by C.Don Adinuba

For a moment, the Igbo nationalists forgot that it was  Fashola who in 2009 personally led the protest against a serving Yoruba naval officer, Harry Arogundede, whose aides beat up a female banker from Imo State, Uzoma Okere, and even successfully instituted a N100 million suit against the rear admiral.

African leaders consider it a mark of weakness to apologise for their actions, even when their actions are clearly in error. Bolaji Akinyemi, erstwhile foreign minister and ex director general of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), used to point out in the 1980s and 1990s that Tanzanian founding President Julius Nyerere was the only African leader on record for admitting that his actions while in office were not always right; Nyerere apologised for his nationalisation of the farms in the aftermath of his famous Arusha Declaration where his Ujama or socialist principles were enunciated.
Well, Africa has come a long way since the Akinyemi observation. Nelson Mandela, for one, has apologised for some actions by various groups during the apartheid system in South Africa. Rwandan leaders across the divide apologised at sittings of the truth and reconciliation commission for acts of genocide and recriminations of the 1990s. Here in Nigeria, former Head  of State Yakubu Gowon has been apologising for the Nigerian civil war of 1967 to 70.

Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola, who has over the years proved to be a leader to watch, on Thursday, September 26, joined the pantheon of African statesmen to apologise for their actions. At the 25th anniversary of Aka Ikenga, the influential group of leading Igbo intellectuals and professionals in Lagos, Governor Fashola tendered an unreserved apology to the Igbo people who misunderstood his relocation of 14 destitute individuals of Anambra origin from Lagos to their home state in July. The relocation was criticised by all kinds of people, resulting in extreme reactions which some inelegant characters attempted to cash in on to play Don Quixote.

Admittedly, Fashola’s apology at the Ikenga silver jubilee was not the first since the brouhaha over the return of the beggars. When the Aka Ikenga leadership visited him in August in connection with the relocation, he did apologise when told that the people were brought to Onitsha very early in the morning and left there.

It takes a lot of courage and grace to apologise even to your wife or business partner. This is why the whole world cheered the late Pope John 11 when he on March 13, 2000, apologised to the Muslims, Jews and French Protestants for excesses of the Church in the medieval age during the crusades.  A lot of people expected the Muslim  or Jewish leaders to reciprocate the pope’s great gesture by apologising to Catholics. After all, it takes two to tango, and the so-called Holy Wars saw different warring sides–and not just one side–  engage in excesses. In the same vein, Aka Ikenga could have seized the Fashola initiative to apologise for the excesses of some Igbo elements who were simply reckless in their responses to the relocation. Some people, especially politicians desperate to capitalise on the emotions of the Igbo people in this election year in Anambra State, have since last July said not just unflattering things about the governor but indulged in dangerous utterances which they know to be absolutely untrue. To such people, it was a war situation; and in war, as in love, everything is fair!

Validating the old-age aphorism that truth is the first casualty in war, these activists  charged him with formulating policies to get all Igbo people out of Lagos. Driven by extreme emotions, these people did not reckon with the fact that urchins from Lagos Island, Fashola’s ancestral home, were among the first to be taken out of Lagos streets in the implementation of the policy to make Lagos a mega-city. Nor did they reckon with Fashola’s decision to rebuild free of charge a large  private shopping complex occupied only by Igbo people in Olodi Apapa which was gutted in June at a time their home governors adopted a non challant attitude towards the fire disaster. And it did not matter to them that some Yoruba irredentists considered Fashola a traitor for travelling to Brown University in the United States last March to participate in the Chinua Achebe colloquium  where he spoke of Achebe in superlative terms at a time the eminent writer was being savaged by Yoruba activists for his unflattering remarks about Chief Obafemi Awolowo in his Biafran memoir, There Was A Country.

For a moment, the Igbo nationalists forgot that it was  Fashola who in 2009 personally led the protest against a serving Yoruba naval officer, Harry Arogundede, whose aides beat up a female banker from Imo State, Uzoma Okere, and even successfully instituted a N100 million suit against the rear admiral. In the fury, Igbo nationalists forgot that Fashola, more than any other governor in Nigeria’s history, had displayed so much affection towards them, as evidenced by the naming of a housing complex for Emeka Anyaoku, the near giving of a state burial to Emeka Ojukwu, the appointment of Igbo people to key positions in the state public service and the underwriting of an expensive medical bill of Ngozi Nwosu, a famous actress afflicted by a serious liver problem, as well as the naming of the press gallery of Teslim Balogun Stadium after Ernest Okonkwo, the legendary radio sports commentator from Anambra State.

The ultra nationalists became so insensitive of the feelings of other people that they audaciously proclaimed Lagos a “no man’s land”. Yet, Lagos had for centuries been ruled by such persons as King Kososko and King Akintoye and was conquered only in 1851 by British colonialists, becoming a British crown in 1861. They did not ponder on how they would react if some Ogbomosho people would declare Onitsha or Aba or Enugu a “no-man’s land”.
Good a thing all the emotional hoopla now belongs to the past. Like Pope John Paul 11, Governor Fashola has apologised in the interests of peace, unity, cooperation and solidarity with the human family. Ojukwu, who proudly called Fashola his beloved son and christened him Chukwuemeka at birth in 1963, would describe the new development as offering a fresh opportunity for a firm handshake across the Niger. The governor’s apology is reminiscent of mea culpah, an important rite in Catholic theology and liturgy performed at the beginning of the mass for full reconciliation between us and God and between us and fellow human beings. Fashola has done what every misunderstood statesman should do. He is a 21st Century leader through and through.

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Read this article in the Thisday Newspapers

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