Enugu in early August already carried the particular tension of a capital at war—checkpoints going up overnight, radios crackling with half-confirmed rumours, the air thick with the smell of diesel and impending consequence. Reports of the capture of Bonny and its oil terminals weren’t shared with the citizens, but there was an edginess in the air, mingling with songs of optimistic patriotism. It was into this city, on the 6th, that Wole Soyinka came, having slipped out of the West with no story that would survive scrutiny. He was not there to admire the capital’s nerve. He didn’t come to persuade Ojukwu not to secede, though he would prefer the referendum route. He made a point to see his friend, Christopher Okigbo, unknown to both of them, for the last time. Perhaps, he shared a cigar, tea, or coffee with Ojukwu over whatever chat masked his true mission to Enugu. There was one consequential conversation to have, and the man waiting for him was Victor Banjo.

They were both patriotic intellectual vanguardist of University College Ibadan circuit, shaped by the same lofty, fervent desire for liberty. And here they were, on the eve of an invasion the world did not yet know was coming, quietly deciding to turn that invasion into something else entirely.

Banjo would have laid it out with a soldier’s economy. In three days he would move into the Midwest—that much was already fixed, already loaded into the machinery of the war. But the Midwest was never the point. It was merely a leverage. His course mate, David Ejoor was the governor of the youngest and least armed region. Beyond it lay the West, Awolowo’s uneasy territory, full of men who despised Gowon’s Northern-dominated federal government but recoiled just as violently from Biafran tanks in their streets. It was in that narrow crack between two fears that Banjo meant to work—and Soyinka’s task was to go back and prise open a corridor through the Garrison Commander, Olusegun Obasanjo. When the moment came, this assembled weight would move on Lagos and Enugu together, and Gowon and Ojukwu would both be swept from the board, replaced by something Soyinka and his fellow travellers had been imagining, in one form or another, for years.

Soyinka left Enugu on the 7th carrying that plan inside him like something ready to detonate, and by the 8th he was back in Ibadan, moving through his old college city with the strange, hunted alertness of a man who has just agreed to become a traitor to at least one side. On the 9th, exactly as promised, Banjo’s forces took the Midwest, and the whole conspiracy stopped being a conversation and became a living thing, with a few surprises. He had no idea, Ojukwu had asked people under his command to unalive David Ejoor behind his back. He went on the radio to preach liberation, but Ojukwu imposed Okokwo on the citizens. His sermon on radio wasn’t adding up. Time was ticking. Soyinka kept pace with it. On the 11th he met Olusegun Obasanjo in Ibadan, passing along Banjo’s message—the shape of the rendezvous, the terms of the mutiny, whatever precise coordinates a plot like this needs to survive its own infancy.

It survived two more days. On the 13th of August, Soyinka was arrested, and the solitary confinement that followed would hold him for the rest of the war—the one man capable of animating the Western half of the plan, taken off the board just as it needed him most. From his own point of view, Obasanjo was a calculating man.

What was left, after that, was Banjo sitting at Ore with an invasion that had lost its luckier half. The weeks that followed have gone down in the history as hesitation, as a commander’s failure of nerve at the one moment nerve mattered most. But it was not hesitation. It was a man listening for a signal that was never going to come, because the messenger was already in a federal cell, and the West was happy to have Awolowo managing the purse of the war.

Meanwhile in Enugu, Ojukwu’s own intelligence was bringing him a colder story—that his commander had been meeting those dreaded intellectuals, courting Third Force sympathisers, perhaps building something with Biafran soldiers that had nothing to do with Biafra’s military objectives at all. Suspicion, once planted, does not need much silence to grow into certainty.

On the 20th of September, federal troops behind the most reckless commander finally broke the line at Ore, and Banjo was recalled to Enugu that same day and arrested. Two days later, on the 22nd, he was executed. What had begun as a few men whispering in a safe space in Enugu in early August ended, in that same city—on a stake at an execution ground.

With Soyinka writing his exculpatory memoir in Kaduna, and his like minds lying in unmarked graves, the radical network of brilliant minds had run out of time. What broke the hearts of the Survivors the most was the death in battle of their finest poet—Christopher Okigbo.

Whoever is romancing the notion that the third force had a chance in hell of achieving peace probably thinks the Mid-West invasion was the beginning of the civil war.

But it was actually a desperate response to a landmark federal military success on July 25, 1967. The Bonny Landing is the most significant turning point of the avoidable war. Nine war ships were deployed in the first fully orchestrated amphibious assault ever undertaken by an independent African nation, which set the stage for the naval and economic encirclement of Biafra. It put an stop to Shell BP’s temptation to pay royalty to Enugu.

When Captain Soroh, assisted by James Rowe, helped Benjamin Adekunle to put the boots of his marine force on the beach of Bonny, the action transferred £150 million assets under the control of Gowon, and convinced Britain that they could bank on the federal government of Nigeria. It also sealed the can on Biafra.

This is why the troops under Banjo’s command formed three prongs—one heading to Agenebode with access to a strategic part of the seaward River Niger; one heading to Warri and Escravos, grabbing Ughelli; and the arrow head surging towards Lagos, with Benin as its centre of gravity.

At this point, Biafra had a clear advantage in the air and was terrifying targets in Kaduna and Apapa. Frustrated by the British, stalling, waiting to be sure on which horse to place their bet, Gowon had turned to Russia for fighter jets.

In effect, the war these militant intellectuals were trying to wrest from the furnace was a war in full swing.

The reality on the ground is why I make bold to say that Obasanjo saved the West from becoming the main theatre of war. And, the third force was an exercise in recklessly dangerous naivety.

“In a race – which life is – everyone has his lane. Once you have chosen a lane, stay in it. If you cross lanes in a relay, you get disqualified. If you are not focused and drop the baton, you also get disqualified. Fast and steady, not slow and steady, wins the race of life”

Last Thursday, July 9, 2026 was another day of nostalgic feelings for me as I returned to my alma mater, Owo High School (OHS), Owo. The occasion was the second graduation ceremony for the graduating Class of 2026 organized by the national body of the Old Students’ Association ably led by its president, Dr. Foluso Falaye. I graduated from Owo High School in 1974, which is 52 years ago. None of the Class of 2026 was born then! Many in the audience also giggled when I mentioned that fact because they, too, had not yet come to this world at the time ! Yet, it looked like yesterday!

The event took place within the expansive hall of the sprawling Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Owo, directly opposite my old school. Readers of my columns must have read my recent intervention on FMC Owo and the nexus between it and OHS, as we fondly call our school. That was my first time within the FMC facility; so I never knew it was such a big place.

What I left out of my story on the FMC was the important role of a pressure group played by my social club, The Krown Klub (TKK), Owo, in launching an appeal fund and sensitization program for the take-off of the hospital in 1986. The highly impactful programme drew attention to the need for government action at the time, which we felt was being delayed. Virtually all of us members of TKK at the time were young, impressionistic university graduates. I was the Public Relations Officer and Master of Ceremony (MC) at the event which took place at the then empty grounds of the FMC, drawing the creme-de-la-creme of Owo elites from all walks of life, including traditional rulers, academia and business world. Thank you, Krownite Owolabi Daramola, for prodding my memory concerning this – but how could I have forgotten that!

One hundred and eighty-six students students graduated in 2026 from OHS, the vast majority of whom were Science students (120) while 55 and 11 were Arts/Humanities and Commercial students respectively. This is a significant departure from what used to be, in my own days when Arts students were usually in the majority. In those days, the demarcation was plainly between Science and Arts and there was nothing called “Commercial”, even though a few of today’s Commercial subjects were also offered then. However, new subjects, mostly Commercial, that were unknown to my own class are now in the curriculum.

As the chairman of the occasion, I had the honour and privilege to conduct the opening and closing ceremonies as well as give a speech. The most emotive aspect of the entire ceremony for me was when the sight-impaired students, two of whom were among the graduates, performed in songs and dance, especially the “ Ewi” rendition by the two male sight-impaired graduates. I understand that OHS has been designated by the government as a special school for the sight-impaired. My wife, herself an educationist, whispered in my ears that teachers of such special students must possess great endurance, patience, and understanding – and I wondered whether those teachers also receive special remuneration for their efforts!

Why Owo High School?

My speech at the event goes thus: “An occasion such as this brings memories flooding back into my mind. For reasons which I cannot now recall, I preferred Methodist High School, Owo to Owo High School, Owo. Maybe because of their bright uniforms – Yellow shirts over blue shorts. Twice I tried to force my choice on my father. Twice he stood his ground that it was Owo High School or nothing! I think it must have been because the founder of Owo High School, Pa Michael Adekunle Ajasin, was the political leader of my father and the entirety of Owo in those days. So I ended up marking time at All Saints Modern School, Owo for two years. The third year, I wrote the entrance examination to Owo High School and got admitted in January 1970,, graduating in July 1974, with one of the four best results in my Set.

“I was a Day Student in Forms 1-3 and Boarding House Student in the last two years. The boarding house experience was another education on its own. It allowed students from far and near to come together. Some parents even sent their children from abroad.

“Whatever you do in school as a student, it is important you do not allow your studies to suffer. That is your main reason for being in school. You should have an idea of what you want to become in life while still in secondary school, not after graduating. Your skills and talents ought to have started showing and flowering at this stage.

Mentorship is invaluable

“In those days, we had a Library that was stocked with newspapers. It was here that I first read in HEADLINES, a publication of the DAILY TIMES group, the story of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s treasonable felony trial and imprisonment; the Wild, Wild West’s “Operation Wetie” and the Western Region crisis of the 1960s, among others. They whetted my appetite and, possibly, shaped my vision of what I later became in life.

“Our principal, Pa Ajasin, asked me if I would like to study in the Soviet Union when I came to collect my result but I said I preferred the United States. My interest was Howard University, established and made popular by Black American liberationists and Civil rights activists. It was a missed opportunity for lack of mentorship. Whatever you will become in life, mentorship is very important. So also those we consider as role models and heroes. My eventual course of study in the university took after my heroes. Indeed, at the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile-Ife, I had the opportunity of studying at the feet of one of them, Dr. Segun Osoba, Marxist scholar and historian, who passed on recently.

“The ideas that I formed early in life shaped my vision and determined my choice of career. Destinies are shaped very early in life. So, don’t waste or trifle with your early life. We make choices in life. In doing so, we make mistakes. I had wanted to be an academician, just like my mentors, but I ended up being an accidental journalist. Maybe that is God’s plan for me!

“Be that as it may, I excelled and got to the pinnacle of the journalism profession and have won laurels and made waves there. It is debatable whether I could have achieved more as a university teacher. However, my passion for academics has not waned and I have found my way into the academic environment in some other ways while still practicing my journalism profession. What this tells us is that there are more options than one where anyone can excel.

Winning the race of life

“The gifts and talents of God in one’s life are the foundation of success. Discover them early and operate on them. Don’t imitate others. Don’t go to where you will struggle. Discover your flair and passion early and stick there. Then, work hard. Master whatever you do. Be focused. Decide very early what you want and let it be what will give you joy, happiness, and satisfaction. If it is wealth, you may not need to be like someone who wants to be a professor. And if academics, you need not run after unbridled wealth.

“In a race – which life is – everyone has his lane. Once you have chosen a lane, stay in it. If you cross lanes in a relay, you get disqualified. If you are not focused and drop the baton, you also get disqualified. Fast and steady, not slow and steady, wins the race of life.

“Life is give and take. Win some, lose some. Let challenges toughen you. Don’t run away from responsibilities. I made a name in my profession because I maintained my lane. I did four jobs but got paid for only one and many of my colleagues at the time thought I was foolish – but I was only training myself to be jack of all trades and master of all. Today, it has paid off!

“You must have heard it said that ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ Where there are privileges, there are also responsibilities and sacrifices to be made. Don’t take one and run away from the other. Because I waited to assume responsibility and take up the challenges of my office was how I etched my name in gold in my profession.

“You also might have heard them say that one road does not lead to the market. Yes, there are multiple roads that lead to success. But the principles are the same. Talents and gifts from God. Skills that we develop through education, hard work, and perseverance. Focus, patience and dedication oil the wheel of progress. Proverbs 22:29 says: “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.”

Nothing like contentment!

“Finally, whatever we achieve in life, if we don’t have contentment, it will always appear as if we have achieved nothing! Know that we are taking nothing out of this world. And when a person dies, what is usually known or remembered is not his or her bank account balance but the good or bad deeds ascribed to such a fellow.

Orlando Owoh, the juju musician, crooned that it is because of the poor that we were made rich. So be charitable.

“Etienne de Grellet said: ‘I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again’.”

“Looking back as you, too, pass the Owo High School way, are you satisfied you did your best? When I passed through it in 1974 and looked back, I wasn’t satisfied I did my best. I looked back and told myself I should have studied harder. My WASC result would have been far better than what it was, even though it was still good. In other words, I could have made my best better if I were more focused. But I have never had the opportunity of passing through Owo High School again to make amends!

“This, perhaps, is what is meant by ‘Opportunity once lost can never be regained!’ You, too, are passing through the OHS way today. Have you made the best of the opportunity? Be assured, however, that there are more ways ahead that you will still pass through. Will you learn from your mistakes here and make a better use of those opportunities?

“You have no excuse because now you have what someone like me never had: Mentoring. If only I had the opportunity you are having now to listen to a speech like this! Now, you have the opportunity! Don’t waste it! Make the best use of it!

I must end by thanking the organizers of this impactful event. God bless you and your efforts!”

I have started looking forward to the 2027 edition, God willing!

turnpot@gmail.com 0705 263 1058

Bola Bolawole Is A Former Editor Of Punch Newspapers And Chairman Of Its Editorial Board

Three score and three years ago, a defining dispute erupted in the old Western Region of Nigeria over the scope and reach of constitutional conventions in determining or terminating the tenure of high-level political leadership. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which ultimately had to pronounce on the matter, described conventions in that case as “a body of understandings which no writer can formulate.” The aftermath of that decision took the country to the brink of ruin.

This year, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) confronts its own moment of truth concerning how far conventions initially designed to accommodate national diversity in its leadership processes can be converted into ethno-tribal vetoes by entities that, in fact, are not part of its institutional or constitutional organs. The consequences for the association could be far-reaching.

For context, the NBA elects a new set of leaders every even-numbered year. It has long been the assumption that “the NBA is too important to be left alone.” Elections into its leadership organs unfold as a political marketplace for a complex competition of interests, many of them external to the legal profession. This year, the biggest issue is arguably the role of ethno-tribal caucuses at the Nigerian Bar.

The road to this point was paved by a combination of ordinarily unrelated events. On 14 August 1991, Taslim Elias died. He was Nigeria’s Attorney-General at independence at a time when the position was deservedly prefixed with the honorific “Honourable” (hence HAGF) and later became Chief Justice of Nigeria. At his death, he was a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). To replace Elias for the remainder of his ICJ tenure, Nigeria nominated Bola Ajibola, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), who was then himself serving as HAGF.

That step opened up a vacancy for the designation of the new HAGF. To fill that vacancy, military ruler Ibrahim Babangida nominated Clement Akpamgbo SAN. At the time, Akpamgbo was in the middle of his tenure as the 15th president of the NBA. In keeping with its constitution, the NBA’s first Vice-President, Priscilla Kuye, succeeded Akpamgbo as president. She was the first woman in that position.

The next cycle of elections into the leadership of the association was scheduled to occur the following year in 1992. In August 1992, members duly convened in Port Harcourt, capital of Rivers State, for the elections, but the conference broke up in extraordinary fracas. Five years later, as the embers of military rule began to fade, the NBA was resuscitated.

In the aftermath of that crisis and at the turn of the Millennium, the NBA introduced two reforms into its leadership process, one explicit and the other initially by convention. First, it abolished universal suffrage among its members, replacing it with a delegate-based system for selecting leaders. In 2015, however, universal suffrage returned. Second, it introduced a convention of rotating the most important leadership positions in the association among the founding three regions of the country – the Eastern, Northern, and Western regions.

Fifteen years later, the NBA wrote this convention into its constitution by way of an amendment, which mandated that “the Association shall, for the purpose of elections of National Officers be divided into three geographical zones namely – Northern zone, Eastern zone and Western zone.” The positions of President, three Vice-Presidents, and General-Secretary rotate among the three zones. In particular, the NBA constitution prescribes that eligibility to run for any of the rotated offices shall be determined with reference to natal origins, not establishment.

The NBA constitution goes further to prescribe that “where a position is zoned to any particular geographical zone, the position shall be rotated and held in turn by the different groups and/or sections in the geographical zone.” Remarkably, it does not say who can have a say in deploying these arrangements concerning zoning and micro-zoning.

The result has been a bazaar in nativist interest groups of lawyers in Nigeria, such as the Arewa Lawyers Forum (ALF); Eastern Bar Forum (EBF); Egbe Amofin Oodua (Egbe); Middle-Belt Lawyers Forum (MBLF); and Mid-West Bar Forum MWLF). They are not organs of the NBA in any form. Operating as ethno-tribal caucuses, these interest groups have sought to mediate the jostling for positions in the NBA. Until now, their roles had been informal, operating at best at the level of unwritten conventions.

In 2018, when the presidency of the NBA rotated to the East, the EBF endorsed Arthur Obi-Okafor, SAN, as their preferred candidate. In the election, however, Paul Usoro, who is also from the same region, was declared winner.

In 2026, the presidency of the NBA rotates to the West. The Egbe (an association of lawyers of Yoruba descent) and the MWBF are both active in this region. In the current election cycle, the MWBF decided not to present any candidates for the presidency, ceding it to lawyers native to the six states of south-west Nigeria.

The Egbe asserts primacy in the role of mediating the ambitions of lawyers from that region desiring to run for the NBA presidency. This year, the Egbe put forward Muyiwa Akinboro SAN as its candidate. However, Yemi Akangbe SAN and Oyinkan Badejo-Okusanya, SAN, who are both from the same region, declined to step down their ambitions. Egbe argues that it micro-zoned the position to the part of the South-West from which Mr Akinboro comes and asked the NBA to elbow the other candidates out of the contest so that he can emerge effectively unopposed.

In reality, this micro-zoning which the Egbe speaks of had been in existence since 2019. But in the 2020 contest for the NBA president from the western region, both Dele Adesina SAN and Tunde Ajibade SAN, who contested the position, came from outside that micro-zone. In 2008, Rotimi Akeredolu SAN emerged unopposed as the 24th president of the NBA by persuading other aspirants informally to stand down for him. The ethno-tribal trump asserted by the Egbe this year would be unprecedented.

In the face of predictable resistance, the association sued at the High Court in Ibadan seeking to get its way. The court issued rapid-fire interim injunctions against the NBA’s election process. The NBA appealed. On 11 June, the Attorney-General of the Federation, a defendant in the suits in Ibadan, ostensibly claiming permission from the Court of Appeal, called a meeting of the disputing parties with all living former presidents of the NBA.

The meeting constituted a three-person subcommittee headed by Wole Olanipekun SAN, the 20th president of the NBA. It included Lanke Odogiyan and Paul Usoro SAN, respectively the 22nd and 29th presidents of the association, but there is a dispute over the sub-committee’s remit.

An unsigned majority report by Olanipekun and Odogiyan claims the sub-committee was constituted to inquire into “the causes of the present conflicts within the NBA” and to make recommendations on the way forward to the HAGF. A separate report by Paul Usoro disputes this, saying the sub-committee was confined to helping the HAGF to fulfill his commitment to the Court of Appeal, to broker an amicable settlement among the parties.

The Olanipekun-Odogiyan report makes far-reaching recommendations. Among them, it asks for the postponement of the BAR elections (to August) and mandates the incorporation of the National Identification Number (NIN) as a voter identifier, claiming -rather incredulously – that the enrollment number, a unique identifier assigned by the Supreme Court to each lawyer in Nigeria, “is not a security number.” In particular, the report wants an end to universal suffrage in the NBA and insists that “The micro-zoning by the Egbe in line with the NBA Constitution should be allowed to stand.” Paul Usoro largely disagreed.

The main recommendations of the report are mutually irreconcilable.

If the Olanipekun-Odogiyan report had investigated the matter, it would have learnt that the bureaucratic process and data integration that should precede the NIN integration into the unique identification system for all lawyers in Nigeria can only be implemented by the Supreme Court in collaboration with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC). This cannot be accomplished before August 2026 “or soon thereafter.” By prescribing impossible conditions, that report effectively sought to create conditions for the tenure of the current leadership to lapse, which would enable government to end the idea of an independent bar, just as the military regime did in 1992.

Rather than take his proposals to the parties or to the Court of Appeal from which he claimed his mandate, the HAGF mostly amplified the Olanipekun-Odogiyan report, endorsing nearly all of its recommendations in an error-strewn document ostentatiously headed “Directions and Outcomes.” But even he could not bring himself to accept the Egbe’s insistence on imposing its ethno-tribal preference on the NBA in the current cycle.

On 8 July, the Court of Appeal declined his thinly disguised effort to end-run the cases before the court. Judgment by the court is awaited.

Pending that, the NBA’s leadership election is likely to proceed as scheduled on 18 July under court protection. Two offices will be returned unopposed while eight will be contested. When the association last voted in 2024, there were 72,071 eligible voters. On 18 July, there will be 82,213 eligible voters (an increase of 14.07%), the largest in the association’s history.

A lawyer And A Teacher, Odinkalu Can Be Reached At chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu