AN ICON OF DEMOCRACY

Udenta O. Udenta pays tribute to Arthur Nwankwo, author, publisher and human rights activist

On Saturday, February 1, 2020, Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo, founder of the Fourth Dimension Publishing Company Ltd, chancellor of Eastern Mandate Union (EMU), deputy chairman of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), founder and leader of People’s Mandate Party (PMP), pro-democracy and human rights activist, quintessential panAfricanist publisher and educationist, author, historian, political scientist, radical scholar and neo-Marxist theoretician translated into immortality. And for those of us whose ideas he shaped, whose thoughts he crystallized, whose lives he moulded, whose destiny he nurtured, and who saw him from the prism of a mentor, a guide and a teacher, what epistemic resource can we call upon to celebrate such a subject whose birth was posthumous in nature and essence? What cognitive or apprehensible schema can unfold a life so diverse and complex, a mind so fecund and capacious, and a social practice so profound and coherent? I will but try in this modest tribute. Arthur Nwankwo’s forceful emergence on the Nigerian public scene was signaled with the publication of his ground-breaking polemic on the Nigerian and Biafran war titled Nigeria: The Challenge of Biafra. Together with Biafra:The Making of a Nation, Nigeria: My People Suffer and other seminal material on the Igbo question in the Nigerian state, he constructed a coherent thesis of a people caught between the haunting dialectics of identity-formation and social becoming in a plural nation-state, and problematized the strategic framework with which they must negotiate and balance the complexities of structural and institutional disequilibria in an unfair and unjust social formation that has turned his people into decentred historical objects. Yet, his pan-Nigeria identity and ideals were near-peerless; unsurpassable too were his urgings for a new national patriotic ethos founded on egalitarian principles for the Self and the Other.

With the establishment of Fourth Dimension Publishing Company Ltd in 1976 -- which in itself grew out of the Nwankwo-Ifejika and Nwamife publishing enterprises -- he re-defined publishing as an art of cultural hermeneutics and the reproduction of knowledge in the Nigerian context; shattered the myth of African strategic, technical, and intellectual incapacity in initiating and sustaining a publishing outlet with global best practices and reach, especially given the spatialization of humanistic referents under late, postmodern capitalism; re-drew the Nigerian publishing geographic and ethno-strategic space and constructed an interventionist paradigm of knowledge reproducibility that produced a generation of scholars.

Arthur Nwankwo gave us the concept of cimilicy -- a grand thesis or metanarrative on Nigerian democratic possibility whose dialectical organism stems from militarizing civilians and civilianizing the military. In formulating extensive and expansive master discourses on the place and role of the military in Nigeria’s democratization process, he radically demythologized such concepts as “retreat of power”, “negotiated withdrawal and leisurely withdrawal from power” and “intra-elite contradictions and the game of revolving doors,” the problematic of which still haunts a nation already embarrassed by the conceptual and paradigmatic deficiencies of the 1999 political transitional pyrotechnics.

With the birth of the Eastern Mandate Union (EMU) in 1994, and Arthur Nwankwo’s selection as its chancellor – a position that made him the movement’s ideological guide and moral conscience – the eastern flank of the pro-democracy agitation was significantly radicalized with the cooptation of the question of the marginalization of the east (an idea it popularized and fore- grounded on the national discourse space) to the restoration of the presidential mandate of the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola as a perquisite of national cohesion, stability and sustainable development.

Arthur Nwankwo was an example of an individual who deliberately elected to commit class suicide, who had all the opportunities to expand his wealth and build the typical Nigerian financial empire, but who casted his lot with the people by first theorizing about their imbecilized condition in a series of neo-Marxist scholarly works, as all organic intellectuals should in the Gramscian sense of the term, and ended up privileging a vibrant participation in their democratic practice. Arthur Nwankwo suffered a series of detentions, intimidations, harassment and ruin of his businesses between 1990 and 1998 because of his involvement in the pro-democracy struggle against regime tyranny and obscurantist power posturing. He invested his personal fortune in the struggle and literally turned his private residence -- already a more than contingent national centre of intellectual illumination, inter-subjective communicative rationality and spirited social dialogic – into a sanctuary for the oppressed and the hunted.

This tribute brings me to that rare quality which the chancellor possessed in exaggerated proportions – COURAGE – and, in saying this, I want to recount three instances that remarkably demonstrated this. On May 24, 1994, the Eastern Mandate Union (EMU), during its special confabulation, issued a June 30, 1994, proclamation to Gen. Sani Abacha to quit office after putting in place a Government of National Unity (GNU) which Chief M. K.O. Abiola would lead. It also incarnated the first version of People’s Mandate Party (PMP), with the full compliment of registration cards, musically scored party song and anthem, emblem and slogan. Thereafter, on May 26, 1994, Arthur Nwankwo and I received a tip-off that a detachment of State Security Service and Nigeria Police personnel would literally “invade” the house and effect our arrest. The chancellor calmly asked me to prepare myself physically, intellectually and psychologically for the ordeal, as he had already done so himself. When, eventually, an over 30-man security squad stormed the house, they met us sitting calmly in the upper floor sitting-room. The chancellor collected his prescription drugs and food supplement bag, stood up and calmly told the leader of the invading army, “Let’s go”. The officer was clearly baffled and visibly taken aback. He immediately collected his wits together, saluted him, and off we marched to our first detention.

WHEN AN OVER 30-MAN SECURITY SQUAD STORMED THE HOUSE, THEY MET US SITTING CALMLY IN THE UPPER FLOOR SITTING-ROOM. THE CHANCELLOR COLLECTED HIS PRESCRIPTION DRUGS AND FOOD SUPPLEMENT BAG, STOOD UP AND CALMLY TOLD THE LEADER OF THE INVADING ARMY, ‘LET’S GO’