The DSS: An Intelligence Agency Or An Arm Of A Campaign

By Charles Ogbu

On March 29, 2023, the Department of State Services, DSS, claimed to have identified some political actors involved in a plot to install an interim government. According to the statement signed by Peter Afunanya, the spokesperson of the Spy Agency, the plot is “not only an aberration but a mischievous way to set aside the Constitution and undermine civil rule as well as plunge the country into an avoidable crisis”. 

The Service identified “endless violent mass protests in major cities” and “frivolous court injunctions to forestall the inauguration of the new executive administrations…..” as the two means through which the unnamed politicians planned to achieve their aim. 

Open Letter To Arewa Youths

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.

The 1914 Amalgamation Remains Nigeria’s Bane!

By Charles Ogbu 

Every problem Nigeria has ever faced and will ever face can be traced to that demonic event of 1914 when the British merged the Southern and Northern protectorates into one country that is today known as Nigeria.
   

Britain had only one thing in mind while carrying out the amalgamation: Their administrative and economic convenience. Nothing more. The action of the British can be compared to a man who bought both herbivorous and carnivorous animals from the market and chose to put them in one cage to make it convenient for him to transport them home. This man knew that herbivores feed on herbs and are very harmless and easygoing while carnivores feed on flesh and are most times very aggressive and violent. In other words , the herbivorous animals in that cage might end up as meat for the carnivorous ones even before the man would reach his destination. He knew all these but still chose to put both animals together.
  
Do we need the brain of Albert Einstein to figure out the fact that the welfare of these animals was the last thing on this man’s mind? Rather, all he cared about was getting them all home whether dead or alive without spending extra money for another cage and extra  fare for that new cage. 

    

Even my three-month-old niece knows that the North and South have absolutely little in common. Not the same language, not the same culture, not the same religion, not the same ancestry, not even the same worldviews and as such, can’t possibly live together as one country.

How To Resolve The Biafra Question

By Charles Ogbu

It is no longer news that a secessionist group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) led by Nnamdi Kanu who is currently being detained by the Federal Government is seeking the separation of the South East states from Nigeria. The group wants the states to form a new country to be known as Biafra, the name by which the defunct Eastern Region was once known in 1967-1970. IPOB cites institutionalised marginalisation by the Nigerian state and state-sponsored killing of Igbo as reasons for its actions.

Successive Nigerian governments have responded with arrests, detention and outright killing of the group members. Some time ago, the Amnesty International released a damning video detailing cases where the Nigerian military under President Muhammadu Buhari killed not less than 150 members of the group inside a church and other locations in Onitsha, Anambra State on May 29/30 where the group had gathered to remember their heroes who died in the Biafra war four decades ago.

Also contained in the Amnesty report is a case where members of the Nigeria security agencies comprising police and soldiers swooped on unarmed IPOB members praying inside Ngwa High School, Aba, Abia State on February 9, 2016 and opened fire without warning, killing dozens of them and injuring hundreds.
 This, most certainly, cannot be the best way to solve the Biafra question. When a people complain of marginalisation in a country they call theirs and express a desire to secede as a result of that, it shouldn’t take the genius brain of Albert Einstein to know that the best way to attend to such a sensitive issue is not by rolling out the tanks against them. You don’t use force to keep an aggrieved partner in a relationship he/she has expressed a desire to quit. The easiest way to keep this aggrieved partner in the relationship is by addressing his/her grievances. This is what I believe the government of President Muhammadu Buhari should do with the Biafra issue.

Regardless of what anyone may think about the Biafra question, what even Buhari himself cannot dispute is the fact that some of the grievances of the IPOB group are genuine. It defies common sense that the government has repeatedly vowed never to negotiate with this unarmed group. Personally, I find it criminally offensive that a  Buhari government which is currently negotiating with the deadliest terror group in the whole world, Boko Haram, cannot bring itself to hold talks with the unarmed IPOB group which has been largely peaceful in carrying out its activities. You cannot be negotiating with the Boko Haram terror group which has killed thousands of Nigerians and displaced millions and protecting the murderous Fulani herdsmen with a strong 1000 man military taskforce while you are busy killing the unarmed and largely peaceful IPOB members. This cannot be right!

Buhari’s Anti-Graft War: A Sham

By Charles Ogbu

The 8th wonder of the world is how Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, managed to convince sane adults and some foreign countries that his government is waging war against graft. Fact is, there is no war against corruption. The so called anti-graft war is one hell of a lie, a fraud, a sham, a farce. It is a carefully planned and well executed show meant to deceive the hoi polloi of the society and take their minds off very crucial issues while the rogues in power keep preying on them in their characteristic manner.

*Buhari 

First, president Buhari who is supposedly spearheading this anti-graft war is a man I believe to be integrity-challenged. With due respect to his office, I think the president is a dishonest man who is incapable of honouring his own promise: Before the election, Buhari promised to fight corruption by first declaring his assets publicly, to enable Nigerians determine whether or not he had corruptly enriched himself when he would publicly declare his assets again upon leaving office. On September 3, the president's media aide, Garba Shehu, read out a list of some of the president's belonging where he mentioned incoherent stuff like: "yet to be located plot of land in Port Harcourt", "Unspecified number of cars" etc.

Mr. Shehu would later promise that the president would disclose his full assets when the CCB was done with the verification. The CCB has since finished with the verification and almost one year after, the president has refused to honor his own word.

How can I trust a man who is incapable of honoring his own word? How can Nigerians trust such a man to fight corruption without corruptly enriching himself in the process? And if he is corruptly enriching himself, family and cronies in the process, can he be said to be fighting corruption? How can you claim you are fighting corruption when you have not even proven the very garment you wore was not made from the forbidden tree of corruption?