Martins
The renowned author and globally revered historian, Martin Meredith, in his well researched book, The State of Africa, while commenting about Nigeria, stated thus: “A prominent Northern Nigerian, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who was destined to become the first federal prime minister, remarked in 1948: Since 1914 the British Government has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in thier religious beliefs and customs and do not show themselves any signs of willingness to unite. Nigerian unity is only a British invention” ((page 8).
Meredith added: “In a book published in 1947, the Yoruba leader, Obafemi Awolowo, who dominated Western Nigerian politics for more than thirty years, wrote: “Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression.
There are no Nigerians in the same sense as there are English, Walsh or French. The word Nigerian, is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not”.
Lasisi Olagunju’s attack against Ndigbo in his column, is a clear indication that really, Nigeria as currently constituted, and as Chukwuemeka Ojukwu argued in Aburi on January 4/5, 1967, “is not working., has not worked., and will never work”. Olagunju’s ruthless tirade against Ndigbo is a clear manifestation of the fact that, just as Balewa observed, Nigerian people themselves are historically different in virtually everything.
Olagunju’s assault confirms Awo’s submission that Nigeria is a mere geographical expression, created by the British colonial masters.
Ironically, when the events of 1966 eventually metamorphosed into “Allow us to go because on Biafra we stand”, it was the same Awo who stoutly stood against it.
First, as the deputy to General Yakubu Gowon and vice chairman of the Federal Executive Council as well as the minister of finance, the visionary Awo, in 1968, travelled to the then OAU General Assembly Summit in Kinshasa, leading a strong Nigerian delegation, raised a very virile objection to granting of any autonomy or assistance of any type to Biafra. He vehemently discouraged the summit from discussing Biafra.
He defended this on the grounds that the OAU leaders had no rights whatsoever to discuss Biafra or the civil war because it was Nigeria’s domestic affair. He noted that the OAU Charter forbade such unless a member nation concerned brought it up in the general house. With that, OAU leaders then headed by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, became helpless and never deliberated on it again (Elections 1979, page 172).
It is imperative to proclaim it here that it was the Great Zik, with the permission of Ojukwu, who talked to the then Liberia President Tubman and he ultimately brought it to the other African leaders of that era.
As it is well known now, Awo ran back to Nigeria and advised Gowon and his war cabinet to mercilessly employ currency redesign policy and “starvation as an instrument of war strategy against Ndigbo and Biafra”.
Of course, Gowon listened to his able and most distinguished deputy even as he maliciously starved, bombarded and massacred Ndigbo to stupor and surrender. At the end, Ndigbo lost more than million people just as their billions of naira investments were crushed in a most devastation fashion.
Read Olagunju’s wicked lines on that unfortunate and notorious event, you could glean his arrogant happiness on the tragic Nigeria – Biafra civil war, all because Ndigbo lost the war and have since then become a conquered folk.
Why not? His other kinsman, now retired General Olusegun Obasanjo, while Ndigbo were still counting thier losses and attending to the eternal bruises brought about by the ugly Biafra experiences, moved fast and administered heavy blows on them.
Number one, as the federal commissioner of works, Obasanjo was in charge of Gowon’s post civil war 3R policy of Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation.
Yet, Obasanjo cannot in good measure point to any project he reconstructed. He cannot mention any Igbo he rehabilitated, besides his catalogue of Igbo women. And he never reconciled Ndigbo with the rest of Nigeria.
Number two, instead, Obasanjo, was among the senior military officers that conspired to appropriate 20 pounds to any Igbo who had money in the bank, no matter how much he left in the vault before the war!
Number three, Obasanjo was also so much around when the assassinated head of state General Murtala Muhammed and his Supreme Military Council (SMC) allotted an insignificant and suffocating two states to the Igbo country: Anambra and Imo – whereas allocating four to their perennial competitor in the south, the Yoruba. That is, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo and Oyo.
Number four, when Obasanjo ultimately emerged as head of state in 1976, he came up with policies that were clearly anti Igbo and to the admiration of Olagunju and his co – travelers.
Take not a cursory look at this: Obasanjo created six federal universities and none was located in the Igbo nation. He established six federal polytechnic and not one was brought to the Igbo country. He built six airports and he never considered the zone now known and addressed as South East worthy for such a national project.
Not done yet, Obasanjo gave executive order for the indigenization decree to take off, it gave substantial ownership of corporations’ shareholding to Nigerians. Remember, Ndigbo were still recuperating from the losses brutally occasioned by the civil war and so had no financial capacity to bid for shares. Practically, they were in the dark.
Thus Nigeria was sold without Ndigbo. As it turned out to be, the Yoruba understood the huge gains thereof, staked heavily on the indigenization gazette and it brought unparalleled corporate rewards which they still enjoy and strongly hold on to till date.
Obasanjo still, and not done with Ndigbo, hammered them without sympathy, with not just a sledgehammer, but with an axe in his hand to confirm them dead.
Therefore, just two days before he left office in 1979, on September 28, Obasanjo promulgated Number 90 of 1979, which ousted powers of the courts to entertain on the abandoned properties.
The meaning as Chief Chuks Iloegbunam captured it in his award winning book, The Case for an Igbo President of Nigeria, page 21, is “Obasanjo issued a decree circumscribing the right of the Igbo to seek legal redress on thier seized properties”.
In all of the above and still more to come, Olagunju never saw any reason to ask Ndigbo how they stood down Nigeria for almost three years. That is, in war time, Biafra’s Airport at Uli was one of the busiest in Africa.
In war time, Biafra’s telephone services were functional and connected globally. In crucial war situation, the Biafra Radio was well received. In a devastating war occasion like the Nigeria – Biafra saga, Ndigbo developed a ground rocket – Ogwunigwe (mass killer) popularly known as Ojukwu Bucket. In a war period, Ndigbo refined thier fuel and there was no scarcity of any kind. In war time, Ndigbo that Olagunju maligned and mangled in his column to praise and elevate his Yoruba ethnic group, had organized health, postal and other service systems that enabled them to survive blockade visited on them by the ruthless Nigerian air and ground forces.
It is a pity that rather than commending such heroics, Olagunju chose to chastise the ingenious Igbo people. In his book, Nigeria: The Challenge of Biafra, Arthur Nwankwo noted that “What was happening in Biafra has never happened in Africa…The Biafran war was not only but also a revolution”.
…In the next article, we shall graphically look at why Olagunju took Ndigbo to the cleaners by labelling them as their own worst enemies., went into the failed attempt of rubbishing Achebe and then the grand deceit of Admiral Emmanuel Ikechukwu Ogalla. Keep on reading and keep a date with us.
