I have had course to argue that anyone who thinks that the Biafra agitation is a nuisance should know that nobody has the monopoly of nuisance, violence and domination. Those who don’t know what is good for them should allow those who know what is good for them to ask for it. Any human being that feels marginalized should have the right to ask for redress. I agree with Bishop Kukah who has said that this country is a criminal enterprise. People are treated badly and then told not to complain. Some people feel more entitled to nonsense than others. Imagine people with links to Boko Haram and all the uncountable religious wars in this country feeling more justified to call out IPoB and suspect every Igbo man as a member. This is the height of mischief and harassment. The irony is that most of these people have never traveled outside their village talk more of visiting the East.
But I don’t blame the anti-IPoB and anti-Biafra Warriors. The so called leaders of the south east of Nigeria are the biggest cowards I have come across ever in this world. They are the reason why the Igbos continue to receive all manner socio-political ill treatment. They are a total sellout and I don’t understand how Igbos still follow them. This Nnamdi Kanu saga has attained this vengeful witch-hunt because the Igbo elites have prioritized peace-at-all-cost to justice equality and self-preservation. But what they have realized painfully is that they slept better when president Buhari had not stumbled upon Nnamdi Kanu, turned him into an international celebrity and they themselves did not join their ‘enemies’ to shoot their best soldiers. I wish there is an Nnamdi Kanu in the North especially among minority tribes who are mostly Christians to speak up for them the way Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is doing. As you read, there are several villages and ancestral farm lands that cannot be accessed by locals in central Nigeria. Entire villages have been uprooted and I have receipts to show you their names and locations. First class traditional rulers have been killed like goats in their palaces, people’s wives and daughters are taken as sex slaves. Natives have to take permission to go to their farms not from Boko Haram but from Fulani Herdsmen that they welcomed peacefully many years ago but are now emboldened to be violent turning against them and taking over their lands in a so-called 21st century democracy. Meanwhile we have Governors and all manner of political office holders including parliamentarians. An entire people cannot be so poor and so unfortunate at the same time.
All the interventions carried out by the Igbo hierarchy concerning the case of the Onyendu have been predictably abysmal and disproportionately placatory. Yesterday I was listening to Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife reacting on national TV to the continued illegal incarceration of Nnamdi Kanu. He was begging the President to release him while sounding all theological quoting Proverbs 21:1 which says the heart of the king is in the hands of the Lord and he turns it to whichever direction he pleases. With due respect, in a democracy you should not be begging for your rights and justice. Perhaps people are yet to come to terms with the fact that nobody including Nnamdi Kanu and the president is above the law. If the Igbo leaders met the president to release Kanu and he refused that his hands are right so the courts will decide the case, why are the begging him now that the courts have decided the case? One take away for me is that the president takes the entire Igbo citizens for granted with even a tinge of malice. How does a people so plenty be taken for granted in a country they form the single most successful majority?
Imagine the outright maltreatment in the forms of indiscriminate arrests, maimings and death meted out on Nnamdi Kanu and his IPoB members to the point of gazetting them as terrorists ahead of Boko Haram Killer Herdsmen and Bandits. We know what it took to get this Government to call Boko Haram and their cousins the herdsmen and bandits who kill for game as terrorists. How many people did IPoB kill? How many people did these vicious marauders kill? We keep in mind that Deborah Yakubu’s killers have escaped justice because she is a Christian.
To avoid facing their existential threat and instead indulge their naive economic-banter-syndrome, the more unfortunate Igbos like to console themselves that they are a republican people that is why they have discordant tunes mainstreaming their general bargain in the Nigeria project. It would seem the only lesson that Igbos have learned from the civil war is subservience and peace of the graveyard mentality. This is baffling really, because it will not solve their question but only keep aggravating it as we can see. My surprise is that of the many Nigerian tribes I have interacted with, it is the Igbos that seem too prideful even coming across as arrogant and condescending. Don’t get me wrong because I have always insisted that it should not be a problem. These are things that come with success and competence. Sometimes what we call pride and arrogance are basically self confidence and capacity. Indeed you will be hard pressed to argue against the enterprising acumen and magic competence of the Igbos. They are the single most successful ethnic group in Africa I dare say; perhaps only dwarfed by the Jews across the world. So why are they so politically subservient?
Perhaps, I should not be surprised, and you too. I tell you why. About two years ago, one Barr Chika was asked on national TV why people are decamping so quick from PDP to APC in Imo state when Hope Uzodinma was declared Governor from the blues. His answer has continued to be proved right with the Igbo leaders. He said: “the goats will always follow the man with the freshest palm fronts.” Clearly most of the Igbo leaders are there for the highest bidder. That is why they are biggest antagonists of the Peter Obi Nigeria project. They know that he will not share dollars. That is why today, IPoB is the only secessionist agitation group that is a terrorist organization. We all remember the loud bangs of efforts that preceded the pronouncement of Fulani terrorist herdsmen, the notorious so called Bandits and even murderous Boko-Haram as terrorist groups. We cannot get e nation of our dreams without calling each other out appropriately. Pandering is hypocrisy and hypocrisy is an enemy of justice.
President Buhari is on record to have visited Governor Lam Adeshina of Oyo in 2002 ostensibly, to ask why his people are killing his own (Buhari’s) people. Those familiar with the rhetorics will remember that it was one of those several occasions that Northerners will engage n violent clashes with their hosts. Engr Rabiu Kwankwasso the NNPP presidential candidate for the coming 2023 election also have had cause to visit several southern cities in solidarity with his northern people when they clash with their hosts. To be frank, I stand to be corrected but I have not heard a southern group clashing with the natives in northern Nigeria but northerners clashing with other Nigerians both in the north and the south is commonplace. Not just these two politicians which are noteworthy, prominent northern leaders have never abandoned their people even if they are wrong. During one of the many Jos crises (which is essentially a scare -tactic by a certain religious, albeit a minority group to push away others so at they can appropriate scarce space within the metropolis), Hajia Turai Yar’adua First Lady, as they love to be hyped, came to Jos. By the way, legend has it that she lived in Jos at a point in her life. She went straight to the Muslim community and donated all she could, gave all the insult she can give against the supposed enemies and left without the usual courtesy calls on the Governor nor the paramount traditional ruler of Jos the Gbong Gwom whose palace was a stone throw away from her itinerary.
There was nothing they didn’t do to Jonathan when he was fighting Boko-Haram. President Buhari himself was appointed by them as a mediator with Government at the time. He had severally said killing Boko Haram members is akin to depleting northerners. Once there is a crisis that involve their people, they make sure their most prominent religious and political leaders visit such places in solidarity. How many Igbo leaders have visited Jos or any other northern city to condole the Igbos over their losses whenever the many crisis and terrorism targeted against their people and other minorities are committed? It is a shame! The highest they do to pretend to care is to send mini-buses to ferry people back to the east. To go back to the east and do what? We are talking about a people who have their livelihoods all over the country except in the east.
Instead of standing with their people who are bullied by their fellow country men and especially their own government, they choose the side of the oppressor and turn to pretend that they are all victims. The miserable paltry Greek gifts from an enemy is better than the survival and prosperity of their kinsmen. There is no way anyone can truly believe in the unity of this country and not be constrained to be alarmed by the trajectory of the Government of president Buhari. This is a Government that takes disproportionately negative drastic actions when it comes to South East and other regions’ issues but conveniently speak all the English it knows when it comes to all manner of terrorists ethnically and religiously affiliated to it. How do you find all the pretexts to release terrorists but find all the excuses to persecute agitators. The violent component of the IPoB agitation remains a concern but we were all here when they started peacefully until the Government introduced violence to them.
The Mazi has been discharged by the courts. The president should release him except there is more to to it. This Government cannot be pretend that it is in pursue ace of law and order that it is detaining Nnamdi Kanu. The antecedents of this Government in keeping law and order has been divisive, and irresposnsible. People don’t know what to make of the discharge by the courts of the Mazi. As usual many people smell foul play and desperate mischief to contain the exponential profile of the Labour Party Presidential candidate Peter Obi whose primary support base is under the spell of the IPoB. Personally, I don’t have any emotions about the discharge of Mazi. I have always insisted that he is a celebrity creation of the irresponsibility, incompetence and incurable hatred of the Igbos by our Government.
I am sure I was not the only one not expecting the Attorney General and the Security Chiefs to react the way they have reacted. What do you expect anyways? A security council that speak one local language in a plural and multi ethnic society cannot dispatch issues without the usual baggage of sentimental and cultural encumbrances. It should be clear to the blind and loud to the deaf that while northern Nigeria shouts “one Nigeria”, southern Nigeria lives and suffers “one Nigeria.”
When he is finally out, I expect the Mazi to reciprocate the love and loyalty of his people and not take them for granted. He will do this by ensuring he uses his greatest assets: the social capitals of enormous goodwill, cult-like follower-ship and influence to reduce their suffering because as it is everybody is suffering in this our country which is the basis of his agitation. He should not add to their problems further by suffocating the new Nigeria that we are all fighting for by frustrating the emergence of Peter Obi through vote suppression as we have seen before now. He should not be as irresponsible as the Government that he is fighting. He should respect the general disposition of the people he is fighting on their behalf which is the fact that they now see that there is something to hope for and hold while they await his Biafra eldorado.
Failing this, the same reason why the people have seen a true Leader in him will be the same reason they will ‘unsee’ the Leader in him. They have been bruised enough by the same Government that claims legitimate authority over them. Let him not be another slave master by his tactics which seemingly is adding to the suffering of the people instead of alleviating it. The Biafra he speaks so passionately and eloquently about can only be trusted if there is a human face to it. The suffocation of the pole and their livelihood has reached a crescendo. The sacrifices made to be in solidarity with him even if enforced by violence must be not be taken for granted. Let him breathe. Let the people breathe. A new phase should be launched with a new strategy that will give hope and succor to the people, confidence to outsiders and no gaps for Government to explore should be the focus going forward.
I love the Mazi. I love those who fight for justice.
