Editor-at-Large, SAM AKPE, recounts his encounter with maverick politician, Senator Francis Arthur Nzeribe, recalling his days in the Senate and the void his absence has created in the National Assembly.
These days, he speaks in low, tone as though whispering. Though the fire has not totally extinguished, the heat is no more intense. Naturally, he has a small voice. Reducing that to low tones, or a further softening curve, means that sometimes you can hardly hear what he says, except your ears are quite close to his lips.
Even then, you have to listen carefully and watch the movement of his thin lips to grasp his utterances; the same lips that used to spit fire and utter mind-puzzling headlines in the media. However, no matter how he speaks, no matter the size and the depth of his voice, there is still something impeccable about what he says.
When you come into his presence, in the words of Woodrow Wilson, former United States President, it is not lost on you that you are in the presence of a leader of men. With this realisation, you know that you have come into the presence of fire; that it is best not to incautiously touch that man; because there is something that makes it dangerous to cross him.
Those words were unconsciously conceived and crafted to fit Nzeribe’s persona, the man whose presence in Nigeria’s political scene, since Independence, is like an indelible finger-print. Between 1960 and today, he has joined and effectively identified with five different election-winning political parties with different ideologies. Truly, wherever he served, he has always left a mark; for good or for bad.
What manner of man is this? How do you define a man as politically irrepressible and, of course, as weird and socially misunderstood as this? When yours truly met him recently, he cut a picture of a man in the periphery of his glorious past; a man, who, though, may not be able to re-invent himself, is still quite proud of his past.
“Describe yourself in one short expression.” His response was as grotesque as those who know him would expect: “I am the rolling stone that gathers moss all the time.”
From his past to the present, of all the descriptions that could fit him, what one can think of is that Nzeribe is a master of his art. Here is a master who knows his game like no one else. As an active politician, he never started a fight he would not finish. Till today, he believes in any cause he is committed to; and is unrepentantly committed to any cause he believes in.
Though a man of mean looks, whatever his portrait disguises about his persona, his words accentuates. He fully represents what has been said of valuable gifts: they come in small packs.
An encounter with Nzeribe is like meeting with a part of the past and having a glimpse of the future. The first impression is that the fire is gradually burning out.
Barack Obama had the same impression in 2005 when he met at the Capitol Hill, for the first time, with a man called Robert C. Byrd, who was elected to the Congress in 1952 (before Obama was born). He later moved to the Senate in 1958, and was still serving when Obama was elected to represent the State of Illinois as senator.
Byrd was a man whose views were 50 years back in history, and 50 years into the future. He was a man of measured words whose intellect had refused to dim with age and the vagaries of Washington politics. He could be described as someone who represented the analogue past and the challenging digital future.
That description, perhaps, fits Nzeribe like a French suit. As yours truly sat that day facing the enigma better known by colleagues as Ogbuagu, one noticed that though the flames are yet to completely extinguish, truly the sparks are not as fiery as they used to be. That was July last year.
That evening, one remembered the Second Republic when Nzeribe was often described as the senator who, daily, had his breakfast in London, lunch in Nigeria and dinner back in London or any destination of his choice. It may not have been true in every respect, but it said something about someone with a loud, even if queer, lifestyle.
When democracy returned to Nigeria in 1999, Nzeribe had made his third return to the Senate. After the crash of the Second Republic in December 31, 1983, Nzeribe again showed up in the bad dream called Third Republic, conceived and executed by his friend, Ibrahim Babangida, in the wee hours of the 1990s. The dream was to collapse before it even started.
As he sat in the hallowed chamber of the Senate on his return in 1999, Nzeribe wasted much breath informing everybody who listened that he was the longest-serving senator in Nigerian history; having served in three republics. Actually, he was right. Nzeribe (to use Obama’s word on Byrd) had, despite what he stood for, come to be seen as the very embodiment of the institution; a living, breathing fragment of history, even if it were for the wrong reasons.
He featured prominently in every debate that was controversial. Every time it looked as though the chamber was too quiet, Nzeribe would either create a scandal of unprecedented taste or get somebody to do it by simply kicking the dust. Nzeribe’s politics has always been soaked in eccentricities. When it is normal, it is not Nzeribe; it has to be controversial and mostly absurd.
Till date, the wisdom and controversy in every word he utters are unmistakable. You may not like his guts, but you can’t ignore his presence. His knowledge and perspective to current issues are incontrovertible.
However, the man is no more the man we used to know. These days, he is hardly seen. He has retired from the arena, but not completely from the game. Truly, he does not seem to have lost touch with reality. Apparently tortured by ill-health, and obviously frightened by speculated physical paralysis, the maverick politician still has his intellect intact. His mind is alert and his reasoning articulate. He told yours truly some time ago that when he reached the gate of heaven two years ago, an angel told him to return to earth because his time was not yet up.
So, what else is he up to? Nzeribe told TheNiche that he is missing active politics, especially the Senate. At the time of this report, it was most unlikely that Nzeribe will return soon to the podium. Has he retired from politics? Yes, at least for the time being.
His friends agree that in his early days as a politician, Nzeribe was a human portrait of aggressiveness with piercing eyeballs full of political mischief and a mind loaded with flawless loyalty to his cause. As yours truly made to leave his house that night, one last look at the man revealed that the sweetness and turbulence of his youthful politicking have been replaced by the vagaries of sickness and the unmistakable silence of old age. How things change, so fast!