Remembering late Major Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, by Wale Adedayo
The students that late Chief Gani Fawehinmi always stood up for were recruited to stone him during the Chicago Gate scandal in Lagos. It took a very brave few to rescue the old man. The masses he was fighting for all his life voted against Fawehinmi’s National Conscience Party (NCP). It was an abysmal loss! It broke the old fighter inside.
Late Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola naively believed he was fighting a Yoruba cause by seeking political alliance with the dominant political party in Nigeria’s most populous region. The same Yorubas labelled him a traitor and named everything negative in the land after him. Nobody remembered any of his sound initiatives and his many positive contributions to the defunct Action Group (AG).
But fate has a way of paying back. Akintola died unsung. But the same Yorubas now follow Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who took his first steps in politics from Akintola’s playbook and successfully crowned it with visible results. Sadly, till date, the average Yoruba still subconsciously view Akintola as a traitor to the race.
Late Major Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu was a detribalised Nigerian, who saw far ahead of his peers. What we call context in journalism or background gives a vivid account of the circumstances of his time. He did not hate the Hausa or Fulani. He did not hate the Yoruba. The patriotic black African in him only hated the corrupt and the ten percenters, who glorified wealth and personal goodies to the detriment of development. And he used what was in vogue at the time to get rid of those perceived to be responsible for Nigeria’s visionless Government.
From the accounts of late Major Adewale Ademoyega, Ben Gbulie and others who knew him deeply, Nzeogwu was more than ready to sacrifice himself in the pursuit of what he saw as an urgent need to redeem the black man. Even after the efforts failed in Lagos and the East, he was prepared to go the Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s way by fighting his way down South until the betrayal set in motion for him.
Son of man has always celebrated Nzeogwu since my teenage years. Colleagues at Compound F Room 19, in the then Permanent Site of the University of Ilorin, where I was a Chemistry student knew me as Chukwuma, because I had him all around me. Of course, in 2001, my mum and the Muslim clerics who came for the christening of my first son were shocked with the name I wrote on the paper as my first son’s, Chukwuma (God knows). My house in Okeliwo is Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu Villa. And my children, especially the girls, know that service to our immediate community is first even to the detriment of the so-called personal good.
This is once again to acknowledge you, old man. Some naively believed you were a Biafran soldier. You certainly were not! Even after you were killed by the same people you set out to free, their leaders knew you died as a patriotic Nigerian, which Dimwitted Chukwuemeka Ojukwu was not. You were buried with full Nigerian military honours at the then national cemetery in Kaduna where you were born. On this day, some of us will NOT forget. You had all it took to live a good life. But you choose sacrifice. You choose others before yourself. Like Yaser Arafat’s former declaration, you refused to marry until Nigeria was free.
We’ll continue to remember you, old man. We also pledge to continue following your path no matter the level of obstacles. It will always be “others before self” for us. Continue to rest in perfect peace as you followed the path of Honour!
