Following the 3-month quit notice handed down
to the Igbos living and working or doing business in the northern states, the
Biafran agitation on one hand, and the
restructuring of the federal system of
government (we are practicing on the breach) on the other has been gathering
momentum. No time in our national history has there been such an audacious
challenge of the moribund status quo. The hitherto bottled-up emotions are
flaring up breeding frustrations with tribal elements and regional 'lords'
flexing muscles. Joining the fray for unity or disintegration also are the
'neutrals;' that is, those who see unity as good but with a fundamental
proviso: wholesale restructuring of the political system.
We have made our position quite clear from the
onset that unless and until we restructure our defective federation, harmony
and peace will continue to elude us. The signs and sounds of the times are
frightening enough and the future appears endangered! We have collectively
compromised the great future of our nation by the actions, omissions and
commissions of those we gave the mandate to lead us aright but have all failed
us by their open display of lack of social solidarity. We vote them into power
and they loot the treasury for their children and generations yet unborn!
For the past 57 years of our flag
independence, our successive leaders have all lived in denial of the
unsustainability of the status quo. Many people along ethnic lines have felt
marginalized yet they pretend that with coercion unity can be sustained or
imposed. The social problems of today never originated today or yesterday. They
were the by-product of a unilateral amalgamation of 1914. More than a century
after, discordant, irreconcilable voices have arisen to lay claim to ethnic,
religious and regional affinities. Truth be told, Lord Lugard made a tactical
grave mistake by that singular dictatorial imposition -- something which is
being repudiated from different quarters.
There are serious issues of justice and
fairness begging to be resolved yet our so-called leaders pretend that all is
well or will be well! Nothing can be 'well' in a nation of diverse
nationalities where a region see themselves as "born to rule" while
another is seen as mere "traders"! The cacophony of voices asking for
the injustice and inequity to be corrected must be heard and justice done.
Failure to accommodate their grievances would ultimately lead to one plausible
outcome: Balkanization. We have seen it happen in the defunct Soviet Union. We
have witnessed it occur in the former Yugoslavia. Recently in history we saw it
manifest in the Sudan-South Sudan split.
Nigeria as presently constituted federally is
not working and can never work in the overall interest of all and sundry. Hence
the urgent need for some constitutional tinkering or engineering involving
radical restructuring based on true federalism. The Arewa youths that gave the
glorified Biafrans till the 1st of October to return en-masse to their
ancestral homelands in the south-east must have done that out of frustration or
arrogance or both. But they have done something good for those hell-bent on achieving
what the late Ikemba Ojukwu never saw happen in his eventful lifetime.
As a parable goes in Igbo language (ukwu
agbara nwa awo bu inye ya lift) the descendants of Dan Fodio up north have
helped kick the toad which in essence would serve it well rather than the
punishment it was intended to be. Biafra as a self-determination idea can never
die! Those thinking otherwise are only deceiving or fooling themselves. It is
like a planted tree surviving generations. No amount of force can obliterate it
from the consciousness of the people concerned. The best way to go is for a
radical change to be administered to our leadership structure. And for a stop
to be put to those anti-progress schemes like the federal character that tend
to kill competence, talent and dream.
Nigeria can still become a great nation (in
the real sense of the word) if we can agree to live together on terms
negotiated without 'no-go-areas'. The issue of a super presidency must be done
away with as the first step forward. A situation where a President is
constitutionally invested with limitless powers cannot be tolerated for long.
We must endeavor to make that office less attractive by devolving more powers
to the states. The President of Nigeria is imbued with uncontrollable
extra-ordinary powers with which he can do anything with impunity! He can rape
a Monika Lewinsky in his office without any consequence. He can take your wife
with you doing nothing! He can decide to raid the national treasury a la Idi
Amin and get away with it. The late Gen. Abacha did that and nothing happened
to him posthumously! He can throw anybody to the gulag without trial for years.
He can wake up one morning, and depending on his mood, ask for some human heads
for sacrifice and the security staff would get cracking without question! Yet
democracy, as we know it elsewhere, does not work that way.
The leader of the Niger Delta Peoples
Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Alhaji Mujahid Asari-Dokubo, recently posted on his
Facebook wall an interview he granted an unspecified media outlet wherein he
declared himself a Biafran! Reading through the interview online one came
across a vintage Dokubo: intrepid, pungent and straight-forward. The ex-Niger
Delta militant from the Ijaw ethnic group said that he was not a Nigerian but a
Biafran, explaining that though he was not a member of the Indigenous Peoples
of Biafra (IPOB), he was in full support of the struggle for the restoration of
Biafra. Like Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of IPOB, Asari-Dokubo said he was opposed
to the restructuring of Nigeria, further arguing forcefully that agitation for
the sovereign state of Biafra was not a call to war but that of
self-independence.
According to him: “I’m not a Nigerian. Nations
are not imposed on people. People don’t sit down in Berlin or anywhere and make
people Nigerians. Nations are created by the will of the people. My people have
never accepted Nigeria and so, how can I be a Nigerian? Nobody can impose
Nigeria on me .... The free will of the people create nations. If everybody
gathered together, the Ijaw people, you know which includes the Kalabari
people, nobody forced the Kalabari people to become Ijaw people, because
naturally, they know they are Ijaw people.... So, nobody will force an Owerri
man, an Nkwere man to be an Igbo person; he naturally knows he is an Igbo
person..... So, if we want to be Nigerians, then we have to sit down, and
decide for ourselves that today, we are going to be, or as separate identities,
and accept Nigeria as our country, as our nation and we become Nigerians. We’ve
not done that."
The interview was offensive if I were to have
come from the North. Hear him once again firing from all cylinders
no-holds-barred: "So we are going to wait for another 50 years under the
bondage of the people we are better than? People, the United Nations and all
agencies in the world said, in educational index, they are the lowest. In
poverty index, they are the lowest. In everything, they are the lowest. Infant
mortality, they are the lowest. VVF, it is more prevalent in their place. Are
they the people?"
On a lighter note, Asari said he has 21
children and would want to live to attain old age! Dokubo must be a strong man
indeed to have fathered a score and one children at the age of 52! He forgot,
however, to tell us how many women gave birth to those boys and girls. As a
father of 21 offspring, Asari-Dokubo must be a good Muslim who adheres to the
Islamic doctrine of marrying more than one woman if you can take care of them
and the children. He must have made a great fortune by his Niger Delta
resource-control violent agitations, so the issue of means to cater for the
kids does not arise here. Besides, one doffs his hat for his libidinal prowess!
Earlier this week, too, another prominent
oriental lawyer and former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Dr. Olisa
Agbakoba (SAN), addressed a press conference in Lagos where he condemned the
call for the country’s restructuring describing it as a "political
calculation by the elite to grab power in 2019." He justified the demand
for self-determination by the Nnamdi Kanu-led Indigenous Peoples of Biafra,
which is seeking a referendum to achieve same. Agbakoba is a seasoned lawyer so
he knows what he is talking about.
He said the federal government must
immediately initiate a process to put the continued existence of Nigeria as a
sovereign entity to a debate, stressing that restructuring was not the road map
to federalism. Agbakoba declared, “I see every politician now says restructure
but I disagree. I also think the Acting President was wrong to say that Nigeria
is insoluble. There is nothing sacrosanct about Nigeria. It can blow up
anytime. It’s an artificial creation, which was made in 1914 and when it was
amalgamated we were not there. It was amalgamated in the interest of the colonialists.”
Sound jab there!
Alhaji Mujahid Asari-Dokubo's pro-Biafra
declaration must have come as a melody in the ears of 'emperor' Nnandi Kanu and
his huge Biafra-or-nothing congregation. But caution must be exercised lest a
monumental error of judgment be committed yet again. During the Biafran
prolonged war and thereafter, the late Ken Saro-Wiwa was known to have played
some pro-Nigeria/anti-Biafra roles assigned to him by the 'masters' of
yesterday. He willfully sabotaged the Biafran cause for fear of his ethnic
Ogoni minority being naturally part of the Biafran nation or outright hatred of
the Igbo gut. He paid dearly for campaigning for the environmental rights of
his Ogoni people; he was hanged and allegedly buried sprinkled with acid!
Besides, the landed properties abandoned in
the Niger Delta region by the fleeing Biafrans were much harder to be reclaimed
(in fact many were never reclaimed) than say those left over in the south-west
and even up north. Therefore, while Asari Dokubo's pride as a Biafran meant
good tiding for the Biafran agitators they must find a way to disabuse the
minds of the brothers and sisters in the Niger Delta who still (rightly or
wrongly) see the Igbos as exhibiting an omnipotent and omniscient mentality.
This must be done for the spirit of brotherhood to prevail.
Saharareporters*
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