Book Review
Oseloka Obaze*
Monday, August 31, 2009
The Eagle in its Flight
Being A Memoir of
Hon. Sir Udo Udoma, CFR
(ISBN: 978-0-9819192-0-1: Grace and Son/IEI, USA, Nigeria, UK, 2008; p.326; Price, $59.95)
Available at:
ikemesit@comcast.net
or
dyaks4@comcast.net
“History”,
it is said “offers us every reason and cause to worry”.
However, the unknown, undocumented and unrevealed, might indeed, prove a
more compelling reason and cause to worry. As so it is, in reading
The
Eagle In Its Flight, the posthumous memoir of Hon. Justice Sir Egbert
Udo Udoma, CFR. I dare say that those, who perchance, get to read this book will
concur with this observation.
Justice Udo Udoma
started writing his memoirs well before his death on
A memoir is at once, a
legacy and a personal and historical recount of what the author was keenly part
of, namely, encounters with people, places and events. Udo Udoma’s personal
history, his rise and accomplishments as a legal luminary, political leader and
community leader, are well documented in this book.
However, this is also a book on institutional and partisan politics in
Cumulatively --and
this would be most essential to students of history, politics, law, and broad
social sciences -- Udo Udoma reveals, with uncanny wit and forthrightness, a
lost mosaic of a nation, once hopeful, and once full of potentialities. In
summation of this severe reverse, Udo Udoma, once said of his dear and beloved
country, “
This twenty-nine
chapter book with its appendices is a rich emporium of personal and national
record. In it, Udo Udoma narrates his humble but forthright beginnings, and his
early encounter with the clash of cultures, his native Ibibio culture, which his
father held dear and the imported Christianity, which his mother embraced
without any reservation. This
dichotomy between the traditional ways and the church is played out in Udo
Udoma’s life and his recount. In one instance, he is torn between accepting an
academic scholarship offered by the Methodist Mission that would lead to his
becoming a teacher, against his father’s wish to go on to study law.
Young Udoma was most desirous of
accepting the scholarship and had indeed signed a commitment letter.
His father, having greater vision and
dreams for him rejected the scholarship outright. The issue was only resolved
when his father, told him emphatically, “then you must obey my command” (p.19).
Udo Udoma bowing to parental supremacy, was a mark of discipline, respect his
pedigree and tradition, being that his great grandfather was the founder of Ikot
Abasi and his own father, “a leader of the
Attat and the Ekpo Nyoho titled societies as well as the distinguished president
of the customary court”.
A commonality shared
by his parents, rested on their abiding faith in the power of education, which
was thankfully, a value also held dear by his Ibibio community.
As fate would have it, Udo Udoma, having
lost both parents at a youthful age, lived up to their expectation, thanks to a
communal effort in sponsoring his education abroad. Understandably, he devoted
the entire Chapter 8, to how he became an “Ibibio Scholar” and went on to
chronicle the origins of Ibibio people and Ibibio Union, and indeed, was the
first Ibibio man to obtain a doctorate degree in law and a to rise to the apex
court in Nigeria.
Though Udo Udoma did
not devote a specific chapter to colonial rule in Nigeria, the memoir is laced
with strands of encounters and historical records of the purpose and role of
expatriate missionaries and publics officers as well as some of the most
unsavory effect of the unregulated insinuation of the representatives of Her
Majesty’s Government into every facet of the Nigerian life. Udo Udoma had very
strongly held views about the ills of colonial administration in
Udo Udoma formed an
early view of the deficiencies of colonial policies, observing as it were, “the
solution to West African problem was a planning for and with the people instead
of against them.” In acknowledgment of his bona fides, as western commentator
would remark, “Mr. Udoma is qualified to write on the colonial problem, for he
is in the position of uniting the subjective sympathy of an African born and
bred with the more objective out-look of the European familiar with the problems
that confront both sides”(p.62). As
a student in
Memoirs are renowned
for their revelation of the unknown or for making whole, historical accounts by
providing the missing links. In this
regard, the The Eagle In Its Flight
does not fail.
Three areas or endeavors are worthy
of recall in this context. Udo Udoma’s recounts his foray into post-independence
national politics, his service as Chief Justice of Uganda, and his ascendancy to
the Nigerian Supreme Court, and how he, being a minority, who had shown
unalloyed loyalty to Nigerian during the civil war, was twice passed up from
becoming the nation’s Chief Justice, though he was the most qualified.
Udo Udoma was a self-made man who by
dogged commitment to excellence and dint of hard work accomplished whatever
goals his had set for himself. Well before arriving to the juncture of being an
eminent jurist, he dirtied his hands doing such yeoman’s job as being a golf
caddy and housekeeper for two expatriates, a collector, a bookkeeper and a
timekeeper in the Nigerian Customs Service. Similarly, he was continuously
engaged in the affairs of Ibibio Union, which he eventually came to lead as
President of the Ibibio Union in 1947.
Udo Udoma’s rendition
of the goings on within Nigerian politics was most revelatory. He recounts his
various roles as an Aba-based legal practitioner, member of the Eastern Nigerian
House of Assembly, and the Federal House of Representatives, as founder of the
Diplomatically Udo
Udoma described his relationship with Zik as “somewhat cordial” but by his
account, it was clear that partisan politics had further estranged both men.
Udoma, having be elected into the Eastern Region House of Assembly as an
Independent candidate in 1951, had joined Zik’s NCNC, only to depart/decamp with
other colleagues to establish the opposition United National Independent Party
(UNIP). His politics certainly did not please Zik, so much so that when he was
in 1961 appointed a judge of the Federal High Court, Zik asked him how it felt
to be a judge, a question, which he felt was Zik’s way of saying, “thank God
they have caught this man at last” (p.119).
Udoma linked that exchange to Zik’s prior desire as Premier of Eastern
Region, that he should abandon politics, concluding, “He would have preferred to
see me a judge than a politician in Parliament in the opposition”.
Udo Udoma served with
distinction as Chief Justice of
Uganda for six years and as Acting Governor-General in 1963.
President Milton Obote of Uganda confirmed as much in his letter of 25th
April 1969, wherein he reaffirm his personal appreciation and that of the people
of Uganda “for the services you rendered o this country” (p.178), Yet, through
an act of fate and what Udoma saw as machinations of Biafran agents, he was
brusquely and embarrassingly removed as Chief Justice of Uganda in 1969. Indeed,
untidy housekeeping at the Ministry of External Affairs,
If Udo Udoma faced
disappointment in
In the second
instance, while he was in the UK, receiving treatment to rectify an obvious
malpractice, in which one Dr. Duncan of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital
(LUTH) had “ignorantly and negligently” administered excessive radiation thus
causing more harm than good, there was a coup on 29 July 1975, after which Dr.
Elias was removed from office. In
his place, Udoma’s professional junior colleague, Hon. Sir Darnley Alexander was
appointed acting Chief Justice. Udoma would note later, that Dr. Ducan’s
malpractice, which eventually resulted in his double amputation and for which,
President Olusegun Obasanjo would not grant him leave to seek legal recourse,
was in some ways used maliciously to block his chances of becoming Chief Justice
of Nigeria.
Udoma recalled how his
colleague and presumed friend, Hon. Justice Fatayi Williams, schemed his way
into the office of the CJN by ethnic blackmail and perfidy and specifically, by
registering “a solemn protest on the grounds that he saw no reason why I should
be given such a high post as the Chief Justice of Nigeria despite the fact that
I was an amputee” (p.202). Yet, Udoma
acknowledges that other political consideration might have been at play.
Citing Justice Williams’ book, “Cases, Places and Faces”, he noted that
Williams had convinced General Obasanjo to appoint him to the position, in view
of the possible electoral outcome, in which the Shagari/Ekwueme,
Hausa/Igbo presidential
ticket were likely to emerge victorious over the Awolowo/Umeadi,
Yoruba/Igbo presidential ticket. In such an eventuality, he had argued
that the office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria ought to be filled by himself, a
Yoruba man...” It bears noting that
Fatayi William’s reasoning might have had a valid logical slant, even if it did
constitute as Udoma alleged, an act of betrayal. In this vein, Udoma’s angst is
understandable, for when
Justice Udo Udoma
retired from Supreme Court of Nigeria in 1982, having also served as Chairman of
the Constituent Assembly responsible for the draft 1979 Constitution, as well as
Chairman of various national panels of inquiry. He eventually founded and served
as Chairman of the Cross River State/Akwa Ibom State Law Reform Commission. In
that capacity, he gave as usual of himself, not always receiving comparable
appreciation in return. Nonetheless, Udo Udoma’s love for and service to
The Eagle In Its
Flight,
is a very
captivating and urbane, yet unvarnished account of Udoma’s deep personal
experiences, all rendered in a seamless flow and with erudite, legal-minded and
incomparable storytelling skills. Though posthumously published, this is an
illuminating, rare and intimate memoir and a portrait into the soul of an
eminently distinguished human being and a true Christian soul.
The Eagle In Its Flight is a good,
engrossing and moving read.
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Mr.
Oseloka Obaze
is a founding member of the
Kwenu.com Book Review Forum,
which is dedicated to the promotion of books with Igbo
and Afrocentric themes. He is also a supporting Member of the African Writers
Endowment (AWE). From 1999 to 2005, he served on the editorial board of
INYEAKA, the journal of Songhai Charities, Inc., a