I have been watching with open-mouthed bewilderment the way centrifugal forces are leading us to the path of self-destruction once again. However, I thank God that I don’t live close to an abattoir. My mouth would have been home to battalions of green flies!
Last week, a coalition of Arewa Youths sniffed the air. And what did they perceive? They perceived not the familiar stench coming from a typical abattoir, but the (imaginary) foul odour of their ubiquitous Igbo compatriots whom Nigeria refused to let go of when arch rebel, then Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu, enlisted to play Moses whose divine mission was to rescue the Israelites from the bondage of Pharaoh of Egypt.
The lgbos claim to have consanguinity with the Jews. The Israelites were strangers on the Egyptian soil for a couple of centuries. Here, our Igbo brothers and sisters are not. They occupy a landlocked geographical location now called South-east. It was famine that drove the forebears of the Israelites to Egypt where Joseph, one of the 12 sons of Jacob, sold into slavery by his siblings, rose by divine arrangement to become Pharaoh’s second in command as a result of his oneiromancy. The Igbos are a Nigerian race.
However, the race by the Igbos to leave Nigeria began 50 years ago. It took the Israelites 40 years to reach the Promised Land. The journey was to last 40 days. Please, consult your Bible for details of how the 40 days’ journey stretched to 40 odd years. Moses was ordained by God to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land.
But he never set his feet on the soil. It was Joshua who eventually led the stubborn Jews, who had to roam the wilderness for 40 years, to the promised soil.
Ojukwu, who had been positioned as the military governor of Eastern Region, dreamt of the Promised Land and ordered his people to board the Ark. They obeyed him. The exodus was unprecedented as the Igbos streamed across the Niger before the door of the ark would be shut. I lost a few Igbo friends forever.
What led to this exodus? It is a big pity that for long now the Nigerian history has been relegated to the background as a subject even at the secondary school level. Those who ignore their past will be punished by the future!
Mid-January, 1966, the nation was jolted by a strange (martial) music heralding the demise of the six-year-old First Republic. The military raped the Constitution they swore allegiance to. In the coup that followed, some key political actors and senior military officers from the North and West were brutally murdered.
The political class included the prime minister and the Golden Voice of Africa, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa; the premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sarduana of Sokoto; the premier of Western Region, Chief Ladoke Akintola, the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland and Chief Festus Okotie-Ebo, Balewa’s finance minister from the Mid-West.
However, the premier of Eastern Region, Sir Michael Okpara, was spared. The First Republic president, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, was saved by his “sense of foreboding” that took him to London for medical attention. Among the senior officers killed in the coup were Brigadiers Zakariya Maimalari and Samuel Ademulegun, Lt. Cols. James Pam and R. A. Shodeinde.
The insurrection, spearheaded by a handful of hot-headed majors led by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, was put down and Major-Gen. JTU Aguiyi Ironsi, an Igbo and the most senior officer in the Nigerian Army, became the first military head of state. For six months, the nation’s survival hung by the thread. Within the period, Ironsi dithered and failed to try the coupists. Had the assassinations been given the federal character, had the coupists been tried and given the deserved penalty to assuage the northern officers, perhaps the ensuing catastrophe would have been avoided.
The coup was seen as a carefully planned and executed agenda by a section of the country against the rest. So, on July 29, 1966, a countercoup was executed by the section of the country that was the victim. Gen. Ironsi was killed in Ibadan along with the military governor of Western Region, Col. Adekunle Fajuyi while on a state visit. Fajuyi begged that Ironsi’s life be spared in his domain.
His request fell on deaf ears.
The countercoup threw up the then Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon as the new head of the military junta. Hell was then let loose in the northern part of the country in revenge of the first putsch. The Igbos who relished in their leadership of the country for six months now became the victims. Following that tragic development, Ojukwu, who was the military governor of Eastern Region, saw himself as the messiah of the Igbos, and asked all his kinsmen and women to return to their roots.
In the months that followed, the entire country was on tenterhooks. A last-minute attempt was made to avert the impending doom in faraway Ghana where an accord was entered into. The Aburi Accord was jettisoned by the Federal Military Government, followed by the balkanisation of the four regions. Emerging from the Eastern Region were the East Central State made up of the present South-east geo-political zone, Rivers and South Eastern States.
Ukpabi Asika, a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, was appointed to administer the newly created East Central State from Lagos. A rattled Ojukwu responded with the declaration of the Republic of Biafra. The stage was then set for a long-drawn-out war to keep the nation intact. By the time the messiah sensed defeat and fled to exile in Ivory Coast, over 2 million lives had been wasted.
Gen. Gowon in his magnanimity proclaimed “No Victor, No Vanquished”. The process of reintegrating the Igbos was anchored on the famous R3 – Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation. Soon, the Igbos sprang back to life and re-spread to the locations they abandoned.
The Second Republic brought a reprieve for Ojukwu. President Shehu Shagari granted Ojukwu a state pardon. He returned to a hero’s welcome and, to the surprise of many, joined Nigerian politics and contested for a seat into the Senate on the platform of NPN. He failed. When the nation returned to democracy in 1999, he floated a party – APGA – and took a shot at the presidency twice.
Twice he missed.
Ojukwu was later to regret his misadventure. Just as we thought the ghost of Biafra had been laid to rest, one Ralph Uwazurike revived the struggle under MASSOB. He later abandoned the senseless mission. Another delusional character named Nnamdi Kanu came up with IPOB. He thinks he can succeed where Ojukwu failed in spite of his war chest and intellect.
The notorious Radio Biafra has been revived and is busy spewing hatred and treason. Curiously, he is enjoying unprecedented acceptance among the Igbos including the high and mighty. The governors and high profile politicians inclusive of senators now see Kanu as the new face and voice of the Igbos who could swing electoral fortunes in their favour. A proof of this was witnessed on May 30, when he ordered all the Igbos to sit at home.
The obedience to the order got into Kanu’s head. He swore to actualise his reverie by all means possible including violence. The President of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Shettima Yerima, decided to call his bluff hence the October 1 ultimatum asking the non-animals to vacate the north before they start behaving as such. However, unlike the South-east governors and other leaders pandering to the nitwit, their northern counterparts, including traditional rulers and prominent citizens, promptly condemned the pronouncement and swore to defend the Igbos in their domains. Quite touching!
It is heartwarming to note that the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has waded into the matter, warning all the makers of hate speech to sheathe their tongues. However, the government should do the needful by addressing the vexed issues threatening to tear us apart, among them true federalism and maginalisation.
Methinks the recommendations of the 2014 National Confab should be taken off the shelves and studied.
The time to break the seemingly endless circles of centrifugal forces is now!
My parting shot to my Igbo brothers and sisters: By your location, you are an important marsupial of this country. And as it is said, if you go to any part of Nigeria or even the world and you don’t find an Igbo, don’t ask any questions… just run! You need Nigeria as much as Nigeria needs you. Stay on and fight for your own share of the national cake like the rest of us. A cake baked 50 years ago is poison today!
