To me, staging a walkout from the red chamber because the house turned down the motion to immortalize Prof. Humphrey Nwosu wasn’t a smart move. And as I heard a senator stirring the tribal sentiment, I wondered when we would stop playing the victim. To me, immortalizing a man in Nigeria is as good as waving at a plane in the sky—a waste of time.

What have we done with the ones immortalized, or are we just fighting to ensure that there will be a pronouncement for a tribesman? To what end? Immortalization that will start and end in the chamber. Make it make sense.

In 2021, I started classes for kids below 12 years old in Onitsha. In the school, we teach them what they don’t learn in the traditional school—like piano, singing, board games, and most especially, history. During our first history class, I asked a hall of 62 kids if they knew Nnamdi Azikiwe. Not even one soul knew him.

I was so shocked because the only roundabout in Onitsha is just a stone’s throw away, and the statue there is that of Nnamdi Azikiwe. Besides, we all live in Onitsha, the hometown of Nnamdi Azikiwe. Yet, 10–12-year-old children didn’t know who he was. They will become adults and read from the internet or whatever would be en vogue then to learn about Nnamdi Azikiwe. Yet, Zik was immortalized. I still don’t get it.

My team and I changed our curriculum immediately. Nnaeche composed a funny song about Nnamdi Azikiwe, and I wrote a poem about Dora Akunyili. We taught the song and poem to even the children in the lower class and made them recite both every day.

The white man is different. They know that immortalizing people goes beyond declarations or putting the person’s face on the currency. How many of us here know the real history of Herbert Macaulay? Don’t beat yourself up—it wasn’t your fault. Nigeria does a shoddy job of immortalizing people. Why then do we fight for a vain thing?

Before I knew the story of Michael Okpara of the Eastern Region, I could comfortably tell you about Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. I learned about them years before the internet. I saw their quotes in motivational books, and our pastors of those days used their stories as illustrations. Why would I know how many times Abraham Lincoln was unfortunate? It is not accidental. Oyibo knows how to do that.

Movies were sponsored to capture their lives. The media was subtly and deliberately fed with their words, making them appear bigger than life. Movies were even sponsored to show how Lincoln was hunting down vampires in America. And whether you believe it or not, Lincoln is planted in your head.

As an undergraduate, I printed a letter of Abraham Lincoln to his son’s teacher and memorized every word of it. Who can swear that Abraham Lincoln wrote that letter? Who was there?

But here, 40-year-old Igbo men do not know much about Zik. No one is talking anymore about how the Great Zik defeated that furious mermaid that wanted to flood Nigeria—that stubborn Queen of the River Niger. Yes, before 1960, Zik tricked that powerful woman and imprisoned her in a bottle. That is why Nigeria is not covered with water today.

No one is telling kids these legends anymore.

I met a man whose father’s name is attached to a public facility. The guy said he had called the governor who immortalized his father and asked him to please change the name of the facility to his (the governor’s) own father’s name. That naming a facility that is so unkempt after his father is an insult his father didn’t receive when he was alive.

So, let’s stop the crazy drama. Instead of walking out of the chamber and crying like a baby, raise 50 million naira, call Collins Okoh and tell him to work on the life of Humphrey Nwosu. Bring in Segun Arinze to play the role of Abiola. Uzor Arukwe is very hot presently; let him be Humphrey Nwosu. And the story won’t be about either Abacha or Abiola—let it focus heavily on the trials of Professor Nwosu.

Believe me, in 50 years’ time, creatives at that time will see this work and recreate it again. It will be a story of courage, uprightness, and being a model public servant. Young Igbos should be told that this is what it means to be an Igbo person. We should get Ikem Mazeli to sing about Humphrey Nwosu. And in the next 200 years, people will never forget a man who risked it all to defend the votes of the humans of Africa’s most populous nation.

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Ozii Baba Anieto is a creative writer, cultural advocate, and social developer who lives and works in Onitsha, Nigeria. He is a widely published author and social commentator with wide engagement on social media.