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While we watch in amazement how Joe Biden has forbidden rambunctious and swashbuckling President Donald Trump from the White House, America’s seat of government, via a crushing defeat, I cannot help but imaginehow Nigeria has successfully exported its electoral culture to God’s Own Country. We saw it all when, out of desperation, Trump shed his presidential toga by claiming victory in an election whose votes were still being collated. This was followed by suspiciously sponsored pro and anti-Trump protesters, who had probably learned one or two things from our dear giant of Africa.
However, thankfully, this was not Nigeria and specifically Rivers State turned rivers of blood because garrulous Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) had called out his supporters to do this or that, and, without proof, the military was let loose on Igbo residents of Obigbo, alias Oyigbo, whether or not they obeyed Kanu. Well, that is the price to pay for being Igbo in the midst of brothers too eager to deny their blood and lineage because of some Arewa patronage.
This is not a new development though, as Ndigbo have continuously been the sacrificial lambs in this coerce conundrum. I don’t knowhow I survived the Nigeria-Biafra civil war, following a pogrom that claimed millions of lives because of a wrongly tagged putsch. I know, however,that I was not a kwashiorkor patient, thanks to the lizards and rats and all manner of latter-day poisonous herbs that my parents fed me with. I survived by God’s grace but not my cousin, Nnawuihe.
That is why, even though I have since forgiven oga Yakubu Gowon, I am still angry with him for planting this evil seed and yet he is praying for Nigeria without first praying for forgiveness and atonement, at least, by restitution, even if verbal apology. Occurrences in the land seem to point to unanswered prayers but any way, ‘this blood we are sharing, there is God o’, apologies, Dame Patience.
It was Gowon’s policy that turned history on its head. In fact, it tossed history through the window and that is why Igbo kinsmen in Rivers State are in a hurry to deny themselves. They began doctoring their names in horribly laughable manner such that even a certain comedian whose fetish Igbo name means idol also claims he is not Igbo. It is all in the quest for stomach infrastructure that has made water thicker than blood but I know, one day, politics shall end and water will find its level.
My problem with ‘Ndi Biafra’ though is that they are the real enemies of Biafra and Ndi Biafra. When a drunkard wakes up from slumber and in his hazy mind decides to stop a moving train, weneed no psychiatrist to tell us he’s on suicide mission. It is a long settled matter that the Igbo need Biafra like yesterday. But are we really prepared for it now? What manner of Biafra do we need? How realisable and realistic is it and under what circumstances? Must it be by force, is war a Nollywood script? Is it by empty verbiage that exposes Ndigbo to danger? Or a Biafra without inhabitants? Unfortunately, that is the likely scenario, if we are not careful.
Allowing Nnamdi Kanu and his supporters to bring upon Ndigbo another genocide is very dangerous, wicked and tactless, as in the recent slaughter in O(y)bigbo because nobody can talk sense into the omniscient few tucked in safe havens abroad while wickedly and unfairly urging the gullible to untimely death. I still believe Biafra is possible but buying Nnamdi Kanu’s rants would either make it impossible or kill us all before it berths.
The gruesome killings of Ndigbo in Obigbo is mostunfortunate. Why would Ndigbo be made to bear the brunt of a mass action by the entire Nigerian youths sans ethnicity? Such has been the lot of Ndigbo over the years but they never learn. When the Yoruba attack themselves, the Igbo become scapegoats. When there is uprising in the North, the Igbo must suffer. We have seen those paraded over the mayhem in Lagos. How many Igbo are among them? Yet it was for this same crime that one tragicomic character ordered Ndigbo out of Yorubaland. Why is Nigeria ill at ease with Ndigbo and yet would not let them go?
Seriously speaking, however, following the grisly slaughter in Obigbo, it is self-evident that Ndigbo cannot coerce a people into a republic they don’t want to be part of. It is okay if the ‘Igbo’ in Rivers or elsewhere want divorce from their roots, or have already obtained divorce. Rather than humour their overly deceptive self-importance, Ndigbo should let them marry their new husbands and compare. Though they deny their root, we cannot deny them anyway. They remain Igbo flesh and blood gone astray and may yet return home like the prodigal son some day, when the Arewa sticky butter melts in the heat of the scorching desert, especially as restructuring looms.
That some northern elements believe that restructuring would dismember the country is illogical and embarrassing. Nigeria had beenrestructured from what it was, resulting in the present unworkable dead end, and it is the failure to navigate it out of this quagmire that will actually divide the country. It does not make sense to common sense when the Arewa North said Nigeria cannot be restructured because, by all intents and purposes, Nigeria has since been restructured. We should be talking about dismantling the restructured nonsense imposed on the country that is at theroot of the obvious hiccups in the land. This fraudulent federation of today cannot salvage the wreckage we are clinging unto as a country.
Advocates of restructuring are saying Nigeria should return to what it was in the First Republic. They are saying, let us go back to where we began, where we fared better, but certain people are saying contrary things because the reversed arrangement favours them. If they are honest, is Nigeria better off now than then? Where are the groundnut pyramids and the tin in Jos, the timber in Sapele, cocoa in Ondo, coal in Enugu and palm oil in the East? I was taught this in primary school but our kids today never get to hear that. In our CONfederation, while states in the North mine their own minerals, the oil in the Niger Delta belongs to Nigeria. That is why they oppose restructuring, to continue cheating other sections. How absurd!
The North should not be afraid of restructuring or whatever nomenclature that seems to enthrone fairness and equity. They should stop wasting money prospecting for oil in theNorth, where there is none. Oil is even no longer golden, as there are far better things in today’s world than oil. The North is already greatly blessed.Its vast land could be turned green all-year-long to feed the nation, coupled with a lot of other mineral deposits being discovered.
Government should look into recommendations of the 2014 National Conference and report of the All Progresdives Congress restructuring committee, headed by Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State.
Those opposed to restructuring are the real enemies of the country because the country cannot be sustained, as it is presently constituted. The Federal Government lords it over the federating units by placing virtually everything on the Exclusive List. In our CONfederation, all juicy appointments are reserved for a certain section while other sections must wait for this ‘golden’ section to catch up no matter how long it takes. Restructuring is devolution of powers. We are talking about sharing revenue formula, equity and giving all sections a sense of belonging. It is about putting an end to nepotistic, tribal and religious biases.
Methinks the North is being insulted by those imputing that it cannot compete and survive in a restructured Nigeria. I know very well it can but for lazy and greedy leadership that has turned the area into a huge mass of almajiri, bandits and insurgents. Thanks to the likes of el-Rufai and former Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi, who have consistently bemoaned this anomaly. By deliberately choosing to remain backward at the expense of others, they scorch their future and keep the entire country on a strangulating leash.
Let us now restructure the restructured nonsense and pluck Nigeria away from the life support, as it cries: “I CAN’T BREATHE!”
