Biafra: The Voyage of Memory vs.
Custodians of Stolen Legacy
By
Emmanuel Franklyne
Ogbunwezeh
ogbunwezeh@yahoo.com
When
memory sails across history, to reclaim landscapes of her birth, or recover
epistemic citadels hijacked by imperialisms of conquering narratives;
custodians of stolen legacies, and other fences in crime, raise turbulent waves
of dissimulation to delegitimize and cheapen those recoveries. They raise
brackish waves of contrived amnesia to assail her bows. They convoke a
confederacy, to frustrate her designs. Symphonies of orchestrated cacophony
assail the airwaves, to drown out the ventilation of legitimate discontent, by
those who have been wronged.
Those
concerted attempts at frustration, unfortunately set the stage for a historical
repeat of those crimes, which prompted the discontent. They frustrate every
attempt to learn from history, and thus condemn us to repeat it, as George
Santayana warned.
That
is the state of the Nigerian debacle,vis
a vis the Biafran debate raging on at the moment. One
could see that in the debate set off by Dr. Jibrin
Ibrahim; on the pages of the www.Premiumtimesng.com, where the learned doctor unfortunately spent the
entire length of his article applauding his prejudices, and rehashing old
hatreds, with an epistemic absolutism that makes a mincemeat
of reason. All, in order to scaffold factually fraudulent
stereotypes that was at the root of the genocide that has always
massacred Ndiigbo in Northern Nigeria since 1953. Communities
of concern waded into the debate, with Prof. Odinkalu
rightly accusing Jibrin of a malicious peddling of
fraudulent stereotypes. There were other reactions. But the fact remains that Jibrin’s claims to objectivity was a wooden apologetics,
which his essay did not acquit. He ended up casting and portraying himself as
possessing the mindset of every custodian, or profiteer that has been
privileged by a stolen legacy.
Custodians
of stolen legacy in every epoch are a fearful, savage bunch. They are children
of fear. They were sired in the uneasy beds of iniquitous privilege conferred
only by robbery. The fluids that mingled to create them were already haunted by
the defiant silence and pregnant inaction of the victims staring defiantly into
the souls of their rapists. The world surrounding their advent was eerie in the
depths of its foreboding. Danger lurked in every corner. Every blade of grass
harbored a sinister possibility. They were born prisoners of fear. Their
shadows frighten them. When injustice is the air, fear rules the waves. They
are afraid that those whose legacies were stolen and
handed over to them, would rise someday to demand a full account of their
stolen inheritance. To forestall this, they were bound to deploy every weapon
of savage dissimulation in their arsenal, to forever keep their victims down.
We need not go into the fact that some have been tempted by
prejudice, to label this and similar voyages of memory like that exemplified in
the Biafra issue of today, as an undue allegiance to an expired heritage.
Others entertain the luxuries of viewing it from the prisms of some
prefabricated bias, in order to dismiss it as a nostalgic yearning for an Igbo
supremacist renaissance. Some may even
try to immunize their compromised consciences further, by labelling it as the
angry rantings of Igbo Ideologues, even though the Biafra idea never left the
Igbo mind or the Igbo streets. Some
others may paint it with the dismissive brushes of an attempt to sculpt a
supremacist ideology of Igbo origin. Every Igbo attempt at engaging the
Nigerian public domain on its terms met some of these stereotypes. The most popular in the unfecund
imagination of some feudal-minded Nigerians being those words of the Ahmadu Bello, which you could view here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHDaHlTaHJw
Such stances are ancient companions of every Igbo attempt
to question the strongholds of oppression, dogging their march to liberty and
development. They have encountered such stereotypes all steps of the way,
whenever they attempted to raise the issue of their oppression, with other
stakeholders in the Nigerian project. This stereotype has always being the
basis for dismissing legitimate Igbo discontent, as unworthy of any attention.
It led to a war. But the lessons remain largely unlearnt. Instead of positive
action that would pave the way for harmony and mutual respect and peaceful
co-existence, Ndiigbo are treated with the kind of
disregard and injustice that has pushed many a people into rebellion or war.
Nigeria never fought a war of independence. But she fought
a war to appease foreign interests, under the false banners of keeping Nigeria
one.[i][ii] Many are want to think that that should be the last war
for Nigeria because no country in history has ever survived two civil wars. But
the internal tension actually predicated on primeval fault lines like religion
and ethnicity, is most likely going to push Nigeria to the battlefields once
again, if cool heads do not prevail to think out a widely acceptable terms for
continued coexistence.
We are revisiting Igbo attempts at becoming of part of
Nigeria, and all the failures that has attended that enterprise, in order to
initiate a dialogue with posterity. We are not keeping quiet. The lava of
dissensions and Igbo discontent is steadily rising. We are speaking out because
of the fact that such cracks of discontent have led to the decline of empires
and monolithic structures of injustice that refused across time, to reform
itself to accommodate the legitimate aspirations of its constituent
nationalities. In fact, history has shown that no structure that mismanages
illusions endures. It fizzles out like the puffs of smoke it peddles as
reality.
We must underline the fact that we are not afraid of the
labels that our boldness invites. We are aware that whenever injustice is
questioned, it always flies into the patronage of impious cant in order to
discredit the questioner, and blunt the sharpness of the questions directed
against its ontologically leprous core. Like Camara Helder once remarked: When he fed the poor, he was seen as
a good Christian. But when he questioned why the poor have no food in the first
place, he was instantly labelled a communist. To this end, some of the
anticipated critiques above would naturally fall into this grand evasive
blueprint held as an ace, by unjust structures and its beneficiaries across
time and climes, since the history of man began.
We are equally aware that such critiques are products of
the indissoluble marriage between greed and fear. Greed essays to feed off the
backs of all, for the sole benefit of its narrow, parochial and concentric
insularity. This disposition automatically marries it to a perpetual fear that
the oppressed on whose back it battens, would one day rise to question their
situation. Many of these anticipated critiques emanate from this region. We
expect it to be so because this piece is designed to question the fundaments of
the monumental injustice against Ndiigbo in Nigeria.
It is interesting to note that in history, those who have ever attempted to
question injustice have all earned the unrighteous opprobrium and murderous
venom of those who profit from the structures of oppression and unjust status
quo.
Interestingly in our case, as contemporary events in
Nigeria have continued to attest, these fears and criticisms though anticipated and welcomed have all being
rendered redundant by the contemporary upsurge in the number of voices calling
for a review of the structure of the Nigerian federation, which has overreached
itself in smothering the aspirations of Ndiigbo and
other constituent nationalities.
Today, the active struggle against the bonds of oppression
as made manifest in MASSOB (The movement
for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra); OPC (Odua People’s Congress); MOSOP (Movement for the Survival
of the Ogoni People, and other ethnic movements lend concrete credence to our
submission. Nigeria is not a nation: It is a construct of federated grievances
that needs urgent geopolitical surgery with the scalpels of justice and right,
if we are not to go to the battle fields once more.
We are here to tell the truth of our convictions. In the
process, we would naturally be doing violence to the false histories being
peddled by certain cults of mediocrity, and other pockets of established greed,
whose existence are dependent on a Nigeria enslaved to their avaricious
interests. We would go behind the veils to seek out the truths. This is because
true history will never lie to protect the strong. Neither will it doctor the
facts in solidarity to the groans of the weak and the oppressed. It remains an
incorruptible umpire in the affairs of tides and times, climes and lands, men
and kings, peoples and nations.
This history is a stubborn reality with an infinite
propensity to embarrass. Most times,
this history does not require an archaeological excavation of its sacred or
sacrosanct sites to yield its secrets. It requires in certain instances, a
simple clinical incision at the right junctures, with the scalpel of inquiry,
for it to purge its innards, throwing up facts that may prove a point, indict a
criminal, exonerate an accused, straighten a confusion, condemn an action,
decry a wrong, dissipate a fear, remedy or redress an injury; as the
circumstance commands. It is in the light of this that tyrants have always had
history as their waterloo. Oppressors of all ages and climes are equally not
exempt from the embarrassments of history. Nero and Caligula testify to this.
Those who believe that victors are authors of history are
really mistaken. Their contention naturally flows from various historical
attempts to invent memories and reconstruct history to suit certain conceptual
schemes. But even in the midst of these attempts to manufacture consent or
fabricate facts, truth has remained such an obstinate reality, which no amount
of historical distortions, tides or debris can ever succeed in defacing. This
same truth would never pander forever to the caprices of the oppressed, in
order to doctor, tailor or distort the facts that played itself out under
history’s watchful gaze. To this end, any man or woman, regardless of stand or
status, can only doctor history at his own peril. The unfunny thing about it
all is that history must not only record whatever it witnessed. It does it with
a mathematical precision and exactitude. It also records any attempt to doctor
her records by anybody, with the same promptitude. In this regard, the army of
Nigerian historical revisionists massed on the borders of contemporary
Nigeria-Igbo history, with the singular intent of defacing history, redacting
and distorting it to suit their mission of embezzling the facts, in obedience
to their distorted vision of future power equations, are already assured of
their failure.
It is on history’s pages that successive Nigerian
governments marked Ndiigbo out for selective emasculation.
This is a truth that no Nigerian historical revisionist can refute with
success. That Igbo country is the least patronized in terms of infrastructural
investments, industrialization etc., is a fact that has remained a placard of
Nigeria’s collective callousness and continued war of attrition against Ndiigbo. That the federal roads that transverse Igbo
country are nothing but truncated death traps generously strewn with erosion
sites, and pockmarked with potholes is there for the whole world to see.[iii] That Ndiigbo are subliminally
discriminated against in their fatherland is a truth that no amount of verbal
denial can erase. That Ndiigbo have contributed more
than any other ethnic nationality to this project that is Nigeria is a fact
that even a blind man can see. That Ndiigbo have
adequately paid more than their dues in Nigeria with a greater promptitude than
other stakeholders in Nigeria is a truth whose majesty stands. That Ndiigbo have the best interest of Nigeria, which transcends
the parochial insularities and confines of tribe, has never been in doubt.
If all these historical facts add up to be true, what prevents sons of this nation
marked for the slaughter slab, raising their voices to protest this sentence,
which was handed down with a high degree of xenophobia, injustice, and
unemotional economy? Would a son of this race marked for death, ever be
justified in keeping silent in the face of this monstrous ogre that seeks his
eternal subjugation and the annihilation of his race? Would he ever gain back
his roots, if he conspired with his silence to auction it off to an
establishment of congenitally deluded feudal lords, or a cabal of avaricious
elites, who feel that it is their birth right to rule Nigeria ad infinitum?
Should he not like the proverbial Sheep take up the challenge, on being
forcefully confronted with an alien dance in his father’s homestead? Is he not
obliged to take it in his stride, even if it means taking to arrhythmical
jumps, instead of throwing in the towel in grovelling cowardice? Should he not
fight and claw to get in his word? Is he
not obliged, at least, to do his esteem the favour of telling his story
himself? Why hide in cowardice while others hawk the untrue in the courts of credulity?
It behoves us to tell our story ourselves, even if others
consider it a heresy to their structured ignorance. It behoves us to unseat
those canons of rogue orthodoxy, with the authentic narratives issuing from the
facts and truths that risk being embezzled.
Achebe told the whole world, the African story from the
African perspective. He told the world that contrary to the false and racist
propaganda of many Western authors,
that Africa was never a land peopled by savages, waiting for the “salvific”
exploitation, and the civilizing savagery, of a buccaneering Europe. Achebe
perforated the Whiteman’s lies on many fronts. They considered him a heretic.
To this end, this tallest African in House of literature was shut off from the
Nobel Prize. Since no establishment ever canonizes a heretic; so the Western
establishment cannot canonize a literary heretic in Achebe, who like Martin
Luther pitched his tent on some truths and refused to budge. Though he remained
Africa’s greatest. The enslaving establishment sees him as a monumental embarrassment
to their prejudicial presumptions.
We are ready to tow Achebe’s line not minding the
consequences. We must lay out the facts to give the common patrons of reason,
some anti-thesis upon which to reconstruct their dialectics of rational
decisions. We give them a basis for comparison between revisionism and truth,
between facts and propaganda.
Today, the undeclared war against Ndiigbo
is our subject. Wole Soyinka; while speaking out
against similar situations against the same people that are now my subject,
captures better the reasons why we have decided to speak out. He recognised the
fact that,
If these and like crimes
were complete in themselves, if they ended in their own occurrence and had no
implications for the future beyond the unpleasant memory, we would be content
to bury our dead, console the maimed and proceed with a calmed will into the
future. But with the certain knowledge that such events are unresolved, and
that their lack of resolution promotes their own kind a hundred-thousand fold,
with increasing sophisticated machinery of outrage and camouflage, in increased
boldness and cynicism which only pauses when a people’s will is wholly
dominated, one recognizes the sanctimonious opiate inherent in popular slogans
like “bygones is bygones”.[iv]
The quasi-institutionalized crimes against Ndiigbo, instead of abetting have been improving in
recklessness and sophistication. It would be a gross and unforgivable betrayal
of our conscience and calling, to look the other way like the Levite and priest
of the Good Samaritan parable, while our people are being progressively
decimated. To keep quiet in the face of such brazen exploitation would make us
unwitting accomplices to the crimes against our people.
Our facts dare the revisionists to refute any of the counts
we are pleading in the courts of human conscience. If Nigeria can successfully
exonerate herself from the guilt of these crimes, then truth must have been
crucified in between a gang of brigands.
One of those truths can be categorically stated. Britain
massacred over I million Igbo men, women, and children to protect her oil
interests in Nigeria, using the Nigerian government of Yakubu
Gowon, with the active collaboration of her Egyptian, and Russian cronies. The
Nigerian war over Biafra was at best a genocidal pogrom designed to deal an
eternal blow on these enterprising people; and protect British/Shell BP’s oil
interests in Nigeria.[v]
The war was equally unleashed on Ndigbo
as a final solution to the Igbo problem. Proofs to this fact are everywhere in
Nigeria. Achebe in chapter 9 of his work; The Trouble with Nigeria, titled “The
Igbo Problem”, recounted that a distinguished political scientist from a
“minority” area of the south pronounced some years ago that Nigeria has an Igbo
problem.[vi] Achebe continued:
Every ethnic group is of
course something of a problem for Nigeria’s easy achievement of cohesive
nationhood. But the learned professor saw the Igbo as a particular irritant, a
special thorn in the flesh of the Nigerian body politic.[vii]
Achebe further consolidated the point he was making by
stating a truth, which is obvious, but which many hawks duplicitously deny. He
has witnessed to the fact that:
Nigerians of all other
ethnic groups will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their
common resentment of the Igbo. They would all describe them as aggressive,
arrogant and clannish. Many would add grasping and greedy (although the
performance of the Yoruba since the end of the Civil War has tended to put the
prize for greed in some doubt)[viii]
Why was Achebe saying this? Why dedicate a chapter to Ndiigbo without offering the same opportunity of full
exploration to other constituent nationalities of the Nigerian nation,
especially those termed the “major ones”? Is it just to pay some obeisance to
his heritage? Achebe been a master of his art, anticipated this question and
put paid to it in the very next paragraph before it could be muted or
entertained. Achebe made the foregoing submissions because in fact;
Modern Nigerian history
has been marked by sporadic eruptions of anti-Igbo feeling of more or less
serious import; but it was not until 1966-67 when it swept through Northern
Nigeria like “a flood of deadly hate” that the Igbo first questioned the
concept of Nigeria which they had embraced with much greater fervour than the
Yoruba or the Hausa/Fulani.[ix]
At face value, the war was inflicted on the Igbo as a
repayment for their purported active plan to kill off the crème la crème of northern
Nigerian elite and leadership in 1966. But the truth remains that the war was
fought to assuage and give full ventilation to the bottled anger of some
sections of Nigeria against what is perceived as the enterprising market
dominance of the Igbo almost all over Nigeria.[x] Lending credence to
this, Achebe wrote:
The origin of the
national resentment of the Igbo is as old as Nigeria and quite as complicated.
But it can be summarized thus: The Igbo culture being receptive to change,
individualistic and highly competitive, gave the Igbo man an unquestioned
advantage over his compatriots in securing credentials or advancement in
Nigerian colonial society. Unlike the Hausa-Fulani, he was unhindered by a wary
religion and unlike the Yoruba unhampered by traditional hierarchies. This kind
of creature fearing neither God nor man was custom-made to grasp the
opportunities, such as they were, of the white man’s dispensation. And the Igbo
did with both hands. Although the Yoruba had a huge historical and geographical
head-start, the Igbo wiped out their handicap in one fantastic burst of energy
in the twenty years between 1930 and 1950.[xi]
To that end, it is not suprising
that;
The Civil War gave
Nigeria a perfect and legitimate excuse to cast the Igbo in the role of
treasonable felon, a wrecker of the nation.[xii]
The British supported the genocide because it fills the
ancient craving of Whitehall to deal with this enterprising group that dared
challenge the decadent core of its imperialistic interests in Nigeria. Bello Osagie captured the metaphysic informing British support of
Nigeria thus:
Thanks to the work of
the missionaries-Southern Nigeria came into contact with Western education much
earlier than other parts of the country. The British soon began to see these
newly educated Southerners as a thorn in their flesh because, unlike their
counterparts elsewhere, the conquest of the country did not make them pliable.
On the contrary, access to Western education made them more confident and
reluctant to submit to colonial rule. The British painted a negative picture of
the Southerners as belligerent, corrupt and audacious. They were considered
capable of contaminating the Northerners, whose traditional rulers the British
had already subordinated and co-opted into their sphere of influence. Together
with the traditional Hausa-Fulani rulers the British formed a pact, whose
influence would continue to be felt well beyond the period of colonial rule.[xiii]
This prejudice was consolidated by the fact that almost all
pre-independence agitations that tried to force the British to leave Nigeria
had some link with the Igbo; championed in one way or the other by the Igbo, or
inspired by them. The 1929 Aba women riot, The 1949 Enugu Coal Miner’s revolt,
and the actions of the Zikist movement are all cases
in point here. Nnamdi Azikiwe
“Zik”; an Igbo, was equally a thorn in the colonial
master flesh, that they did everything to set him up, diminish his influence
and scheme him and whatever he represents out of any position, where he would
shape post independent Nigeria with his vision.[xiv]
The booty that was Southern-eastern Nigerian oil fields and
unrestrained access thereto was equally the attraction for many of the vultures
fighting on the Nigerian side. The geopolitical calculus was that a pliable
government in Lagos, peopled by puerile and strategic unintelligent management
as that of Gowon and his team, would be better controlled than the fiery
intelligence and the courage of an Odumegwu Ojukwu in the East. Mark Curtis pieced information from Released Secret
Documents of the British Government together. He contended as follows in
“Nigeria’s war over Biafra” http://markcurtis.wordpress.com/2007/02/13/nigeriabiafra-1967-70/
What is crystal
clear is that the wishes of the Biafrans were never a
major concern of British planners; what they wanted, or what Nigerians
elsewhere in the federation wanted, was simply not an issue for Whitehall.
There is simply no reference in the government files that I have seen, to this
being a consideration. The priorities for London were maintaining the unity of
Nigeria for geo-political interests and protecting British oil interests. This
meant that Gowon’s FMG (Federal Military Government) was backed right from the
start. But the files also reveal astonishing levels of connivance with the
FMG’s aggression.
British interests
are very clearly revealed in the declassified files. ‘Our direct interests are
trade and investment, including an important stake by Shell/BP in the eastern
Region. There are nearly 20,000 British nationals in Nigeria, for whose welfare
we are of course specially [sic] concerned’, the Foreign Office noted a few
days before the outbreak of the war. Shell/BP’s investments amounted to around
£200 million, with other British investment in Nigeria accounting for a further
£90 million. It was then partly owned by the British government, and the
largest producer of oil which provided most of Nigeria’s export earnings. Most
of this oil was in the eastern region.
Commonwealth
Minister George Thomas wrote in August 1967 that: ‘The
sole immediate British interest in Nigeria is that the Nigerian economy should
be brought back to a condition in which our substantial trade and investment in
the country can be further developed, and particularly so we can regain access
to important oil installations’.
Thomas further
outlined the primary reason why Britain was so keen to preserve Nigerian unity,
noting that ‘our only direct interest in the maintenance of the federation is
that Nigeria has been developed as an economic unit and any disruption of this
would have adverse effects on trade and development’. If Nigeria were to break
up, he added: ‘We cannot expect that economic cooperation between the component
parts of what was Nigeria, particularly between the East and the West, will
necessarily enable development and trade to proceed at the same level as they
would have done in a unified Nigeria; nor can we now count on the Shell/BP oil
concession being regained on the same terms as in the past if the East and the
mid-West assume full control of their own economies’.
Ojukwu initially tried to get Shell/BP to pay royalties to
the Biafran government rather than the FMG. The oil
companies, after giving the Biafrans a small token
payment, eventually refused and Ojuwku responded by
sequestering Shell’s property and installations, forbidding Shell to do any
further business and ordering all its staff out. They ‘have much to lose if the
FMG do not achieve the expected victory’, George Thomas noted in August 1967. A
key British aim throughout the war was to secure the lifting of the blockade
which Gowon imposed on the east and which stopped oil exports.
In the run-up to
Gowon’s declaration of war, Britain had made it clear to the FMG that it
completely supported Nigerian unity. George Thomas had told the Nigerian High
Commissioner in London at the end of April 1967, for example, that ‘the Federal
government had our sympathy and our full support’ but said that he hoped the
use of force against the east could be avoided. On 28 May Gowon, having just
declared a state of emergency, explicitly told Britain’s Defence
Attache that the FMG was likely to ‘mount an invasion
from the north’. Gowon asked whether Britain would provide fighter cover for
the attack and naval support to reinforce the blockade of Eastern ports; the Defence Attache replied that both
were out of the question.
By the time Gowon
ordered military action in early July, therefore, Britain had refused Nigerian
requests to be militarily involved and had urged Gowon to seek a ‘peaceful’
solution. However, the Wilson government had also assured Gowon of British
support for Nigerian unity at a time when military preparations were taking
place. And Britain had also made no signs that it might cut off, or reduce,
arms supplies if a military campaign were launched.
In lieu of that, making the conservative element victorious
would require them conceding some patronage in appreciation to the mercenaries
that armed and helped them to victory. This targeted patronage is unrestricted
access to the Nigerian Bonny-Light Sweet crude oil wells; lying wholly and
totally within Biafra.
To prove the point that some sections of Nigeria craved a
final solution to what they perceived as the Igbo problem, is the fact that
when Biafra was defeated, the war did not end with the signing of the surrender
documents, as is the case in all warfare. Listen to Achebe as he published a
fact that was never refuted by the actors while they lived. I crave to repeat
earlier cited sections for literal fluidity.
The Civil War gave
Nigeria a perfect and legitimate excuse to cast the Igbo in the role of
treasonable felon, a wrecker of the nation. But thanks to Gowon’s moderating
influence, overt vengeance was not visited on them when their Secessionist
State of Biafra was defeated in Jaunary 1970. But
there were hard-liners in Gowon’s cabinet who wanted their pound of flesh, the
most powerful among them being Chief Obafemi Awolowo,
Federal Commissioner for Finance. Under his guidance a banking policy was
evolved which nullified any bank account which had been operated during the
Civil War. This had the immediate result of pauperizing the Igbo middle class and
earning a profit of 4 million Pounds for the Federal Government Treasury.[xv]
It did not end there.
The indigenization
Decree which followed soon afterwards completed the routing of the Igbo from
the commanding heights of the Nigerian economy to everyone’s apparent
satisfaction.[xvi]
To this end, we dare these actors and their army of
revisionists to refute the fact that Ndigbo have been
badly bruised, battered, and decimated by the collective deceit, criminal
negligence and conspiratorial highhandedness of successive Nigerian
governments.
Further to this, the reactions here are “the beatings of
that generous heart, which is always stirred to anger and action by spectacles
of aggression and oppression by the strong against the weak”.[xvii] It is equally a prophetic call to all that view Ndiigbo as a threat that the bests of this people are not
enemies, but partners in our common project of leaving Nigerian better than we
found it for our children, and posterity to come.
Ndiigbo are one of the most travelled groups in Africa. Their
migratory experiences remain an interface for the intercultural dialogue,
exchange, and tolerance, which has been the basis of every great civilization.
Nigeria and Africa will continue to ignore this fact to their loss and
detriment. If Nigeria continues to deny Ndiigbo their
rightful opportunity of contributing their own quota in this nation, and/or
developing at their own pace, Nigeria will continue to grope in the dark
grottos of poverty and underdevelopment. If that persists, Africa should bid
prosperity a very sad farewell. Injustice has never led to the portals of
peaceful and sustainable development anywhere. Besides injustice anywhere
remains injustice everywhere.
We equally wish to underline the fact that today; there has
been a concerted wave of efforts and attempts to embezzle the significance of
Biafra on all fronts. The Obasanjo’s government
shot itself in the foot, in an attempt to wipe out MASSOB as well as devastate
Anambra State in a gangland-like war sponsored by his presidency; using Chris Ubah as his hatchet man. Wale Adebanwi
recognized this, and brilliantly proffered reasons for this culture of denials,
when he wrote as follows:
There has been a
terribly regrettable, if not shameful culture of “avoiding Biafra”,
particularly among the power elite of other ethnic nationalities, but also
among some Igbo leaders. The Yoruba power elite have been careful not to
acknowledge the display of superior technical competence and resilience that
marked the “Biafran enterprise”, while the
Hausa-Fulani power elite have made deliberate efforts to efface the very notion
of Biafra, let alone accept the dynamics of the attempt to build a putative
Black power nation, which memory will continually shame this cabal in terms of
how its actions squandered the Nigerian Possibility-represented in the failed
separatist enclave. And some Igbo fear the political backlash that may come
with the invocation of a “dead” enterprise-Biafra. This represents one extreme
among contemporary Igbo politician, the “Biafra-phobic” elements, who see their future in politics as tied to the denial of
their Igbo-ness. The other extreme are the “Biafra-philic”
elements, who see a conspiracy against Ndiigbo at every turn and permanently overlooks their own
complicity in the fate that has befallen a proud people.[xviii]
But the fact remains that no matter the amount of
simulations invested in the inglorious enterprise of effacing history, failure
is ontologically engineered to attend its end. The Biafran
truth may be buried for millennia like the Egyptian Pharonic
tombs of antiquity. It may be submerged under intractable layers of
manufactured debris and invented lies. But like the calabash of wisdom
brilliantly articulated in the words of Ovarenmwen Nogbaisi, the tragic
hero of Ola Rotimi’s play, as he addressed the
assembled Benin Court, while passing judgement on two felons, that “no matter how long and
stout the human neck; on top of it must always sit a head”.
No matter how long and deep the layers of misinformation
and conscious denial of Biafra extends, it will always sit in the tribunes of
our socio-political discourse, as an un-propitiated ghost, that haunts all our
attempts to deny it.
Today more than ever, the injustice of Biafra screams for
attention. This becomes more urgent, when one reviews the issues that led to
the birth of Biafra in the first instance, against the backdrops of the
goings-on today. On the first of June, 1969, the then General Odumegwu Ojuwku, in the Ahiara declaration, laid down these issues as the primeval
broth, out of which emerged the Biafran resistance.
Those words of the Ahiara declaration, which was hewn
out of a people’s exasperation, resound today like deja
vu. Thus spake Ojukwu some
moons ago:
Nigeria committed many
crimes against her nationals, which in the end made complete nonsense of her
claim to unity. Nigeria persecuted and slaughtered her minorities; Nigerian
justice was a farce, her elections, her politics, her everything was corrupt.
Qualification, merit and experience were dislocated in public service. In one
area of Nigeria, for instance, they preferred to turn a nurse who has worked
for five years into a doctor, rather than employ a qualified doctor from
another part of Nigeria. Barely literate clerks were made Permanent
Secretaries. A university Vice Chancellor was sacked because he belonged to the
wrong tribe. Bribery, corruption and nepotism were so widespread that people
began to wonder openly whether any country in the world could compare with
Nigeria in corruption and abuse of power.[xix]
If the above were all there was to it, it could have been
tolerable. But to all these, continued Ojukwu, was
the added fact that;
All the modern
institutions; the legislature, the civil service, the army, the police, the
judiciary, the universities, the trade unions and the organs of mass
information were devalued and made tools of corrupt political power. There was
complete neglect and impoverishment of the people. Whatever prosperity there
was was deceptive. ..There were crime waves and
people lived in fear of their lives. Business speculation, rack-renting,
worship of money and share practices left a few people extremely rich at the
expense of the many, and those few flaunted their wealth before the many and
talked about sharing the national cake.[xx]
This instructive thesis was only of introductory import,
when compared with the facts immediately following it. We crave Ojukwu’s indulgence once more:
Then worst of all, came
genocide in which over 50,000 of our kith and kin were slaughtered in cold
blood all over Nigeria and nobody asked questions; nobody showed regret; nobody
showed remorse. Thus, Nigeria had become a jungle with no safety, no justice,
and no hope for our people. We decided then to found a new place, a human
habitation away from the Nigerian jungle. That was the origin of our
revolution.[xxi]
What Ojukwu fingered as the
network of premeditated commissions, designed omissions; structured and planned
mistakes, which all stewed to enslave Nigeria to the whims of Igbophobic elements, and provided the rotten humus for the
germination of Biafra thirty six years ago, has bounced back with more urgency,
and more sophisticated devilry today. A
little foray into the heart of today’s Nigeria will unravel this intersection
between the dark ominous rains of the civil war and the portentous signs of
today, home to all of us.
Nigeria will always hover at the brink of implosion. She
actually runs the risk of really imploding, if the ghosts of Biafra are not
exhumed and given a justifiable audience, propitiation and atonement. Ohaneze Ndiigbo captured the
reasons for this so very well that we cannot resist the temptation of making it
speak for itself. Ohaneze observed:
History is replete with
the lessons that marginalization of people in the final analysis is
UNSUSTAINABLE; for marginalization, if allowed to foster, is capable of
eventually unleashing explosive reactions. Slavery could not endure beyond a
certain point. The vast colonial empires of the European powers had had to be
liquidated. The problems of the minorities in the United States of America are
eventually being addressed through “affirmative action”. The Jewish holocaust
continues to stain the presence of the German race and haunt her future. Ian
Smith’s Rhodesia yielded place to present-day Zimbabwe. Apartheid collapsed under
the weight of suppressed tensions.[xxii]
With this as preamble to their conclusions, they rightly
submitted that:
Marginalization of Ndiigbo if allowed to fester in Nigeria, will resolve
itself autonomously in the fullness of time, but not without untold bloodshed
and social disruption. For ignoring these lessons of history, Yugoslavia,
Somalia, Sudan and Burundi are, today, paying dearly with the blood of their
citizens. The prospects of such a catastrophe are not
farfetched for a country like Nigeria whose volatility has already been
underscored by a civil war.[xxiii]
Nigeria can never escape from poverty and lack of
direction, until the progressive elements, abundantly represented in the Igbo
spirit and their kindred spirits in all Nigerian ethnic nationalities take some
time at the helm of affairs to lead her out of the woods. The detractors know
this. They are afraid of a race that in three years of miniature independence
became the most technologically advanced nation in black Africa. To this end,
if our reactions here are harsh in tone or tincture, it was prompted by the
brazen nature of the assault on these people, and the persistence of their
oppressors in their avowed goal of emasculating Ndiigbo. Our effort here, is equally to arouse in Ndiigbo themselves and other such oppressed folks in
Nigeria, a disdain for the corporate insult being handed down to them in
Nigeria. We must come to realize that to go through life swallowing real
insults, is to compromise one’s self respect,[xxiv] and that in any people that submit willingly to the ‘daily
humiliation of fear, the man dies.[xxv]
We must rise up to demand for what is rightly ours in
Nigeria. Those who profit from this unsustainable status quo should get the
memo. Their fangs should get out of our profusely bleeding flesh. Liberty is
never a gift from the oppressor. It is purchased with the struggles of those
who can no longer bear oppression quietly. The Biafra of today transcends Ndiigbo, to embosom all ordinary Nigerians that are
selfishly exploited by the looting elites and faceless cabal holding Nigeria to
a ransom.
History is replete with examples, which are pointers to the
fact that no oppressor has ever won a prize for benevolence, and that
oppressors never yield their conveniences purchased at others’ supreme
inconvenience without a fight. Pharoanic Egypt would
not let the Jews go, until a medley of punishments broke their feudalistic
resolve. Once it seemed that the plague was abating and there existed the
possibility of their losing their Jewish slaves and the inglorious services,
and cheap, disposable labour accruing therefrom; they gave chase to the fleeing
motley crowd of pilgrims; even to the thresholds of a divided Sea of Reeds.
There, their feudalistic avarice for dominion suffered a fatal defeat.
Rome never gave up her tyrannical dominance over the then
known world until the horde of barbarians from the north forced her hand, and
sent her to an irredeemable decline. The colonial imperialists never gave
Africa political independence until the agitations by the colonised peoples
made the situation so uncomfortable for them that leaving the colonies became
the only sane option.
America wouldn’t have left Vietnam save for the bloody nose
she received there. Neither would the French have left Algeria and French North
Africa, save for the heat generated by the freedom fighters, which rendered
further stay there a suicidal option. Apartheid would still be holding sway in
South Africa, if Mandela, Walter Sisulu and other
freedom fighters folded their arms in inaction or crawled on their knees
begging the white segregationists for clemency and integration.
India will always bow in humble gratefulness to the dogged
persistence of the Great Mahatma Mohandas Karachi Gandhi. The American Blacks
have the sacrifice, fight and doggedness of Martin Luther King Jr. to thank for
the freedoms and respect they now enjoy. Slavery would still have been a
lucrative business in human merchandise, had Wilberforce and others done
nothing to get it abolished. Europe today and the rest of the world would still
have been grovelling under Hitler’s millennialist jackboots and megalomanic vision of a Third Reich, if Churchill,
Roosevelt and Stalin and their allies, did not mobilize their men and materials
to fight this grossly perverted vision of social engineering personified in
Hitler. Six million Jews were reduced to cinders because they were persecuted
into doing nothing in the face of a monumental evil. Many of them left their
defence in the hands of their God, who is the shepherd of Israel. Since God
according to Sophocles, could never help those who would never act, He looked
while they were gassed and cremated for good measure. This was because they
were subdued or tricked into abandoning the principal duty and responsibility
which nature imposed on every living being, namely, self-preservation.[xxvi]
We took pains to situate this in its historical context
because heaven would not help the Igbo nation if Ndiigbo
and every other oppressed Nigerian continue to maintain the kind of postural
inaction and lackadaisical unconcern that they now adopt as an attitude in
Nigeria, while the Oligarchic hegemony continues its rampaging onslaught on the
commonweal. They should not be begged to grant us what is rightly ours; which
is to make Nigeria better for all of us. We must demand for it giving no
quarters and being ready to receive none, like Mandela did, until our rights to
be equal, free and accepted as such in Nigeria is realised to its last
microscopic detail. We all must hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal. The Orwellian doctrine of some animals being more equal
than others, should not be allowed a foothold in Nigeria.
Once again it is liberty and justice that we should pursue.
Secession should only be considered as a last resort. We can reform Nigeria,
and reform the current State of black humanity, if we can get out of the narrow
insularities of prebendal politics, to see the major
issues at stake. Forces of history and conquest brought us together. It is not
a perfect union. We were never consulted on whether we desired that union. But
we can make that union work by sitting down to dialogue out the issues in a
clear manner, which would include everyone. Posterity would demand an account
of what we did with today. The torch has been passed to a new generation of
Nigerians; although the old guard are posing a nelson’s eye to the reality
unfolding daily across the Nigerian Streets and social media. And if we let the opportunity pass by without
utilising it, then we shall bid our tomorrow a very sad goodbye. If that ever
happens, then our existence would have been a vegetative insult to our maker; a
disgrace to our ancestors and an unforgivable affront to liberty.
This we should never allow.
We are equally writing for the liberation, true
enfranchisement and empowerment of our people. We may not be some Moses or some
Nelson Mandela, but we must speak out because the only basis for the triumph of
evil is the conspiratorial or cowardly silence of good men. In relation to our
stand and style, we have appropriated the philosophy, which informed William
Lloyd Garrison’s resolute stand against slavery in all forms, especially as it
appeared in the Negroes of the American plantations. In the first issue of his
Newspaper-The Liberator-he announced to American slave drivers, as well as
slave masters of all times and ages, as we have undertaken to announce to
Nigerian slave drivers of our day:
I shall strenuously
contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population…On this
subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. I am in
earnest- I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a
single inch - and I will be heard.[xxvii]
Ours may be an effusion of bottled anger and
disappointment. Disappointed, that the problem has persisted in murderous
dimensions, although many are very busy pretending as if nothing of consequence
is happening. Disappointed, that the
rape has continued unabated. Disappointed, that some of the victims have joined
the choir singing kumbaya to the phallic prowess of
the rapist. Disappointed, that some are very busy denying the rape happening in
their presence. Disappointed, that a climate of moral lethargy and hypocrisy
has made the perpetuation of the situation possible.
This piece therefore, is our own blow to the shackles and
fetters manacling our flight to greatness. This is our own resolute stand
against the forces of oppression. This is our stone cast at the great harlot of
oppression. This will forever stand to harass the complacence of oppressed
Nigerians into vigilance. It will equally embarrass the oppressive presumptions
of our detractors.
In 1521, Martin Luther stood before Emperor Charles V at
the Diet of Worms on trial for apostasy and heresy; and told him: Hier Stehe ich,
Ich kann nicht anders, Gott
hilfe mir!-Here I stand, I
cannot change it, so help me God! This article you have in your hands will forever
be on trial for apostasy against the gods of Nigerian oppressive illusions. It
is heresy for the oppressors, but a battle cry for liberation. Luther’s words
engendered a reformation that broke the Holy Roman Catholic Church into pieces.
It even induced self-examination and a counter-reformation within the citadels
of misguided deployment of religion represented by the Holy Roman Catholic
Church of those times. This article would have achieved its aims, if it leads
to a critical re-evaluation of the Nigerian state, with the aim of redressing
the injustices that marginalizes large swathes of her population and cripples
her march to greatness.
Here we stand! We do not have a choice! I fully make Edward
R. Murrow’s words my own:
We will not walk in fear,
one of another. We are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared
to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes, which were for the
moment unpopular. This is no time...to keep silent.[xxviii]
This is why we chose to write!
[iv] Wole Soyinka, The Man Died, Ibadan, Spectrum Books, 1972,
p. X
[v] Cf. Mark Curtis. Op. Cit.
[vi] Chinua Achebe: The Trouble with Nigeria. Enugu, Fourth Dimension
Publishers., 1983, p.56
[x] Amy Chua captured well the fate that awaits market dominant minorities
in her seminal work titled World on
Fire; How Exporting Free market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global
Instability, London, Arrow Books, 2003
[xi] Achebe, op. cit. p.57-58
[xii] Chinua Achebe: The Trouble With Nigeria, P. 57
[xiii] Bello Osagie:
Crippled Giant: Nigeria since Independence (Hurst and Co. London.1998) p.5,
cited in Matthew Hassan Kukah: Human Rights in
Nigeria: Hopes and Hindrances, (Missio. Aachen. 2003)
p.6
[xiv] See: Harold Smith. Op. cit.
[xv] Achebe., op cit., p.57
[xvii] Winston Churchill Speech to the House of Commons,
April 17, 1945, at the death of Roosevelt, Great War Speeches, P.342
[xviii] Wale Adebanwi, Ohaneze and the “New Aburi
Accord”Thisday Newspapers, Saturday, May 8, 2004 , p.2
[xxii] Ohaneze Ndigbo’s Petition to the Human Rights Violations
Investigations Commission, head by Justice Chukwudifu
Oputa, 2002, P. 58
[xxiv] Achebe Chinua, “The African Writer and the Biafran Cause”, Essay in Morning Yet on Creation Day,
London, Heinemann, 1975, p.78
[xxv] Soyinka, Op. Cit., P.15
[xxvi] Baruch de Spinoza, the Jewish philosopher equally
shares this view that “Conatus Essendi” or the drive
to remain in being is the force propelling every living being.
[xxvii] An Outline of American History, p.79
[xxviii] Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) an American Broadcaster
and Journalist