UKPOR OWES DIM NNAKIFE A LOT… C.O.L UGBOAJA

When I was given the name of Chief C.O.C. Ugboaja as one of the credible sources to interview on the life and politics of Dim Nna O Nnakife, I felt a bit inadequate. I still remember with great respect the unblemished records of Chief Ugboaja in the federal civil service. I had never met him one on one before, but his reputation precedes him. I wondered how he has fared in retirement, has he lost the fire and acute intelligence that were hall marks of his younger years… I wondered. Again how do I get such an accomplished person to open up and tell me his candid balanced opinion of a personality such as Dim Nnakife?

I did what any average writer would do, I decided to first do a background check on my subject, but with absence of libraries or resource centres in Ukpor, I can only rely on what well informed people can tell me about Chief Ugboaja. But nothing they old me prepared me for the face to face interaction I had with this illustrious son of Ukpor.

Just as the sun began to take its inevitable dive into the unknown horizon beyond the hills of Lilu, I set out for the interview date with Chief Ugboaja. He had earlier called me in the morning to inform me that he would be available for the interview at my convenience, but it was Sunday and mass must take precedent. On the phone his rich soft voice which I strained to listen to in other to catch the so soft spoken syllabus gave nothing away of his depth of wisdom and love for Ukpor and her people. If anything his voice on the phone sounded deeply rich and baritone, the kind of voice you would expect from highly successful politician or an obese man of cloth, as it turned out he is neither.

As I began to descend the small hill after ‘Obom Otagborogwu’ momentarily distracted by the women and men laboriously excavating stones from farms straddling both sides of the ill maintained hill, I wondered aloud if the town isn’t courting ecological disaster in future by this temporary solution to the economic hardships of families in this area. A left turn and I was at Chief Ugboaja’s country home, a one

storey building set in one of the most serene nature friendly enviroments I have seen in Ukpor. Adjacent to the house plantain trees struggling to remain erect labored under apparent unbearable weight of plantain stocks dangling pricariouly from dead stalks. Nature blessed this village. Almost like the environment, a very calm looking man opened the door to welcome me to his austere but tastefully furnished living room. This Chief Ugboaja.

He has not aged much, there is a simplicity about him that is so re-assuring, and he is the kind of person you instinctively trust. Respectable, he looked every inch his reputation. After exchange of pleasantries and presentation of kola nut which I elected to pocket, he signaled his readiness and the interview commenced. I left his home so deeply touched by his wisdom, wits and sincere desire to see Ukpor join the league of fast developing towns. This is a passion, according to him, he shares with Dim Nnakife…

Question: Can you give us a little of your background Sir?

Ans: My name is Chief C.O.C Ugboaja, Omenka. I am a retired Federal public servant and I am now retired to the village to assist in putting things right as much as one can. Well eh; even when I was working, I was equally interested in community peace and development. Peace first because without peace, there is nothing one can do. And there will be peace by putting together and by organizing people, and, I think that has been my area and even when I was in public service, I was able to reactivate UIU, Lagos branch and that was in the seventies and from there the other body; Central UIU because you’ll remember if you were close then, there was another body introduced by the then leaders called Ukpor Development Trust, but I said, I had never seen where a goat can give birth to a cow. A cow has to give birth to a cow and a goat give birth to a goat, so we struggled from Lagos end to reactivate the Central body which we succeeded in seeing through by 1980 and since then Ukpor, like every other community that was progressive started moving forward. And so the person you are asking of, Chief Dim Nnakife, equally participated in Lagos putting Ukpor community together in Lagos in the sixties before the start of the civil war. He was one of the officers then, and then he was very dynamic, he tried to put in his best before he left for Cotonou from where he made what he is. And he later came back after

having lived there for many years; he affected a lot of Nigerians that came across him because he is a lover of the people.

He loves progressive men, so most of our boys used to travel to Cotonou then, and Chief Nnakife’s place was the rallying ground for them. Those that got there without accommodation, he equally accommodated and helped them with whatever form of problem they had, provided the person is not a criminal. If it was where to stay, eat he rose up to the occasion.

He developed most of our business boys over there before he returned to Nigeria for politics. And like I said too, I remember when we initiated our local government – Mbanano LG we initiated it from Lagos. In fact we drafted application for that and dispatched a number of men to meet with Chief Mbazulike Amechi, Chief O. C. Sam Okeke, Chief P.N. Emerah and Chief Dim Nnakife to meet with them and sell our idea to them which they bought, and they took it up and developed it and with their effort we had the Mbanano LG of which Chief Dim Nnakifeh was the pioneer Chairman of the LG then.

And it was that Mbanano LG that metamorphosed to present day Nnewi South LG because you cannot just start from nowhere, and when that one came, Ukpor was the headquarters and as it developed, Ukpor continued to remain the headquarters. In fact what we are looking forward to now is to have Ukpor as a LG of its own which the young man is working very hard to actualize, because he is a very dynamic politician, and he has done a lot of things in other areas, even right now he is working with other collaborators to have Ulasi State. He is very relentless in that project and is working day and night to see it through. And from all indications he may come out successful with that. And he is a very sound politician brought up by Chief Mbazulike Amechi but I think he is now overtaken because Chief Amechi is retiring and we are looking forward to borrowing better political ideas from him by those who are young enough not people like us who are retired. The moment one gets on to certain level, he thinks of retiring as a statesman and advise young men aspiring to go up, for those who care for that.

He is sound and working well on that, because of his love for his village and desire for its development, when he came back, he saw his village in shambles that is Umudim. He is the young man – the person that fought very vehemently to ensure that Umudim is taken and recognized as a village of its own in the town. Formerly, they used to be known as Umudim-Ebe and if you look at it, they had no relationship with Ebe, and he worked on that and when he was working on this, a lot of people even within your Umudim did not see the vision and the way he was going. They were seeing him as somebody who wanted to destabilize something that was organized but that kind of organization is not an organization because it was not formidable and

it had no history behind it. So he fought very much and achieved Umudim as a village.

And it was inaugurated, people from far and near attended and there are some pamphlets on that. And even when some people tried to bring up some crisis too over it, still fighting strongly to belong to Umudim Ebe, it became a case and it came up to UIU Central Body, and in UIU we have a peace committee called Conflict Resolution Committee and I was the chairman, so this case came up before my committee. We studied the submissions and saw that he had a very good reason for what he was saying and we did not hesitate to recommend to the Ukpor Community that these people should be allowed to exist on their own because they are supposed to exist on their own and the way they came and their affiliation – even Umuohama Dike have relationships with them through Agbuana and if you look at those things you see that though Umudim is a very small village, it is mighty in reality. “Ndi be anyi si na isi miri adi ebu ugbo”. For instance this Urasi River that can drown scores of people actually started from Dikenafar from ordinary spring water. There it is barely “Ogba n’ elu” but down stream, it is a river. So as chairman of the committee I told them well I have no reason to object to these people’s aspirations and they have every reason to be there as Umudim village historically speaking and should be allowed to exist on their own.

So I am happy that they are together now in fact Dim Nnakife in his magnanimity, being a peaceful person that he was not forcing issues. He said look if any fraction or group of people still wants to belong to Ebe let them belong and allow those that want to belong to Umudim Ukpor to belong.

He never believed in fighting people for holding a contrary view point or even people who refuse to see reason. They should be allowed to go there until they see reason to want to come back so he was so open on this, then I said yes. I think what he is saying is quite clear and even if there are only three people that want to be Umudim Ebe. They too should be allowed to be. Others can go wherever they want until the other group decide to come back and team with the rest. I don’t know what the situation is like there now.

Question: So the unification of Umudim is a vindication of your committee’s recommendations

Ans: Yes, yes, because we told them, look it is quite clear that Umudim Orioha has no relationship to Ebe whatsoever, the two slices of Ebe, one related to Ohamadike, and then the other one relates to Nnaboshi, they all

came through Ezika. Ezika was the father and Naboshi and Umudara Ebe were brothers while Ebejerem Onye and Ohamadike were of same mother. We are related to Umudim through our Nna ochie, Agbuana, and Egochukwu the mother of Agbuana was Okwutuo’s daughter so you see historically, Umudim’s argument is very sound.

We are so interrelated. We are supposed to know ourselves better but people chose to fight against what I don’t know.

Question: So why are philosophers misunderstood? Has it got to do with the way their visions are communicated and why are our intellectuals not recognized? Some people believe that Ukpor has not accorded enough recognition to our thinkers is this as a result of the way our philosophers are communicating their ideas. Because Ukpor doesn’t seem to care enough. Is this the with Dim?

Ans: Yes, it is partly a fault of the intellectuals. Even here the way they comport themselves and the way they organize people and I think that is part of the reason why they seem not to be recognized the way, they ought to be because most of them don’t make their presence felt by the people, you find that those that are in position of making themselves known to the people, some of them are not ….. I mean only very few of them like Prof. Ogunna you spoke about are public men.

But there are still many others, you don’t know they exist, and when you don’t know somebody, how do you recognize him. It is now that a good number of them are coming out like Prof. Anyamene, he is a lecturer in Unizik and not minding his high position there, he came down here to the village to accept the position of a secretary general of the town union. He is unifying the people, you know, the people can recognize him because he loves his people and we have indeed been recognizing him in many ways. But there are still others who people don’t even know, so how do you expect the people to recognize somebody they know nothing about. Now going back to Chief Nnakifeh, this is a man that rose to the position of chairman of a Political Party in the old Anambra State, a former member of the constituent assembly, a highly articulate and sagacious politician.

Question: Why has Ukpor not recognized him knowing he is the only Ukpor man to have attained such high position in political party administration in Post Civil War Nigeria?

Ans: I think that is part of what you said earlier that some people rendered services to Ukpor that go unrecognized. Well I don’t know why, Chief Nnakifeh has been a chairman of a party in old Anambra state, his presence is felt wherever he is. He played prominent part in the various development stages of this town…. I really don’t know why. Whether we can look at it as ill luck, it is just like chief Mbazulike Amechi.

I don’t know how many Mbazurike Amechis still exist in Nigeria politically, but up till now he has not been given any national honor. They are truly the forgotten heroes. But that of Dim cannot be compared to that of Chief Mbazulike Amechi, because Dim is right here in our midst, it does not need outside decisions, this is Ukpor and this man has been in Ukpor and is always there. Maybe the leaders has forgotten him.

Question: A gentle man I spoke with yesterday told me that his religious views may be responsible that people kind of can’t differentiate his politics from his religion could it be true?

Ans: Meaning what? I can’t understand what that means, that doesn’t matter, his person is there whether he belongs to the least religious group makes no difference at all. It does not matter, because it is not religion we are talking about. We are talking about a person in a community and the whole community cannot share the same religious views. Honestly I can’t explain why this man has not been accorded a commensurate recognition. I can’t explain but it is surprising because he is supposed to have been placed where he belonged I really cannot explain. Maybe some of the leaders that have been can explain better.

Question: Ok what are the personal qualities that endeared this man to you?

Ans: Well I have already said certain things about him like what I said about him when he was in Cotonou, I accompanied a friend on a visit to Cotonou and he said there is an Ukpor man here in cotonou” I didn’t even know Chief Nnakife then but the friend said we should go to his house that he helps Ukpor people, you know this & that and I followed my friend to Chief Nnakife’s house and that was the first time I saw him in my life. I used to hear about him, you know like when he was in Lagos, but I was not really close to him or met him one on one. Though I used to hear a lot about him and what I heard about exactly was what I saw in Cotonou and when I came back to Nigeria, I still heard people talking about this Ukpor man in Cotonou.

It was when he came back to Nigeria that we actually became close. He has been very popular with our people you know “CAESAR”, and you know Julius Caesar was one of the Shakespearean tragedies and any body that has read the book and heard of the man Caesar would like to know the person bearing such a name. He became very popular by that name, everybody would like to have a glance at him whenever mention is made of his name in a public gathering, everyone will like to look at Caesar. There are a lot of things that made him popular like the way he addresses issues his kind of life and that kind of things. So everybody liked him.

Question: Now many people are not aware of the noble deeds this man did in Cotonou and the services he rendered to our people then, that he was actually a rallying point for Ukpor indigenes in Cotonou and that his life in Ukpor is just a continuation of his selfless service to Ukpor in Cotonou. What do you say to this?

Ans: Yes exactly he was a very good coordinator and a good organizer, wherever he is, things can not be left undone and above all, he is a man of truth, anything outside of what he thinks to be the truth he disassociates himself from, anybody that appreciates such quality in a man would like to deal with him. To me he has one of the best qualities of a good leader. And I like him for that and if he comes out for something, he is out for it and he must make it except where he is not interested, if you go to him, he would tell you initially and from on set that he is not interested in that but if he is, he will fight to make it work and I respect him for that

Question: So what is your massage for him on his 70th Birthday?

Ans: My message to Dim my friend, oh, we are all age grade you know and I was telling him the other day that if not for my bereavement, of my wife’s eternal exit early this year I would have much earlier than now celebrated my 70th birthday. And it is unfortunate we have not been able to organize age grades at Central Ukpor Level because all our age mates within Ukpor would have come out together to tell Ukpor that we are still alive. And I thank God for him, that he has actually marked what the Bible spelt out for us. And life begins at 70. And I pity those that never lived up to that and I think also that it is a confirmation of the fact that he is living a good life, because I believe that it is one of the benefits of the type of person he is, having achieved 70 years of age.

Because of the way things are now I am looking forward to him living up to 130 years as long as he would be able to move and with his kind of

stature he may even make 150 years. Oh I am praying for him that he would celebrate his birthday very healthy, and I call upon people of good will to pray for him to celebrate it at his best and then after that we would then tell him, he is reborn and we want more of what we have always known him for.

I thank God for his life and wish him the best

Thank you.