Nobody is marginalized in Nigeri

Nobody is Marginalized in Nigeria

By Tochukwu Ezukanma

The Willink’s Commission Report of 1957 made clear the desires of the ethnic minorities in all the three regions of Nigeria for their own regions. In 1963, the federal government - a coalition of the Hausa/Fulani dominated Northern People Congress (NPC) and the Igbo dominated National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) - created a region from the Western Region, the Mid Western Region, for the western minorities. It did not create regions for the minorities in the Igbo dominated Eastern Region and Hausa/Fulani dominated Northern Region. And the creation of this new region was most advantageous to the NCNC; an NCNC stalwart, an Igbo, Denis Osadebe, became the premier of the new region.

From the four brigadiers of the Nigerian Army (Aguiyi-Ironsi, Ademologun, Maimalari and Ogundipe), the departing British General Officer Commanding (GOC) the Nigerian army, Major General Welby-Everard, recommended Obafemi Ogundipe, as his replacement. Having worked closely with his four Nigerian subordinates; and known their qualifications, capabilities and temperaments for the responsibilities of the GOC, his recommendation was momentous, and should have been a powerful determinant in the appointment of the new GOC. But pandering to his coalition partners, the NCNC, the prime minister, Tafawa Belewa, ignored his recommendation, and appointed Aguiyi-Ironsi the GOC the Nigerian army.

While the foremost Igbo leader, Nnamdi Azikiwe, luxuriated in the opulent and ornate, but almost politically powerless, presidential office, and the Hausa/Fulani leader, Tafawa Belewa, held sway from the more austere, but politically powerful, office of the prime minister, the principal Yoruba leader, Obafemi Awolowo, wasted away in prison. In Eastern Nigeria and Northern Nigeria, Michael Okpara led United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) and the Ahmadu Bello led Nigerian National Alliance (NNA) held sway respectively. Sadly, Western Nigeria was the most ferocious battlefields of the two political alliances’ warfare: homes were torched and people were murdered; the innocent and hapless suffered and died.

As of then, what was the problem of the Yoruba? Were they universally hated by other Nigerians and/or marginalized? No, they were paying the price for their wrong political choices and actions. Similarly, in present day Nigeria, the political problems of the Igbo are neither from their universal hatred by other Nigerians nor marginalization. We are paying the price for our wrong political choices and actions.

The most disastrous political choice ever made by the Igbo was Biafra. There was absolutely no cogent reason for Biafra. Conscious of this fact, the Igbo elite were opposed to Biafra. The military elite were appalled by the murder of Ironsi and the anti-Igbo pogrom in Northern Nigeria; and were opposed to Gowonism, but wanted the problems resolved within the context of One Nigeria. Like Nnamdi Azikiwe and Louis Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Igbo political elite saw through the absurdity and foolhardiness of secession, and were opposed to it. But intimidated by Ojukwu’s Edict 5, which stipulated stiff punishment for criticizing or disagreeing with the governor of Eastern Region, the Eastern Region Consultative Assembly lukewarmly assented to Ojukwu’s secession bid.

It was obvious that the declaration of Biafra will result to a war for Gowon was unequivocal in his stance to fight any attempt to dismember Nigeria. The British and American governments; African countries, as represented by the Organization of African Unity (OAU); and the generality of the minorities in Eastern Region were opposed to secession. Just, as the ethnic minorities in the North and West dreaded Hausa/Fulani and Yoruba domination respectively and wanted their own state/regions, the minorities in Eastern Region dreaded Igbo domination and wanted their own state/region. Biafra was to deny them their own state, and also reinforce Igbo domination.

With Biafra completely enfeebled, militarily and economically, and diplomatically isolated, it was obvious that Biafra was a suicidal and doomed enterprise motivated by Ojukwu’s arrogance, strong headedness and selfish ambitions. As governor of Eastern Region, the parameters of his powers were circumscribed; they were subject to Gowon’s authority and goodwill. With his declaration of Biafra, his power became independent of Gowon, and he also levitated from governor to Head of State and Supreme Commander. To retain his power, he scuttled every attempt at a peaceful resolution of the war, because all the peace talks demanded compromises that would have stripped him of his imperious and boundless powers. Finally, as the federal forces closed in dangerously on him, and his power became untenable; he ran away.

To give his obsession with power a coloration of a struggle for survival, and thus, get the Igbo fighting for “survival” demanded excessive falsehood. Consequently, Ojukwu and his propagandists lied copiously to the Igbo. The anti-Igbo riots in northern Nigeria did not bloom out of a void; they were in reprisal to the lopsided killings in the January 15^th 1966 coup by one Yoruba and four Igbo majors. The riots were in two phases: May 29^th to 31^st, 1966 and September 29^th to early October 1966. About seven to ten thousand Igbo were killed in the riots. At the Aburi meeting of members of the Supreme Military Council, Ojukwu placed the number at ten thousand (10, 000), but the Biafran propaganda bumped it up to thirty thousand (30,000).

Gowon implemented the Aburi Accord, with Decree 8 (not word for word as Ojukwu desired). And all the signatories to the accord (members of the Supreme Military Council) accepted Decree 8, and Ojukwu’s advisers urged him to accept it, because, “Gowon had gone more than far enough”. He refused, and lied to the Igbo that Gowon did not implement the accord. The anti-Igbo riots in the North ended in early October 1966 (seven months before Ojukwu declared Biafra). In this intervening seven months, nobody was killed and no one attacked any one. Although Ojukwu rejected Decree 8, the search for peace had not be exhausted.

It was the declaration Biafra, and its sequels (the war and our unconditional surrender) that set the Igbo tumbling off a pedestal into a quagmire of powerlessness, hopelessness and helplessness. They caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Biafran soldiers and at least one million Biafran civilians. They destroyed the Igbo power structure painstaking cobbled together, over decades, by the likes of the Nnamdi Azikiwe, Louis Odumegwu-Ojukwu and S.I. Obi. They rendered the Igbo rudderless by stripping us of the earlier consensus and strategy that gave us a preponderant influence in Nigerian politics, economy and the entire range of the Nigerian social life. And it vacuumed out our earlier political and economic powers, and bestowed them on the Hausa/Fulani and the Yoruba; the Hausa/Fulani acquired an almost exclusive hold on political power and the Yoruba, a stranglehold on the economy.

Instead of holding the man that led us into an abyss accountable for our troubles, we are blaming everyone and everything, including marginalization, for our dilemma. Most lamentably, the inexorable hold of Ojukwu’s lies on Igbo minds continues to fuel our self-pity, sense of victimhood and persecution complex, which, in turn, reinforce our blame game and drive us deeper into a political morass.