Shex Ladipo reviews “Zik of Africa” interspersed with thoughts and insights on the life and politics of late Nnamdi Azikiwe.

I was privileged to be invited as a special guest at the stage play “Zik of Africa” mounted on Easter Monday at the MUSON stage. It was produced by Joseph Edgar, the indefatigable and indomitable Duke of Shomolu. Edgar is the proprietor of the Duke of Shomolu Foundation, an organization irrevocably committed to entertaining and educating Nigerians through stage drama.

I had become a fan of the Duke, though he thinks of me as his egbon, true to Yoruba culture, ever since I saw his “Ogiamen” production on stage. I was very impressed and we became egbon and aburo since that event.

Zik of Africa was equally impressive, receiving resounding ovation from a very appreciative audience that included the cream of Lagos and Nigerian society. There were many Special Guests at the Command Performance. His Royal Majesty, Igwe Nnaemeka Achebe, the Obi of Onitsha, was the Special Guest of Honor, supported by members of Zik’s immediate family. This was my first close encounter with the Obi and I found him to be a very distinguished and personable modern day monarch.

Zik and my father’s friends

Personally, I relate to Zik. I knew him when I was a toddler because he was my father’s friend. Two of Zik’s most prominent establishments in Lagos, the West African Pilot newspaper and the Lagos City College, a secondary school, were situated directly opposite my father’s Lisabi Mills, Nigeria’s pioneer food processing company on Commercial Avenue, Sabo, Yaba on the Lagos Mainland. The Lisabi Mills food processing factory was at the rear of our premises on Commercial Avenue while the residence, administrative office and a retail store were located in the front storey building.

Zik sometimes visited my father when he was in the neighborhood. They would sit and socialize on the balcony of Lisabi House overlooking Commercial Avenue and Zik’s establishments across the road. My father, JK Ladipo, apart from being an industrialist, was an avowed nationalist. He was well known for his “British must go” slogan. This translated on the business landscape to “Buy Nigerian Goods”, another slogan coined and widely publicized by him.

Incidentally, another prominent Igbo leader, Sir Odumegwu Ojukwu (the Ikemba’s father), also had his business premises on Commercial Avenue. However, like my father, Sir Ojukwu was an industrialist and was never known with partisan politics. The third prominent Igbo man in the area was Mr John Okwesa Snr. who owned a flourishing printing press located in the industrial estate behind Lisabi Mills. By far, Mr Okwesa was my father’s closest friend. They were “k’ori, k’osun.” Loosely translated, that meant that they never slept without seeing each other, daily. My father, Mr JK Ladipo pre-deceased all of these friends in 1961. I was six then.

I should mention that Mr John Okwesa continued to visit our family regularly after my father’s death. He would often sit on the same patriarchal balcony with my mother, while they talked and had refreshments. It was during one of his visits that an incident occurred which resulted in him giving me the nickname “Rubber Boy”. But that is a story for another day.

My Igbo Friends

With such antecedents of my father, I too have always had Igbo friends. I grew up and went to school with many of them. My primary school Ladi Lak Institute, Yaba and my secondary school King’s College, Lagos were well known for their integrative ethos in the newly independent Nigeria of the 50s and 60s. So you can well imagine that all this new era ethnic profiling and talk of Igbo domination rub me the wrong way.

Any attempt to fester these divisions would certainly rob some of us of a vital heritage of our growing up in Lagos. Who would I be? For example, prominent Lagos lawyer, Chris Okeke, is my egbon ever since I was born. His late mother, a teacher at the Lagos City College was, until her death, one of my mother’s closest friends. What about my big egbon, Retired General Ike Nwachukwu ? He and most of his siblings attended Ladi Lak Institute and he also attended Lagos City College. How about John Okwesa Jnr, son of my father’s close friend? Johnny and I were together at Ladi Lak and King’s College. Not to mention the highly revered Chief Emeka Anyaoku, my mentor and in-law, married to my cousin Sista Bunmi ? These are some of the Igbos that I know and I can say without any fear of contradiction that they are a proud and industrious people. I have known and related with them all of my life. As well as numerous other close friends of Igbo extraction made from my school days and the Lagos social circuit. Lagos society has always been cosmopolitan and we just never knew or cared who was Igbo.

Troubling ethnic profiling

That this issue has become topical these days is rather troubling for people of my generation. With the high incidence of intermarriages in our society, such ethnic profiling is absurd, unhealthy and unreasonable, to say the least. In fact the Duke of Shomolu reported that some people tried to dissuade him from staging the play Zik at this time because of prevailing sensibilities and controversy. Of course he didn’t listen to them. (Does that one listen to anybody?) Anyway I’m glad he didn’t listen, because the play was very educative and, of course, very entertaining.

The history of Nigeria’s independence struggle, as portrayed by the stage play, based on historical accounts, throws up several posers about the dramatis personae and their true objectives. The play was well researched and ably directed by Dr Erojikwe; himself a Zikist and drama icon in his own right. The story shed light on some germane issues and I feel obliged to share my thoughts.

Firstly, as an industrialist like my father, I believe in the sanctity of capital and free enterprise. Also, as a Jaycee, I believe that “economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise”. Igbos, like any other tribe or people, are free to buy land, invest and establish businesses anywhere; so long as the original owners and proprietors sell to them freely and without duress. This appears to have been the case in Nigeria and many other parts of the world where Igbo have successfully exercised their entrepreneurial acumen. In Lagos and Abuja where Igbo hold substantial property investments, such properties were acquired legally from the original owners. The sellers and the buyers were both happy. It is only now, with the benefit of the hindsight of the political mismanagement of the Nigerian union, that these acts of industry and free enterprise are being given a different coloration.

Zik, the Republican

On the political spectrum, it would seem that Zik, unlike the other two members of the national tripod, had a more republican concept of the Nigerian federation. It is easy to deduce this as a consequence of his American education and orientation which differed substantially from Awo’s British orientation. Under the American system, States may have distinct jurisdictions, but not so the citizenry. In the United States of America, citizens are relatively free to move across State lines in pursuit of economic and political goals. One could well argue that this system of government is best suited to the type of heterogeneous agglomerations found in the United States and also in Nigeria.

To my knowledge, my father certainly had no qualms or reservations about Zik’s interests across the road from us. In fact they were friends. With the benefit of history and hindsight, it appears that Zik and Awo, in spite of their mutual interest in Nigeria’s national independence, had profoundly different ideological leanings. As an example, it appears that Awo and some other Yoruba leaders had very serious apprehension about Zik becoming leader of government business in the west, a territory they perceived more as Yorubaland.

They thought that Zik was overreaching and over ambitious. The records indicate that some other Yoruba leaders were of a different view. This was a contributory factor to the political schism in Yorubaland. In fact Zik and many nationalists, till this day, cite many instances of non indigenes who acquired political popularity and positions in “foreign” jurisdictions. Records show that this phenomena occurred freely in many parts of the Nigerian federation, without any adverse effects on political and economic development. Rather, it seemed to have fostered unity. In an environment of true federalism and honesty of purpose on the part of the political class, Zik’s bid to lead Government business in the west should not necessarily have generated such apathy, because it was wholly consistent with his own Republican ideology. In the spirit of true and genuine federalism, Zik often referred to himself as a Suru Lere boy! Perhaps Zik, the American-styled Federal Republican was largely misunderstood?

University of Nigeria

One other remarkable takeaway from the Zik story was his vision for the University that he established in the Eastern Region. While Awo and Yoruba leadership established and named the University of Ife, Zik insisted that his own would be named the University of Nigeria, to emphasize that it was open to all Nigerians. Thus the University of Nigeria, Nsukka survives till this day with that nomenclature.

This snippet is a window into the mind of the man Zik. I just hope that one day, some Igbo leaders would not wake up and decide to rename the University after Zik. While such act could be perceived as an honor well deserved, I personally would rather prefer that his underlying dream of Nigeria as one united, indivisible country should be preserved.

The Northern Alliance

The other often cited poser of the Nigerian independence story is Zik’s decision to form his Government in partnership with the Northern bloc, rather than the western bloc with the stellar Awo. Based on my earlier postulation, having failed to carry Awo and the western leadership along on his political trajectory, I don’t think that Zik had any other choice than to align with the north to form a national government. Obviously things had fallen apart in his political calculus, due to ideological disparities with Awo, and he had to make the best of the situation. It then became fortuitous for him to play his birth place card, having been born in Zungeru in Northern Nigeria. Again, going by American political culture, Zik could well have been considered a Northerner, having been born in the north.

Notwithstanding this fractious post-independence scenario, many believed that the Nigerian nation could still be salvaged and nourished under Zik’s leadership. Recall that after the inauguration of Zik’s government, one of the earliest foreign visits of Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa was to the United States of America where he was received by its government and people with such pomp and pageantry. I would like to believe that US enthusiasm was fueled by the prospects of a Republican style government in Nigeria; one modeled after the United States, notwithstanding its parliamentary variation. The Americans knew Zik and what he stood for. This was all quite plausible as it was during the time of President John F. Kennedy, who had a relatively liberal view of black emancipation than most other world leaders of that time.

Zik and Secession

One other historical fact often cited in contemporary Nigerian politics is Zik’s position on secession. It is on record that he was the leg of the tripod that argued against the inclusion of a clause allowing for secession of the federating units in the Nigerian constitution. It is a no brainer that this position was also wholly consistent with his view of an American-style Republican federation of a united and indivisible Nigerian nation.

Today, the obvious contradiction of Zik’s position with the Ikemba’s Biafra declaration and the more recent IPOB position is the seeming paradox of the Igbo position in contemporary Nigerian politics. From an ideological standpoint, a Biafra could never have been in Zik’s purview. We should also note that the proponents of IPOB have never taken their bearing from Zik. Rather their compass is pointedly taken from the Ikemba who led the secession bid.

In spite of the often referenced inferences of the 1966 coup as an Igbo endeavor, there is no credible record or evidence anywhere to suggest that Zik had a hand in that coup. He was already President, so what would he stand to gain ? What may be true is that the coupists sought to protect him from any collateral damage. With the benefit of hindsight, it would seem that the coup may have been a misguided adventure. Once again, I would restate my own view that these aberrations were driven more by the divergent and unreconciled ideologies of the founding fathers of Nigeria and the subsequent mismanagement of crisis in the Nigerian project by the political class. However I am hesitant to heap all the blame of the aftermath on the political class because the trust deficit and inherent tensions now created could probably only have been resolved by the tripod. With the untimely subtraction of the Sardauna (and Prime Minister Balewa) from the equation, the schematic was substantially altered; perhaps irretrievably.

Awo and Zik

One can only wonder today what Nigeria and Africa could have become if Zik’s political trajectory and leadership paradigm had endured and prevailed. One big paradoxical challenge that Zik faced was in Awo. Here was another brilliant leader, but with a different ideological leaning. They should have worked together, but they could not because of their ideological disparities. We know from history that during his sojourn in Ghana (then Gold Coast), Zik interacted very closely with Kwame Nkrumah, another shining star on the African continent who later became President of his country. Both men copiously shared pre-independence notes about development of the African continent. And as expected, the Osagyefo would probably have conceded pride of place to Nigerian leadership in the equation. But the envisaged emancipation of the continent that they both dreamed of could only come to fruition if the component parts succeeded in their quest for independence and consolidation. True, both did get independence. But their victories now appear pyrrhic. It would seem that Ghana, like Nigeria, was also derailed somewhere along the line. But Nigeria’s derailment is so much more exacerbated along its natural fault lines.

I must mention here that not all of the western world harbored goodwill towards the African development project. There is ample evidence of sabotage and dismemberment of the African dream by many western world countries. Had Zik succeeded in leading Nigeria on his preferred political pathway, then most assuredly Ghana would have followed the lead. It is likely that the rest of Africa would have followed suit. Africa would certainly be in a different place today. It was this vision of Africa by Zik that obviously inspired the sobriquet ‘Zik of Africa’.

Zik and Funmilayo Kuti

Many of us in the audience at the MUSON that Easter Monday were visibly excited by the alliance of Zik with the legendary Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, mother of the Revolutionaries Olikoye, Dolu, Fela and Beko. Never mind that I mention all of them. They are my family and I knew them all personally. They were all Revolutionaries, like their mother.

The exploits of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti in the emancipation of women in those nascent days is the subject of history on its own merit. It is very remarkable however, that Zik tapped into that energy; though hardly surprising because the sentiments of universal suffrage were already consolidating in the United States when Zik was a student there. The alliance with FRK certainly provided Zik with much political leverage in Yorubaland, Nigeria and the globe.

The Zik of Africa Stage Play

Before closing, let me confess that I love music and dance. Like my father, I played trumpet. I played in the King’s College School Band, the Hotspots. In our days, in the 60s, Keem Belo-Osagie did lead vocals, while Yele Aluko played Bass and Ladi Williams (the Pilot) played lead guitar. I was part of a very virile horns section composed of trumpets and trombones. The horns section was trained and led by my seniors Kitoyi Akinsan and Chinyere Ohia. My father JK Ladipo, in his own time as a trumpeter, in the 40s and 50s, led the Mills Orchestra, composed of talented musicians, most of whom worked with him in the food processing factory. They produced yam flour during weekdays and played music on weekends. These are stories for another day.

So for me, the music and dance, which have become the forte and a trademark of the Duke of Shomolu Productions, is the most exciting element of their outings. The stage play Zik of Africa served up pulsating traditional rhythms and dance from many parts of Nigeria including Yorubaland, Igboland and Hausaland; all Zik’s constituencies. The richness of Nigerian culture was on full display.

The excitement that the production delivers, in contemporary music and dance, is unmatched in the history of Nigerian stagecraft. It was simply quintessential; and madd! to paraphrase the Duke of Shomolu.

It is ready for export, if I might add.

Of course the story of the play is equally very compelling; probably more so. Remember that education and entertainment are what is on offer from the Duke of Shomolu Productions. Zik of Africa certainly gave the best of both worlds in about two hours running time. It was a topical and compelling story and many people in the audience came away with a better understanding of our nation’s history. Some answers were provided to the oft asked question of “how did we get here?“ It may also have provided a better perception of the path to unity.

The Arts must surely be appreciated for its bridge building and unifying role in every society that yearns for development. After the curtain dropped, there was lots of hugs and back patting to go round. Segun Awolowo, the Sage’s grandson, who was a Special Guest, and the Azikiwe children were in great demand amongst the audience. Zik’s surviving widow, Emeritus Prof (Mrs) Uche Azikiwe, drew plenty of tears from the audience. She had featured prominently in the play in some very moving love wan tin tin scenes with Zik. The Obi, in his brief remarks, proved to be a real royal father of the day with his admonition for love and understanding amongst all Nigerians. He also commended the qualitative stage production. I must not forget Olisa Adibua, the anchor and master of ceremony. As usual, Olisa was neat and tidy.

Most of us have seen the best of Broadway and I can tell you that the stage craft of Zik of Africa was first class. The actors were very good and the technical support was perfect. The dancers, both male and female, were exceptional. The cultural dance movements were well choreographed, with our trademark Nigerian acrobatic maneuvers executed to precision. First class.

It was a great Easter treat. Kudos to the Duke of Shomolu Productions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shex Ladipo

Shex Ladipo, an art enthusiast and patron, is former Managing Director of Lisabi Mills Ltd and is now a consultant-at-large. More by Shex Ladipo

Thoughts on the Zik of Africa, a stage play

Author

  • Shex Ladipo, an art enthusiast and patron, is former Managing Director of Lisabi Mills Ltd and is now a consultant-at-large.

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