Fifty Shades of My 50Years
easygoing. The fact is that I will like you to follow the process. I am a rule keeping person.
The Ike Obosi, respecting the traditional institutions
being with the people.
Exhilarating, being with the people. It is my happiest moment when I am in the village. I love it so much. My cultural affirmations are such that my identity, my being, is linked to my culture. I believe every human being must realise that that place where you were born is the place where you most flourish better. Going outside of that to flourish would be difficult. Culture, for me, is a way of life. I strictly adhere to it.
How fulfilled are you at 50?
It is not every day that you turn 50, and your father is alive, your mother is alive, my siblings are all alive, my children are growing up, and for that, I am very thankful to God. Most times, I feel I have lived three lives in one. Many people in their countries will struggle all their loves to become the head of an agency like FRSC and retire at 50 or 60….. I did that and left at 43 and retired more or less. I was the aviation minister until 2015, and I have remained engaged in the country. I am very proud of the strides I have gone through to not only go to a university, have a Masters Degree, and I have finally gone back again to read law, so I feel very fulfilled. I feel I have contributed my quota engaging in Nigeria. I feel I have encouraged young people to learn from my mistakes and to learn from those things I have done well. I remain a social media-engaging person. I keep engaging with the young ones. I have a mentorship programme. I hope that on Saturday, young people from across the country will be gathering to commemorate with me my birthday by doing the 5-kilometre walk in their various locations. I must say that I feel good.
Tell us about your upbringing.
I was brought up in a family of love and care. I have a sister who is a chartered accountant, a brother who is a politician and a member of the House of Representatives, another brother who is a bishop and investment banker. We were contented. We had so many influences in our lives. All my Godparents have passed on to greater heights. I go to St Baths Anglican church. I go to my primary school, Ziks Avenue Primary School, my secondary school, my university. I went to St Vincents the Pore Nursery school and Union Secondary school Awkunanaw. I am an Enugu boy, born and bred. For many reasons and difficulties of logistics of travelling and all of that. In due course, I will still do thanksgiving in St. Baths in Enugu and St Andrews in Obosi, where my father was baptized in 1926.
My parents invested in me particularly very early because when I was a boarding student, most pocket money was money to buy The Guardian every day. I started reading The Guardian from the University and the Newswatch. In fact, when Newswatch was closed in 1987 and reopened after Dele Giwas death, I had that copy of Newswatch that restarted. My teachers used to read my magazines and newspapers. When I was in the University, I had pocket money for Time Magazine and then Newsweek, one every week.
The real post-civil war generation, how ready are they to unlock the potential?
I see it in two ways. The first thing is that there is a generation of Nigerians that have been bound by our history. I tell you, for the most part of the military regimes we had in Nigeria, there was no international airport in the East, and that was primarily because the military who fought in that war were thinking of that area as basically a secessionist enclave. So, we don’t need an international airport. I remember the FM radio station in Enugu having the rising sun as their logo. The then government forced them to remove it.
However, it took President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the man who didn’t participate in the war, a true civilian, to say, can we not have an international airport for the Igbos? He authorized the Enugu airport. It was President Yar’Adua; President Goodluck Jonathan only implemented. During President Jonathan’s time, things that people felt were anathema; an Igbo man becoming Chief of Army Staff, he did it. He did not think twice about it. I think President Yar’Adua appointed Ogbonnaya Onovo as the Inspector General of Police; I think his appointment was after Michael Okiro. What I am saying is that not being held hostage to the past is an important step if a country wants to move forward.
Now we have gone back to President Buhari, and we have seen how his mind is still in the 70s and the 60s. Not much progress has been made. He still thinks of Nigeria from the prism of our differences, which is not his fault. It is the default mode of how he grew up, how he was born, how he experienced Nigeria. We need to make that shift to a new set of Nigerians who think differently, who have interacted at our federal government colleges, national institutions, who are comfortable within the enclave called Nigeria. Who are also aware of social justice issues, global trends? Banning Twitter is something that any person thinks is absurd. We don’t want to be in the league of those countries that banned Twitter. Even to report the president’s speech on Twitter, the handlers just showed a lack of sensitivity. This Nigeria and Naija that is going, we need to be able to weave to change Nigeria, to free Nigeria from its obsolescence. Nigeria is destined for obsolescence. We are discussing a $20 billion revenue a year economy from oil, maybe sometimes $15 billion a year. That is not up to the profit of apple and the economy of a state like California in the United States. That is not up to the money that companies like google make. My attitude is that we need to look at Nigeria differently. We need to reimagine Nigeria. There are no better people to do it, in my view, and that can feel the exit of this older generation that are holding us hostage from our prejudices. We need to hand it over to a new generation awakened by the optimism of hope. We need to see a new generation that sees the social justice issues of the world, which can imagine Nigeria as you have imagined Naija. That place where we can collaborate. Let’s not give in to cynicism. Let’s give in to hope.
We are a country founded on compromise. When we were going for Independence, and the North was not ready, the South compromised. We waited; we deferred our date for Independence. When we created
Nigeria and had places that were not educationally advantaged, we created an educationally disadvantaged state. We created a quota system to make sure everybody had a sense of belonging. We created the Federal Character Commission, so nothing is stopping us from knowing that what has kept Nigeria going is our ability to compromise. To look at the constituent parts of Nigeria as one and show that we are ready to take others along despite our abilities in these areas. That, for me, is the challenge of 2023, whether Nigeria should give in to hope or be held hostage by cynicism. That hope for me is when we make a conscious effort to say we need to heal our divisions, we need a new set of leaders. We need to engage all parts of Nigeria to continue to make progress until we get to that point when our divisions will not be the subject of our conversations for what you have to bring to the table. But before then, we have to continue making compromises.