BY SIR FRED CHUKWUELOBE
Anybody who is being oppressed anyway in the world is a Biafran. Forget the name. What’s in a name? Everybody deserves and demands equal rights and justice. Without these, there’s no peace both for the oppressed and for the oppressors.
This country has been must unfair to Ndigbo. We fought the war. We had no choice. We lost the war. We surrendered. We were told no victor, no vanquished.
We went back to Nigeria and started from the scratch. We rebuilt in no distant time. But Nigeria still believes that we must continuously be put down. The country was carefully gerrymandered to keep us down. Of the six geopolitical zones, only the South East has five States. Under this administration, only the South East is missing among the three tiers of government: the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. And so on, and so forth.
The Igbo believe in one Nigeria and have built up every place they live in and earn their livelihood.
We have also been targeted and our properties looted or destroyed spontaneously once riots break out spontaneously too. At the end of last EndSars protests, the biggest losers were Igbo businessmen. Yet, SARS maltreatment was meted out more to Ndigbo. Double jeopardy.
We are denied critical appointments and favours. I recall the late Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, telling Mrs. Uzoamaka Nwizu, then Comptroller General of Immigration, that she was occupying “our position”. Gratuitous insult!
Therefore, we feel unwanted in a nation we have done so much to sustain. Every effort by Ndigbo to forge alliance was seen as elitist and didn’t achieve much. Hence, the agitations. Hence, MASSOB, IPOB, etc.
That said, let me weigh in on the current move by IPOB to force a shutdown of the Igbo nation “every Monday” until its leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, is released from detention.
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I spent the whole of last night thinking how this Monday Monday shut down of Igbo nation can force president Muhammadu Buhari to release Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
Unless there’s something I don’t know or understand, can somebody help me?
Of the 36 States writing NECO today, only children in 5 South East States will be affected by today’s forced shut down. Most of them are children of Igbo people. They will lose one year and wait until 2022 to write the exam.
Those who are eager to go to school will feel sad. Lazy ones will be happy because they will be home with the serious ones. Delusional.
Those in 31 States will write the exam. They include children of Igbo people resident in those states. The results will come out. South East will have fewer candidates passing. The unfortunate scenario will have ripple effects.
Businesses will go on in 31 States except in 5 South East States. I’m not sure the nation’s economy is tied to the economy of the South East. Don’t kid yourself; it is not.
Buhari refused to release El Zakyzaky despite court orders until recently. Many of El Zakyzaky’s followers were killed. A panel was set up. Can somebody remind me of the outcome of it or what came out of it?
I repeat, this government has been most unfair to us. Nigeria, as a matter of fact, has been unfair to Ndigbo. But in demanding a stop, is harming ourselves an option?
A man sees a rat in his house. The rat chews his certificates and furniture. He gets angry, douses the house with gasoline, fetches a matches, lites it and sets the house ablaze. Then steps out to watch the rat burnt.
Meanwhile, the rat sees a hole it had dug, escapes through it and goes to the boy’s quarters to eat more certificates and furniture. At the end, when the inferno settles, the angry man, unfortunately, realises the rat escaped, but his house completely burnt. Who loses? That’s why the Igbo say “adi eji iwe oke suo uno oku”.
Shutting down our nation to demand the release of MNK is setting our houses ablaze to kill a rat. It doesn’t work that way. It boomeranges.
I bet you, president Buhari will have his breakfast, lunch, dinner and desert while we’re counting our loses.
By the time he’s done and while listening to BBC Hausa service, he will hear how we killed ourselves, shut down our businesses and lost billions.
What will he do? He’d look for a toothpick and pick his teeth, smiling as he does that.
This is what he enjoys: watching us suffer.
Will he release MNK?
You guess is as good as mine.
When and if we eventually we get Biafra, this is how we will start. Some people will be banished from their homes for not supporting the agitation. Others will be punished for being reasonable. Many are already keeping quiet for fear of being attacked. But we must be reasonable. We don’t support the political disenfranchisement of Ndigbo. We only call for caution and tact as we struggle for our rights and freedom.
The truth of the matter is that the South East may be shutdown, not because they believe in the cause of it, but for fear of being harmed by hoodlums and armed men who have taken over the struggle. Gradually, anger will set in and there will be an implosion, the consequences of which will still be suffered by those the struggle is meant to help.
Shutdown excites the lazy and unenterpresing because he sits at home with the hardworking people. To him, we are the same. No, you’re not. Head or tail, like an alcoholic, he needs more alcohol to keep dreaming. And he’s always drunk and misstepping.
Not all dreams come true. Certainly, not the one without concomitant work plan.
He who fights and runs away, lives to restrategisze and to fight again. Nobody who cuts his nose to spit his face gets another nose. Not even a plastic surgery. That is artificial.