A visitor to Villaska Lodge, the Lagos home of the late Igbo leader, Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu, at No 29, Oyinkan Abayomi Street (formally Queen’s Drive), Ikoyi, is confronted with an unusual warning: beware of snakes!
But contrary to the warning at the entrance, there were no snakes in sight when our correspondent visited the house on Tuesday to see one of the valued possessions left behind by the ex-Biafran warlord.
‘You wan snakes?’ a guard asked our reporter when he sought to clarify the warning about the snakes.
‘No, I’m only curious about the warning,’ the reporter returned.
The guard replied: ‘We have snakes, we kill snakes just like they kill dogs. There is a section of the house where we rear snakes. It is not as if they crawl about the compound. But there is a particular place where they walk around in the grass’.
The environment was neat when the reporter visited the place. The mango and the almond trees provided a shade for the building. The lawn was lush green, while his domestic servants tendered the flowers and cleaned the surroundings.
Although the guard at the house said the place used to be the ‘Mecca’ of Igbo leaders who came to pay homage to the late Igbo leader, the house was devoid of such traffic of people on Tuesday.
According to the guard, some Igbo leaders in Lagos had come to sign the condolence register opened at the house in honour of the late Igbo leader.
Bequeathed to him by his wealthy father, Sir Louis Ojukwu, who died in 1966, the house became a bone of contention between the Lagos State Government and the ex-Biafran leader when he returned from exile in Cote D’Ivoire and made the place his abode even though the government had confiscated it and labelled it an abandoned property on account of the rebellion that Ojukwu led against the state.
On August 12, 1985, a Permanent Secretary in the Lagos State Government wrote to Ojukwu and asked him to vacate the house or face eviction. Ojukwu headed for the Lagos High Court to challenge the action of the state government to eject him from his residence. He sought an interim injunction restraining the Military Governor of Lagos State, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police and the Attorney General of Lagos State from ejecting him and members of his family from the house.
He swore to an affidavit that the house belonged to his father after whose death he became the owner of the property. He also deposed that during the period of the civil war between 1967 and 1970, the house was not occupied by anyone. He also claimed that for its pains in keeping the house while he was on exile, he had paid the Lagos State Government the sum of N90,000.
The trial judge, Justice Roseline Omotosho, granted the interim injunction on the grounds of Ojukwu’s ownership of the house and impending threat to evict him. But while the matter was pending in court, the state government deployed about 150 armed men to evict Ojukwu, and throw him into the streets.
But Ojukwu’s spirit was not dampened. He stayed in his vehicle in front of the house, defying rain and sunshine as he continued the legal battle up to the Supreme Court and eventually triumphed and reclaimed his property from the state government.
That, however, is not to say that the battles he fought over the house were restricted to the Lagos State government. Early this year, the house also became a bone of contention between him and his younger brother. Lotanna Ojukwu, the aggrieved younger brother, insisted that the house was not a personal property of the late Ikemba Nnewi but one left behind by their father as part of the assets of Ojukwu Transport Limited, their late father’s business outfit.
The controversy has since abated if the situation at the house last Tuesday was anything to go by. The Chief Security Officer of Villaska Lodge, Mr. Ikechukwu Umunnakwe, told our correspondent that all that was in the past. “There is nothing like somebody trying to take over the property. The property belongs to Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu,” he said.
Umunnakwe also disclosed that a lot of people had come to the house on condolence visits, particularly prominent Igbo indigenes. Appraising the late Igbo leader, he said he would serve him again if he had the opportunity.
He said: “I’ve been with him for 15 years. He treated me like his son. He never saw me as an employee. My relationship with him was good. I’ve read so many authors, so many books but Ikemba was a good teacher to me. If I am to come back to this world, I will prefer to be a servant to Ikemba.”
He said unlike many leaders of Ojukwu’s status who go about with security details, he was a man who cherished freedom and preferred to move about alone. Recalling a recent incident, he said: “During the celebration of his birthday at Alimosho Local Government by the Ndigbo in Lagos, I expected him as an elderly man and Ndigbo elder to just move quietly into the place that had been prepared for him. But he came down from the car, went into the crowd and started shaking hands with everybody. I was shocked that the man did not care that something could happen to him in the crowd. People were shouting Dim! Dim! He was very free with the crowd.”
He said until about four years ago, Ojukwu was always coming to the house. According to the chief security officer, “He was coming in regularly. I think it wasn’t long before he stopped coming. He was a man that would not sleep in a hotel. I found that in him. He preferred to sleep in his house.
“I would describe him as a saint sent by God for people to look up to and learn from him just like a philosopher. Being Dim’s servant does not take the energy and power I have. Rather, it gave me wisdom.”