By Arthur Agwuncha
Nwankwo
The recent onslaught by the Nigerian military on
Nnamdi Kanu’s country home in Abia State under the curious code name “Operation
Python Dance” has once again demonstrated the naivety, ineptitude and
insensitivity of the current Buhari administration on dealing with the
incandescent ethnic nationalism that has ripped Nigeria apart in the past couple of
years. Why this government or any other group in this country or outside would
think that solution to the present impasse in Nigeria could be resolved through
the barrel of the gun beats my imagination.
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*President Buhari and Chief of Army Staff Burutai
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I have always
maintained that Nnamdi Kanu and his Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPoB) is not
a threat to Nigeria .
Rather IPoB and its leaders represent the manifestation of a beleaguered people
desperate for freedom. What Nnamdi Kanu has succeeded in doing is to gnaw at
the conscience of the world to call attention to the plight of his people and
the need to give the Igbo a better deal in Nigeria . And here I must say that
Kanu is not alone in this feeling and factual knowledge of the truth that
Ndigbo have become an endangered species in Nigeria .
The
precarious situation of the Igbo in Nigeria has been worsened in an age
of clash of civilizations when the forces of radical Islam are on collision
course with western civilization. Like I have always pointed out, Boko Haram is
a philosophy anchored on the rejection by Islam of anything western especially
its religion and education. Apart from this warped religious inspired hatred of
western civilization, Islam is anti-democratic and does not support the
republicanism and gregariousness for which unencumbered societies like the Igbo
are known for. Unlike western liberal democracy, Islam does not admit of
question on its foundational principles; it regards Christians and Jews as
“people of the Book” that must be destroyed at all level. The religion
advocates the plundering of the riches of the “infidels”, slashing their
throats and binding them as slaves and also compelling them to pay the “zakat”.