Author Topic: A TRIBUTE TO OKOKON NDEM: The Mouth Of The East.  (Read 1736 times)

Prince

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A TRIBUTE TO OKOKON NDEM: The Mouth Of The East.
« on: February 18, 2005, 08:31:55 PM »
TRIBUTE TO OKOKON NDEM:
The Mouth Of The East.


I stumbled onto this tribute to Chief Okokon Ndem.  Chills ran down my spine as I remembered the shoot from the hip ?mouth of the East.?

To some of you of recent generations, Chief Okokon Ndem might well be a myth, a legend at best, or both ? a mythical legend.  But to me, he?s all too real.  I was but a child when I smelt spent gunpowder, for the first time.  For the first time, I knew that human blood did smell.  And after about two and a half years of combat, inside the last quarter of the violent struggle, my own blood was let out of me.  Today, I proudly see my scare as a perpetual, indelible evidence and testimony of my trial by fire.

The struggle continues, only not as violent, albeit more destructive to the Igbos.  True, Chief Ndem single-handedly fought our war over the airwaves, destroying the stigma of ?Rebel without a cause? by the then Nigeria and her International \"Jons.\"  But there was one sector he couldn?t decimate: the tribal divisions and mistrust within Biafran boarders.  Despite the contributions of the towering icons listed, Biafra, our real homeland, was stillborn; never to see the light of day.

Yes, the guns have silenced, smoke cleared, and dust settled.  We wake up Nigerians; a shackle Britain?s amalgamation tamed us with, when we weren?t looking.  Yet, under the suit and tie and glistening evening gowns, we are who we are; we are what we are, Biafrans.

I thought this is a piece you should have, preserved for posterity.  Read it, print it, or do whatever.  But hold on to it, between your breasts, displaced slightly to the left, where the thumping is noisiest.  One day, you may hear a man, old and gray, tell the tales of Okokon Ndem.  You will clutch your heart and say, My God, I?ve heard this story told before.?

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In Praise Of Okokon Ndem
By Chinyemike Torti

At the risk of being branded a MASSOB activist, even though there is nothing shameful being labelled with that appellation, given the preponderance of closet secessionist groups like O.P.C, Egbesu, Ogoni, Bill of Rights, Kaiama Declaration, Sovereign National Conference and Resource control agitators, strutting all over the federation; Ndigbo at home and abroad must rise in unison and hats off, to the late Chief Okokon Ndem whose golden voice ventilated the very essence of our resistance against the evils of genocide, pogrom, injustice and inhumanity.
 
While the boys in the war fronts were keeping the federalist army busy for three years, Okokon Ndem and his colleagues on their air waves effectively projected the Biafran counterpoint to the outside world and in the process drubbed Chief Anthony Enahoro\'s propaganda machinery hands down, so much so, that the Uromi Chief was booed by irate foreign journalists at the 1968 Kampala peace talks when he sought to clarify an agenda on the conference theme.
 
Today the octogenarian is sulking and embittered after being used and dumped as a Federal Minister of Information famous for whitewashing the cracks of an imperfect federation, which Chief Okokon Ndem articulated 30 years ago. The Edo Chief has joined the club of camouflage secessionists with his pet project dubbed Movement for National Reformation.

Okokon Ndem with his well-modulated and posh diction reeking with the elocution of the muses, functioned as an emotional prop and invigorator of sagging spirits in the beleaguered Igbo heartland, then at the receiving end of bombs, rockets, artillery fire, starvation, kwashiorkor and all the cruel bludgeoning of warfare. Behind the microphone, the style of his delivery had character and chutzpah, which put the dread in the hearts of enemy troops. Not only did his oratory disembowel the barefaced misrepresentation of the contending sides but also gave dialectical advocacy to the structural imperfections, ills and contradictions of the Nigerian federation which later day converts like Ken Saro-Wiwa, Afenifere and June twelvers latched on.
 
Apart from the public relations mileage Igbos gained from his endowments, Okokon Ndem in tandem with other easterners from the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers flank like Chief N.U Akpan, General Philips Effiong, Major Archibong, Chief Emmanuel Aguma put paid to the vicious propaganda of Igbo domination. Okokon Ndem succinctly demonstrated that if you were competent in your chosen career, any person from the so-called minorities belt could match; excel and outclass his Igbo compatriot; which was the reality on the ground.
 
Hundreds of riverine, Efik, Ibibio and Ogoni civil servants occupied very senior positions in the Eastern Nigerian Civil Service. The first African principal of the elite Government College Umuahia in 1958 was the Buguma chieftain, Mr. Erekosima. Chief Kogbara, an Ogoni, was the Biafran envoy to United Kingdom. Ken Saro Wiwa himself passed out from Government College Umuahia in 1956, enjoyed Nnamdi Azikiwe scholarship and to cap it, Ken was a house Captain at Fisher House. Up till this day his name Kenule Saro-Wiwa is emblazoned in the roll of honour plaque at the Umuahia Government college of which I am privileged to be an old boy.

Chief Okokon Ndem debunked, demystified the nebula of Igbo domination. After the civil war, in the face of persecution from the conquering forces who threatened to pull out his tongue, Okokon Ndem never recanted, never did a verbal somersault. May his soul reincarnate in Igboland. And therein lies the morality of immortalising him.
 
Canonising Okokon Ndem should herald the genesis of the process of the recognition and rehabilitation of our genuine leaders and heroes both living and dead who went beyond the call of duty to do, what they had to do in the heady days of the sixties. The list is legion, but my mind readily recalls names likes Col. Onwuatuegwu, Chief Jacob Ukeje Agwu, Sir Louis Mbanefo, Dr. Nwariaku, Chief Roy Umenyi, Col. Ogbugo Kalu, Okigbo brothers, Chief Mojekwu, Dr. Ikejiani, Comrade Chukwumerije, Achebe, Professor Kalu Ezera, Eni-Njoku, etc. Nobody and nobody would ever pour cold water on the virtues of the Nigerian civil war because the causes are still very relevant to the solutions of the national question today.
 
The efforts of our heroes past, as they say, must not be diminished; otherwise we would have a situation where ethnic irredentists, Igbophobes, re-write, distort and chronicle our history from their prejudiced blinkers. In recent years, we have witnessed hack writers and columnists who were in their diapers when the guns were booming, pontificate that Igbos fought a wrong war! Their verbal assault is beginning to gnaw into the psyche and subliminal of some wet and spineless Igbos who now denigrate their roots of origin.
 
Okokon Ndem, is a metaphor nay epitome of the effervescent human spirit in its quest for excellence, fair play and liberty from the grips of hegemonic power relations. That was the centrepiece of the 1960 Aburi Accords, whose truncation led to the civil war. Thirty years after, the crux of the national question still revolves around the unresolved problems. You wonder why the Niger-Delta is conflagrating? The cauldron in Warri is a microcosm of the discontent nationwide. God is not mocked. You cannot sow cassava and reap cocoyam.
He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool.

If you s-m-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-l-l-l-l-l-l-l what the Prince - is - cooking!!

(Adapted from WWE’s Rock.)