than in Ajie Ukpabi Asika. Not only was he
an advocate of peaceful co‐existence and non‐violent resolution of conflicts, but as a patriot and
nationalist he believed in the indivisibility of the Nigerian State. At a time when tribal interests,
sentiments and other parochial pursuits, swayed people, Asika was a steadfast and courageous
champion of the Nigerian Union. On the eve of the Civil War and at great risk to himself and family, he
remained at his post in Ibadan when his tribesmen responded to Ojukwu’s back‐to‐the‐East call.
7. As the successful prosecution of the Civil War progressed, the Federal Ministry Government
appointed Asika the Administrator of the East Central State in October 1967. His willingness to accept,
what was perhaps, the most unenviable appointment during the civil war, even at a great risk and
peril to himself, family and clan, was no doubt governed by those principles, which are deeply rooted
in his patriotism. In spite of widespread opposition, accusations of betrayal and vilification of his
person and family, he saw in his job an opportunity to serve Nigeria without compromising the
interest of his Igbo people.
8. Asika is a visionary leader who even in the darkest days of the civil war saw the urgent need to end
the hostilities and thus minimize the disastrous effects of the war on his people. And when it became
clear that the rebellion had been roundly defeated, Asika promoted the noble idea of “No Victor No
Vanquished” to facilitate reconciliation, an idea he successfully sold to the Head of State General
Yakubu Gowon. Asika also demanded and got total amnesty for the people of Eastern Nigeria, from
the Federal Military Government.
9. In the aftermath of the Civil war, Asika left indelible marks and contribution towards the actualization
of the Federal Government’s Reconciliation, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Programme. This
period brought out the strong, exemplary and compassionate leadership qualities in Asika, which
manifested in his display of unparalleled courage and wisdom in dealing with many intractable
problems of people devastated by war. The remarkable speed with which reconciliation and re‐
integration of the Igbo people into the mainstream of the Nigeria State in the post‐civil war took place
was due largely to his pragmatic leadership style.
10. Ajie Ukpabi Asika served as a member of the Supreme Military Council from 1967 – 1976. Within the
same period he remained as the Administrator of the East Central State. He was Chairman, Technical
Committee on the Review of the National Census of 1973. In 1985, he was the Team Leader, President
Delegation of Niger, Chad and Cameroun to re‐open Nigerian Borders.
11. Ajie is an affable man with a dignified presence, for whom friendship and respect knows no religious
and tribal boundaries, an attribute that has endeared him to those he has come into contact with. Asika
holds more than 35 traditional titles from all over Nigeria but stopped accepting additional titles when
he ascended to the rank of Ndichies, (immortals) in the ancient Kingdom of Onitsha, in 1985. He is the
Ajie of Onitsha, Ajie Ukadiugwu. He has also received national honours from Senegal. Sudan, Mauritania
and Togo.
12. In presenting this recommendation I am mindful of the fact that at the end of the Nigeria Civil War it
was decided that, in order to promote the spirit of reconciliation, no medals or honours were to be
conferred on the major actors in the resolution of the crisis. However, I am also aware that since the
decision, some of those who served on the Biafran side have had one form of honour or the other
conferred on them. And I have recognized that throughout the difficult civil war years and after, Asika’s
deep commitment to the national cause and national unity remained unshakeable. It is also a historical
fact that most of the credit for the reconciliation that took place after the civil war goes to Asika.
I am persuaded by the weight of the foregoing compelling reasons to recommend that Ajie Anthony Ukpabi
Asika be bestowed the National Honour of the Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (CFR).
‐THE END‐