ONCE UPON A TIME, Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo and Samuel
Udechukwu Ifejika wrote a book entitled, Biafra: The Making of a Nation. In the book, Nwankwo was the idealist who lamented the
failed Biafran revolution and the unsuccessful liberation war. Now, three decades later, Nwankwo has
written another book. This time, the
book is entitled The Igbo Nation and the Nigerian State. In this book, Nwankwo recalled the Igbos
unending tragedy in BiafraNigeria. Since
these two publications and other books related to the pogrom, growing animus
toward Igbos and the question of Igbo assimilation, Nwankwo has written
numerous essays and commentaries on Igbos arguing that other Nigerians should
accept the Igbos as equals.
But, Arthur Nwankwo is a man of ironies and multiple
loyalties. From his recent writing on the pogrom, the
quest for Biafran sovereignty, Igbo reintegration and equality in the Nigerian
state, and the many contradictions in those writings, one must now conclude
that Arthur Nwankwo is a man who has lots of explaining to do considering that
Nwankwo’s flirtations with arch enemies
of Nd’Igbo persist in the face of the sad state of Igbos in Nigeria today and the continuing display of hatred for Nd'Igbo by the people with whom Nwankwo has crawled into bed.
It is in that context that one encounters Nwankwo’s more recent effusions
as they expose his blind eagerness to cuddle the enemies of the Igbo Nation.
Let’s not be confused here. The contents of the two books Biafra: The Making of a Nation and The Igbo Nation and the Nigerian State
differ significantly. With hardly any parallel
for one to draw between the two books, one wonders if the same man authored
both books. Biafra: The Making of a
Nation is an insightful book. Surely
not just one of the better books about the Yakubu Gowon-led genocidal campaign
against the Igbo Nation, but also one of the better accounts of the pogrom, the
Nigerian renegades at Aburi, Ghana, and the Nigeria-Biafra War. That the book
is out of print so soon is a sad commentary on our current literary and
historical situation. Even though The Igbo Nation and the Nigerian State proffers
a little splendor and sorrow, it did not come close to Nankwo’s first work.
In narrating the mass killing, rape, and the destruction
of Igbo property in Nigeria, which began in the North, Nwankwo and Ifejika’s
book is like no other survival account I know of from that period. It was
essentially written during the pogrom and Civil War, unlike most survivor
accounts, which are memoirs after the fact.
Nwankwo was born in 1942 in what was then Awka Province in the colonial era. When British
mandate made its prescription for a nation state for what Obafemi Awolowo later
referred to as a “mere geographical expression,” Awka, an Igbo town, came under
the Eastern Region in post-independence Nigeria. A whole lot of points make Biafra: The Making of a Nation a well
written book, including the circumstance in which the book was written as
Nwankwo and Ifejike acknowledged:
Writing under the strains and stresses of the Nigeria-Biafra War,
amidst the rattle and rumble of machine guns and shells, the whizzing and
roaring of Nigerian jet bombers and fighters—pouring down demolition and
incendiary bombs, and spouting and spraying canon bullets on Biafran civilian
populations—the staccato of defiant Biafran anti-aircraft guns, the authors have
not found the production of this book an easy task. Often without scripts under
our arms, we have had to dive for cover from raids from the Anglo-Soviet
supported Nigerian Air Force. On one occasion, cannon bullets have whistled
into our study; shattering window-panes and missing us by inches. Naturally the
speed of our work fluctuated with every turn of the war
The position of Igbos during the pogrom
and civil war was unique: Despite the
fact the book gave a detailed account of a world without conscience—the
mutinies in the garrisons, the brutal assassination of Major-General Johnson
Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi and annihilation of civilians, references can be found on
a suffering people in its postscript. Nwankwo-Ifejika’s work portray a supreme
example of a tragedy allowed to take place while the world watched. Regardless
of his pains toward the atrocities against the Igbos—the mowing down of “two
hundred military officers of Eastern Nigerian origin” of which most of them, if
not all, were Igbos; the “systematic massacre of 30,000 Igbos” and Gowon’s failure
to honor the Aburi Accord, which supposedly should have offered real hope,
Nwankwo and Ifejika described the emergence of a new nation born out of
sufferings and a struggle against hatred. Nwankwo’s sensibility in the postscript
(pp265-294) was clear in as he narrated a telling and chilling tale where every
Biafran and sympathizer of Biafra who reflected
on the economic blockade suffered “insomnia” caused by the presence of death in
their thoughts and the thoughts of everyone around them:
I have seen things in Biafra this week, which no man should have to see. Sights to scorch the mind
and sicken the conscience. I have seen children roasted alive, young girls turn
in two by shrapnel, pregnant women eviscerated, and old men blown to fragments.
I have seen this things and I have seen their cause: high-flying Russian
Ilyusin jets operated by federal Nigeria, dropping their bombs on civilian centers through out Biafra.
The
Sunday Times (London), April
28, 1968
The sight that met my eyes gave me a feeling of nausea. Sprawled along
the street was a rippling sea of violently writhing bodies. Chilling means
charged the hot noon. At my feet, on the steps, the mangled body of the ten-year-old boy
with the starry eyes lay in a poll of his own blood. Instantly I stooped and
felt his pulse. His body was still warm but the boy was certainly dead. Just
then his mother rushed out, saw her dead son and fell on him, wailing
piteously.
Every time I read this passage I ask myself
why the world stood and watched and did nothing as a people marked for genocide were slaughtered.
Why was it just fine for others to suffer even after they had managed through
their leader to communicate their condition to the world? That takes one back to the Aburi Accord in
which Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu presented himself well on behalf of the
suffering Biafran children who were mercilessly and callously murdered by the
vandals who killed on the orders of Gowon.
So, instead of threatening war
and secession, considering the senseless killing of Igbo and the looting of
Igbo property, Ojukwu and the Biafran delegation to Aburi , well prepared, focused
on the possibility of improving
relations with the Nigerian vandals who later made up their mind that Aburi was
not the solution and Aburi’s prescription to avoid the war of genocide was to be negated. The Nigerians opted for a
genocidal invasion of Biafra.
The monstrous merger of the Hausa-Fulani
vandals and bloodthirsty Yoruba tribesmen led to more pogrom and the worst case
of human tragedy in that era. The Aburi communiqué,
was unanimously adopted by both the Biafran delegation led by General Ojukwu
and by Gowon’s assassins and mutineers.
The Aburi Accord was backed by African nations and some countries in the
West. At the prompting of Yoruba arch-tribalist, Awolowo, and his British
handlers, the agreement was in a sudden
about-face reneged upon by the Nigerians on the pretext that it was just a
group of individuals led by Murtala Mohammed and his fellow mutineers attempting
to usurp or undermine the legal authority of the country at in international
stage.
Nor was it a meeting of a group of
individual Biafrans or Nd’Igbo with no power to commit the state of Biafra or its
government. Later, it became clear that
the Nigerian vandals were only in Aburi to
study the willingness of the Biafran delegation to give up its aspirations for
safety within Nigeria or surrender
any aspirations for Biafran statehood should safety in Nigeria prove elusive.
Aburi was well organized with a genuine
mandate to resolve what had been seen as tearing the country apart. It had
delegates appropriately and adequately representative of the populations in the
country tasked to reach an agreement for the time being until a permanent
solution was sought based on upholding and respecting the decisions. The Aburi
paper was designed to avoid any further internal strife, and had the guidelines
to propel the country to the forefront without bloodshed. The Aburi document
was not designed for Mohammed and his mutineers to carry out a genocidal
campaign against Biafra in order to keep Nigeria one. The Aburi
paper was not designed to send innocent children, men and women of Biafra to their
graves. The Aburi paper was not a Gowon-Obafemi Awolowo-Anthony Enahoro’s own
personal document, sealed to plunder and demolish the Igbo Nation and the Biafran Republic. The Aburi
paper was not Western/vandals propaganda to make a justifiable war in
retaliation to a previous attack or invasion. The meeting at Aburi, Ghana, was resolved
on consensus toward peace not genocide, period!
But the irony here is, even as one has
become weary of pointing out a great number of Nigerian apologists, Igbos in
particular, and most of them lacking perspective and knowledge of historical
facts, have succumbed to the brazen Enahoro propaganda that the Aburi Accord was
a product of military despots and that the document is inadequate for a democratic settingc. Here is what a friend
said to me while discussing Aburi: “The Aburi Accord is a military document. We
need a sovereign national conference whereby each community and ethnic group is
duly represented to decide on the best possible way to govern the country.” I
have equally argued on this very subject time without number that even though
there happens to be a gathering of these “sovereign nationalists” that the
subject matter is bound to fail on the same premise that these “sovereign
nationalists” have attacked the Aburi Accord.
And, probably, what that suggests is
“Aburi Accord is a military document” and in that context justifies Gowon’s
genocidal campaign against the Igbo Nation. It also suggests accordingly that
the Awolowo-Enahoro’s initiatives that disregarded the decisions reached at
Aburi and carried out a full blown genocidal assault on the Igbo Nation and the
Children of Biafra. Some Nigerian sadists have even said that the
genocide against Biafra was a due and normal step to
bring about the anticipated peace reached at Aburi. However, the failure to respect the decisions
reached at Aburi signaled the beginning of a country that would never live in
harmony in decades that would follow. The bastardized country has never been
the same again, and history has proven the refusal to implement the Aburi Accord
to be a fatal blow to the country.
The ultimate reason a meeting was
scheduled in Aburi, Ghana, between the
Gowon-led vandals and Ojukwu’s delegates was to put an end to an on-going
carnage pre-planned and well-orchestrated by the bloodthirsty Hausa-Fulani and
their Yoruba hoodlum and nihilistic allies. Ironically, too, the Aburi meeting was
senseless because Gowon’s vandals had already made up their minds to start what
would be the most murderous campaign in African history. Too often, it is asked
why compare the talks at Aburi created out of the confusion which erupted when
the military juntas took laws into their hands with to a more consensual dialogue with the
people’s mandate, the so-called SNC or the conference of ethnic nationalities
as some have preferred to call it.
Nevertheless, if Gowon and his fellow vandals
were not so bloodthirsty, the decisions at Aburi would have been substantially upheld. And, had the decisions at the meeting been
respected, the war would not have been necessary and no further blood would
have been shed. Had Gowon and his vandals followed what was required after the
Aburi Accord, the desperate starvation of innocent Biafran children on
Awolowo and his cohorts' initiatives would not have occurred. So what mistakes were
made over the Aburi that prevented the Accord from averting war? And
what were the options available to the country in the aftermath of the pogrom
and Gowon’s vandals’ premeditated and diabolical acts that made the Aburi
dialoge necessary?
I have read the Aburi Accord over and
over again, and found no flaws that justify the disregard by the Gowon-led vandals. In particular, the inexplicable and tragic
events of July 29, 1966 in which Ironsi
was flogged, tied to a moving jeep, dragged, and murdered mandated that the Aburi Accord be
repected. Noteworthy is Nwankwo-Ifejika’s argument that Gowon’s “dismissal of
the AD Hoc Constitutional conference and assumption of dictatorial powers”
killed any hope for peace. But never minding Gowon’s dictatorial powers,
the idea to carry out a full-blown assault on the Igbo Nation and Children of
Biafra took wings.
In the poisoned minds of the vandals,
especially Mohammed, Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, Mohammed Shuwa, Benjamin
Adekunle, Obasanjo, David Ejoor, Samuel Ogbemudia, Ibrahim Alfa, Zamani Lekwot,
Joe Akahan, Nuhu, Muhammadu Buhari, Michael Adelenwa, Augustus Aikhomu, Ibrahim
Babangida, Mobolaji Johnson, Joseph Garba, Ike Nwachukwu, I.D. Bisalla, Domkat
Bali, Oladipo Diya and the rest, predisposed of the view that Igbo wanted to
take over all aspects of the country’s polity embellished to include the claim
that during the first coup of January 15, 1966, Igbo dignitaries and eminent
politicians were warned in advance of the bloody coup which was about to take
place leaving them with the opportunity to survive the “putsch” by either
traveling out or going into hiding until the execution of the so-called Igbo
coup.
In his book “Why We Struck,” Adewale
Ademoyega noted the “January Boys Coup” was never an Igbo revolution as claimed
by the bloodlust vandals who had used the term “Igbo coup” to successfully
employ its gruesome acts of unnatural taste: the pogrom. That the coup,
according to Ben Gbulie who testified at the Oputa human rights
commission, was organized and launched
to install Awolowo as president for his “vision” and ambition. In this view, as
in that of Ademoyega and other sincere observers who know what truth is, the
January coup, however, was not an Igbo coup; and was not the beginning of Nigeria disunity. And a
greater Nigeria did not emerge, either, after the Chukwuma “kaduna” Nzeogwu-led
coup and the one that followed six months later which erupted the pogrom and
civil war leaving the Children of Biafra with no other option than secession,
and the events from which so many of today’s problems emerged. An accord like
the one at Aburi, which is now an oft-told tale of a superb document had never
been put together before. Most people
who read it subscribe that it should be
reexamined carefully again, if the country really wants to take care of its
troubled past and the pervasive present tension.
On that point, the Aburi Accord made
progress until the civil-military dysfunction of Awolowo-Enahoro-Gowon-led
vandals—along with the obvious bloodsucking Hausa-Fulanis—decided it was
irrelevant, yearning for the destruction of the Igbo Nation and the Children of
Biafra. Having decided to renege on the decisions reached at Aburi, the
Nigerian vandals further singled out and murdered rank and file Igbo military
officers in the barracks, and in the horrific war that followed, drowned, shot,
tortured, and massacre male Biafran citizens at Asaba. That
a people should be marked for destruction because of the acts of some
individuals is still beyond my comprehension—yes, still beyond my comprehension.
No one embodied this atrocity more than
Murtala Mohammed, the drug addicted, mentally unstable, notorious bank armed
robber, was allowed to die and go to
hell without apologizing for his cold-bloodedness.
Ironically, Mohammed who took his Igbo
blood stained hands to his grave, was canonized by his sluggish crony and murderous
Igbo-hater, Obasanjo, who succeeded him and worked hard to maintain the pace of anti-Igbo bigotry and hatred. But the
plan to run over Igbos in a matter of days was wrong and miscalculated. Biafra fought the
vandals and did what it viewed was essential to its survival, resisting in a
heroic effort against a long bloody war waged by British-Russian backed
vandals. Regardless, the Gowon-led vandals never took its foreign backed
advantage into anything resembling military effectiveness. When war did come,
and in what had been envisioned to end in a couple of months, Gowon’s bloodlust
vandals found out Biafrans were singularly ready.
Isolated and with limited or no
resources , Biafran scientists went to work. They produced the Ogbunigwe which in its
capacity matched the “sophisticated” foreign weaponry of the vandals. They had
the best propaganda machine and resisted the invasion of the vandals to run
over Biafra in a couple of months as predicted. The
statehood of Biafra was recognized by many nations and
organizations. Among them: Ivory Coast and Tanzania for its
strength to sustain her existence despite not firing the first shot, and not
initiating secession.
The vandals had earlier called for breaking
away from the country and leaving alone a people they saw as a “sorry lot”
insisting their survival was wanting out. Were the vandals allowed say goodbye
to a “sorry lot” and specifically had the Aburi decisions been respected and
upheld, the consequences would not have been ominous in its aftermath. Gowon,
who would later be humiliated in the course of the country’s history when
declared wanted for masterminding the assassination of the hoodlum Murtala Mohammed
on February 13, 1976, had this to say when the civil military tension of 1967
reached crisis proportion, dismissing the articulated Ad Hoc Constitutional
Committee:
The day we say
confederation, it would be goodbye to Nigeria since
confederation meant a willing grouping together of independent sovereign
states.
The above comment ultimately sealed the
fate of the Aburi Accord. Surprisingly
“sovereign nationalists” who now tells us an SNC would address the ills of the country
fail to indicate when their thinking changed from the sentiments that Gowon
expressed above, the same sentiments for which many in the SNC Now bunch
followed Gowon to a genocidal war. When I hear things like that I shudder at
the shallowness of some of those calling for an SNC. I shudder partly because
such self-important positions seem weightless and implausible coming out of the
mouths of people for whom “history” is whatever happened during the Sani Abacha
terror years. Thus, the sudden call for SNC was initiated in the
Abacha years by the same people who would assure us in their next breath that a call for
SNC is unconstitutional, if the call were made to stop atrocities in Biafra or
Igboland. They would argue that there is
an existing workable and integral legislature formed through a democratic
fabric and based on the rule of law, and that there should be no SNC since it
would create tension, breaking up the country, and realizing Gowon’s fears.
That Nigeria is for all of
us, and that we should stay together and work things out. Imagine that. We
should stay together amid chaos.
Nwankwo’s book nearly three decades
after his first has what might be described as a proposal for a change of strategy
in Igbos road to assimilation into mainstream Nigeria. In Igbo Nation and the Nigerian
State,
there were some things in common with what Nwankwo narrated in his earlier
book during the pogrom. There is also much difference between the
present book and the earlier book. But,
there is indication that hard economic times had pushed Arthur Nwankwo into loyalties
to enemies of Nd’Igbo, betrayal of principles, all eviles that Nwankwo attempts
to mask as a new strategy and an effort to reach out to non-Igbos. This new pattern of betrayal of Nd’Igbo by
one of their own masked as an outreach effort should be cause for concern,
especially when the self-delusion is perpetrated by one who has in the past
pretended to champion justice for the Igbo Nation.
The case of Aburi was the last straw for
a peace path in what degenerated and tore the country apart. Compounding the
peril after Aburi has the fact that Gowon’s vandals and the Hausa-Fulani Igbo
haters came to a conclusion that upholding the decisions at Aburi would amount
to the entire country being locked in a conflict over the oil-rich Biafra
region and likely would seal the fate of Nigeria economically. Ojukwu made it
clear on the plebiscite for peace (Biafra, 1969) with
regards to the “oil-rich” Biafra that the
Eastern ethnic minorities by all accounts based on the principles of
self-reliance, should be free to agitate for her own freedom. To complete the
picture, the Gowon-Enahoro-Awolowo team was desperately concerned about
controlling the resources from the region without caring for the plight of the
Children of Biafra. Using every weapon, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) supplied
by Russia and Britain, Enahoro, Awo,
and Gowon set out to achieve their desired goals of wiping out the Igbo Nation
from the face of this planet.
As it happened, in exchange for territorial
control and in agreement with Russia and Britain, Gowon and his
vandals paid for the conquest of Biafra by barter. That
illicit trade resulted in the loss of the Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon.The
deal allowed the Nigerians to carry out full blown genocide and assault in a
conflict that left tens of thousands of infants and children dreadfully starved
to death and tens of thousands of civilians outnumbered and massacred in the
most horrible way.
Naturally, then, in searching for the
“root cause” of an anti-Igbo hatred so deep that it led to a pogrom, the jealousy
of other Nigerians over Igbo prosperity in BiafraNigeria must not be overlooked.
But Nd’Igbo, it should be clear, should not assume blame themselves for being
successful when the environment permitted competition. They Igbo were
republican in orientation and would
mingle with anyone even when not accepted. They meant well to a collective
national state regardless of the varied ethnicities. They were in for a one
united Nigeria. Alas! They
were not wanted. The hatred was ingrained and not much could be done. The most
dramatic of this hate was exposed during the civil war when Benjamin Adekunle
admitted shooting at every creature that moved in Biafra. The graphic
scenery was applauded. Adekunle in his own words:
I want to see no
Red Cross, no caritas, no World Council of Churches, no pope, no missionary and
no UN (United Nations) delegation. I want to prevent even one Igbo from having
even one piece to eat before their capitulation. We shoot at everything that
moves and when our troops march into the center of Ibo territory, we shoot at
everything even at things that do not move.
In violation of the rules of war and the Geneva Convention, the vandals
assaulted children, scorched churches, raped Igbo women, killed infants for no
reason, then plundered the Igbo Nation in the name of keeping Nigeria one. As
the assault continued apace, the vandals gained their way, declaring the Aburi
Accord null and void, justifying the pogrom and starting anew Igbo killings
wherever they could lay their hands on an Igbo man, woman, or child. Whatever
the shortcomings of these approaches may be, I firmly believe the cause of the
“disease” was envy and hatred, and the only way to cure it was if only Igbo
didn’t exist.
The Yorubas made it clear and were more
vocal in proclamation to “cure all Nigeria's ills” by
wiping out the Igbo Nation from the map. (1967). The satanic and Hutu-style Radio
Kaduna filled with hate and bigotry could not hide its feelings when it aired loud
and clear its own theme:
Let us go and
crush them. We will pillage them, their property, rape their womenfolk, kill
off their menfolk and leave them uselessly weeping. We will complete the pogrom
of 1966.
No less revealing is what might be
called “tongue tying” by the world when the Hausa-Fulanis refused to abandon
its genocidal ambitions encouraging their allies to help eliminate the Igbo
Nation.
Internationally, these poisoned minds and
haters of the Igbo enjoyed the tacit support of the impotent Organization of
African Unity, OAU, which failed to impose sanctions on Gowon’s genocidal vandals. With the OAU looking the other way, Gowon
assembled vicious Hausa-Fulani Islamic Jihadists and bloodthirsty Tiv, Juku,
Idoma, and Igala, and Yoruba tribesmen to launch a war of genocide. The weak
OAU and its Secretary-General Diallo Telli who witnessed the mayhem committed by the
vandals against Biafran Children practically and morally did nothing when the Soviet Union was providing
technicians, high-flying jets, and key components of strategic facilities to
the vandals in order to decimate the entire Igbo Nation.
All the same, one thing that must be
borne in mind is that “Nigeria” as a country
is nothing but fiction. We all know that. There is in reality no nation called Nigeria. Thus, the imperialists who were only
interested in coercion and theft, did not envision a morally, politically,
culturally, intellectually, corrupt and chaotic country in its aftermath. In
fact, it wasn’t just too long after the carving in the so-called amalgamation of
northern and southern Nigeria that its
troubles of ethnic and political disputes erupted making it clear that there
was nothing upon which to build a nation.
Indeed, the different nations that came together to make Nigeria were better off
on their own before the uniting took place.
Inasmuch as the carving was designed to
benefit the Imperialists, as fair-minded as ever, Nd’Igbo saw nothing that
should stop them from coexisting with a bunch of other nationalities that later
turned out to be haters and bigots with whom the Igbo Nation had nothing in
common. The problem, however, rested on the “Founding Fathers” who were either
anxious or in a hurry, hence having to do with being left with one of two
choices—“get the damn independence under our prescription” or stay right where
you are and better not complain again. Somehow, it sounds likely the founding
fathers succumbed to the British gimmicks ignoring the fact that an independent
national state of different ethnicities would result in total chaos and would
leave the fabricated country permanently in a comma.
Nwankwo, seemingly seriously “troubled”
about the sorry state of the country since the “legacy of the Southern and
Northern Protectorates of the British colonial empire” (Vanguard, December 29,
2003) joined together a people whose tradition, culture and language varied in
many ways and with further trial of the process perhaps as a litmus test—all to
an experiment that has left the country permanently paralyzed sought after ways
and means to solve the country’s growing mess. For sure, it has not gotten any
better. The total failure of the polity is a nightmare in Nwankwo’s own
imagination. Nwankwo wondered if the failure of the “Nigerian
experiment,” could be traced to the British and the way they originally
designed it or if the blame should go to the so-called founding fathers for lack of vision in enforcing
a contract fatal to the country’s interests.
Equally disturbing is Nwankwo’s multiple
loyalties, “changing strategy,”
subscribing to and compassionately wooing the unapologetic bigot,
Enahoro, the former infamous information minister who considered “mass
starvation” of infants and children “a legitimate weapon of war.” I can
understand that politics oft-times makes strange bedfellows. But, I cannot think through Nwankwo dining
comfortably with the devil and knowing without being told that dining with
devils like Enahoro requires one using a very long spoon. It is a bad behavior.
In The Igbo Nation and the Nigerian State, there was a Nwankwo
contradicted the ambitious statement in his preface:
Nigeria tragedy arises
from the conspiracy of successive regimes to exclude the Igbo from occupying
responsible positions in the armed forces: the army, navy, air force, and the
intelligence services not because they are not qualified but because they are
Igbo. Consequently the Igbos have been deliberately prevented from occupying
leadership positions within the commanding heights of the economy. The fact
that these attempts will fail is a foregone conclusion but what worries me is
that the continuous pursuit of the ethnic formation inexorably leads to social
and political upheavals.
Also, while Nwankwo is at his incoherent
game of visions of collectivity in a “Nigerian State,” and delusions that
others would include Igbos in all aspects of what he calls “position within the commanding heights of the
economy,” which is being denied now, one is compelled to take a look at the
present political dispensation of the war criminal Obasanjo and his inept,
corrupt administration. Of course, one could see Obasanjo’s appointment of
ministers, a kitchen cabinet, service
chiefs and manipulation of local government “bureau chiefs” whose ultimate goal
has been to antagonize the Igbos. Even
using this basic measure, was there fairness and were the said appointments
proportionally distributed or based on merit?
Although I recognize Nwankwo’s previously
expressed concerns and the plight of the Igbo Nation and their marginalization,
I am worried about his flirtation with a personage like Enahoro who hates
everything Igbo and does not want the Igbo Nation to survive Some of the passages in Nwankwo’s Biafra: The Making of a Nation, indicate that
nothing justified meaningless killing of Igbos, and the terrible cost was highlighted
in Nwankwo’s charge at the beginning of the “Igbo Nation and the Nigerian
State” when he indicated that the Igbo
Nation and her Eastern Minorities neighbors have suffered tremendously since
the post-civil war era. This kind of situation illustrates the dangers involved
when most likely money and favor changes hands and forces men to alter accounts
of historical events. Obviously, I have
a problem with Nwankwo’s thesis (pp15-16) adding up incidents like this when he
writes:
Relatedly, the
Igbo and the rest of the Easter minorities have been experiencing a sustained
policy of institutional and structural marginalization since 1970, simply
because they lost the civil war. The feeling of acute, social, political and
economic alienation makes them one of the most aggrieved segment of the polity,
to the extent that any dialogue or discussion about the restructuring of the
Nigerian state on the basis of equity, fair play and social justice without
them is bound to fail.
As many political scientists and
historians of Igbo extraction would agree, Nwankwo’s sympathy with “Eastern
minorities” is severely flawed because it includes a call for the minorities to
retain stolen Igbo property, which the minority thieves call “Abandoned
Property.” The danger in Nwankwo’s view
is mind-boggling, and Nwankwo knows that the minorities of the “East” did not suffer
the boding evil cost of the pogrom and civil war, except to the extent that
some of them were mistaken as Igbos. The case of Awolowo’s initiated
reimbursement of twenty pounds to Igbos who left their life savings and fled
did not affect the Eastern minorities. The wickedness of the economic blockade
also initiated by Awolowo in his quest to starve his enemies to death did not
affect the minorities either.
Nwankwo also delves into the drama of
June 12, 1993 annulment where Moshood Abiola was said to have overwhelmingly
won, insinuating Igbo patriotism toward a democratic state gave Abiola his
presidential ticket for the still-borne Third Republic. Didn’t Abiola brag Igbo
votes was not relevant for him to win overall, in an outrageous election
savagely stricken by all sorts of malpractice in which he had been the ring
leader? Is not a shame that Nwankwo is
calling Nd’Igbo to die and perish when the Yoruba nation who could not and would not fight
for Abiola’s mandate and right to form a government that suits them fled Nigeria en masse until saved by a stroke
of luck: the death of the nasty dictator, Abacha.
Enter the three word cliché Sovereign
National Conference-SNC, coined when Ernest Shonekan was compelled to abandon
his responsibilities in the made-up Interim National Government and the
conquered Yoruba nation came under Abacha. They could not, and would not fight for
what they believed in: freedom, democracy, “the right to self-reliance” and the
rule of law. Abiola also took to his heels showing up in the West where he made
incoherent and unintelligible speeches.
My question here, before I proceed
further: why did the SNC cry which threatened Obasanjo's presidency in a hyped
O’dua Peoples Congress-led media frenzy during the first few months of the
bigot’s presidency fizzle out without much ado? And why has Nwankwo turned out
to be a stand up guy for the Enahoro and NADECO “drivel” that the SNC call has
become, especially since Enahoro was key in killing the Aburi Accord?
And why are the dovish Igbo efulefu, the worthless
and confused bunch so much concerned with an SNC with a Yoruba lot who are very
likely to make a swift 180-degrees turn in the eleventh hour? And why is
Nwankwo determined to be an errand boy to Enahoro, of all people?
Nwankwo needs to think over his
courtship with a double-faced satanic personage like Enahoro if only for the
fact that once a traitor would always be a traitor. Enahoro and his cohorts cannot be trusted.
Even if Enahoro has repented for his sins, perhaps he did and only Nwankwo
knows, upon what mandate does Nwankwo purport to speak for the Igbo in his
slave service to Enahoro?
Somehow, a gathering of these “sovereign
nationalists” has been seen as the last resort to the woes of this troubled country
since its birth as an independent state.
As it also happened, however, and
ironically, no call for a national conference was made during Gowon’s regime
following a genocidal campaign against the Igbo Nation. The
country was locked in a conflict between the military juntas and civilian
“lootologists,” the Abiola types, over the control of the country’s economy.
Could it be that during the 1970 to 1993
military dictatorships save for 1979 to 1983 when Shehu Shagari's inept and
corrupt administration was briefly ushered in, the horde of sovereign nationalists did not
know how to go about calling for a sovereign conference? Why
did they wait until Abacha surfaced? Does this mean that Babangida who encouraged
and promoted bribery and corruption to the highest level and drowned the country
in its entirety had a sound, effective regime, which did not deserve to be
disturbed by calls for national conference?
Why did the call for a conference not go
out during Shagari’s era. Were the widespread scandals of looting the treasury
one of the country’s better days which did not require calls for SNC? Were
things really so good that the brutes
Mohammed’s and Obasanjo’s and their military gangsterism did not need the
interruption of an SNC call?
Does
it mean that that Gowon’s administration, most corrupt and self-styled
“Reconstruction Era,” or “post-Civil War era,” whatever that is, was not the
appropriate time to assemble for SNC or “Conference of Ethnic Nationalities”?
Or that the present crop of fraud in Obasanjo’s administration whose
appointments and elections as ministers, advisers, “commissioners,” local
government chiefs, legislators and governors were based on personal connections
and political reliability rather than merit and dedication to service, would be
patriotic enough, honest and truthful to make good judgments?
The idea that an endorsement of SNC
would solve the country’s problems politically without defeating the root cause
of the problems is ludicrous. letter. A
humorless prank. For more than two
years, the Oputa panel, the media and we, we who had relied on an independent
commission of Oputa’s magnitude, were stuck with research work, reflections,
witnesses, testimonies, material evidence, cross examinations, and seemingly
endless discussion about what the human rights commission meant for our
constitutional order, our political culture, and, inevitably the fate and
survival of the Fourth Republic. The government’s deliberate obfuscation and
erasure of the atrocities committed against the Igbo Nation and the collusion
of the ngbati-ngbati press and the drugged public in forgetting or ignoring
history’s abomination was zeroed and finally reduced by Oputa’s investigative
commission, to a mere rhetorical balderdash.
So, and, who now cares for SNC when a
rubber stamped confused bunch, the “Justice
Oputa Human Rights Investigation Commission” sat for two years to study,
investigate, deliberate and recommend only having its findings trashed? If
Oputa’s panel at tax payers expense could not be allowed to work independently
doing its job in point of fact and sufficiently recommending under due process
that war criminals like Danjuma should be found liable on the circumstances
behind Ironsi’s death, how then could SNC arrive with resolutions or
conclusions on how the affairs of the country should be run with similar
characters in session?
If the Oputa panel could not come up with
evidence that Babangida was the brain behind the destruction of an entire
generation and should be held responsible, locked up behind bars indefinitely
until justice is done in so many of his cruelties, how then could SNC reach a
consensus on a right constitutional order based on accumulated precedents? If
the Oputa panel could not make recommendations that “Abandon Property,” an
avalanche of insanity, was wrong, and that properties should be returned to the
rightful owners, how then could SNC know what is right and wrong, again, when
the same characters are in session?
A number of SNC apologists, and Nwankwo is one, have addressed this issue in a
similarly one-sided manner by trying to demonstrate that the country will go
down the hill if a conference is not held. Their central focus is the undoubted
enmity between the military juntas begun in Babangida-Abacha era and the
Yoruba-led National Democratic Coalition-NADECO, during the “June 12” nullification
crisis.
They point to Abacha’s assumption to the
throne, denying the Yoruba nation privilege to the presidency. But these apologists somehow miss the point.
NADECO was borne out of singing the blues for what Babangida did in his
infamous “Maradona politics” and what would later lead to Abacha’s “hammer time.”
The Yoruba failed to imagined what goes
around comes around when persecution and ethnic cleansing reappeared in
Abacha’s government. In this respect, and if the pogrom was seen as necessary
to keep Nigeria one negating
the resolutions at Aburi, shouldn’t the ethnic cleansing by Abacha equally be seen the same way, thus there is
need to avoid an SNC in order to keep Nigeria one?
Addressing this question is where I have
a problem with Nwankwo’s multiple loyalties. I am Igbo and I do not hate the
Yorubas or the Hausa Fulanis who slaughtered my kith and kin and yet have not
shown remorse or offered apology. I am still wondering why the pogrom took
place. I am having nightmares. I was just as amazed at Abacha’s reign of terror
and ethnic cleansing. I believe it is only the truth that can set us free
acknowledging nothing justified the pogrom and nothing by the same token
justifies extermination of ethnic minorities and or ethnic cleansing. I
proclaim that truth myself. I am pained by all the tragedies and atrocities
incited on the country throughout the military regimes and civilian uprisings.
I am also pained by the apologists that minimizes the injustice done by the
Hausa-Fulanis and their Yoruba collaborators to Igbos in history, or seek to
relegate it to oblivion.
Even as we pretend to be moving forward,
it pains me that all we are doing is promote our own ideological agendas than
in seeking the truth. There has not been an explanation why Igbo happened to be
the country’s problems suffering more casualties than any in history. Even
after the cycle of September-October 1966 pogrom—never minding the
assassination of Ironsi and a host of high ranking Igbo military officers—the
only Yoruba person to speak out was Wole Soyinka (later Nobel Laureate in
Literature), whose protest cost him prison time, and whose book The Man
Died
was ultimately banned from the book shelves for what the military juntas
claimed threatened national security.
This defense of the juntas, however,
bent on mischief and covering the truth, fails to account for a number of
important facts. It ignores the existence of a specifically Igbo hatred, shared
in varying degrees by Yoruba and Hausa-Fulanis. It justifies the photographer
Emmanuel Ogbonna who was abducted at Dugbe Market, Ibadan, tortured and
murdered because he was Igbo. It makes valid the inexplicable and mysterious
death of Chu-Chu Nzeribe in the hands of the mobs at Ikoyi Prison under Gowon’s
dictatorship and genocidal campaign in opposition to the Igbo Nation. It justifies
Hausa-Fulani nihilists who fatally stabbed a female teacher in a Minna
elementary school classroom. And of course, Mohammed’s “bravery” was applauded
by Gowon and his vandals for the greatest single massacre in Asaba.
Still, as the world heard, read, watched
and commented on the carnage against the Igbos, the outcries were never
designed to help the Igbos and Children of Biafra. Take for instance the
following comments from a universal media:
In some
areas outside the East, the Ibos were killed by local people with at least the
acquiescence of the federal forces… 1000 Ibo civilians perished in Benin in
this way. (New York Review, December 21, 1967)
After
the federal takeover of Benin…troops
killed about 500 Ibo civilians after a house-to-house search. (Washington Post,
September 27, 1967)
There
has been genocide on the occasion of the 1966 massacres…the region between the
towns of Benin and Asaba where only widows and orphans remain, federal troops
having, for unknown reasons, massacred all the men. According to eye witness of
that massacre the Nigerian commander ordered the execution of every Ibo male
over the age of ten years. Le Monde April 5, 1968)
A Red
Cross official said Equatorial
Guinea had given no explanation for
her ban on the relief flights. He recalled, however, that the Nigerian
government had announced last week that there were to be no more flights over
its territory. It is possible he said the Equatorial
Guinea had interpreted this as an
immediate ban on relief shipments. (Economic blockade). The Red Cross
announcement said that for every night the airlift did not operate, the 850,000
people who depended on it for their 70-gram-a-day subsistence ration would
‘have to go without even this meager allowance’ (New York Times, December 23, 1968)
More
than 60 civilians killed and about 300 injured during…during federal raids on
Umuahia. (Washington Post, December 1968)
Until
now efforts to relieve the Biafran people have been thwarted by the desire of
the central government of Nigeria to pursue total and unconditional victory and
by the fear of the Ibo people that surrender means wholesale atrocities and
genocide. But genocide is what is taking place right now—and starvation is the
grim reaper. This is not the time to stand on ceremony, or to go through
channels or to observe the diplomatic niceties. The destruction of an entire
people is an immoral objective even in the most moral of wars. It can never be
justified. It can never be condoned. (Richard Nixon, The Presidential Campaign,
September 9, 1968)
650
refugee camps…contained about 700,000 haggard bundles of human flotsam waiting
hopelessly for a meal; outside the camps…was the remainder of an estimated four
and half to five
million displaced persons…kwashiorkor scourge… a million and half children.
suffered from it during January; that put the forecast death toll at another
300,000 children…More than pogroms of 1966, more than the war casualties, more
than terror bombings, it was the experience of watching helplessly their
children waste away and die that gave birth to…a deep and unrelenting
loathing…It is a feeling that will one day reap a bitter harvest unless…
Frederick Forsyth, Ojukwu’s biographer,
Umuahia.
Unfortunately, despite the extensive
media coverage, including Time magazine, Newsweek, New York Times,
Los Angeles Times, British Guardian, Midstream Magazine, Ghana Daily
Graphic and Evening News, eyewitness accounts, and numerous other
international publications, not only were the above citations belated with lost
of thousands of Igbo lives, it was also inadequate to counter the continued
assault on the Igbo Nation by Gowon’s vandals considering the widespread
indifference to the fate of the Igbos. Given the view Igbo men were a target of
extermination, comments from the above media reports, then, came far too late
to be of any help to Igbos. In spite of the urging by the international
community, including the media and Papal State to stop persecution and killing
of Igbo children, men and women, Igbo hatred continued when the Hausa-Fulanis
and some Igbo traitors had proclaimed that the sad lot of Igbos was the result
of the cause that they had called down upon themselves when they murdered
Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa.
Upon all this, and after three decades
of assertions by other Nigerians that Igbos are not needed and are not part of
the rest who saved Nigeria, and therefore that Igbos should be made to feed
from the crumbs of the Northern caliphates, Yoruba bigots and war criminals, Nwankwo
seeks a one-united Nigeria yet again on the back of the Igbos, asking Igbos to
blind trust the Enahoros without seeking their apologies and return of the
properties that they stole. Nwankwo
writes:
It concludes
that for Nigeria to make
progress what should be urged is not the accentuation of the logic of Igbo
isolation and exclusion but the principled and relentless participation of the
Igbo in building a new democratic, just and genuinely federal Nigerian state.
I’m not sure why Nwankwo finds himself
obsessed with a Nigerian state even at the cost of one million Igbo lives.
Perhaps, Nwankwo knows what may have been beyond our reasoning and control,
that Igbo persecution and marginalization was a normal process that we as a
people should go through for assimilation into “Nigeria’s democratic
culture.” Perhaps Nd’Igbo were a lot who
enjoy sacrificing their lives as guinea pigs to keep a contraption of a country
united.
Ever since he joined the bandwagon and
became SNC’s public relations stuntman and right-hand man to Enahoro who knows
every detail of the task of gathering and murdering ethnic nationalities,
Nwankwo has written at length on this subject matter of trying to convince and
persuade his audience that SNC may be the only remedy for a fractured and worn
out country. Unfortunately, no conference will achieve any results if the
participants are the same unrepentant instigators of genocide who destroyed the
Aburi Accord. Put it simply, a
conference of ethnic nationalities without reflections on the pogrom and Aburi
Accord would be nothing but fiction.
To understand this requires a look back
at the history of the country over the past forty years. The first
post-independence election found the Yoruba nation overwhelmingly shattered
when the drama within Action Group began to unfold. Realistically, the Western
regional crisis, the starting point of the country’s troubles when Awo and his
colleagues were indicted and slammed for treasonable felony was the genesis of
the country’s continued predicament. Worst of all, is what followed, henceforth—January 15, 1966 through the Civil War. The end
of the civil war found Igbos totally isolated, liquidated and marginalized.
With the chant of “no victor no vanquished” as if Igbos reinstatement into
government jobs and private corporations would be effected, Igbos were dealt
another stunning blow. They were relegated and had to start all over again with
a clean slate. The bigotry and hatred continued apace.
In this light, what would one make of
the image of the beleaguered Igbo Nation surrounded by a sea of haters and
bigots yearning for its ruin? Perhaps the Nwankwo-Enahoro team of SNC and other
conference of ethnic nationalities advocates have figured out everything with
efforts to resolve the country’s problems of constitutional crisis and lack of
good governance. Perhaps, too, Nwankwo in his “right thinking mind” believes
the SNC convention, like Aburi, and SNC convention in an existing legislative
body of a democratic structure, unlike Aburi, could be expected to restore a
sense of purpose to the country’s economic, socio-cultural, political and
intellectual environment. And, perhaps, after SNC or conference of ethnic
nationalities, dismantling the country and mandate for several republics would
be very palpable and inevitable.
For Nd’Igbo, Biafra and the rest of
Nigeria today, the
Aburi Accord appears a far more a coherent initiative that should have provided
the country with some approximation of peace, no doubt. And for the vandals, if
they had respected and upheld the decisions at Aburi, their cause of commitment
to destroy the Igbo Nation and Biafra would not havematerialized.
No peaceful solution and dialogue of a
sovereign national conference has any chance unless every child in the country
and Diaspora, every adult, every analyst in every news media and political
forums knows and concurs that Aburi had no parallel on the way out for the
country. And on that note, SNC endorsed and subscribed without specific
reference to Aburi would spell another doom. Again, it’s time we dust off the
Aburi Accord and take its lessons seriously.
We must not forget!
ON
ABURI WE STAND!