A NEW NIGERIA OR A NEW BIAFRA: IGBO CHOICE HAD LONG BEEN KNOWN

Prof. Obasi Igwe.

This 7th June 2021, it was good listening  to the re-posted  Prof. Soludo's book launch speech which he delivered a few years ago, but which is still relevant today probably about a difference between what the Igbo actually want and what they actually need to optimize their potentials - and when such a debate can start. 

The tragedy for the Igbo is that there is hardly any other ethnic group in Nigeria except them that doesn't already know where it is headed to and working assiduously towards. This Igbo tragedy arises from 4 sources: 

(a) In the 21st century some Igbo elites do not know yet whether or not they are Igbo first before they are Anglican, Catholic, Ogboni, Freemason, Cherubim, Moslem, Christian and so on. The Yoruba, Fulani, French, English, Russian, Chinese, Bini, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Americans, etc had long solved that simple issue that those personal attachments are subordinate and sometimes necessarily irrelevant to the survival of your own nation. None of those entities can ever choose the Igbo simply on account of sectarian or cultic brotherhood over and above their own nationalities in any critical moment of need. It has happened before and still happening worldwide. 

(b) Ekwueme-led betrayal of the Igbo nation. At the end of the civil war the Igbo nation was still generally intact despite Gowon's vindictive pattern of states creation and Abandoned Property employed to scatter them into bits. 

This surprising Ekwueme action was when the additional rain started beating the Igbo. Why did he do such a thing, what went into his head, what god was he pleasing? 

Most great Ikwerre, Etche, Obigbo, Umuagbai, Ndoni, Ogba, Ubani/Bonny, Opobo, etc southern Igbo chiefs and leaders (Amabibi Nsirim, Jackson Mpi, Obi Wali, SJS Cookey, Francis Ellah, name them) were still identifying themselves as Igbo and totally opposed to the ethnic-cleansings going on against their brothers and sisters, with such people as Otonti Nduka isolated as renegade equivalents of Ukpabi Asika.

 Why should an "Igbo leader" go and formulate a 6-zonal political structure to isolate these oppressed southern/coastal Igbo communities from their hinterland kith and kin and giving a suicidal stamp of legitimacy to the political corruption of destroying the cohesion of the Igbo nation? 

This cruel evil aimed at destroying Igbo coastal history and maritime traditions is what many corrupt Igbo elites have since been promoting; and the only great idea from Igbo land that sections of the press and authorities have been relishing till date - and some Igbo elites cannot learn from this ill-motivated mirth. The greater tragedy is: where are the Igbo intelligentsia; who among them have questioned how enclaving some Igbo and isolating the others would economically or politically help the Igbo in Nigeria? All that the supporters and beneficiaries of this treachery do is promoting the falsehood that "they" hate us, probably therefore we will hate "them" in return. 

(c). Corruption of the Igbo political elites. Corruption twists reasoning, distorts thought, personalises issues and betrays any cause. This is the problem that the Igbo nation have about most of their elites. Nigerians are so fickle that they cannot set their eyes on money, but a true Igbo man aware of the objective situation of his suffering people should not act like the herd.

 Because of this corruption there is

zero ideological focus among average Igbo politicians. You easily wonder if there is anything else they are looking for other than positions and personal aggrandizement. What Nigeria needs today to survive is the immediate end to the several suspected officially sponsored, enabled or facilitated "wars", and correction of the many military-security imbalances in a modern democratic secular state. The. Igbo political elites cannot drive this civilization either because of its implications for their anti-people religious denominations, the feudal interests of those propping them up, the corrupt enrichments in their baggage, and their outright hatred for, at least dislike of  ideological discourse. (d) Igbo elites lack of interest in history except that of the civil war. Of course, it's axiomatic that a corrupt man/woman, glued to foreign cults, beliefs or deities, would certainly be beholden to the Ekwueme-type of selfish thoughtless thought, with little or no interest in history.

IGBO POSITION ON NIGERIA AND BIAFRA.

There are two competing Igbo positions today on Nigeria and Biafra, which is not different from that of many other ethnic nationalities, and they are as follows:

(1) Most Igbo youths, together with many other Easterners, fed up with the institutionalized injustices against them and their parents and peoples, and unhindered by the usual divide and rule tactics of the Nigerian evil system, want Biafra and nothing else. 

Nigerian authorities and their indivisible, non-negotiable hirelings pretend that Biafra agitation is restricted to only Igbo youths living in the 5 hinterland states while hypocritically afraid of a referendum that may prove the opposite. 

Many non-Igbo Easterners are now ruminating whether or not the Igbo actually oppressed them as propagated by Ken Saro-Wiwa, Adaka Boro and others enabled by several Igbophobists.

 This writer was the Mkpoko Igbo Rapporteur in 1994 when Ken Saro-Wiwa at Enugu apologized before the whole world that he was wrong and that the Igbo as a people didn't after all victimize his people. 

There are also passages in his anti-Igbo diatribe, "On a darkling plain", to the effect that Igbo-led Eastern governments were actually "pampering" his and other such peoples, and that what triggered his anger was that a probably illiterate Igbo cook while serving him food at Govt. College, Umuahia, said that some Ogoni were "stupid" for not voting NCNC. Mistakes were made like the Eyo Ita issue, but never in the magnitude of the evils imposed oh the Ogoni peoples ever since. 

Someone claimed that that acknowledgement of the virtue in the albeit imperfect but still republican and equality-minded Igbo compared to others was the day that Saro-Wiwa sealed his fate and Sani Abacha was only the denouement, almost the same way that life was snuffed out of Adaka Boro when he tried to wax equality with other genocidal Nigerians the way he did at the UNN and meritoriously achieved election as  President of the Students' Union. 

If you hear what Elechi Amadi said during Achebe's burial or carefully read between the lines his "Sunset in Biafra", you will appreciate that while he defended his being Ikwerre at the micro level, just like the Ogboo, Ijekebee, Ndoki/Ngwa, Waawa, Anioma, Uzor-Ulor, Echie, etc are, they are all Igbo at the macro level. Even the white man noticed that the Igbo are all "separate" at home but firmly united abroad - that is, in the face of common danger.  

It's very shameful that while the elites are harping on hatred and disunity, it is Mazi Nnamdi Kanu who was able to tap into this latent natural unity of the Igbo nation and between them and other Eastern/Southern nationalities.

(2) Some Igbo elders,  maybe those from 60 upwards, believe that Nigeria can be rescued through a  restructuring, and that like the Igbo/East themselves, not all Nigerians are bad or good or want us eradicated. 

There are two strands among them: between the corrupt and non-corrupt but shortsighted, and compromised and power hungry who propagate the Ekwueme scheme narrowing their Igbo to SouthEast and by excluding others, make themselves more acceptable to anti-Igbo peoples and easier for them to snatch rewards, including an "Igbo Presidency". The second are those who believe that the Igbo should not be treated or treat themselves different from the way other Nigerians are treating themselves and are treated.

 Yoruba, Fulani, etc are working for internal unity and cohesion: why must any Igbo elites be working for Igbo disunity and internal disharmony? Igbo dialects and traditions are easier and more mutually intelligible than those of other nationalities, and in the whole of West Africa they are the only major nation bestriding the Niger and at the same time coastal; why are some Igbo elites bent on turning this advantage into a curse, and not looking forward to a needed Igbo role in the African and ECOWAS free trade treaties?

 Why shouldn't Port Harcourt, Ubani, Opobo that contributed immensely to Atlantic history and population of the West not be in the CNN, BBC, Aljazeera and other global weather charts,? All should be lost to satisfy the gods of division and artificial mutual "hatred"?

UNITING THE IGBO POSITIONS.

In prayers, what you ask God is what He considers for you, and in the courts of fallible man we hear that you are hardly granted the reliefs that you never sought. 

The impoverishment of the Igbo is anchored on the subsisting Gowon-led blockade and deprivation of their Igweocha, Ubani and Opobo ports and their severance from their hinterland kith and kin. That blockade continues till today and still doing it's job of dividing, impoverishing and antagonizing the Igbo and East. 

To restore peace in the East you must retrigger industrialization and prosperity in the East by modernizing and reopening these ports to the Nnewi, Aba, Onitsha, Agbor, Asagba, Owerre, Abakaliki, Enugu and other industrialists. 

The Igbo feel greatly insulted, at least humoured by orchestrated barges once in a while carefully rigmarolling through creeks and rivulets to offload a container or two at Onitsha, all in the effort to divert the Igbo or make them believe they had no coastal ports or used any before. The fair, just and honvest restructuring the Igbo need shall retrigger prosperity in the East, have a positive spillover effect on most of the Middle Belt and Northeast, and help douse ethnic tensions. And we hope to draw our youths onto this alternative route to their self-actualization and optimal development. This remains our appeal to all well-meaning Nigerians, who we indeed respect as fellow stake holders in the search for peace based on justice.

The other alternative is to continue the war to divide and/or eradicate the unarmed and innocent Igbo and Eastern youths, men and women, while at the grassroots the youths increasingly unite for nothing but a new Biafran nation. Thanks greatly.