Part 3 GUTLESS IGBO PROBLEM IN LAGOS STATE—WHEN I FOUGHT FOR NDIGBO AND WAS SABOTAGED BY NDIGBO
(Part 3)
Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe, PhD September 10, 2025
When I informed Mr. Michael Ololo-Ogwu the embattled young man that we would be going to Century Hotel to settle his matter before Dr. Faseun he flatly refused to go, insisting instead that he would prefer to be killed by the OPC in his house where people would see his dead body than at the OPC Headquarters. Even some of his leading tenants I invited to join the meeting were initially afraid to go. ,
However, I was able to convince them to the contrary, assuring them of their safety so long as I was with them. I further informed them that I was going to invite some leaders of the Igbo-Speaking Community in Lagos State to join us, since we needed some important Igbo personalities to support his case.
Based on this need to have strong Igbo representatives at the meeting to offer me the necessary back-up, I pleaded with the President of Igbo-Speaking Community in Lagos State Chief Uche Momah to join me with some members of his executive committee. I also invited the leaders of Tejuoso Market Igbo Traders’ Association to join us. Before then I had briefed them on the matter and they all promised to join me to support the young man. Unfortunately, the contrary turned out to be the case.
When we arrived at the entrance gate of Dr. Faseun’s Century Hotel, seeing members of OPC mounted everywhere, both the young man and the accompanying Igbo leaders refused to enter the hotel compound out of fear. In fact, they all insisted that they would be going back. It took me a herculean task to convince them to follow me into the hotel since I had already packed my car inside with Mr. Michael Ololo-Ogwu already in.
When we eventually gathered inside the- Hotel for the Dialogue, the first frontal assault against me came from the young man’s Ngwa-born mother who threatened me with hell and brimstones for interfering in their family matter. Well, I calmly responded by reminding her that I was not afraid of her.
After formal presentations by the three parties—Mr. Michael Ololo- Ogwu, his mother, and the buyer—Mr. Akintomide, it was obvious that the business was not only illegal but criminally conceived. But oftentimes truth becomes an orphan where lies are borne on the shoulders of the king. That was what the matter turned out to be. Dr. Faseun had accepted the fact of both the illegality and criminality of the transactions during our in-house analysis of my investigations.
However, finding himself torn between his sentimental attachment to his Yoruba kinsman whose cause he had sworn to defend as OPC leader, and the naked truth of a business transaction constructed on the thoroughfare of unconcealed criminality, he immediately sought a soft-landing pad for his buyer-kinsman. Indeed that was the first time I saw Dr. Faseun propelled unethically by ethnic sentiments.
Instead of looking at the merit of the case as we agreed prior to the meeting, he immediately sought respite from Yoruba tradition of inheritance, in order to provide a ground of legality to the transaction. He declared that since the property was situated in Yorubaland, the Yoruba custom of inheritance, in which all the siblings have equal rights to their father’s property, should apply in the case.
Short of reminding him of our earlier position on the matter, I rejected it out rightly, insisting that location does not invalidate the customs of a people relating to their inheritance. Under Igbo custom of inheritance, the first son inherits his father’s Obi (his main residence). The house in question was the same house the man lived with the first son till his death after his first wife, the mother of the embattled young man divorced him. He named his first son after him, the same named in the survey plan. This is Igbo tradition and must be applied in this case.
It would therefore amount to the height of injustice and breach of our time-honored customary laws relating to inheritance, for the same people who abandoned their father, to collude with their mother, who equally abandoned her husband, to appropriate the property without the consent of the first son, who lived there with his father for more than three decades until the latter’s death and, consequently inherited it as the first son.
The buyer Mr. Akintomide on his part welcomed Dr. Faseun’s position and promised to give Mr. Michael Ololo-Ogwu’s additional five hundred thousand naira in addition to the two hundred thousand he rejected. The Igbo leaders I invited to be on my side turned out to be a disgrace unto themselves. Throughout the deliberations they had kept grave silence to the amazement of even Dr. Faseun who had expected expert contributions from them in line with the purpose of their invitation. But as soon as Mr. Akintomide proposed five hundred thousand name, they all shouted in a disgusting chorus of support; urging Michael Ololo-Ogwu to accept the money to save his life.
I looked at them with utter disbelief but nevertheless stood my grounds. They spoke in Igbo but I responded in English asking, who told them Michael’s life was in danger? They were as shocked as much as they were embarrassed. I rejected both Dr. Faseun’s thesis of Yoruba custom of inheritance and the concessionary five hundred thousand naira. As soon as I made this statement, I knew I was standing alone with the young man.
I saw myself abandoned by even those I invited as my Igbo kinsmen to provide me with backup support. Sensing that I was alone in the entire house, I immediately decided that the only option left to me was to abort the dastard decision by way of beating a tactical retreat. Consequently, I requested an adjournment to enable the young man think over the proposal, since in Igbo tradition land cases are not often settled in one day. They immediately agreed and the meeting was subsequently adjourned to one a week’s time.
When we left the meeting the Igbo leaders were just gazing at me speechless expecting me to say something to them. I just returned the gaze with a disgusting hiss and beckoned on Mr. Michael Ololo-Ogwu to enter my car and we drove off. Unfortunately, this is the same class of people who still complain till date of Yoruba oppression in Lagos State, which they wretchedly aid through their habitual cowardice.
As soon as we got home, I immediately drafted a petition on behalf of Michael Ololo-Ogwu to Itire Divisional Police Station, reporting a case of attempted murder by his mother and siblings. I went further to direct him to immediately consult a lawyer, which he did, enlisting a member of his Assemblies of God’s Church, Ikate, Surulere Lagos.
The lawyer immediately filed civil proceedings against the sale of the house at Lagos State High Court and, immediately secured an Ex-parte Injunction restraining the buyer from taking possession of the building pending the outcome of the Motion on Interlocutory Injunction. This was later granted as well. With that victory, both the man his tenants were saved from ejection.
It is important to note that I was a star-witness in the said case in which both his mother and siblings refused to attend even as the sellers of the disputed property. Furthermore it is again important to note that on the adjournment of the meeting, Mrs. Rosalyn Ololo-Ogwu vowed that I would not live to come to the next meeting; a threat I simply ignored and moved ahead with my plan to scuttle the entire meeting and devise another strategy to help the young man re-possess his inheritance.
Armed with the petition and the High Court proceedings, I informed the young man that the proposed meeting would no longer hold if not for any reason but to save his life. So the date of the adjourned meeting, I drove alone to inform Dr. Faseun of the new development and why the meeting and the settlement of the case were no longer necessary.
It should be recalled that Michael’s mother had boasted that I would not live to attend the next meeting, a threat I simply brushed aside. But true to the woman’s threat, as I was driving from Surulere to Okota to inform Dr. Faseun of the new development, I was confronted with serious traffic jam on the main Ikorodu Road. So I decided to use the service lane especially since I had to negotiate at Anthony Bus-Stop. Just immediately after the busy Palm Grove Bus Stop, I had a collision with a Danfo (kombi) bus. In the process both my front fender and the passengers’ door of the bus pulled off.
As usual with Lagos rough life, within a moment I saw myself engaged in a scuffle with both the conductor and the driver in their attempt to carte away the damaged fender of my car.In the process we blocked the road and caused a serious traffic-jam on the service lane. When the Police eventually arrived at the scene and stopped the fight, we were ordered to pull our vehicles off the center of the road.
However, I informed the Police that my car had ignition problem and so needed to be pushed. They immediately ordered me to enter the car. “Oya enter the car quick”, echoed one of the Policemen. Having secured my damaged fender at the back seat of my car, I immediately entered my car. As soon as they pushed the car, I pushed the gear lever to number two, released the clutch and zoomed off on the open road and, within some few minutes landed at Century Hotel, just as Mrs. Ololo-Ogwu was leaving the premises.
When I informed Dr. Faseun why the meeting should be temporarily suspended, brandishing the copy of the petition and the court processes before him; he looked at me in anger and said, “So, Tony you stabbed me at the back.” But I said not so Baba. The point was that I could not stop the young man from taking decisions that would help his case and save his life.He retorted, “No! That is your handiwork.”
However, there was nothing he could do beyond that point. That was how the battle for the property was transferred to the High Court, thereby saving Mr. Michael Ololo-Ogwu from being ejected from his property and further harassment by the OPC.
The foregoing instances of my selfless defense of collective Igbo cause clearly underscore my roles as a patriotic Igbo son beyond debate. And the point here is did anybody demand my Igbo identity before I engaged in such trying responsibilities in support of collective Igbo cause? Why the current insanity over Igbo identity?
I need not go further on my onerous pro-Igbo activities but only to restrict myself to the cases of habitual acts of cowardice and sabotage I suffered at the hands of my Southeast Igbo kinsmen. We should not forget that it was the same mentality of cowardice and saboteur syndrome that caused the downfall of their ill-fated Biafra Republic.
We expect those who champion the so-called Igbo unity project to first see my personal experience in the hands of their kinsmen as a bad example of ethnic brotherhood not worthy of emulation and, which invalidates whatever love they profess for Anioma people. It is easy to brush away the foregoing experiences as inconsequential, but it is not easy to erase them from the pages of history for future references.
The foregoing encounters further underscore the fact that when people talk of those Anioma people who wear their Igbo identity and sacrifice their time, energy and intellect to commonality of Igbo interests, Senator Ned Nwoko and all the addle-brained noisemakers around him do not have the least space. It is therefore an act of political pettiness woven in rancorous desperation for somebody like Ned Nwoko who is ashamed of his Benin ancestry to lecture Anioma people on their identity. The question is when did Senator Ned Nwoko become a pro-Igbo activist or campaigner?
I have been in that business of Igbo emancipation with indisputable revolutionary pedigree for over three decades right from my undergraduate days at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; yet without losing sight of the fact that I am from a multiethnic background with much of our cultural features tilting towards the West. If the foregoing encounters do not act as a mirror for the Southeast Igbo in their relationship with Anioma people, it is a mirror on the part of Anioma people for the reassessment of their relationship with their Southeast Igbo kinsmen.
I therefore consider it uncultured insult for intellectual nonentities to educate me on the question of my ethnic identity. We hope that this insane ethnic identity profiling will not lead to Anioma people formally denouncing any association with Ohaneze Ndigbo as Ikwerre people of Rivers State did not long ago. This is because same constitutional right that governs freedom of association also provides for freedom of disassociation.
Regrettably, of the elderly Igbo progressives, only Professor T. U. Nwala from the Southeast and, Professor Pat Utomi from Anioma are still standing effectively active; with the revered radical historian and scholar Chinweizu quietly convalescing in retirement at one corner of the Republic of Ghana.
Dr. Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe is the Odogwu (Traditional Generalissimo) of Ibusa, Delta Sate & President, International Coalition against Christian Genocide in Nigeria (ICAC-GEN). He was formerly Director, Centre for Igbo Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He lives in exile in Manila, Republic of the Philippines.
Email: Nwaezeigwe.Genocideafrica@gmail.com
Visit our: https://icac-gen.org to understand the core reason of my struggles and exile in Republic of the Philippines.