By Ethelbert OkereBy 4pm this evening, September 4, 2024, we would have gathered at his residence off Port Harcourt road, Owerri for an evening of Praise and Worship to mark Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu’s 82nd birthday. With at least two live choirs ministering as usual, I can picture him nodding approvingly to the songs especially when his favourite ones are being rendered. Chief was quite fond of hymns like “Standing On The Promises of God”, by R. Kelso Carter; “Stand `Up Stand Up For Jesus”, by G. Duffield; “Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer”, by William Williams and “Praise To The Lord, The Almighty”, by J. Neander. Chief Iwuanyanwu had in 2009 compiled 230 Hymns which he published under the title, SELECTED HYMNS FOR DEVOTION (SHD). A revised edition was published in 2010 and in 2022; he did a third edition to mark his 80th birthday anniversary.
But in place of Hymns rendition this evening, the over 300 members of a national burial committee, through the various subcommittees, will parley, both physically and through the internet, on how to give this national icon a befitting farewell. Thanks to the Southeast Governors Forum led by Imo state governor, Senator Hope Uzodimma, this is perhaps the first in the country that a pan-Nigerian burial is being put in place. It is something higher than a state burial because the latter is mostly a government affair.This time around, nearly every facet of the society is involved– organised private sector, educational institutions, churches, traditional institutions, alumni associations, professional bodies etc etc. What this means is that
Chief Iwuanyanwu’s burial, slated for November 1, 2024,is probably going to be the first national burial in the country in the real sense of it. How he earned this honor is not a hidden matter but that is a story that will be told as we move towards the D-day. Despite his wealth and fame, Chief Iwuanyanwu was a very modest man. So much has been written about his life and time since his departure on July 25, 2024 but let me draw attention to one of his attributes which the various writers seemed to have ignored or overlooked;which is that Chief Iwuanyanwu was probably the only Nigerian who became accepted as a national leader despite the fact that he never held any executive or legislative office.
Twice, he made unsuccessful attempts to become the president of Nigeria but each failure, rather than diminish his enthusiasm about of a great Nigeria, spurred him on to dream bigger about his fatherland. The late sage, Obafemi Awolowo, was described as the best president Nigeria never had but I think Chief Iwuanyanwu would fit into the following characterization: The Best Dream About Nigeria That Never Came To Pass.
In Iwuanyanwu Nigeria dreamt big. He was among the few Nigerian leaders who did not lay emphasis on her diversities as the major obstacle to her development. Rather, he believed that “our diversity is what makes Nigeria a great country”. He further said: “I believe in a big country. The moment we start breaking, we might end up with 13 or 15 countries. The world is coming together. It is best to come together…”.
Let me make a brief illustration with two key areas where he demonstrated a rare leadership acumen that Nigerians to further harness for the benefit of the entire country: his proprietorship in sports development and newspaper publishing. The exploits of his football club, Iwuanyanwu Nationale, in both national and international championships is well known but what many did not know was that he was the first football proprietor in Nigeria that operated a feeder academy, known as Iwuanyanwu Comets, whose products populated the team that won Nigeria’s first Olympic gold medal in football in 1996.
He once gave an account of his personal experience during that tournament: “One of the matches we played at the tournament was in Boston. During that particular match, I sat with a former president of USA, George Bush, in the VIP stand. When I told him that I owned a football club and that seven of my players were in the Nigerian team, he was excited. Immediately I told him, he took my autograph. All other dignitaries, congress men and business men took my autograph. That was a rare privilege”
The feat of 1996 was achieved despite the traumatic experience two years earlier, in 1994, when Iwuanyanwu Nationale suffered a plane crash in Tunisia after an engagement and in which it lost two of its players. Chief Iwuanyanwu described that incident as “my saddest day”. He said: “it pained me so much. It was a very terrible experience. It wasn’t the loss of the aircraft or the expenditure I had incurred but the loss of my footballers because they were assets I cherished so much. It was my saddest day”.
The other area in which Chief Iwuanyanwu, through personal enterprise, provided Nigerians an opportunity to cohere was in his involvement in newspaper publishing. He founded Champion newspaper in 1988, becoming the first Igbo, outside Nnamdi Azikiwe – with his West African Pilot – to float a national newspaper.
Before the coming of Champion, the newspaper industry was dominated by proprietors from Yoruba land and what was formerly known as Midwest; in what was then known as the Mgbati Press. Apart from that Chief Iwuanyanwu successfully made an inroad into that area, Champion newspaper provided a forum for a deeper relationship between the Igbo and the Yoruba. Even though the perennial mutual suspicion between the two peoples may never be completely mitigated, there can be no doubt that through the newspaper, Chief Iwuanyanwu improved the relationship between the two ethnic groups.
That came about largely because of his decision to make the newspaper have a national outlook, ab initio, by appointing a Yoruba, Prince Henry Odukomaiya, as the first Managing Director and Editor-In-Chief of the newspaper company. He appointed another Yoruba, Alhaji Gbenga Ashiru, as the executive director in charge of Marketing. Not surprisingly, several of his Igbo kinsmen charged him of founding a newspaper and handing it over to the Yoruba.
Even though Prince Odukomaiya was one of the most experienced in the newspaper industry in Nigeria then, Iwuanyanwu critics pointed at the fact that there were quite a handful of top Igbo journalists with requisite managerial experience whom he could have brought in to run the newspaper. There were names like Innocent Oparadike, Eddie Iroh, Onyema Ugochukwu, Lewis Obi, Livi Iwunze, Pini Jason Onyegbadue, etc.
But it was a needless cynicism since those critics did not have the privilege of sharing in the vision Chief Iwuanyanwu had in establishing the newspaper. That vision was to publish a newspaper that would, among other things, foster a more national integration and re-lunch the Igbo into a field of endeavor in which they had initially played a pioneering role but had at a point lost track of, for one reason or the other.
As far as he was concerned, that vision would hardly be realized with a newspaper that did not have a cosmopolitan outlook as there were bound to be prejudices, ab initio, against a newspaper which management was tilted towards Igbo professionals or administrators. As already noted, the Igbo were hardly into media proprietorship in Nigeria, at least at national level, before Champion newspaper was established. Alex Ibru, the founder of The Guardian did not face such a challenge because there were already a lot of his kinsmen from the defunct Midwest region that were part and parcel of the politics of media ownership in Nigeria.
Similarly, both Moshood Abiola and Olu Aboderin, respectively publishers of Concord newspaper and Punch newspaper, did not have to worry about where the chief executives of their outfits were to come from for the reason and, as such, were not vulnerable to the insinuation of publishing a “Yoruba newspaper”. Differently put, Chief Iwuanyanwu was quite conscious of the fact that he was veering into a terrain where he potentially faced the challenge of being discriminated against. Fortunately for him, that decision enabled him to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone. It at once made a good business sense and immediately marked Champion newspaper out as a national asset.
Odukomaiya himself does not mince words in saying that through the newspaper, an opportunity was created for a stronger integration of the Igbo with other ethnic groups especially his own people, the Yoruba. While I was gathering materials for my book, “Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu: Another Angle To A Big Story”, published to mark his 80th birthday, I had a one-week encounter with Prince Odukomaiya, my former boss, now retired and an elder statesman, in his Ilupeja, Lagos residence. He told me that the major reason he accepted the offer to be the pioneer chief executive officer of the newspaper was because he saw an opportunity to have a closer relationship with the Igbo. He said he had always craved for that because the perennial rivalry between the Igbo and the Yoruba had created a wrong notion of whom the Igbo really are among his own people and limited the potentials of a mutually beneficial relationship between the two ethnic groups.
That was not all. Chief Iwuanyanwu’s legacy to national politics is easily one of the most outstanding. Right from the first day he made a foray into national politics, Iwuanyanwu embraced the philosophy of “Politics Without Bitterness” espoused by the late Ibrahim Waziri in the second republic. Incidentally, the year, 1992, when Waziri passed away was the same year Iwuanyanwu took his first shot at presidential politics in the country. Waziri certainly has his place in history but what Nigeria lost in him providence returned to her through Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu who preached the same gospel of politics of accommodation and inclusion even with a greater enthusiasm.
Right from beginning, Iwuanyanwu came with the message, especially to his co-members of the political class, to imbibe the spirit of tolerance and love for one another as an abiding faith for anyone seeking to provide leadership for the country. He didn’t just talk about it. He put it in practice and a demonstration of that came in 1993 after the June 12 presidential election. In the midst of the controversy that ensued over the declaration of Chief Moshood Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as winner, Iwuanyanwu, despite being a chieftain of the only other viral party, the National Republican Convention (NRC), mobilized a group within the party to insist that even though there were some irregularities during the election, the NRC should not go into litigation against the SDP.
Instead, he pushed that the NRC should support the SDP so that the transition programme which had become highly vulnerable to the antics of some elements in the ruling military class, would be concluded and the country returned to a democratic rule. Unfortunately, that election, true to the fears of Iwuanyanwu and a few other patriots like him, was annulled by the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida, leading to a halt in the transition programe and an elongation of military rule by another five years.
Is it any wonder that today, Nigerians of all works of life and from different sections of the country are jostling to play one role or the other to ensure that this national icon is giving a big fare well. From an initial membership of about one hundred, the national burial committee has grown to over three hundred; as those who were initially left out keep insisting to be included. From the general committee, fourteen sub-committees have been created to ensure that no aspect of the burial arrangements is shoddy. The burial itself is approximately in two months’ time but it will not be an exaggeration to say that that in the weeks ahead, and given this level of enthusiasm, only just a few issues will be talked about in the country before that date and perhaps for months after.