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In reality and in the present circumstances, Okoro is barely a citizen of Nigeria. It does not really matter that the Igbo man is autochthonous and had lived here long before the geographical space assumed the name Nigeria. He has been here, living and dying and being buried centuries before 1914 when Nigeria was contrived by the British. Okoro had furthered God’s creation and obeyed His commandments by procreating and dominating his environment, bonding with the land and covenanting with his gods. He had known the Big River where he had conducted his fishing business long before the European historians told us that Mungo Park discovered River Niger. Okoro had lived at peace with nature before the West came with their destructive practices, the excessive exploitation of the environment and the rape of the earth. The Europeans came waving the flag of a dubious civilization, conveniently forgetting that civilization started with our cousins across the Sahara Desert in ancient Egypt. With their guile, they brainwashed Okoro, discredited his culture, denigrated his tradition, stole his mind and then his land. More than 100 years after, Okoro is still bemused. And lost.
Physically, the Europeans have been gone from Nigeria for at least 62 years. But Okoro is still uncertain about his identity. In the midst of the uncertainty, Okoro is today confronted by another dilemma: rejection by internal colonizers, the new overlords. Even the feeble effort he has been making to rediscover himself and possibly return to his roots is being buffeted and violently resisted by those who believe they have a greater stake in Nigeria. To compound the situation, ‘Citizen’ Okoro is being compelled by forces pulling from all segments of the country to deny himself, to deny his Igboness. And this in 2022. It’s immaterial that the Igbo is autochonous or a son of the soil in local parlance and probably the only Nigerians living in Nigeria today. The Igbo are unlike Buhari, the President of Nigeria and his fellow travellers who have cousins in Niger Republic, Chad, Sudan and elsewhere. Buhari has repeatedly spoken lovingly and emotionally about his cousins in Niger and sundry places outside Nigeria. Baba Ahmed, one of the northerners who stakes his claim to being a bonafide Nigerian, goes to Mauritania regularly for reunion with family in the homeland. In 1992, the first governor of Adamawa State, January 2, 1992-November 17, 1993, Abubakar Saleh Michika, had told Nigerians that he would join his cousins in Cameroun, if a coup happened in Nigeria. He said he would cross the border on foot to the warm embrace and safety of his ancient family in Cameroun. The same other-centred relationships and families can be said of the Yoruba. Their own cousins are spread all over Benin Republic, Togo and, to some extent, Ghana. I once had a vicar of my Anglican parish in Lagos who was fully Nigerian and fully Beninois. Some Nigerians of Yoruba and Fulani stock have been merely separated from their cousins and families in other countries by the arbitrary and artificial boundaries and borders created by European powers while they scrambled and partitioned Africa for themselves.
In the business of cousins outside the borders of Nigeria, the Igbo are orphans. As Buhari once said, the Igbo are a dot surrounded on all sides. Their neighbours who should be their brothers and sisters have since had their hearts and minds poisoned against the Igbo. The Biafra-Nigeria civil war did not help the no-love-lost relationship between the brethren of the South East and those of South South. And the vultures from other parts of the country are having a feast.
If you are an orphan, you will do well to steel yourself against the missiles that would be aimed to break you and bring you down. And they have been coming thick and fast on the Igbo of, or in, Nigeria. The dislike for the indomitable spirit of the Igbo by segments of Nigeria is not hidden. But the trouble is that the dislike is beginning to manifest from unlikely quarters. The most recent incident at forcing the Igbo to deny who they are came from a federal high court in Abuja presided over by Justice Binta Nyako. She is the wife of Rear Admiral Muritala Nyako, a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress [APC]. For weeks, Justice Nyako had taken umbrage at Nigeria’s secret police for not allowing Nnamdi Kanu a change of clothes, since he was renditioned to Nigeria from Kenya in a questionable manner by Nigeria’s federal agents. Kanu is facing trial for alleged treasonable felony. Last week, Justice Nyako had an opportunity to ensure compliance with her lingering order. But she baulked. A newspaper reported the exchanges thus: “My lord will still see the defendant in the same uniform, which my lord warned against in the last proceedings,” Chief Mike Ozekhome, counsel to Kanu, said. “It will be recalled that they [secret police] had on that day alleged that he [Kanu] preferred to wear the same clothes because it is a designer.
“However, since that time, the younger brother of the defendant, his lawyer and sister have gone three times with materials for him to change but they refused to collect them.”
In his response, the prosecution counsel, Shuaib Labaran, said the clothes brought by Kanu’s family had lion’s head drawn on them, and he said that such designs offended the operating procedures of the secret police.
I can be accused of not paying attention, but I have not heard about any detainee from any other ethnic nationality in Nigeria who had been denied wearing his or her ethnic attire. Isi agu is Igbo dress. What could be in this dress that frightens Nigeria’s secret police? The Department of State Services [DSS] as they are formally known gave no reasons for forbidding Isi agu but Justice Nyako sided with them nonetheless. From the DSS and Nyako’s court, the Igbo nation’s Isi agu attire may soon constitute a crime for the wearers.
The other unlikely place that Igbophobia has manifested is the church of man masquerading as the church of God. James Anelu was the priest in charge of the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Ewu-Owa, Gberigbe, Ikorodu, Lagos. He reportedly prohibited songs and choruses in Igbo in his parish to curb the excesses of the Igbo. Father Anelu was alleged to have stopped the rendition of songs in Igbo language at a particular service, saying angrily that he would not allow the Igbo to keep dominating other people in his parish. He alluded to the Benin Diocese where, according to him, the Igbo, through their spirit of domination, succeeded in imposing one of their own as the bishop. Fortunately, the leadership of the archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Lagos acted fast and suspended the toxic priest. But I want to believe that, in the course of Anelu’s hate-filled priesthood, he must have come across where the Good Book said that from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Is it not likely that the offence Anelu committed was speaking out. Even in the church, I verily believe that there are other priests across board who dislike the guts of the Igbo. And these types are to be feared most for the toxicity they will ultimately inflict on the Body of Christ.
Elsewhere, in 2019, a bigot called Danladi Umar assaulted a security man at Banex Plaza in Abuja. Umar was, and still is, the chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal. Later, he issued a poorly-written and embarrassingly error-filled press statement purportedly through an aide wherein he described his victims as “Biafra Boys,” an obvious reference to the Igbo. The main victim, unknown to Umar, was not a Biafran boy. He was from the Middle Belt. The tragedy of Nigeria is that Umar who is barely literate in any subject and has no temperament and decorum to hold even the lowest of any public office is still the helmsman of the sensitive tribunal. Of course, he is emboldened because he spoke the minds of those who appointed him. And who are protecting him. For many Igbo, it could just be that There Was A Country.
