Why Eze Igbo II of Jos was crowned secretly

The Igbo community in Jos meant the installation of Professor Jeromi Obilom as the new Eze Igbo of Jos, Plateau State, to be an open but harmless occasion to crown a successor to the last person who held that position, Chief Joseph Ejimbe, who died two years ago, but they suddenly found themselves playing a […]

The Igbo community in Jos meant the installation of Professor Jeromi Obilom as the new Eze Igbo of Jos, Plateau State, to be an open but harmless occasion to crown a successor to the last person who held that position, Chief Joseph Ejimbe, who died two years ago, but they suddenly found themselves playing a hide and seek game with the Plateau State Government personified by Governor Jonah Jang and the Jos traditional institution headed by the Gbong Gwom Jos, Da Gyang Buba

 

A cold war brewed between the Igbo Community in Jos and the Plateau authorities just three days to the planned Eze Igbo installation that Saturday, November 3, when the government suddenly asked that the ceremony be put on hold, citing security concerns; and the Gbong Gwom Jos mounted his own pressure not just for a postponement of the installation but for the entire idea of an Eze Igbo of Jos to be abandoned.

While the state governor reportedly asked the Special Task Force (STF) to change whatever security arrangement it had made for the ceremony and ensure instead that it should not hold, the Gbong Gwom Jos wrote a letter to the Plateau State Police Command urging it similarly to stop the installation from holding.

As it turned out, the apparent desperation of the authorities to stop the installation was matched by equal determination of the organizers to go ahead with it. So, a game of wits ensured. A member of the installation committee who objected to being named because he was not the spokesman said the event could not be put off because many months of preparations had already gone into it and several guests had even arrived Jos from across the country by the time government passed the order to stop it.

Explaining how the whole drama played out, the committee member told Sunday Trust: “We were to do the installation at the Rwang Pam Stadium but it is a government facility and we knew by then that we were not going to have it even after we had paid for it. We then made another booking. We booked a hall at the Crest Hotel (located in Jos South) but security agencies got wind of it and littered the place with their agents. We then resolved quickly to do it at the residence of the new Eze Igbo and that is what we did eventually.”

It was meant to be a big event, with big names expected as guests from the South East and other parts of the country.

“We had to tone the tempo down because of the opposition from government and the Jos traditional leadership, but it’s good enough that we were able to hold the ceremony, low-keyed as it turned out to be,” the committee member said.

In advancing government’s reason for opposing the installation, Secretary to Plateau State Government, Professor Shedrack Best, told newsmen that government was not trying to stop the event but to draw the attention of the organisers to the security implications of holding the event at that particular time.

The government scribe said, “Government is not stopping them. They are consistent and tested friends of government. You also know that government has concerns, which were shared with the Ndigbo and I believe they understand.”

The explanation apparently did not sound plausible to the organisers who had no knowledge of any particular security threats and were not told of any, which would explain why they went ahead with the business of formally making Professor Jerome Obilom the Eze Igbo II of Jos that Saturday, November 3, 2012.

In opposing Obilom’s coronation as Eze Igbo of Jos, the Gbong Gwom Jos relied on a controversy which surrounds the Eze Igbo position itself. It has a fairly long history of being unpopular with some Igbo leading luminaries who feel the title ‘Eze Igbo’ should not be adopted by leaders outside South East, the heartland of the Igbo hegemony.

Well aware of this, and particularly armed with an appeal that visiting Igbo leaders were reported to have made to him last year that no person should be installed as Igbo King in Jos except such person would be addressed as Onye Ndu Ndigbo (leader of the Igbo), the Gbong Gwom went about his opposition to Ebilom’s coronation with a passion.

Nobody would accept to be quoted by Sunday Trust that the Gbong Gwom Jos had a motive other than joining forces with the school of thought preferring the Onye Ndu Ndigbo title to Eze Igbo because the Gbong Gwom had stated such motive in this instance, but many feel and express it in confidence that the Gbong Gwom Jos does not feel comfortable with high- flying traditional rulers the likes of an Eze Igbo in his domain.

In any case, the organizers of last week’s coronation of Professor Jeromi Obilom said Friday that the application of the Eze Igbo title outside Igbo heartland is a development that has gained legal acceptance and widely applied after initial controversy and rejection in certain quarters.

“The idea to restrict the use of Eze Igbo was developed in error and some people went to court against it and got judgements affirming that there was nothing wrong with the concept,” President General of Igbo Community Association, Jos, Chief Jonah Ezekwueme told Sunday Trust, mentioning the Eze Igbo in Abuja, and those of Minna, Kano, and Ibadan as being those who went to court and got judgements that confirmed them.

Uncertainty surrounds Professor Jerome Obilom’s secret coronation. There is no knowing what the Plateau establishment will do next after the race to stop it. Will it become another court case?

Born to the family of late Nze Jude Echebiri of Ezuido Ezinihitte Local Government Area of Imo State on April 28, 1949, Professor Obilom attended Christ the King and Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School, both in Aba, Abia State, from 1956 to 1963. Choosing to go the priestly way, he proceeded to Immaculate Conception Junior Seminary, Ahiaeke Umuahia Ndume, Abia State from 1964 to 1967. When the Nigeria-Biafra war broke out that year, 1967, he joined the Biafran Army. After the civil war in 1970, he returned to the Seminary, finished his secondary education, and was admitted for his tertiary education at the then West African Catholic Major Seminary, Enugu (that time an affiliate of Urban University, Rome), where he earned his B.A. Hons in Philosophy in 1973, and a B.A. Theology in 1981.

Opting out of his ambition to be a priest, Professor Obilom took up admission into the University of Jos where he obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Education, a Masters degree in Education, and a PhD in 1982, 1985, and 1997 respectively.

Upon finishing his Masters as the best student of his class at the University of Jos, the university employed him as a lecturer. Rising through the ranks, he became a Professor of Education in 2003.