“Elizabeth was educated by the best humanist scholars of the time who had all been influenced by Plato’s educational ideas; so complete and effective was her education, and so dazzling her use of it, that she may well be considered the first personification of Plato’s idea of Philosopher queen. Her tutor Roger Ascham describes her routine as beginning with reading from the New Testament in the original Greek, after which she read a selection of classical authors “to supply her tongue with the purest diction, her mind with the most excellent precept and her exalted station with a defense of the utmost power of fortune. It is no wonder, perhaps, that she soon gained the reputation for speaking with intelligence and quick-witted flourish in six languages. Elizabeth employed a full arsenal of complementary strategies with which she orchestrated a wide range of contact, measuring trust against prudence, intimacy against authority, openness against protocol.”
In his Fragmental Regalia published in 1641, Sir Robert Naunton complimented Elizabeth for balancing the different court factions: “the principal note of her reign will be that she ruled much by faction and parties, which herself both made, upheld and weakened, as her own great judgment advised.”
During her 45 years as queen, Elizabeth perfected a brilliant eye for talent, and she ruled with the aid of a carefully chosen group. As biographer J.E. Neale comments, “There was no greater tribute to the tolerance, sagacity and masterful nature of Elizabeth than her choice. She chose them for their ability, their honesty and their unshakable loyalty. Even in their intensity they were the expression of England she was nurturing.”
Elizabeth combined a towering mind and indomitable spirit with effervescent sham and exceptional intuition about people. According to one court observer, “if ever any person had either the gift or the style to win the hearts of people, it was this Queen … in coupling mildness with majesty, all faculties were motioned, and every motion seemed a well-guided action; her eye was set upon one, her ear listened to another, her judgment ran upon a third, to a forth she addressed her speech; her spirit seemed to be everywhere, and yet so entire in herself it seemed to be nowhere else.”
And in return, she earned the outright adoration of her people, particularly in her final decades the years after the tremendous victory over the armada – which was generally interpreted as a sign of divine favour – were the most glorious of Elizabeth’s reign.
“England had emerged from the armada year as a first class power,” observed Sir Winston Churchill. “Her people awoke to a consciousness of their greatness, and the last years of Elizabeth’s reign so a welling up of national energy and enthusiasm focusing upon the person of the queen.”
It is more than a miracle that Agu Chike Edozien is still alive, breathing strongly, resurgent and as alert as Einstein before the explosion. At 95, almost racing to the centurion tape HRM’s sojourn on this planet has constituted for me a subject for curiosity and scientific inquiries. Therefore, attempting to compare the landmark contributions of HRM in the resurgence of Asaba, after the horrors of 1967, to the seminal leadership and impacting development of some of the world leaders strike the parallel notes as we dusted up the golden legacies of Queen Elizabeth.
Like Queen Elizabeth, Agu was born blue and like his type he was from childhood expected to conquer and rule the world. It was in that surge he found his way to my father’s house in Igboshere, Lagos, in the late 1940s. (There was no Ikoyi or Victoria Island then). In my father’s room upstairs, my father’s bed, Chike lost his virginity to a Yoruba lady who would not resist the fine “JJC Oyibo.”
My father who had instruction from the Ajie of Asaba and the MD of the Coal Corporation Enugu to procure the travelling papers of his son Chike to Dublin, was accosted by my trembling mother who blew the whistle on what happened in my father’s room, when he was gone for the day’s job. My father instantly embraced his gallant nephew and congratulating him, declared “you are a true son of Ahaba, you must from today show strength any time a woman comes around to try you!”
Chike arrived Dublin in the footsteps of Dr. Obiakpani, the first black man to play football in the Irish League 1949. Chike completed his medical studies and returned to Ibadan, where he was the pioneer Dean of Faculty of Medicine, UCH. That class included Prof. Sanya Onabimiro, the brain behind the Western Free Education, Prof. Ajose, Prof. Dike, Eni Njoku and Dr. Okechukwu Ikejiani, all deceased. Prof. Chike Edozien singularly conceptualised and put out the technical papers, which he submitted to Chief Dennis Osadebay, the Premier, who founded the University of Benin.
HRM was an outstanding actor during the war, while his brothers were being saved by the kindness of Gen. Obasanjo, Murtala Muhammed was slaughtering Asaba. He ran for his life until he found himself in a boat, 1 a.m, alone on the Atlantic from Oron to the Cameroon. The entire Chronicle is in the impending classic, titled, The Atlantic Escape… the untold story of Prof. Chike Edozien, the last of the Titans.
Had Chike Edozien not become a professor of Medicine, he would have been a consummate professor of Mathematics or a polyvalent musicologist, a President of the Senate. Such is his depth, his wealth of cultural references, his cosmopolitan taste and the acuity of his civilised judgment.