When you have a good heart, kindness becomes a responsibility you take up.” ― Ufuoma Apoki
The late global icon and South Africa’s former President, Nelson Mandela, once said, “A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.”
This rare attribute is hard to be bestowed on one person except perhaps in an exceptional piece of humanity like Chief John Nnia Nwodo, the man we celebrate today in this column. Ike Ukehe (Enugu State) is a quintessential man with a gift of the gab.
A Turkish playwright and novelist, Mehmet Murat ildan, thinks that any man who is good by heart is great. Political Musings this week will be about a great man of remarkable quality. You cannot encounter Nnia Nwodo without leaving with a lasting impression of an extraordinary personality whom you will desire to meet over and over. Here, we present to you the report card of a man you cannot stop loving even at 70 years.
Admiration for Chief Nwodo did not start when he came into the national limelight in the Second Republic. It dates back to his days as an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan in the 1970s. Then he made history when he won the hearts of UNIBADAN students to become the first Igbo man in a Yoruba-dominated campus to head the Student Union Government.
Listening to him at the oration night, the students, mostly Yoruba undergraduates, buried ethnicism and other base considerations and chose merit, character, competence, and capacity. These qualities have been ascribed to Nwodo since he was 27 and made it to the national limelight as Special Assistant to President Shehu Shagari.
Nigerian youths’ knack for delivery in choosing good leadership did not start in this dispensation where they are throwing away primordial sentiments of tribe, religion, and geography for the three Cs in their support for the Labour Party Presidential candidate, Peter Obi, in the presidential election on February 25, 2023.
They did exactly that with Nwodo. After the oration night on the eve of the UNIBADAN Student Union election, the electorate changed their mind and went for Nwodo who had impressed them the most among the contestants. Before the oration night, Nwodo was not a frontrunner for ethnic reasons. If ethnicism had played up the voting day, Nwodo’s presidential ambition would have suffered a shipwreck, for the Igbo population in the election was too inconsequential to give him any hope of victory.
Back then in the 1970s, the political behaviour of the University of Ibadan students, compared closely with that of today’s youths across all barriers who are rooting for Peter Obi of the Labour Party. Even the patriotic endorsement of Obi by the pan-Yoruba group, the Afenifere is backed by history as the foundation of such pan-Nigeria nationalism was laid in Ibadan many years ago with the Nwodo election. What Nwodo and Obi’s examples are showing is that in an ideal progressive society, when character, competence, and capacity appear vividly in the choice of leadership, every other instinctive consideration is drowned.
This week’s column will celebrate one of the finest heads in this country who will be 70 years old on Sunday, December 11, 2022. Where do you start with a man of many parts whose impact is wide and overwhelming?
His oratorical prowess, which has made him more visible, seems to whittle down his other sides, namely the depth of his intellect and humanness. When you happen to hear Chief Nwodo speak you will quickly align yourself to the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero who said, “Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.” The Roman still added, “Great is our admiration of the orator who speaks with fluency and discretion.”
Great indeed has been the popular admiration for Nwodo in all assignments he found himself. Fresh from university in 1979, President Shehu Shagari brought him (Special Assistant) as one of the youths around him. He did so well in that first political job that at 33 years he was elevated to the position of Minister of Aviation. A job he also performed well before the military junta truncated the democratic process again in 1983.
When the military decided to exit again on the sudden death of General Sani Abacha with Abdulsalami Abubakar as the transition military head of state, Nwodo was tapped again to be the Minister of Information and de facto spokesman of the transition team. This critical assignment was challenging because of the image of military rule at the time, especially after the annulment of June 12. [The annoying annulment came with unsalutary consequences.] Nwodo was to bring civility into the regime with his persuasive oratory.
In this current political dispensation, he has been off and on, contesting at some points as a presidential aspirant when he took his penetrating messages around the country but was set back by the various clogs in our democratic wheels. Despite the pressure from his people back home for him to join party politics, a sad occurrence saw death snatch his beloved wife, Justice Regina Obiageli Nwodo. Her death changed the trajectory of Chief Nwodo’s political career.
To respect the wish of his wife, Nwodo, now a single parent, resisted all pressures to run for either the Senate or the presidency. He needed to give maximum attention to their children.
People still persuaded him to lead the apex Igbo socio-political and cultural organisation, the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, as President-General between January 2017 to January 2021. As providence would have it that was the most challenging time for Ndigbo In Nigeria’s history since the civil war and Nwodo was indisputably the square peg in a square hole.
His tenure elevated the Ohanaeze status nationally and internationally and made every Igbo man proud of being one. He defended Igbo interests in all ramifications. He not only marketed Ndigbo appropriately but made sure that all their challenges and potentials are brought to the fore globally.
His leadership of Ohanaeze helped to further energise all other ethnic nationalities in the country to emerge as a formidable force in the political space. No wonder after his tenure as Ohanaeze President, four ethnic nationalities, Ohanaeze, Afenifere, PANDEF, and Middle Belt Forum elected him as their joint spokesperson.
On Sunday, December 11, 2022, the crème de la crème including numerous relatives and friends of Nwodo will assemble in Coal City to celebrate a man who has left memorable footprints of nobility along all the roots he passed. As part of his 70th birthday, added to supplications, will be a one-day colloquium where raging national issues would be tabled for dispassionate discussion.
One thing about Nwodo that stands him out among the club of the elite in society is his relationship with God. Like a typical pious damsel, Nwodo hides in God so that when his friends come they go there first to make their friendship smooth and rancour-free and this explains why he has many friends and admirers across the country.
Credit for this unique and exemplary feature goes to the progenitor of the Nwodo dynasty of Ukehe, Enugu State, the late Igwe J. U. Nwodo and his wife Josephine, who made sure their children embraced God early as an inevitable partner in human development. It was such a distinctive, disciplined family where Nwodo was once a lorry conductor to make ends meet, [an interesting story for another day].
Nwodo’s traditional honorific is Ike [pillar of] Ukehe, says all of his power and influence in a town that is so affectionate about him. In Ukehe and indeed Nsukka cultural area Nnia has cult figure. He mentored not a few and remains very charitable to all through scholarship and many other uplifting of the downtrodden. In fact in Ukehe, Nwodo meets Mehmet Murat ildan’s definition of a good man, “The first step to being a good man is this: You must deeply feel the burden of the stones someone else [is] carrying.”
Nwodo is the man who carries the piano for everyone to play. In football, they call his role the team player.
Join me, therefore, along with his numerous admirers to welcome this iroko, lawyer and economist to the seventh floor of life where elder statesmen reside. Happy birthday, Ike Nsukka, a charismatic and affable personality. Congratulations.