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President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Fruitless W.A.I. (WAR Against Igbos) By Chidi P. Eze Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo was selected by the then northern military power in 1999 to serve two purposes. 1.
To maintain and protect the corrupt interests of the northern
military elite, retired and serving. 2.
To continue the official exclusion and marginalization of Ndigbo
from the scheme of things in Nigeria. Soon
after he was selected by the northern military which was then going by
the name Nigerian army, he decided to device new tactics. First, he
sought for and got some marginal igbos who would help condone his W.A.I.
in exchange for the spoils of office. Hence the emergency of Mr. Evan
Enwerem as his choice for the senate president, the recruitment of Ojo
Maduekwe as his first culture minister. When he discovered that Ojo
Maduekwe is truly a mole, he rewarded him with transport ministry.
Maduekwe recruited Mr. Vincent Ogbulafor, Kema Chikwe and Mrs. Chinyere Asika. He unfortunately appointed some true igbomen and women
although with some reservation. These are; Dr. Menekaya, Mrs. Obageli
Akunyili, Mrs. Uzoamaka Nwizu, Mrs.Oby Ezekwesili and Mr. Dubem Onyia.
They are living true to their igboness. In
the senate it was obvious that Mr. Evan Enwerem was weak and lacked the
stuff true igboman is made of, so they got rid of him and in his place,
Dr. Chuba Okadigbo was elected by his peers. With
Okadigbo as the senate president, the Nigerian senate for the first time
tasted what could be called the independent of the legislature. To Mr.
Obasanjo’s chagrin, he new he was not going to succeed with his WAI so
easily, then he deployed Nigerian instruments-- bribery and corruption
to Okadigbo’s Hausa/Fulani and Yoruba colleague who were extremely
suffering too many complexes about Ndigbo, lead by the now political
dysfunctional Abubakar Haruna to get rid of Okadigbo. Obasanjo
succeeded. His W.A.I. (war against igbos) has continued. First,
he employed the state security police to invade the house of Dr.
Okadigbo the senate president, at 1.00 am. He
fired Dr. Menekaya, one of the best health Minister Nigeria has ever
known, as minister of health. He
infiltrated all igbo organizations meant for the unity and development
of igbo race using Mr. Ojo Maduekwe to make sure there would be
confusion and disagreement within Ndigbo because igbo unity is not only
a threat to Obasanjo, but to the Hausa/Fulani and the Yorubas. He
transferred Justice OkeChukwu Okeke from Abuja federal judicial division
to Bayelsa State. Justice
OkeChukwu Okeke is perhaps one of the fearless and upright judicial mind
in the current Nigeria’s judiciary. This was after he shut down
Savannah bank owned by Chief Jim Nwobodo. Obasanjo did not care about
the social and economic
effect the shut down of Savannah bank would have on the employees of the
bank, so long as he has the national resources at his disposal, he, his
family and friends would be squandering on foreign trips. The transfer
of Justice OkeChukwu Okeke has two folds. To make sure Savannah bank
remained shut and to avoid having a judge like OkeChukwu Okeke in Abuja
during his election fraud, popularly known as 419, 2003. Ndigbo
were massacred in Kaduna in February and May of 2000. Ndigbo were
massacred in Kano in 2001, and 2004.What did Obasajno do? Nothing, but
to reprimand the southeast governors for raising their voice against the
igbo massacre. While reputable construction companies were constructing
and maintaining roads of other geopolitical locations in Nigeria,
southeast road was awarded to a trading company from Middle-east.
The Niger Bridge situated in Onitsha is a dead trap or a land
mine. The design has been cancelled, the reconstruction has by extension
been cancelled also, but Ghana and Sao Tome and Principe were granted
loan without the authorization from the national assembly. Although
there is nothing national in the Nigeria’s senate and house of
representatives, but a rubber stamp agency of Mr. Obasanjo.The 2nd Benue
Bridge at Markudi was built in 1978 with the oil money. The
internationalization of Enugu airport has been politicized. This
politics is all part of the WAI. Dr.
Ngige is the governor of Anambra State, but the president has to
withdraw his police security, because Ngige is an Igboman. MASSOB is a
non-violent organization, but Obasanjo sends his private police aka
Nigerian police to kill and maim them. Governor
Orji Kalu cried out for the death threat from the notoriously corrupt
and disgraced police officer called Tony Anenih, his Slok airline barely
operational for one month was shut down by Obasanjo. Again more than
2000 employees of the airline are jobless. Mr. Vincent Azie despite
being a fearless and an experienced auditor was removed in place of
twice rejected Joseph Ajiboye, a Yoruba. Vincent Azie is an igboman. The
Chinese made provisions to build two power plants in Nigeria. One in Ala
Oji, the other in Ondo State, but Obasanjo removed the Ala Oji project
in Abia state to Ogun State. The Nigerian/Biafra war ended some 34 years
ago, but Obasanjo has continued the war in a different form. The PRODA
(Project Development Agency) situated in Enugu has been left to die a
financial death. The Agency has been deliberately starved of funds. But
this man squanders Nigeria’s oil money junketing around the globe
pretending to be searching for foreign economic development and
laundering Nigeria’s image. It will be recalled that prior to the 2003
election façade, Obasanjo enunciated five projects for the southeast.
These include, dry port, the construction of the 2nd Niger
Bridge, the reactivation of Oji Power house, the development of coal and
among other things. More than one year after the façade, which of these
projects has been initiated? The lives and properties of Ndigbo do not
mean anything to Obasanjo and group of his leadership cult. How many
igbos have been deliberately murdered in Kaduna and Kano since the
inception of his inglorious administration? How many igbo properties
have been destroyed and looted by the islamic hoodlums? There was some
retaliation by just one local government in Plateau State, Obasanjo
declared a state of emergency to placate Alhaji Mantu, a muslim who has
been spying and fronting for him in the senate. Igbos were killed in
numbers in Kano, but Obasanjo did not even condemn the killing. Alhaji
Abubakar Rimi called Obasanjo all sorts of names, abusing him and have
no regards whatsoever for his presidency, yet this man Obasanjo has been
paying him salary as the chairman of the Nigerian Mint and Printing
Corporation. During the first term of the so- called Nigerian national
assembly, Alhaji Umar Na’Abba stood his ground against Obasanjo, but
there was no where he let out his private police to harass Na’Abba.
Is any one in wonder about the alacrity with which he unleashed
his private police in the Okija shrine? Much as I don’t condone Okija
shrine for whatever it stood for, sharia is worst than Okija shrine, but
has Obasanjo ever condemned sharia with its attendant human destruction
on Nigerians and the modern world? Cutting of limbs and hands, stoning
women to death. Depriving
Christians their right to dress and drink even in their houses, burning
churches and unleashing deaths and destruction on people whose sins are
because they profess different faith.
The
true test of his continued war on igbos will come the year 2007. What he
is going to with the presidency of 2007 will certainly be another issue.
But what he does with the presidency of 2007, igbos will always out live
Obasano and his WAI. Whenever Obasanjo took a tour of the south-south
states, Ndigbo, Ojukwu and Biafra, were his daunted topic. Be it Bayelsa,
Akwa Ibom, or
Cross River. If he was not fanning the ember of hatred and friction, he
would be telling them that he liberated them from the igbos, and that
oil was the cause of the civil war, therefore more 100,000 igbos
murdered in Kano, Kaduna, Jos, Makurdi and other parts of the north in
1966 meant nothing to Obasanjo. His most recent crude expression at Akwa
Ibom, he left the question asked to him about General Philip Effiong and
took on Ojukwu calling him arch rebel. Ojukwu like Effiong were his
seniors in the military, but for a man who rose to the rank of general
in the northern army not to conduct him self appropriately with respect
and dignity of other generals showed his uncouth manner and his
poisonous irascibility. Obasanjo will go out of his way to abuse the
Nigerian constitution to advance his despotism and rankle the
opposition. His irrational and unpresidential behavior in Owu
chieftaincy saga in Abeokuta his home state, his use of presidential
letterhead in the Owu matter, and his arrest of the Owu king makers with
his personalized police because they opposed his crude ways is all about
using his position as president to harass and intimidate Nigerians. Of
course Obasanjo is what he
is because Nigerian legislatures are what they are,…..unelected and
unelectable men and women serving as institution of corruption and
president’s rubber stamp agency. Obasanjo chooses whom he can use to
destabilize Ndigbo. He surrounds himself with hopeless and prodigal
igbos, people like Adolphus Wabara, Emeka Offor, Chris Uba and Arthur
Nzeribe. In
his first term he spent the whole 4 years empowering the Yorubas and
creating economic and structural empires for the Yorubas. During that
period, Yorubas were everywhere in Nigeria’s national and economic
affairs. In
this 2nd term, he knew he was going to go down as hell if he
continues to yorubanize Nigeria and her institutions, hence the
enlistment of Ndigbo to rescue him. In this term if Dr. Ngozi Iwuala,
prof.Charles Soludo, Frank Nweke, Chikelu, prof. Fabian Osuji, Mr.
Ernest Ndukwe of the NCC, Obeageli Ezekwesili and Obeageli Akunyili,
decide to quit his government today Nigeria and Obasanjo will collapse
like an under inflated balloon. The justice ministry is manned by a
yorubaman, but it does not appear Nigeria has the minister of justice,
except when the issue involves igboman. Nigeria does not seem to have
minister of foreign affairs except when Obasnjo junkets around the
world, yet there is one yoruba man named and paid for the job of foreign
minister. The
noise being made about Babangida’s
presidential ambition which of course is never going to
materialize, is because Obasanjo has personalized the police, the
security services, the Nigerian nation and above all created an agency
called ICPC for use for those who disagreed with his tyranny and
political opponents. That there is even a mention of Babangida for
presidency for the year 2007 is a big indictment on Obasanjo and his
government. Obasanjo’s
irascibility, crudeness, irrational behavior and negative reactions are
all product of intellectual deficiency. The man lacks personal and moral
discipline. His personalization of the police is a product of insecurity
and inferiority complex. He goes to the university and accused them of
all kinds of illegalities. He accused the police of lending or selling
weapons to the armed robbers, by extension the police are armed robbers.
But as a president and he knew all these things, what is he doing about
them? Although he limits his wicked ways and foul languages to the igbos,
northern and southern Christians, the police, the southern and northern
minorities, hence the declaration of state of emergency in Plateau
state, the military inversions of Odi and Zaki Biam, the denial of
police security to a governor of an igbo state, the sponsoring of
abduction of an igbo governor, the use of vulgar languages to the
university lecturer, he dares not use such language or provoke the army
otherwise they will deflate his big bulge and send him back to Otta in
pieces. At least he has enough brain to avoid messing with the army or
call them names as he cajoles his police. Obasanjo
has been effecting this war against igbos and destruction of their
economic structures using the machinery of the Nigerian government to
achieve his objectives because he has personalized the Nigerian security
apparatus. It has been said that no one ever successfully muzzled all
people all the time. He can have some success in muzzling Ndigbo at some
time but will never be successful in muzzling Ndigbo all the time. He
surrounds him self with Mustafa Balogun, the head of his personal police
just for today, but he cannot surround himself with God much longer. He
can ask General Yakubu Gowon, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, General Muhammed
Buhari, General Ibrahim Babangida, not to talk of the late General
Murtala Mohammed, the late general Sani Abacha or Obasanjo’s
equivalent in igbo hatred, the late major-general Shehu Musa Yar’dua .
These men like Obasanjo personalized Nigerian State, surrounded
themselves with Nigerian security apparatus, signed and presided over
official conspiracy and official oppression against Ndigbo, maintained
economic and structural deprivation of Ndigbo. Maintained
exclusion of Ndigbo in the scheme affairs and yet refused Ndigbo from
separating themselves from a mere geographical expression called
Nigerian. Before Obasanjo igbos were in existence, after Obasanjo Ndigbo
will still be in existence. The civil war was fought between the evil
forces of oppressive elements represented by the Hausa/Fulani in
collaboration with crude elements in the west of Nigeria against the
man’s inalienable right to live in freedom from fear and ignorance
represented by the igbos. Ndigbo lost the battle, but as for the war,
sooner than later the truth shall prevail. Chidi
P Eze. Texas, USA. |