Pastor Tunde Bakare And The Lies Of A Failed State

 By Chuks Iloegbunam 

Pastor Tunde Bakare of The Citadel Global Community Church recently spoke through his hat while preaching a sermon. He told his congregation that, during the January 15, 1966 military action that toppled the First Republic, the soldiers that took Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa removed his turban, poured wine on his head and force-fed him with the alcohol. For abominating him, Balewa, just before he was shot, pronounced a curse on Ndigbo, to the effect that no one from the ethnic group will ever bear rule over Nigeria. Mr. Bakare’s story, fanciful as it sounds, is a pack of lies. This article, therefore, is to educate Mr. Bakare and others of his misguided persuasion with the truth, of which Jesus, the Christ said in John 8: 32: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” 

*Awolowo, Azikiwe, Balewa

 

On the mundane level, no one removed any turban from Sir Abubakar’s head. The turban is a headdress. Soldiers invaded the Prime Minister’s official residence at around 3am, when the man was in bed. Did he sleep turbaned? Do people sleep in their headdresses? Apart from that picture in which presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari appeared in suit and tie, wearing a wan smile and looking almost comical with his receding hairline, there hardly is another photograph of the man in which a cap does not adorn his head. Would his traditional fondness for full dressing gear ever mean that he went to bed in a hat? Do women sleep with all those accessories they routinely assembled on their heads for public events? Tafawa Balewa’s turban was not removed because he wasn’t wearing one when his adversaries closed in on him.

Achuzia, Biafra Spirit And South South Igbo

By Onuoha Ukeh

As a kid during the Biafra War, I did not know the major actors of the battle, which claimed more than two million Igbo. At that time, I never knew Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Yakubu Gowon, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Philip Effiong, Olusegun Obasanjo, Joe Achuzia and others, who played one role or another in the internecine war. This was expected. Little kids, in their innocence, do not know about wars.

*Achuzia

However, I will never forget the day my parents took my siblings and I into the bush, as we fled from the federal troops, who entered our community in Item, Bende Local Government Area of the present-day Abia State. That faithful early morning, we started hearing the sound of explosive artillery or shelling from a distance into the Item area. The sound of “Kpo, kpo, kpo, kpo” rent the air. Another shooting sound that always followed was “dum.”

Let’s Stop Talking About Corruption, Please!

By Anthony Akinwale

Let’s stop talking about corruption. Let’s do something about it, something intelligent, something within the bounds of the law and fairness, something devoid of selective sanctions, propaganda and media trial. The recurrence of corruption as a theme in coup day speeches and in maiden speeches of successive military strongmen who, by force and not by a constitutionally granted mandate, took over reins of government in Nigeria, challenge us to act and not just to talk.

On January 15, 1966, that bloody day of the first military coup in Nigeria, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu declared in his coup day speech: “The aim of the Revolutionary Council is to establish a strong united and prosperous nation, free from corruption and internal strife….Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low  places that seek bribes and demand 10 per cent; those that seek to keep the  country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or  VIPs at least, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before international circles, those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and deeds.”