Nigeria Must Atone For the Blood Of The Innocent

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo

The recent revalidation and recognition by the federal government of late Chief MKO Abiola as the rightful winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election in Nigeria has generated intense debate in the country. This debate has further been exacerbated by the unilateral declaration of June 12 of every year as Nigeria’s democracy day instead of May 29. 

*Dr. Arthur Nwankwo 

While this move by the Buhari administration has been interpreted by his apologists as a political master stroke aimed at galvanizing support from the south-west, many others have interpreted it not only as a political mischief but also as the debauchery and selective treatment of issues that bear at the foundation of the country.

I am not unmindful of the deep import of this development on the political trajectory of Nigeria. While it is given that righting the historical wrongs in any given society is critical to national healing process and unity, I am convinced also that the selective treatment of such historical injustices creates more disharmony than it is intended to resolve. There is no doubt that the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election was a criminal act that gnawed dangerously at the soul of Nigeria, inflicted mortal wounds on our federalist pretensions and generously encouraged ethnic nationalism.

Irrespective of the so-called apologies that have been offered by Buhari for the annulment of that election, it has not changed the intention for annulling the election in the first place. The intention was to forestall the shift in the power equation in the country from the north to the south. In recent times, former military President, Ibrahim Babangida had given all manner of reasons for the annulment. Let me state categorically that these reasons are fundamentally false. 
The real reason for the annulment could be gleaned from the impressions of the Sultanate, which=had accused Ibrahim Babangida of poor preparations for the election and putting the north in a position in which it could not determine the outcome of the election. In addition, upholding the results would have amounted to a reversal of the bequeathal of political power by the colonial masters to the north and also amount to the north’s inability to control and appropriate the resources of the south as it deems fit. 
In real terms, the so-called apology by President Buhari does nothing to altar the status-quo essentially because the deed has been done and apologies can come later. The evil of the annulment has not been lost on Nigerians particularly the Yoruba nation and reference to it at any point strikes a soft chord in their consciousness as a people. In our clime, there is this adage that you can kill a man’s dog to take his fish and apologize later. But the truth is that the fish has been taken and cannot be recovered. Apologies only serve to palliate the mind but do not palliate the loss. 
There is no doubt that President Buhari has been in deep political stress on account of his poor performance since coming to power in 2015 so much so that his support base in the south-west seem to be ebbing irredeemably. The only thing that would seem to resonate in the psyche of the south-west would be the canonization of Abiola and the sanctification of June 12 as Nigeria’s democracy day. Incidentally, the south-west appears to have swallowed this bait not minding that Buhari was hand-in-glove in the processes that led to the annulment of that election having worked very closely with General Sani Abacha. 
The Igbo are not deceived by this gimmick. Whereas the June 12, 1993 imbroglio is deserving of restitution, so also is the genocidal pogrom against the Igbo in Nigeria deserving of national atonement. I have noticed that there has been a reluctance or indifference on the part of many Nigerian governments to accept the truth of atonement for the sin of the Igbo genocide in Nigeria. In the main, the reason has been due to official and non-official conspiracy to subvert a focus on an event in which more than three million Igbo were slaughtered through a process that was fomented, orchestrated, executed, and supervised by the Nigerian state. 
The Igbo genocide just like the Rwandan and Darfur genocides in Africa, as well as the Armenian and Kosovan genocides, all reflect the historical conflagration of human bestiality and resonate the Nazi trivialization of Jewish genocide in scope and magnitude. However, unlike the Jews and the Armenians, Rwandan and Darfur genocides, the Igbo genocide has been neglected by Nigerian leaders. Whereas certain persons have tried to deconstruct the genocidal narratives against the Igbo for what they claim to be “lack of wholesale slaughter of Igbo in the aftermath of the war”, such deconstructionists have not been able to offer explanations on how to characterize the massive death toll among the Igbo civilian population if there was no genocidal intent on the part of the Nigerian state. 
While it is plausible to argue that there was no complete annihilation of the Igbo when we lost the war, the actions and behaviour of the Nigerian state during the war did not exclude such genocidal intent. Speeches by Northern leaders called for ethnic cleansing of the north of Igbo people. Pogroms and mass killings of the Igbo population from a decade earlier leave no doubt that the war offered opportunity to implement a “final solution” of what was perceived as an Igbo problem. Indeed, according to the 1968 Report of The International Committee on the Investigation of Crimes of Genocide, “hostilities between the Nigerian state and Biafra, which began in July 1967 served as a continuation of an intention to exterminate the Igbo people. The war was indeed a Nigerian variant of what the Nazi called the “final solution” of the Jewish problem”. 
Since the late 1950s, thousands of Igbo people have been massacred in different parts of Nigeria, especially in the Northern Region. The genocide against the Igbo, conceived, planned, and executed with the support of public officials in many cases, reached its climax in 1966. Even since the end of the Biafra-Nigeria war, the Igbo people remain objects of targeted slaughter in different parts of the country. Nigeria cannot hope to make progress without atoning for the blood of millions of Ndigbo that has been spilled on the Nigerian soil. Like the blood of Abel, the blood of these Igbo martyrs cry out against this country. From their shallow tombs, they cry out with a loud voice to God Almighty saying “How long, O Lord, Holy and True, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell in Nigeria?
Since we have suddenly realized that it is important to correct the errors of the past, it is not yet too late in the day to declare a national day of atonement for the blood of Ndigbo that has been spilled in this country. The blood of the innocent pollutes the ground on which it is shed and God has promised to repay the blood of the innocent on the hands of the murderers, even to hold the jurisdiction of murders responsible if they do not atone for the righteous blood found in their territory. 
Nigeria cannot possibly move forward until this is done. We cannot expect to be joyous when the blood of the innocent cries out against our land. Nigeria has become a killing field of the innocent and God’s judgment is upon the land. If the government can apologize for the sins of June 12, 1993, then it should recognize that declaring a national day of atonement should be the perfect restitution of historical injustices that have plagued this country. Truth is that righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach to any people. Killing of the innocent in any circumstance is a sin and the consequence is far-reaching. Nigeria is presently on that path.