Follow Us on Google
“I am the sole witness to my homecoming”
Christopher Okigbo, DISTANCES
In 1949, his father as the Secretary General of the UAC Trade Union in alliance with other workers congresses mobilised and stopped Nigeria. The Strike was not called off until the workers’ demands were met. From then, the Nduka Eze Peronistic myth and sky blue Charisma was created. His total surge and acceptance as the Leader in the Anioma Dialogue was accentuated by his large heart community contributions. Nduka Eze established the Asaba General Hospital. He was instrumental and organized scholarships and placing in the Eastern European Institutions and Universities for deserving Nigerians most of whom hailed from the Anioma Area.
Now enter the son, Barrister Chuck Nduka Eze Junior, original member of the Asaba October 7 Anti-Genocide Crusade. After the ceremonies this week at Asaba, we will have time to analyze the program, for now Emma Okocha will never betray the true son of Comrade Nduka Eze!
Nduka Eze was the one who led us to the Oputa Panel when Asaba Genocide was like a whispering discuss by the women in the kitchen. For the first time since the end of the war, the NTA carried the footage of all the Asaba testimony before the Oputa Panel. Nduka Eze, when the foreign Authors savaged my character was the one who responded and tagged them petty Authors. When the money grants started coming in for this Asaba romantic Genocide studies, the annual conference I established in Florida was hijacked by the pretenders. It was Nduka Eze who returned from the same conference and informed me about it offering me as my due, some dollars for my backbreaking collaborative research work with the Traveling Faculty of the University of South Florida. I didn’t know that the pretenders were not Americans but for Prof. Erin Kimmerle, the world renowned Anthropologist who actually introduced Asaba and invited them to join us in the study and the research of the Asaba Genocide.
Finally we conclude the last lines of the Asaba memorial report. Excerpts…
With our understanding and recent conversation with Stella Damascus, a star of the Nigeria Motion picture, we are at the moment writing the last lines of The Vengeance of the Sea Goddess…. a film production of the Asaba Genocide in collaboration with UNN’s Fine Arts/Music Dept.
This summer, our first volume of Poetry, the Last Dance on the Niger, as well as our new Edition of the Blood on the Niger, will be presented to the public.
These three decades of wandering and researching on the war and its impact on Asaba have exposed us to so many war damages, squashed opportunities, so many lost talents, much destruction of our cultural values. In order to stem the tide and preserve some elements of our civilisation, we are proposing the establishment of an ASABA WAR MEMORIAL.
The Foundation would act as a Patron of these disappearing Arts providing opportunities for literacy events, dance, theatre etc. The Goal of the Foundation is to uncarpet the Genocide and through the promotion of contemporary works of arts, literature, lectures, studies, symposia and the erection of the monument, preserve forever the blood history and the sacrifices of our people in the struggle for the unification of the Nigeria Peoples. In their memory we have a duty, and for our children they have an inheritance. Primarily the Foundation will conserve and serve as the central platform centralizing information and current research on the Asaba Memorial project.
In understanding the scope of the project as a whole, there is need to cultivate in our people the need to contribute in building up a rich Archive Centre which would be housed by the monument. Here the emphasis is surrendering to us the Archival materials. Our current exercise include pursuing a vast and systematic research across the Anioma area, searching and collecting materials relating to the Asaba Genocide, which will be preserved at the Monument’s Archival Centre.
In that wise, most war Photographs, Diaries, Manuscripts, Music clips and of course recent Audio – visual interviews by surviving witnesses of the Genocide would serve as foundation pillars to the building of the Archival Center.
The collection of all these including the rare gramophone record of the famous “Ndu Ofu” which will all be housed in the Foundation’s base inside the Asaba Monument and Conflict Centre.
As recounted, the Monument is a cemetery, if we don’t build up the Archives Centre, the Library and other important elements of the Memorials. Therefore, in order to involve the community, the State, the Nigerian and the International Community and to put on a steady traffic of Tourists, the Monument would be erected on a fallow ground of over six acres.
It is therefore with the greatest fulfillment that we announce that the actual Drawings of the Asaba War Monument, the Parking Lot, complete with its correct scale and type of stone to be used, all have been prepared, sketched and made available to me by the kind services of the State of South Florida.
It is our proposal that the Monument would provide space for an International Conference Centre, Conflict Studies Centre, a Library, and Shopping Centre etc. in the final sketch. The Conflict Studies Centre is as result of our fruitful experience during our last visit to Rwanda.
We did not elect to travel this path. All through the undulating march, trips and falls, we have come a long way. Awash with new beginning and through these explorations we have come to redefine ourselves and feel that spiritual bond between us, and those Ogbeosowa brethren, still covered in sands of shame
Deflowered in their prime
Bereft of their rites of passage
Yet to be released and set for their final ascension
For those dear friends and relations who have emptied our ship, we wish them well, this is not the time to cast aspersions or the time to return their banter.
And for those who have kept the faith, we are fated to fulfill this missionary escapade.
We are the sole witnesses to this Home Coming!
