Professor Ben Obumselu, who was laid to rest yesterday,
Friday 9 June, 2017, at his hometown, Oba, in Anambra State, remarked in a 1990
article: “Every man is a lover and follows the Muse.” He meant to point to the
legion of human compulsions and fixations, and placed in hierarchical
categories the varying ideals that humans strive for or hanker after. For
Obumselu, the life of the intellect is a life of unusual distinction and the
intellectual Muse is the lover par excellence, being both the ultimate seeker
and ultimate sought-after. Prodigiously
gifted, extraordinarily learned and informed, oracular in his pronouncements in
spite of his unassuming mien, Obumselu was himself the fulfilment of every
ambitious student’s deepest dream of the intellectual Muse. And he, moreover,
had the patience and the compassion to guide the enthusiastic student on the
challenging path to truth.
When I and my generation of students at Imo State
University, Etiti, first met Obumselu in the classroom in the early 1980s, the
experience was nothing short of a revelation of the enthralling delights of the
life of the intellect. Our stars could hardly have been more auspicious. Dreams
were engendered; careers were born; eternal discipleships were begun.
Discovering Obumselu and his work has been one of the
profoundest experiences of my life. A pioneer student in the honours degree
programme in English in the University College Ibadan, Obumselu entered the
University in 1951 as the winner of the Open Scholarship for the best candidate
in the Faculty of Arts. He maintained the scholarship level of performance for
the six years he spent as an undergraduate and won the Faculty Prize as the
best graduating student in 1957. He achieved these results while holding the
office of the President of the Students’ Union in 1955/56 and the first
President of the National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) in 1956/57. He was
so bright he was offered a scholarship for postgraduate studies at Oxford
University England even before he had earned his first degree. On his return
from Oxford with a doctorate, Obumselu taught for three years at the University
of Ibadan before moving at the onset of the Civil War to the University of
Nigeria, Nsukka. Fleeing the country at the end of the War, Obumselu led the
life of a wandering scholar and taught in universities in England, Zambia,
Zaire, Botswana, and Swaziland.
Scholar par excellence
As a scholar, Obumselu was remarkable for the catholicity of
his interests and competences. Regarding cultures as necessarily alive,
dynamic, and exogamous, he methodically explored the history of a great
diversity of literatures, sculpture, music, languages, religions, and other
human endeavours to contend that the mystique of national culture, as he told
Kalu Ogbaa in a 1989 interview, is a twentieth century error: “Earlier phases
of world history rightly saw culture in terms of useful elements that were
available to all men. One language can radiate from its point of origin and
enter new areas, just as a tool, a musical instrument, an administrative
system, a religion, a new form of literary chant, can flow down the arteries of
commerce, conquest and social intercourse”.
Obumselu demonstrates this thesis by a careful examination of the impact
of Italian poetry on the bardic English tradition in the late 1590s, and of
European fiction on the Russian in the mid-nineteenth century. Beyond
literature, Obumselu also cites the transformation undergone by European
painting on its discovery of African masks, culminating in cubism, as well as
the modification of European musical styles by African rhythms. One of the
pleasures of reading Obumselu is that every typical piece is an ambitious
multidisciplinary tour de force. Understandably, though, his emphasis was on
the place of Africa, and especially African literature, in this universal
cultural interchange.
Obumselu was particularly distinguished by the rigour and
tireless zeal with which he traced ideas to their ultimate sources and followed
their varying mutations. Two publications of his set this in particular relief:
his 1980 publication in Research in African Literatures, “The French and Moslem
Backgrounds of The Radiance of the King” and his 2010 publication also in
Research in African Literatures, “Cambridge House, Ibadan, 1962-1966: Politics
and Poetics in Okigbo’s Last Years.” In
the earlier article, refuting the stereotype of Laye as an African writer
drawing on privileged African material to exalt a permissive moral outlook,
Obumselu locates the novel in the context of values that derive both from Islam
and the twentieth century intellectual novel in France. If Obumselu’s
exploration of Islam with its Sufi revivals is astonishing, he equally
methodically ransacks and lays bare the oeuvres of many influential French
writers and thinkers of the twentieth century to foreground Laye’s indebtedness
to the West with regard to his moral vision. Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus,
Julian Green, Francois Mauriac, Gustave Flaubert, and especially Franz Kafka
are explored with stunning mastery as writers whose works are instructive for
understanding Laye’s craft and preoccupation. Yet the critic is adamant in
affirming Laye’s originality:
Sartre, Green, and Kafka are …sufficient indications that
Laye was absorbed by the drama of moral and religious consciousness in French
fiction. It is apparent too that Laye does not merely criticize the
existentialists’ evocation of human alienation and anguish. That body of
literature positively enters and qualifies, at least by the technical means
that it supplies, what the Moslem writer has to say about the limitations of
the created condition. Yet the more closely we study his French background the
more impressed we are by the imaginative originality of his adaptation of
existentialist thought to his African material and by the comic zest and
religious affirmation which he is able to bring to what is essentially a gloomy
Gallic tradition.
Meditating on Laye’s The Radiance of the King and its
inspiring antecedents, Obumselu writes with obvious passion and easily rises to
the full height of his unusually exceptional powers: the analytic rigour, the
meticulous logic, the breath-taking revelations and inventiveness, the
chiselled, consummate, and compelling phrasing, and the virtual encyclopaedic
knowledge that are the hallmarks of his writing are the presiding virtues of
“The French and Moslem Backgrounds of The Radiance of the King”.
“Cambridge House, Ibadan, 1962-1966: Politics and Poetics in
Okigbo’s Last Years,” like “Christopher Okigbo: A Poet’s Identity” which
preceded it, has as its thesis Okigbo’s multicultural filiations. Obumselu’s
contention is that Okigbo observes no cultural frontiers but regards the entire
baggage of humankind as his patrimony which his genius could subject to a
synthesis that is original and life-enhancing. Serving his apprenticeship at
the feet of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Stéphane Mallarmé, Okigbo, Obumselu
demonstrates, in his pupillage to Leopold Sedar Senghor and oral African
(actually primarily Yoruba) literature was equally absolute in his dedication.
Examining Okigbo, Obumselu ranges through the poetry of Virgil, Eliot, Pound,
Yeats, Lorca, Mallarmé, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Senghor, and through
the varying genres of indigenous Yoruba poetry as well as the music of Debussy
and funeral African drums. In its ambitious scope, as in its depth and
thoroughness, “Cambridge House, Ibadan, 1962-1966: Politics and Poetics in
Okigbo’s Last Years” is a typical Obumselu offering.
The Biafran partisan
Obumselu spent the last years of his life as an “Igbo icon”
and played an exceptional role quietly, persistently, creatively, selflessly,
and almost invisibly in Igbo public life in restructuring the community both in
politics and cultural formations. He had similarly played prominent roles in
Biafra especially in setting up “His Excellency’s Special Brigade.” Obumselu
enlisted in the Biafra Army in late August 1967 on the personal invitation of
General Ojukwu and was commissioned a Lieutenant Colonel of the Biafra Army.
General Ojukwu had called upon his old friend to join him at his command post
in Government House Enugu because he had received irrefutable information that
an insurrection was brewing in the high command of the Biafra Army and that he
would be assassinated. The first job assigned to Obumselu was to keep watch
over senior army personnel in the war office (Defence Operations). A month
later, Obumselu was asked to set up a separate Biafra Army formation called the
“His Excellency’s Special Brigade” to defend General Ojukwu personally in the
event of a breakdown in the Biafra Army.
Obumselu went to the military Cadet School in Enugu with a
note from General Ojukwu authorising him to choose twenty-four undergraduates
who would command the platoons of the three battalions of the Special Brigade.
He took the cadets to Akagbe Primary School Awkanawnaw in Enugu where, with
General Ojukwu himself, he drilled, trained and indoctrinated them. This was
the genesis of the mythical “His Excellency’s Special Brigade” which caused so
much vexation among senior army officers. The details of the events of this
part of Biafran history are explored in many books, but especially in Ben
Odogwu’s No Place to Hide and Alexander Madiebo’s The Biafran Revolution. Eventually, personal friends of Ojukwu in the
Biafra Army, Colonel Ralph Obioha, Captain Willy Archibong, Colonel
Onwuatuegwu, Sergeant Okilo, and Sergeant Roberts, were enlisted to take the
Special Brigade into action. But throughout the war, Obumselu was the Rear
Commander of the “S Brigade” which remained a separate military formation as a
strategic reserve for emergencies. The insurrection in the Biafra Army did not
take place. Half a dozen ring leaders of the planned assassination were tried
and executed. But the Special Brigade played a major role in defending Enugu in
September/October 1967. If the Special Brigade had not been established and
specially equipped at the time, Biafra might have collapsed in
September/October 1967.
Obumselu had a special position in Government House and the
Biafra Army. In Defence Operations, he was the representative of the Head of
State, and General Ojukwu consulted him on matters which required quiet
analytical judgement. He was given the official title of War Historian to give
him access to all information. In this capacity, he was given official custody
of the report of the Atrocities Commission which he eventually published as The
Massacre of Ndi Igbo in 1966. A good deal of the time, he was in the war front
at Colonel Ralph Obioha’s tactical headquarters. Obumselu eventually took over
the intelligence unit of Biafra Defence Operations. His job was to ensure he
understood the disposition of the units of the Federal Army and that he could
tell in advance what they were planning to do. He was in Defence Operations
throughout the war, reporting for duty daily at 10.00 am and closing at 2.00 am
in the morning.
Obumselu had another important assignment during the war,
moreover. He was a member of the Briefs Committee. With Professor Anthony
Modebe as Chairman, other members of the committee were Professors Obumselu,
Chieka Ifemesia, Michael Echeruo, Adiele Afigbo, and Drs K.I. Kalu and Stephen
Ibeziako. This committee wrote all major propaganda pamphlets before the war,
did far more for Biafra publicity at the international level than the
Propaganda Directorate, and was the intellectual face of Biafra. The committee
also prepared a draft for every major speech delivered by General Ojukwu. The
final text was often agreed between Ojukwu and Obumselu, who occasionally had
to write an entire speech for General Ojukwu singlehanded. Obumselu was close
to Ojukwu throughout his exile in Ivory Coast. He visited Ojukwu three times in
Yamoussoukro; took an Anambra State delegation (with the Deputy Governor Roy
Umenyi and the NPP Chairman) to visit him before his return; and was with him
in Yamoussoukro on the last day when he returned to Nigeria. Obumselu remained
a close friend and confidant of General Ojukwu till his death. He deserved all
the attention which the Federal Army paid him at the end of the war and for
which he embarked on self-exile!
In public life
Obumselu returned to Nigeria in 1981 to serve as Special
Adviser to the then Governor of Anambra State, Jim Nwobodo. At the collapse of
the Second Republic, he taught for several years at Abia State University,
Uturu. Obumselu left Abia State University Uturu in July 1986 to establish an
Igbo media house in Lagos. He was chosen for that job by Dr Pius Okigbo, the
Military Governors of Anambra and Imo States, and a committee of potential
donors to the media house project which included Chief Nnanna Kalu, Dr Hyde
Onuaguluchi, Chief Sonny Odogwu, and Professor Ogbonna Irukwu. An expert team
of Igbo journalists led by Dr Stanley Macebuh and Dr Jemie Onwuchekwa was privy
to and in support of the project. The Military Governors, however, contributed
no money to the setting up of the media house and although a web offset press
was soon installed in Esomo Close in Ikeja, the project was never fully funded,
and for three years Obumselu received no salary and had to survive by engaging
in freelance journalism. He had ample time though to engage with young poets
and novelists, and to be a frequent broadcaster on Channel TV and AIT. He also
worked with the Igbo Speaking Community which soon appointed him a Patron “in
recognition and appreciation of (his) passion for the promotion of the cause of
the community and of Ndigbo in general.” He likewise worked with Dr Okigbo to establish
an Eastern forum which met in rotation in Port Harcourt, Enugu, Uyo, and
Calabar. The mission was to re-build the broken solidarity of the Eastern
Region. With his old friend, Chief Bola Ige, he re-established dialogue between
Eastern and Western Nigeria and a good number of friendly meetings were held in
Lagos and Enugu.`
The National Unity Organisation was launched in 1993 in the
high noon of the Abacha regime. General Olusegun Obasanjo was the National
Leader and Obumselu the Secretary General. The idea was to prepare the ground
for a return to inclusive civilian democracy which many people thought was long
overdue. Obumselu quickly wrote a constitution for the National Unity
Organisation and provided the support literature for the campaign which was
planned. He accompanied General Obasanjo in the ill-fated attempt to secure the
release of Chief Moshood Abiola from jail in 1993. He only narrowly escaped
arrest when General Obasanjo was charged with treason a few months later.
But the time came at long last for the return to civilian
democracy. Ndigbo formed the PNF as the political vehicle for entry into the
PDP. In Lagos, Obumselu was the Deputy Leader of PNF and the Western Region
Director of Dr Alex Ekwueme’s Presidential Campaign Organisation in 1999 and
2003. He presided at Boyle Street Onikan Lagos and established contacts all
over Western Nigeria. His personal mobilization of communities and
organisations in Lagos was a basic foundation stone on which the PDP was
eventually built. Obumselu had enough leverage at this time to enter politics
and contest for an elective office or a plum political appointment. But he was
not interested in any of that. He loved the backroom, the book stacks and the
wrestle with principles in which the great excitement arose from an adventure
of ideas. He loved politics and kept very close to it. But he did not want to
be a politician.
After the debacle of the Jos Convention of the PDP in 1999,
Obumselu believed that Igbo politics was in urgent need of a new configuration;
it had to be re-invented. It was easy therefore for him to answer the call of
Chief Chekwas Okorie who invited him to take part in the formation of APGA in
March 2001. Obumselu presided over the inaugural meeting of APGA in Nike Hotel
and Resort in Enugu in which a vast concourse of Igbo organisations from every
corner of the nation gathered. Thereafter, following a brief pause, he chaired
every meeting of the planning committee until the Party received its INEC
certification.
APGA was a monumentally ambitious idea. It aimed to bring
the entire Igbo nation into one political community which would give the rest
of Nigeria a delightful new taste of the democratic inclusion at the heart of
the Igbo tradition. Intellectuals were many in the planning phase of the Party.
But the politicians were trickling in; and it was intended to bring in
financiers, the churches, the Market Associations, and community leaders.
Obumselu was typically eloquent in his first pamphlet titled “A Syllabus for
Change” in which the guiding principles of the new party were set out. He
followed this up with a magnificent Party Manifesto which many pundits in Lagos
press compared favourably with Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group Manifesto
of 1951. But APGA began to break up even before it received its INEC
registration. Its future would depend upon the ability of its leadership to
return to the principles set out in the manifesto.
As the promise of APGA began to fade late in 2001, Obumselu
agreed to serve as Deputy President-General of the pan-Igbo cultural
organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo. At about the same time, he took up the post of
Secretary of the Anambra State Elders’ Advisory Council. The intention was to
approach the restructuring of the community from a slightly different
perspective. The Igbo democratic tradition could still be re-kindled and
re-invented in the easier context of cultural formations even if it was
impossible to do so in the smoke and heat of politics. But the matter was not
simple. Ideas could do a great deal. But power would always trump ideas in the
short term.
Final years
Scholar, critic, intellectual muse, soldier, adventurer,
counsellor, journalist, entrepreneur, hero with a thousand beautiful faces, in
a career spanning more than five decades,
Obumselu embodied some of the best ideals of both the contemplative life
and the active. Significantly, though, in a 2012 interview, he noted that the
vocation of the university teacher was the profession he identified with most
both mentally and spiritually. Typically, he spent his final years reading
voraciously while also at work on a book on the African novel. As always, the
planning was painstaking; the procedures and execution rigorous. Old books were
reread and new ones were ordered from different parts of the world; new and old
journal articles were consulted, and the writing itself was meticulous and
unhurried. But the body was steadily giving in to the exertions of a life that
always reached out to new horizons. Obumselu’s response though was even greater
devotion as he found in scholarly work a refuge from searing pains…
And I turned up on 9 February 2017 at your residence in
Lagos, the day you left home for the last time for the hospital. It was evident
in a moment why you had called me weeks earlier, no doubt to bid me farewell
though you insisted that was far from your purpose. But you had long taken me
beyond the frontiers of tears. Your words when they came that afternoon were
like haloes, luminous above the grating of rasping coughs and the thundering
silence of the intervals. Speech was an act of defiance but you persevered. I
strained in vain to decipher meanings that had transcended mortal thresholds.
However, a phrase dropped distinct and immortal as you meditated on great
literature: the presiding images of human lives. And I was certain that the
indescribable conflation of pain and exaltation I discerned on your brows right
then was itself a most telling image. You spoke of the state of African
literature and scholarship; and of chapters of your book project on the African
novel you intended to let me see.
Anxiety was my lot when Fidelia, your wife, called me on 26
February—until she noted you wanted to speak with me. You were much stronger
and your voice firmer. We discussed placing your new article on Soyinka’s The
Interpreters. A perfectionist to the end, even on the hospital bed, you gave
instructions on bibliography! You certainly did not need another publication to
get on in life then. Providing signposts to the living had been the deepest
inspiration and motivation of your life. Decades earlier, you wrote to me in a
letter:
You surely ought to know that what makes a life meaningful
is what the person adds to the sum of life. That will be what goes on of me
when I am dead. A huge house, a fleet of cars, and big bank balances, are our
amulets, our exorcisms against the necessary inconsequence of any individual
life. In the end what matters is what survives. That is what is immortal in the
man.
You wrote at length on the mystical tradition in Western
philosophy which pictures virtue as a kind of dying. In your study of Leo Tolstoy,
André Malraux, Iris Murdoch, André Brink, and Ancient Greek tragedy, you
highlighted how seeing and knowing the self to be a passing show is an
inspiring creative realisation. But especially on Okigbo’s “Elegy of the Wind”
you wrote with great admiration and power on how the poet’s acceptance of his
mortality and transience beside the imponderable mystery of life liberated him
from the fear of death and released his energy for gallant self-forgetful
action. Giving selflessly again and again of what was best in you with
unstinted generosity, you trailed the intimations of your immortality. Thus do
we rise early, as the great poet wrote, from mourning into morning.
Isidore Diala, Professor Obumselu’s former student, is
professor of African literature at Imo State University, Owerri.
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