He was always frank, brutally frank when he decided to speak, and he spoke often even in his last days about the country and its malcontents. About a decade ago, I was in his house in Asokoro, off T.Y. Danjuma street, interrogating a sore point in the relationship between his Ijaw ethnic group and the Nigerian state. I told him after our meeting that he was indeed more than an Ijaw leader; he was a quintessential Nigerian patriot and elder statesman. Leadership of our Southern Nigeria and Middle Belt Forum over a decade confirmed my assessment of the irrepressible petrel of Nigerian politics. Together, the Forum and other like-minded representations had, inter alia, fashioned a pan-Nigerian document which we took to the 2014 Conference. It was a monumental labour of love, whose days of glory will still come. No one can hide a goldfish forever.
He threw lethal punches to the enemies of society without the fear of repercussions to self or of name calling. Following his diatribe (disquisition) against the unprogressive and unproductive maltreatment of the Igbo in Nigeria by successive Nigerian governments following the Biafran war, I reminded him of one of the reasons God had kept him alive, that is-to complete the work he was created to perform and that he had continued to be on track. That task, I surmised, may include speaking for the disinherited, the oppressed and the voiceless as well as giving vent to their latent frustrations. And that he has been intentional all the way. He took all in stride, like the social crusader he was.
Edwin Clark was frankly brutal. He could not have chosen a more befitting title for his autobiography, publicly presented on the 17th of August, 2023 in Abuja. He has, without a doubt, remained one of the most enduring, and, I dare add, endearing names in Nigeria’s volatile, chequered political and public space, a tireless advocate for justice and for the fundamental rights of all Nigerians.
His call for the release of the highly maligned and misunderstood Nnamdi Kanu, by a state that should protect its own, coupled with his advocacy for justice for the Igbo, is the voice of a conscience rooted in the constitutive principles of human rights and good governance. Government cannot continue to be disdainful of valent opinions from our elders, opinions that reflect best and universal practices in these matters; it cannot continue in its perceived waywardness without hurting itself.
Clark in his frank brutality did not spare the quisling Igbo, who seems to have forgotten the noble precepts of his predecessors, especially those who preceded him in public office. The novel political anthem of “everyone to himself and God for us all “is not tenable in a clime where hedonism has become rampant. We must continue to be our brothers’ keepers. I can still hear his clarion call for ‘The Igbos to rise and legitimately Fight for themselves because No other Nigerian is Superior To Them.” Many of us are doing exactly that, and we need more Nigerians like E.K. to cause the powers that be, the Leviathan, to lose the state strangleholds, overt and covert, that are rendering Igbo efforts for more political space a nullity. Hegemonies do not last forever.
Nigeria is also dying in instalments and we are yet to find another country. We are reminded in parenthesis, of J.P. Clark’s poem The Casualties. Primitive accumulation of ill-gotten wealth will not build a stable or progressive Nigeria for all. Good governance will. Restructuring the polity, which is the first part of Chief Clark’s “Letter to President Ahmed Tinubu” is the silver bullet that may yet save Nigeria from disintegration. The sooner we restructure, following the 2014 recommendations or an improved version of it, the better for all.
We remember and salute Chief E.K. Clark, CON, Distinguished Senator of the Federal Republic, Founder and Chancellor of Edwin Clark University, Kiagbodo for his dogged and committed leadership for all Nigerians and for speaking truth to power. He is dead but not gone, for great men do not die, they simply disappear.
Permit me to end this remark with a poem written by an American novelist and poet, Josiah Gilbert Holland (July 24, 1819 – October 12, 1881) at a time America needed quality and selfless leadership like Nigeria does now.
GOD, give us men,
A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith
And ready hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill
Men whom the spoils of office can
Not buy
Men who possess opinions and a
Will;
Men who have honor, men who will Not lie;
Men who can stand before a Demagogue
And damn his treacherous
flatteries
without winking
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live
Above the fog
In public duty, and in private Thinking;
For while the rabble, with their thumb-
worn creeds
Their large professions and their Little
Creeds;
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom
Weeps
Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.
May God in his infinite mercy continue to grant the departed eternal repose
Prof Ihechukwu Madubuike, KJW. OON
Author: Nigeria And The Lugardian Hubris
Former Minister of the Federal Republic.
Abuja, April 9, 2025.
