Category: Steve Osuji

There was a country, Chinua Achebe’s narrative of the Biafra and the Nigerian crises of nationhood soon moves from a personal story of early beginnings to the Nigerian tale of elite redux, leadership failure, coup, killings, counter coup and war. Reading through his account, one is chilled to find that the conditions precedent to the calamities that befell the country, the grim precursors to Nigeria’s sad unravelling are also eerily present today. Though he has not said anything that had not been said in other Biafra books by Madiebo, Achuzie, Ademoyega andUwechue, it is easily discernible that Achebe’s narrative is nimbler, his insight deeper and perspective broader.

For instance, contrary to the generally held view that Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu was driven by a vaulting ambition to rule a sovereign State of Biafra, thus declared war heedlessly, the decision was actually taken by the entire Igbo leaders, intelligentsia and the people after months of consultation and dithering by the Federal Government.

Hear Achebe on this: “It is crucial to note that the decision of an entire people, the Igbo people to leave Nigeria, did not come from Ojukwu alone but was informed by the desire of the people and mandated by a body that contained some of the most distinguished Nigerians in history: Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s former Governor-General and first ceremonial President; Dr. Michael I. Okpara and Sir Francis Ibiam, former Premier and Governor of Eastern Nigeria, respectively; and Supreme Court Justice Sir Louis Mbanefo. Others included: Educationist Dr. Alvan Ikoku; First Republic minister, Mr. K. O. Mbadiwe as well as Mr. N. U. Akpan, Mr. Joseph Echeruo, Mr. Ekukinam-Bassey, Chief Samuel Mbakwe, Chief Jerome Udoji, and Chief Margaret Ekpo.”

By late May of 1967, the battle line had been drawn between Eastern Nigeria and the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Both sides were engrossed in what in today’s parlance, is called a strategic session, to contain the “enemy”. Earlier in April, frustrated that the Gen. Yakubu Gowon-led Federal Government would neither act on the Aburi agreements nor do something about the masterminds of the pogrom, Ojukwu began to sever ties with the centre. He froze official communication with Lagos and disconnected all administrative and revenue ties.

In a speech to the nation on May 27, 1967, Gowon responded to what he described as Ojukwu’s assault on Nigeria’s unity and blatant revenue appropriation by declaring a state of emergency and dividing the nation into 12 states. This was a deadly blow to the Biafra move as the implications of this move were deep and devastating. The Igbo were isolated and all the surrounding ethnic minorities were ranged against them and most notably, they were excised from the major oil wells. This singular move was to be decisive later when the war raged. All the minority states fought against Biafra and the foreign powers with their eyes trained on Nigeria’s crude oil, backed the federal side or looked the other way as the Igbo were being pummelled when hostilities raged.

The die was cast. On May 30, 1967, Ojukwu bit the bullet. This is how Achebe recorded it: “Ojukwu, citing a variety of malevolent acts directed at the mainly Igbo Easterners – such as the pogrom that claimed over 30,000 lives; the Federal Government’s failure to ensure the safety of Easterners in the presence of organised genocide, the direct incrimination of the government in the murders of its own citizens – proclaimed the independence of the Republic of Biafra from Nigeria, with the full backing of the Eastern House Constituent Assembly.”

The Biafran position, as Achebe sees it is that beginning with the January 15, 1966, coup d’etat, through the countercoup (staged mainly by Northern Nigerian officers, who murdered 185 Igbo officers) and the massacre of 30,000 Igbo and Easterners in pogroms that started in May 1966 and occurred over four months – the events of those months left millions of other future Biafrans and me feeling terrified. As we fled “home” to Eastern Nigeria to escape all manner of atrocities that were being inflicted upon us and our families in different parts of Nigeria, we saw ourselves as victims. When we noticed that the Federal Government of Nigeria did not respond to our call to end the pogroms, we concluded that a government that failed to safeguard the lives of its citizens had no claim to their allegiance and must be ready to accept that the victims deserve the right to seek their safety in other ways – including secession.”

The Nigerian position in the crisis as Achebe presents it, was hinged on the premise that if Biafra was allowed to secede, then a number of other ethnic nationalities within Nigeria would follow suit. The Nigeria government, therefore, had to block Biafra secession to prevent the dissolution of Nigeria.

Tracing the origin of the crisis, Achebe noted that Nigeria’s leaders at the time were not quite ready to face up to the nation’s problems. He says: “If its leaders had approached their duty with humility, they all might have realised long before the coup that the country was in deep trouble. Nigeria was rocked by one crisis after another in the years that followed independence. First, the Nigerian census crisis of 1963-’64 shook the nation, then the federal election crisis of 1964, which was followed by the Western Nigeria election crisis of 1965 – which threatened to split the country at its seams. At that point, most of us, the writers at least, knew that something was very wrong in Nigeria. A fix was long overdue.”

Apart from the incompetence of the Nigerian ruling class to rise up to the occasion at this critical juncture, the author also delved at length into the supposed Igbo dominance of that era, how it fanned the embers of hatred and how the January 15, 1966 coup, which went awry, was twisted to be an Igbo coup, breeding the reprisal in July. If the Northerners had stopped at killing about 185 Igbo officers, it would have probably been allowed as a horrendous tit for tat. “But the Northerners turned on Igbo civilians living in the North and unleashed waves of brutal massacre that Colin Legum of The Observer (UK) was the first to describe as a pogrom.”

The Igbo fled from across the country back home. There was suddenly a “refugee” crisis in the East as over a million returnees could not be managed. Meanwhile, the killings were not assuaged; they were not even discussed let alone the perpetrators being brought to justice. General Aguiyi- Ironsi, the Igbo officer who took over the reins of power after the first coup, was hunted down in a most horrific manner with his host, Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, in Ibadan.

When, therefore, attempts were made to repair all these at the Aburi Summit in Ghana, the sore had festered.

•Tomorrow: Ojukwu and Gowon; The Asaba massacre and Ogbunigwe bomb.

Good truth – yes, there is good truth – it tintinnabulates. It continues to ring in the mind (ear) and jars its target (victim) until he succumbs to it or even goes crazy as the case may be. Good truth is an ever ringing bell that will never stop until assuaged. This is what Nigeria’s patriot-extraordinaire, Professor Chinua Achebe has told his compatriots in his new Biafra war memoir, There was a Country. For a book just released in the United States, hardly been read by anyone in Nigeria, the tome of reviews and commentaries on just an excerpt of it is a testimony to the stature of the author and the weight of what of his proclaimation in the book.

In the extract, published in The Guardian of London, Achebe simply says that the story of Biafra is being suppressed and sandbagged in order to put a veil over one of the worst genocides of human history. He wants our collective Biafra to be properly investigated, interrogated, discussed, debated and reconciled so that we do not walk blindly, into such gruesome history ever again. He said vicious policies were deployed in fighting what was a civil war and that even post war (on-going) attrition against Igbo is in itself, the worst kind of warfare. Achebe mentioned the food blockade to Biafra, the 20 pounds policy and oblique economic warfare as facts of that war and its aftermath. He then went on to mention some of the dramatis personae who were the master-minds and architects of the ideas that shaped Biafra.

Achebe mentioned specifically, the role played by Chief Obafemi Awolowo who was the war regime’s Finance Minister, chief strategist and certainly, the second most powerful man in the land at that time after the Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon. An attestation to this was that Chief Awolowo, as part of the strategy to damage Biafra’s position, single-handedly changed Nigeria’s currency during the war with General Gowon knowing about it only the day before. Such was Pa Awolowo’s power that only two other Nigerians knew about his stratagem.

These issues have been with us since after the war in 1971 prompting journalists to ask Chief Awolowo for explanation during the 1983 presidential election campaign. And he had thrown some light on them as much as possible. This in itself is a strong suggestion that these questions are still live and latent. Now the grouse of many commentators is that this matter need not be raised anymore so long after the end of the war. Some wonder why Achebe, an elderstatesman would be ‘opening old wounds’ 41 years after Biafra. But there is no better mind to profile Chief Awolowo today than Achebe. He had said earlier that the sage was tribal and now; overly ambitious. One says why not; in fact one wished the great Nnamdi Azikiwe had such virtues, Igboland would have been better for it. But then there are consequences too, which Achebe points to.

Most people missed Achebe’s point. Even the First and Second World Wars are still being interrogated and written about; ideas are never time-barred. On the other hand, the Biafra imbroglio is being muted and muffed by the perpetrators as if it were a taboo. And in fact, the victims are being dared to tell their story. The truth, however, is that the blood of about two million Igbo people spilled in the most brutish genocide of our time will not rest until atoned. The ghosts of innocent people including pregnant women slaughtered on the streets of the north and other parts of Nigeria will continue to walk those streets until they are reconciled.

Most disturbing is that many accuse Achebe of hate and bitterness. That is a very illiterate summation. Achebe is a transcendental mind. Anyone who understands this would know that he long outgrew such baseness. Imagine a Wole Soyinka hating people or being bitter. Their ilk only exhibit hateful abhorrence for injustice, arrogance and suppression of truth as has happened in the Biafra case. Even if we disagree with Achebe, we must at least accept that he knows what he is talking about. Here is a man who had written all his epic novels – including the prophetic, A Man of the People – over a decade before the upheaval. Even at the lower level, hate and sustained bitterness are not in the nature of the Igbo man; that is why he moves freely to every corner of the world. Ojemba e nwe iro is how we say it in Igbo.

The real problem is that the rest of Nigeria doesn’t want to hear it but you cannot put down two million kinsmen and expect to sweep all that heap under the carpet. It won’t keep. You must clean out those carpets someday. That is Achebe’s thesis.

2015 and Orji Kalu: where Greg Mbadiwe got it wrong

One was taken aback reading Ambassador Greg Mbadiwe in this newspaper last Friday on how former Abia governor, Orji Uzor Kalu got it wrong in his 2015 Igbo presidency calculations. Greg in his very articulate piece suggests that Kalu need not go on the offensive in seeking to actualize the Igbo presidency agenda in 2015. Here is Greg’s summation: “while it is the turn of Igbos to produce the President in 2015 it can only be achievable if President Jonathan is not re-contesting. If he is, and PDP endorses him, the bargaining chip left for Igbos would be to insist on succeeding him after his tenure.”

The logic in the above conclusion is so flawed that I was troubled whether it is the Greg I had encountered several times who is not terribly compromised. Here are a few questions for Greg: why should the lot of the entire Igbo race be left solely to President Jonathan’s decision to run or not to run? And while he decides, we Ndigbo must go home, lock ourselves in and wait? Don’t you find that to be terribly self-deprecating? Don’t you think Kalu has an inalienable right to discuss 2015 presidency, to rally his people, to even contest? Who says PDP is the be all and end all party in Nigeria? Who told you PDP will win in 2015? Why should Jonathan run for a second term? Does he deserved to run; why should Nigerias vote him again; has he lived up to expectations? Did he not give his word that he would serve only one term? Where is our honour?

And lastly my brother Greg, if perchance PDP gives him another ticket, do you think Ndigbo still have a bargaining chip with a ticket in Jonathan’s pocket? Why would he not bargain with other regions with higher ace? My brother, though I am no fan of Kalu’s, I wager that he is doing the right thing. We must rally ourselves first, harness Ndigbo to one strong, loud voice then we can go to any bargaining table and get our due. Dear brother, let us shun that cheap platter of porridge they dish to us, it is overnight manure that amounts to nothing; let’s work on things that endure.

LAST MUG: Wow, Gov. Rochas parties while Igbo governors were strategizing: Governor Rochas Okorocha’s obscene 50th birthday celebration would never have found space here had he not been conspicuously absent in Enugu last Sunday during the parley of Southeast governors and political leaders. To say the least, it was very embarrassing to read that the Imo governor was absent because he was celebrating his birthday. What vanity, what self-glorification? Did Imo people vote Rochas to office to celebrate lavish birthdays? If he would rather wine and dine than attend to state affairs, why would he not send his deputy as Enugu State did? At a meeting why the most crucial issue (state creation) to the Igboman was decided, Imo governor chose to party.

Seized by the evil spirits of vanity, Rochas shut down his State (offices, schools, markets) and invited a foreign head of state and five state governors to a lavish party. Meanwhile, the workers’ salaries had not been paid and there is no factory humming in the state. Why would a sitting governor throw such a lavish party in a State that has no economy other than federal allocation and whose money is being spent? Only emperors of old exhibit this manner of recklessness and impunity…

Such comforting irony it is that sometimes, adversary brings out the best in you and if you are lucky, some good fortune. This is what may happen to the age-long, half-hearted agitation by Ndigbo for equity and fairness in the distribution of Nigeria’s commonwealth among the federating units. The Igbo nation which was one of the three regions (Eastern Region) of Nigeria at Independence in 1960 has today been viciously carved and sculpted into a tiny appendage entity of southern Nigeria through the instrumentality of the Hausa-Fulani hegemony which held sway for over 35 years since 1960.

Recently, the governor of Kano State, Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso kicked the doughty backsides of the Igbo elite when he let it be known in clear terms that Ndigbo agitating for an additional state is misguided and unreasonable. And one must say it here upfront that Ndigbo have this man to be grateful to who has let it out that the pre-civil war conditions, perceptions and even afflictions are still alive and well. Did our fathers not teach us that when evil persists for one year, it tends to become the norm? One noticed some Igbo leaders hee and haw about Kwankwaso’s statement but if it takes the Kano governor to stir us to life then we should show him nothing but gratitude.

It was before our eyes that so many voodoo censuses have been held for the sole purpose of keeping the Igbo nation static at her post- independence population while other region’s population had been growing in leaps and bounds. Before our eyes, Southern Cameroun was excised from Southern Nigeria; before our eyes, the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula was handed to Cameroun just to spite the Eastern Region. We watched as the hegemonistas in military uniform brazenly re-parceled the country into states, federal constituencies, local governments and even electoral wards to suit their design to continue to dominate in perpetuity.

Never be a bedfellow to an unjust man, says an old adage for you will always wake up on the floor. Governor Kwankwaso is only acting true to type. Traditionally, he is not capable of fair play, equity and justice otherwise, he would have been restrained in his comments knowing that Nigeria’s population censuses, the premise on which his argument is built is deliberately skewed and therefore, unreliable. Kwankwaso would have been circumspect if he realized the deep hurt the entire Igbo nation bears for being subordinated to the size of old Kano State (today’s Kano and Jigawa States). These two states now have more local government councils, more federal constituencies and more INEC wards than the entire five Southeast states. What this means is that in the last 20 years or so, these two states have been getting more federal allocation than the whole of the Southeast put together.

How could Governor Kwankwaso make such a callous, if not wayward statement knowing that Ndigbo make up about one-third of the phantom nine million population figure he claims that Kano has? It is the same way Ndigbo are littered across all Nigerian towns and cities; refugees in their land, partly because there is an unspoken national agenda to mark them out even when they do not have the ball. This is the punishment and pain Ndigbo have endured and lived with, albeit, gallantly since after the civil war.

But there is no wallowing in self pity here. Ndigbo actually have themselves to blame for their current situation as this column had posited several times in the past. Fact: if Ndigbo by a certain consensus this instant, are asked to present a new Igbo State for adoption, one doubts if they are capable of presenting one in the next 10 years. Reason: every Amadi and Okoro who has a say wants the new state carved out of his backyard and the new capital sited in his front yard. In short, there is no critical Igbo elite therefore, there is no critical consensus on issues that matter to us. What a pity. Perhaps Kwankwaso has roused us?

LAST MUG: PHCN sale: why would IBB, OBJ buy power plants they run down: there is something uncanny about former presidents buying up state facilities they allowed to be run down and decay under the guise that government cannot run anything. During the reign of President Ibrahim Babangida, over $12 billion oil revenue was unaccounted for. In the time of President Olusegun Obasanjo, again, over $12 billion was repaid as loan to some rich countries. Today, the country suffer untold infrastructure and power deficit and the nation’s meager power assets are unbundled and privatised to make them more efficient and guess who is buying them? To allow firms (North-South Power Coy and Transcorp) in which Babangida and Obasanjo have interests to buy Nigeria’s power plants is the limit of corruption in Nigeria.

Right of Reply

Re: Of Deathways, Highways and Onolememen’s N652 billion

Ordinarily, one would not have bothered replying Steve Osuji over his article published in last Friday’s (14th September, 2012) edition of the Nation Newspaper titled “Of Deathways, highways and Onolememen’s N652 billion’ but for the malicious falsehood contained therein.

Osuji apparently trying to create an unsupported parallelism between a recent accident along the Benin-Ore-Sagamu expressway in which four lecturers of the Igbinedion University plunged into Ovia River and the awarded contract for its rehabilitation, claimed that the Federal Executive Council has just approved the award of the repairs of the road to the tune of N652 billion. This is not only false, but a deliberate misrepresentation of facts.

For the purposes of records, the rehabilitation of the third phase of the Benin-Ore-Sagamu expressway was only approved by the Federal Executive Council on the 5th of September, 2012 for award to RCC Limited at the cost of N65.223 billion and not N652 billion as claimed by Osuji. Our friend Osuji would have made a balanced and beautiful article if he attempted to delve into the recent past condition of the Benin-Ore-Shagamu expressway before the intervention of the present administration. If he did, he would have also told the reading public that barely six months after taking over as Minister of Works, Arc. Mike Onolememen substantively changed the condition of the road and commuters no longer have to spend over 9 hours to shuttle between Lagos and Benin City. Not only that, the on-going works in the first two sections of the road have reached 89% and 91% respectively, making it possible for travellers from Benin to Lagos to make the journey in about four hours. Expectedly, no road has attracted commendations from the public like the Benin-Ore-Sagamu expressway since Arc. Onolememen restored the perennial failed section at Ore.

It is our joy that all contractors working at various locations of the nation’s roads including the Onitsha-Enugu dual carriageway which he also mentioned, have just been paid by the Federal Ministry of Works and massive works will soon resume in a matter of days as the rainy season ends.

•Tony Ikpasaja

S.A (MEDIA) to Hon Minister of Works

Note: the wrong figure, N652 billion was picked from a national newspaper which reported the FEC meeting. It is simply an error which this column regrets. No malice or deliberate misrepresentation was intended. But the piece is about the rate of fatal accidents on our roads which has become a carnage. Who might the next victim be? Our Federal roads are still largely death traps. That is the story.