The Instruments of EmasculationByfranklyne ogbunwezehScalpel
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 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, 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 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 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
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
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