By Ikechukwu Amaechi
In one of his recent articles, my brother and colleague, Oguwike Nwachuku, posited that based on the rabid anti-Igbo sentiment that seems to have become the all-consuming pastime of some Nigerians, there may well be a school where they are thought how to hate the Igbo.
In one of his recent articles, my brother and colleague, Oguwike Nwachuku, posited that based on the rabid anti-Igbo sentiment that seems to have become the all-consuming pastime of some Nigerians, there may well be a school where they are thought how to hate the Igbo.
Oguwike wrote in the wake of the Eze Ndigbo
controversy in Akure, Ondo State and the resort to ethnic profiling by some
Afenifere chieftains who derogatorily labelled Ndigbo “migrants” in their own
country, even as they insist that the idea of one, indivisible, indissoluble Nigeria is
non-negotiable.
In the last four weeks since some members of the
Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and
the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) mobilised supporters to take to the
streets, I have come to feel the intensity of the hatred against Ndigbo.
Given the opportunity, some people would not bat an
eyelid in chasing the Igbo into the Atlantic Ocean
as they wished before the April elections.
But just as I noted in my reaction to the Eze Ndigbo
saga, those who call Ndigbo names and stoke the embers of morbid hatred against
them across the land have not bothered to ask how many Igbo support the
agitation for secession.
How many Igbo actually want another civil war? How
many Igbo want to abandon their property again for those who were busy sleeping
while they were sweating under the bridges, in the scorching sun to inherit?
The military, perhaps reading the now famous body
language of the President and Commander-in-Chief, Muhammadu Buhari, has warned
pro-Biafra protesters to stop or face the consequences.