When he fought the juntas of Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha over the June 12, 1993 presidential mandate alongside NADECO as leader of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) he was a great Nigerian.
Today, he brings the battle nearer home, and must have gained new title as Biafra agitator, ethnic jingoist, enemy of Nigeria and mischief maker. That is the way we are and the way we conclude.
And I am here to assure big brother, Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) that whatever epithet they haul at him, however they look at him with ill intentions are all welcome.
The most important issue now is how we, the brothers of Agbakoba look at him, judge him, assess his action and eulogise him. As per eulogising and hailing Olisa Agbakoba, we do that a million times every minute of the day since he took out that classic action against injustice and the skewed system called Nigeria. If there is a man we celebrate in the streets and corners of Igbo land today, it is Agbakoba.
His voice is loud as thunder clap, his suit sends fears in the minds of the enemies that want us down forever and the best thing to happen to the Igbo struggle against annihilation heightened today as extension of the genocide in Owerri/Mbaise in 1968 during the war when they launched Operation Leave Nothing Standing. They mowed down every tree, building, human beings and had a task of leaving nothing standing at the end of the orgy with a target to obliterate the Igbo race. They never succeeded that day and will never succeed today or tomorrow.
No intent to subjugate us now would work. Take all the appointments in Nigeria today, hold them for at most eight years. After those years it expires and the world goes on. I am so sure that the Igbo race must survive the President Muhammadu Buhari regime.
Even if the next move is to clamp every Igbo that speaks in jail, including me speaking now, and Agbakoba that has spoken through his suit and others already there, before the 50m Igbo must have been sent in, the detention facilities of this government must have been exhausted. If they start killing us in the streets, by the time eight years expire, some must still be alive. So the Igbo race and nation must survive this wave of hate and evil targeted at it. We are wired to survive and must keep surviving.
Thank you bright lawyer, Agabkoba. The nation you belong to where nature brought you into is one that believes in diversified efforts. Many Igbo people fight back the enemies in various forms and thank God you have joined the struggle from your end and perspective. We have been waiting for a day people of your clout would keep silent no more and enlist in this struggle. We have been waiting for you to bring on board what you have, your great legal mind and warrior spirit to the war arsenal. We welcome you.
From your Igbo world, there is the saying that the heavy rain that drenches the prisoner never spares the warder and the baby that vowed his mother won’t catch some sleep must stay awake to implement the plan. As some people vow to live by their resolve to hold Igbo down, hate the Igbo, annihilate the Igbo, frustrate the Igbo, they unwittingly fill their life and energies and vibrations with negativity that they don’t remember how to do good again.
That is why this administration atrophied. That is why it has the worst power generation record, worst infrastructure development record, worst hardship record for the masses because negative energies swarm their aura so tick to dislodge and choke everything positive.
As we witness the decay and tottering we also expect men with clean mind towards all humanity and all races of Nigeria to take over some day. Nobody develops a country with hatred. No progress comes in an environment dense with ill minds.
Even if they claim some rights in a chapter of the constitution are non-justiciable that means nothing in the court of commonsense and the conscience. With the depth of knowledge you have of the law, nobody in this country wishes away any of the legal issues you raised against this land. They know you have your points and that would open the doors to other people dying under the same suffocating stench to speak up and pull free.
The germane issues you raised re-echo the essence of the remodelling of Nigeria, restructuring of Nigeria and re-jig of the maladjusted set up we operate and force into impossible existence.
In the past they had viewed the Igbo voice of reason against discrimination as that of few disgruntled belonging to the wretched of the earth.
Last February, I was compelled to write a prominent Igbo leader reminding him of the need for him to use his offices to persuade the elite Igbo to lend their voice to the provocations going on. If the political, economic and intellectual elite of the Igbo world had replicated even 30% of the efforts of the low voices in asking for change, the Igbo man would have had a better deal now. The low voices have shouted themselves hoarse over the years and when it seems nobody hears them, they raved up the Biafra chant, and they know the slave drivers that feel Igbo should be in the clan of their slaveholding and fiefdom don’t feel happy hearing that the supposed slave asks for freedom.
But the higher and more articulate voice would finetune the clamour to what it should be. What it should be is – Remain in Nigeria, but restructure Nigeria; Let the regions manage their fate; Let inequality be done away with and that way anger and rancour-laden competition would be sieved out of the Nigerian psyche and all would live in peace with each other.
I dream of a day when more enlightened Igbo would join the struggle that should be more strategic, intellectual and structured than the street clowning that pervades. That way the killing of Igbo young people in the street because they protest would stop, clamping them in jails without trial would stop, the people would be alive to fight their battle and in the course of doing so would fashion the struggle in a manner that those that have done nothing against the Igbo interest would not be offended. When pursued that way, it would be easier and faster to actualize the dream.
All over the world, people don’t take to touting or overt means to drive their ideology anymore. They define and fight their war through intellectual persuasion and that is what has been lacking in the Igbo setting.
It is not about tasting the presidential seat as it is about making use of what we have – economic and human resource abilities to develop ourselves and get to where we target. The recovery of the Biafra enclave about 20 years after the devastation by Gowon is world record. That was a period no Igbo man was appointed to the federal cabinet for nine year (1970-1979) until Shehu Shagari appointed Igbo ministers. At the centre then were all the major actors of the Igbo and Biafra genocide – Gowon, Mohammed etc. Nobody spoke for us those years, but God did and we recovered and the same God has not stopped speaking for us now. So welcome here dear big brother Agbakoba.