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CHIMA UBANI; JUST LIKE YESTERDAY.
By Peter Claver Oparah
When the history of the moth-ridden Obasanjo era is written, the name of Chima Ubani, the late Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Organization (CLO) will stand out as one of the martyrs that regime that wrote its name in blood-felt pens created. Chima died on the roads, protesting the callous, insensate and inhuman mass extortion that Obasanjo and his cult of vampires generously unleashed on Nigerians as that under-achieving epoch lasted. Chima died in a ghastly motor accident on the Maiduguri-Yola Road. He was on the road in a country-wide protest against another infliction of pain through the deadly ritual of fuel price increment by a regime that was raking unimaginable profit from a skyrocketing international oil price, yet deigned such increased revenue as reasons to suffer the citizenry more than they could cope. Chima died on Wednesday, September 21, 2005 and with him, died one of the most resilient life wires of Nigeria’s struggle against horrible leadership curse, the type that reached a crescendo with the Obasanjo pestilence.
I got to know of Chima’s death through a doctor cousin of mine who said he got a call from an editor in Vanguard, who also told him that a reporter of Vanguard (as it turned out the paper’s labour reporter) also died in the accident. I was to confirm the news shortly after and I must confirm, something snapped in me, as in many Nigerians that have lived a precarious life engendered by an unending string of dubious, fraudulent and hypocritical leadership. What kept me wondering was why Chima escaped the bullets of Babangida and Abacha but fell to the wicked, asinine, duplicitous and devious policies of Obasanjo and his band of bloodthirsty vampires. Cruel irony, you might say.
Chima lived and died for Nigeria. He lived and died for Nigerians and he gave out his life as a sacrifice for the well-being of all, so that all may live well. But it is a different story for the rapists, whose deadly lust and love for mass privation spawned Chima’s death. They saw his death as good riddance to bad rubbish and a just libation for their own ulterior interests. Even as it is difficult if Chima’s sacrifice has tamed the gluttony and greed that fire the sadistic passion to inflict maximum pain on the whole so as to satiate the desire of a few, there is no doubt that Chima ranks among the men whose songs would form themes of our national ballads for ages to come. Chima lived and died for the struggle. It is debatable whether he has another life outside the struggle for the common good. If he ever did, he never showed it and would certainly not show any other life than the one committed to the interest of all Nigerians.
A graduate of Agricultural Science from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Chima cut his activist teeth at the University where he rose to become the Student Union President, at a time student leadership was for service and not a padding to the societal ill that run riot in our land presently. He naturally melted into the civil movement after graduation and rose steadily to become the Executive Director of the CLO. During the mad days of late Sani Abacha, Chima, with Sylvester Odion Akhaine, was the Joint-Secretary of the United Action for Democracy then led by the present NBA President, Olisa Agbakoba and this body led the final and decisive push that led to the collapse of the Abacha tyranny and the dawn of the dysfunctional and badly mishandled democracy we have in place today.
As Student Union leaders at the University of Lagos during the Babangida and Abacha era, we enjoyed very good relationship with the leadership of the Nigerian civil society sector and these include; Chima, Gani Fawehinmi, Olisa Agbakoba, the late Beko Ransome Kuti, Femi Falana, among many others and we tapped well into Chima’s rich and solid reservoir of strategic knowledge as the struggle against militarism and its negative fallout peaked. Our paths naturally crossed when we left school and joined the civil society movement. Together with some other student leaders, we (from the UNILAG crop among whom were Sowore Omoyele, Bola Ilori and I), formed the Committee for the Protection of People’s Dignity (COPPED) and CLO, then at Hussey Street Yaba, was gracious enough to accommodate at this incipient stage of our evolution. Then, Chima was the Head, Human Rights Education Department of the CLO so it was natural that we interacted on daily basis. We sought him out whenever we had any dicey know to untie and he was generous with his advice, often delivered in measured, very soft, often effeminate voice that you wondered whether he had the nerve for the awe-inspiring adventures he took in the civil rights movement that severally landed him in the gulags of recurring terrible leaders.
It was during the anti-Abacha days that Chima’s potentials as a nemesis to irreverent dictators peaked. I remember very well as we (Sowore and I) were hit by the brainwave that Abacha could be openly confronted and challenged through street protests, just a week to the Daniel Kanu-led march of infamy called the “2million man march in Abuja”, meant to persuade Abacha to transmogrify from a military despot to a civilian monster. Then, what was left of the anti-Abacha struggle were tepid issuing of moratoriums and newspaper campaigns as Nigerian built the fallacy of an Abacha that had assumed so much super natural powers that he heard through whispers in people’s bedrooms. So the turf was left for Abacha and his goons to run riot and threaten every other person that tried to question his powers and Nigerians obliged. Just a few days before the Kanu show, the UAD addressed a press conference in its Yaba office against the plight of dismissed workers in Kaduna State. Hunted by the brazen manner Abacha and his people were going about with their march plans, I drew Sowore aside and we started discussing on the possibility of staging a parallel protest in Yaba on the day of Abacha’s own march in Abuja. We reasoned that head (if Abacha allows our march) or tail (if he predictably clamps down on it), we and Nigerians would win because we knew that distaste for the man and his government was running over at that time and a little opening will afford Nigerians the opportunity to ventilate their spleen. We came out with the name (10million man march) and the venue (Yaba central park) and some other little details of the march. Sowore took it to Olisa, who just came in and he gave his express approval and told him to meet Chima, who was the strategic egghead of UAD then.
The meeting with Chima was just to stretch out the strategic details as he was home with any plan with reasonable ‘action’ content and he saw very well into the potentials of the counter march. The little change made to the original idea was that it was toned down to a 5million man march and in less than 12 hours, all the flanks, the sectors and all the unions that made up the UAD were put on alert. Within 48 hours, UAD leaflets and posters announcing the 5million man march had spread to all nooks and crannies of Lagos and beyond. COPPED handled the campus mobilization flank of the march and the media had something exciting and much more promising to play with in those days Abacha and his cahoots had stuffed all known medium of information ventilation with their campaign. UAD then retreated into its ‘underground office’ somewhere in Ojuelegba for its constant meetings as the visible office at Hussey was ringed with security goons and Abacha’s mascots. In this underground office, Chima was always in command, dishing out proposals and ideas on how best to achieve the stated objective that would certainly reflate the struggle in Nigeria. The marches held and Nigerians knew what happened from there but the details of that march that gave a newer voice and final push to the anti-military struggle would be told in full details someday. What I merely wanted to bring out is the depth of Chima’s strategic imbuement that took the struggle to a dizzying height even when so many people never knew this fact.
Chima had a very fragile, almost breakable frame that you would be forced to dismiss him as boneless, but certainly to your own peril. He speaks so slowly, almost drawling but this hid a steely persona that suffers fools gladly and knows how best to use his time than to give comfort to lying, double-faced, deceitful leaders that misses no opportunity to rob and short-change the people. He had a handful in the infamous troika of Babangida, Abacha and Obasanjo. You could never believe Chima could stand before moving tanks and smoking guns but these he did as his eventful life lasted. Chima told us a story in Ghana in April 1998, where some Nigerian civil society groups went for a meeting, which Wada Nas, Abacha’s propagandists was later to refer as a plan by Nigerians to overthrow the government of Abacha. Chima’s story was how some security men came to affect his arrest at his uncle’s house in Fadeyi, where he was staying then. Incidentally, he was the person these goons met as they came into the compound and they told him of their mission; to arrest a certain Chief Chima Ubani. Certainly, they never believed the gaunt-looking fellow they encountered was the man that had been given their oga sleepless nights. He told them that Chief Ubani was inside and made off. A close observation of Chima showed he spoke the way he did so as to make no mistakes, especially when he talked strategies and planning. He was as thorough as he was a stickler to friendship. He was a planner’s delight and was wont to fill in the blank spaces on any issue others have glossed through. He had an unquenchable thirst for details and made it a point to always back his strategic outline with a fallout provision. For instance, as we envisaged that Abacha goons would take over Yaba on the day of the anti-Abacha march in Lagos (in fact they did as early as 5.30am, with a platoon of armoured tanks), Chima came out with a brilliant idea of not only overwhelming them from various points (Ojuelegba, UNILAG, Jibowu and Ebute Metta), he only suggested we have a fallback rally venue in Evans Square, Ebutte Metta. All these worked out as planned. He had no enemies besides those that life off the lifeblood of the poor, the defenseless and the weak. He was a man without cant!
He continued when the contradictions of the Obasanjo pseudo-democratic started tumbling down and because that regime never flagged in inflicting maximum pains and hardships on the people, Chima had enough to keep him busy till his life ebbed. He became the revving engine in the emergent coalition the country’s labour formed with the civil society groups to fight the emergent dictatorship that is well seeped in horrific dubiety, which proclaimed an unending war against a people neighing for freedom. He died in the battlefield and today; his lifeless remains lie in a quiet and lonely grave in Obioma Ngwa, Abia State.
Chima is dead, leaving a young family and a distraught nation, grappling for its pieces after nearly five decades of untrammeled despoliation. It was for this pallid state that Chima lived and for this he was sacrificed. Chima died standing and even as the very people that sacrificed him gloat for conquering Nigerians, there is every reason to put them on notice that their own days of judgment is fast coming. It is a pity that the putrid mess Chima met at birth and fought in life survived him. The laid back and prostrate state he fought against still endures but he never died in vain. As I continue saying, may God rest his valiant soul that was denied rest throughout his fitful life by callous leaders. Amen!!!!!
Peter Claver Oparah.
Ikeja, Lagos.
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Posted by Robot| 22.09.2007 23:14