The Igbo furor over nothing

By Tochukwu Ezukanma
The lecture, Wole Soyinka delivered at Harvard University titled, Predicting Nigeria, Electoral Ironies, was something of an acidic tirade. It read like a vent of disgust and frustration with the state of affairs in Nigeria. He was caustic in his denunciation of Goodluck Jonathan, Patience Jonathan and Olusegun Obasanjo, among others. He was critical of micro-nationalistic organizations like Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Odua PeopleâCongress (OPC), etc. And he talked about the Igbo: their separatist tendencies, fixation on money and political myopia. Soyinkaâcomments about the Igbo are unflattering but neither hateful nor defamatory; they are within the realms of legitimate self-expression.
Like anyone else, Soyinka reserves the right to his opinion. Every Nigerianâexpressed opinion of the Igbo must not necessarily be admiring and approving? Do not some Igbo utter negative views of other Nigerian ethnic groups? People are entitled to their opinions of the Igbo. And, as the Igbo, like any other group of humanity, are not perfect, peopleâstated views of them may not always be hagiographic “ that is – as though, they are describing saints. Writers and public speakers routinely write and talk about people and issues. It is most unrealistic to expect that every comment by these public commentators on issues, individuals, ethnic groups, etc must be complimentary. It will be tantamount to strangulation of freedom of expression to circumscribe commentators on public affairs by rules or expectations that demand that they make only flattering comments about every issue, individual and group.
In his book, Why the Jews rejected Jesus, David Klinghoffer, wrote that, Widespread misinformation poisons a culture. To give what was essentially one manâpersonal ambition “ Biafra “ a coloration of a crusade for national survival demanded excessive lies. The lingering grip of these lies on Igbo minds is poisoning both Igbo culture and psyche. It makes the Igbo paranoid. We see ulterior motives in every act, no matter how benign and innocuous, by other Nigerians. We believe that there is an anti-Igbo alliance of all the other ethnic groups of Nigeria, dictated by a common hatred of the Igbo. We feel that we are an endangered species encircled by fervid haters and implacable enemies hell-bent on our destruction.
What lies? They abound, including those on the Aburi Accord, saboteurs in Biafra, genocide by Nigerian government, and a master plan for the extermination of the Igbo. It is a well documented historical fact that Yakubu Gowon implemented the Aburi Accord. In his book, Power Sharing in Nigerian Federation, Chukwuemeka Nwokedi wrote that, Apart from minor adjustments to the Aburi Accord, in other to still retain the corporate nature of Nigeria, Yakubu Gowon implemented the Aburi Accord with Decree 8; and the regions acquired more powers than they have ever had. That was months before the continued wrangling between Ojukwu and Gowon led to the creation of states. But did Ojukwu not declare Biafra and we marched out to war on the mantra, On Aburi We Stand.
We were told that Biafra was losing the war because the Biafran Army was infested with saboteurs. In the book, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, the Biafran Army Chief of Staff, Alexander Madiebo, wrote that there was no saboteur in the Biafran Army, and that he repeatedly confronted Ojukwu, asking him to stop his saboteur politics because it was hurting the Biafran Army. In his book, Emeka (that pro-Ojukwu propaganda masterpiece), Frederick Forsyth attested that there was no saboteur in the Biafran Army; and that Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna was not a saboteur. The saboteur politics also told us that the Onitsha Igbo (then, with the highest concentration of the educated and the prominent in Igbo land), some of whom questioned Ojukwuâmotives and methods, were saboteurs. The minorities in Biafra were easy targets for the saboteur politics. Many of them were accused of, and killed for, sabotage. These were innocent people, suffering all the deprivations, and exposed to all the dangers, of war, and were, still, targeted, hounded and killed for nothing.
Some of Ojukwuâspeeches in Biafra were punctuated with, That is genocide. What genocide was he talking about? International observer teams, after extensive investigations, reported that there was no genocide in the civil war. At some point during the war, Ojukwu co-opted Nnamdi Azikiwe to support Biafra. Azikiwe helped to get some diplomatic recognition for Biafra, not so that Biafra could ever win the war, but that it could negotiate peace from a position of relative power. Still, Ojukwu refused to negotiate. In a letter by Azikiwe urging Ojukwu to negotiate and put an end to suffering of Biafran masses and unnecessary deaths of Biafran youths, he wrote, Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, why would some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter. They (Biafran soldiers) are fighting and dying from the conscientious belief that they and their people were slated for extermination. Blood is flowing freely because of this false propaganda. The killing should stop now, now. Enough is enough
We were indoctrinated, and we believed, that the Nigerian government had a master plan to kill every Igbo five years and above. But as Biafra collapsed, were the federal forces a marauding, trigger-happy soldiers out to exterminate the Igbo? Absolutely, no! We were impressed by the benign and disciplined might of the federal forces. And we were pleasantly surprised by the phenomenon, Yakubu Gowon, that rare breed in the brute and vindictive milieu of African politics.
These befogging lies, deeply embedded in Igbo minds, make us nostalgic for Biafra. We see Biafra as a lost but realizable reality. We fail to realize the absurdity of Biafraism (OjukwuâBiafranism was recklessness and Uwazurikeâneo-Biafranism is criminal lunacy). As such, we pander to Igbo separatism, which undermines our full integration and re-establishment in Nigeria. As stated earlier, the lies also make us fearful of our imagined enemies and their countless conspiracies and devices against us. And all these are taking their tolls on us. They alienate, enervate and demoralize us; we feel like second-class citizens in our own country.
Pining for an illusory country (Biafra) and quaking in trepidation of our (none existent) multitude of enemies, we cannot realize our full political potentials. Is it not shameful that a people that once, in their ebullience and verbal flamboyance, boasted of not only dominating Nigeria but the whole of Africa now whimper and snivel over being marginalized? Is it not mournful that a people once led by one the greatest political minds of the 20th Century, Nnamdi Azikiwe, are now under the political sway of colorful thugs and blustering ruffians like Ralph Uwazurike of MASSOB?
Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria
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