By Celestine Okafor (Editor-in-Chief ) @CelestineOkaf11
Elderstateman and first republic Minister of Aviation, Chief Mbazulike Iwuchukwu Amaechi, is dead.
Family sources disclosed that he had been suffering from old age related illnesses but passed on this morning, Tuesday, November 1, 2022, in his hometown, Ukpor, Nnewi South Local Government Area of Anambra state, at the age of 93 years, 4 months and 15 days. The revered nationalist was born on June 16, 1929.
Chief Mbazuluike Amaechi who was popularly known as "The Boy Is Good", was among the top political leaders of his first republic era from the old Eastern Region of Nigeria. He was a foremost member of the Zikist Movement who propagated the noble political philosophies of unity and Pan-Africanism, among others, propounded by the great 'Zik of Africa', Owelle Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first indigenous President of Nigeria.
Mbazuluike Amaechi was renown for his outspokeness against injustice, oppression and all forms of ethnic and political domination in Nigeria and elsewhere. He was a strong advocate of restructuring of the federation and electoral reforms. He had also made a vigorous case for a proper integration of the Igbo-speaking people of the South East of Nigeria based on the post-civil war amnesty/integration policy of "reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction" initiated by the then federal military government of retired Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon.
On the strength of this, Chief Amaechi believed that the only way to heal the national wounds of the past and ultimately bury the ghost of Biafra, was to urgently de-marginalize the people and zone of the South East Nigeria in every spheres of Nigerian socio-economic and political activities, undertakings and equity share.
Though, the late elderstateman deplored youth rascality and unprovoked restiveness in all forms, he however had an exception in the case of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a pro-Biafra movement which sprang up in 2015 to allegedly engage the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration to give a better deal to the Igbos of the South East Zone of Nigeria.
In pursuit of this belief, however, Mbazuluike Amaechi, early this year, led a delegation of Igbo leaders and elders to meet with President Muhammadu Buhari to plead with him to consider an unconditional freedom for the detained leader of IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, a plea that the Nigerian government is yet to grant ostensibly as a result of security, legal and other associated considerations.
Pa Mbazuluike Iwuchukwu Amaechi, now of blessed memory, was a notable party man and fiery freedom/rights activist in his hey days in politics and even in retirement. He was the secretary of the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroun (NCNC) Youths, the young people’s wing of Nnamdi Azikiwe’s led political party in the first republic era.
His NCNC youth organization fought the colonial regimes in Nigeria and consequently gave the British imperial government sleepless nights until they granted full Independence to Nigeria on October 1, 1960.
Amaechi was a well educated man in his lifetime. In the 1980s, he also studied political history at the University of Beverly Hills, in the United States of America (USA) and obtained a bachelor’s degree afterwards.
However, as condolences continue to pour in for the deceased elderstateman and frontline nationalist, his family is being expected to make available, details of his funeral rites. NNL.
