Na yourself you de do!
Anambra
is in the news of late. In the first instance, it is for good reasons: the
inauguration of Mr Governor, Professor CC Soludo and his initial sure-footed
steps. The inauguration was devoid of
money-guzzling fanfare. He visited Okpoko as promised and the clean-up
has started. He nominated his commissioners within record time and these have
been confirmed. The office of the first lady appears to be on sabbatical and
this is a good one, given our awful experience with the last occupant of that
unconstitutional office, including the valedictory slap incidence. And then, we
have also been on the news for the wrong reasons: the arrest and humiliation of
the ‘working’ Willy Obiano, his wife’s Senatorial ambition, and the activities
of the UGM, the viciously enforced but ‘voluntary’ sit at home (SAH)
and the illogical, irrational utterances of some UGM supporters. The
Prof-Governor had convoked a peacebuilding and security roundtable, and in
cohort with the distinguished attendees, declared Monday, 4/4/22, a day of
prayers to mark an end to wasteful SAH.
The so-called defenders of Biafra went haywire, badmouthing the
governor, accusing him of setting up our people for death, fighting against his
own people and being a traitor like Hope. They also asked how he had
compensated those who had died in the process, why SAH should be his first
concern and finally, they declared that the SAH was a little way of
appreciating Kanu for speaking up for Ndi-Igbo.
Of course, if they had been affected and afflicted by the UGM murderous
activities, they would not have espoused these views and some of them, like Simon
Ekpa, are enjoying the good life outside our shores. That was as IPOB declared
unequivocally that it had nothing to do with the SAH and supported any measures
against the rogue-enforcers.
The
governor has followed this up and in fulfilment of his promise established a
star-studded Truth, Justice and Peace committee to work on the insecurity in
Anambra and by extension, the South East. People have also attacked the
Governor, asking why he did not interface with other governors and attacking
the composition of the committee. That is government in practice; it is normal
for the governor to have people critiquing( not criticising) his policies and
programmes. And just a day after establishing the Truth Committee, the UGM
dared the Governor by torching the Aguata LGA Complex , terrorising the Ekwulobia-Aguluezechukwu axis and causing
some mayhem at Igbo-Ukwu, my hometown.
What
exactly do these people want? Are they really ndi Igbo and if so, are they from
Anambra State? How can they adopt the scorched
earth policy in their own home?
Meanwhile, the Governor is right to have prioritised the SAH and
insecurity challenges in Anambra state. There is no way Anambra will be a
liveable megacity where we will enjoy to work, trade, invest, rest and retire
if we live under the terrorist shadow of UGM.
My
views about these senseless bloodletting and coerced solidarity have not
changed and I present herewith my comments on the Ghost Town Monday and allied
matters, written some 6 months ago, with a small haircut. Read on.
Our people have many proverbs and idioms used to define the
unlucky or ill-fated fellow. He needs to pick his teeth after drinking water;
whenever he goes hunting, even the tortoise would learn how to climb; the day
he searches for a wife, only mad women would be available and the day he wants
to ‘do’, the lady’s ‘holy-of-holies’ grows thorns. As you can agree with me, these are unusual
occurrences, with water sticking in between someone’s teeth, as the weirdest.
But that is the fate of onye chi ojoo (the ill-fated fellow). As it is, we, the
DOT-people or IPOBians, ( for PMB, every ‘onye-Igbo’ is IPOBist)
have become the quintessential ill-fated people. This includes Dave Umahi who swore that
Ebonyi would NEVER be a part of
Biafra because that would be tantamount to second slavery ( haa)! I don’t know
whether he spoke for himself or for his people and whether he has bothered to
find out those who constitute arch-IPOBians;
those who act before they think on behalf of IPOB. Anyway, because we are an ill-fated
people, whenever we or some of us do less than 1% of what others do freely, it
becomes a front-page news and we, all of us, become subjected to the ‘language-they-can-understand’ treatment. By the way, there is a book titled ‘An
ill-fated people: Zimbabwe before and after Rhodes’ by Lawrence Vambe and
published by Heinemann in 1972. I read it during the period when I read ALL the
titles in the African Writers Series.
Just look at the recent front-page news and you can
understand what I mean. This includes the militarisation of ana-Igbo, and the arrest and brutalisation of Chief Chiwetalu
Agu for wearing a Biafranist attire. But nobody has said a word to Gumi, the uncrowned Minister
of Terrorist Affairs(he has already
requested for the establishment of the ministry), or Executive Consultant to
bandits, who hobnobs with heavily armed assorted bands of terrorists, who
pleads that we stop killing bandits because they have families and who just
said that Nigeria would end if Buhari
declared bandits as terrorists (which is what they are). Even the armed
terrorists are neither arrested nor ‘neutralised’ because, according to the great Lai, the government does
not want to harm innocent citizens, because they are petty criminals who love
Nigeria and because they are a favoured people. But the reverse is the case with my
people, my people because, we are an
ill-fated people.
In the past few weeks, it has been a reign of terror (ROT) in Anambra state, supposedly by UGM. The gruesome murder of Dr Akunyili was the
height of it. Of course, the carnage at Nnewi, (the burning of the house of the
drainage specialist, Joe Igbokwe, together with the DSS and FRSC complexes) and
the attack on the Project Specialist, Hon Azubogu, occurred around the same time. Then came the attack on APGA rally at Ihiala
on 12/10/21.Some people have already accused IPOB and its ‘military
arm’ ESN of complicity. Suddenly, just suddenly, Mr
Malami, announced the intention of the FGN to declare a SoE (State of Emergency) in Anambra State. A look at the
terror statistics in Nigeria shows that before SoE gets to Anambra, it would have become a national affair.
In the first 6 weeks of 2021, 1521 Nigerians were murdered by NSAs (Non-State Actors), with Kaduna, Zamfara and Borno states
responsible for 497, 267 and 257 respectively. The Southeast and the entire South accounted for
85 and 300 respectively, making the SE, the most peaceful region in Nigeria.
Yet, the South (SE, and Anambra in particular) is where the pythons and
crocodiles are gyrating now, in the forms of golden dawn,
enduring peace and still-water. You don’t get
peace by raw force or fiat and the water cannot be still when it is consciously
being troubled.
Now just the other day, Nnamdi Kanu was brought to court
and charged with, among others, insulting the President and looting the Oba’s
place in Lagos. But we all saw when a young man slapped the French President
the other day and in a lesser degree, the public hot-slap given to Brig Gen Abedin Khorram, the
Governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province on 23/10/21( long before the Biancarish award-winning slap!). The most laughable however, is the
one about looting the Oba’s palace. On 21/10/21, Olawale, Ajayi, Rafiu, Lukman
et al were charged for the invasion of Oba’s Palace. These names do not sound Kanuish. By the way, if the
FG charged Kanu to court for badmouthing
the President, what will it do to Fani Kayode? They just rewarded him: they
invited him to come and chop!
Now, the precarious situation in
Anambra and indeed in the Southeast, started with the Ghost Town Strategy
(GTS). It started with Monday lockdowns and then the
rebuttal of the GTS by IPOB itself and then the brutal attempt by some unknown
elements to enforce the same lockdown. And then the GTS became amoebic. One week, it is just Monday; another week it
is Monday and Tuesday or Monday and Thursday. So, when you wake up every
morning, you listen to news and rumours to ascertain whether the day was open
or closed. And if you wanted to schedule an activity, you would undergo a
30-day dry fasting so that the date would not fall into a GTS
day. There was even threat of 30-day lockdown a. As it is now, nobody is sure
of who is announcing or enforcing the lockdown. But people, remembering what
had happened to those found on the wrong side of the Ghost-Town days, have
decided to stay away but some of us claim that the SAH evidenced love and
support for IPOBism. Of course, people in Imo spoke,
when they mobbed an Unknown Young Man enforcing GTS (which was why those at
Nsukka deployed masquerades for the enforcement). Nobody
brings war home!
Incidentally, I have been on the
road on 4 of these lockdown days, not necessarily because I wanted to prove
that ‘nothing mega’, but because I just had to travel on these
days. On the first day, I went to the Igbo-Ukwu market square to see things for
myself. I have also spoken to a lot of people, those who are directly affected
by the lockdown; the ‘ejehu olu ma elighi nni’ group (Those who
cannot eat unless they go to work). The last two people I spoke with were
drivers, who appeared sympathetic to IPOB but decried the lockdown, which had impoverished
them. On 25/10/21, transport workers in Abia State asked IPOB to provide them
with palliatives to cushion the negative effects of these ghost-town days,
including some vehicles burnt in the process of enforcement.
Nkwo-Igbo on the 1st
GTS day Niger Bridge on Kanu’s
court-day, 21/10/21
So, who is responsible for this ROT in Anambra State? As can be seen in the charges against Nnamdi Kanu, the Government is ready to accuse IPOB of everything, including the number of police tollgates on the Shagamu-Onisha high way, the increasing bloodletting by the ‘harmless’ bandits or the wrinkles in Buhari’s face. IPOB has denied involvement and promised to cut the ears of those enforcing the GTS. But our security officials will accuse IPOB before even getting to the scene. We should however remember that the founder and GO of ‘Hopism’, Governor Uzodinman had told us that 70% of those arrested for the Imo mayhem were not Nd’Igbo. And then, a meeting of traditional rulers in Imo State ended in an orgy of blood. It had been reported officially that the policemen on duty were recalled by their commander before then. What has our security people done with both intel?
What I believe is that some criminal
elements are hiding under the statements by some loud-mouthed IPOBists
to inflict pain and confusion in Anambra. More so, the one and only Enynnaya
Abaribe had declared that there are more than 30 separatist groups in the South
East. However, IPOB has gone ahead to openly accuse the Chief Hopist
of culpability in this matter, listing the names and phone numbers of those
involved in recruiting fake ESN members to cause the regular mayhem in the
entire Southeast. You want me to mention the names? I have not written my will
yet and I don’t have the money to buy justice for myself.
But why do we still talk of UGM
when governor Umahi threatened the other day to punish the parents of UGM? If
he knows the parents of the UGM, then he sure knows the UGM!
I want to state unequivocally that the GTS,
which costs Anambra State N19,6bn each day or N3,8trn cumulatively (according
to Soludo & Ohaneze) cannot be in the interest IPOB, or even the Igbos. It is consciously contrived self-inflicted
wound because we are punishing and brutalizing ourselves, and
destroying our properties. Most important, PMB and his government do not give a
damn. If PMB did not notice the El Zakzaky group, which was protesting in his ‘doormot’
for months, how will he notice and respond to people engaging in
self-annihilation of the DOT part of the country? One uninformed local told me on the first
day of the SAH that government would be pained by the amount of money (levies
and taxes) it would fail to collect on that day, which was an Nkwo-market day. I just laughed! How much does the FG collect
from Nkwo Igbo-Ukwu? Even if it fails to collect anything, the CBN is there to
provide ways and means advances! However, the GTS hurts our people and you
cannot save or liberate the people by inflicting pain and sorrow on them. As one Unknown Compatriot had
asked after the first Ghost Town Monday: who owns the busses that were
burnt today? Who owned the goods in the busses? Whose businesses were
truncated? Who was killed? Whose children were stopped from taking NECO math’s
exams? Whose children will be denied admission into tertiary institutions
because they did not have Maths? Who is being affected economically? To
all these questions he responded: Igbo Man. Unfortunate; Sad!
I agree that sacrifices are
needed to achieve any worthwhile objective but the sacrifices must be
strategically aligned to the said objectives. And now, Anambra State is said to
have approved a Monday-Saturday School week because of the ghost-Mondays. And that is after the Governor and South East
leaders had ordered a stoppage of the GTS, to which IPOB responded ‘you
no fit’! Governor Ikpeazu who is doing signs and wonders
at Aba agreed with them, saying that the SE stakeholders, including governors,
lacked the capacity to stop the GTS.
Conclusion is what writers do
when they are tired. I want to condemn all the bloodletting and syndicated ROT in Anambra State. The killings and ROT,
including enforced GTS is not in our interest. However, the degree of Igbofobia,
IPOBfobia and DOTfobia in the presidency is condemnable
and stands condemned. I also repeat ad-nauseum, my age-old view that the way
Nigeria is presently structured and run is NOT sustainable. This cannot stand
and something MUST happen in that regard. What will happen when and how it will
happen, the son of man does not yet know. But things cannot continue to be done
the way it is being done today.
Igboho & Kanu:
persecuted and prosecuted
As I was writing this, ‘somebody’ wrote: Sunday Igboho crippled; Nnamdi Kanu
incarcerated, Gumi& Miyetti Allah, protected. And now, Justice
Ladiran Akintola has just ruled, in a suit filed by Sunday Igboho, that based
in international and domestic laws, agitation for self determination is LEGAL.
So, wither the consolidated suit against Kanu?
-
Like| Comment| Share
“Find a great mentor, someone who has already been through the many challenges of being an entrepreneur..” -Jodi Levine
Entrepreneurship in Practice: Cases, Challenges and Lessons By IK, MUO PHD is now available on Amazon, since 14/5/21. Click here to view Available for order +2348033026625 | Delivery : Worldwide
I strongly believe that all the enumerated vices, which the writer condemned, amount to self-inflicted destruction which cannot promote the cause of the DOT people but rather set them back the more.
ReplyDeleteIt's my sincere wish that all these agitators will give the Prof-Governor free hand to serve his people.