Dangerous Times In The Dear Country

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

The demons of death are on the loose, arranging mayhem and spreading annihilation all over Nigeria. We walk an ungodly but very familiar Nigerian road littered with shattered bones and broken dreams.

The struggle for political power is all the rage with the ruling party presenting a Muslim-Muslim ticket in a multi-faith country while the main opposition party presents a Northern Fulani Muslim candidate to succeed a Northern Fulani Muslim incumbent after eight years of incumbency. There is the third force rousing the youths into fervid activity such that if the elections are tampered with the EndSARS riots may pale into a child’s play. The dangerous times of Nigeria today cannot but force one to look back in anger at the country’s history on how the land came to this pass.

To Kill In The Name Of God Is Outrageous Murder – Archbishop Obinna

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THE CHINUA ACHEBE 

FOUNDATION INTERVIEW SERIES

  April 2006

All Rights Reserved ©

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*Archbishop Obinna during the interview 

Dr. Anthony J.V. Obinna, the Catholic Archbishop of Owerri, is one of Africa’s foremost theologians and scholars. Born on June 26, 1946 in Emekuku (near Owerri), and educated at St. Peter Claver Seminary, Okpala (near Aba), and Bigard Memorial Seminary, he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest on April 19, 1972. Obinna graduated with First Class Honours in Divinity, from the Bigard Memorial Seminary, an affiliate of the Pontifical Urban University, Rome. He left for Rome for a Masters Degree in Theology, and then for the United States for another Masters in Religious Studies, concentrating on Religion and Culture, and then a PhD in Education and Theology.

A former lecturer in the Religious Studies Department of the Alvan Ikoku College of Education, Owerri, Archbishop Obinna is the current Chair of the Education Committee of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of Nigeria (CBCN). He was ordained a Bishop on September 4, 1993, and became the first Archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Owerri when it was created in 1994.

In this interview with UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE, Archbishop Obinna canvasses an attitudinal change, which he hopes will help steer Nigeria out of its present political, moral, and economic descent, and reroute it to the path of progress and lasting development.

Excerpts:

Your Grace, do you think we can in all honesty say that we have freedom of worship in Nigeria today?

Well, constitutionally there is freedom of worship. So, to some extent, it is possible to say: yes, Nigerians worship as they choose. But we have had problems in certain parts of our country, where people were prevented from worshipping, as they desire. There have been attempts to muzzle Christians in some parts of the country, and that goes to show that the freedom of worship enshrined in the constitution is not given its full play. In the more Christian-dominated areas, I believe that there is no prevention of anybody from being a Moslem, from worshipping God. But in some areas of our country, there have been churches that were bulldozed, and land allocations have been refused to Christian worshippers.

July: Nigeria’s Month Of Remembrance

By Dan Amor

 For those of us who were born during or after the Nigerian Civil War, Chief Uche Ezechukwu's Monday column on the 50 years of the assassination of Nigeria's first military head of state General JTU Aguiyi Ironsi, provides an illuminating pathway to the events that led to the war. No nation among the third world countries makes a stronger claim on the interest and sympathy of Africans than Nigeria. What Nigeria has meant to the black continent and to blacks across the world, makes her future a matter of deep concern.

*Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu
taking the oath of office as the leader
of the Republic of Biafra in May 1967

Nigeria might be doddering or tottering behind less endowed African countries as a giant with feet of clay, no thanks to the tragedy of irresponsible leadership. But whatever happens to her usually serves as a huge lesson for other African countries. To view therefore with judgment and comprehension the course of present and future events in Nigerian life and politics, we must possess knowledge and understanding of her past, and to provide such understanding within concise compass, we must consult history. Yet it is an unbiased, disinterested and unprejudiced inquiry into the history of our country that will ensure that we leave a legacy of truth for generations yet unborn.

In fact, the true story of Nigeria must begin with the foundations of the nation – its geographical and economic character; its social-political and religious influences and the psychology of its peoples. Besides the existence of multi-ethnic nationalities before the fusion of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914 by Lord Fredrick Lugard, a British imperialist military commander, and the almost 100 years of British colonial rule, the great period of post-independence crisis – 1960-1970 – must be vividly delineated for posterity. The death in November 2011 of Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu who has come to symbolise that great epoch of epic struggle brought to the front burner of national discourse, the issues and convergent forces at play in the Nigerian Civil War. But recent developments point to the fact that our leaders who prefer to learn their geology the day after the earthquake would want history to repeat itself.

Unfortunately, rather than telling in bold dramatic relief, the tragic and magnificent story of what brought about the war and its aftermath, some commentators have elected to mislead the reading public on who actually caused the war. Some have even pointedly accused Chief Ojukwu of having masterminded the war in order to divide Nigeria. What can be more mischievously misleading than the deliberate refusal to allow the historical sense transcend the ephemeral currents of the present and reveal the spirit of a people springing from the deepest traditions of their tragic experience? How could one begin to appreciate a legend who continued to be astonishingly misunderstood even when the realities of the factors that pushed him to rise in defense of his people are damning on the rest of us forty-nine years after his action? Why is it so difficult for us to appreciate the fact that Ojukwu has come to represent, in large and essential measure, not only a signification of heroism but also a courageous attempt to say no to an emerging oligarchy which was bent on annihilating his people from the face of the earth?