The Instruments of Emasculation

By

franklyne ogbunwezeh

ogbunwezeh@yahoo.com

 

 

Scalpel is a surgeon’s most trusted instrument. It is indispensable. With it he could gain an unrestricted access into the body of his patient. With it he invades the sectors of his patient’s body that holds interest or promise for his skill and competence. With it equally, he could navigate the furthest extremes or the innermost protoplasmic sanctum of his patient’s physiology. A scalpel is for a surgeon what a knife is for a butcher. Despite nomenclatural and geometric differences in name and shape, both instruments have the flesh as their exclusive province of operation and deployment. One essays to restore health by an invasion and /or excision of diseased interiors, while the other battles to put sufficient protein supplements on human dining tables.

 

A scalpel is equally employed in minor surgical incisions that may have an eternal consequence in the life of a patient. It could be used in the transformation of a patient from a potential father or genitor of offspring to a certifiable eunuch. This procedure is technically known as sterilization, castration, or emasculation

 

Whenever these two instruments fall into the hands of quacks, many lives could be senselessly lost, both human and animal. On the human side of the divide, heaven gains the patronage of many uninvited guests, while the animal world is depopulated with sadistic relish. The same holds true when power falls into the hands of megalomaniacs. History is a better judge of what has happened and what would happen in such a situation. The mass murder of 6 million European Jews by Hitler, the iron curtain that was the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin, and the blatant decimation of Uganda under Idi Amin Dada are some footnotes to this.

 

Power is like the scalpel. It could speak health for the people or it could be deployed as an instrument of oppression and emasculation of a select assemblage of people. It is in this light that we wish to x-ray the instruments deployed in the emasculation of Ndigbo in Nigeria.

 

Many Instruments have been employed in this war against Ndigbo. Many of these instruments were subtle and subterranean, while its overt manifestation includes the civil war, in which the British connived with their northern vassals, in a grand conspiracy to teach Ndigbo an eternal lesson. The routine incineration and torching of markets where Igbo interests and holdings supersede that of others, the avalanche of routine armed uprisings directed against Ndigbo in all parts of Nigeria, the direct attacks on Igbo interests cloaked under the garb of Islamic fundamentalist riots, the Sharia which is nothing but an attempt to Islamise Nigeria and balkanize a sizeable portion of the Nigerian Christians that has Ndigbo in its majority are all some of the tools deployed in the war against Ndigbo in Nigeria.

 

Prior to the civil war, the British perceived the dexterity and adaptability of Ndigbo as arrogance. The unyielding recalcitrance of Azikiwe and the fiery brand of nationalism of the Zikist movement troubled the digestion of the colonial office. Likewise the 1929 Aba Women riot and the Enugu Coal miners uprising of 1949, which all took place in the Igbo hinterland.  Against the backdrop of all these, Britain saw Ndigbo as the only stubborn resistance they may encounter in their bid to use Nigeria as a perpetual vassal. This did not go down well with their strategic interest and neo-colonial agenda. To this end, they made Nigeria an arrangement that will perpetually favour the Hausa-Fulani oligarchy that had proved their mettle as subservient vassals of perpetual value. The fact is that “it was the British who, having politically set up the North to be bigger than the South, planned to hand over to them, an army that was more than 50% northern’[1]

 

The British had this natural indisposition and phobia for the Igbo. This is accounted for by the fact that success breeds envy, contempt and hatred. Moreover a conquistador never dines in peace with an ungenuflecting rebel, even if the rebel has been temporarily subdued. He knows that if the race had been on equal terms, the scale will tip to his disadvantage. So the conqueror slept with an eternal apprehension, that the captive would break to freedom. His apprehensions were right as it was based on experience. The Igbo man will say “ He who deprived a child of his toy by raising it up, will definitely put down the toy for the child once his muscles start to rebel over the strain”

 

That the Igbo is a rebel is simply because he grew up in a republican ambient, that is superlatively impervious to dictatorship. And this, the British found too hot to handle. They stage-managed the independence that was spearheaded by Ndigbo to the advantage of their errand boys.

 

A dispassionate look at the operations of this exploitative ogre will reveal the following instruments in operation.

 

A: Quota System, Federal Character and the canonization of mediocrity

 

A society that prefers the best of the worst to the worst of the best,

will be frozen in the Arctic of mediocrity. She will slumber through development

and greatness. Such will remain a race of pygmies.

Ogbunwezeh

 

Even before the coup the North was offered an unfair preferential advantage of intakes in the federal establishments and institutions like the army and other sundry services. This is to show you that the obnoxious concepts of Quota system and Federal Character did not start today. It was etched into the core of the hegemonic agenda that was designed to keep Ndigbo at he periphery of things in Nigeria .

 

This policy, which was touted as aimed at bridging the gap between the educationally advantaged and disadvantaged sections of the country, was hijacked and used to good effect in ensuring that Ndigbo are consigned to the periphery of relevance and opportunity in Nigeria . Go to NNPC as a young Igbo job seeker or to any Federal parastatal in Abuja . If you are not a Kayode or a Sanni or Musa by name, your chances are slim. But if your name sounds Igbo, the slim chance evaporates. The quota system as Okwudili Ogbu would have it favors the best of the worst to the worst of the best. And this is why the North’s long domination of leadership in Nigeria has been a history of the greatest reign of the cult of mediocrity and kleptomania in Africa.


Onye Igbo has never been an Inspector General of Police in Nigeria, let alone Defense minister in any Government in Nigeria or Chief of Army staff. This is not because the Igbos have no brilliant officers in these services. Though disadvantaged by the quota system, which is engineered to marginalize them, those whose brilliance saw them to higher posts and ranks are quickly retired to foreclose their chances of smelling the top echelon of these services. This happens to pave way for members of other tribal extractions, who could not have found themselves into those services on merit, save for the overwhelming influence and political muscle of their godfathers.

 

The only time Onye Igbo became a chief of General Staff; Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, he was schemed out by this faceless Northern cabal that saw threats everywhere in an “nyamiri”[2] becoming the 2 IC in Nigeria. This was the only member of Babangida’s AFRC that took a principled stand against the smuggling of Nigeria into the Organization of Islamic countries, in utter disregard of her constitutional status as a secular nation.

 

When Allison Madueke became a service chief of Naval Staff. He did not last in that post. He was quickly jettisoned with a vindictive retirement that is redolent of marginalization.

Abacha had the effrontery to exclude Ndigbo from the Provisional Ruling Council, without anybody raising an eyebrow, save Gani Fawenhimi.

 

The only posts they can gladly allow Onye Igbo to occupy in peace in Nigeria is either the Comptroller General of Prisons, or a ministerial post in the information ministry, where he would be used to wash the dirty linens of corrupt and kleptocratic governments that have variously transversed Nigeria’s Power corridors. Uche Chukwumerije, Dr. Walter Ofonagoro, John Nnia Nwodo all occupied the information ministry as ministers under various governments.  Ndigbo have always known that the office is the propaganda ministry peopled by glorified image launderers, who could smooth talk the public out of its perceived conceptions of governments’ ineptitude.

 

The quota system works very much against Ndigbo in the field of education. An Hausa student who scores 180 marks in the university matriculation examination is offered admission over an Igbo student who scored 280 or 300 in the same exams. This is condoned and justified by a criminally insane policy designed by a faceless Northern cabal, to arrest the rampaging advance of Ndigbo.  One northern bigwig had an occasion to remark that northerners are gifted with leadership qualities, the Yoruba in entrepreneurship and administration, while the Igbo is good in commerce and mercantilism.[3] I wouldn’t know whether an endless loitering in the deserts of underdevelopment is the proof of leadership acumen claimed by the North. My argument here is: why shouldn’t everyone compete on a level academic playing field? Why legitimize glaring injustice under an obnoxious policy designed to advance the interests of a hegemonic ogre?

 

 

B: Situation of Industries that are indicative of Federal Presence

 

The Igbos are made to lose out of it all. The industrial might of Nigeria is concentrated in other areas save Igboland. The examples are simply a nauseating litany.  It might interest you to know that of the 16 Dams in Nigeria, 14 are located in the North and 2 in the south and none in Igbo land. The 3 hydroelectric power-generating Dams in Nigeria are all located in the North. To this end, the rest of us enjoy power supply at their good pleasure.  Of the 15 earth dams in Nigeria, 11 are located in the North and 4 in the South. Of the 12 irrigation projects in Nigeria, 11 are located in the North and only 1 in the South. Is this not a grave and systematic injustice perpetrated with a decimative intent and blueprint?

 

Even those projects we could have hosted with a comparative economic advantage over other parts of Nigeria were denied us. The Federal ones, which were perchance sited in our area, are actively patronized with dereliction by the successive northern-controlled governments in Nigeria.

 

Feasibility studies for the Steel industry in Nigeria revealed that for the project to be viable, it must be sited at Onitsha, Anambra state. The Nigerian government disregarded this expert advice based on the tribal-inspired fact that Onitsha is the heartland of Igboland. The reasoning like all others of its ilk being “How can the basis of Nigeria’s industrial revolution be sited in rebel territory. Ajaokuta was chosen against all right reason, in utter disregard of the expert opinion commissioned to that effect. Today in 2002, Ajaokuta has remained nothing but a huge drainpipe, through which Nigeria’s resources are siphoned. The project is a boiling cesspool of corruption, debt buyback; illegal deals, kickbacks and kickfront, etc. Little wonder the project remains a monolithic testament to ineffectiveness. It has not taken off. It may never take off. Nigeria blinded by tribalism has in Ajaokuta swallowed a pestle; she would now have to sleep standing upright.[4]

 

The project has seesawed between Russian contractors and British and American subcontractors, who use it for the politics of technology. One side would recommend a total scraping of the Russian technology that constituted the bedrock of the steel complex, and the other would favour a review. This festival of technological arrogance has not sufficed to lift Ajaokuta out of the doldrums of non-production and non-performance. It never will. The ontologic structure of reason, upon which the steel complex was moved to Ajaokuta, was authored in oppression and tribal apartheid. And the gods of our fathers could not brook this brazen injustice and tribal tomfoolery anymore. The seed of Nigeria’s technological disability was sowed the day the steel complex moved from Onitsha to Ajaokuta.

 

On another pedestal, no one has explained satisfactorily to Nigerians the reason why a refinery is sited at Kaduna, many thousands of miles away from the nearest oil wells. If a hegemonic agenda wasn’t the major consideration for this brazen act of profligate waste of funds in laying miles of petroleum pipeline, from the Niger delta to Kaduna, then what consideration was that which favour Kaduna over and above other cities in Nigeria? Was it the chronic economic illogic of the whole thing, which portrays any government that undertook that project as one manned by mentally challenged and grotesquely incompetent men?  The pipeline was laid from Port Harcourt and curiously to Warri and from Warri through Kwara to Kaduna. The length of the pipeline would have been shorter if it ran straight from Port Harcourt through Markurdi to Kaduna.[5] Was it security consideration, which roundly disqualifies a city that plays host to some of our military arsenal, which would be one of the first targets in the case of military face off with a tactical army? What actually was it that made Kaduna a preferred site for this project? Is it the economic advantage? Or the funds wasted in pumping oil over such a long distance?

 

What about the much touted dredging of the River Niger and the construction of a seaport at Onitsha? One must remember that Onitsha hosts the largest market in black Africa. This is an arrangement that bring millions of traders from the African sub-region daily to Nigeria. The economic potentials of Onitsha are so great that any government that loses sight of this is economically stupid, administratively bankrupt or wilfully blind. Such a government is not a government at all, and should be sacked.

 

But successive Nigeria governments have excelled themselves in turning a Nelson’s eye to the development of Onitsha because it lies within “rebel territory”. Shagari’s puerile government only succeeded in building an insignificant dysfunctional jetty at Onitsha, and called it a seaport. The dredging of the River Niger holds serious gains for Nigeria, if the tribal feudal warlords up there would realize that. They will not. Ethnic hatred blinds their good judgment. All they are waiting for is for Ndigbo to do it, and they would swoop to annex it as a federal project, in other to continue their random rape and decimation of Ndigbo.

 

Still on Onitsha, Nigerian engineers have consistently warned the Federal government that the present Niger bridge at Onitsha is notoriously incapable of handling the vast amount and volume of traffic, that Onitsha generates and hosts daily. Nothing has been done till today. Successive Nigerian governments claim to have awarded the contract for a second bridge over the Niger at Onitsha. That project is simply just a proposal gathering dust in some outback shelf in one ministry at Abuja. This is because an irrigation project in some deserted desert outback in the north is much more important than that.

 

Against this great backdrop, one would then not be surprised by the fact that almost all the federal highways originating from, passing through or terminating at Onitsha is in a great state of disrepair and dereliction. Enugu-Onitsha expressway is an erosion wasteland. Onitsha-Owerri road is equally another death trap generously strewn with gaping potholes. The number of deaths and auto mishaps recorded on these roads in the East far outstrips all records from any other part of this country.

 

An airport was proposed for Onitsha as early as 1980 due to the eloquently peculiar nature and strategic economic status of Onitsha. But in 1981 a senate committee on transport and aviation headed by a nincompoop named Senator Ebutte Ameh had the effrontery to throw its realization into a trashcan of irrelevance, while at the same breath recommending the construction of a new airport at Markurdi, Benue state instead. Ameh’s objection to the Onitsha airport project smacks of primeval stupidity and congenital economic myopia. In fact let me represent him exactly as the West Africa, magazine of 27th April 1981 presented him. In Page 654 the following report was carried:

 

The senate committee on Transport and Aviation has proposed the shelving of a project to build an airport at Onitsha Anambra State, and has recommended a new airport at Markurdi, Benue state instead. This is contrary to the aviation ministry’s capital expenditure budget proposal. Senator Ameh had objected to the Onitsha airport project when some state capitals did not have airport. “What is more, an expressway linking Enugu and Onitsha, which are only 60km from each other, is under construction, compared to Markurdi, which is in the hinterland and is one of the state capitals without an airport”

 

 On the above citation, I have few observations to highlight. First and foremost, I wish to regret that this unfortunate character pictures the poverty of ideas dominating our decision-making bodies in Nigeria. This was in 1981. It is a pity that Senator Ebutte Ameh who was a senator in the second republic under Shagari from 1979 to 1983, and who was the architect of this strategically inane decision, equally stole into the senate in 1999, under Obasanjo. These are the type of men that decide the fate of Nigerians, men who are politically myopic, superlatively stupid, political amateurs and intellectual Liliputs.

 

The reasons he advanced for shelving the project were nauseatingly pedestrian, economically illogical and strategically stupid. Markurdi cannot challenge comparison with Onitsha in any form. Onitsha is an economic goldmine that directs rivers of revenue flowing like the Niger into our national coffers. Markurdi is simply a state capital, without any comparative strategic economic significance. The airport would have opened Onitsha up to international spotlight for the best interest of Nigeria as a whole. Onitsha has the potentials of an economic El Dorado, which if utilized and properly managed can set Nigeria on the tracks to independence in the economic realpolitik of modern Africa.We lost that chance thanks to the grotesque incompetence and arrant tribalistic jealousy of a political midget, seeking to derail the progress of Ndigbo.

 

America for example saw Las Vegas, Nevada as a strategic stopover point between the East Coast and the minefields of the American West coast. On realizing its strategic economic importance, no resource was spared in making it accessible and comfortable for wayfarers that commute between the East and the West coast, on this route. Nevada, which was a sandbox, grew to be the tourist’s delight and destination, and the gamblers paradise, with beautiful hotels to house wayfarers and drifters, and with gambling emporiums and casinos to assuage their avaricious sense of adventure. Nevada’s development gave rise to   so many other allied industries that revolve around and support the hospitality business. This created jobs for many Americans and turned a wasteland into a tourist’s paradise. What would have been abandoned as a piece of arid parched land was transformed by administrative hindsight, strategic economic sense and principled innovative initiative into a money-spinner for the American economy. The economic policy, which banned personal income or company tax, was a great incentive for investments that in each month, Las Vegas received 250 t0 300 applications for new businesses.[6] In Vegas, a desert city through an administrative “miracle”, became an oasis of business and pleasure that attracts more than 30 million visitors each year[7]

 

But in Nigeria, the obverse would always obtain. We lost this kind of chance to the chicanery and political puerility of a simpleton in senatorial garbs, who when the opportunity knocked for greatness, hid under the opaque goggles of ethnic bias to torpedo a great opportunity.

 

He cited the expressway then under construction linking Enugu and Onitsha as a sound reason to site an airport in some backwoods of socio-economic irrelevance. He moronically reasoned that Enugu has an airport therefore Onitsha can subsist without one. And that anyone who must come to Onitsha could do well to land at Enugu and race the 66kilometres to Onitsha, without much ado. This reason is a piece of unvarnished stupidity. Onitsha hosts the largest market in Africa south of the Sahara. Its revenue generating capacity is colossal and towers astronomically above that of Markurdi, which juxtaposed with Onitsha is an economic backwater. Markurdi may need an airport. But the need is more at Onitsha. The reasoning incapacity of Senator Ameh and the men in this ill-fated senate committee is so acute as to realize this. Yet, this dangerous buffoonery is still at play in the Senate of the Federal republic of Nigeria today. I wonder whether those who voted such men knew about their gross intellectual deficiency before casting their votes and abandoning their mandate to some nincompoops.

 

Would an airport at Onitsha hurt Onitsha or accelerate and boost the business potentials of Onitsha? Must everyone who has a business at Onitsha transverse the whole of Nigeria to land at Enugu, before proceeding majestically by road to Onitsha? Wouldn’t an airport have reduced the risks posed by road travel? Wouldn’t it have made it cheaper, time-effective and cost-effective to do business at Onitsha than the present absence of an airport allows?

 

Up till today, Onitsha is yet to have an airport or a seaport, all thanks to ethnic pejorative bias, political stupidity, economic incompetence and arrant shortsightedness of the hegemonic cabal that Nigeria has had the misfortune of being saddled with since independence

 

Do we need talk about other federal roads in the East? Doing that would be a sterile litany here because I have touched it tangentially elsewhere in this piece. All one needs to do is to take a tour to the East. One would discover that the whole place looks like a surreal dream, a landscape of dereliction and abandonment. Yet this is one Nigeria.

 

C: Destruction of Education in the East

Education has been a strong forte of Ndigbo. It was the vehicle that launched them into prominence and reckoning in Nigeria. Ndigbo embraced Western Civilization late. But in some space of a decade, they outran almost all other ethnic contenders that encountered the white man before him. This was due to the unique reinforcements afforded him by his egalitarian society and republican culture.

 

Painstaking research has revealed that despite appearances to the contrary, there exists a blueprint designed to destroy education in the East.

 

This takes the form of reduction and outright withholding of capital allocation to educational development for Eastern universities. I have no doubt in my mind that those hell-bent on destroying Ndigbo would have changed the name of the university of Nigeria, if they are to have their way.

 

Nomadic education is designed and vigorously funded with federal funds because the northerners are the nomads in Nigeria. Huge expenses are entertained to enable teachers run around the bushes with blackboards, chalks, free books and stationeries, and free lunch in pursuit of nomads who migrate from overgrazed to more greener pastures at a moment’s notice for the sake of their cattle. These nomads don’t like school. They prefer cow milk and suya to going to school. This is the origin and the chief end of their lives. Their creation myth taught them that the world was created from a drop of milk. And milk is the chief pursuit of their existence. Yet the government runs around the bushes with them to force education into them, while systematically placing insurmountable obstacles on the way of Ndigbo who desire education.

 

The issue is: If nomads could be pursued against their inclination to be taught, why wouldn’t the government craft a similar policy to cater for the educationally disenfranchised Igbo youths at various trading posts and apprenticeships all over Nigeria? The nomads are the fair brides to be courted and toasted by the government, while the Igbo traders are the outcasts to be patronized with abandonment. If this is not injustice, I wonder what is.

 

On another front, the university of Nigeria, which is one of the premier universities in Nigeria, is a federal institution with an unfair share of abandoned and perennial uncompleted projects doting her landscape at both campuses of the University. The fact is that this great mother of academic titans is being gradually and subtly run down by a collection of forces that has ethnic disembowelment of Ndigbo as its cardinal agenda.

 

In one moment of frustrated anger, Prof. Miriam Ikejiani-Clark remarked that the university has been reduced to  “a glorified but antiquated villages of the ninth century BC”[8]. Newswatch noted, “ the university is littered with several abandoned projects which only suggested government’s half-hearted commitment to the infrastructural development of UNN”[9] And adducing reasons for this situation of things, Bamidele Azikiwe, the son of the founding father of the University said, “that the university has remained a pitiable victim of the Civil war. “Why should this university be made to pay for the rebellion of the people?” he asked”53. It is a fact that the government stopped the allocation of capital grants to UNN immediately after the war because it found out that the university was the intelligence base of the Biafran resistance.

 

Universities all over the world have always been the seedbed of genius and revolution. This is a milieu that grooms idealistic minds whom dissatisfied with the world the way they found it, always clamor and strive to make it a better place. This vision arms the university environment with the propensity to discountenance the misplacement of social values. Students being restless explorers of a boundless conceptual universe would readily rise in dissent against an unpalatable status quo. And peoples and governments all over the civilized world know and recognize this.

 

This dissent may take many forms and shapes, but the goal remains the correction of a present wrong and the ultimate betterment of society. Demonstrations, which are one of the tools readily employed by students to ventilate their grievance against any perceived threat or oppressive social structure, had forced many a tyrant to listen and get his fangs off the bleeding flesh of peoples worldwide. It has forced and persuaded governments to change their policies and stands on many issues impinging on the society and the welfare of citizens.

Governments worldwide are afraid of “Aluta”.[10] But in Nigeria, UNN is taken out and victimized severely whenever students invoke “Aluta”. UNN enjoys more closures and severe punishments than other universities in Nigeria, whenever the government feels threatened.

 

To this end many Igbo youths spend more years as students than their other counterparts from other parts of the country.

 

I will not end UNN’s plight without visiting Gomwalk’s tenure as UNN’s sole administrator. In summary, that singular opportunity pushed UNN several years to primitivity. It was an unmitigated disaster. He solely administered a rapacious plunder of the university of Nigeria. Students, utterly dissatisfied with his certifiable incompetence, nicknamed him “Uncle G”-which is a short form of “Uncle Goat”.

 

What about the admission of Ndigbo into tertiary institutions? This is scuttled by the quota system and federal character that I discussed above.  In fact, other diffused and progressively subtle policies aimed at eviscerating the Igbo tendency towards education is there for all to see. Need I mention the   massive withholding of results of candidates from Igbo extraction by JAMB, WAEC and other sundry examination boards headed by some professors of Islamic studies and other Igbophobes?  If it is a fault that Ndigbo love education, well it remains a grievous fault in Nigeria, because Ndigbo are gradually being interred with their intellectual bones.  To prove this point the only good library situated in the East, namely the British council library situated at the Teacher House at the New Haven junction was closed down for unknown reasons, while their offices are open in some other parts of Nigeria. I have been forced by the facts of history and the present circumstances to distrust the relationship between the British and the Nigerian governments whenever the issue is Igbo.  Nobody has offered any explanation for the closure of the library and its subsequent movement out of the Igbo capital city.

 

All I know is that I have a dream. I have a dream that the sunrise will not find us where the sunset left us.

 

D. Routine Incineration of Markets and looting of Igbo holdings and Interests

 

In the chequered history of Ndigbo and their pioneering into the fringes of the North and other parts of Nigeria, in furtherance of their dream of one Nigeria, their psyche has been brutally wounded by the characteristic rejection and half-hearted tolerance meted out to them by their fellow countrymen of other tribal extractions.

 

Their northern Islamic brothers pounce upon them at the flimsiest of excuses as ready game and scapegoat to be summarily dealt with. In the name of Allah, many Igbos have lost their lives in the north under the flaming swords of Islamic fanatics, fighting the cause of an Allah sculpted in their selfish, tribal and xenophobic image. But the truth is that “it is nonsense to regard fanaticism as a fruit of religion. Fanaticism is a natural tendency rooted in our basic egoism and will-to-power. It seizes upon any noble feeling to live on it. In this sense, and in many others, a little religion is a dangerous thing. A fanatic redoubles his effort to improve and increase his means and his instrument while he has forgotten his purpose”[11] 

 

On many occasions, Islam has been used in Nigeria in pursuit of ethnic and sectional agenda. The vituperative remarks of late Sheik Gumi remains an affront to the fragile sensibilities of every right thinking person. Gumi once told the whole world that Muslims   in Nigeria couldn’t accept being ruled by a Christian in this country. This is a pious nonsense from the lips of one who should be a harbinger of peace, love and mutual co-existence. It was stupid in conception and utterance. Gumi must be sick and senile to think that Nigeria belongs to him and his fanatical cohorts alone. He is dead wrong to see it as their birthright to lord it over the rest of us forever. That may be the case in the emirate serfdoms of the North, not in the lush green fields of the South East, where I come from, and which is superlatively impervious to dictatorship.

 

Though this is beside the point, Ndigbo have come to view Kano and Kaduna as an axis of arson against Igbo interests and business holdings. Markets with majority Igbo interest are routinely torched to retard the progress of Ndigbo and set them on the road to economic impoverishment and powerlessness. Every religious uprising in the north would terminate in the torching and looting of Igbo goods in these places. These religious warmongers have a platonic hatred of Ndigbo such that every opportunity is exploited to do him in.

 

This propensity to undermine Igbo economic interests is not only the exclusive preserve of Islamic fanatics. In the West of Nigeria, especially Lagos, the Igbo trader is daily confronted by the vagaries and the criminal excesses of the Yoruba street urchins known as “Area Boys”. These lazy and crooked sets of petty thieves take out their excesses and insecurities on Igbo traders. And any reaction by Ndigbo to secure their lives and hard earned property against this onslaught is most likely to be misunderstood and interpreted through a bifocal lens of tribal sentiments by their hosts.

 

E: Appointments to Portfolios

 

Appointments into key portfolios in Nigeria have been designed to scheme Ndigbo out of the controlling positions and key power epicenters in Nigeria. As I earlier hinted, only the peripheral positions are granted us. This is aimed at keeping us perpetually in the cold as far as Nigeria is concerned. This is one of the portent instrument used against us. Whenever any Onye Igbo rears his head in any high post of responsibility, he is set up and sacked without rhyme or reason. Some of those sacked were men of reputable integrity who can never be accused of incompetence or irresponsibility. Ebitu Ukiwe is an example. The key security and sensitive positions are   too nebulous for the aspirations of an Onye Igbo. He could be made the chief-prisoner of the federation, baptized as the comptroller-general of prisons. He could be a glorified errand boy or a vassal of one tribal illiterate in a political portfolio. These are the positions that are for Ndigbo. They can never head the security apparatus. The Presidency is “O no nso elu aka”- an unattainable dream for Onye Igbo, yet this is one Nigeria. The structure is so tailored to ensure his perpetual exclusion from all indices of power. This is why any rational Igbo son cannot close his eyes to a Sovereign National Conference as an imperative surgical procedure that is long overdue for Nigeria. Any one who contests the above factual assertions should not do it in some corner before kids who can proffer no proofs to this institutionalized policy of exclusion. I dare the person to do it where we can find and reply him so that we may charitably do battle with his ignorance and put a cure to his errors.

 

 

F. Information Dissemination and Management

 

The groans and the agonizing wailings of Ndigbo do not receive adequate representation and media coverage because Ndigbo are not key players or stakeholders in the Media establishments and information management in this country. The television and Radio stations in Igbo states are simply satellites of the government’s side of the story. And these governments most of the time were not Igbo-friendly. To this end the Igbo side of the story is suppressed and relegated to a background of irrelevance, while other painted sepulchral postures of the governments are blared to the high heavens. Experience has shown that most of the private print-media establishments in Nigeria are owned by non-Igbos and many of them are Igbophobically biased and prejudiced in their footage and reportage of Igbo affairs and problems. This is not because Ndigbo cannot own or effectively manage media houses, but the point must be made that governmental policy has in most cases sent Igbo competitors in this racecourse into oblivion as a result of policies that were grossly unfavorable to competitors of Igbo extraction.

 

Many of these media have been used to pull down and tarnish the image and reputation of illustrious Igbo sons and daughters as well as to downplay the achievements of Ndigbo in the overall Nigerian picture and even scuttle their attempts at self-actualization. And Ndigbo have not got an effective response to this due to our scant representation in the media. I have to thank Mike Ajegbo of MINAJ SYSTEMS Television, who has been struggling to keep his media conglomerate afloat, despite unfavorable governmental policies that are seriously frustrating.

 

 

F. Fifth Columns

 

Fifth columns are those Igbo sons and daughters who have become lackeys and cheerleaders of our oppressors. These have unwittingly made themselves into sharp arrows in the hands of our detractors. This community of traitors at the heart of Igbo resistance today, has an infamous godfather in Ukapbi Asika, who betrayed the sacrifices and the blood of his people for the mere pittance of cheap popularity and the perverse intellectual satisfaction native to conspirators. Need I mention those who betrayed their people from within the heart of the resistance or those who like Judas accepted some bribe to betray their people with a kiss. Need I mention those that slumped and died at Abuja, while singing the praises of despot, who treats the Igbo man as a piece of excrement[12]

 

The Igbo governors, senators, ministers, politicians of all cadres, contractors, and all who in one way or the order contributed to the evisceration of the Igbo dream are all a part of this inglorious bandwagon. Many of them became errand boys to the cabal that seek our destruction. Ojo Maduekwe, a minister of transport in Obasanjo’s regime has been there while the roads in his geopolitical zone remain tributes to potholes. And he has been very busy riding his bicycle while his kinsmen pass through the other side of hell to get to their fatherland. I would not waste my slender time on Governor Mbadinuju of Anambra State, who made it a religious duty to ensure that every Anambra child wasted one full academic year at home, due to his incompetence. We have callous and spineless Igbo sons to thank for the paltry infrastructures in our own side of this geopolitical field.

 

These fifth columnists are deadlier than vipers. They cruise our scorched countryside in the Jeeps and other cars that were fruits of their dishonest labors of betraying their people. They corner our collective entitlements for themselves alone abandoning the majority to wallow in abject penury. They are not the only ones. The unscrupulous traditional rulers that confer these unprincipled men with unmerited chieftaincy titles are equally a part of the fifth columns. The church leaders that recognize them and confer knighthoods on them are equally guilty of their offence. The people that mill around them in sycophantic postures are probably the worst of all. They are catalyst to the unbridled tendency and quest of some Igbo sons to impoverish their fatherland in mercenary obedience to the promptings of bribe offered by our enemies.

 

G. Falsified Population Count to Favour the North

 

The British knew that politics is a game of numbers. And since the natural endowments of the north is a good quality of a vassal, but notoriously inadequate for a long tenure at the helm of affairs in a Nigeria, where the multi-talented and richly endowed south are equal competitors for the throne, a plot was contrived in the dark lobbies of Whitehall, to keep the south at perpetual disadvantage in the power equations in the post colonial Nigeria.

 

Census figures since then have always been manipulated, to favour a region that is densely populated more by cattle than by human beings. And this is being used as a basis for planning and resource allocation in Nigeria.

 

That the North is more populous than the south is a farce. The Northerners know this. If not why are the emirs resisting the introduction and use of the National Identity card for voting. They know that this would deflate forever this balloon of lies that has been peddled for so long in Nigeria. The persistence of this lie is notoriously inadequate to dislodge the bright illumination of the facts on the ground. Oguejiofor lamented that in Nigeria the “population is a matter of estimation as there are no accurate population figures in Nigeria”[13]

 

The north may have a very large landmass, but the infinitesimal   percentage of this landmass that is inhabited by people would confront anyone who takes a trip to the North. But the southern part of this country is so densely populated that the north cannot challenge a credible comparison with it, hence the need for a jaundiced population count that has been politicised to favour a section of the country at the expense of others.

 

 

H. The Sharia Blackmail

 

The more empty the leadership, the more reliance on primordial forces

Odumegwu Ojukwu[14]

 

There has been an avowed Jihad by the North against the rest of us. This, which was first verbally articulated by Ahmadu Bello, was designed to “dip the Koran in the Atlantic Ocean” down south. He tried in his lifetime to make good his boasts, but for his early defunct, there is no way of knowing what he would have achieved. But events since his death have shown that his megalomanic dream did not die with him. He handed it on.

 

His fanatical lieutenants and disciples caught the bug. This gives the reasons why an old, opinionated and impious fanatic like Abubakar Gumi could get up and insult Nigerians in the following words: “if Christians do not accept Muslims as their leader, we have to divide the country. Nigeria unity is to try to convert Christians and non-Muslims (to Islam). Until the other religions become minority and not affect our society”[15] Yet this man was allowed to go scot-free. No Fatwas or death sentence was passed on him for that statement that reeks of primitive will-to-power and mean spirited mendacity. But the Islamic fanatics that bestride Zamfara state as governor and Deputy respectively, had the effrontery to pass a death sentence on Miss Isioma Daniels for exercising her constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression. It is my opinion and the hallowed opinion of every sane Nigerian that Gumi should not have been allowed to die in peace, in fact it is the duty of every Nigerian to spit at, and desecrate the grave of this tongue-wagging impostor. Gumi was not worth the cloth with which he was buried. He was an eternal insult to reason and tolerance. Gumi was a crazed fanatical beast. Gumi should be made to realize that Islam is not Nigeria and can never be. I wonder what his version of fanatical Islam has offered the world save carnage, terrorism, bad blood, bloodletting and violence. Do we need to take a trip to the Middle East where Arab treachery and Islamic militancy combine to make that area the most dangerous place on the earth’s surface? Do we equally need to cite the ungenerous instance that the most dangerous terrorists in the world hide under the cloak of a Jihad to perpetrate their regime of brutality and evil on their fellow men?

 

Among the incivilities by which individuals provoke and irritate each other, Gumi’s vituperation was an extraordinary instance. What irks me most is the fact that this unprovoked verbal insult on the intelligence of Nigerians, which shouldn’t be condoned on the scores of manners, was allowed to go unchallenged by the government and human rights crusaders. The Muslims would have declared a Fatwas[16] on anybody who paints their religion or dignity in such a poor light of irrelevance. Salman Rushdie[17] and Taslim Nasrin[18] and lately Isioma Daniels[19] remain footnotes to this. Yet every Nigerian, save for few subdued voices kept quiet. In the case of Taslima Nasrin, she decided to appear in court to answer to the charges against her. On that day “100,000 demonstrators gathered in Dhaka to bay for her blood. They branded her an apostate appointed by imperialistic forces. One particularly militant faction threatened to loose thousands of poisonous snakes in the capital unless she was executed”[20]

 

In fact let us say a word or two to this: It remains the inalienable right of man to have the freedom of thought, conscience and worship. This is recognised and enshrined in section 38 (1) of the 1999 constitution.  To this end, any religion or social structure that denies me this fundamental freedom, or forces me to embrace a specific religion or face death is bullshit.  That religion is a summary of what the devil can contrive. And any portion(s) of any purported Holy book that holds and teaches that, is a satanic verse(s). And that religion can roast in hell for all I care. Be it Christianity or Islam. More so, any religion that promises me a paradise of uncensored sex with a million virgins as a reward for killing my fellow men is a past time and the exclusive province of polymorphous perverts and sex-crazed idiots.

 

I cannot imagine Abubakar Gumi threatening to break up Nigeria if the Muslims are not allowed to lord it over the rest of us. This is the most atrociously stupid and reckless words I have ever heard in my life. If this man really said this, and everybody kept mute, then we are doomed. Why was everybody afraid to give him back a riposte of his ranting? I wonder what Gumi had in mind while he uttered such impious nonsense. May be he thought that Islam had a monopoly of violence. Why didn’t the government of the day under Babangida call him to order? May be they were partners in crime who knows?

 

Gumi’s stance was an unvarnished affront on right reason. In fact, everything which rancour, prejudice, undiluted bigotry and convoluted ignorance could suggest was copiously encapsulated in that uneducated stance. Gumi spoke his unintelligent mind in an eloquent manner. By that statement, he betrayed the fact that he was a venerable ruin in an assemblage of learned fanatics. And that incidentally, is the stuff of fanaticism; excessive zeal garnished with little knowledge.

 

In a civilized society, Gumi would have died in jail. This is why no Islamic scholar or Imam, no matter how radical would utter such arrant nonsense in a developed country like the US, even as America pounds Afghanistan, supports Israel and blockades Iraq, which are Islamic nations. If any person of whatever faith persuasion tries it, a supermax prison facility like either Alcatraz or Sing-Sing, would be his abode for the rest of his life. The Islamic fundamentalist Talibans presently being incarcerated at Guatanamo bay in Cuba is an example of what terrorists would face when apprehended.

 

Babangida could not call Gumi to order because he was equally a part of the plot to Islamise Nigeria. Babangida in 1986 conspired with the northern Oligarchy and Abiola to smuggle Nigeria, which is a Secular state[21], into the Organization of Islamic Conference, (OIC).  Ebitu Ukiwe protested against this smart coup and was sacked for his troubles

 

Today the North is blackmailing the whole country with the introduction of Sharia in the Northern states, in contravention of Section 10 of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which designates Nigeria a secular state. With this present clamour, the North is once again measuring the depths of the waters to see what would happen if they try to ride Sharia roughshod over the heads of Nigerians. Well I have a word for them. Sharia can only be introduced in Nigeria, when every Nigerian, Christians, Moslems, Traditional religionists and Atheists must have died. In fact, the day a Sharia court will convict a Christian or any other non-Islamic Nigerian is the day Nigeria will burn to ashes. These polymorphously perverse beasts that use a sacred instrument for cheap profane ends, can go ahead and stone the entire Muslim adulterers in the north or chop off the wrists and legs of every Muslim thief. That is their kettle of fish. It should not and must not extend to non-Muslims under any pretext. Any attempt to hoist Sharia on Nigeria would be settled once again in the battlefields, and this time Gumi’s wish would be realised because Nigeria will be divided that day.  They may be pepping themselves up counting on the support of the whole Islamic world. But they should do well to realise that the whole Islamic armada could not upstage the resolve of one resolute nation fighting for survival like Israel. And if ever Sharia leads Nigeria to a field of scores, no scoreboard would ever accommodate the scores to be settled on that day, both in its brutality and intensity. I repeat: Sharia could only be installed when Nigeria must have been reduced to a river of blood. In fact Sudan will look like the mischievous antics of spoilt kids in comparison to Nigeria, once it is attempted.

 

Sharia is a dress rehearsal for the Islamization of Nigeria. The northerners touting this as their life’s goal are cowards and mean spirited impostors using it to score a cheap political point. During the second republic under Shehu Shagari, they had the opportunity of mapping the whole of Nigeria with Sharia. But they never did because they never wanted their man to preside over the disintegration of an arrangement that favours their greed.  But immediately power came to the south under Obasanjo, they took up their Sharia trumpet once more to destabilize him and make the country ungovernable.  Commenting on this, Moustafa Bayoumi, a professor of Islamic politics at Brooklyn said that “Islam is used as a political instrument, a safety valve by politicians to draw attention away from local conflicts that have nothing to do with the clash of civilizations and all to do with the allocation of resources. Politicians play the religious and ethnic card to rally support and divide and conquer”[22] And since Nigeria’s return to civil rule in “May 1999, more than 7, 000 people have died in violence related to efforts to impose Sharia (fundamentalist Islamic law) in the country’s northern states. More than 500 people have died in the northern town of Jos, a centre of the conflict, since September”[23] This goes to prove that the Sharia hoopla is nothing but a manufactured crisis latched upon by unscrupulous politicians, like Ahmed Sanni and his likes, to bounce into reckoning and relevance, which their grotesque incompetence had rightfully denied them.

 

This is the same yoke of slavery that the Iranians since 1979 have been struggling very hard to shake off.  Iran in 1979 witnessed the Shah being overthrown by radical Islamic revolutionaries led by the Islamic cleric Ayatolla Khomeni. What many Iranians thought would give them a new lease of life turned into a dream of nightmarish proportions, where a woman could be killed for not observing the Islamic dress code and where a group of female students were not allowed to escape from a burning building because an attempt at escaping would expose some parts of their bodies. These ladies were incinerated more by myopia than by the conflagration. Many Iranians were forced into exile for the fear of their lives. Christianne Armanpour, the CNN   Chief International Correspondent had to emigrate to the United States of America, to escape the hell that was Iran under the Ayatollah.

 

This is what myopic Nigerians are courting. Afghanistan, Sudan, and Lebanon are sad instances of what Islamic imperialism can make of a country.

 

Islam in the sense in which many practise it today seems to be one of the most discriminatory and jingoistic religions. Women are condemned to the status of non-personal sexual objects for men and a lifetime as baby manufacturers; objects for the satisfaction of masculine phallic needs, punch bags to buffer masculine frustrations and domestic slaves. This is why a man could just swear to “God”, testify against a woman and had her stoned to death for a purported crime of adultery and everybody accepts the veracity of his testimony just like that. That is equally why a man could get up, beat up his wife and amputate her legs, because he suspects that she would leave him[24]. This is why eight-year-old kids are married off to octogenarians in the name of God. Little wonder why Vesico-vaginal fistula thrives in Islamic lands. Islam sees a non-Moslem as an infidel to be converted, enslaved or killed. It is a religion steeped in the anachronistic thought frame of Arabia. And this thought frame is so impervious to the dynamics of social evolution. This is why Islam never gave the world the conceptual scheme for the emergence of modern science[25].  It sees itself as the fist of God and fights God’s wars for him. This accounts for the greater propensity to violence exhibited by Muslims.

 

Where Sharia operates, non-Moslems who are not people of the Book, either convert to Islam or face the sword. They belong to the house of war ‘Dar al-harb or kufr’. For the protected people or Ahl al-Dhimma, they must perpetually pay the Jizya (poll tax) as an indication of their inferior position and these protected people include Christians and Jews.[26] And they should wear a distinguishing mark for example a belt zunnar; just like the Jews were forced to wear the Star of David armband during the holocaust and they should not display their religious rights and convictions in public[27] Well isn’t this the stuff of racism?  I wonder who told the Muslims that they are superior to Jews and Christians. Even if they are superior, must the whole world genuflect at that? No way. Salman Rushdie in an open letter to his fellow candidate for death, Taslima Nasrin remarked: “How sad it must be to believe in a God of blood! What an Islam they have made, these apostles of death, and how important it is to have courage to dissent from it”[28]

 

This kind of fanatical Islam had remained a grand purveyor of violence all around the world today. In India, it is Islam versus Hinduism over sacred spots. In Jerusalem it is Judaism represented by the Israeli nation versus Islam represented by the Palestinians over sacred sites and rights to exist side by side in a Zionist nation. Prior to Camp David, the Arab world never considered it feasible that it would co-exist in peace alongside a Jewish state in Palestine. Today that avowed goal has not changed, though Israel’s zero-tolerance level for Arab-sponsored terrorism and apolitical antics may have presently rendered that goal stillborn and too dangerous to entertain.

 

It is a fact today that the kind of impious Muslims that politicise religion are past masters in volte-face. They smile at you and stab you in back while reciting some portions of the Holy Koran.

 

Reacting to the Fatwas passed on Isioma Daniels of This Day Newspaper, who wrote an article the Muslims considered “offensive”, the world beauty pageant violence that arose in its wake, and the general conspiracy of silence by the authorities, Professor Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel Laureate lambasted all those who hide under the garbs of religion to perpetrate violence on others, as well as their patrons and all who should have spoken and risen in opposition to such a criminally dangerous trend, but kept quiet. He said in no mean terms that

 

“There is an attempt to cow this nation, an attempt to terrorize this nation into accepting the norm of one religion. There is something belittling, I observe, whenever terror is unleashed by Islamic Hoodlums, I don’t see them being called to order. I do not hear a strong language of condemnation being pronounced on unto those who brutalise their fellow human beings for no reason whatsoever[29].

 

Continuing, he regretted that:

 

For long in history, the culture of impunity has been established in this country and it must come to a stop if we are going to continue to call ourselves one nation.[30]

 

He rightly observed that;

         

Religion itself is not the problem.  Religion is being used. Opportunists who scramble for power are those who derive pleasure in using religion to cause crisis[31]

 

He regretted the unfortunate fact that these opportunists have the fodder with which to achieve their unholy and impious wiles

 

They have an unthinking, open mindless followership whom they call out to destroy whenever they feel they are not having their ways[32]

 

The signs are clear. That Lateef Adegbite, the Secretary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs had the effrontery to challenge Soyinka on this sound and truthful assertions, betray the thinking that obtain in certain Islamic quarters that Nigeria is their vassal state that must be subjected to the whims and caprices of Islamic jingos who would want all Nigerians of whatever religious affiliation to bow subserviently to the toxicity of their socio-political farting. This thinking is treasonable as it stands in contravention of Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution. Yet, no government has taken decisive action on the perpetrators or religious pogroms in Nigeria. Alhaji Aliyu Shinkafi, the deputy Governor of Zamfara State, who passed a Fatwas on Isioma Daniels, should be tried for attempts on someone’s life. He should be condemned as a common criminal that he is. Aliyu Shinkafi stands in contravention of Section 9 of Cap. 77 Criminal Code Act, Law of the Federation, 1990. Though the offence is yet to be committed, it has engendered a sense of foreboding in Isioma Daniels, whose   right to life unencumbered by irrational and unreasonable threats is guaranteed by Section 33 of the 1999 Constitution. He should be condemned by all men of goodwill for perverting a holy means to a devilish end.

 

Did Isioma Daniels commit any crime for exercising her constitutionally guaranteed right of freedom of Expression? No is the answer. If the Muslims considered her article slanderous or libellous, we are most fortunately, in a democratic society, where the rule of law reigns supreme over        the unpredictable volcano of human caprice.  They should have gone to court to challenge that article and to seek redress in a civilized, constitutional manner. The law is there in its majesty and magnificence as our guidepost. They should have flown into its refuge for redress. They ought to have realised that life would have assumed the horrendous dimensions of the Hobbessian state of nature, were the law to be absent form our socio-political firmament. Therefore, if a section of our population is given an unwritten nod to be wolves to other sections, or to feed on the blood of other people as cows would on pasture, once the digestion of the perennial aggressor is troubled, then there would be no further need for the state, the law or government. It would then be “to thy tents O! Israel” as the construct Nigeria would sing its “Nunc Dimittis”.

 

Better still, they should have left the battle for Allah if Allah was insulted. Fighting for Allah is an apostasy and heretical to say the least. This is because, by so doing, we most eminently and wrongly presume that Allah is impotent to defend himself.  Allah is the Creator, the Most Powerful. And human power or weaponry is notoriously infinitesimal to defend him. If he wants defense, His Holy awe and majesty is enough to overawe his enemies or anybody superlatively unfortunate to attract or encounter his Holy wrath and Righteous anger. Any body that forgets this is a certifiable case of bovine theological stupidity. This is to the effect that man in his finitude and feeble strengths should stop indulging his pride in thinking that he can defend the Most Holy One.

 

On another pedestal, these Islamic Ulamas and Muhajedeens ought to have realised that;

 

There are writers and commentators who live to take pleasure in shocking the established beliefs of society in blatant and obscene manners that make Isioma Daniels pale in comparison, thus Kaduna and Abuja were not supposed to smoulder if civility had been the catchphrase. There had been authors and writers who had written to malign Jesus Christ, the Christian world did not go berserk by killing or calling for the blood of the writers. One good example is Nicholas Kazantzakis who wrote the book “The Last Temptation of Christ” in which he portrayed Jesus Christ giving in to sexual desire with Mary Magdalene. If this were said of Mohammad, what would have happened?[33]

 

The riots and the wanton killing s that followed in its wake took place after (jummat) prayers on Friday (a day of prayer) in the Holy month of Ramadan. The question to these killers and looters may be appropriate here: Which one is better? Holding a beauty pageant, which is a celebration of the BEAUTY that is God in a Holy month or fighting and killing and looting. Is this not a case of fighting a lesser crime with a greater one?; a case of substituting sleep with death? Suffice it to note that to his eternal credit, the Sultan of Sokoto in his appeal quoted a verse from the Holy Koran (Suratui Baqara), which said that fighting in the month of Ramadan constitutes a transgression. Would that these jingoes heed this.

 

Sharia in Nigeria is nothing but an instrument of exploitation. I am still to find a convincing reason why successive Nigerian governments continue to waste taxpayers’ money and scarce foreign exchange in sponsoring pilgrimages to Mecca and Jerusalem in a ratio of almost 50,000: 1,000[34] It is my considered view that taxpayers’ money should not be deployed in underwriting the transport fares into some frontiers of doubtful advantage or used in funding quintessential non-essentials like pilgrimages.

 

I.                  Economic Castration

 

After the war, Awolowo’s banking policy[35] crippled the accumulated capital wealth base of Ndigbo as they emerged from the most trying periods of their history. It was a nauseating broad daylight robbery, planned and executed with punitive intent.

 

Awolowo was not done with Ndigbo yet. It was he who inspired Gowon’s decision to ban the importation of second hand clothing, which Ndigbo went into in their bid to build up their battered economic fortunes.

 

This avid propensity to ban and inhibit the business and commercial interests of Ndigbo has continued under various governments since after the war. Ndigbo were denied the huge River basin developments that conduced to fishing and irrigation, which was availed their northern brothers. And to remedy this, Ndigbo found nutritional refuge for their protein supplements in Norwegian stockfish. This cabal, discovering that Ndigbo are excelling in this business and as well replenishing their protein reserve that was dangerously depleted by kwashiorkor during the civil war, strove and got the importation of stockfish banned. Need we talk about the ban on imported frozen food products, especially poultry? Obasanjo’s government did not ban this. It banned its importation to deal with Ndigbo who found this a lucrative business as well as a good source of protein. Unless a Dangote imports it through Lagos, frozen poultry brought overland through the border is liable to be incinerated.

 

Every opportunity was sought to strangulate the lifeline of Igbo business interests. When second hand cars, refrigerators and electronics became the saviour of the Nigerian middle class, Ndigbo went in to span the chasm between the goods and the consumers. The anti-Igbo coalition swung into action to get it banned. And they had a willing accomplice in the government of the day, which stepped in to impose strict and heavy restrictions that made it impossible to profit from the business.

 

These few examples are not exhaustive. I wonder the logic that saw the NEPA transmission and distribution control point being situated in the West of Nigeria. The West is neither of centralized geographical or strategic import nor does it host any power generation plant. Yet, power generated at Kainji, Shiroro and other sundry power stations must transverse backwards to the West before being redistributed to the whole of Nigeria.

 

Nigerians should tell me: If this is not tribal apartheid I wonder what is. I beg not to go into the politics of the internationalization of Enugu airport here. That requires another occasion for a full treatment. My conclusion against the backdrop of all this remains that, Nigeria is dangerously spinning all those webs of deceit that rose to constitute the basis of the last civil war. I would not know if we would survive another civil war. Darfur in Sudan would pale into insignificance as the antics of drunkards compared to Nigeria once the implosion comes. Injustice and oppression will not for long hold sway in any firmament. Nigeria and Nigerians should take note.



[1] Ademoyega, Op. cit. 24

 

[2] This is the derisive appellation given to Ndigbo by the Hausas up north. It is a crude re-creation and rendition of the Igbo phrase: “Nye m mmiri” which means “Give me some water”

[3] See Joe Igbokwe, P.

[4] Ola Rotimi, Ovarenmwen Nogbaisi, Act Scene

[5] Mma Agbagha, The Igbo Predicament, Enugu, Network Publishers, 1983, P.50

[6] Andrew Ferguson, “Amazing Vegas” in Readers Digest of January 1999, P.157

[7] Loc. Cit.

[8] Newswatch, May 21, 2001,P.31

[9] Ibid, P. 32

53 Ibid

[10] “Aluta” is the shortened acronym for the Latin Maxim “Aluta Continua, Vttorio Acerta”-which translates to “The struggle continues, victory is certain or assured”. This is a clarion call for action by Nigeria students.

[11] The Human Adventure, P.18

[12] The despot here is late Gen. Sanni Abacha who presided over a Provisional Ruling council that has no Onye Igbo in its ranks

[13] Oguejiofor, Op. Cit., P.9

[14] See Karl Maier, Op. Cit., P.287

[15] Quality Magazine, October 1987, P.35

[16] Fatwas in the case of Rushdie means that it is the duty of every Muslim to seek out Salman Rushdie and kill him for blaspheming against their religion. Fatwas is a religious decree calling for death.

[17] Salman Rushdie is the Indian-born British author who wrote the Satanic Verses, which the Muslim world found offensive. Ayatolla Khomeni, the Iranian Islamic revolutionary leader, sentenced him to a Fatwah, in 1989

[18] Taslim Nasrin is a Banglandeshi , authored a book which challenged the Islamic oppression of women. A fatwas was declared on her after her quoted challenge of scripture. See Time magazine of August 15,1994, P.22

[19] Isioma Daniels is a Journalist and a columnist with a Nigerian Daily Newspaper “ThisDay” She wrote an article about the voices of protest raised against the hosting of the Miss world beauty pageant in Nigeria for her opinions, the deputy governor of Zamfara state and his Islamic cohorts passed a Fatwas on her. She is presently (December 2002) in exile outside Nigeria for safety and security reasons.

[20] Time, August 15, 1994, P.23

[21] Section 10, 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria

[22] Bayoumi, M., cited in Hisham Aidi, “Islamic Fundamentalism gaining ground in Africa, BlackWorld, http://www.africana.com/DailyArticles/index_20011024.htm  P. 2

[23] Hisham Aidi, loc. Cit.

[24] Nigerian Television Authority Newsline, a Sunday News Documentary Programme, in 2002 carried the news of a man in one of the Northern States in Nigeria that amputated his pregnant wife, under the flimsy psychotic excuse that he suspects that she would leave him

[25] See Hodgson, The Christian Origin of Science, a paper presented at the International Religious Conference organized by Whelan Research Academy, Owerri, Nigeria, 8th-12th October, 2002

[26] Ubaka, C.O., Sharia in Nigeria; Its Implications for non-Muslims, Enugu, Snapp Press Ltd., 2000, P.40

[27] F. El Masri ed. And Translator, bayan Wujub al Hijra ala al-ibad, Khatoum: khatoum University Press, 1978, PP. 126-128, cited in Ubaka, C.O, Loc. Cit.

[28] Time, August 15, 1994, P.23

[29] THIS DAY Newspaper, Saturday December 14, 2002, P.64

[30]  Loc. Cit.

[31] Loc. Cit.

[32] Loc. Cit.

[33] Samuel Onipede, Still on Extremism and Irresponsibility versus Isioma Daniel. In response to Dauda S. Dauda’s rejoinder, “The Comprehensive Dummies’ Guide to Responsibility in Writing”, http//www.gamji.com/NEWS1933.htm, P.2-3 of 4

[34] Ibid, P.50

[35] Achebe, Op. Cit., P.45