They once served their fatherland meritoriously. Owing to their records in office, ELEOJO IDACHABA asks in this piece where they could be now.
Ike Nwachukwu
Ike Nwachukwu is a retired army General as well as a former senator. Prior to his retirement and subsequent journey into the world of politics, he had held strategic military postings such as the position of military governor of Imo state between January 1984 and August 1985 in the regime of Gen Muhammadu Buhari. That was when he moved Imo State University (now Abia State University) in Uturu to its permanent site. Thereafter, from 1986 to 1987, he served as minister of employment, labour and productivity during which he founded the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) to alleviate the problems of unemployment, especially among graduates. Till date, NDE has surprisingly survived for 34 years in a country where the unwritten code is that institutions and their activities must be axed whenever the government that brought them into being is displaced. He was later appointed by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida as minister of foreign affairs from December 1987 to December 1989. Although replaced with Rilwanu Lukman for a brief moment, he later returned to the ministry as minister in September 1990 till 1993 before his retirement from the military a year after. Principally, as foreign affairs minister, Nwachukwu’s style was active and effective in what analysts describe as mercantilist approach to foreign diplomacy.
As a senator, Nwachukwu served in two influential committees as chairman. These were the Committee on Power and Steel and the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. He is no doubt a military strategist having also commanded the influential 1 Division of Nigeria Army as GOC before he retired from service. According to an opinion in a major newspaper about Nwachukwu who clocked 80 not too long ago, it said, “At 80, retired Maj.-Gen. Ike Omar Sanda Nwachukwu is delivering precisely such a refuge. It is an enclave he has constructed through a lifetime of momentous accomplishments, defeats, failures and successes. Every year when this old soldier marks his natal anniversary, he urges his countrymen and women to examine his past and that of other helmsmen so we all can be guided in our mortal struggle to attempt to rescue the land and build the beneficial society repeatedly denied Nigerians by their leaders. In retirement now, Nwachukwu isn’t superannuated. Instead, he has joined the distinguished club of Nigerians actively pondering over the fate of their nation as it lumbers by in circles, hopping from one faltering administration to another looking for what would lead her to the Promised Land. He has arrived where a great number of Nigerians have got to in the search for the panacea for ailments of their fatherland.”
John Azuta-Mbata
Former lawmaker Senator John Mbata was elected to represent Rivers-east Senatorial District at the start of the Fourth Republic on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 1999 and got re-elected in 2003, but after then, this heavily-built lawmaker appears to have bided farewell to politics as there is no report of attempt to return to the vocation that brought him to limelight since 1999.
In April 2005, while serving in the Senate as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation and Finance, although he had running battle with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) over allegations of bribery; however, after extended legal battles, on June 1, 2010, a full panel of the Court of Appeal in Abuja quashed all the charges against him and discharged him along others. In the Senate, apart from the Committee on Appropriation and Finance, he was also a member of the Committees on Defence, Works & Housing, Women Affairs, Information, Special Projects, Local & Foreign Debts.
On August 8 2000, he temporarily presided over the Senate session that removed Senator Chuba Okadigbo as Senate president following the deliberation of Senator Ibrahim Kuta’s report that implicated Okadigbo and his deputy of complicity. Azuta-Mbata was born in January 1960. He has a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Ibadan and was a member of the governing council of Rivers State University of Science & Technology, Port Harcourt. Recently, he was quoted as saying that the only thing that gives him fulfilment now is family life. He is, however, said to be involved in the running of his family’s construction company business in Port Harcourt where he currently resides.
Usman Bayero Nafada
Usman Bayero Nafada was the deputy speaker in the House of Representatives. Before then, he was a member of Gombe state House of Assembly where he held the position of majority leader and later as speaker on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) from 1999 until 2003. Following the general elections of 2003, he was elected into the House of Representatives in that election also on the same party platform to represent Dukku/Nafada Federal Constituency of the state; however, owing to political development in his state of Gombe, he switched over to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). His ascension to the exalted position of deputy speaker actually started after the resignation of Babangida Nguroje amidst the famous Patricia Etteh corruption saga in which a fellow lawmaker, Friday Itulah from Edo state, nominated him to succeed Nguroje as deputy speaker. He was, therefore, unanimously elected unopposed on November 2, 2007. Nafada was a dependable ally to former speaker, Dimeji Bankole, as both of them joined hands to pilot the affairs of the lower House through the rough roads in the midst of the hiccups from fellow lawmakers. He is said to have shunned partisan politics and shuttles between Gombe and Abuja.
