DECONSTRUCTING UDENTA UDENTA
Paul Obi pays tribute to Udenta, an intellectual and a politician
“By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, they do not cheat, they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice nor to authority… These are the general virtues of scholarship… “
– Jacob Bronowski
Polish-British Mathematician Cum Politician
As Nigeria throttles along its shaky democratic experience inflamed by a rapacious political culture, it is not only critical to reflect on the history of the origins of Nigeria’s democratic transition starting from 1998 and 1999 when it finally took off, but also the key player(s). The essentials of that task could or would dwell on how Nigeria has evolved from the dark days of military junta and autocracy to a wobbling democracy. For a start, many of the key players contributed their quotas; some served Nigeria; others served their purses and pockets; a tokenistic number and their lives left lessons. Today, those lessons provide us with a guide and an ideation of such transition to the present, and in a troubling manner too. How then do we grasp the knock-on effect of that transition on both sides – the enablers and disablers of electoral autocracy or our sanctimonious pseudo-democracy? The answer to that puzzle can only be unearthed by key player(s) who saw, witnessed and fizzled not. Here cometh Prof Udenta Udenta.
First, during the regime of late Gen. Sani Abacha junta, Prof Udenta was at the forefront of the pro-democracy struggle – pitching his tent with NADECO and Eastern Mandate Union (EMU) rather than cozying up with the lucre of the junta. His persistent confrontation with dictatorship – fighting for democracy and setting the democratic narratives for a return to civil rule landed him in the Abacha dungeon. It was not until the demise of Abacha in June 1998 that the then Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar transitional regime released Udenta. At the dawn of the democratic transition, Udenta became the ideological torchbearer of partisan politics of that time. In him, with his intellectual muscle, he became the political powerhouse of the Nigerian progressives at the inception of partisan politics in 1998/1999. Buttressed by his combination of social criticism, humanism, cultural aesthetics, critical theory, democratic disposition, Marxist materialism and fearless rigour, Udenta was a force and an armour uncontainable. With this burdensome commitment, Udenta set out not only to make history but rewrite the pages – in view of the transitional moments.
Thus, the pages of those historical moments between 1998 and 1999 tell of a democratic journey that never took off. It was a moment that Nigeria missed the golden opportunity of de-militarizing its politics, de-risking its political terrain and decoupling its electoral democracy from the vagaries of grab it, snatch it and run with it mentality. The nitty-gritty of that gist is that that transitional foundation ruined Nigeria democratically, rendering that era as wasteful years of the locust. It’s an era where the mighty democrats and pathfinders took the back seat for fear of the re-enactment of Abacha-like junta. In their stead, those with tainted democratic credentials from the backwaters took the front row – a catastrophic venture that now defines our sordid trajectory today. So, in 1999, left at the Nigerian Agora to stir the ship of leadership were pseudo-Khaki boys with kleptomaniac hands and manufactured certifications.
Yet, there were few actors of that era just like the Hebrew and Jewish boys of Babylon – Shadrack, Meshach and Abednego who refused to bow to the political Nebuchadnezzars of this world. A key player of that era that saw it firsthand remains Prof Udenta. At the cradle, and as the founding national scribe of the then defunct Alliance for Democracy (AD), Udenta was already a behemoth at the inception of Nigeria’s second phase of democratization after independence. Alongside other giants like Chief Ayo Adebanjo, Chief Bola Ige, Chief Arthur Nwankwo, Ekpo Bassey Ekpo, Mahmud Waziri, Chief Funso Williams, Udenta then in his 30s won himself to exalted seat of party politics, shaping most of the democratic re-engineering and opposition politics of a country on the verge of untying its autocratic regalia.
At this critical juncture, Udenta was not only instrumental to the merger of the All People’s Party (APP) and AD, but also the National Secretary when the current President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu rode to the gubernatorial throne. He was more of an epicenter of that party in many shades and light, and did tower above many of his coevals. It can therefore be said that, in Udenta, AD’s history is subsumed. He had a proclivity of wanting to recentre and repurpose Nigerian politics away from primitive accumulation to an arena of ideation and citizen-centric intellection. In the transitional politics of that period, he came to understand that the existential gap between ideas and governance was the greatest amnesia, and derailment that Nigeria suffers from, and continues to do so till date.
Before all these exploits and feats, Udenta’s intellectual and academic prowess had already mapped out a niche for him. Even before the age of 40, Udenta had recorded great success in the literary field, resetting the dynamism of critical theory. With his books such as Revolutionary Aesthetics and the African Literary Process; Crisis of Theory in Contemporary Nigerian Literature and Possibilities of New Materialistic Direction; Art, Ideology and Social Commitment in African Poetry; 37 Seasons Before the Tornado; Heroism and Critical Consciousness in African Literature; Autonomy of Values: Determinations, Affirmations, Mediations; Illumination: Essays on Democracy, Peace, Culture and Social Development in Nigeria; and Democratic Transformation and Social Change in Nigeria (a personal journey from intellectual conscience to praxis) among others, Udenta remapped critical theory in African literature, recalibrating new thought and charting a novel course in literary circles. With his production of 21 books billed for launch and public presentation today on his birthday, we can deduce that Udenta reached his magnum opus in literary studies, and too early also. On that note, Nigerians and this writer too should send SOS to return back to the classroom and impact that knowledge on the young generations.
Again, with the 2023 presidential election, Udenta’s oratory elucidation of the divergent political issues and dynamism was a centre of attraction across the political spectrum. And when some democratic turncoats wanted to shutdown dissenting voices in the civic space and the media space and those who had risen up to speak up against the undemocratic and autocratic tenets of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and election riggers and snatchers, Udenta again rose to the occasion on Arise TV to give them a phenomenal perspective describing the presidential election as “a vibrant decay of democracy.” In that encounter and interview with the ace broadcaster, Charles Aniagolu, Udenta spat fire on the faces of INEC, Nigerian autocrats and the country’s electoral system which it so glaringly and ironically professes. Hence, Udenta remains the nation’s compass of conscience and unperturbed pathfinder in the struggle for truth and democratization.
But then, Udenta’s tutelage during his teens at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) set him apart and the signposts were already afoot that he will do great wonders. Graduating at the age of 20 in UNN and proceeding to University of Benin for his MA and PhD., he was later Senior Research Fellow in African Studies and Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities at Abia State University, Uturu, Abia State in 1996. Udenta has also had a stint in several institutions, where he also attended capacity building/peace practice induction courses at the University of Bradford, UK; University of Melbourne, Australia; Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand; Singapore Mediation Centre; United States Institute for Peace (USIP), Washington, DC; Inter-Governmental Agency on Development (IGAD), Addis Ababa Ethiopia; and the Institute of Security Studies, South Africa, between 2001 and 2008. Those foundational years became the definitional signpost and compass of what Udenta is to become. He was born in Awka, Anambra State. A native of Mgbowo, Awgu LGA of Enugu State, he was born in Awka, Anambra State on 5th September, 1963. Happy Birthday, Prof.
Obi, is a media scholar and journalist, and Co-Author of Media and Nigeria’s Constitutional Democracy: Civic Space, Free Speech, and the Battle for Freedom of the Press
