Yusuf Otaru Ozigi: Sunset for activist

He returned to Kaduna in1954 and was sent to train as a rural health assistant in Makurdi, Benue Province then.

Ozigi was the best all-round student at the end of the course. He came top out of the over 30 students from all over the country, which at that time included Southern Cameroon.

After the training, he worked with the World Health Organization programme on yaws control and eradication campaign, which the various regions in Nigeria embarked upon.

In the civil service, he worked all over the former Northern Region at various health centres and hospitals from 1956 to 1963. In 1963, he was transferred from Makurdi to the defunct Northern Nigeria Ministry of Health to help the Senior Health Officer at the headquarters to establish the Rural Health Service Division, a task that he successfully carried out.

With the creation of states in 1967, Ozigi was deployed to the defunct Medical Auxiliaries Training School (which later became School of Health Technology) to teach. It was from the school of Health Technology that chances for various courses at home and abroad opened to him .He attended WHO Health Centre Superintendents Course in Lagos, postgraduate diploma in Food Resources related to Community Development, London University, Primary Health Care Tutors and Certificate Course in International Community Health and Hygiene, Liverpool University, Primary Health Care Management Course, University of Benin, International Community Health Certificate in Developing Countries, Boston, USA.

He transferred his services to Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH) in December 1980 as Training Coordinator, World Health Organization (WHO) Training Programme, Department of community medicine, from where he retired as Chief Health Tutor in 1991, after 35 years of service.

Labour Activism

In 1957, Ozigi got involved in trade Union activities with Mr. L. I. Amadi, onetime old Imo State Director of Public Prosecution when Amadi was with the Rural Health Service in the North, and organized a trade union in the profession/cadre. This was called Northern Nigeria Rural Medical Workers Union, registered in 1959.

It later metamorphosed into Nigeria Union of Rural Health Workers 1970 and became one of the seventeen house unions that formed the present Medical Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN)

He started modestly in the trade Union as a circular bearer in the late fifties, holding different offices and steadily rose to become the National President of MHWUN in October 1980, the position he held for a decade (1980-1990). Ozigi served in various capacities in one of the former four central labour organizations in the country. He was from 1971 to 1975 the regional secretary of the defunct United Labour Congress of Nigeria for the North. During his tenure as MHWUN president, he introduced a number of changes, one of which was the creation of four zones for the administrative convenience of the union with a Vice-President heading each zone. The zones were East, West, North-East and North-West. It was his philosophy of participatory leadership that prompted the creation of zones in order to strengthen the various members’ sense of belonging and commitment in the running of the union.

He attended short and long term courses in Nigeria and abroad, including International Labour Organisation (ILO) conferences in Geneva at least three times during his tenure. His union’s counterparts in the defunct USSR, GDR, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary invited him severally to attend seminars/workshops and/or study visits before the military administration stopped the labour freedom which the Gen. Abdulsalami’s administration restored from in January, 1999.

Involvement with Ebira Proples Association (EPA) activities

Ozigi joined the Ebira Association or Club since the mid-fifties while on a course in Makurdi. On transfer to Kaduna from Makurdi in 1963, he joined the Ebira Brotherhood Society. The society was one of the Ebira associations/clubs all over the Federation which met in Kaduna by mid 1967 to form Igbirra Peoples’ Association (OPA) now EPA.

When EPA took off in 1968, he became its Kaduna chapter secretary, the position he held until December 1977.

He was elected Deputy President General in absentia in December, 1980.

He became the President-General in December 1981. He held the position for three years during which he reactivated the association.

He was also a foundation member of Front for Ebira Solidarity (FES).

The EPA’s annual conference held in January 2002 selected Ozigi to chair a caretaker committee to rejuvenate and restructure the EPA for one year.

One of the most outstanding legacies of Alhaji Ozigi was his stance on corruption. He was a one-man anti-corruption crusader. He abhorred corruption, favouritism and cutting corners till the end.  He believed that good name was better than a mountain of gold. In his paternal and maternal families, Alhaji Oweyi as he was fondly called by all was a pacesetter par excellence. He was a role model most family members wanted to emulate. Ozigi will surely be missed by the Ebira community and all those that knew him. For the family, just like the passing away of the patriarch, Alhaji Abdullahi Ozigi in 1991, another big tree on top of the mountain has fallen and from now henceforth we will know where the tree’s shade used to cover.