Ndi-Igbo and Biafran War Apologies-A Rejoinder

By

Odi Maduneke

odimaduneke@yahoo.com

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.