MANSFIELD — The story of Ezike Ihemegwe is a family tale born in Nigeria with a Mansfield angle.

Doctor Chinedu (Peter) Ezike, a healthcare practitioner at OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital, and his brother, Doctor Uchenna Ezike, founder of the MidOhio Infectious Disease Clinic, are authors of a book that tells of the life of their great-grandfather, Ezike Ihemegwe.

He was a revered community leader and an abolitionist from the grassroots whose courage and compassion helped resist the evils of slavery and colonial injustice in southeastern Nigeria.

“His story is a very interesting one,” Peter said during a recent interview. “He is a leader. He is a family man. And he is somebody with compassion.”

Peter, who immigrated from Nigeria and has made Mansfield home, says the story of his great-grandfather has been with him for most of his life. But it wasn’t until recently that he and his brother completed the decades-long task of writing Ezike Ihemegwe the Great: The Story of an African Abolitionist.

“This book has been in the making for the past 30 years,” Peter said. “When my father was alive, I started writing at the age of 15.” He recalled writing his first book as a teenager and how his father quietly published it without telling him.

“He always knew that one day, I’d write something big,” he added. Although his father passed away in 2008, Peter continued collecting stories, interviewing elders in his village of  Isseke, and conducting research in both Nigeria and abroad.

“We built this project gradually,” Peter said. “We collected material from major libraries, schools, and also in London and other cities where colonial-era records are stored.”

The result is a compelling narrative that centers around Ezike Ihemegwe, born 1855 and lived through the harrowing shift from pre-colonial West Africa to the height of British colonial rule.

While the transatlantic slave trade had been formally abolished in the early 1800s, Peter explains that “even after the abolition in the United States, it was still ongoing on African soil, indirectly.”

Peter describes his great-grandfather as a man who refused to be complicit in exploitation. Peter describes Ezike as a vigilante force against human traffickers.

“He started what I will say, a Robin-Hood type justice. He was able to rescue his community, and wherever there was injustice, he stood firm to make sure that was changed.”

His activism extended into the colonial period. Under British indirect rule, local leaders known as ‘warrant chiefs’ were appointed to act as intermediaries between colonizers and these indigenous communities.

Peter explained that this system failed in the Igbo regions of eastern Nigeria, where decentralised, elder-led governance was the norm.

“The Igbo people didn’t have a centralized government,” he explained. “They had their elders — similar to a Senate. When the British couldn’t easily govern through that, they created warrant chiefs.”

Ezikee was appointed a warrant chief, partly because of his wealth, charisma, and steadfastness, not merely because of his status as a trader. His influence and reputation gave him the platform to protect his people during turbulent times.

One such crisis occurred when a British assistant district commissioner was nearly killed during a land dispute. The colonial government planned a military reprisal.

“They planned to send a platoon of soldiers to come and shoot down the whole community,” Peter said. “But it was thwarted by a white priest who persuaded them to collect a fine.”

The fine was issued in pounds, an impossible sum for most villagers to raise. “My community was afraid,” Peter said. “They couldn’t pay the money. Ezike stepped in and paid for it himself.”

This act of selfless protection — against both slave traders and colonial oppression — became a defining moment in Ezike’s legacy and inspired Peter to share the story with the world.

“What makes this story so powerful is that no one talks about local resistance to slavery,” he said. “You hardly hear that an African from the grassroots fought against it.

“Today, I want you to know that there were people like that, and one such name was Ezike Ihemegwe.”

Through his book titled Ezike Ihemegwe the Great: The Story of an African Abolitionist, Peter hopes to show that Africa, too, had its abolitionists, and that these figures deserve recognition.

“In today’s political arena, people don’t want to tell the truth,” Peter said. “I want every leader to learn from Ezike — someone who truly had the people’s interest at heart.”

The book is available on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/EZIKE-IHEMEGWE-GREAT-Warrant-1855-1923/dp/B0FFB6ZLFN

“It’s not just something that my family will keep to themselves,” he said. “It’s a story for the world to hear.”