Ndi-Igbo
and Biafran War Apologies-A Rejoinder By Odi
Maduneke Again, I
wish to thank H. Osita for the tremendous amount of information in his
article titled as above. It is very important that those of us who are
well meaning and interested in the well being of Ndigbo as well as Ndi
other ethnic groups that make up Nigeria digest the facts of Nigerian
history rather than the propaganda. Only then could we do a meaningful
analysis. The British
colonial masters designed tribalism and inter- ethnic rivalry into
Nigeria from inception in order to divide and conquer. The struggle for
independence was led by the Igbo and Yoruba elite and so the
colonialists allied themselves with the northern elite in order to keep
the activists in check. But their ace was to divide the Igbo elite from
the Yoruba elite. The carpet crossing incident of 1954 which denied
Nnamdi Azikiwe the premiership of Western Nigeria was their opportunity.
This incident destroyed the unity and trust between the Igbo and the
Yoruba elite. It is generally cited as one of the tribalist crimes of
Obafemi Awolowo. This may be so, but it does not explain why those who
crossed the carpet ran the election under the NCNC and leadership of
Nnamdi Azikiwe in the first place. There must be some other powerful
reason - MONEY. Awolowo was not in a position to buy so many people. It
has come to light that, in-fact, that the British colonialists financed
that precisely to achieve their aim of dividing their most formidable
opposition. This incident is critical in understanding the subsequent
set up of the first republic. Only in Nigeria out of the countries of
Africa did the leader of the struggle for independence, Nnamdi Azikiwe,
fail to be the first chief executive of the independent state, with the
exception of the Congo where Patrice Lumumba was murdered. On the other
hand , this may have saved Zik’s life. In the secret memoirs of a
British ex-colonial administrator, this option of assassination was
definitely considered and actually attempted, but with the success of
the parting of ways between the Igbo and Yoruba leaders as a result of
the carpet crossing incident, they had an effective strategy for
containing both Zik and Awolowo. So, the
politics of Nigeria by British design was based on the competition
between the elite classes of the three main ethnic groups, Igbo. Yoruba
and Hausa/Fulani. It is important to point out that the rank and file
Igbo and Yoruba masses were in very similar positions with respect to
the colonialists. They were the workers in the colonial administration.
They were the technicians , teachers, plantation workers, mine workers
etc. Those in the villages lived by subsistence farming and gathering
agricultural products for export by British firms. There was and still
is a big difference between the elite who aspire to be the masters of
the society and the rank and file who continue to toil from morning to
night in order to survive. The masses of the north were equally
relatively unaffected by the position of dominance by their elite
leaders. Since colonial times they were the most impoverished of the
three ethnic groups and remain so. The crises of Nigeria has really been the crises of the elite classes of the different ethnic groups as they compete for what the colonialists are leaving for them. By pretending , now to be moderators, the colonialists maintain their economic and even political control. The Biafran war was the direct result of this set up. The Igbo rank and file masses were sacrificed in this inter-elite struggle. The rank and file Ndigbo, therefore, owe no apologies to anyone with regards to the Biafran war. If anything Ojukwu owes them an apology similar to Gowon’s. The Igbo elite appear to be in disarray. A section of the Igbo elite siezed leadership with Ojukwu from the more seasoned section around Zik during the crises that led to the civil war. They were beaten. It seems, somehow, difficult for them to understand that it is their leadership that led to their defeat after sacrificing the lives of millions of Igbo rank and file masses. They have not been able to take a critical look at their leadership until now. Rather they cling to Ojukwu’s war propaganda as facts. Orji Kalu represents a certain section of the Igbo elite. He may have decided that it is time to concede in order to be reintegrated into the booty sharing party in Abuja. He does not speak for the rank and file Ndigbo whom he should also apologize to on behalf of his class. |