Those involved in
formulating these policies included people at the top of the military
government at the end of the War. None, however, pursued this policy with as
much zeal as the present �leader� of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo,
who has executed the well planned Igbo destruction agenda in his tenures as military and civilian head of state. As Prof Herbert
Ekwe-Ekwe states:
[N]o post-Biafra War Nigerian head of
state has been so obsessed with the subject of Biafra and the Biafra War as Olusegun
Obasanjo, the current president of the country. Equally, no post-Biafra War
Nigerian head of state possesses as vindictively a pathological anti-Igbo
disposition as Olusegun Obasanjo; a condition apparently developed in the 1960s
prior to the pogrom when several of his fellow officers, mostly Igbo, often
questioned his intellectual competence.
It is on record that up
to three weeks after the end of the civil war, Obasanjo was still supervising the
massacre of Biafran military officers and other members of the Igbo intelligentsia
in the Owerri sector. In fact many members of Biafran Research and Development
department were either murdered or had to flee into exile.
At
the end of the Obasanjo supervised murders, Obasanjo began cultivating a group
of Nd�Igbo whom he intended to install in positions of authority in Igboland.
These people were characteristically misfits in Igbo society, and their ilks
are appropriately described as �Efulefus� by contributors to the BiafraNigeriaWorld Forums.
Through this method, Obasanjo and other Igbo haters have succeeded in ensuring
that Nd�Igbo are kept second class citizens in Nigeria. They have also
succeeded in stifling any aspiration of equity and justice Nd�Igbo may have
within Nigeria. These individuals may
be found within all works of life. The common factor seems to be to prevent the
emergence of prominent individuals who do not depend on government patronage
for their financial needs.
�� There are countless examples of these post
civil war Igbo �elites.� One such example is Chief J.S.P. Nwokolo. Here was a
man who during the civil war was under arrest as a saboteur to the Biafran struggle.
A man who admitted to making unauthorised trips to Yoruba land during the civil
war, a man who guided Obasanjo and other Igbo enemies into Igboland in the
middle of the war, who worked to ensure the collapse of Biafran forces before
the armistice instrument could be fully negotiated, a man who subsequently was
able to purchase a large expanse of prime real estate in Enugu for tens of
thousands of pounds in cash at the end of the war when every Biafran was
entitled to only 20 pounds.� Even
Nwokolo�s own account of his role in the war shows that he was nothing but a traitor
to his own people.� Till date, he is yet
to give account of how he earned all that money.
In 1999 when Obasanjo
came calling again, it was to Nwokolo he turned for help towards penetration and
political defeat of Igboland. It was Nwokolo who came up with the idea of a
pact between Ekwueme and Obasanjo, to the effect that should Ekwueme support
Obasanjo in 1999, Obasanjo in return would serve only one term and support
Ekwueme�s presidential aspirations in 2003. Well, the rest is now history.
I don�t think I need to
dwell much on the activities of other carpetbaggers like Ojo Maduekwe who was
used to destroy the legacy of another Igboman, Dr. Nnamdi Ozobia. Dr Ozobia for
years ran the only functional and profit making Nigerian parastatal, Nigerdock,
Mrs. Kema �Chikwe, Maduekwe�s colleague
who as Aviation Minister refused to consider the siting of an international
airport in Igboland. No list of �Igbo
Efulefu would be complete without a mention of people such as Chief Emmanuel
Iwuanyanwu, Arthur Nzeribe, Emeka Offor, and Chris Uba.
In
the area of Economics, Igboland is the most underdeveloped of the regions of Nigeria. There is clear
evidence of an unofficial policy of the Federal Government of blocking the
siting of any industry or infrastructure in Igboland. Take your pick; from
moving of the steel industry originally earmarked for Onitsha to Ajaokuta, the
deliberate delay of the digitisation of telecom services in the East, the
recent move to Otta, Obasanjo�s village, of a power station earmarked for Alaoji
in Abia state and the refusal of the government to construct an airport in
Owerri in line with gazetted plan to construct an airport in every state
capital, even when the people of Imo state taxed themselves to build an
airport, the federal government has been largely obstructive in its full �utilisation.
Those
old enough would remember the scuttling of the plan of Mazda, the Japanese
company to site an assembly plant in Umuahia, with plans to move to full scale
manufacturing of cars within 10 years. The plans fell through when the federal
government issued a �conditional� approval to the plan. The approval was on the
condition the project would have to be sited in Bauchi rather than Umuahia. Of
course the Japanese left as the project would not be viable in Bauchi. Later, the Korean company, Hyundai, had the same experience.
Chief Onwuka Kalu is alive and can attest to the difficulties he encountered
towards setting up industries in Igboland.
A
look through a list of prominent Igbo business people will show that either their
businesses are largely dependent on Federal Government patronage, or their
business is based largely outside Igboland.
These businesses though
they depend largely on the patronage of Nd�Igbo, are thus not able to provide
employment to our kiths and kins. It is very common now to see Igbo owned
financial institutions that do not have even branches in Igboland.�
Chief Joe Irukwu�s (the
present Ọhanaeze President-General) claim to
fame is that he introduced the concept of Insurance to �Ndi awusa.� During his
years in the forefront of the Insurance industry, he swaggered around in
Igboland as the only Igbo of prominence in the insurance �industry.�
Yet, no regional office let alone head office of a prominent insurance
company exists in Igboland today. This is the man who heads Ọhanaeze,
a social club that purports to represent the interest of Nd�Igbo.
It is na�ve to expect
the likes of Iwuanyanwu and Orji Uzor Kalu to speak out in favour Nd�Igbo as
they are heavily compromised like most of the present set of �Igbo Leaders.�
Iwuanyanwu would of course have to be made to explain how he spent the money he
was given towards the construction and rehabilitation of several roads in
Igboland.
It
has been difficult for Nd�Igbo to have a group of people to represent them
because of the economic strangle-hold that the Nigerian government has enforces
on Igboland. Many a people have tried to establish industries independent of
the federal government. This has often been met with outright hostility by the
federal government. People in the Aba-Awka axis can testify to attempts that
have been made to sabotage their efforts at being the industrial base of West Africa. In an era when most
emphasis should be on the earning of foreign exchange, the Nigerian Government
has resorted to sending out its security and custom officials to prevent the
exportation of products of indigenous manufacturers simply because the goods
are manufactured in Igboland. This is reminiscent of the action of the Shagari
regime, which destroyed the poultry industries that sprang up in Igboland in
the late seventies.� With one fell swoop,
he achieved this by banning the importation of raw materials necessary for the
production of livestock feed. No livestock feed industry, no poultry industry.
Today, Nigeria is a net importer of both
poultry products and the livestock feed.
�One cannot help but admit that the Nigerian state
has all but succeeded in destroying the traditional Igbo society. They have
continued to maintain the post war status quo by pulling the strings and
controlling all the seeming �Igbo Nationalist Organisations� be it Ọhanaeze, World Igbo Congress, Pan Nd�Igbo Foundation,
etc. There was panic within the Nigerian government with the emergence of the
Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).
The
Nigerian state began a campaign of violent and often fatal intimidation against
MASSOB members and the group�s leader, Chief Ralph Uwazurike. ��The recent report by the Human Rights watch
published before the CHOGM meeting in Abuja confirmed that in the
build up to the last elections, hundreds of MASSOB members were murdered by the
Nigerian police when the MASSOBians were on their way to a peaceful rally.� Chief Uwazurike and many others were held in
detention without trial for several months.
Chief
Uwazurike and the other MASSOB leaders have made several allegations of
attempts to bribe them into giving up the struggle or bringing the group under
the control of the Nigerian establishment.�
��It will be interesting to mention here that
Irukwu of ohaneze had confronted Uwazurike at the 2002 WIC jamboree in the United States with these words: �You
are going to fail in your misguided adventure, count me out of your Igbo/Biafra
whatever if you want to fight another war.��
From Irukwu�s unprovoked outburst, it is easy to infer that he owes his
present position in ohaneze to the same anti Igbo forces that want MASSOB and
other pan Igbo bodies dismembered.� Where
are we headed as a nation?
We
have replaced the values that made the likes of Louis Mbanefo, Kalu Ezera, MI Okpara, Akanu Ibiam,
and Sam Mbakwe with those that produced the likes of Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, Chris
Uba, Emeka Offor, Orji Uzor Kalu, Achike Udenwa, Kema Chikwe, Ojo Maduekwe etc.
There is hope however. Newer entrants to the Igbo Nationalist cause have tended
to be independent of external control. Most of these groups have gotten their
inspiration from the incorruptible and outspoken nature of Dim Emeka Ojukwu. �The most prominent of these is the Igbo National Assembly (INA). It is the
prayer of every Igbo nationalist that these independent groups should flourish,
as only then will the revival of traditional Igbo values begin. Only then would
we have genuine representation.