Tag: Wanted

“The civil war was a disaster, the failure of reason and the triumph of egoism and narrow-mindedness” — Sam Amadi, in a 4 September 2002 piece published in This Day, headlined “Nigeria: enter the Third Force”

 

The first casualty of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) was reason.  But mutual hurt sharpened the knife for that grand slaughter.

The Igbo pogroms all over the North followed the 15 January 1966 coup.  That coup overthrew the North-led civil order. But it enthroned Major-Gen. Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi, after the so-called “Igbo coup”.  The pogroms badly hurt the Igbo — as it would any other people.

But the pogroms too were a result of reported taunting, by some Igbo in the North, of the northern locals.  The taunts were over the northern leaders, felled during the first coup.  That hurt the North — as it would any other people.

The counter-coup of 29 July 1966 gorily settled scores — a Northern coup cancelled out an Eastern one, with all the grisly killings.  But it only roasted the collective Nigerian psyche.

No surprise, the counter-coup only signalled the final descent into political Hades — the Civil War, which followed Eastern Region Governor, Lt-Col. Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s 30 May 1967 declaration of the ill-fated Republic of Biafra.

Before that tragic denouement, however, the drums of war beat with deafening intensity. Ojukwu was canonizing his Biafra Army as so formidable “no force in Africa” could vanquish it — a tragic bluff.

Yakubu Gowon, also then a lieutenant-colonel though also head of state and supreme commander of the Nigerian Armed Forces (before the Aburi Accords in Ghana pared that title down to commander-in-chief), was also positioning the coming slaughter as a “police action”, to rein in the break-away rebels of the East — a sinister threat.

Less than three years later, tragic bluff had sized up sinister threat — and no less than two million, victims on both sides, lay dead!

Even as that tragedy was brewing, only Wole Soyinka, then 33, of all the intelligentsia then, was unimpressed by the war-mongering.  He would try to prevent war at all cost.  Hence, he called for a Third Force, neither for Nigeria nor Biafra but against avoidable carnage.

His reward?  Detention without trial, almost all through the war, by the Gowon Federal Military Government.

But his contemporary writers?  Ken Saro-Wiwa, of the Ogoni South-South minority, opted for Nigeria.  Indeed, after the liberation of Port Harcourt from the Biafra forces, he was administrator of that city.  But the country he opted for later consumed him under Sani Abacha, a young military commander when Saro-Wiwa was PH administrator.

Chris Okigbo sided with his Igbo folks, though using his poetry to lament the blood and gore.  He was consumed by the war.

Chinua Achebe, Soyinka’s most famous contemporary, also sided with his Igbo folks; and was soon drafted as Biafra’s war-time envoy.  He survived the war and even joined Aminu Kano’s People’s Redemption Party (PRP), during the 2nd Republic (1979-1983).

But his unrelieved Civil War bitterness would come in There Was A Country, his 2012 “Personal History of Biafra,” a classic example of the swan song as ogre.  That book is believed, by not a few, to power the philosophical push for the present neo-Biafra campaign.

That ogre may yet consume the naive.  But the old man is safe in his grave.

The Achebe angle neatly ties the present to the past, with its avoidable tragedies. History is threatening to repeat itself.  But it may well be a costly farce.

Already, there are eerie parallels: check out Ojukwu of 1967 with Nnamdi Kanu of 2015.  The one bluffed and blustered out of plain hurt.  The other does, out of free-wheeling bigotry and hatred — as the  callow youth, in that Yoruba proverb, that mistakes potent herbs for a delicious vegetable soup.   But both are  hardly the epitome of sober introspection.

Check out too the Igbo-Hausa/Fulani ethnic baiting and counter-baiting, culminating in the sensational diktat, by the so-called “Northern youths”, for the Igbo to quit the North before October 1 — or else!  That, in response to IPOB’s gospel of hate and threat — lunacy and counter-lunacy!

As in a theory in basic creative prose, you know the true character of a person when under crisis.  In the crisis of the moment, about every ethnic group is betraying its own maladies.

Some elements in the Niger Delta have given their own counter-order: not only should northerners quit their enclave, those that have oil well interests should also scram.

Even in Yorubaland, some atavistic elements are celebrating the sweet prospects of their great utopia: the immaculate Oodua Republic where, open sesame, Ibadan domination would vanish in Oyo State; the Ijebu-Remo rivalry, in Ogun, would disappear; and the “Lagos-for-Lagosians” lobby in Lagos would, Saul to Paul-like, morph into happy-go-merry pan-Yoruba nationalists, with zero condescension towards the ”ara-oke”, the Yoruba upcountry denizens!

It’s an emotive season of anomie, which shows how little the Nigerian mule, warts and all, is appreciated by these ultra-nationalists!  Indeed, as crooned Don Williams, the American country music ace, some folks don’t know what they’ve got until it’s gone!

Kudos to Acting President Yemi Osinbajo for his systematic way of diffusing the tension by his ongoing meeting with leaders of the different ethnic groups.

But one point must be made, if you must come to equity with clean hands: you can’t blame the northern reaction to torrential threats and insults without first condemning, in the most vigorous of terms, the South East source of that torrential hate.

Still, to forestall tragic history from repeating itself, a third force against reckless ethnic ultra-nationalism is imperative.

Despite all the ethnic bellowing and muscle-flexing, it is reassuring that a parallel counter-voice, from all ethnic divides, is challenging this emotional foray into Golgotha.  Those voices — Igbo, Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, Ijaw, Idoma, Tiv, Kanuri, et al — should coalesce and face down these divisive voices.  More of such sane voices should speak up.

In 1967,  Wole Soyinka went solo, when the rest of Nigerians were going mad on ethnic hate.  Their eyes did not clear until two million people lay dead.

In 2017 — 50 years later — surely we have learnt enough from our tragic past to avert yet another?

That is why the Soyinka spirit of 1967 must inspire a determined pan-Nigeria Third Force to defeat this ethnic madness.

If Nigeria is sick – and indeed, it is — fix it!  Restructure, if you must.  Ensure justice, equity and fair play reign.

But sure, balkanization cannot be the solution?  That would create new problems for the illusory el-dorados to follow.

 

Poetic Extra

June 12

June 12!

And a culprit is long dead.
But his memory 
is a septic tank of sleaze,
memory worse than no memory!

Another lives,
perfumed by the high
and the mighty.
But what oozes from his chamber
is the rot
of the living dead!

But MKO, their victim
lives, though long dead!
Each year, this day,
he comes alive:
pleasure to the righteous,
pain to the hideous,
but a deep gash,
on the soul 
of a nation
that kills its best!

June 12!

Lagos, 13 June 2017