Enugu—Three years after the young Biafran
secessionist, Nnamdi Kanu joined the Biafran Liberation struggle, the south
East Nigeria, a region characterized by huge deposits of clay soil and a
topsy-turvy topography, has become a boiling pot of sort, for secessionist
agitators who want a breakaway from Nigeria, the 103 years old republic made
possible by the singular political will of one Man, in 1914 for what many today
attribute to economic greed.
The latest phase of the Biafran Movement
enlisted itself into prominence through the instrument of a foreign based radio
station— Radio Biafra— the official
mouth piece of the Biafran struggle under the auspices of The Independent
Peoples of Biafra IPOB (a new secessionist platform floated by the Abia born separatist), and managed by him until his
capture and detention by the Nigerian authorities on charges of treason, on the
14th of October, 2015 and whom until today is still the acclaimed Director of the London-based
Radio station with a large demography of
audience in South East Nigeria and a great many percentage of those audience
found among those at the margins of the society with few ideological minds to
boot. Not forgetting also, the Diasporan audience who have participated in no
small measure in keeping the Biafra struggle a top global consciousness through
demonstrations and protests across influential state capitals of the world.
The reason for their secessionist movement
many believers in the Biafra cause say is marginalization by the current
federal structure in the country that appear to have successively favored only
the North as against the eastern part of the country. They cite the near lack
of federal presence in the south east; the dilapidated nature of federal roads
in the region; the unrepresentation of the Igbo nation in the higher rungs of the federal civil service
including the Armed Forces and a somewhat conspiracy of sort by the dominating
Northern hegemony to prevent the emergence of a Nigerian president of Igbo
extraction.
The current administration of President
Muhammadu Buhari has helped in no small measure to give fillip to the above
recriminations and or complaints by the Igbo nation who cite the
never-seen-before skewed appointment of federal bureaucracy by the Buhari
government in favor of the North as against the east. These ugly development
the secessionist agitators say have reduced them into strangers in Nigeria and
hence want out of a system that make them passive members of the larger nation.
Curiously, there hasn’t been any response
by the federal government to debunk all of these charges levelled against it by
the Igbo nation; one of the three major ethnic group that make up Nigeria; a
development which lends weight to the complaints of the secessionist Biafra
agitators. The only response by the Federal Government has been the tepid and
now too familiar chorus of Nigeria as an indivisible entity whose unity cannot
be negotiated in any guise. At the last National Conference convened by the
previous administration of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan; the first president to have
superintended over Nigeria from the South-south
region of the country famous for
its huge oil deposit, this same condition
was also laid out to the over four hundred delegates who gathered for
over three months to proffer solution towards a workable national framework.
But the argument of unity against all odds
have not sunk well with Nnamdi Kanu and his Biafran foot soldiers who counter
the argument of the federal government with its position that a people within a
geographical space reserve the right to opt out of the larger whole provided
they meet the conditions as laid down by
international law towards the grant of statehood. They propose a
referendum on the contrary to be held to test once and for all the resolve or
otherwise of the Igbos to remain in Nigeria as an internationally recognized
modus of such action. An option which the current federal establishment is not
disposed to sanctioning judging by its
body lexis.
In the midst of all these confusion,
Nnamdi Kanu’s popularity continues to grow by the day among a host of Igbo
youths who despite having not been born at the time the Biafra war broke out in
1967 but who obviously have read the
post war literature and exposed to all manners and mannerisms of
marginalization by the federal government of Nigeria, as they see it, have
chosen to join forces with Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, whom they refer to as the biblical
Moses to take them out of slavery in Egypt. Read Nigeria. The rousing welcome
that have been given to Nnamdi Kanu in his diverse visits to many igbo towns
and communities even as far as Port Harcourt, has helped in no small measure to
end the debate over who controls the mind of the younger generation of the Igbo
nation and has added vent to the ego of Nnamdi Kanu who in blatant defiance to
bail conditions handed down to him by Justice Binta Nyako of the Fderal High
Court sitting in Abuja, continues to circulate the nooks and craanies of the
eastern region and granting interviews to both local and foreign media outfits.
I had a conversation mid last month with a
young man whom I had met at the bus station preparatory to travel back to Enugu
after a short visit to the federal Capital Territory. The young man who
appeared to be in his late twenties and whom I would later discover to be a
graduate of mechanical engineering from the Federal University of Technology,
Owerri ,had told me of his resolve not to participate in the forthcoming
gubernatorial election scheduled to hold in Anambra state by the 18th
of November. His only reason for that was, he said, in total obedience to the
directives of their celebrated leader, Nnamdi Kanu who had warned in
unmistakable terms that all adherents of Biafra should boycott the scheduled
election; a move geared towards testing the acceptance rate of project Biafra,
in the state which produced the foremost Biafran leader, Dim Chukwuemeka
Odumegwu Ojukwu. All efforts by me to expose the illogic in a boycott of a
local election by me, proved abortive, as our friend had since made up his mind
not to participate in the scheduled election.
While an atmosphere of fear and
uncertainty hangs above the skyline of south east Nigeria, the Ohaneze N’digbo,
the foremost Igbo socio cultural organization currently headed by Chief John
Nnia Nwodo in a bid to calm the charged atmosphere in the region, has called
for calm among the agitators suing for restraint in their clamourings however
justifiable they may be. Whereas the president of the apex socio-cultural
organization agrees that the south east have been marginalized in the current
structure of Nigeria, he disagrees with the resort to outright secession as the
solution to the structural disconnect favoring the restructuring of the country
rather; a sing song of sort that have formed the basis of national discourse in
recent times.
According to a release from the office of
the president General of the organization made public to press men on the 17th
of July, 2017, the former federal commissioner for information told the press
that no ethnic group has more stakes in the Nigerian project than Ndigbo and as
such cannot consider a break up as a viable option.
But this line of thought however, appears
to make no sense to the Biafran agitators who have since alienated the
so-called Ohaneze Ndigbo calling them a gang of political jobbers who are too
shy to put across to the National table the extreme position of the Igbos and a
cult of retired politicians only seeking after their parochial interests and
not those of the larger igbo interest. A narrative that has been accepted hook,
line and sinker by the Igbo youths.
In this atmosphere of disagreement between
the supposed leaders of the Igbo nation and the young rampaging Biafran
agitators who have since taken to the “Give us Biafra or Death” philosophy
on the way forward for Ndigbo, Nigeria is left in the pool of a national
dilemma knowing that she cannot make the needed progress as a nation until the
Baifran problem is resolved one way or the other. This position is lent
credence by the thesis of a renowned lawyer, essayist and the managing partner
of an Abuja-based law firm: Chuddi Offodile of Chudi Offodile & Co. who in
his latest contribution to the Biafran debate in his book: “The Politics of
Biafra and the Future of Nigeria”, argued that no matter the pretensions of
Nigeria, it will at some point have to reform its present pseudo-federal
arrangement to create a more inclusive, equitable and proper federal structure
else the country will continue to face epileptic developmental thrusts, militancy
in the Niger Delta and a ruinous intensifying clamor for self-determination by
disadvantaged ethnic groups, especially the Igbo.
While the resumed hearing in the trial of
Nnamdi Kanu is awaited, having been adjourned by the Federal High Court, to the
17th of October, 2017, insinuations are rife that his bail might be
revoked by the court having flouted the conditions upon which they were
discretionally granted. A move which many Biafran apologetics say would lead to
the “nation boiling” if ever carried into effect.
In the meantime, the arguably most popular
Igbo man on earth, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu continues headstrong with his agitations
for the official creation and recognition of
the Republic of Biafra without caring whose ox is gored and he seem to
be buoyed by the rousing welcome he continues to receive in his various
consultations and visits to the inner reaches of the south east; a development
that leaves him convinced that should a referendum be ordered, the result of
same would leave him in no shock, while the nation watches almost helplessly.
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