Fred Omadeli Agbeyegbe celebrated his 75th birthday last week Thursday July 22 even though he looks much younger He is a legal luminary but has contributed greatly to growth of the theatre vocation in the country. He spoke to JOE ADIORHO on his birthday and national issues.

Guardian:
Congratulations on your 75th birthday. You have surpassed the U.N life expectancy for average Nigerian, which is 50 and yet you look younger than some who are 50 and below.

Chief Agbeyegbe:
Glory be to God

Guardian:
What is the secret behind your look?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
Well, I do not know about secrets. I keep saying we have the good Lord to thank. I do my normal chores; I wake up in the morning, pray, and set out for work and come back. I do not have anything in particular; I cannot say why the good Lord had chosen to keep me the way He did.

Guardian:
You were born in Warri, how was it growing up there?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
It was a lot of fun. It was a lively place; never mind what they tried to turn it into. In the family, I was the 51st child of my father, who had 19 wives, we lived in a huge village with all the people, and I had a lot of care from members of my family. We were brought up as one, sometimes, not knowing who your mother was. We lived in a very happy family setting, well of course, that was many years ago. My father had the economic ability to look after his wives and children.

Guardian:
How many children did your own mother have; and you?
Chief Agbeyegbe:
My mother had five, three boys and two girls and I have eleven children, seven boys and four girls but not from as many as 19 wives!

Guardian:
However, as few as how many?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
I will not say more than that.

Guardian:
Its okay, so you are a Christian, are you?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
Well, I believe in God; I do not know if that is tantamount to Christianity.

Guardian:
Do you have any denomination where you go to every Sunday to fellowship?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
I go to any church that is nearest to me when I feel like thanking God or congregating with other people. I am not denominational. I am a Godist. I mean to say I believe in God. I do not particularly subscribe to the idea of club membership; it is what I believe that denominations are all about.

Guardian:
How does it feel being endowed with many years and great experiences?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
Well again, we have the good Lord to thank. I take it all in my stride; I do as many things as I have an interest in participating. The experiences have been quite varied from professional angle, to the political, to the business and the arts. I pay attention to everything I am involved in and I find time for all as well.

Guardian:
Looking back at your 75 years on earth, could you say you are fulfilled that all your expectations, your aspirations were
met?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
As an individual, vying in many sectors of life, yes. I have had fulfilment. I have found fulfilment in practising my profession as a lawyer, as a playwright and theatre enthusiast. At the last count, I have written about 16 plays, four books on poetry, and my interest as a writer, I have written for The Guardian, Thisday, Vanguard, Daily Times, Sunday Times, and all the newspapers that were there during my time. I have had the pleasure and privilege of writing for them.

Guardian:
In certain publications, I read about you, it was said you are a successful writer but they also added that, you had only two books to your name.

Chief Agbeyegbe:
Who said that? That person was very mistaken. I mean, which two books are they talking about? Maybe, they mean the two most successful plays. The Confused World in 1988 and Woe unto Death. These are the two books that were recognised.
Well, I have written, The King Must Dance Naked, Woe unto Death, The Last Omen, This Confused World, which is not a play, it's a book on poetry, Human Cargo, Conflict Resolution…you want me to carry on?

Guardian:
Where did you attend your primary and secondary school and what influenced your travelling abroad?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
I went to many schools because my elder brother, whom I lived with, was a police officer. I went to as many schools as he was transferred. I was at Government School, Auchi, African School, and Forcados. I was at B.N.A School, Ewoeilai in Benin, C.M.S school, Utagba-Ugbo, Kwale, N.A school Kwale, and others. There were so many of them. After that, I went to P and T School Oshodi; I am not sure, it is still there, to become a wireless telegraphy operator. I was tutored in moss code. It was a means of secret communication in those days, and I was a member of the communications division of the Nigeria Police, where we read and interpreted moss code for secret messages.
I left the police force and I went to Customs, I went to Federal Training Centre in Broad Street and trained as a stenographer and I worked as the secretary to the Controller of Customs of Eastern Nigeria and got involved in the closing of border towns when the English Cameroon left Eastern Nigeria. I was working in a place called Ufum, Ikom and Ekang. I think there were three divisions that the Controller was involved in at the time and we worked day and night for months.
I was a confidential secretary. That was what we were called at the time. When my boss, Mr. John Wood Green, a British, was leaving Nigeria, he said to me that you work too hard, you are an honest person, and that you will waste here in the Customs.
He said I must come with him to England. I thought he was joking but he took me to my family in Warri and told them, 'I'm taking this your little boy abroad; they were all surprised and they thought it was a joke too, but behold on the particular day in 1961, I boarded M.V. Tarkwa, belonging to Elder Dempster. In January 1962, I went to Pitman's College in Southampton Road in London and did a verbatim reporter's course that was meant to last for one year but finished the course in March; and after that, I went to write my O and a level and I listed as a chattered secretary at a law languages and commerce.
I worked in the Harold Wilson's Government in 1963, and from there I went to London University to read law and I was at the School of Oriental and African Studies. I went to University College of London University to do my Master's. My classmates at this time were the likes of Broderick Bozimo, who was Obasanjo's Minister of Police. After that, I went for my doctorate.
I got a job in the Commonwealth Secretariat. I was the first legal adviser there, and after that, I came to the Nigerian Law School and I was admitted in the Nigerian Bar in 1973. I registered at University of Lagos. I went straight to research in the Nigerian Law of Financial Institutions, and after that, I started practising my profession.

Guardian:
Did you obtain your doctorate degree or you stopped midway?
I got my PhD. Why did you go through such rough road when your father was such an influential personage?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
Well, I tell you nobody will believe the story I have just told you because the Agbeyegbes that they knew were all spoon-fed, and they went to all the best colleges in Nigeria. The person you are talking to is the one exception. Not because there was no ability, but that is just the way my own went. In fact, I never decided to read law; once I finished the things I was doing, and there was a lot more time before coming back to Nigeria, so I decided to do a degree in Law.

Guardian:
You had things going well for you there abroad, why did you come back to Nigeria?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
Very good question. Few days ago, my son was here and we were talking about why I did not take British nationality and passport. It is because I was a patriotic Nigerian. I was even the leader of the student’s group saying that 'keeping Nigeria one is a task that must be done.' I was a leader of International communities of students in so many fronts, anti apartheid, United Nations work; I was instrumental to making sure that Ian Smith of Rhodesia, the Prime Minister who declared unilateral independence, was brought to book.
We set up an international court of Justice; a mock one of course, under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, tried him, and got him convicted. In that exercise, I involved three universities in the United Kingdom, Oxford, Cambridge and London Universities. Those were the type of activities in which I was involved, in England. Now I came back because I believed I had a fantastic country.

Guardian:
Are you a politician?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
I did my bit; I was chair of one local government council for a very short time, from 1982 to the end, when it was one, not now it has been divided into 20. It was before Buhari came and crashed all of them. The NPN-led government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari put me there.

Guardian:
Now you are no longer a politician?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
That is a difficult question for me to answer. I take part in political activities, so I cannot say I am not a politician, but I do not belong to a political party. I took part in the formation of PDP, ANPP and AD before we had to leave the initial two because Bola Ige was the one taking us from one party to the other. We had so much trust in him until we discovered that we were all making a mistake anyway.

Guardian:
People know your connection with plays and theatre. Is there a conflict in your mind when you were making a choice of academic and career pursuit? What kind of crisis was going on in your mind that you would read law and come out to practise theatre arts?


Chief Agbeyegbe:
There was no conflict at all. As I have told you, I never chose to become a lawyer. The circumstances in which I read law were what I just narrated so there was no conflict there. Those who know me in theatre arts know me in theatre arts, those who know me in law know me that I have practised law all that time in spite of my writing plays and staging them and running a theatre group. I have never dropped my legal practice, I have practised law since I came back to Nigeria and I was called to the Bar in 1973 until today.
Last week, I was in the federal High Court wearing my wig and gown. That will show you that I have never stopped practising law.

Guardian:
What attracted a legal luminary into theatre art?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
There was no special attraction. Before I became what we call a legal luminary or whatever, I had been in theatre. I wrote my first play when I was 14 and I had written so many plays before I read law at all. When, in 1963, BBC London broadcast my plays, I had not become a lawyer. I started reading law in 1965, so it is something that has always been there. I do not know where those things come from but I do them. If you ask some people, they will tell you that I am a journalist because they have seen my articles not only in Vanguard but also in your newspaper, The Guardian. I have a stock of 111 articles that were recorded and published and those are the ones we could find. I am a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

Guardian:
Is there any landmark case that can be associated to your name?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
I do not know of any landmark case, but I have done what lawyers do in a legal practice. I have practised mainly in the federal High Court because one of my specialisation is Maritime Law that deal in ships, vessels, buying, arresting, releasing from arrest. I did admiralty law before I left England. So what do you mean by landmark cases?
I was in the Supreme Court very early in my practice, participating in cases involving land in Warri. I had the privilege of appearing against Chief Awolowo in a court in Warri very early in my practice. Funny enough, I went with Chief Awolowo in the same car from Lagos to Warri to stand against him in that position. My PhD research is on the Nigerian Law of Financial Institution.

Guardian:
Does the prevailing situation now in the country live up to that dream you have of Nigeria that made you come back home?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
In fact, everything that you have seen so far shows me that the Nigeria that I thought I had was not the Nigeria that is worth living or fighting for. Everything here has been upside down and I would not say I regret coming back. I am here now, but it is only now that I am beginning to realise that this country was forced upon me.
Neither my parents nor I participated in bringing about this country, so my rights to choose to belong to an entity called country was forced on me. I am here by force of British colonisation, and after they left, the military came, kept us here and gave us the 1999 Constitution, which is slavery to the people of this country.
You can quote me; everybody here, inside this Nigeria is under the yoke of slavery. We have had no chance in participating in how we want to live with each other. I have nothing from my mangrove swamp in Warri in common with the person who is coming from Sokoto. I am held here by force.

Guardian:
So you are saying you want a country of your own outside this?
I would not mind. I am an Itsekiri man long before the British came. Recently a book was launched at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs. It is called Warri, a focus on Itsekiri. I belong to a group of people who have a very rich heritage.

Guardian:
Ojukwu talked this way and you and others fought him?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
Yes, we did, that was the biggest mistake we made. As I said, I was in the forefront carrying placards saying we must keep Nigeria together. Well, I do not know what Ojukwu thought was, but I can tell you that my believe today is that if we understood what Ojukwu was talking about then, we won't have been here under chains today.

Guardian:
Have you made attempt to pursue this thought at the United Nations?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
No, I have not, but there are moves, there are people who are saying enough is enough, they do not want to take this anymore and they want to belong to a society where they have a say and where they all agree as to how they are going to live together not being forced and being dictated to from afar. Somebody stays in Abuja and wants to fix the leaking pipe in Warri.

Guardian:
Can you say something about the Nigeria you came into as a son and the one you are now living as a father, grandfather and an elder statesman?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
The Nigeria I came into was a place we thought you could be proud of because it will give recognition to merit, it will give recognition to hard work, sense of value. The society I was born into was up there, today there are no values other than money. It does not matter how you came by it, hit somebody on the head and you take his money nobody ask you how you got it. In fact, they will give you a chieftaincy title and a doctorate that you do not merit. You have never been to school, but they call you doctor and they would not put it in inverted coma showing that it was not obtained by research. That is what happens in this country today, corruption; Ghana must go bags are the ruling factors.
The National Assembly, the people who are there getting paid up to 200 million in a year for doing absolutely nothing and that's why the people who were there are not even qualified to call themselves leaders or rulers because they were never elected, they were selected by those who wanted to carry on to use this country against the interest of the ordinary people. Even the constitution that we have is a lie, a fraud and it manages to call itself Federal Constitution. Have you ever seen a country where there is a Federal Constitution and there are no supporting federating units? Nigeria is the only one example in the whole world.
Do you know that there is a case in court saying that the 1999 Constitution is a fraud? Do you know that there are two cases in court; in fact, one is by someone like Oki who is 90 years old, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), joined by so many people including Wole Soyinka and Odumegwu Ojukwu.
Do you, also know that in this so-called constitution the power that the people who are controlling your life have are so enormous that they can do away with you when they want?

Guardian:
With all these works there is no such thing as SAN attached to your name why?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
What do I need SAN for? Has it been given out on merit? Answer me; people have gotten SAN because they belong to a particular part of the country where there have been no SANs for some time. People have gotten SAN because they are the sons of SANs.
People have gotten SAN because a governor has intervened on their behalf. Is that the SAN you want me to get? What do you want me to do with it?

Guardian:
You heard the argument between Prof. Nwabueze and General
Danjuma,

Chief Agbeyegbe:
What do you expect Danjuma to say?
He was a soldier, and part of the people who came and took away our rights. He was the one who said Obasanjo gave him something that yielded him one billion dollars and he didn't know what to do with it. Don't you know what to do with one billion dollars in Warri, where the oil comes from? Don't they know what to do with one billion dollars in Rivers, Port Harcourt, Ngwa, Ogoni land, all over the place where the oil comes from?
How come somebody who comes from Sahara suddenly found himself with one billion dollars and he didn't know what to do with it? Since they've refused to listen all these years, it means change will come naturally. No situation is ever permanent in life.

Guardian:
You said the bible says God blesses the work of your hand and you have done a lot of work. Are you a rich man?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
What do you mean by that? The only thing I can say is that God has given to me, good health and the ability to suffer and smile. Yes, I am a comfortable man. I can never subscribe to being judged as to my state of wealth or otherwise by virtue of cash. Money, they say, is the root of all evil; money is a very devilish thing. I do not participate in that sort of club. I have satisfaction. God is helping me to look after my children, my family and God knows I have educated hundreds of people and I am not exaggerating. Nevertheless, I will never take part in any measure of success that is built upon cash or wealth.

Guardian:
What is your assessment of Goodluck Jonathan's performance so far?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
Well, I wouldn't say he has not tried, but don't ask me about what he has tried because anybody who is operating the 1999 Constitution has to be more than an angel to succeed. Maybe, if Jesus Christ or God starts operating the 1999 Constitution, there will be success, but to think that a fellow human being, a mortal, is going to show any measure of success under that constitution is a waste of time whether his name is Jonathan good or badluck.

Guardian:
The topical issues today is on zoning, they say Jonathan is not qualified to contest, what do you say?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
I am not in PDP. However, whether there is zoning or there is no zoning, it is a PDP affair. The only comment I made is that the failures from leadership that we have suffered so far is as a result of not giving cognisance to merit and when you zone that, what you get will not be the best, so good luck to them in PDP or wherever else they want to adopt that system that has no regard for merit.

Guardian
Do you think is the best way to move forward from your past experience?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
You do not need any experience to notice that if you do not have a true physical federalism in this country, it will never work. People must leave their slave status to be able to do their best for this country. People must enjoy the benefit of the resources that God gave to them.
Until you have a people's constitution and by that, I mean to say, in which they have participated, and in which they have decided what rights to cede to the ruling authorities, there will never be peace, there will never be a country that you can call a country worthy to be lived in.
All that struggle about 2011 election or no election, for me it is a waste of time; they are not talking about how to solve the problems of this country, they are talking about how the looting game will continue. I do not have any other advice to give than what has been given over the years.
I do not know what Professor Nwabueze is calling for and I do not know what General Danjuma is saying we should not have. The revolution is already here, so good luck to all of us.

Source: The Guardian, 25th July 2010.
Copy: Igbofocus.co.uk

Eziachi:

Fred Omadeli Agbeyegbe celebrated his 75th birthday last week Thursday July 22 even though he looks much younger He is a legal luminary but has
Chief Agbeyegbe:
Yes, we did, that was the biggest mistake we made. As I said, I was in the forefront carrying placards saying we must keep Nigeria together. Well, I do not know what Ojukwu thought was, but I can tell you that my believe today is that if we understood what Ojukwu was talking about then, we won't have been here under chains today.

Hhehehehe see Ibo man claiming warri. Ojukwu ko Biafra ni

Eziachi:


Guardian:
Ojukwu talked this way and you and others fought him?

Chief Agbeyegbe:
Yes, we did, that was the biggest mistake we made. As I said, I was in the forefront carrying placards saying we must keep Nigeria together. Well, I do not know what Ojukwu thought was, but I can tell you that my believe today is that if we understood what Ojukwu was talking about then, we won't have been here under chains today.

A very good morning to you Sir. Nice to be awake!!

olabukola:

Hhehehehe see Ibo man claiming warri. Ojukwu ko Biafra ni

Should I take it then that you cannot read or you're blinded by the obvious? The Chief Agbeyegbe that was talking is Itshekiri, not Igbo.
You shall know and acknowledge the truth and that truth shall set you free. Stop being a prisoner troubled concience.