By Chiedu Uche Okoye
MY spry octogenarian mother is my closest chum. And I do spend quality time with her. My interaction and conversation with her on the state of the nation and the Nigeria-Biafra war inspired me to write this piece.
Being the effervescent and brilliant last born of my parents, they’re greatly enamored with me. And while growing up, they gave me pet names, such as “Chubby Checker” and “Jesse Jackson”, and under the moonlight, they would regale me with tales about the Nigeria-Biafra war. My father’s war tales (may God rest his soul) were a rehash of fantasies and reality while my mother would narrate her ordeal during the war to me. Till now, she hasn’t ceased to tell me how the war nearly cost the life of her eldest daughter (now deceased), the one fondly called “Miss Nigeria”.
Having escaped death by the whiskers during the war, my Mother has a great dislike and phobia for war. She would rather we dialogued than go to war. Now, many Nigerians from diverse ethnic groups are stoking the embers of disunity and war in Nigeria with their inflammatory utterances and divisive actions. These people, who harbour deep hatred for people who belong to religious and ethnic groups other than theirs, are taking Nigeria to the precipice.
Can Nigeria come out of another civil war not dismembered? Have we forgotten that the civil war stalled our national development? And it took us long time to re-build our country. The physical and emotional scars from the war are still deeply etched on the bodies and hearts of millions of Nigerians. Although the mishandling of political crisis in the Western Region in the 1960s partly caused the war, the remote cause of the war was ethnic hatred as well as suspicion.
Since the end of the civil war in 1970, our successive leaders, both political and military, had made concerted efforts to entrench unity in Nigeria. Sadly, the NYSC programme, which is a tool for achieving national cohesion and unity, is being abused. Today, corps members’ mandatory one year stay in places other than their native home states has failed to disabuse their minds of ethnic prejudices, sentiments, and stereotypes.
The fact is that Nigerians are fiercely conscious of their ethnic origins and backgrounds and religions. That’s why we place our ethnic nation’s interests above the national interests and good. Consequently, the centrifugal forces of ethnicity and religion have caused deep fissures in our polity. Since the inception of Nigeria, the major ethnic groups in Nigeria had attempted to secede from Nigeria at different times. In the 1950s, the Hausa-Fulani threatened to pull out of Nigeria in their nine point programme. In 1963, Isaac Adaka Boro declared the Niger-Delta Republic, which was short-lived. The Igbo people of the South-East of Nigeria fought a secessionist war between 1967 and 1970.
In addition to these, there are other political and religious uprisings that threatened the continued existence of Nigeria as one country. We had the Maitatsine religious crises in the 1980s. And the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election nearly caused Nigeria to bowl over. More so, the vacuum created by the late Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s debilitating illness caused a rift in our polity, and pitched the Yoruba against the Hausa-Fulani, then.
Even till now, there is rumbling in our country; and it is feverishly convulsing with agitations for the dismemberment of the country by some ethnic groups. The Niger-Delta people and the Igbo people feel short- changed in the national scheme of things. While the Niger-Delta militants blow up oil-pipelines, occasionally, to call attention to their plight, there is a renewed and sustained clamour for the creation of the state of Biafra by IPOB, whose leader is Nnamdi Kanu.
The mercurial Nnamdi Kanu, who has become popular with the Igbo masses on account of his speeches on Radio Biafra, has become a cult figure. Today, millions of Igbo youths have acquiesced in the IPOB’s notion that giving the Igbo people a geographical space called Biafra will lead to the rapid development of the area.
Their hope as well as belief is not misplaced given that Igbo people are known for their inventiveness, entrepreneurial spirit, and sedulousness. But good political leadership is the prerequisite or condition that can give fillip to national growth. And there is no guarantee that the proposed state of Biafra will enjoy political stability and good political leadership if it becomes a politically independent nation.
But at this juncture in our country’s democratic evolution and odyssey, the call for the creation of the state of Biafra is both misconceived and misplaced. The circumstances in the 1960s which led to the declaration of the state of Biafra by the late Col. Emeka Ojukwu are different from what obtains in today’s Nigeria.
Nobody can gainsay the fact that the Igbo are being marginalized in today’s Nigeria. And other Nigerians view them with deep mistrust and hatred. In order to allay the fears which other people(s) have and feel towards them, politicians of Igbo extraction should enter the mainstream Nigeria politics, and form political alliances across the ethnic divides. By so doing, they’ll stand a chance of producing a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction.
An enterprising and adventurous people with expansionist proclivities, who are dispersed all over the world should not tend towards insularity. So, it is utterly bunkum and inane for the Biafra agitators to assert that one of their reasons for opting out of Nigeria is that they do not have the same culture and religion as the northern people. But is there any country in today’s world that is ethnically homogenous?
Even South Sudan, the newest country in the world has many tribal groups. Ghana, which is far smaller than Nigeria, is not ethnically and religiously homogenous.
Okoye writes from Uruowulu- Obosi, Anambra State.