Honours, Memory, and Those Yet to Be Honoured

Guest columnist By Osita Chidoka

When President Bola Tinubu announced the Democracy Day honours list in 2025, many Nigerians, myself included, assumed that evident omissions would be addressed in subsequent rounds of national recognition. That expectation now appears difficult to sustain. The recent conferment of the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) on a businessman whose career included close association with the Abacha era – however complex or commercially distinguished his later record – sits uneasily beside the continued silence surrounding many Nigerians who directly confronted military rule, often at the cost of detention, exile, or death.

I raise this issue as an eyewitness to the struggle and a participant in its most perilous years. I served as Coordinator of the Youth Wing of the Eastern Mandate Union (EMU). I was present at EMU’s inaugural meeting at the Enugu residence of Arthur Nwankwo, with Patrick Dele Cole and Chuba Okadigbo as the intellectual arrowheads. It was at that meeting that Nwankwo was proposed and accepted as Chancellor of EMU. Liyel Imoke and Greg Mbadiwe are living witnesses to those early days.

EMU, like NADECO, emerged in early 1994 to demand the de-annulment of June 12 and the restoration of a stolen mandate. Like NADECO, EMU issued an ultimatum to the Abacha regime. Only EMU was met with a 24-hour deadline to recant or face the full weight of the law. We did not. The consequences were swift. EMU leaders, Arthur Nwankwo and Udenta O. Udenta, were arrested and detained for over a week. Others, Chuba Okadigbo, Patrick Dele Cole, Polycarp Nwite, and the late Dubem Onyia, EMU’s tireless Secretary, were hunted for months and forced underground.

Between 1994 and 1998, Nwankwo and Udenta endured more than five arrests and detentions. EMU leaders and younger stalwarts paid in lost livelihoods, truncated careers, interrupted education, physical distress and mental anguish. I nearly missed graduation in 1995 if not for the benevolence of Late Mrs Adichie, then Registrar of University of Nigeria.

EMU’s emergence nationalised the June 12 struggle. It lifted the cause beyond regional or ethnic lines and anchored it as a Nigerian democratic imperative. That transformation culminated in 1997, when the entire AFENIFERE leadership travelled by night bus to the EMU chancery in Enugu.

Led by Abraham Adesanya, the delegation included Bola Ige, Ayo Adebanjo, Solanke Onosanya, Olaniwun Ajayi, Kofo Akerele-Bucknor, Ayoka Lawani, Femi Okorunmu and others. I witnessed their arrival and the deliberations that followed. That Enugu meeting rebirthed NADECO as a truly national front. Leadership was recomposed: Anthony Enahoro as overall leader (including the Diaspora); Abraham Adesanya as Chairman (Nigeria); Arthur Nwankwo as Deputy Chairman (Nigeria); and Dan Suleman as Vice Chairman. EMU leaders – Udenta Udenta, Francis Ellah, Chike Obi and others – formed the backbone of the National Executive.

Prof Udenta, in particular, represented EMU in NADECO’s engagements with the international community and major embassies, holding forth when colleagues were detained and serving as the most visible face of the resistance between 1996 and 1998. He would later emerge as National Secretary of Alliance for Democracy.

It was also through EMU, partnering with NADECO, that the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) submission for the Edinburgh meeting in 1997 was authored, tightening international pressure on the junta. By then, the democratic struggle rested on a triumvirate: AFENIFERE in the South-West, EMU in the East, and NEPU-PRP in the North. The day Balarabe Musa and Prof Bala Usman visited the EMU Chancery in Enugu, I was part of the reception team.

My own engagement was not abstract. In 1993, I placed a newspaper advert—funded by my father—urging Nigerian students to vote for M.K.O. Abiola. That led to my first meeting with Abiola in Lagos, facilitated by Stanley Egbochukwu. He introduced me to Kudirat Abiola and her husband’s aide Fred Eno, and asked me to help align student leadership with the mandate struggle.

I was part of a small team that met regularly at Dr Edwin Madunagu’s office at Rutam House to push for the de-annulment of June 12. My article, Pondering Over These Times, rebutting Peter Enahoro’s famous article A Time to Ponder, appeared in the final edition of The Concord before it was shut down by the junta.

After the Epetedo Declaration, I served as liaison between Kudirat Abiola and Arthur Nwankwo. Shortly after one of my visits, Fred Eno was arrested and disappeared; months later, I traced him to Enugu prison, bringing relief amid fears he had been killed. Those were the stakes.

EMU’s voice also drew attention at the highest levels. In 1995, Olusegun Obasanjo led his National Unity Organisation to parley with EMU; he was soon arrested and detained. EMU was among the most vocal platforms demanding the release of Obasanjo and Shehu Musa Yar’Adua—records attest to this.

In 1998, as Abacha’s grip weakened, Arthur Nwankwo and Udenta Udenta were detained again; plans were underway to move them to Abuja when Abacha died, abruptly ending that chapter.

These are not claims; they are facts – documented, witnessed, and verifiable. This is why the silence on EMU, and the continued absence of names like Arthur Nwankwo, Udenta Udenta, Chike Obi, and others, from Nigeria’s highest honours matters.

It is time to complete the record. Nigeria should recognise Arthur Nwankwo and Udenta O. Udenta; Patrick Dele Cole and Chuba Okadigbo; and posthumously Dubem Onyia, Polycarp Nwite, and Balarabe Musa and Prof Bala Usman and others who gave NADECO a national character and paid dearly for it.

Democracies endure by memory. Selective remembrance weakens the republic; full recognition strengthens it.

Osita Chidoka

21 January 2026