The Life and Times of Prince Nwafor Orizu

On the attainment of independence on October 1, 1960, Nwafor Orizu became the first President of the Nigerian Senate. This placed him in line to assume the Acting Presidency of Nigeria when Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe traveled out of the country in January 1966. That same month, a group of Nigerian army officers, under Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, struck. It was the first coup d'etat by the Nigerian military; tragically, the first of many. In the confusion that followed, Nwafor Orizu, as Acting President, was obliged to hand over power to General Aguiyi Ironsi, Officer commanding the Nigerian Army.

By CHIKE MOMAH

The year was 1947; the time about three o'clock in the afternoon. My Umuahia Government College cricket teammates and I were waiting at the Asaba wharf for the Shanahan to ferry us across the River Niger to Onitsha. Suddenly someone pointed to the other side of the road from where we were standing. "Isn't that Orizontal, there by the pleasure car?" I looked across the road and saw and recognized him at once. He was truly a sight for sore eyes, tall and magnificently built, broad-shouldered, and impossibly handsome. His familiar double-breasted jacket, ash-gray in color, was so long it reached down to mid-thigh. It was the first time I had actually seen the man so close I could have walked across the road and touched him.

Prince Abyssinia Akweke Nwafor Orizu, scion of the royal house of Nnewi, was one of the sons of Eze Ugbonyamba, Igwe Orizu I. Soon after his return to Nigeria from America, in the mid-forties, he became universally known as Orizontal. This was a play on his name and the word horizontal, because he espoused what he termed horizontal (typically American) education, as opposed to the vertical or perpendicular (typically British) education.

He wrote and talked endlessly about this. His book, Without Bitterness, was a classic of its time. In America, he said, education was available to all and was broadly based. In sharp contrast, in Britain, education tended to be too narrowly focused, and was the privilege of relatively small numbers. I understood this to be mainly in reference to tertiary education. This, he explained, was why he had made it his life's work to correct what he perceived as the pernicious influence of British educational ideas on Nigeria and Africa.

The American Council on African Education, his brainchild while he was still in America, obtained numerous tuition scholarships from various American sources for the benefit of African students. My views and appreciation of this great son and prince of my home town, Nnewi, are based, force majeure, almost entirely on my recollections of the man. I happen to be married to his niece Ethel, the second daughter of his elder sister, Mrs. Victoria Uduego Obi, wife of Onunekwulu-Igbo, Chief Z. C. Obi.

Orizu was a controversial figure. In all he did, he had his detractors, and they were many. One of my high school teachers, with a penchant for quoting Shakespeare, was fond of saying that Prince Orizu was all sound and fury, signifying nothing. There were those who saw him only as a showman. And others who doubted the authenticity of his scholarships.

Nigeria's British colonial rulers openly scoffed at his educational philosophy and his message. The same authorities convicted him on charges of financial fraud, relating to these same scholarships. Notwithstanding which, hordes of young African students benefited from his efforts. On the day I saw him at the Asaba wharf, he was traveling to Lagos with one of those scholarship winners. In time, he received a full pardon from the President of an independent Nigeria.

He was in the forefront of the struggle for Nigeria's independence, alongside Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (Zik of Africa, and Owelle of Onitsha). He belonged to that breed of American-educated Igbo men (Mbonu Ojike and Ozumba Mbadiwe were two of the others), whose brand of anti-colonial activism contrasted somewhat with the more staid approach of such British-educated luminaries as H. O. Davies, S.L. Akintola, and even Obafemi Awolowo. Like Zik, Nwafor Orizu was nationalist in his outlook. So were Mbonu Ojike and Mbadiwe. Unlike them, Awolowo and Akintola, at least from my perspective, were more narrow in their political orientation, though they fought just as hard against British imperialism.

On the attainment of independence on October 1, 1960, Nwafor Orizu became the first President of the Nigerian Senate. This placed him in line to assume the Acting Presidency of Nigeria when Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe traveled out of the country in January 1966. That same month, a group of Nigerian army officers, under Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, struck. It was the first coup d'etat by the Nigerian military; tragically, the first of many. In the confusion that followed, Nwafor Orizu, as Acting President, was obliged to hand over power to General Aguiyi Ironsi, Officer commanding the Nigerian Army.

The General, who had not been a party to the coup, took over the reins of government with the mandate to restore order. What followed turned out to be the sordid and tragic history of a sequence of cataclysmic events that entrenched the army in power and brought Nigeria to its knees in everything that was, and is, important to the weal of the nation. A civil war was fought, 1967-1970 between Biafrans and the rest of Nigeria. General Gowon, the then military ruler, desperately seeking compromise and redemption, declared it a "no-victor, no-vanquished" civil war. Afterwards, Orizu faded from the political scene from the moment he transferred power to Aguiyi Ironsi. But he remained an educator. Before the civil war, which started in July 1967, he had set up a high school, the Nigerian Secondary School, in Nnewi. He remained its proprietor till, after the defeat of Biafra, the state government took over all the schools.

Twenty-nine years later, at the age of eighty-four, he died in March 1999. Now, he belongs to the ages. Nwafor Orizu was, at once, imperial in bearing, and a charmer. My other personal recollection of him was the day I stood on the steps of my father's house in Nnewi. This was some four or five years after my earlier encounter with him in 1947. I was an undergraduate student of the University College, Ibadan. He was walking past our house when he saw me. He stopped, turned and came and chatted genially with me for at least a half-hour before he continued on his way. I knew, after that conversation if I did not know it before, that he had a very persuasive tongue.

The topic of our conversation was mainly to do with the nature and purpose of the Ibadan university college, then only in its third year of existence. I do not recall exactly what he said about Ibadan. I only remember that, at the end of that half hour, I fervently wished he had been invited to help shape and structure the university college, which had seemed, to some of us at the time, a reluctant creation of the British colonial office.

He may have had the physical attributes of an Adonis, favorite of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. Since he had his human frailties, there are differing perspectives about his private legacy. I appreciate him for his contributions to Nigeria, his activism in education, charm and ready wit.
Mr. Momah, based in Somerset, New Jersey, is a son of Nnewi.  

As the Christmas season approaches, Nnewi on my mind…(Part 1)

By Alfred Obiora Uzokwe

Every Fall season, as the leaves start falling and cool winds begin to blow, I become very nostalgic. I find myself thinking about the place I grew up in, the town I will always call home and cherish, the land that many call Anaedo, the place called Nnewi. The Fall season, with its attendant cool winds, reminds me of the beginning of the harmattan season in the land of my fathers, which also heralds the onset of my favorite season- Christmas. The deep sense of nostalgia that I get, at this time of the year, is not really about the Nnewi of today, the one that is currently being visited by a multitude of problems like overcrowding and ubiquitous presence of cars and buildings. It is not about the current Nnewi that sees high-rise buildings, instead of trees, springing up in all nooks and crannies, blocking the course of natural drainage and culminating in the disaster that is erosion (mbize). My nostalgic feeling does not dwell on the Nnewi of today, where plumes of black smoke sometimes ooze out from the chimneys of cottage industries located inside residential areas, threatening the existence of the very people that worked hard to give the town the glorious name it has in industrial circles. My nostalgic feeling is certainly not for the Nnewi of today, where the freedom to move around and mingle with friends, families and neighbors, in the eventide, has all but become an illusion because of the evil machinations of men of the underworld, some of who come from far away towns and cities, terrorizing peace-loving people of the one-time serene and bucolic land.

Nostalgia takes me down memory lane, through the Nnewi of yesteryears, the hometown I knew as a little boy; the one I grew up in as a teenager and then a man. That’s it; the quaint town of decades past, with pristine surroundings dotted by refreshingly inviting landscape of greenery and trees of assorted nature- udala, ube, ube okpoko, ugili, oji, okwe, usuke, mangolo oyibo and mangolo igbo. In the stable land that I once knew, the problem of erosion (mbize) was few and far in-between because our forebears were full of insight and foresight and built earthen drainage ditches (swales), at strategic locations, to channel rainwater into the many miniature catch basins (umi) that existed solely for that purpose. They never built structures over swales and they jealously guarded the catch basins because their blockage would spell disasters of flood proportions.

Then, Nnewi was serene and inviting; the people were very friendly and welcoming. If you visited friends or relatives, even if the visit was unannounced, you still got the utmost of receptions - roasted maize and pear (oka na ube), afufa, oji, ose oji and okwa ose. Those were the days when elders welcomed friends with ite otu or ekwekpu, filled with original and home-brewed palm wine (ngwo) devoid of chemical additives (saccharine) that have now soiled the innocence of the home brew. Then, the kids would go down our village spring- Okpuani, not just to fetch water, but to mingle and socialize with other kids, especially those on the opposite side of the human spectrum -oops. Descending the hills that led down to Okpuani spring, we could easily see other kids, with buckets and jerry cans balanced carefully on their heads, with aju as the cushion between their heads and the water containers. They would equally be descending or ascending the hills of the springs in their villages like Obiakoloma, Nnenkisi and mmile eze. We would stop and jokingly holler, “ndi nnenkisi-o-o, otolo gbagbue unu-o-o, ndi Obiakoloma-o-o, otolo gbagbue unu-o-o, ndi mmili eze-o-o, otolo gbagbue unu-o-o”. As much as otolo, in this context, is a form of curse, we said it light-heartedly, with no malicious intent and the other kids understood it as such; they would also respond in kind, “ndi Okpuani-o-o, otolo gbagbue unu-o-o…” Life was good or so it seemed; it was all, hakuna matata, to borrow from the movie, Lion King. The kids actually had no worries. There were no competitions; kids were satisfied and proud of what they and their families had. As a result, serious robbery and get-rich-quick schemes were practically alien to the town. The villages were safe; neighbors looked after one another and the kids freely roamed the dusty pathways and every time it rained, they indulged in the rain dance we called igba ogogo mmili.

I would set out, on foot, from our house in Okpunoeze, Uruagu and head to Umuezena in Umudim, with my little brother Nnamdi in tow, to a funeral ceremony (akwam ozu) just to behold the “magnificence” of Odogwu Izeji, Nwansi ndi Umuezena, Odogwu Bob Ike, Ikedinaodogwu Nde Ngbu Otolo, okpoka ndi Edoji, Ozokwamkpo and Ajukwu. The funeral ceremony grounds were always dusty and it seemed like every time we went to one of those, one would go home with a cold (azuzu). We did not mind the effects of the cold because it was always fleeting but the general precaution, to minimize it, was to cover our nostrils with handkerchiefs while watching the masquerades do their thing inside the dancing arena (ogbo egwu). As kids, we were not always allowed into the dancing arena for fear of being stomped on by the more manly and imposing adults, dancing to the melody of the masquerade songs. Mmodile, the charismatic World War II veteran, from Uruagu, who was always invited to funeral ceremonies to keep the peace and maintain order, was always on hand to show the kids out of the dancing arenas. Part of his charge was to ensure that masquerades did not stay in the dancing arena past their allotted time. I have heard him, on one occasion, say that he fought during the Second World War in Burma; he called it agha Burma (the Burma war), I guess he served in Burma. Aside from the display by the many masquerades that grace such funeral ceremonies, umu okpu, of the bereaved family, were always on hand to sing the praises of the deceased through a performance called “itu ukwe”. Nnamo-o, they would say, as they firmly stamp their feet on the dusty ground and with the picture of the deceased picture firmly held in one hand, they would gracefully gyrate their waists, while moving their hands and feet in synchronized and elegant fashion. Nnam oyoyo, others would say while stretching out the picture in their hands for further viewing by curious visitors. Guests would sometimes drop some money in the plates they carry, in appreciation of the mini entertainment. It was fun to watch, we loved life and were very happy indeed.

The end of school year, at the St Mary’s school, used to be in December. There was a short song that kids sang in reference to the end of the school season. It went something like, “December, ndi n’ochi, ndi n’akwa”. It meant that during the December period, some kids would be happy and smiling while others would be unhappy and crying. We got our final report cards for the year in December and in January, those who passed would go on to the next class. It was always emotional as we would gather in the assembly hall, excitedly awaiting the slow but majestic entrance of the school headmaster. He would walk into the hall and after the necessary end of year announcements, begin calling out the names, by class, of the top three students in each class. Subsequently, others would go to their various teachers to get their report cards. Successful ones would be all smiles (ndi n’ochi) while those who failed would be crying (ndi n’akwa). Getting a good result means that one would have a good and happy Christmas season; we always raced home to break the good news about doing well in school for the year and then begin to ask for Christmas clothes, shoes, hats and knock outs (firecrackers).