Made in Aba: What Senator Abaribe Has That Others Don’t, By Rudolf Okonkwo

Date:

I spent over an hour following live the launching of Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe’s memoir, ‘Made In Aba’. Watching the proceedings was a study in Nigerians’ psychology, especially that of the class of people who run the affairs of that failed nation.

Thanks to zoom, I watched how they loitered around, how they shook hands, how they hugged, how they approached the podium, how they grabbed the microphone, and how they held a book. The way you hold a book says a lot about your relationship with knowledge.

It was interesting watching government officials from both the ruling and opposition parties come on stage and every one of them equivocally declared without any iota of irony that Senator Abaribe was a man of integrity. They each muttered the word “integrity” like dunces (itibolibos), calling someone a first-class brain.

How did that happen? What does Senator Abaribe have that others do not have?

Until I did my research before an interview with Abaribe last year, I didn’t remember him being the Abia State’s deputy governor. I did not remember him being up for impeachment three times before he finally resigned. It says a lot about the attention we pay to deputy governors in Nigeria. His memoir exposed all the stories behind his recruitment and subsequent traumatic era as Governor Orji Uzo Kalu’s deputy in Abia.

Virtually everyone who spoke of the book mentioned that when asked what he would be when he grew up, the young Abaribe said he would want to be a big man. While some participants at the event suggested that Abaribe, as Minority Leader in the Nigerian Senate, had achieved his mission of being a big man, a few others disagreed. One of those who disagreed was Prof. Pat Utomi, who wrote one of the book’s forwards. Utomi said that Abaribe was not a big man yet because he had not acquired a big stomach.

During his review of the book, ThisDay newspaper’s editorial board chairman, Segun Adeniyi, who was sitting beside Abaribe’s wife, Florence, reported that Florence had a different take on the debate about whether Abaribe had achieved the big man status. Abaribe, the wife had whispered in jest, had no money and, as such, had not merited the big man title.

While many in the audience took the laughter well, they lost the real definition of a big man. Present at the book launch was an epitome of a one-time big man, Pius Anyim. Anyim was a former Senate President and also a former Secretary to the Federal Government of Nigeria. In the body-mass index, Anyim is a very big man. In every dimension of the stomach perimeter, Anyim is in good standing. In building a mansion in record time to bury his mother, Anyim had very few who could measure up. In having the audacity to build a house in Abuja on an illegal plot of land only to have the house knocked down when he was out of power, Anyim was a big man of unequal means. On several levels, Pius Anyim was a poster boy of what a Nigerian big man should be. Yet, if Anyim were to write a book, even if 100 ghosts wrote it for him, thunder would strike down anyone who dared call Anyim a man of integrity at his book launch.

A real big man is one that history will remember for how he touched his people’s lives. A big man whose bigness will survive beyond his time in a big office is someone who is in tune with the heartbeat of his people. He is a man who fights for his people, that even when he fails to obtain fairness and justice, nobody will doubt whether he is on the side of the people or the side of the oppressors. A big man, whose bigness ends at the grave, is a big-for-nothing big man.

Peter Obi, the former governor of Anambra State, was the chairman of the book launch. He, too, is a big man. If Peter Obi were to write his memoir today, you bet that he would talk about how he personally pumped petrol into his official car as governor to make sure that the filling station clerk did not cheat the Anambra State government. But he would not say a word about the N250 million Anambra State security vote money that Nigerian police intercepted in 2009 as it was being ferried to Lagos for onwards transportation out of Nigeria. Obi would write about giving up his personal bed and sleeping on the floor to let visiting President Obasanjo sleep in his bedroom instead of paying for a hotel room. He would not talk about those bodies of 18 young men shot by police under his watch and dumped inside Ezu River, left to bloat and float down the river until they clogged the tributaries of our conscience.

In searching for what Abaribe has that other Nigerian leaders do not have, it is important to remember that there are two kinds of leaders in Nigeria – those who were surprised to see themselves in leadership positions and those who expected themselves to be leaders. Within those who were surprised to see themselves as leaders, there are two camps – those who feel accomplished by just being there and those who have the sense that they owe posterity a responsibility for getting them there. Amongst those who expected themselves to be leaders, there are two camps too – those who think they should be revered because they are God’s gift to their country and those who think though they are privileged to be in their positions, they still have to earn the respect that comes with such fortune. Those in the second camps of each group are few and in-between.

For so many in leadership positions in Nigeria, leadership is about greed soaked in platitudes. For many, leadership is mere banalities amplified by bloated ego. Answering big and empty titles are substitutes for producing long-lasting results. One of the titles that I found preposterous is the gburugburu title common in the Eastern part of Nigeria. Some define gburugburu as, in totality, worldwide and global. I have a mathematical definition of gburugburu which is perimeter. Suppose you are the gburugburu of Enugu or Abia or Ebonyi or Imo or Anambra and your territory has no water, no light, and no road. In that case, it is like a circle that has a perimeter of zero. If the perimeter is zero, the radius cannot be anything but zero. 

How ironic that a governor of a state that has Aba in it can muster the courage to call himself His Excellency of a gburugburu that contains Aba?

In ‘Made In Aba’, Abaribe details what he went through as Orji Uzo Kalu’s deputy governor. In the stories of his confrontation with Gov. Kalu and his overbearing mother, Abaribe paints a vivid picture of the contrast that 18 years later has him towering above the one that recruited him to be his deputy with a promise to give him a free hand as a technocrat to run things, while, he, Orji, would provide the political cover.

Why did Abaribe thrive while Orji Uzo Kalu, the one once called action governor, fumbled? The answer is in the different backgrounds of the two men. One had a solid and purposeful upbringing where the emphasis was on being true to yourself and authentic to your conscience, while the other relied on a fluid, insecure, end-justifies-the-means philosophy that would sacrifice the sum for the slice.

There was a reason why our ancestors inquired about the pedigree of those aspiring for leadership. The practice is gone, but the reason is as obvious as it was generations ago. Those unsure whether something remains of the DNA of the women who led the Aba Women Revolution of 1929 see it daily in one of their descendants, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe.

“Made in Aba” is a toast to Abaribe’s pedigree. If some Nigerian politicians of today were to write their memoirs, the most common title would be “Made by Oluwole.”

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