By Charles Ogbu
Brethren from the
north, I bring you greetings from the southern part of Nigeria . On behalf of the
peace-loving people of the south in general and millions of Igbo youths in
particular, I start this letter by commending you for your recent open letter
to the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, where you called on the
pastor-turned politician to organise a referendum for the Igbo to enable them
to determine their future in line with international laws on
self-determination.
*pix: guardian |
By that letter, you proved to be better versed
in legal matters and ways of international laws with regard to the right of
indigenous people on self-determination than many have given you credit for.
Above all, your decision to resort to dialogue by writing a letter as against
the option of violence is one I must not fail to commend.
Having said these, let me come to the main
reason why I’m here. In your letter to the acting president, I noticed what
I’ve been trying to figure out whether to classify as an innocent
amnesia-induced oversight or a calculated attempt at revisionism on your part.
The aim of this letter is strictly to put the record straight.
You cited the January
15th coup which you mischievously tagged Igbo coup and claimed was the Igbo
manifesting their hatred for Nigeria .
Quite frankly, when I read that part, I was left wondering whether to pause and
die laughing or die crying. Contrary to your assertion, it was not the Igbo who
manifested hatred for Nigeria ’s
unity. It is you and your kind who invented the word “hatred” and even went
further to prove that indeed, it is not just a word.
You started manifesting hatred for other Nigerians as far back as
1945 when your kind killed hundreds of innocent southerners mostly Igbo in the
north central Nigerian city of Jos in an anti-Igbo pogrom, 15 years before Nigeria even got her independence from Britain . And of course,
you would later rise again in search of more Igbo blood in 1953 when your
people carried out another anti-Igbo pogrom in Kano which resulted in
another hundreds of Igbo lives being wasted once again. This time, all you
needed was a minor legislative disagreement at the Lagos parliament where your lawmakers were booed for trying to
delay a motion for Nigeria ’s independence by
claiming the north wasn’t yet ready for self-rule.
Isn’t it a classic definition of irony that a
people who started doing exceptionally well in the business of killing and
maiming their fellow Nigerians as far back as 1945 when Nigeria had not even
dreamt of gaining independence would now open their mouths and accuse others of
manifesting “hatred for Nigeria’s unity”? If you ever believed in the so-
called Nigeria ’s
unity, why kill and maim your fellow Nigerians for the flimsiest of excuses?
Funny enough, it was your people who first romanced the idea of seceding from Nigeria in a
movement that was popularly known as “Araba”.
Secondly, the January 1966 coup was not an
Igbo coup. It was a coup carried out by mostly junior army officers led by
Major Kaduna Chukwuma Nzeogwu and it had soldiers from Igbo, Yoruba,
Hausa/Fulani, Tiv, Esan, Ijaw, Urhobo, Bali etc on board. Hassan Usman Katsina,
an Hausa/Fulani, who was later made military governor of northern region, was
Nzeogwu’s right hand man and a major participant all through the period of the
coup. Major Adewale Ademoyega, the author of Why We Struck was of the same rank
as Nzeogwu. He was an active participant in the coup. There were Major
Ifeajuna, Lt. Fola Oyewole of The Reluctant Rebel, Lt. Tijani Katsina and Saleh
Dambo who were both Hausa/Fulani, there was Lt. Hope Harris Egheagha among
other Igbo. And that same coup was foiled by two brave Igbo men, Aguyi Ironsi in
Lagos (West) and Ojukwu in Kano (North).
Now, assuming without conceding that the
January 15th coup was organised and executed by only Igbo army officers, does
it not still amount to standing decency on its head for anyone to blame the
whole Igbo nation for a coup carried out by few military men from the region??
How can anyone seek to justify the savagery visited on defenceless Igbo men,
women and children residing in the north in the aftermath of that coup? Did
Nzeogwu who was from Delta
State consult the
indigenes of the state before leading that coup?
How come we don’t blame Dimka’s coup on his
ethnic group neither do we blame IBB and Buhari’s coup on the whole
Hausa/Fulani?
Let me quickly remind you that in the evening
of the January 15th coup, a Boeing 707 belonging to the Nigerian Airways
arrived in Kano with almost the whole northern
establishment back from Lagos
where they had gone to attend Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ conference. Ojukwu,
it was, who received them at the airport and even when orders from the coup
plotters were to shoot all politicians, Ojukwu gifted them with protection. If
there were a consensus among the Igbo to eliminate northern leaders, this would
have been a golden opportunity. Yet, Ojukwu ensured they were safe all through
the period.
In the said letter, you correctly stated that
Ojukwu refused to recognise Gowon but you mischievously failed to state that
Ojukwu’s refusal to recognise Gowon was in protest over the refusal of the
Hausa/Fulani military officers who killed the Head of State, Aguyi Ironsi, to
allow Brigadier Ogundipe to take over as the next in rank according to military
tradition.
Still in that same letter, you stated that Ojukwu declared Biafra but you conveniently failed to tell the public that Ojukwu didn’t just wake up in the morning, smoke his Benson cigarette and rushed to declareBiafra .
He (Ojukwu) did his best to de-escalate tension and even succeeded in reaching
a landmark accord with Gowon in Aburi , Ghana , which if implemented, would have put an
end to the Igbo genocide going on in the north and averted the moral tragedy
that was the Biafra war. But, Gowon,
unilaterally chose to defy the terms of this last-minute Aburi Accord, leaving
the Oxford
product, Ojukwu, with no choice but to pull his people out of a country that
refused to protect them.
Still in that same letter, you stated that Ojukwu declared Biafra but you conveniently failed to tell the public that Ojukwu didn’t just wake up in the morning, smoke his Benson cigarette and rushed to declare
Let me quickly say this not just to you, the
Arewa youths but to all Nigerians and foreigners alike:This current Biafra agitation is not a bait for Igbo presidency,
restructuring or appointments. It is a cry against institutionalised
marginalisation and state sponsored killing being perpetrated against the Igbo
by a country that was and still is, deaf, dumb and blind to the sanctity of the
lives of the same people it exists mainly to protect.
My generation is simply sick and tired of
being in a country where they are killed over the flimsiest of excuses such as
the burning of the Koran in a far away Afghanistan, the shooting of a
Palestinian boy by a murderous Israeli soldier in Gaza, the drawing of the
cartoon of Prophet Muhammad in far away Denmark by a cartoonist who is neither
Igbo nor Nigerian etc.
Igbo youths are not aggrieved with Nigeria solely because their parents were
massacred in the Biafra war. We are aggrieved
because almost 50 years after the war, the same people who killed our parents
are still killing us even in our homes using Fulani herdsmen, in our churches
and cities using soldiers trained and equipped with tax payers money, and our
places of business using almajiris who slaughter us and burn our shops with
state-sponsored impunity for no just cause other than the insatiable urge to
spill blood.
My fellow youths, we have lied to ourselves
for far too long. How about a little honesty here? All these killings point to
one thing which is that our worldviews are world apart. If we cannot stay
together as a country, we can always go our separate ways but it has to be in
peace. No one wants war. War is an ill-wind that blows no one any good.
I love the concluding part of your letter
where you rightly asserted that the Biafra
agitation is not an issue over which a single drop of blood should be shed. We
agree completely. We have all advanced beyond the primitive era of war. We are
not asking for war. We are only asking that since the Nigerian state has repeatedly
proven her unwillingness to treat us as equal partners in the Nigerian
experiment, we demand to be ‘gifted’ with a YES or NO vote known as referendum
to enable us to decide our future. Rather than merely mouthing off quit
notice, prevail on your leaders who control every facet of the Nigerian
government to allow for a plebiscite for the Igbo.
After they have voted and the YES vote carries the day, you can then give Igbo living in your region whatever condition under which you want them to live if they still want to continue living in your midst.
After they have voted and the YES vote carries the day, you can then give Igbo living in your region whatever condition under which you want them to live if they still want to continue living in your midst.
Dishing out quit
notice to Igbos residing in your region when they are yet to be officially
granted their referendum and Biafra is only
tantamount to putting the cart before the horse. Until the Igbos officially get
their Biafra, they remain Nigerians with all the right and privileges
of Nigerian citizens including the right of living and doing business
anywhere in Nigeria .
Lastly, let me conclude by reminding you that
even in the event of a successful referendum for Biafra, all property legally
acquired by the Igbo anywhere in Nigeria remain theirs and are protected by
international laws. Nigerians did not lose their property in Britain when
the latter granted her independence in 1960, did they? The world has progressed
considerably. I would remind you that the ‘abandoned property’ era is over but
I’m sure you already know that, don’t you?
Instead of killing ourselves and creating IDPs
everywhere, let us peacefully do “To Your Tent, Oh, Israel !” That way, we will still do
things together but as good neighbours under mutually agreed terms.
Love from Charles Ogbu.
*Ogbu, a social analyst, wrote fromPort
Harcourt .
*Ogbu, a social analyst, wrote from
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