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Becoming
the Turning Point On Biafran War View: Can That Be By Patrick
Iroegbu Alberta,
Canada Having
read a number of comments brought forward on the above issue critiquing
Governor Orji Kalu on whether or not this Governor is the fulfilling
vision and voices of the Igbo. I make a clean breast that insights and
analyses of what an authentic Igbo leader ought to be and say regarding
the history of the Biafran war have been so highlighted for proper
understanding. Generally, the Igbo will continue to see themselves as
special people once it comes to questioning their struggle for existence
in Nigeria’s complex sociocultural and political givens. They are
special because their chi
(God) gave them wisdom to be who they are. It gave them the mindset to
walk the hard path and find meaning and life in their socially situated
identity and value in Africa. The Biafran-Nigerian war proved this
context as true to people whose self-reliance, creativity and goodfaith
in themselves for their own God (chi
ha) given existence could fight a war with virtually nothing as a
back-up. Although
political authoritarian nuances sometimes tag the Igbo as defeated in
the said war of self-defence. For the Igbo, this is untrue. They were
not. After all, there was no victor no vanquished or anyone defeated as
proclaimed at the end of the war. Having said that, it suggests that the
Igbo will never go down in history as defeated people in the struggle
for their survival and existence in the geographical spread of their
identity and value. Across the world, they are making news in
communities where they live and labour. Informed by the fact that some
half-baked leaders are turning the episodic war unfairly to gain
national political attention and self-position for inclusion is a
development that must not stand. One among them is Governor Orji Kalu of
Abia State. This
submission, being prompted by the most recent outburst of Governor Orji
Kalu to the Press at Muritala Muhammad Airport, explores further the
psychological implications of this Governor’s public statement on the
Biafran Question calling it a mistake and appealing to Nigerians to
forgive the Igbo on the said war. It is argued here that the
Governor’s statement is callous and regrettable. The Biafran question
as I will further illustrate, did not come as a surprise to the
operators of the war. As such, the war unfolded according to the
circumstances that permitted it. Biafra
is one of the greatest themes of modern Nigerian and African history.
Its narrative is on-goingly explored. Yet it should not be irresponsibly
done or verbally opinionated to undo history. Years after Biafra, it is
determined that the Biafran story will continue to rear up. There exist
trends to remind us that Biafra, and indeed, African genocide is as much
a worthy subject of creative explanation, writing and exploration.
Sensibly, it is a subject related to colonialism, slavery and genocide
by the Northern ethnicities in Nigeria and the Federal government of
Nigeria on the Igbo. The burdens of the Igbo in the hands of the ethnic
terrorists of the North have continued by extension in insensitive
statements to undo issues and thus accept historical deprivations of the
said war. Some self-claiming Igbo are attempting to thwart the social
facts of the war. This must be resisted in strong words and through
continuous education linked to that war that is re-making this modern
Nigeria. However, the
Biafran question, it must be emphasized here, is continuing in diverse
ways. As they do rear up, they open new perspectives for considerable
critical attention. Recently,
the Governor of Abia State, Mr. Orji Uzor Kalu threw a bombshell on the
Igbo. What did he do? He told Nigerians that the Igbo was in error to
fight a war to save their lives during the carnage they faced in the
North and various parts of Nigeria that led to Biafran war. This
statement is one of a misinformed sort emerging from a youthful Igbo
political Governor of our time. Regretting the Biafran war by this
Governor and calling it a mistake is unexpected. Governor Orji Kalu is
leading Abia Sate, mostly on pretended assumption that he is about the
best. This he does at one of the main geopolitical cities of Biafra from
Umuahia. Here is where the Nigeria-Biafra war museum is even sited and
administered. It is curious if this outspoken governor, although often
with difficulty and eloquence, actually understands the meaning of a war
museum in his own state capital. The symbols of Biafran war placed in
that museum speak for themselves about the validity or not and
consequences of that war. Having said that the Biafran war incident was
a mistake is a cause for alarm and shock to what those symbols appear to
represent. There
is some alert if he is becoming delusional, that is facing some
political and power-mind troubles that might need some examination and
psychological counselling. The utterance carried by Vanguard Newspaper
of 8th September, 2003 is chilly and orchestrated of this
governor. It should not have happened per
se. In fact, his aides should have dropped him a note right across
the table to modify his utterance on the spot, which failed to happen.
Flatly, he must make bold to apologize to NdiIgbo in strong and
unconditional words. A few apologies coming from his aides and the
Governor himself when cornered by the press cannot be sufficient enough
to undo the damage done. He must make a broadcast and really apologize.
That is what a reasonable politician should do, to show enough regret
for the insensitivity shown. For these so-called apologies which were
rather further arguments of arrogance, see The
Guardian September 17th and Daily Champion September 17th,
2003. Ultimately,
there is no way, no matter how powerfully placed or argued, to cover the
lapses that the Governor’s recent utterance on the Igbo-Biafran
question is not so unfortunate. It is indeed one that is making the Igbo
world sad again. Following the statement credited to Orji Kalu, saying
that the war was a mistake on the part of the Igbo; and appealed to
Nigerians to forgive the Igbo over the civil war, one cannot but yell
foul at it. The Igbo in entirety are facing this outrageous appeal and
blaming as considerably off the mark of proper sensibility to their
chosen course of war for survival.
The unfortunate statement is a bother, sacrilegious and
unacceptable. As such, the Igbo have no hesitation to grief it. With
hurt feeling, the Igbo are grieving! A governor such as Orji Kalu should
well help the Igbo recover and cope with their great human, economic and
socio-political status loss caused by that inevitable war event. It must
be understood that that war was unavoidable on the part of the Igbo.
Well, that said, the Igbo were compelled and made to become the model
slaughtering-sacrificial-ethnic-community persons of the nation. Helping
the Igbo recover into the mainstream, which the PDP State Leaders like
Orji Kalu must know, cannot be gained through cheap political
unwarranted popularity and careless talks. Such unguarded statements may
be so costly like the one in question here.
Biafra
remains a most unpopular Nigerian misfortune well documented in history,
story books and literature of war. It marked the first State sponsored
ethnic genocide in Africa imposed by the Nigerian Sate power of the
General Yakubu Gowon’s time. Since after that genocidal war aimed at
the extermination of the Igbo given all sorts of strategies applied to
do so by the prosecutors. It is quick to realize that not much has
changed in terms of economic, and psychological matched physical
development of Igbo areas reflecting the Federal presence when compared
with the rest of Nigeria. The fact that Igbo people are curious to
achieve things for themselves, their limitations are also obvious.
People visiting Igbo areas are always shocked regarding, for example,
the deadly Federal roads. In light of the deplorable situation of road
lives in the southeast, it reached a point when quite recently, the Abia
State Legislators went on hunger strike. They did so in order to give
the devastating state of the roads a political and social weight for the
Federal attention it so much deserved. Is that development not
illustrating what further implications of the continued war on the Igbo
that Mr. Orji Kalu is short of appealing to Nigerians that it was a
mistake? The war is on the Federal abusive roads since lives are being
lost on daily basis around the same axis of the Biafran region.
Right
from 1914 when Lord Lugard’s leadership of British colonialism
mistakenly amalgamated Nigeria, things have never been the same. Before
then, the Igbo had seen themselves driven by spaces of development and
achievement, thereby served across Nigeria as community connectors in a
national spirit. But the same Igbo had been misjudged historically and
economically. Things will change, it is hoped, when brilliant minds and
politically matured persons take over power in the polity. As it is
being craved for, that has not happened yet in people like Orji Kalu.
A
large number of Ex-Biafran soldiers that fought that self-defensive war
against the imposed genocidal war are still alive. Generations following
the war are being transmitted this event is typically cultural and
social. Thus, the very small boys and girls that experienced the horrors
are now in their late thirties and mid and late forties. So the
experiences are still fresh to the extent that imagining what happened
in Biafran question is out the issue. The causes of the war were as real
as the implications that followed that war during and after it. One
continues to wonder what actually led the said Governor Orji Kalu into
making that unfortunate statement of regret, and appeal to Nigerians to
forgive the Igbo. On the natural clinic of justice, natural innocence
appeals to natural justice. One can only appeal for forgiveness of
wrongs that were unnatural. Naturally, the Igbo fought a natural war to
position their natural right for survival. As such, there is no need for
anyone to apologize on their behalf of what was, and what they
considered natural to them for their natural existence.
No
matter how it may be said or defended on the contrary to favour the
perpetrators of the killings and continued marginalization of the Igbo,
it is all politics of domination. Doing such inimical apology, as
Governor Orji Kalu did has consequently loathed the Igbo as a whole. The
Governor is sure with the present posture he is showing that he is not
grieving with the Igbo in the generational implications of the war. His
most recent so-claimed apology as noted before is not apology so to say.
It is a further argument of generational gap that makes his case even
worse. War is war and the consequences are shared by generations of the
affected group or people. It is unfortunate that this Governor is still
holding an opinion that the present generations of the Igbo youth were
not part of the Biafran war and should be hooked out of it through
insensitive apology. By that he meant they did not carry guns and
thereby did not physically execute the war. He forgets that these youths
were being carried by their parents at the back, most often abandoned by
the raiding war planes and agonizing Gowon soldiers and Awo
hunger-master weapon screaming. Most suffered all kinds of diseases of
the war unleashed via biological weapons. Acute hunger, starvation,
influenza and kwashiorkor were ridiculously uncontrollable and commonly
devastating. Sovereignty
of expression if it is prayed to here does not and will not mean freedom
of idiocy and unguarded public statement to humiliate others,
communities and individuals combined. Freedom of speech and expression
is one allowing people to express themselves responsibly. In this case,
Orji Kalu as Governor is less cautious and therefore abusive of the Igbo
self-survival event in operating that war in their very own traditional
and ancestral homeland. The
war politics can be expressed simply like this. Someone said, instead of
killing me and abusing me everyday in time and space in your so-called
ethnic community geographical holding, let me go home. I am gone. I want
to live this life, do not kill me further in this one Nigeria meant for
the North for the North and South for the South against the wisdom of
fostered nationalism. Going home to Igboland, the Igbo did, earned them
the Federal military force coloured in all regrettable atrocities in war
history. It is by unfairly forgetting this that Mr. Orji Kalu is turning
around to tell the same Igbo dead and alive that it was a mistake. It
was not. Self-defense is allowed in the concept of defence
law, for justice and peace. That was what Biafra did. Mr. Orji Kalu
should be told this right on because he does not reconcile history with
his present emotional, detrimental and unjust and acultural outburst.
Not
until this ridiculous statement of Orji Kalu came up, many have been
perceiving this youthful governor as a genuine son of Igbo people who
should say all the truth and nothing short of the truth of the Igbo at
all times and in all places. But what we just heard and read, as
reported by the Vanguard Newspaper of 9/8, is rather not the case. Up
until now, he has not denied this. Rather than equivocally denying and
apologizing, he is still arguing that he did right in saying so for
reasons so biased and gutted also to stand the test of argument. Should
Orji Kalu convoke a conference in his state of Abia and retell the Igbo
and Nigeria that the Biafran question was a mistake and get away with it
or remain a Governor from that arena? I will doubt if he will. I will
doubt it because; his perspective will never be true. It will be
categorically faulted, called to order and questioned for
irresponsibility. Vote of no confidence will legitimately be canvassed
on him and called to keep quiet and finish his term or resign or go back
to his Ariaria Stockfish business.
Anyway,
becoming a State Governor in Nigeria does not imply the said Governor is
the best leader out there we can have to speak and act appropriately.
Many are unfortunately imposed on the people as leaders. They are merely
the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Warrant Political State Chiefs, so
to say. Like the concept of “warrant chieftaincy” in Igboland
illustrates, such leaders are hand-puppets, dummy, marionettes,
misguided, used as instrument of physical and psychological torture to
dominate and exploit their very own people’s identity, value,
resources and society’s status quo ante as a whole. In this way, Mr. Orji Kalu is a metaphor
of double face. He blows hot and cold at the same time, whichever way
that might suite his purposes. The
news that this Governor has been receiving informed University education
was a welcome thing for most Igbo people. It is because; their leaders
are expected to be informed and foresighted with ability to use
oratorical skills and diplomacy. But it is appearing that this Governor
is falling short of this expectation. Not making suitable use of the
education at Abia State University where he is currently a postgraduate
student in International Relations and Diplomacy is a serious handicap.
A diplomatic student will not go so low to be unmindful of his public
utterances in the capacity of a Governor. He should be visited by
University authorities for a review before things get worse. The
Igbo are weeping for many reasons most of which writers have variously
illuminated in this column. I have also mentioned some above. Apparently
some of the Igbo supposed forward looking leaders often turnaround and
become conscience twisters of truth for their own selfish interests.
This must be continuously checked too. As a matter of fact, Alfred
Uzokwe among others has written on this issue and strongly emphasized
the unbecoming pronouncements of Orji Kalu and his likes. See “Orji
Kalu and the Politics of Self Interest: He Wants Biafrans to
Apologize” (Nigeriaworld.com Sept., 10, 2003). There is need to grief
all of these now. This is informed by the fact that the Igbo are
thinking and planning to lead the Nigerian presidency in the next
elections and term of office. They require credible persons with
credible mindsets to arrive at it. This is not happening with the
unsound and costly humiliatory view played out by Mr. Orji Kalu
recently. And it is worth grieving for it.
The
concept of ‘grieving’ is well known in the face of misfortune and
perpetrated hardship of various political and social dimensions. To
grief is to be abstemious, restrained, sober, and weary and moreover,
requires one being or helped to be clearly on guard. Nelson Madela of
South Africa is a symbol of apartheid in grieving. He knows what it is
and plays the game wisely. Former Governor Sam Mbakwe of Imo State lived
the conscience of Igbo leadership and value. His records are yet
unbroken. If he were to be healthy again and become active to relive the
conscience of the Igbo, there is no doubt he will rank like Bill Clinton
of USA in managing Nigerian political affairs and international
interests. Such leaders express themselves responsibly and credibly.
Igbo leaders should learn from such heroes as Nelson Mandela and Sam
Mbakwe. Governor Sam Mbakwe fought for the abandoned property of the
Igbo in Rivers State and others. If Governor Orji Kalu will apologize
for the Igbo, let him start by righting the wrongs like Sam Mbakwe
showed a huge example. Modern
political PDP leaders should not sell their ethnicism cheap and wreck
the foundation of their being who the Igbo are and ought to be in the
mainstream. Mandela refused to sell out South Africa in order to be
released from prison, live or become a hero. Neither did Governor Sam
Mbakwe as a lawyer refuse to stop fighting the cause of the Igbo in
order to win re-election as an Nigerian People’s Party (NPP) leader in
the crucial election war of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) against
Imo State during the Alhaji Shehu Shagari and Dr. Alex Ekwueme
administration. So is expected of any democrat for the Igbo in the
mainstream Nigeria. The point is, holding the reality of Biafra as it
happened will do the Igbo psychology good than twisting it with
insensitive apology.
Nigeria
is diverse, culturally speaking. Yet, it is hoped to thrive in diversity
and sustain stability. That does not entail regional state leaders to
loose the reason their people hold as important to them in the national mis-en-scene.
Such leaders are expected to draw from ethnic reasons to foster
centrality, not division, not demeaning, and not swimming in insensitive
obsequiousness. The stereotyping of the Igbo in Biafranism should not be
touted unwisely. Calling it a mistake is so sad, and utterly
inconsistent with their reason d’etre,
in the face of humiliations
they were made to suffer in the land of the North and in the position,
which the Federal powers took against them. One calling the episode of
this war a mistake on the side of the Igbo is doing so at his or her
lack of informed history, articulate opinion and related Igbo cultural
diligence. The one doing so thereby is expressing cowardice and fickle
mindedness and should not contend Igbo public discourse in the Nigerian
and international contexts.
Grieving
this Biafran war poliking, furthermore, is exercising emotional
expression for a great loss, due to a great calamity, war and
catastrophe. Grieving can be caused, or destined by design of inability
to avert the war to occur. Careless and uncontrolled outbursts can cause
mistakes for grief, as it is for now. Great politicians had fallen
because of reckless talks. Orji Kalu is about to fall and should be
helped, if necessary. Trent
Lott, the former USA Senate leader lost his position due to uncontrolled
racist outburst for praise of Congressman Thurmond’s 100th Birthday
Tribute on Capitol Hill. Mr. Lott praised that “The way His home state
of Mississippi had voted for Thurmond in 1948 was right. We were proud
of it”, he said. And if the rest of the country (USA) had followed our
lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years.” That
was a nostalgic appeal to Southern segregationism and the Dixiecrats
raising larger questions about ways major parties continue to incite and
appeal to race in various guises in order to achieve fragile governing
coalitions. Unloading Trent Lott, may be what Republicans need (Nigeriaworld.com
Jan. 15, 2003). Senator Trent Lott, realizing his error following the
public outcry and criticism, apologized for his choice of words, and
promised to work and make sure that every American has a fair and equal
opportunity in life. He further denounced his insensitivity, and claimed
he did not mean to be endorsing policies of 54 years ago. But it was too
late, too understood. While Trent Lott was encouraging racism in the
case of USA historical circumstances, Mr. Orji Kalu is supporting the
killing of the Igbos in the North that resulted in the brutal war of
three years (1967-1970). If Lott said, his home town was right to
sustain racist strategies, Orji kalu in the same way is saying that
Nigerian North and the Federal Government as at then was right to
sustain the killing of the Igbo in their thousands and making all parts
of the country hell for their survival, including even Igboland itself.
That is why he has the urge and gut feeling to appeal to Nigerians to
forgive the Igbos as their own killing by other ethnicities was the
mistake of the Igbo. This is a sheer case of insensitivity to the
Igbo-Biafran reality. If there is any apologetic thread of logic to
merit considering the Governor’s argument, it must be nothing other
than a faulty one, totally ahistorical to the Igbo cultural position and
a write off so to say. QED.
Another
example will illustrate this further. A Canadian Native Elder, DAVID
AHENAKEW, was made to face probe over Hitler praise for ordering the
deaths of 6 million Jews that led to World World 11. He told the
Saskatoon Star Phoenix at a Conference on Native Health Care that “Hitler
acted to make sure that the Jews did not take over Germany (cf. Social
Darwinism and Eugenics Movements). So he fried six million of those
guys, you know. Jews would have owned the goddamned world. And look at
what they are doing, he further said. They are killing people in Arab
countries” he concluded, referring to terrorism. This did not stay
unchallenged in Canada where people express themselves responsibly, and
failing of which results in consequences appropriate to what happened.
The incitement attracted reactions. Thus, politicians, Jewish activists,
and aboriginal leaders came out bold in their own appropriate terms. For
all of these groups, they perceive Canada as a country that prides
itself as a diverse and tolerant nation and such comments are considered
unusual, especially from a member of a group that believes it has been
mistreated historically. David Ahenakew’s comment was concluded as
insulting to Jewish people who have at all times supported Canadian
First Nations struggles. The point here is also this. Vicious and vile
remarks stagger the mind and sicken the heart. Mr. Orji Kalu has
provoked one out there in like manner. Back
home in Igbo area again. Following how costly it is when a public person
engages in vile remarks; one time Governor Ukpabi Asika of former
East-Central State of Nigeria had it hot when he told Igbo people that
leadership is like Pea roasting. He whose Pea roasts, licks it up, he
said. And he was offered basins and baskets of Pea by the Igbo women
whose suffering and rehabilitation were becoming unbearable in the years
following after the war. There are several ways emerging leaders expose
their arrogance in the name of diligent leadership. Governor Orji Kalu
is untidy with the use of language. The Biafran question is a serious
one that every leader should be mindful of at addressing. Although the
Biafran question is constantly out there; it cannot be dodged. Leaders
of means and worth should face it and address it carefully. There is
need to tutor aspiring political leaders on the political history of
Nigeria, in particular the Biafran cause. Doing so will help check
against idiosyncrasy and unguarded utterances that will not be good for
the states and the nation building of Nigeria.
However,
the history of human society unfolds countless episodes of political
grief. The Christian Bible accounts for stories of grief. All nations
that had ever faced war tell stories of grief. Nigeria-Biafra war
emerged as a historic circumstance necessitated by historical problem of
leadership. It was one that will remain a lesson for Nigerian nation to
build on and fence off such devastation from re-occurring in words and
in action. Biafra as a geographically and physically, and not
objectively, defeated self-determining republic came into being to
escape continued massacre of her peoples in their thousands in the North
of Nigeria. During the war, remember the 30,000; was the norm. That is
the thirty thousand killed being a reality in slogan for mustering
courage to resist further castration and pogrom against the Igbo in the
North and of the Federal vindictiveness. Hence the Igbo were singing
warsomely songs such as chetakwanu
30,000, enyi ooh enyi ooh enyi (literally meaning remember the
30,000 Igbos slaughtered). And on account of that, Biafra must
preserver, foster and thus survive. That was the one that
captured the ordeal and horror-metaphor of their pogrom in 1966
through 1967 in the North and across Nigeria. Reflecting their agony,
indeed, it was a common soldierly and Boys’ Company chanson among
others. School
pupils marched in schools with it, this I recall widely. Orji Kalu
should update himself with this fact of Igbo-Biafra as a public
definition underlying the war event. Especially that when one is being
killed, the one runs away to safety. General Ojukwu, the Biafran
Self-determining Head of State found it imperative to act responsibly
for the life and safety of the Igbos being butchered and scavenged
around Nigeria. So Ojukwu after facilitating and enabling consultations
and by total Igbo expectation rightly declared the Igbo geographical
region as Biafra and the only Save-haven and called on the Igbo to
return home and receive protection and care. That was how Biafra was
born. It was a last resort seeking self-determinable refuge. A last
decision consultatively and collectively taken to serve the last hope
for the harassed, killed, and fingered Igbo persons in the Nigerian
polity and Northern Islamic hatred of the progressive and republican
culture and socialization of the Igbo in their own fundamental human and
community right of habitation in any part of the common Nigerian
geographical nationalism. One
simple question one can raise for Governor Orji Kalu here is now this.
And I hope he will have the opportunity to read this piece among others
and respond to the entirety of Igbo community. As a Governor of Abia
State, if news breaks out today that Abia people in various parts of the
Northern Nigeria are being slaughtered and messed up. What will he do?
And let us here pre-empt the reasonable fact that he will swiftly call
on the Federal Government and other powers that be to help him in the
cause of protecting Abia people. If then after all efforts failed and
Abia people remained being increasingly killed, with their property
unsafe, and with more ethnocentrism to deepen the drive out of the Abia
people from anywhere in the North where they may be struggling to assert
themselves and live, without regard to the Governor’s appeals and
negotiations (local and international), what will he do? If calls are
mounted on him as the Abia State Governor to do something, no matter
what it takes to protect the life and property of the Abia people in the
circumstance, what will he do? If his position in the given circumstance
is threatened further either by calls to resign or do the wishes of the
people, what will he do? Let
us also suggest that one is to ask the Abia people to return home to
Abia geographical space for safety and care, would he not ask people
from Abia being killed and horrified daily to now return to their
customary homeland of Abia as a last resort? If so to say, the people he
is mandated to serve urge on him persistently to lead them out of the
hell of the Federation of Nigeria, will he abandon their hopes and
wishes for their safety and survival? Just what would Governor Orji Kalu
do in the face of the crisis of unending nature that has been facing the
Igbo for too long? It will be interesting to hear Honourable Dr.
Governor Orji Kalu respond. We will wait to hear him speak. And it will
be right to do so now.
In
addition, when people are being killed, they run for their lives. No one
will voluntarily, and under normal circumstances, choose to become a
refugee in another person’s land. Refugeeing in war crisis occurs
because those running away do so with the urge, curiosity, and drive to
live. Staying out of the way of one’s enemy you know that will kill
the one, as the enemy has been doing, is a wise thing to do. It is
making effort to reorganize and defend oneself. Biafra did so to be able
to survive and live again. Mr. Orji Kalu is alive today and a Governor
of a State because on the side of the Igbo, the right decision, given
the circumstances, was taken. It was appropriate collective decision to
stay alive rather than a mistake. If the Igbo continued to submit to the
Northern and Federal human butchers and scavengers, then that would have
been the so-called mistake Mr. Orji Kalu is referring to. But the Igbo
did not make that irresponsible mistake. So it was a war of oppressed
people who sought for a described geographical space to call their own.
Their own in order to just survive and live. That was Biafra. A declared
republic that was forced upon them to offer needed refuge, safety and
hope that Nigeria failed to give the Igbo in the geographical Northern
space of Nigeria (cf. Ojukwu). Survivors
of that pogrom have a right to tell their hurt feelings about the war in
ways appropriate to their cause. They saw national betrayal. They
experienced national killing. And moreover, they sustained national
deprivation of common food and medical care. Hunger was a war weapon
(Awo’s brain child, then Minister of Finance) used against the
international practice. It was such that the Igbo were considered
non-humans and were considerably so treated. To define and assert their
right to life, and spaces of normality, they came struggling to say no
to those atrocities. Should Orji Kalu now understand why Biafran cause
is not a mistake? Regrets. It is grieving time to wipe the sufferings of
the dehumanized Igbo in the context of uncivilized corrupt Nigerian
ethnic politics.
In
all political decency, education is important since it helps to remove
ignorance and idiosyncrasy. But this is real for a supposed achieving
political student and practitioner like Orji Kalu. He must be made to
come to terms with the right position on the Biafran question. What he
is saying now if unchecked will be cancerous, and elastically turn
pan-demonic. If unchecked, the little pride and respect the Igbo may
have in the present Nigerian disposition will become tumultuous,
disordered and roughed, thus disabling them entirely and critically.
This governor has become excessively insulting, misleading and
ahistorical of and to the Biafran question and concerns.
Lastly, some recent events in Nigeria, particularly the ongoing
Dr. Chris Ngige saga in Anambra State portrayed this gentleman Governor
Orji Kalu as a possibility and vocal label on the Igbo cause. People had
reasoned his emerging outcry for appropriate justice against the episode
as the Chairman of the Union of South-Eastern Governors to be something
to note. Sadly, this is now twisted, and purely inverted on the Biafran
question. The same Igbo he spoke for in Anambra civilian coup d’etat
saga to uproot the sitting Governor Ngige is the same Igbo he has turned
around to condemn on the Biafran concerns. If he has the audacity to
make this pronouncement even now when Chief Dim Ojukwu who prosecuted
the war is still alive and active in Nigerian politics. One increasingly
wonders what will happen if he dies? If all Igbo leaders would follow
the example of Mr. Orji Kalu and start making such horrendous
pronouncements, calling the war a mistake, and appealing to Nigerians to
forgive the Igbo, history will be doing wrong rather than documenting
reality in time and place of human and societal activities and events. Mr.
Orji Kalu will fail to make this wrong turning point on the Biafran
question. I live you to imagine what written records and the treatment
of the Igbo in Nigerian society will also turn out to be if this is
allowed to rest. If also what Mr. Orji Kalu said against the Biafran
question will stay unchallenged, and unconditionally unrepented, how
would the neglect of physical development and distribution of resources
fair well with the Igbo? What will the generations of the Igbo mature
into as reality of the history of the Igbo in Nigeria? I
recall names on the Biafran question people like Chief Dim Ojukwu
insisting that the war was justified. He has further, in many instances,
strongly argued that any other leader in his position would have done
what he did to save the Igbo society from extermination. No reasonable
Igbo have challenged this because he acted out the collective wishes of
the Igbo. Till now, he is still appreciated as the voice and vision of
the Igbo collective survival agenda. If he had mistaken the expectations
of the Igbo for his own selfish interest, the Igbo being what they are
in their republican nature, identity and value, will not hesitate to
look down on this gentle man, Dim Ojukwu. The Igbo have not, because he
carved out and reinforced respect and identity for them in the Nigerian
sociocultural, political and economic changing mainstream. I
do also recall Dr. Yakubu Gowon apologizing for the war that jeopardized
and incarcerated the Igbo. After realizing that the causes of the war
and what happened during the war were issues he would have handled much
better. So much happened more than what he could understand and accept
for correction and change leading beyond what his led national
imagination made aware to him. If all these key players are telling us
all of these, there is then much hope that room for change can still be
persuaded. But how come then Mr. Oji Kalu would be the turning voice and
vision of a war he appears to fail to understand? There are many
questions; provocative as they are that can be raised here. The issue
now is that Governor Orji Kalu should be called to order in this
enigmatic and unwarranted posture he is showing. It is wrong, unmerited
and condemnable. The Biafran question is a reality of the Igbo in Nigeria, yesterday, today and all. It must not be viewed as a mistake on the part of the Igbo. It must also not necessitate appealing to Nigerians to forgive the Igbo that sought refuge and care in Biafra denied them by the same Nigerians. Governor Orji Kalu is false on this issue; he is a sabo to Igbo identity and what they consider to be their existential value and reality in Nigerian mainstream. He must retract this uncalled for apology now with a right televised broadcast and suitable press conference. He should redeem a historical and political correctness, rather than turning the philosophical and social facts of the Biafran war episode through apology that is a grand mal. |