In 1970, after more than two years during which a bloody civil war successfully ruined any hopes that Nigeria was going to turn out to be the country many expected it to be, Yakubu Gowon, the country`s then military president declared that there was no victor and no vanquished in the thoroughly exhausting civil war that had engulfed the country in a conflagration that had threatened to rip the country apart.
The ‘No victor, No vanquished’ refrain which subsequently became a slogan for the military government was interpreted as a sop to the Southeast region which had been turned upside down by the civil war, but also critically as the battle cry to lead genuine efforts to return the country to the path of progress and development from which it had badly derailed when it lurched into an unfortunate civil war.
However, if the passage of time has revealed anything, it is that the wounds hacked open in the Southeast during the war which lasted from 1967-70 have yet to fully heal, principally because many of the problems that precipitated the war have not only survived the main players but have grown worse over the years.
A region on the ropes
Nigeria`s inability to hold a proper conversation with everyone around its table especially those who see their future elsewhere has been key to fueling the discontent that continues to ripple through the country at will, laying waste to every effort to build a country synonymous with genuine progress.
That Nigeria`s situation has not improved in many years is testament to the fact that many of those who have been tasked with repositioning the country to tap into its prodigious potentials and ensure a measure of contentment for all those who share its common destiny have been troubling failures.
In recent years, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has emerged as the loudest voicecalling for the establishment of the Republic of Biafra whose botched establishment in 1967 saw the bubble of Nigeria`s independence in 1960 burst into a civil war that lasted all of three years.
Leading the new charge to get the Southeast secede from Nigeria and form Biafra was Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, a charismatic if somewhat loquacious Nigeria who also held a UK citizenship.
With the federal government accusing the group of multiple attacks on key national assets within the region, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was soon picked up and arraigned on charges bordering on terrorism. While his trial raged at the Federal High Court, citing threats to his life, he fled the country while on bail, and proceeded from unknown locations around the world to continue taking the Nigerian government to task over what he branded the ill-treatment of the Southeast.
In abundantly farcical circumstances, he was arrested in Kenya last year and bundled back to Nigeria where his trial continued at the Federal High Court until recently when the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja discharged and acquitted him.
While in the custody of the Department of State Services, the IPOB proceeded to put in place a number of radical measures that have today led to the slow disintegration of security in the Southeast.
The most odious and otiose of them has been the decision to grounding activities in the Southeast every Monday and on any other day the group wishes.
Though it denies them, the group has also been accused of multiple attacks on security formations and personnel in the Southeast.
Now, that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has been discharged and acquitted, the IPOB must sheathe its sword once and for all. As a matter of urgency, the odious sit-at-home orders on Monday must be lifted.
As for those whose specialty in the last seven years has been to whip up bogus charges, it can only be just deserts that their bland broth has now suffered rejection at that table where taste is at once eclectic and exquisite.
They would be better served channeling their considerable energies into going after the real terrorists in Nigeria who do not even bother to disguise themselves anymore.
Kene Obiezu,
Twitter:@kenobiezu
