Buhari, Fayose, Ugwuanyi, And This Bitch Of A Life

By Chuks Iloegbunam  

“If you are neutral in situations of in­justice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

“The ultimate tragedy is not the op­pression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Vexed voices have, in exasperation, been asking where Reverend Father Ejike Camillus Mbaka is. They are absolutely right who expect the priest to speak up. People should ask where Bola Tinubu is, the one who covets the feat of unknotting Pandora’s Box. People should be asking where many other previously vocal Nigerians are. People should conduct an investigation on the seemingly abrupt dryness of Niyi Osundare’s inkpot, for he has put an incongruous halt to his fondness for poetizing on national ques­tions. All those experts on radio and television, all those incisive analysts on cyberspace and concourses – know you one thing! People have a right to ask what sneaked in and stole your voices. What crept in and rendered you incapable of standing up? What stealthily stymied your very humanity?

People also have another re­sponsibility, which in fact is more fundamental than pointing accus­ingly at the supposed guilty. People should be asking themselves where they stand.

People will, perhaps, temporar­ily desist from wondering whether Wole Soyinka had embarked on a journey out of the planet Earth. The Nobelist’s voice finally crashed against the wall of eviscerating in­justice: 

“Impunity evolves and be­comes integrated in conduct when crime occurs and no legal, logical and moral response is offered. I have yet to hear this government articulate a firm policy of non-tol­erance for the serial massacres have become the nation’s identification stamp.

“I have not heard an order given that any cattle herders caught with sophisticated firearms be instantly disarmed, arrested, placed on trial, and his cattle confiscated. The na­tion is treated to an eighteen-month optimistic plan which, to make matters worse, smacks of abject ap­peasement and encouragement of violence on innocents.

“Let me repeat, and of course I only ask to be corrected if wrong: I have yet to encounter a terse, rigor­ous, soldierly and uncompromising language from this leadership, one that threatens a response to this unconscionable blood-letting that would make even Boko Haram re­pudiate its founding clerics.”

Buhari: Phase Two

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Everyone must keep their eyes on the ball. Muham­madu Buhari has, with little drama, slipped into Phase Two of his presidency. Giv­en the texture of Phase One, this new phase could deliver somber­ness and dissemblance. For those who didn’t get it, or who pretend after the fact not to have gotten it, Buhari’s Phase One stressed one point: All that glitters is not gold. It wasn’t that people were una­ware of the possibility of stuff like clay, rubber and wood glinting on account of some polish. It was that the hoopla that attended the shimmer of the recycled “gem­stone” was unprecedented.

But, as Nigerians would say it, after the race, the calculation of the distance covered! There were scores of experts in calculus at the starting point. Strangely, what had been hyped as one joy­ous calculators’ adventure quick­ly came to grief, reason being that there was precious little to mark on the achievements’ mar­gin. Good promises, like candy bars, had of course, been made to be broken.

There had been (or hadn’t there been?) a number of warn­ing voices in those heady days of the change mantra’s eruption, Sputnik-like, raring to tear into and through outer space. One of such voices – that of Chuk­wuma Charles Soludo – wasn’t even oppositional to the touted humankind’s final hope. This was Professor Soludo a month to the presidential ballot: “The APC promises to create 20,000 jobs per state in the first year, totaling a mere 720,000 jobs. This sounds like a quota system and for a country where the new entrants into the labour market per an­num exceed two million. If it was intended as a joke, APC must please get serious…”

“Did I hear that APC prom­ises a welfare system that will pay between N5,000 and N10,000 per month to the poorest 25 million Nigerians? Just this programme alone will cost between N1.5 and N3 trillion per annum. Add to this the cost of free primary education plus free meal (to be funded by the federal budget or would it force non-APC state governments to implement the same?), plus some millions of public housing, etc. I have tried to cost some of the promises by both the APC and the PDP, given alternative scenarios for public finance and the numbers don’t add up. Nigerians would be glad to know how both parties would fund their programmes. Do they intend to accentuate the huge public debt, or raise taxes on the soon to-be-beleaguered private businesses, or massively devalue the naira to rake in bas­kets of naira from the dwindling oil revenue, or embark on huge fiscal retrenchment with the sack of labour and abandonment of projects…

“The presidential election will be won by either Buhari or Jona­than. For either, it is likely to be a pyrrhic victory. None of them will be able to deliver on the fan­tastic promises being made on the economy, and if oil prices re­main below $60, I see very diffi­cult months ahead, with possible heady collisions with labour, civil society, and indeed the citizenry.”

Nigeria: Of Bastards And Legitimates

By Chuks Iloegbuhnam

Two recent telephone conversations: My brother called. He was in something of a fix. Opening his door earlier that morning, there were two 30-li­tre jerry-cans placed in front of his house. Who had left them? He didn’t have long to wait for the answer to his unvoiced question. Our cousin’s wife, who lives in the same estate and whose husband was out of the country, had left them. She soon surfaced with an unam­biguous request.

“Your generator was on throughout the night.”

“It was.”

“That means you have a way of sourcing fuel. Please, don’t come back today without fuel for us!”

“Eh?”

“You can’t beat off the heat with your electric fans while I suffocate with my children.” The woman spoke matter-of-factly and returned to her house. What to do? I told my brother to go find fuel for his household’s further use, and for our cousin’s family too. He complained that the proposi­tion was far more difficult than it sounded. But, in my book, that aspect of our conversation was at an end. I was ready for us to discuss the moon and China.

I later called a journalist friend of mine. He had just returned from his barber’s, he said. The barber had doubled the cost of a haircut. When he asked why, the barber respond­ed with his own question:

“Oga, you no see say na genera­tor I dey use?” My friend drove home to find his wife frowning by their open freezer.

“What’s the matter?”

“The fish is melting.”

“In that case, let’s put the generator on for an hour while I go out in search of fuel.”

He had brunch and drove off again. Back after five hours without as much as a pint of petrol, the generator was still on. Seven minutes later, its fuel tank ran empty and the poor thing went off.

“As I speak to you now,” said my friend, “there’s no fuel in the house for anything. None for fighting the intense heat. We can’t even afford the luxury of watching the La Liga tonight. What gives me the jitters, how­ever, is the contingency of my wife’s fish going bad; that will earn me some roasting.”

*Chuks Iloegbunam 

I sym­pathized with my friend, and advised that he detailed his ex­periences in his next column, leaving out, of course, any as­pects that may, even if vaguely, suggest that his wife was some­thing of the authority on the domestic front.

The next story is about someone who got fuel all right but, against his will and the de­sire of his family, paid with the expensive currency of his life. The price was uncritically ex­tortionate and raises afresh the whole question of the place of the human being in contempo­rary Nigerian society.

The following report, by nu­merous online publications, came from Festac Town, Lagos, on April 6, 2016: “The lingering fuel crisis has claimed a life as a female staff of the Nigerian Se­curity and Civil Defence Corp (NSCDC) shot dead a boy at the AP Filling Station on 21 Road.

“The boy was alleged to have bought fuel in jerry cans and was going home when he was accosted by a team of Civil Defence officials who arrested him. The boy who should be about 18 years old was said to have laid down on the road pleading with the Corps mem­bers to allow him to go home, as he was not a fuel hawker but had just bought fuel for per­sonal use.

“Eyewitnesses said the Com­mander of the team who felt that the boy was resisting ar­rest, ordered a female official to shoot the “Bastard” and the woman obeyed his order and shot him. On seeing the boy dy­ing in the pool of his blood, the Corps members zoomed off in their patrol van.

“As at press time, men of the enhanced military patrol tagged “OP Mesa” and the Nigeria Po­lice led by the Festac Police Sta­tion Divisional Police Officer (DPO) Monday Agbonika were on the ground, making sure that the angry mob did not take the laws into their own hands.

“The angry sympathizers had attempted to set the filling station and some petrol tank­ers ablaze but were prevented by the security operatives. A senior police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said the killing of the young boy was unwarranted.

‘‘Why should they kill the boy? I think the Civil Defence doesn’t know when to use fire­arms; they don’t even have reg­ulation on firearms usage.’

“The Lagos State Police Command spokesman, Dolapo Badmos, who confirmed the in­cident, said that the Police was investigating the matter with a view to fishing out the Civil Defence personnel who com­mitted the act and prosecuting them in the law court.”

The Civil Defence officers abandoned the boy they had shot dead and zoomed off! Who did they expect to clear their mess? Also, something new is self-evident. If people previously entertained only suspicions, the Civil Defence commander in Festac Town finally confirmed the composi­tion of Nigerians as legitimates and bastards. The legitimates are armed to the teeth and, like poachers in a games reserve, are running around gunning down bastards indiscriminately. But, until recent times, it wasn’t spelt out that bastardy was a capital offence.

There’s another considera­tion. An unidentified Police officer questioned the Civil De­fence’s knowledge on gun us­age. In fact, he wondered if any regulations guided their use of lethal weapons. The murdered boy had not committed any of­fence known to Nigerian law, let alone an offence punishable by summary execution, with­out any form of trial. The bas­tard was sadistically shot dead at pointblank range, despite the fact that he was rolling on the ground, pleading for mercy.

In some societies, this out­rage by the Civil Defence Corps should lead to a thorough re­view of their arms-bearing cir­cumstances. But, the problem of Nigerians – or more appro­priately, the problem of Nige­rian Bastards – has not been only at the hands of the Civil Defence. All other gun-bearing services are into this indiscrim­inate poaching of ‘bastards’. A DSS officer recently shot and killed a voter in Nasarawa State, at pointblank range and with­out provocation. As for the reg­ular Armed Forces, the Shi’a in Zaria and Biafran agitators are severely bloodied patches on their slates.

It all leads to the fundamen­tals. Official wantonness is a needless invitation to the chaos of backlashes. Again, Nigerian commentators often audit gov­ernments on their performanc­es regarding mundane things like power supply, availability of petroleum products, the provi­sion of jobs and the creation of the feel-good factor. Needless to add that these are critical areas in which the current dispensa­tion has so far posted mind-numbing failures, for which it has consistently blamed every other entity but it bumbling self.

Yet, the most important barometer for measuring a gov­ernment’s worth ought to be the amount of premium it places on human life. Any society with the apparent or inherent dichotomy of Legitimates and Bastards, in which the former mindlessly plunders and mur­ders the latter, execrates politi­cal leadership.

 *Mr. Chuks Iloegbunam, an eminent essayist, journalist and author of several books, writes column on the back page of The Authority newspaper every Tuesday.

Why Governor Ayo Fayose Must Hang

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Peter Ayodele Fayose. Two-time Governor of Ekiti State. There’s cer­tainly something to say for this man. Without question he is, for good or for ill, the most talked about State Governor in Nigeria today. He is one of the most controversial, if not the most controversial. Those who believe in him, who swear by his name, would readily die for him, would give whatever it would take for their man to retain his gubernatorial seat, will strike in­numerable blows to thwart his traducers. Others who hold Fay­ose to be beneath contempt, who proclaim that disdain expended on his account amounts to vital energy exercised in obedience to barrenness, people who abhor all that the man stands for, and who sand eternally against his regular ventilation of contrary opinion, would yearn for a cudgel – and a chance to bring the deadly weapon hard down on his head, to shatter his cranium, to finish off everything for the first-and-final time. 

*Gov Fayose 

Yet, there is something to say for Ayodele Fayose. If the coun­try ever had an autonomous Governor, the accolade belongs to this occupant of the Ekiti Governor’s Lodge. Leftwing ideologue Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa, tried his hands at autonomy as Governor of the old Kaduna State during the Sec­ond Republic. He waged a deter­mined war against the behemoth known otherwise as feudalism. He got impeached in less than two years. Even though the exer­cise that moved him from office was unwarranted, unjustified and shameful, the Federal Gov­ernment then run by the Nation­al Party of Nigeria (NPN) sanc­tioned it. He went. Balarabe may have had a chance to bounce back to the governorship seat but a second, protracted military in­terregnum killed and buried the possibility. He still lives though – with his integrity intact – while very little is today heard of those who abused democracy to get a blameless leader off the princi­pled path.

Fayose is empathetic to Bal­arabe’s experience. On October 16, 2006, he suffered a similar fate when into the third of his four-year tenure as Governor of Ekiti State. He was impeached, not necessarily because he was a wolf among the sheep, but large­ly because the top leadership of his political party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), found him expendable. But age was on his side. Only a month shy of his 46 birthday when he was im­peached, he bided his time. He switched parties. He contested other elections. He ultimately returned to the PDP. Then he strode back to Government House, Ado-Ekiti! 

Nigeria: Farewell To Fuel Scarcity

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Through the ages, peo­ples, including those currently occupying the space known today as Nigeria, who are faced with seri­ous challenges, naturally devise ways of mastering them. Yet, Ni­geria continues to groan under the weight of multifarious prob­lems that are, in truth, not intrac­table. Of course, there are prob­lems and there are those of them that are unquestionably knotty, including the task of building am­ity and unity between disparate peoples lumped together by the invasion of trans-Atlantic greed. When, in such a setting, it seems like the signs of enduring con­cord are in the offing, local greed – the insidious variety planted and nurtured by the trans-Atlan­tic original – rises and wipes away every vestige of hope. That is un­derstandable.

When, however, the problem has to do with fuel shortages, or the acute shortages of other goods and services, there is a fundamental reason why things permanently bad – to the cha­grin, utter pain and peril of Nige­rian peoples. Take the perennial shortages of petroleum products – gas, kerosene and petrol – in the country. These items are not scarce because they are not obtainable. They are invariably scarce because those employed to guarantee their availability have, through time, either shirked their responsibility or failed to under­stand what that responsibility entails.

This disgraceful situation criti­cally questions the nature of the essence of Nigerian peoples. It indicts Nigeria. Despite being the biggest oil nation in Africa, it remains the only one on the continent in which the discord­ant woes of fuel scarcity are regularly emitted. It is shameful that the mournful riff of lack of fuel, and the sorry sight of end­less queues at gas stations are Nigerians trademarks. Non-oil producing countries, including those in the Sahel region, hardly ever experience fuel shortages. But it is the lamentable lot of Ni­geria. Countries engaged in wars or afflicted by other tribulations manage somehow to meet their fuel demands. But not Nigeria, a country said to be benefitting from “relative” peace.

The reasons behind this blight are all too obvious. Corruption is one of them, as are ineptitude and negligence. So, the peoples suffer. The peoples suffer because of the long queues in the blistering heat of everyday. The peoples suffer because of the contrived delays by those operating the distribu­tion channels and the fuel sta­tions. The peoples suffer because artificial scarcities hike pump prices, which automatically im­pact negatively on prices and the availability of other goods and services. Without fuel there can­not be locomotion. Without this essential product, there cannot be power in homes and hospitals and factories; without fuel, what remain are jaded peoples.

Nigeria: Rivers Of Blood

By Chuks Iloegbunam

“When you use soldiers to kill, just to win a rerun election, just know that you will need the same soldiers to protect you while in of­fice. Or else, INEC will conduct a bye-election to fill your seat.” Sena­tor Shehu Sani.

*Gov Wike Nyesomof Rivers State

Looking at the weekend’s charade generally referred to as rerun elections in Riv­ers State, the profundity of Senator Sani’s statement strikes with the force of brutal truism. How come that a broad segment of Nige­rian politicians carry on with the mentality of creatures who possibly feed through their anal cavities? The imagistic representation out of Rivers State is a vast canvass of mindless violence by the two domi­nant political parties in contention. What was the objective of all the wantonness – a State Assembly to make laws for the living, or a fune­real conclave for cemeteries?

The following front-page story in the Sunday Sun of March 20, 2016, is entitled Rivers of Blood: Election Rerun Turns Deadly: “NO fewer than 10 persons, including one Immigration officer, were killed in yesterday’s Rivers State. Also, two National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members working as ad ­hoc staff were abducted at Abual Odua. But they were later rescued at 5 pm, by a team of mobile police­men.

“Meanwhile, heavy shooting marred voting in Abalama Town, in Asari-Toru Local Area. It was during the sporadic shootings that a bullet hit the Immigration officer.

“Sunday Sun gathered that some thugs had stormed the RAC centre and shot sporadically, after a disa­greement between supporters of two major political parties.

“Also, four persons were feared dead in Ogoni, in Rivers South-East, following late arrival of voting materials, which created tension in the senatorial district.

“Also, a soldier allegedly killed a young man who came out to cast his vote at Rumuokwuta area of Port Harcourt. In Nonwa, Tai Lo­cal Government Area, a voter, simply identified as Tombari, was shot dead by some hoodlums who stormed the area. The victim was said to be on queue, waiting to cast his vote before he was shot dead. Another person was also feared killed in Eleme, while two persons were reportedly killed in Abual/Odua and Ahoada West Local Gov­ernment Areas, respectively.

“Meanwhile, security men ar­rested over 32 persons for various offences. Of the number, 18 were arrested for being in possession of military uniforms and electoral ma­terials.”

Jonatan Korsintin

By Chuks Iloegbunam  

A rich man looked at all approaches to his life and found every one of them particularly daunting. Dispirited, he exam­ined all routes from his person. Each held the dreadful promise of his extinction. He shuddered. A veteran of many of life’s excru­ciating struggles, he decided on remedial action. He, therefore, consulted oracles and diviners, sorcerers and stargazers, astrolo­gers and palm readers, mara­bouts and prophets.

At the end of his inquiries he got a distinct message from the spirit world. His problems were complicated but not impossible to surmount. He only had to abstain from sex for six straight months and his deliverance would be automatic. The man smiled. He had spent more than half his life kicking the can of sex around. He had fathered children in more places than he cared to enumerate. Surely, after an al­most endless stretch of sexual freedom, he could manage absti­nence for six month, a mere 180 days.

Fortunately, he had only one wife. Explaining the lay of the land to her posed little difficulty. As for the army of consorts, gold diggers and freeloaders who masqueraded as a part of him, they could go to blazes and burn to ashes. His wife made a useful suggestion. She said that sleep­ing in separate rooms thencefor­ward would prevent the flesh’s weakness from throwing a span­ner in the works. Given that the man was no hater of the bottle, he could come from a binge any night and, finding himself on the same bed with the wife, pounce on her. The man agreed. But he was the kind of man who liked the spectacular. Instead of a new bed in a separate room, he built the wife a duplex, tastefully fur­nished and fitted with combina­tion locks she could operate even by remote control, to thwart all intrusions.

Abstinence began in earnest, with the man blocking his phone from the calls of vixens. He got home early everyday, per­formed the prescribed rituals and hopped into bed, without giving in to the temptation of watching blue films. That could lead him to masturbation and the prohib­ited outcome of spilling semen all over. The first month passed rather quickly. All correct. The second month was even more fleeting. As for the third month, it seemed to have lasted only a fortnight. However, the fourth month came scowling. He no­ticed a kind of glow on the wife’s face that suggested a disagreeable development. But he kept quiet. When, however, he espied the wife spitting indiscriminately, he was perturbed.

“Darling, you can’t possibly be pregnant, can you?”

“Whosai? That’s as impossible as the earthbound crushing the airborne.”

“Thank heavens.”

There were many other things to thank as time went on, includ­ing the fact that no pregnancy could be permanently screened with a basket. It soon became obvious, even to the blind, that Madam was pregnant. Who­dunit?

Onyeka Onwenu: Another Case Of 'That Ibo Woman'!

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Onyeka Onwenu was, on September 13, 2013, appointed the Director General of the National Center for Women Development (NCWD) by the Jonathan admin­istration. The all-changing Buhari government relieved her of the position last month.

 

*Onyeka Onwenu

On her ten­ure, she claimed thus in an open letter: “I served for two years and five months and did my best under very difficult conditions. We hard­ly had money to operate and the place was badly run down. Worst, there was low moral and lack of commitment among the staff. Most spent the day loitering and gossiping. Many would not show up for work or arrive 11 am, only to leave before 3 pm. Some were absent for months and were just collecting their salary at home. My administration changed all that. Most staff were turned around and became passionate about the work, appreciating also the changes they thought were not possible but were happening right before them.”

Is she correct? The answer would seem to be positive because, nearly two weeks after the claim, no voice has controverted her. This should cause botheration in conscientious quarters because she protests that her sterling service to the country was repaid with the objectionable coins of injustice: “There remained, though, a rem­nant who felt that the Center was their personal preserve and that the position of Director General should only go to someone from their part of the country. I was ini­tially dismissed as just a musician. When that did not work, I was tar­geted and abused for being an Igbo woman who came to give jobs to and elevate my people while side­lining them. When these detrac­tors could not provide answers to the spate of improvements we were bringing, they resorted to sabotage and blackmail. The first such salvo was fired when a Senate Commit­tee visited on an oversight mission a few months after my arrival. All three Generators at the Center were cannibalized, overnight, just hours to the visit.”

Onyeka stated in her open letter that, to begin with, she hadn’t lob­bied to be appointed DG-NCWD. Nor was she ever minded to grovel in order to retain the post. Once word arrived from above that she had had her day at the Center, she made to leave. “But some people were going to exact their pound of flesh. They organized some staff, mostly Northerners, invited the Press and set about to disgrace themselves. By mid-afternoon, while the Heads of Departments were putting together the hando­ver notes, they seized the keys to my official car, even with my per­sonal items still inside. Threats be­gan to fly. ‘That Ibo woman must’, ‘We will disgrace her.’ Their chief organizer, the Acting DG, went about whipping up ethnic senti­ments against me. Late 2015, the same officer had gone to the Cent­er’s mosque to ask for the issue of a Fatwa against me, claiming that I was working against the inter­est of the North. We nipped that in the bud by calling a town hall meeting and asking that proof be provided. The Fatwa was denied and peace reigned for a while. Po­lice was called in to the Center to escort me out and avoid bloodshed as I disengaged. Eventually, in the midst of insults and name calling, with an angry baying crowd, some of whom were brought in from outside, I entered my official car and left.” 

Our Soyinka Has Gone Wrong Again

*Wole Soyinka and Lai Mohammed

By Chuks Iloegbunam

The first time Wole Soyin­ka misdirected himself, it had to do with his “cautious endorsement” of Muhammadu Buhari’s presi­dential candidacy. He offered a platter of reasons for the stunning faux pas, of course. But, post-election, his out of sync reading of Nigerian politics has been pa­tently exposed.

To recap, it happened that in the run-up to the presidential ballot, Professor Soyinka, long time combatant on the side of the oppressed, announced that the best thing that could happen to Nigeria was a President Buhari. His rationalization:

“It is point­lessly, and dangerously provoca­tive to present General Buhari as something that he probably was not. It is however just as purblind to insist that he has not demon­strably striven to become what he most glaringly was not, to insist that he has not been chastened by intervening experience and – most critically – by a vastly trans­formed environment – both the localized and the global.”

Aware that his about-face would set teeth on edge, Soyinka took the pains to further explain his Road-to-Damascus conver­sion. He had become a Buhari flag-waver, having “studied him from a distance, questioned those who have closely interacted with him, including his former run­ning-mate, Pastor Bakare, and dissected his key utterances past and current.” He underpinned his implausible argument with his location in Buhari of “a plausible transformation that comes close to that of another ex-military dictator, Mathieu Kerekou of the Benin Republic.” 

Sharpeville, Nigeria

By Chuks Iloegbunam

There are two stories to jump off from:

1) Sharpeville, South Africa; March 21, 1960.

A group of between 5,000 and 10,000 people converged on the local police station in the township of Sharpeville, offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying their passbooks. The Sharpeville police were not completely unprepared for the demonstration, as they had already been forced to drive smaller groups of more militant activists away the previous night.

By 10:00, a large crowd had gathered, and the atmosphere was initially peaceful and festive. Fewer than 20 police officers were present in the station at the start of the protest. Later the crowd grew to about 20,000, and the mood was described as “ugly”, prompting about 130 police reinforcements, supported by four Saracen armoured personnel carriers. The police were armed with firearms, including Sten submachine guns and Lee-Enfield rifles. There was no evidence that anyone in the gathering was armed with anything other than rocks.

F-86 Sabre jets and Harvard Trainers approached to within a hundred feet of the ground, flying low over the crowd in an attempt to scatter it. The protestors responded by hurling a few stones and menacing the police barricades. Tear gas proved ineffectual, and policemen elected to repel these advances with their batons. At about 13:00 the police tried to arrest a protestor, resulting in a scuffle, and the crowd surged forward. The shooting began shortly thereafter. The official figure is that 69 people were killed, including 8 women and 10 children, and 180 injured, including 31 women and 19 children. Many were shot in the back as they turned to flee.” (Quoted from Wikipedia.)

*Herbert Ekwe-ekwe 

2) Onitsha; Aba, Nigeria; December 2015 – February 2016.

“The current orgy of massacres of Biafrans by the Nigerian occupation genocidist military, begun on Wednesday 2 December 2015 in Onicha, has continued unabated. On Wednesday 9 February 2016, the genocidists positioned in Aba, commercial city in southeast Biafra, shot dead 10 Biafrans attending a prayer session at the National High School, Aba, for the release of Nnamdi Kanu, freedom broadcaster of Radio Biafra and leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (Vanguard, Lagos, Friday 12 February 2016), illegally detained by the Nigerian regime in a secret police facility in Abuja since mid-October. Scores of other demonstrators were seriously wounded in the slaughter and several others seized and taken away by the genocidists. This massacre is the second within three weeks in Aba. On Monday 18 January 2016, another marauding genocidist corps gunned down eight peaceful Biafrans demonstrating for Nnamdi Kanu’s release and the restoration of Biafran independence (Vanguard, Lagos, Tuesday 19 January 2016).”

(Quoted from a report by Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe in http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-current-orgy-of-massacres-of.html )

January 15, 1966 Was Not An Igbo Coup (1)

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Reuben Abati earned a PhD in Dramat­ic Arts over two decades ago. He was chairman of the Edito­rial Board of The Guardian for nine solid years. And he was spokesman for Presi­dent Goodluck Jonathan for another four years. In terms of education and exposure, therefore, he ranks with the best, not just in Africa, but globally. Yet, in Armed Forces Day: January 15, 2016, Remember­ing Where We Came From, an article recently published extensively in both the or­thodox and social media, he made many false and unwar­ranted statements, only two of which must be debunked in the space available here.

 

*General Aguiyi-Ironsi

Abati claimed that in Jan­uary 1966, “An Igbo man, Nwafor Orizu, the acting President, handed over pow­er to another Igbo man, Gen­eral Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi.” He also claimed that, Ironsi “had been instrumental to making the coup fail.”

Kaneng Daze, the daugh­ter of Lieutenant Colonel James Yakubu Pam, a victim of the January 15, 1966 coup, granted an interview, which The Punch published in its edition of January 17, 2016 and which is also circulat­ing in the social media. At the time of the coup, Mrs. Daze was only eight years old. 

The following is a part of what she recalled: “So, my father dressed up and got out of the room and started fol­lowing them (the coup mak­ers) down the stairs. Before then, he made some few calls while he was with our moth­er… The first was to (Briga­dier Zakariya) Maimalari… I think it was that call that alerted Maimalari that made him to escape. The second call was to General (Aguiyi) Ironsi. Ironsi appeared not to have shown any surprise as he kept saying, ‘I see! I see!! Okay!!!’ He dropped the phone and went down the first stairs.”

 

*Gen Gowon 

Dr. Abati and Mrs. Daze represent two broad types that straddle Nigeria’s con­temporary history. Abati is of the class of Nigerians fully knowledgeable about the minutest details of Ni­geria’s history but are crip­pled by a curious inability to live the truth. Mrs. Daze belongs to the class unwilling or unable to reach beyond fairy tales and determine for themselves the truths of their country’s stories.

Who Is Fueling The Igbo-Yoruba Feud?

By Chuks Iloegbunam

The feud between the Igbo and the Yoruba ethnic groups is con­trived, just like the feud between the Igbo and the Ikwere. Whenever these feuds take centrestage, the impetus is invariably traceable to the divide-and-rule imperative, which inevitably profits the oligarchy of northern Nigeria. Every other explanation ad­duced in the explanation of the phenomenon can only be pe­ripheral. It is important to make this point from the outset, be­fore going about the business of explanations – for the benefit of those who may genuinely be ig­norant of a crucial factor in the continued inability to resolve some of the more critical of Ni­geria’s contradictions.

Femi Aribisala, one of the more perceptive of the motley coterie of columnists currently on the national stage, discussed the origins and manifestations of this feud in an incisive article entitled Time To End The Bad Blood Between The Yorubas And Ndigbo (Vanguard January 12, 2016). “What is the basis of all this hate?” Mr. Aribisala asks. “In the sixties, the Igbo were slaughtered in pogroms in the North. However, the principal exchange of hateful words today is not between Northerners and Easterners, but between East­erners and Westerners. Why are these two ethnic groups so much at loggerheads?”

The straightforward answer is that it serves the interest of the “core” North to keep the South permanently in mutually assured destructive contention on largely immaterial issues. It happened between the Igbo and the old Rivers State in the wake of the Nigerian civil war. It was suddenly and conveni­ently “discovered” that the Ik­werre were not and had never been Igbo. The people went into a flourish of re-spelling: Umuomasi became Rumuo­masi; Umukrushi became Ru­mukrushi; Umuola became Rumuola; Umueme became Rumueme. In truth, all these represent no more than dis­tinct dialectal spellings of Igbo root names typical to the areas around Port Harcourt. But the re-spelling exercise was used to manufacture an entirely new ethnic group.

The acclaimed writer, Pro­fessor (Captain) Elechi Amadi, who led the group that lent intellectual weight to this fad, went further to celebrate in fictional terms the political marriage between Rivers peo­ple and Northern Nigeria. Yet, he did not see fit to change his name to Relechi Ramadi. Of course, the contrived ethnic dissonance achieved its pur­pose. While the fight raged re­lentlessly on “Abandoned Prop­erties”, mostly mud houses over three decades old, the “core” North moved in and harvested the oil rewards. Their members became instant millionaires by being allocated shiploads of crude, which they sold off at the Rotterdam Spot Market. Fur­ther, they appropriated 99 per­cent of the oil blocs. Then they seized Professor Tam David- West, a Rivers man, “tried” him for causing the country “eco­nomic adversity” and handed him a tidy prison term.

But the picture is becoming clearer. Had the black gold been found in the “core” North, would the Rivers man have been allocated even one per­cent of the oil blocs? It was not the Igbo that killed Major Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro. It was not the Igbo that killed Ken Saro- Wiwa. It was not the Igbo that banished Delta nights with the interminable flare of gas. The Igbo was accused of desiring nothing but the expropriation of Delta oil and gas. But science since proved that the entire Igbo country sits on oil, and holds in its bowels the largest concentra­tion of gas on the Africa conti­nent. That is the way everything goes and turns round.

Corruption And The Rules Of Engagement

By Chuks Iloegbunam

The fight against cor­ruption has been dominating national discourse since the inception of the Buhari ad­ministration. The Rules of Engagement of the Nige­rian Armed Forces recently weighed in as a topic for de­bate. Discussions on corrup­tion have remained central for two reasons: Candidate Buhari indexed his presiden­tial campaign on it. And it is the one topic President Buhari seizes every opportunity to declaim impassioned commit­ment.

*President Buhari

At the annual Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation Lecture in Abuja last week, he was at his sanctimonious best: “Without our collective will to resist corrupt acts as a people, it will be difficult to win the war. Nigeria has been brought almost to her knees by decades of corruption and mismanagement of the public treasury. We must come to a point when we must all collec­tively say ‘Enough is Enough.’”

Unfortunately, the Presi­dent’s anti-corruption rheto­ric, and the manner his gov­ernment is prosecuting the war point to duplicity. This is because the fight against entrenched corruption can­not succeed unless it is sys­tematized. But Buhari’s anti-corruption war is bereft of system. It is selective. It is running on the wheels of me­dia hysteria. It is unconcerned with preventive measures. It is overloaded in censure and sanction. It is, therefore, bound to end in tragic failure. Commentators unwilling to acknowledge the foregoing cannot honestly claim to love the man or support his presi­dency.

President Buhari's Biafran Contradiction

By Chuks Iloegbunam  

 
Nearly six weeks after it started, President Muhammadu Buhari finally reacted to the agitation for Biafra, which has been sweeping through some cities of the South East and South South geopolitical zones. The President chose two events inside last week to make his position known. The first was the investiture of His Royal Majesty, Igwe Alfred Nnaemeka Achebe, as the 7th Chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The second was the graduation ceremony of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Plateau State.

These following sum up the President's position on the Biafran agitation:

* "Government would not fold its arms and watch, while some individuals and groups create unnecessary tension in the country in the guise of seeking to break away from Nigeria."

* "Let me again call on per­sons or groups in the country who have some grievances to submit to peaceful and dem­ocratic means of expressing themselves."

* "I therefore sound a note of serious warning that the corporate existence of Nigeria as a single entity is not a sub­ject of debate and will not be compromised."

Now, the fact that it took the President nearly two months to comment on a matter that had elicited three specific threats of military re­sponse by his field command­ers probably makes the point that, in his graph of national importance, the Biafran agita­tion is no more than a vexa­tious distraction.

But, it is still welcome that he spoke late than not at all. What if he de­cided against uttering a word on the subject? After all, he has so far treated all the substanti­ated reports of the rampage and wanton killings of Fulani herdsmen across the length and breadth of Nigeria with a deafening silence. He has also treated in the same manner all the calls for his government to address the report of the properly constituted National Conference of 2014.

Now, it is assumed in quar­ters that claim comprehensive understanding of President Buhari's brand of politics that the man is not given to talk­ing glibly. He is said to expend enormously in the critical sec­tor of consideration before he ever deems it necessary to make a public statement. This means that it is in the best interest of those who have heard to accept that what the President has said on the Bia­fra agitation is his irreducible stance.