The Federal Government has described the country’s late Ambassador to Côte d’Ivoire between 1981 and 1984, Denis Iyortom Ukume, as “a distinguished Nigerian diplomat and a strong proponent of Nigeria’s global outreach in the Second Republic.”
Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume, in his condolence message to the bereaved family, recalls how the late Ambassador had a unique experience while on a tour of duty in Côte d’Ivoire when the former Biafran leader, Odumegwu Ojukwu, was in exile.
Akume says Ambassador Ukume “Chaperone, a remorseful arch-secessionist, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, back to his fatherland after he was pardoned by President Shehu Shagari.” It will be recalled that Ojukwu, who was granted asylum on January 11, 1970, by then President of Côte d’Ivoire, Félix Houphouët, was in exile for 12 years until he received state pardon on May 18, 1982, allowing him to return to Nigeria as a private citizen on June 18, 1982.
Ambassador Ukume, who died on October 18, 2023, at the age of 85 following a brief illness, will be buried on Saturday, November 25, 2023, in his home town in Tarka LGA of Benue State. For his love for reading and writing while alive, Ambassador Ukume published a number of books, including one titled “I Believe,” as recent as 2021, in which he captured his encounter and relationship with Ojukwu in Côte d’Ivoire.
Before his appointment as a diplomat in 1981, Ambassador Ukume had a successful public service career. He served as Secretary of the Publicity Committee of the War Council during the country’s civil war between 1967 and 1970. Earlier, he had worked with the Northern Nigerian Ministry of Information under Ahmed Joda as Permanent Secretary and had the privilege many times to travel with the late Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello.
With the creation of Benue-Plateau State in 1967, the young Ukume was deployed to its Ministry of Information as Principal Information Officer before leaving to join Nigeria Airways as Advertising and Public Relations Manager. He worked both in the United Kingdom and Nigeria. History has it that Ukume took up a job as National Administrative Secretary at the National Secretariat of the National Party of Nigeria, NPN, where, at the end of the 1979 general election, President Shehu Shagari appointed him as Ambassador to Cote’d’Ivoire, where he served until the military coup of 1984.
Elder statesman and former NPN National Publicity Secretary, Simon Shango, says in his tribute that the death of Ambassador Ukume “came as a big shock to me. Two days before he passed away, he came to visit me at my office in Abuja, and we heartily discussed the past and the future of this country.” He says the late Ambassador in his home town “served as Chairman of the Mbakor Community Development Association for many years during which a lot of projects were initiated and executed, including the construction of more school blocks at Mbakor Community Secondary School, transformers, and transmission lines in Wannune Town.”
Born in 1938, Ambassador Ukume started his early education in Gboko and Katsina-Ala and was admitted into the prestigious Government College Keffi in present-day Nasarawa State in 1948, even though, along with his mates, they spent their six years at the school in its temporary site in Kaduna State. He later studied journalism at the London Fleet College in the United Kingdom, where he married a Briton, and they had two children, Terna and Juliet. Ambassador Ukume remarried and had three other children: Ukume Junior, Igba, and Susan.
For his service and love for Nigeria, the late Ambassador Denis Ukume was conferred with the national honour of Member of the Federal Republic, MFR. He was buried in the Tarkaa local government of Benue State over the weekend.
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