In a resounding demonstration of commitment to sustainable development, Anambra State Governor Chukwuma Charles Soludo recently embarked on a strategic visit to Orumba South, reinforcing his administration’s dedication to improving infrastructure, boosting economic opportunities, and enhancing community security.

During the visit, Governor Soludo announced plans for the construction of a crucial road linking St. Augustine Rest Assured Hotel to the Community High School and the Umunze Ultra-Modern Market. This significant infrastructure project will greatly improve mobility for residents and visitors, seamlessly connecting Umunze to the Umuchu Bye-Pass Road.

The governor emphasized that the initiative aligns with his administration’s broader strategy to drive economic growth, ease transportation challenges, and improve the overall quality of life in Anambra State.

His tour included key stops in Ogbunka and Owerre-Ezukalla before he addressed a large gathering at Nkwo Umunze. Acknowledging the resilience of the local populace despite security challenges, he commended their determination to build a thriving and prosperous community.

"Despite the security issues we face, the spirit of the community remains strong," Soludo stated, urging Ndị Igbo to reconnect with their roots and foster collective efforts toward lasting peace.

"Let us unite as one people and resist the tide of insecurity. The government is doing its part, but lasting peace requires the cooperation and vigilance of the entire community," he emphasized, warning those involved in criminal activities that they would face the full weight of the law if they refused to change their ways.

Beyond infrastructure and security, Governor Soludo revealed ambitious plans to develop notable attractions such as the Owerre-Ezukalla waterfall and cave, alongside the renowned Ogbunike cave. This initiative aims to boost tourism, create job opportunities, and stimulate economic growth in the region.

Echoing the governor’s vision, local officials expressed gratitude for his leadership and commitment to development. The Mayor of Orumba South, Mr. Shaedrack Azubuike, commended the governor for his relentless efforts to transform the region.

"Your leadership has instilled hope in our communities and set a new benchmark for development," remarked Dr. Foster Ihejiofor, Commissioner for Agriculture.

Community leaders, including Chief Oliver Okolo (President General of Owerre-Ezukalla), Sir Ezekiel Anyazo (President General of Umunze), and Sir Timothy Ikedinma, lauded the governor’s initiatives and pledged their support for further development efforts. They also highlighted pressing community needs and called for continued collaboration with the state government.

The event attracted a diverse and engaged audience, including former Deputy Governor Chief Emeka Sibudu, Chief of Staff Mr. Ernest Ezeajughi, Special Adviser on Markets Chief Evarist Uba, Chairman of the Anambra Urban Regeneration Council Architect Mike Okonkwo, traditional rulers, and other key stakeholders—all united in their vision for a progressive Anambra State

The make-up of Babangida’s Abuja crowd during the public presentation of his autobiography- ‘A Journey in Service ‘last week was in character with a leader who like ‘Maradona’ takes delight in devious scheming. On hand to give him solidarity were five of his fellow former military Heads of State who see manipulation of the governed as great asset. They all believe that government doesn’t need to ask what the governed want. Why are they leaders if they cannot dream for their people?

 The second group is made up of former products of Babangida’s school of democracy; he personally christened them ‘new breed’ politicians. They were from the onset forbidden from making contact with neither the past nor their corrupt leaders. Today, some are in the private sector while others have become part of our current governing class. The military is their role model and for them, government is about sharing spoils of war. They didn’t have problem raising N17billion towards the building a presidential library for their godfather, ex-President Babangida, accused by detractors of institutionalising corruption in Nigeria.

Babangida, the self-styled evil genius, often obsessed with self-preservation, loves none but self. He is as selfish as he is self-centred. He is a leader with no abiding faith. Babangida was the leader who carried out a palace coup against his principal he accused of not carrying people along in decision making only for him to take IMF loan roundly rejected by Nigerians as shown by the result of a national survey he commissioned. Despite experts’ advice and general rejection of the Structural Adjustment Programme, it was embraced by Babangida even as the result was the turning of our country into a dumping ground for foreign manufactured goods from all over the world. And finally, the evil genius, thinking he knew what we want, took a multi-cultural and multi-religion nation like Nigeria into OIC without consulting Nigerians.

This is why I think his last week act of contrition over his role in the June 12 1993 fiasco during the public presentation of his autobiography- ‘A Journey in Service’ was an assault on sensibilities of thousands of Nigerians beaten by and detained by the police or killed by soldiers while demonstrating in Lagos and across Nigeria against Babangida’s coup against the nation.

 For anyone who is familiar with the style of the ‘Maradona’ who dribbled the academia, the media that made him, and the traditional institutions that bestowed on him honours without end across Nigeria including the (Opu Omu Alabo), the chief war leader of Rivers, the Oka ome Eme (a man of his words of Enugu) and the Comforter of the Igbos), it is not difficult to dismiss his last week act of contrition over his June 12 1993 coup against Nigeria an assault on sensibilities of Nigerians

And if one may ask, what is the Maradona apologizing for after blaming everyone else for the coup except self? As if the evil genius thinks he is still the Commander-in-Chief 32 years after Nigerians angrily chased him out office, he is identifying those Nigerians should hold responsible for the 1993 coup many believe he masterminded but executed by his friends. He has identified, Arthur Nzeribe, the Association to Better Nigeria (ABN), he admitted was his friend as the one who secured an illegal midnight judgment that threatened the conduct of the election; he named his Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Clement Akpamgbo who in clear violation of Decree 13, which barred any court from interfering with INEC’s conduct or scheduling of the elections, he said misadvised government and  Akpamgbo’s godson, Justice Ikpeme, whose Abuja High Court granted the ABN an injunction stopping NEC from conducting the June 12 elections.in the dead of night. Babangida also wants Nduka Irabor sanctioned. According to him the June 12 elections “was annulled on June 23, 1993 through “a terse, poorly worded statement from a scrap of paper, which bore neither the presidential seal nor the official letterhead of the government, read out by Nduka Irabor”.

Unfortunately, Babangida forgot that in spite his current denials and buck passing, he validated, all the above decisions he now says were not approved through a public broadcast and press conference where he also laid out plan for his Interim National Government contraption.

 Sadly, Babangida, a common trickster thinks no one sees though his subterfuge. The other five perfidious generals who were out with him last week suffer from the same affliction

But how did we get here?

We are an endowed nation. At independence, Nigeria was seen as the hope of the black race. The East was rated as having the highest growing economy in the world, The West had television ahead of Belgium and Germany and was through welfarist policies including free education and free health services, was on the verge of creating an egalitarian society. Our dreams and hopes came into an abrupt end when ethnic irredentists turned the Nigerian Army into an army of balance of terror in 1966.

It is precisely because Babangida style is not different from those of other Nigerian former generals that ruled us like conquered people that I want us to look beyond his Abuja crowd and interrogate how total disrespect for Nigerians by our successive military leaders from Aguiyi Ironsi to Abdulsalami Abubakar has brought the nation to her knees.

First let us take a journey through memory to see how we got here.'

There was a military insurrection in January 1966. Ironsi who emerged as the new leader of the country in a moment of madness promulgated Decree 34 of 1966 that overnight turned a multi-cultural Federal Republic of Nigeria into a unitary state. Unitarism was a social system long canvassed by the Igbo ethnic group.

The response of the north to unification was the July 1966 vengeance coup that led to the killing of many Igbo military officers, massacre of Igbo people in the north and eventual civil war.

Gowon played the ethnic card by allowing himself to be railroaded into power in breach of espirit de corps of the military which favoured Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, then the most senior surviving military officer as Head of State. Of course, there wouldn’t have been any civil war but for Gowon’s refusal to abide by the terms of the Aburi Accord.

Obasanjo also betrayed the country when he, as an umpire in the 1979 election, chose to support Shehu Shagari. The rest of the country viewed Obasanjo’s action as a form of payback to the northern hegemonic power that allowed him to succeed assassinated Murtala Mohammed in 1976.

Buhari actually believed he could rule Nigeria without Nigerians’ consent.  In 1984, he treated northern politicians with kid gloves while he sent their southern counterparts who, as government, officially cornered contract commissions to build universities and health facilities for the mass of their people in Edo, Ondo, Ogun and Lagos to prison years ranging from 100 to 200.

Besides stealing the country blind, Abacha, the maximum dictator ruled the country on his own terms. He waged war against Abiola and his Yoruba people while preparing himself for self-perpetuation

Abdulsalami, besides imposing the 1999 Constitution regarded by many as Decree 24 as it was never discussed by Nigerians, believed he and other northern military officers that brought Obasanjo  out of prison, and imposed him as Yoruba preferred candidate and went on to work for his victory, have neither patience or respect for the sensibilities of the Yoruba people.

The net effect of this on the nation was that at the birth of the fourth republic in 1999, there were no politicians with experience in parliamentary democracy or even or even the party system. What we had were military-baked new breed politicians that saw only the outgoing soldiers as role models.

This was why Ayo Opadokun, a former NADECO chieftain, speaking on the legacies of Ayo Adebanjo and Pa Edwin Clark who died after lifelong struggle on Channels Television last week said he holds exception to being told our current political class are politicians. To him as well as to many other Nigerians, they are military apologists who since 1999 could not even guarantee the status of citizenship Nigerians enjoyed under colonialism especially in terms of constitutional engineering.

As a way forward, Opadokun says President Tinubu who understands and has been part of the struggle for nation-building should engage the leaders of ethnic nationalities, the owners of Nigeria.

I think it is time to stop playing the ostrich and let those who claim they don’t know the meaning of restructuring that it is a quest to return our country to a federal arrangement which most multi-cultural societies in the world believe guarantees unity in diversity.

The ordeal of Herbert Wigwe’s children, who have been caught up in a legal tussle between their grandfather on one side and the testaments of their deceased father’s Will on the other, has shone some light on what other fatherless children and their mothers are going though in the hands of oppressive relatives. Whether their fathers died interstate or testate, many Nigerian children and their mothers have been cheated out of their legal inheritance by greedy and callous relatives, especially if they had nobody to fight for them. Herbert Wigwe’s children are lucky to have their father’s friend and business partner, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, stand up for them. Aigboje should be commended for his principles and capacity to stand by the law and protect Herbert’s children according to the wishes of their departed father, despite pressures and attempts to cow him.

Other children who have not been so fortunate to have a strong pillar of support have been dispossessed of their heritage and pushed out into penury and hopelessness. This tribute is to all such unfortunate children and their mothers and to all men of goodwill and father figures who have decided to take sides with these fatherless children (and widows) who are fighting to claim their inheritance. A recent piece by Onikepo Braithwaite, a law columnist with Thisday newspaper, on this subject matter is quite enlightening and educative.

Herbert Wigwe left behind both a Will and a Revocable Trust to protect his estate and ensure a smooth inheritance for his children and wife. But, unfortunately, his wife died with him. The laws governing the administration of estates of deceased persons in every state of the federation explicitly define the dependents of the deceased who are entitled to benefitting from the inheritance of the late breadwinner. In Lagos, for example, where Herbert Wigwe lived most of his life and raised a family, Section 2(1)(a) & b of the Wills Law refers to the deceased’s spouse(s) and children as the family dependants of the deceased who are entiled to benefit from his estate; not the deceased’s grandparents and siblings. Section 4 of the law provides that for a Will to be valid, the Will must be in writing; the Testator (the person writing the Will) must sign it in the presence of two witnesses who must, in return, attest and subscribe to the Will in the presence of the Testator. A Will made outside Nigeria can also be valid in Nigeria.

The second scenario in death, intestacy, is a case in which a person dies without a Will. In the case of Herbert Wigwe, his Will named three people alternatively to be his personal representatives and three people alternatively to be his trustees. Herbert listed his wife Doreen (who unfortunately died with him) and his cousin, Uche Wigwe to be both his trustees and personal representatives. Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuee is also listed as the second alternative trustee, while an American citizen, Ms Blanco, is listed as the second alternative personal representative. Ms Blanco subsequently declined to be the personal representative.

The Wills law and administration of estate law in Lagos define dependents as spouses and children, and in scenarios of testacy and intestacy, the children and the spouses are priorities in the hierarchy of inheritance. In intestacy, the children are the most superior, in that, where there’s no spouse, whether there are parents or siblings of the deceased, the children take the whole estate of their father; but if there is a surviving spouse and no children, the spouse will only take half, and the other half goes to the parents of the deceased in equal shares. It goes without saying that being a biological relative of the deceased person does not confer a right to inheritance. Rather, it is the wishes of the deceased as stated in the Will that confers the right of inheritance; or where the deceased left no will, the provisions of the law will prevail.

Herbert Wigwe left behind a Will and by the Wills Law of Lagos State; his four surviving children are the true inheritors of his estate. It is therefore mindboggling that Herbert’s father and cousin, Christian, are fighting to be in control of the estate by first seeking an Order of the Court to change the administrators of the estate. Typically, it is the children of the deceased who fight over their father’s Will. I have never seen a situation in which a 90-year-old man is taking on his granddaughter in such an embarrassing feud. This is why Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, himself a lawyer, is determined to protect Herbert’s children and preserve their inheritance for them as enshrined in their father’s Will. Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede should be commended for standing up for Herbert’s children in spite of all the innuendoes thrown at him. But who will protect the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of other Nigerian children and their mothers who have been disposed of their rightful inheritance just because they do not have someone to fight for them? What can our governors do about this? In many Nigerian societies, the siblings of the deceased are always eager to step in and confiscate the deceased’s properties and chase the widow and children away.

Professor Humphrey Nwosu, will, finally, go back to mother-earth on Friday, March 28, 2025. On that day, he will finally find peace and satisfaction which his country, Nigeria, denied him while alive. And that,  inspite of his selfless sacrifices for it.

On that day, Nwosu will, finally, find that peace, denied him by his country when his body embraces the bosom of his beloved Ajalli, Orumba North Local Government Area Anambra State, to  meet his Ancestors who must be proud of his sojourn on Earth. They will tell him: “Great son of ours, you have done well. You did well for your country. And we are proud of you”.

It was the erudite and urbane and calm and unassuming Nwosu, a Professor of Political Science who oversaw the June 12, 1993, Presidential Election adjudged by Nigerians and the International Community as the freest and fairest election ever conducted in Nigeria, a Country which every of its election is covered by corruption as water covers the sea. Nwosu was the Chairman of the National Electoral Commission  1989 – 1993 when he was unceremoniously kicked out for conducting a free Presidential Election.

That election, held after years of  Military Rule was meant to usher Nigeria into the circle of decent Nations, governed by civilians, law and order. It was between Chief Moshood Abiola of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, and Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention, NRC. The two political parties were created by the Military Regime of President Ibrahim Babangida. He had dubbed one a little to the right, and the other, a little to the left.

When Nwosu was appointed the Chairman of the Electoral Body to birth Nigeria into the world of democracy by Babangida, it was a job he took seriously. It was a job he gave his all, and inspite of all the dribbles and obstacles, did a good job.

The SDP Candidate, Chief Abiola, was clearly, undisputably, in the lead. There was nothing to stop his victory lap, and that of Professor Nwosu – Abiola’s for his overwhelming victory, and Nwosu’s for delivering a perfect baby.

But just when Nwosu, all smiles, was ready to name the baby he had just delivered, the smile was brutally wiped off his face. The baby was snatched from him and killed. It was camouflaged like a still birth. But no. The baby had already been seen alive by most Nigerians. They were celebrating, already, a new dawn. But, the Military Regime, led by Babangida, inexplicably, annulled the election. Nwosu was left empty and broken.

It is not known whether Professor Nwosu ever recovered from that brutal smack on his face and reputation. An undeserved question mark had been put on his credibility. And capacity. He withdrew into his shell. He never granted any major interview to discuss June 12; the pressure he underwent; the trauma he went through; the threats he endured. He never let on.

In those very fluid days, between June 12 and the day the Election was, finally, annulled, he never discussed where he was. Was he under house arrest? Was he surrounded by trigger-happy soldiers? Was a gun, or guns, pointed at him with a threat not to make “pim” or …? Anything could have happened. What was going on inside his head? Was he afraid? Did he fear for his life, that perhaps, he could be wasted just like that by an unappreciative Country and people? What were his regrets? Did he feel betrayed by Babangida, the man who appointed him? Did he feel abandoned? Did Babangida call him to apologize or explain what happened? Was he thinking of his time, years, now wasted, and the trillions of Naira gone down the drain.?

With Professor Nwosu’s passing on 24th October, 2024,  in the United States of America, a good chunk, indeed, what could have been the most authentic June 12 story is gone. For, the Professor never wrote a book to tell his story. Nigerians have been denied of all that by his passing. Now, who will tell his story?

The question one has been asking since February 20 when Babangida presented his own side of June 12 story in his autobiography – A Journey In Service – is: What could have been Nwosu’s response to Babangida’s tale?  Babangida’s book was sadly presented behind Nwosu, as it was behind a whole number of those who played prominent roles in that very dark phase of Nigeria’s history. Most of them are gone. They left the world  in silence as if their mouths were celotaped. The only real main character remaining is Babangida. That irks.

But perhaps, what irks most is that  Professor Nwosu was not alive to hear Babangida validate the June 12 Election. He was not alive to hear Babangida say “Yes, Professor Nwosu was right, I was wrong; that the election was clean; that Nwosu did a good job, and I was the one, along with my colleagues, especially, the goggled one, who rubbished it, and took Nigerians on an endless journey. Sad.

Yet, the worst is that Professor Nwosu is going home unsung, unappreciated, uncelebrated by a Country he gave his all. Nobody has recognized him. Nobody is even remembering him. No National Honour has been bestowed on him. No National monument has been named after him. None. Why?

On the day Babangida presented his book, I never heard any speaker pay glowing tributes to Professor Nwosu. I never heard any talk about Nwosu’s pains and sacrifices. And resilience. Just as I never heard any of them pay tributes to the hundreds of Nigerians who lost their lives over that scandalous incident.

And, unless I missed it, when he died, I never read any letter of condolence to his family from the Federal Government. In the preparation for his final send- off from mother-earth, I have not heard of any contributions made by the Federal Government of Nigeria. What role is the FG playing for a man who offered us the democracy we are enjoying today? Is he being given a state burial? Will the Nigerian flag adorn his casket?

From the programme of events released by the Family, not by the Federal Government, or in conjunction with the Federal Government, the closest I saw of Nigeria’s involvement is a Service of Songs for him which will be held at the Nigerian Embassy,  Washington on March 1. Will the Federal Government be represented? There is no Ambassador at the Nigerian Embassy yet. So, who? There will, also, be a Night of Tributes at the Shehu Musa Yar’adua Centre, Abuja on March 28. Who is organizing that? The Federal Government or friends and family?

Yet, as the saying goes, it is better late than the late. Any time one wakes up, it is, also said,  is one’s morning. The Federal Government still has a chance to redeem itself. Nigeria still has a chance to celebrate its son who is the architect, the hero of the democracy we are enjoying today, no matter how weak, and disjointed and corrupted it is. It is still better than a Military Regime.

On  March 28, the day Professor Nwosu will be interred, the FG should honour him by naming a National Monument after him.

May his great and patriotic soul rest in perfect peace. Amen.