Every Igbo is a BIAFRAN. If this is not our
PERCEPTION, It is THEIR (Nigerians') CONVICTION. Dr. Alex Ekwueme had a bitter taste of it in
the PDP Presidential Primaries in Jos in 1999. ~~ Nkemakolam Ekeopara
I
love the Igbo! I find us a funny and fascinating
breed. The other day I saw an Igbo hail
his kinsman with the words; "Agu nna!”
The fellow who had been complimented as "Old boy the wild
leopard" was a picture of delight as he savoured the adulation of his
buddy. I shook my head because he was
the same guy who came close to punches when a member of his age grade called
him "Anu ohia!". Anu Ohia is Igbo for a wild animal. One could hinge an argument on the figurative
metaphor of the wild leopard salutation, but, pray, would a wild animal respond
any differently to a spoken word from our guy who landed a punch for being
labelled a wild animal? I guess sooner
or later we may all need to adopt a systematic approach to manage our
ever-shifting panorama of feelings.
Control may be required in handling the emotions this discourse could
evoke on the reader.
I
am not a social scientist with a bird's eye perspective to the Igbo and
BiafraNigerian question. On the
contrary, what I offer is a worm's eye view because I am involved. By extrapolating from the past, there is
ample evidence that the Igbo of BiafraNigeria have been carefully marked out
for total destruction. Some more
accomplished commentators have argued that BiafraNigeria has an Igbo problem, which
is their way of saying that BiafraNigerians do not want the Igbo in their
midst. In as much as I agree with this
viewpoint, I still personally feel that it is baseless to situate this problem
in the war and immediate post war years.
The historical facts suggest otherwise.
In
his treatise on the Igbo in the BiafraNigeria politics, eminent lawyer,
Professor Ben Nwabueze, himself an Igbo, dished out the following words of
admonition to the Igbo:
It was in order to counter the
threat of Igbo domination implicit in (Igbo Ironsi's) unitary scheme that
thousands of Igbos (sic) resident in the North were massacred in May, July and
September, 1966. The massacres were
certainly too genocidal in their extent and too savage in their methods to have
been warranted by the provocation, but we did give some occasion for it. There is so much in the present political
situation in the country that makes it necessary that the Igbos should be
extremely circumspect and cautious so as not to become scapegoats for whatever
might go wrong, and thereby invite yet another massacre on themselves. Those Igbos in sensitive or critical public
positions should carefully weigh their actions and utterances in the light of
this. It is perhaps wiser for them not
to express themselves too soon on explosive public issues.
1985
Ahiajoku Lecture The Igbos in the context
of modern Government and Politics in BiafraNigeria: A Call for Self-Examination
and Self-Corrections, by Prof. B.O. Nwabueze, SAN.
Professor
Nwabueze is a respectable member of the BiafraNigerian intellectual clan but
his argument as propounded above leaves an awful lot to be desired. Nwabueze's presentation was predictably
fairly well researched but I'm at a loss in trying to understand how an Igbo
intellectual could even remotely apportion any grain of blame to the Igbo on
what is a carefully programmed genocide.
It is indeed highly disturbing that Professor Nwabueze opted to ignore
the many acts of genocide before 1966 or does the esteemed professor think the
Igbo "did give some occasion to it".
The
Igbo massacre of 1956 in Kano left the watching
world gob-smacked. Did Professor
Nwabueze not read what the British Administrative officer wrote in his report
after the 1953 massacre in Kano:?
No amount of provocation,
short-term or long-term, can in any way justify their behaviour. The seeds of the trouble which broke out in Kano on May 16 (1953) have
their counterparts still in the ground. It could happen again, and only a
realisation and acceptance of the underlying causes can remove the danger of
recurrence.
Which
Igbo public official said anything that could even remotely be misconstrued as
insensitive before the jihadists moved in for their habitual bloodletting even
in the post 70 years? What did the
Igbo do before the massacre of Kaduna 2000, which even Obasanjo equated to the
1966 pogrom? Professor Nwabueze's theory belongs to the Igbo school of thought
that pleading guilty and bowing to every NATION of BiafraNigeria will hasten
the “assimilation of Nd’Igbo into the mainstream” of BiafraNigeria. This pacifist tendency predates the
Biafra-Nigeria civil war. I am convinced
that the Igbo leaders of pre war BiafraNigeria knew from various intelligence
reports that the Jihadists will shed Igbo blood on a regular basis. It is my belief that they deliberately chose
to turn a blind eye owing to political expediency. They didn't want to be accused of being
ethnocentric and thus lose their god ordained role of main stream politics. I refer my readers to a statement credited
to no less a person than Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Zik of Africa. Zik was consoling the grieving Mrs Aguiyi
Ironsi whose husband had just been murdered by Danjuma, Diya and others as part
of the ethnic cleansing against the Igbo.
Zik is on record as having lamented that notwithstanding all the
compromise and sacrifices the Igbo had made in BiafraNigeria, the awusa-fulani
and Yoruba read wrong meanings to virtually any move the Igbo make. If BiafraNigeria rejected the great
pan-Africanist and peace-loving Zik, it will be fool-hardy for any Igbo to
think that the way to the centre lies in silly compromise. Today, a vegetative old man called Omo
Omoruyi could discuss the referendum and creation of the Mid West without
mentioning the prominent role played by Zik and other Igbo compatriots in that
regard. Let’s go back to the Obasanjo,
Igbo/Biafra and signatures.
OBASANJO, BIAFRA & SIGNATURES:
I
chuckled when one of Obasanjo’s errand boys, ABC Nwosu, waxed courageous and flaunted
his Biafran combat credentials before the Lagos-Ibadan press:
I, ABC Nwosu, can stay and look at
a few people that say President Olusegun Obasanjo is the major architect of
Igbo marginalisation and I say it is their view. Ojo Maduekwe and I, were
commissioned officers, the same intake at school of infantry Biafra. Ask him.
I was the commander, I commanded the pass out parade and people who never saw Biafra, never
fought in Biafra, will challenge my Igboness. Not even to talk of people
who fought against me.
Vanguard
March 24, 2003.
In
the same column, Nwosu lamented his loss of three years as an under graduate at
the University of Ibadan. Pray, which Igbo did not lose time and more
as a result of the civil war? Another
Igbo called Odunze flaunts his own Biafran combat credentials at the
awusa-fulani Gamji. Little wonder
Obasanjo could mock at his re-selection campaign in Enugu earlier this year:
“….even during the war I fought for the Igbo”.
Alice, pass me the sick bag!
Our
record shows that aside from the genocidal atrocities visited on hapless Igbo
by Obasanjo and his ilk during the war, Obasanjo was the arrow head of the
massacre of the so called Igbo intelligentsia even after the war was officially
over. It is common knowledge that
Obasanjo was responsible for the execution and burial of foremost Igbo
nationalist, the ebullient Ohafia man, Dr. Kalu Ezera. General Ojukwu had to call a press conference
in the Ivory Coast to alert the
International community on Obasanjo’s criminal activities. Even six years after the war Obasanjo was
still plotting to kill Chief Sam Mbakwe,
a fact that Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu, military administrator of Imo State in 1976 recalls in his
memoir: Is Mbakwe giving you any problem? Obasanjo asked rhetorically. He
was apparently expecting an answer in the affirmative, as a part of a build-up
aimed at putting Mbakwe out of circulation.
Obasanjo
was visiting Owerri as
BiafraNigerian military dictator having
succeeded the slain Murtala Mohammed,
the infamous murderer and butcher of Asaba.
Obasanjo’s
brutal murder of Ezera as a ploy to bully the Biafran contingent into signing
some fraudulent surrender document still failed to achieve the desired
effect. Writing about the Biafran Chief
Judge, Sir Louis Mbanefo, as recently as
April 2002, Ekong Sampson recounts the signature moment thus:
Sir Louis' huge profile is
invariably drawn into two critical aspects of the Biafran epoch the Biafran
legal system, in which he was Chief Justice, and the peace talks during the
civil war. When the rebel state collapsed he was among the high level
delegation that emerged to negotiate its surrender. It said something about Sir
Louis' guts that in Dodan Barracks at that cloudy period, right before the
Nigerian army top brass that included our President, Obasanjo, the Chief Justice refused to sign the Biafran instrument
of surrender, even as a witness. Why he refused to sign has been well explained
in his forthcoming biography written by this writer.
Well,
the man had to pay the price. Sir Louis was retired, rather than get
re-appointed to the Supreme Court, a gesture that would have benefited the
judiciary immensely and lent credence to the reconciliation preachments of the
Gowon junta. The retiree was eminently qualified to succeed Sir Adetokunbo, his
close friend, as Chief Justice of [Biafra]Nigeria.
Remembering Sir Louis Mbanefo, by Ekong Sampson, This day, April 2, 2002.
It is my hope that from the fore-going it has
been made obvious that the panic attacks Obasanjo and his ilk suffer at the
mention of General Ojukwu’s name stems
from the simple fact that Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu did not and has not
surrendered anything to anybody. I want
my fellow Igbo intellectuals to grasp this simple fact. Just check through Obasnjo’s emotional
outbursts each time Emeka Ojukwu speaks, and Obasanjo’s infamous Bayelsa declaration that “if that
man [General Ojukwu] had won the war, your Governor would be dead”.
From
the fraudulent signature which mutated from “no victor no vanquish” to a
surrender instrument, all the way the Obasanjo’s own mutation as a democratic
leader, his brazen hatred for the Igbo is legendary.
As the powerful Minister of Works
and Housing in post war BiafraNigeria , the only evidence Nwosu could point to
as his master’s achievement in a ruined AlaIgbo is the Enugu – PH road. For daring to query the lip service of the
3Rs in post war AlaIgbo, a young journalist called Agwu Okpanku was “summarily
dealt with”. Agwu Okpanku’s dead body
was to be later discovered on a BiafraNigerian rail line. Obviously, the train that was supposed to
have killed him never made the journey before his body was recovered for
burial. Again, Rear Admiral Ndubuisi
Kanu in his memoir recalls the time Obasanjo opened his bucaal cavity and
insulted the Igbo dignitary that had gathered in his honour at a
reception:
As was common with such addresses, genuine requests were
made on behalf of the people by the chairman, but to everybody’s surprise, these
innocuous demands were enough to draw the ire of the Commander-in-Chief who
lambasted the people and literally handed down to them a first-class dressing
down…
Even as some indigenes walked out of the stadium,
Kanu despatched his Commissioner for Justice, Hon. K. K. Ogba and Mr. G. G.
Okezie, to other venues slated for the head of state’s visit same day. Their
mission was to censure the addresses…with a view to removing those portions
containing requests, lest those requests provoke His Excellency!
…
Kanu was later to tell the Head of State that he had
no apologies for the requests, but not before he had mounted the rostrum to
address the already depressed and depopulated audience, trying in a most
diplomatic manner to soothe their nerves which had been frayed by the guest’s
invectives. The Governor’s decision to speak after his boss was a breach of
protocol excusable by the exigency of the moment.
In that outburst, Obasanjo
reminded the Igbo that they did not deserve to make requests since they had
tried to break away from the country and even tried to kill him. I am sure Nwosu and his gang would rather
have us forget that aspect of our history.
They would also want us to forget that not only has Obasanjo repeated a
similar statement in this dispensation, but that he has actually come to far
away America and told a young Igbo
attorney to “go to hell.” Any Igbo man
defending Obasanjo is an enemy of the Igbo nation. Just think about it, the way to his April
2003 reselection is littered with the blood of Igbo slain by his Gestapo. Human rights groups counted 68 dead MASSOB
members. Even in the PDP primaries where
Governor Peter Odilichukwu of Rivers State and Abubakar Atiku
publicly renounced the Igbo and again whipped up anti Igbo sentiments as had
served them well in Jos ’99. Did any of
his Igbo ministers challenge their colleagues?
New Igbo and Obasanjo:
I
believe the time is ripe for the new Igbo free themselves from Obasanjo’s historical shackles. There is a small clue in the speech allegedly
read by General Philip Effiong. It is in the words: “Government in Exile is not an option.” With all due respect to General Effiong, I strongly disagree that he ,
blooming Obasanjo, and a few others have a right to
determine the options open to Biafrans. The time
has come when the new Igbo must shun all the silly Texas based socio-cultural
organisations parading themselves as
Diaspora Igbo umbrella groups. The Igbo
in Diaspora need an exclusive Igbo nationalist organisation that will fight for
the Igbo world wide. An Igbo nationalist
organisation would be closed to people like Abubakar Rimi, Arthur Nzeribe, Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu etc.
Do
not believe them that hide under the “Igbo enwe eze, we are republican(anarchists)”
mantra to embark on clandestine and
nihilistic anti-Igbo activities.
The concept of communal
networking is more developed in Ala Igbo than elsewhere in the world. The Igbo Union of old and all our present age grades and
community development unions are not indicative of a society of anarchists. The time to network is now. But, first, do get a job. Igbo Unions
tax the membership to fund projects. If
you need to retrain, then just do it. If
you study medicine or law at Harvard and you cannot get a job as a lawyer or
medical doctor, try training as a nurse.
Igbo has no use for an unemployed Oxford graduate. Our folks back home have continued to switch
trades and vocation as the BiafraNigerian government continues to make their
lives hell. It is appalling to read
about Igbo Ph.D. motor mouths who baby-sit free yahoo listserves and make empty boasts on the special endowments
and talents providence has showered on the Igbo. I am not amused. There is a place for Nature and there is a
place for Nuture.
Nuture takes over once we utter our first cry
in the delivery suit of the maternity clinic.
It's
not your blue blood, your pedigree or your college degree. It's what you do
with your life that counts. ~~Millard Fuller
I
hereby recommend that any Igbo under fifty who has no job should consider
training as a nurse or locomotive/bus driver.
Both of these are essential stable jobs which are in fairly high
demand. Having a job will not only put
food on the table but will do the individuals self esteem no harm at all. The aggregate of healed psyche will in turn
make for a whole-some Igbo ready to face the challenges of this century. Guinea pig Ph.Ds
from some guinea pig colleges are hardly what the Igbo
need at this point in time.
Let Obasanjo and the Yoruba be!
My
final take on Obasanjo and his second term is that he is not worth the effort
for the IGBO. If a
funeral director promise you a discount on your next visit, just turn
round and walk away. I would. But if you have the time
tell him to reserve it for his own folks! What is good for the Yoruba nation may not be
good for the Igbo. If they(the Yoruba)
are happy that Federal Universities have been carefully shut down for the good
part of a year then it is their funeral.
If they feel BiafraNigeria no longer requires restructuring , it is still
their choice. For the second time in
about four decades Ojukwu and Nd’Igbo have tried to rescue them from
themselves, If they feel Obasanjo is eminently
qualified to represent the Yoruba in the comity of nations, it is their
funeral.
Concluded …. See also, New
Igbo and Obasanjo: of Signatures and Sour Grapes, Part 1