HOW BUHARI’S BIGOTRY GAVE RISE TO AN UNINTELLIGENT NNAMDI KANU by Fidel Albert

Opinion




Nnamdi Kanu is unfortunately not an intelligent person, otherwise he should know you do not begin an agitation for secession by call to arms. It has to and must start with the dissemination of the underlying ideology foundational to your struggle.

Hitler, as gifted as he was in the gift of oratory, still took the pains to put his thoughts down in written form, called the Mein Kampf. This volume was bible for every German and they read its pages religiously and fully understood why they had to go to war with the whole world and exterminate jews and other “inferior” races. It was about Aryan superiority. That was the objective

Chairman Mao Tse-Tung had his Red Book, containing his communist manifestoes. He also wrote “On Contradiction”, “On Practice” and over a dozen other deep ideological books to guide the Chinese revolution. Lenin and Stalin also had the writings of Karl Max to guide the Russian Revolution.

Ojukwu himself understood this, and was smart enough to put down the Ahiara Declaration. This was the document that guided Ojukwu’s secessionist struggle in those days. Everybody in the East who could, read it. The revolutionary document clearly set out the problem the Igbo faced in the Nigerian polity and why arm conflict and secession was necessary, and most importantly the structure of the Biafra Republic.

These sort of foundational documents not only educate and arm your followers, but also assist other people, home and abroad to be properly informed in order to decide whether to sympathise with your cause or not.

Nnamdi Kanu clearly has no ideological pillars supporting his present agitation. And I daresay that he was not prepared for, nor did he envisage the uproar and immense popularity that followed his arrest and detention. The larger-than-life dimension of this entire conflict has been accidental in my view, unwittingly fed by the many missteps of Buhari administration in dealing with it.

Nnamdi Kanu has asked for our support in his quest for “Biafra”, but I would first want to know, without discrediting his motives, what i’ve been asked to die for exactly.

Which “Biafra” are we dying for in 2017 exactly? The one Ojukwu himself said, before he died, is a dead ideology? Or the one Nnamdi Azikiwe betrayed after quickly switching allegiance to support “One Nigeria” during the civil war? If Zik did not think Biafra worth his life, and this was when the injury to the Igbos was still very fresh, if Ojukwu refused to die for the cause and entered the next available flight out of Nigeria, leaving the pitiful Philip Effiong, an Akwa ibom man, to surrender and hand over to Federal Forces, then what are you inciting people to die for in 2017, when the Igbos are fairing far better than several other ethnic groups in Nigeria? In fact, does it surprise you that Ojukwu was buried in Nigerian colors, rather than Biafra’s?

Lest we forget, the world over, no group of secessionists have been reintegrated into society after failing in their secessionist objective, as fast as the Igbos were reintegrated back into Nigerian society. The first thing Ojukwu himself did when he returned to Nigeria in 1982 was to contest for the Senate, despite his people’s protestation that he should stay out of “Nigeria’s” politics. And contest he did, though beaten by Jim Nwobodo, his Igbo brother. Jim proceeded to the Nigerian Senate. Meanwhile, as at 1979 – 1983, the Vice-President of Nigeria was Ekwueme, an Igbo man. And this was barely 10 years after the civil war!!

Throughout the administration of both Babangida and Abacha, the Igbos were favored even more than the Yorubas who considered themselves to be the foremost elites in Nigeria, and so many, like Arthur Nzeribe, Arthur Eze, Iwuanyanwu et al became billionaires through insidious patronage of military despots who daily oppressed ordinary Nigerians. Nobody remembered Biafra while counting the money. Even today, the Deputy Senate President is Igbo. All through Obasanjo’s tenure, The Senate Presidency was the exclusive preserve of Igbos. At some point in GEJ’s administration, the entire economic policies of the country were controlled by Igbos, at the same time that the Chief of Defence Staff was also Igbo. What marginalization!!

Meanwhile, you have the tivs, the Jukuns, the Ibibios and hundreds of other tribes who have never been allowed to rise to such elevated offices, yet the heavens have not fallen.

So exactly how badly have the Igbos been marginalized, that we must all die at the snap of Nnamdi Kanu’s fingers, beyond the many injustices we collectively face and endure in Nigeria on a daily basis? And why is secession the ONLY option?




You see Buhari has a huge blame in what is playing out today. And I blame him for the most part. If he hadn’t come up with that hideous octopus arithmetic of 97% against 5%, to balkanize the country even further along ethnic lines, if he had not undertook those lopsided appointments that gave credence to all the tribal instigation of the likes of Ena Ofugara and co on social media after the elections that he was a tribal bigot, if he just was large-hearted, forgiving and mature enough to accommodate the 5% at the earliest stages and understand that elections were over and he was now, not the President of APC or Northern Nigeria, but of Nigeria as a whole, perhaps this unnecessary tension and heating of the polity would have been avoided.

In any event, who the hell was Nnamdi Kanu, and what was “Biafra” before 2015?

Fidel Albert

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