Wednesday, May 11 was exactly 20 years since Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe, popularly known as Zik of Africa, passed on to the great beyond.
Were he to still be alive, November 16, 2016 would have been his 112th birthday, having been born in 1904 in Zungeru, present day Niger State in Northern Nigeria.
He died on May 11, 1996 at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu at the ripe age of 92.
Zik was
• General secretary of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) from 1944 to 1945.
• President of the NCNC (1946-60).
• Vice president of the Nigerian National Democratic Party (1947-60).
• A member for Lagos in the Legislative Council of Nigeria (1947-51).
• A member for Lagos and leader of the opposition in the Western House of Assembly (1952-53).
• Member for Onitsha in the Eastern House of Assembly (1954-60).
• Premier of Eastern Nigeria (1954-59).
• President of the Senate of the Federation (January-November 1960).
• Governor general and commander-in-chief of Nigeria (1960-63).
• President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1963-1966) and
• Chairman and presidential candidate of the Nigeria People’s Party (1978-83).
He deserves to be celebrated by the Nigerian state even in death.
In other climes where valuable stock is laid on quality leadership and service to fatherland, such national icons do not die, literally.
Twenty years would have been time enough for a country in dire need of role models to showcase Zik to the younger generation who may not have been in a position to appreciate his contributions to Nigeria.
At a time when the bonds of national unity have been so strained that secessionist calls are reverberating more loudly, this would have been an auspicious opportunity to celebrate the life and times of Zik, the pan-Africanist, who believed in and lived for the unity and inviolability of the sanctity of the Nigerian state.
It is sad that the day would have passed unnoticed if not for the full page advert in a national daily placed by his widow, Uche.
In the advertorial titled, “20 years in mind; letter to my dearest,” she asked Zik: “Do you know that your resting place, the mausoleum, at Inosi Onira Retreat, Onitsha, is yet to be completed?”
The great Owelle of Onitsha has absolutely no need to know because it does not matter to him. But Nigerians need to be reminded of that fact because ultimately the country is the worse for the shameful negligence.
Nigerians need to know whose responsibility it is to build the mausoleum – federal or state government? What is the cost of the mausoleum to necessitate the abandonment of the project?
Even if the federal government refuses to complete it for whatever reason, can’t the Anambra State government, or indeed, the five South East states come together to complete it?
In a country where everything is perceived through the narrow prism of ethnicity and bigotry, there is no doubt that the project has been mired in the debilitating politics of attrition.
But that explains why the country is not making much progress.
If Nigeria were to be a country conscious of promoting tourism, Zik’s mausoleum would have been its topmost tourist destination, the same way no tourist visits South Africa without going to the Nelson Mandela National Museum.
Commonly referred to as Mandela House, the museum is on Vilakazi Street, Orlando West, in the heart of bustling Soweto, where the late South African president and anti-apartheid icon lived from 1946 to 1961.
On Vilakazi Street, visitors from all over the world walk past traditional dancers, hawkers, and taxis to visit the building that was also Mandela’s home for 11 days when he walked free from prison on Robben Island in 1990, thus helping transform the area into a thriving business community.
That is how countries that are conscious of national heritage treat their heroes and by so doing develop national monuments.
It is a shame that 20 years after Zik’s death, his resting place at Inosi Onira Retreat, Onitsha, is yet to be completed.