June 21, 2010
Around this period there were few manufacturing firms, and few unions. Comrade Che became active in the local unions. The secretariat of their union in Lagos was impressed with his activism. Nlewedim Anunobi, the Secretary-General of the union in Lagos made frequent visits to Che’s P.Z, and later appointed him (Che) as a shop steward of their local union. One of the major characteristics of the union then was also high political consciousness, and because Marxism was accepted as the ideology that articulated working conditions and consciousness, the unions were left-leaning and Marxist oriented. Whether rightly or wrongly, Russia then, verbalized the Marxist ideology, and became its exponent. The trade unions were Pro-Russia. His work as a shop steward was to spread trade union consciousness, and mobilize the workers to fight for better working conditions. Beyond that responsibility, Che took up the tasks to propagate Marxism, militant trade unionism and fervent anti-colonial disposition. A militant trade unionist he was, and still is. At various times he joined anti-colonial platforms like the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons (NCNC) which later changed its name to National Council of Nigeria Citizens (NCNC) whose premier president was Herbert Macaulay.
He was also a member of the Dynamic Party of Nigeria (DPN) whose first Secretary-General was Professor Chike Obi (1921 - 2008), world-acclaimed mathematician, writer, lawmaker, activist and newspaper columnist. The Rivers State branch of DPN which Che was active elected, Ohiri, a brilliant and honest Igboman from Ikeduru as its secretary, he was killed during the war by Biafran soldiers on false allegation that he was “Ndi Sabo” (saboteur). Poor man! Anytime Che mentions his name, he weeps, he was such an avid man and great mobilizer Che admires. DPN later merged with NCNC, Che was also a member of the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM) which started as Lagos Youth Movement (LYM). Its leading spirits were Ernest Ikoli (1893 -1960) that pioneering radical journalist, Dr. Kofo Aboyomi, Davis Hezekiah and others. It was during his anti-colonial struggle on the platform of NYM that he met Professor Eskor Toyo, the famous Marxist economist, Baba Omojola, that dialectician and economist, the late Comrade Ola Oni, the Ibadan-based political economist and agitator, Pa Michael Imodu, one of the architects of Nigeria labour movement, Dr. Tunji Otogbeye, that Russian trained physician and communist and the late Dr. Kola Gbode, a fanatical Marxist educated in Marxist philosophy in Eastern Germany, and married to a beautiful German woman. He donated the 3 volumes of Karl Marx’s seminal work Das Kapital (capital) 1867 to Che. Another of Che’s close friend was Major Philip Alale, the Marxist revolutionary guerrilla, who was unjustly executed by Lt. Col. Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, head of the defunct Biafran state along with Lt. Col. Emmanuel Ifejuna, Brigadier Victor Banjo and Sam Agbamuche. Their crime was that they couldn’t capture Midwestern Nigeria through the Ore enclave four months after Biafra was declared. All these comrades proved to be supportive at one point or another to comrade Che’s life.
On October 1, 1960, Nigeria gained her flag independence from colonial Britain, though Che was not too happy, but said he would have preferred socialist government to a bourgeois regime that emerged. In late 1961, he was promoted to Chief Clerk and transferred to the P.Z headquarters, Alagbon House, Lagos, to handle statistics at the Manchester department of the company. Dissatisfied with what he called “enslavement of capitalism”, around 1962, he voluntarily resigned from P.Z to pursue his freelance revolutionary and trade union agenda. Behaving like Karl Marx, he went underground, to escape arrest, and lived as a refugee on worker’s donation, goodwill and charity. When a major crisis erupted between workers and the Anglo- Canadian Cement Company owned by Dr. Wellen Sterner, Che was called in by workers. He organized workers and a full strike action took place. That firm could not survive, it folded up.
Commenting about the incident, Che said, “Capitalism is evil, and capitalists are cowards. They can’t withstand the people’s action that was the people’s action against capitalist conspiracy”. The intelligence community went after Che. At that point he went into hiding, and hunger and poverty ravaged him and his family. Pa Imodu reached out to Che, and gave him money, food, and clothings and urged him “to continue the struggle”. Imodu, the foremost labour Chieftain of that time offered to protect him. Che’s fame swept throughout the trade union community. Workers of INCAR MOTORS, an Italian firm in 1964 enlisted his services to organize their unions; INCAR African Workers Union (IAWU) was created to fight for better working conditions. Che was made to tour all the places in Nigeria where Incar motors were located such as Kano, Enugu, Ibadan, Lagos, Kaduna and Port Harcourt. Incar motor would import the vehicle parts and assembled them at their service stations in the places above.
He was in Kano when the 1966 sectional killing targeted at those from eastern Nigeria erupted. It was Comrade Slyvester Ejiofor, a trade union veteran born in the north and speak Hausa language fluently who saved Che he would have been killed in the senseless violence. While Che was at Incar motor in Kano with workers, Ejiofor who Che had met some years back in Kaduna at the Public Works Aerodrum Technical Unions (PWATU) charged Che to leave the north immediately. Che narrowly escaped to Enugu, and continued to organize IAWU workers there. Intelligence reports about Che were literally available everywhere. When Che started organizing workers there, the management of Incar motors and the police were keeping regular surveillance on Che’s activities. In 1966, he ordered a major paralysing strike there, Incar motors and C.C. Nwuche, an inspector of police in the coal city who hails from the neighbouring Ahoada area to Che’s Erema, allegedly conspired and falsely accused Che of stealing Incar motor’s cheque of One hundred and forty pounds (£140). Their tactics will never change. When the police led by Nwuche attempted to arrest comrade Che, the workers fought with the police and wounded one policeman with bare hands. They insisted that Che will not be taken away by the police. When Che saw that the worker’s resistance will result into bloodbath, he calmed them down and persuaded them to allow him to be taken away. The workers obeyed. He was taken to Awaiting Trial (ATM) section of the Enugu prisons, and held in solitary confinement for two weeks. He was horridly charged to a magistrate court with the aim of making him to serve full prison term, but surprisingly, great workers of Incar motors hired a lawyer who defended Che and was freed that same day. Major Philip Alale who was in the Biafran army then, and was married to one of Ojukwu’s relations, asked Che to quit Enugu because there were plans to kill him by the government.
The workers planned and took Che to the railway station where he escaped to Port Harcourt. Back in Port Harcourt, Incar motors workers bought two cars (a small cupa car and an 18 seater bus) and donated to Comrade Che with some cash. On May 30, 1967, was the proclamation of the sovereign state of Biafra. Port Harcourt also become hot for Che, he left to his Erema village to stay until the war ended, but no where can be safe in war time. Home, sweet home, home was becoming unsafe too. I notice that there is a deep-seated hatred against Che because of his activities by his kinsmen mostly in spite of his free-mindedness. Nelson Elenwon, the nurse in the military hospital in Port Harcourt, Che first lived with, retired and was a parliamentarian in the Federal House Representatives until the Nigeria-Biafra war broke out. Elenwon’s house in Ahoada was rented by Biafran soldiers for official and residential purposes during the war. Before the war stated Che and Elenwon had met and analyzed the war in details, Che expressed his reservations about fighting a bourgeois war either on Biafra or Nigeria side, rather would want to fight in a revolutionary liberational war.
Che did know that his discussions with Elenwo would form the basis of petitions against him. Elenwon wrote series of petitions against Che alleging that General Yakubu Gowon, head of state of Nigeria had bought two cars for Che to spy on the Biafran Ahoada sector. He was arrested and detained for a year and 3 months. Njoku, a high-ranking Biafran soldier, a Marxist and trade unionist who knew Che way back in Lagos was instrumental to his release from the Biafran “protective custody”. Another person who saved Che was an Igbo Biafran soldier who was code-named “Over-Heat”, a young man in his early 30s, whose vulnerability for alcohol and women was frightening, was also useful. Over-Heat advised Che not to eat any food given to him by the soldiers and that they were planning to kill him by poisoning his food while in their cell, it was Che’s mother that fed him throughout until he was released. And that there were also plans to hang him, Over-Heat mentioned Elenwon as doing all those stuff. The schemes were quite terrible, Major Ihenacho, an average man in height and stature with a crack voice, but honest and straight forward after examining the various petitions against him, in late 1968 summoned Che to his office and set him free.
“If Biafra win the war you will be useful to your people, and if Nigeria win you will also be useful to your people. I won’t waste you. What I did to you was protective custody. Go home and remain peaceful, don’t talk to anybody, don’t attend any meetings. I will release your cars to you we have concluded our investigations. You are innocent. Go, Go.” These were the words of the Major to Che. Few months after, Biafran soldiers seized the cars again to transport their men and materials to Umuahia, where Biafra headquarters was shifted to. Che, therefore lost his cars forever. The entire area fell to the federal troops. The Nigerian soldiers also arrested Che, he was in detained and tortured in Lagos until the war ended. Captain Elechi Amadi, the renowned novelist, and playwright from the Ikwerre group in Rivers State who had retired from the Nigerian Army earlier, was the civilian administrator of the Ahoada sector at the time of Che’s abduction and detention by savage Nigerian (Gowon’s) soldiers.
The early 1990s, Comrade had cultivated a new group of friends such as the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni writer, activist and columnist who was hanged on November 10, 1995 by the General Abacha junta and Shell. The late Dr. Obi Wali, that famous literary scholar and progressive politician from Ikwerre too, who was butchered by assassins on April 21, 1994 during the reign of Chief Ada George as the governor of Rivers State. Dr. Murphy Akobo, the Ijaw minority rights campaigner and physician, and Professor Claude Ake, internationally acclaimed political economist who died in suspicious circumstances in an ADC plane clash on November 6, 1995. Ake hailed from Che’s Ogba nationality. They were all Che’s new comrades in the struggle for ecological debts, environmental justice and human rights.
Che is old, but not tired. In the 1990s, with the massacre of poor Etche villagers by Shell, the rise of the Ogoni on the platform of the Movement for the Survival of The Ogoni People (MOSOP) and renewed minority rights consciousness, Che is stirred again. He founded Host Community Network (HOCON) to challenge the sharp practices of transnational oil corporations in his Egi land. He coordinated series of protests and blockades against Totalfina and Agip led by women and youths. These corporations continued to destroy the natural environment and poison the atmosphere, and abuse the rights of the people using security forces. For Comrade Che, as he turns 78 the struggle certainly continues.
Concluded.
Naagbanton writes from Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State, Nigeria
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