Many well-meaning Nigerians who are genuinely concerned about the survival of our nation are pained that President Muhammadu Buhari and his bungling APC, after mouthing restructuring and government of change to secure our votes are set to fritter away an historic opportunity to resolve the national question that has haunted our nation since the derailment of our federal arrangement by the military following its infiltration by Igbo and Fulani politicians fighting for the soul of Nigeria shortly after independence. But it will amount to intellectual deceit to equate this with the resolve of South-east’s defeated PDP politicians and their IPOB surrogates or those the Minister of Information calls “coalition of the politically disgruntled and the treasury looters” to make the nation ungovernable in order to protect the disproportionate share of our nation’s wealth, they illegally confiscated.
Were the current war about restructuring or marginalization, the disgruntled groups now fomenting trouble had had 14 years to join hands with their Yoruba compatriots who have been at the vanguard of restructuring since 1993 following the annulment of MKO Abiola’s pan-Nigeria mandate. A greater opportunity came six years before Buhari’s presidency during which time Igbo- dominated Jonathan Presidency ate with their 10 fingers. And even if it is agreed the current struggle is about restructuring, how is that advanced by a relentless attack on the person of President Buhari?
Unfortunately, critics of Operation Python Dance, have by their own level of assault on the person President Buhari on the pages of newspapers and in the social media tried to outdo the misguided Igbo youths that Joe Igbokwe describes as “association of hate preachers and wailing bigots who see nothing good in Buhari”.
First, they claim Operation Python Dance was antithetical to democracy without pointing out that our own brand of democracy already under a siege by a self-serving legislature, a judiciary whose leadership is undergoing inquisition for corruption and the two dominant political parties, PDP and APC, lacking in ideological distinction, is already on trial since democracy cannot thrive with sick institutions.
Some even said Operation Python Dance was motivated by Buhari’s hatred for the Igbos. How can it be otherwise when President Buhari left out Igbo office seekers while ceding key positions in his cabinet to his Daura village school mates who many believe are now holding him hostage, they reasoned? They however forgot that not long ago, there was a President Azikiwe Jonathan who ceded over 60% of key positions to his South-south and South-east supporters, 30% to the north and less than 10% to the South-west only to complain later that he was caged during his presidency. Hawkers of Buhari’s anti-Igbo sentiments also forgot to remind Nigerians that in his last two unsuccessful outings as presidential candidate, Buhari bypassed other ethnic groups to pick Igbo vice presidential candidates.
With Fulani herdsmen’s mindless killings across the country, how has Operation Python Dance in the embattled South-east become a priority – others critics want to know?
As a self-admitted absentee Fulani herdsman with 500 herds of cow, he could not but be sympathetic to the herdsmen’s plight, others explained. The problem is that if critics conveniently forgot Buhari’s order that Fulani herdsmen caught in action rampaging other people communities be shot on sight, they are not likely going to remember how even an inattentive Governor Fayose of Ekiti found a final solution to the Fulani nuisance and menace.
And finally, critics, especially those who Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said hardly notice differences of ethnicity and religion when looting our resources, questioned the President’s motive for resorting to use of a military whose leadership is tilted towards the North and Islam. I think it can be said that while the military still carry the scar of infiltration by Igbo and Fulani politicians in the first republic and in the years they lord it over Nigeria, the military as custodian of our constitution, remains our only hope and the last place of refuge when our survival as a nation is threatened. The military, after all owns the state.
President Buhari deserves commendation for Operation Python Dance. It is a disservice to Nigerians that critics have not weighed the consequences of the last two years of relentless attack by Igbo misguided youths on someone who enjoys a cult-like following in the north. As Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, my former teacher and former foreign affairs minister put it last Sunday, ‘An average person on the northern streets believes in Buhari. He stands now in the kind of position that the late Sardauna stood in the sixties’. Tragically, Kanu’s madness and the intemperate language of his supporters can only be compared with the pre-coup years of 1963 and 64 when Zik’s West African Pilot and the Nigerian Citizen tried to outdo each other in name-calling and hate messages.
Operation Python Dance, I believe has saved the South-east from itself. Sixty percent Igbo live in other peoples land far away from their ancestral home. Governor Okezie Ikpeazu who last week claimed “God averted the greatest bloodbath in history” put the figures of Igbo in the north as 12million. According to Nasir el Rufai, the Governor of Kaduna State, Igbo occupied a land area larger than all the south-eastern states put together. The Igbo put the figure of their investments in the north at N44 trillion. Kanu and his group are knowledgeable; the problem is that they lack wisdom… As clear headed Joe Igbokwe put it even before Kanu became law on to himself, “ethnic bigotry and hate speeches our people both at home and abroad dish out every day endanger our people living in all parts of Nigeria”.
But beyond hate speeches and the ranting of a demented mind, Kanu has gone beyond the cliff by threatening to plunge the nation into a second civil war. It is on record that Kanu at the 2015 world Igbo Congress in Los Angeles, said “we need gun and we need bullets to fight the Zoo government in Nigeria”. There are also clips of Kanu’s hosting of Abdulkadir Erkahraman , who was said to be a Turkish diplomat in his home town Isiama Afara Umuahia where he was reported to have said: “The Turkish citizen visit was in line with IPOB plan to solidify the actualization of Biafra”. Since that boasting, 22,000 pieces of pump action rifles in three consignments have been seized by customs in Tin Can Island Ports, Lagos, all shipped from Turkey – a case of the witch cried yesterday and the child died this morning.
While critics of Operation Python Dance who seems to weep louder than the bereaved keep calling Buhari names, however, relieved elected representatives of the people of the South-east have found their voices. As soon as Kanu crawled into a hole at the approach of Operation Python Dance.
Governor Umahi of Ebonyi State issued a statement saying: “All activities of IPOB are, hereby, proscribed. IPOB and all other aggrieved groups are advised to articulate their position on all national issues to be submitted to the committee of governors, Ohaneze Ndi Igbo and National Assembly members from the South East zone through the chairman of the South East Governors’ Forum,” adding that the forum believed in the unity and indivisibility of the country and reinforced their desire for the restructuring of the country.
Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State followed with his own statement urging the federal government and citizens to treat the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu as an individual whose views do not represent those of the generality of Igbo, adding no reasonable Igbo man ‘would support secession or division of the country”.
