OPINION: When A Leader Leads His Subjects To A Collective Suicidal, By Anayo M. Nwosu

An Igbo area which is today known as Abia State has made the Igbo race renowned from time immemorial. It was this area that housed the shrine of the supreme deity of the Igbos.

Arochukwu town in Abia State  was the Mecca for the Igbo. It was a town where Igbo people from far and near went to seek answers to intractable questions of life and existence.

My own grandfather had to travel to Arochukwu in 1884 to divine and ascertain why mysterious termites would always ravage his yam barn. He also got a solution.

In Abia State are Ohafia and Abam towns that produced mercenary soldiers or warriors patronized by many Igbo towns that could pay for their services. Nearby Ozu-item and Bende towns also raised many warriors of note.

All through the Igbo land, Arochukwu and the people of today's Abia State settled in and were controlling the economy of their host communities except in Nnewi.


The man, Nnewi married the first daughter of Arochukwu.

The Arochukwu settlers continued in their dominance of their fellow Igbos due to their high intellectual, spiritual and military ascendancy until the Great Britain decided to annex all the Igbo hinterland into its Colonial Government.

The British expeditionary army overran the entire Abia, sacked their shrines, destroyed their kings and publicly executed or imprisoned their revered warriors.

The remainder of the kings and budding warriors of Abia areas were not happy but had to pipe low upon witnessing or hearing what happened to the great warriors and people of Arochukwu, Ohafia and Abam.

In Umuahia, 100 kilometres from Arochukwu, also lived a particular traditional ruler who could no longer stomach the continued humiliation of his people by the colonial government.

It got to a time when the colonial government decided to construct a rail line that would span from the Northern Nigerian Protectorate, passing through Umuahia his town, to the South terminating in PortHarcout. The tail was primarily to transport agricultural produce from Nigeria hinterland to PortHarcout for export to Europe.

The initial attempts by Chief Nwakpuda to stop the laying of the rail tracks were neutralized by armed soldiers who mounted sentry as workers, who included prisoners, worked day and night until the tracks laying were completed.

Chief Nwakpuda had another plan.

He had sworn that no train would pass through his town even if the colonial masters succeeded in laying the tracks and he meant it.

But the British colonial government didn't consider his musings as a serious threat.

The date for the inaugural train ride was announced.

Unknown to the British security forces, Chief Nwakpuda was planning  to do the unthinkable. He would never allow the train to pass through his home town. That he said would happen over his dead body!

That day, Chief Nwakpuda, together with scores of well built up compatriots stood on the rail way as human wedge or obstacles, stretching their hands towards the oncoming train in a bid to wedge and prevent the train from advancing Enugu and passing through Olokoro-Ibeku and Ibeku in Umuahia towards PortHarcout and back.

That was how Chief Nwakpuda led his able bodied Townsend to a collective suicide.

Till date, trains have been plying through Umuahia enroute Enugu to the North and back even though the dead heroic dead have since been buried.

Macaulay, Azikiwe and other fighters were wiser. They fought the British with their brains and still achieved what Chief Nwakpuda desired.

Many years after, another leader who hails from Afaraukwu, a town which is some few minutes from Umuahia town, is about to outperform Chief Nwakpuda in defence of his people's pride.