Akwa Ibom @ 39
Prof. Eyo Ita: Unforgettable, yet forgotten?
By Sunday Antai
Not many people in today’s Cross River and Akwa Ibom states, which once constituted one state, know that Prof. Eyo Ita was actually an Akwa Ibom son, going by the present geo-location of the hamlet where he was born. This was true even during his lifetime.
Most people regarded him as an Efik man — not merely in a generic sense, but in a specific one. Yes, he was born in Calabar, named after his father’s business partner, a Calabar man from Creek Town; he was raised in Calabar and lived there for most of his life. Yet, he also had a house on the Oron Marina overlooking AME Zion Primary School in OronTown, which still stands today. Who, then, was this man?
As Akwa Ibom State marks its 39th anniversary, your soaraway medium brings you a brief account of one of the state’s — and Nigeria’s — largely forgotten political and intellectual giants.
Prof. Eyo Ita (1903–1972) was one of the foremost nationalists who fought for Nigeria’s political independence and can deservedly be regarded as one of the country’s founding fathers. He was in the struggle alongside such nationalists as Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (Zik), whom he deputised as the first National Deputy of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC); Chief Obafemi Awolowo (Awo); Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto; and Sir Udo Udoma. Today, these contemporaries of his are far more celebrated than Ita.
A man whose record of achievement is replete with several firsts, Ita is recognised as a founder of the Nigerian Youth Movement, founded in 1934, and later founded the Nigerian Independence Party (NIP). He was also a co-founder of the NCNC. He stood shoulder to shoulder with nationalists such as Ernest Ikoli, whom Awo reportedly respected greatly as a nationalist. These were no mean feats for a man from a so-called minority ethnic group.
Ita became the first Leader of Government Business — effectively the Premier — in the Eastern House of Assembly in 1951. He was also Vice-President of the NCNC following the death of Herbert Macaulay, the party’s leader, while Zik served as its secretary.
Ita’s mistreatment by Zik in 1952, which the former’s minority supporters regarded as driven by ethnic considerations, resulted in his ouster as Premier. That year, following a mass cross carpeting by Yoruba legislators protesting a claim that Zik had uttered supremacist rhetoric favouriing his Igbo ethnicity, Zik had failed to become the Premier of the Western Region even though his party, the NCNC, had the majority in that regional legislature. He then returned to the East and plotted the removal of Ita for him to take over as premier. He succeeded leveraging the support of his majority Igbo kinsmen. The development provided impetus for the formation of the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers State Creation Movement, as minority members of the Eastern Regional House of Assembly withdrew from the NCNC.
That struggle would later contribute to the broader agitation for the creation of states in Nigeria. In that sense, although Akwa Ibom State has many fathers, Eyo Ita, Udoma Udoma, Oyokunyi Ita and a few others belong in the category of its political grandfathers.
Ita attended Presbyterian Hope Waddell Training School in Calabar, one of the earliest educational institutions in Nigeria. He would later come under the influence of the philosophy of African-American James Aggrey, who strongly advocated education for Africans in the US. This influenced his decision to travel to the United States to study at Columbia University in New York, at a time when Britain was the preferred destination for Nigerians seeking overseas education. He spent eight years in the United States and also studied at the University of London.
Ita’s parents, the Nwaenangs, came from Ibeno in present-day Akwa Ibom State. This is a piece of information that would surprise many people today.
Living well ahead of his time, the United States- and United Kingdom-trained educationist and politician founded the West African People’s Institute (WAPI), located barely a kilometre from the historic Hope Waddell in Calabar. The school remains in existence today.
An accomplished educationist, Ita also founded the Ogbomosho People’s Institute during his sojourn in Ogbomosho after returning from the United States. He was also regarded as Nigeria’s first indigenous professor.
At the 1953 Nigerian Constitutional Conference in London, Ita was among those who presented a minority report advocating a united Nigeria, at a time when delegates were sharply divided over the country’s constitutional future.
At the resumed conference in Lagos, he was among the early speakers, alongside Sir Ahmadu Bello, Dr. Azikiwe, Malam Aminu Kano and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. Ita advocated that Nigeria “should be divided into a larger number of ethnic states.”
Unfortunately, Ita has been largely forgotten by the country and, perhaps more painfully, by many of his own people in Akwa Ibom State, some of whom know him mainly as a Calabar man.
This is what I mean: while many of the leading nationalists of his generation have universities, roads, airports, streets and other public monuments named after them, comparatively little of such recognition has been extended to Prof. Ita.
Long dual carriageways, streets and airports bear the names of his contemporaries in Abuja, Lagos and elsewhere. Outside Calabar, however, it is difficult to point to comparable public recognition of Ita’s contribution to Nigeria’s political and intellectual development.
Naming an obscure street after such a colossus is hardly enough. Indeed, it risks diminishing rather than celebrating the scale of his political and intellectual accomplishments.
A people who forget their heroes may eventually find themselves with few heroes to inspire the generations that follow.
We cannot afford to forget men like Prof. Eyo Ita — not in Nigeria, and certainly not in Akwa Ibom.
