Biafra, Or An Oasis Of Prosperity?

 By Obi Nwakanma

 Let me be on the record, and say that I align myself ideologically with those who seek the right to self-determination as a fundamental human right. This right is enshrined in the charter of the United Nations of which Nigeria is a signatory.

*Odumegwu-Ojukwu taking the oath of office as Head of State of Biafra

These facts are so clear that it begs the question, why is the Nigerian government persecuting, and criminally violating the rights of those like Nnamdi Kanu who has devoted his life to the pursuit of what he sees as his right to be free of the Nigerian enterprise? The answer is: the word, “Biafra” gives Buhari and his ideological fellow travellers the excuse to wallop the Igbo.

Soludo’s Challenge

 By Obi Nwakanma

Charles Chukwuma Soludo is a brilliant economist. He made a Nsukka first in the years when to make a first-class at the University of Nigeria was like a camel passing through the eye of a needle. These days the University of Nsukka is poorly run, and badly situated/oriented, and there is a narrowness to its own self-image that degrades it radically.

One hopes that the rise of its great alums, like Dr Soludo, a former student, and former Professor of Economics at the University of Nigeria might help push a “Nsukka renaissance.” In a sense, Nsukka gave Soludo his first rodeo.

*Soludo

One returns to the fountain of one’s intellectual growth to fetch the waters of life. But though Soludo might have been taught by the likes of Okwudiba Nnoli, I’m a little worried about his centrist, middle of the road politics: Charles Soludo was known among his fellow students in those years of Students Union Politics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, as something of an “establishment figure,” who ran with the hares as a student member of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the 1980s as an undergraduate student.

For Hauwa Liman, Martyred!

By Obi Nwakanma

Since the movers of Boko Haram think of books as “haram,” it is most unlikely that they, being illiterate, can comprehend, and therefore are likely to read this tribute to the young woman whom they have killed, Hauwa Liman. And so, this is not directed at them. 

*Hauwa Liman

They cannot read. In any case, one must address a community of humans, those who share human traits; who have the natural human, and healthy instinct for empathy. It takes a subhuman freak, and a deadly form of misanthropy, to take another life. Members of the Boko Haram movement are not human. 

The Limits Of President Buhari’s Powers

By Obi Nwakanma
 Adams Oshiomole, former President of the Nigerian Labour Council (NLC), immediate past governor of Edo State and, most recently, National Chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC, has called on the Federal Government to “deal ruthlessly with looters” of the national treasury. The reports of Oshiomole’s statement carried in the Nigerian newspapers variously led with this headline “Buhari should deal ruthlessly with looters.”

*President Buhari 

My problem is: I do not know exactly if Oshiomole is actually conflating the president with the Federal Government of Nigeria. The president is Head of the executive branch of the federal government, and thus head of state, since the executive is that branch of government that is constitutionally mandated to manage the executive functions of the state by the act of the federation. The executive is however not the “Federal Government of Nigeria.” It is a branch of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

On Biafra And Democracy

By Obi Nwakanma

These are busy times for Nigeria. May is the month of blooms. But in the last couple of weeks, two parallel celebrations came to underscore the fragility of the Nigerian state, and the hollow rituals of its self-annunciation.  First, on May 29, the president like the other presidents before him since the year 2000 when it was initiated by Olusegun Obasanjo, celebrated what it now calls “Democracy Day.”

*Odumegwu-Ojukwu 

I personally think this a truly annoying misnomer because May 29 carries with it, the germ of a profound national tragedy. It was on May 29, 1966 that the Pogrom of Easteners commenced in earnest in Nigeria. On May 29, 1967, General Ojukwu declared the birth of the Sovereign state of Biafra, and announced the excision of the East from the old Federation of Nigeria.

June 12: President Buhari’s Left Handed Charity…

By Obi Nwakanma

Mr. Muhammadu Buhari, President of Nigeria, announced on Wednesday, that June 12 will now be “Democracy Day.” He went further to award posthumous honours to the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 elections, Moshood Kashimawo Abiola, with the GCFR, the highest political honour in the land, and his running mate, Babagana Kingibe, the second highest honours, the GCON. To top the gravy, he also honored the late Gani Fawehinmi with the GCON too.

*Buhari 

Quick as the announcement came, there were various reactions. Not unexpectedly, many from the Southwest of Nigeria, particularly the partisans of the APC, began to call Buhari the “new progressive.” Mr. Ahmed Tinubu in fact did gush so much that he came short of describing Buhari as the greatest democrat of Nigeria’s modern history. This is not unexpected, because Buhari’s gesture fits into the logical interest of the APC partisans of Southwestern Nigeria. And I shall return to this. But the president’s gesture was quickly called into question – the legality of it: first from the senate, came a flurry of tongue-in-cheek statements.

What Do The Igbo Want?

By Obi Nwakanma

In an angry retort to a question thrown at him in his recent Media chat not too long ago, President Muhammadu Buhari asked, What do they (Igbo) want? Who is marginalizing them?

*Ojukwu 

In Biafra, under three years, they were making their own rockets and calculating its distances; distilling their own oil and making aviation fuel, creating in their Chemical and Biological laboratories, new cures for diseases like Cholera, shaping their own spare parts, and turning the entire East into a vast workshop, as Ojukwu put it.

At the end of the war, the Ukpabi Asika regime brought together these Biafran scientists and set up PRODA. The initiative led, in the first five years between 1970-1975 under the late Prof. Gordian Ezekwe and Mang Ndukwe, to designs of industrial machinery models and prototypes for the East Central State Industrial Masterplan, which remain undeveloped even today. The Murtala/Obasanjo regime took over PRODA in 1975 by decree, starved it of funds, and basically destroyed its aims.

Mr. President, Pythons Do Not Dance!

By Obi Nwakanma

 In a badly worded press release announced last week, the Nigerian Army declared what it called “Operation Python Dance,” aimed, the Army says, at anticipating and curtailing violence in the South East through the Christmas period. The language of that press statement signed by Colonel Sagir Musa was only slightly better than the extremely poor and bombastic English of an earlier statement by the Army’s Public Relations Office signed by Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman, Army Director of Public Affairs, that challenged Amnesty International’s damning report about the Nigerian Army’s extrajudicial killings of unarmed Biafran activists and protesters. 

 

*President Buhari with Military Service Chiefs

The Army’s response and denial of Amnesty’s report was not only incompetent, in that it lied about the Biafrans, but it also seemed not to take into account that in this age of ubiquitous eyes, including the Eyes in the sky recording and capturing everything, the evidence of the killing of the Biafran protesters exist; the faces of the soldiers who took part in these killings exist, recorded and digitally preserved in real time, and are now public record. Did President Buhari order the killing of these unarmed Biafrans? This is a question that is now slowly gathering momentum internationally, and it is not going to go away. 

Colonel Usman’s statement claimed: “The evidence of MASSOB/IPOB violent secessionist agitations is widely known across the national and international domains. Their modus operandi has continued to relish violence that threatens national security. Indeed, between August 2015 and August 2016, the groups’ violent protests have manifested unimaginable atrocities to unhinge the reign of peace, security and stability in several parts of the South East Nigeria. A number of persons from the settler communities that hailed from other parts of the country were selected for attack, killed and burnt. Such reign of hate, terror and ethno-religious controversies that portend grave consequences for national security have been averted severally through the responsiveness of the Nigerian Army and members of the security agencies.”

Aside from the ineloquent bombast of this statement, I beg to note that MASSOB and IPOB are not known internationally as violent groups, and have consistently maintained their non-violent philosophy and methods, and have never armed themselves, unless Colonel Usman suggests that singing and praying and “signifying” constitute lethal ammunition. The Nigerian National Assembly which should investigate the uses or misuses of Nigeria’s National Security apparatus, and keep the use or misuse of executive power within bounds, have maintained a very stony silence on this matter even with the international release of this damning video of soldiers killing unarmed Igbo civilians whose only crime is public gathering to campaign for self-determination. 

Aguiyi-Ironsi: Danjuma's Terrible Act Of Treason

By Obi Nwakanma

Fifty years ago, on a Friday night at the Western Nigerian Governor’s lodge in Ibadan, a group of soldiers led by Major Theophilus Danjuma committed a terrible act of treason. They accosted their Commander-in-chief, Major-General Johnson Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and Military Head of State of Nigeria only six months in the making, stripped him of his epaulettes and his swagger stick shaped in the form of the Crocodile, and proceeded to arrest him and his host, the Military Governor of the West, Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi.

*Major-General Johnson Thomas
Aguiyi-Ironsi

These soldiers, some of them far too drug-addled, did not stop there. They proceeded to administer brutal beatings and a careless torture of the General, and the Governor, Colonel Fajuyi, supervised by T.Y. Danjuma, and Ironsi’s ADC, William Walbe. They did not stop there: bruised and much bloodied, these two men were later bound hand and feet, as legends would have it, and tied to a military truck driven by Jeremiah Useni, through the streets of Ibadan, and taken to that quiet spot on Iwo road, where they were murdered and buried in mean and shallow graves.

Fajuyi was by then, nearly dead in any case, far too brutalized to endure any further humiliation. But Ironsi stood tall to the very end – the image of a great elephant enduring the beatings that accompanied him finally to the dug-spot. Accounts of Ironsi’s stolid, dignified and courageous handling of his brutal end come to us by a number of eye witnesses. He was travelling with then Colonel Hillary Njoku, Commander of the Lagos Garrison, in his entourage. They were upstairs in the Governor’s lodge when they sensed the change in the air, by the rustle of the mainly Northern troop that had been arranged for his guard detail.

As soon as they noticed the mutiny afoot on the grounds of the Governor’s lodge in Ibadan, they quickly knew that they had only one shot at getting out there alive. Ironsi ordered Hillary Njoku to find his way out of the grounds and make contacts with his headquarters in Lagos to send some reinforcement. Meanwhile, he got through to Yakubu Gowon on the phone which were still working, to send a Helicopter for him. The Helicopter did not come. Gowon, Ironsi’s Chief of Staff, was busy issuing different orders to Danjuma in Ibadan, and apparently to Murtala Muhammed and Martin Adamu in Lagos, the arrowheads of that July mutiny. Neither did any reinforcement come. Just as he was attempting to sneak out of the Governor’s lodge, the mutineers saw Colonel Hillary Njoku, and fired shots at him. He escaped by scaling the fence of the Government House, but was so seriously injured he had to find his way to the University College Hospital, where he was treated.

The ‘Fulani’ Rampage

By Obi Nwakanma

 Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s current president is a passionate Fulani, and the Fulani are a transnational migrant group, dealing today with the forces of environmental change that are forcing great pressure on their pastoral culture. Armed Fulani-herdsmen as desertification intensifies in the Savanah regions, grazing and watering grounds disappear, and drives the herdsmen farther and farther out, seeking places to graze, occupy, or settle. The Fulani herdsmen are no strange sights in Nigeria. In fact J.P. Clark, one of Nigeria’s eminent poets, captures both the life of the Fulani herdsmen, but more specifically the resilience and silent will of the cattle in his poem, “Fulani Cattle.” And I should say that I myself have anticipated a great conflict.

 In my yet to be published novel, one of the characters, Simple, is lying in the solitude of his farm near the Orashi river, after a day’s work, and after smoking a little grass, and in the haze of sleep he hears the rustle of cattle in a neighboring farm and thinks, they better not come near my farm or I’ll draw blood. Something to that effect. It did occur to me quite early when I penned that scene that a real menace is brewing, unheeded, and it is the struggle for arable land. What did not occur to me, even in my wildest imagination, is the increasing dimension of war-like activities that now accompany Fulani pastoralists in their moves to settle new grazing areas by force, as the condition of the earth drives them further and further from the Sahel. It may just as well be old grazing pressure, but the recent spate and heightening of attacks of Southern agrarian towns by so-called “Fulani Herdsmen” is throwing many curveballs.

This menace has been reported in the North too, in places like Adamawa, the Plateau, Southern Kaduna, Nassarawa and Benue, basically, mostly Christian areas of the North, where frequent attacks and resistance against the so-called “Fulani herdsmen” have been going on in the last two years with growing intensity. The thrust of the attacks has given rise to a religious dimension to this: the fear that the so-called Herdsmen are masking a greater menace: religious and political conquest of a scale comparable to colonialism. Such a possibility should not be dismissed as conspiracy, because indeed, most political and conquest movements are the products of conspiracies often publicly denied or even ignored until it is too late. So, the spate of attacks have increased with intensity, and some analysts have noted that the South, once seemingly buffered from these activities have become flashpoints, and areas of serious and rapid conflict involving the so-called “Fulani herdsmen,” since the election and swearing in of President Buhari. Is there a connection? I dare not think. 

Buhari Is Enabling Corruption, Not Fighting It

By Obi Nwakanma

The minister for justice just announced that judges found to be corrupt will be tried by this administration. This is problematic. Though this sentiment is much shared, it should not be left to the president and his administration to define “corruption,” or determine which judge is corrupt. For the avoidance of doubt the writ of this republic does not make the president the supreme authority of the land.

*Buhari 

The constitution is the governing authority of this republic, and the president is, as are all Nigerians, governed by the Constitution. It would amount to overreach for the president to break the thin glass boundaries that established the separation of powers under the constitution. It would be power-grabbing, and the National Assembly and the courts must keep an eye on this president. In fact, it is about time that the National Assembly moved to reduce some of the powers granted the president, because one of the great sources of corruption in Nigeria is the enormous and almost limitless power granted the executive by this constitution designed by the military. Let me advert the minds of Nigerians to January 1, 1984: a military coup had just sacked the democratically elected Government of President Shehu Shagari. At the head of that coup was a tall, lean, unsmiling General, who came across as a Spartan, no-nonsense, missionary soldier, out to rescue Nigeria from political and economic collapse.

Shagari had just been re-elected in a very controversial election, which had the great Nnamdi Azikiwe spewing fire in his very prophetic, as it turned out, post-election letter to Nigerians, “History Will Vindicate the Just,” published widely in the Nigerian Press. It was clear that the election was riddled with irregularities. Yet, corruption in the politics of those years was the bread and butter kind. It was confined mostly in the political parties. The civil institutions were still intact: the public service; the judicial system; the entire bureaucracy of state governance which could put to check to the excesses of political leadership. And they were still all there in 1984. Then came Buhari and his dark-browed praetorian guard, sacking the civil government, and instituting a rule by decrees. The first order of business was to dismantle the credibility of the elected political leaders the soldiers had sacked. In very elaborate fashion General Buhari and his rubber-stamp Supreme Military Council authorized the arrest, detention, and prosecution of the discredited politicians. His Minister for Justice, Chike Ofodile quickly crafted decrees that established extrajudicial tribunals that evacuated the powers of the civil courts. Some of the trials were in-camera. But it soon became obvious that these arrests and detentions were skewered mostly against politicians from the South, particularly of the group that called itself the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) and by politicians from the Middle Belt. It might have been inadvertent, but the impression it created was of a partisan, regionalist witch-hunt of Southern politicians – some of them the most popular, and in fact, the more credible in their visible achievements in the four years between 1979 and 1983.