By Chuks Iloegbunam
December
1994 and June 2016 are two epochs, separated by 22 years, which send an
unambiguous and implacable message – the impracticality of the most mouthed of Nigeria ’s
platitudes.
Dig this:
In December 1994, a
hysterical crowd forced itself into a Police station in Kano and bundled out a detained Gideon
Akaluka, a young Igbo trader and Christian, who had been falsely accused of
using pages of the Koran like toilet paper. The mob decapitated Gideon, spiked
his severed head and carried it around town like a trophy.
*President Buhari and Emir of Kano, Sanusi |
On June
2, 2016, Mrs. Bridget Agbahime (74), an Igbo housewife and Christian, was
seized in Kano
and lynched – on a false charge of blaspheming Islam. Naturally, there has been
the anticipated outrage and uproar from the afflicted camp. It could be
treated just like another statistic: an old woman murdered because she was of
an unwanted ethnic group, and because she professed a religion that, in the
eyes of her killers, automatically made her an infidel.
There are
screams for the culprits’ apprehension and punishment. But, that does not
address the problem; it merely scratches at the surface of a malignant tumour.
Of course, it is natural for some Nigerians to blow hot air in the face of
difficult challenges. Still a fundamental clarification is imperative because
anyone unaware of the sources of their pummeling stands little chance of
activating a defence mechanism.
The
crucial point is the politically contrived dispensability of the Igbo life. It
started in 1943 in
Jos, when the first massacre of Ndigbo took place. There is a
documented history to it all, which the volume entitled Massacre of Ndigbo in 1966:
Report of the Justice G. C. M. Onyiuke Tribunal [Tollbrook Limited,
Ikeja, Lagos ],
will help to ventilate.
First,
some background information. Following the pogrom of 1966, the Supreme
Military Council of General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi set up a judicial tribunal of
inquiry to investigate the grotesquery. But, days before the tribunal was to
start sitting, Ironsi was assassinated and his regime toppled.
Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon, who succeeded Ironsi, promised that the
tribunal would carry on with its assignment. When this promise was negated,
Lieutenant-Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Military Governor of
Eastern Nigeria, had no option but to establish the Onyiuke Tribunal via an
instrument called the Tribunal of Inquiry (Atrocities Against Persons of
Eastern Nigeria Origin: Perpetuation of Testimony) Edict 1966.