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Ndigbo�s attack on Obasanjo
misguided
By Chimaroke Nnamani
With this benefit of five and
half years of democratic practice, as both a leading player in my state
and front row observer/participant at what obtains at the more global
nation state, I will hardly escape giving my own version of contemporary
description of statesmanship, that is attendant to relations with various
sections of the Nigerian Federation.
Indeed, most Nigerian leaders,
past and present, have had to contend with their individual abilities or
chances to fit into roles perceived for them by the more vocal and
articulate elements of their immediate environments or localities. They
have as well faced the pressure of what the others outside their ethnic
origin perceived of them, especially as they ascended higher positions of
national responsibility.
Invariably, there is always
this compelling situation of craved attention as emanating from every
segment of the nation such that persons who assume very high national
offices have questions to answer how they, as individuals, perceive and
treat each section of the country; how they are individually perceived and
seen to be deploying national resources, as in allocation of offices, to
persons of the varying sections of the country.
In other words, such political
ascendance makes no pretensions about conferring the status of the
conscience of the nation to those individuals. So, whether they take it or
not, those who have had the exceptional privileges and blessings of God to
assume high offices are conferred with such values reminiscent of the
influence of the super being even as they are still mortal.
Largely, these had come of the
history of the nation state of which the root of governance has always had
serious legitimacy question. Legitimacy, in this sense, rides the extent
and functionality of the credibility or trust conferred on the individual
government (and key functionaries). Legitimacy arguably derived from
people's perception, and readiness to relate with the authorities,
especially in its current status of authorities in deployment of national
resources.
But even as legitimacy
appeared yet unresolved in our previous administrative episodes, the fact
of sectional acceptance or acquiescence, form the springboard on which
further legitimacy is conferred to successive enterprises of each
administration.
Of course, we cannot remove
the fact of suspicion arising from this doubt over the thrust of
leadership persons and indeed the direction of the government. In fact,
the strength of such suspicion or our inherent readiness to doubt the
sincerity of intentions, lead us to regard actions with understandable
apprehension and sometimes disdain. Really, the strength of such suspicion
and apprehension lead to varied suppositions and further dread of being
left out of the national resources at the whims and caprices of the leader
in question.
This has been the basis of the
view that allocation of state resources could be doctored and had followed
the individual attitude of the head of each administration, who is
believed to be responding, in turn, to the immediate attitude of sections,
especially in conferring or professing legitimacy for his government.
Elsewhere, such matters as the
usually alleged skewed distribution of the national resources or
allocation of high state offices, are resolved by such compelling
objective instruments or institutions as the Constitution, broad-based
precedents, formulas, principles and practice of fair sharing, based on
equity. In such societies where matters of distributing national resources
were no longer issues subject to individual fancy, the question would not
be whether the president accepted to follow the rules but whether he would
deliberately fall into obvious pitfalls such that will seal his political
career.
In our specific experiences in
these five and half years, the tendency for Third World democracies to
face the challenges as may be presented from the foregoing tended to have
its manifestation in the resolutions of the Federal Executive Council,
Committee and plenary resolutions of the National Assembly, tradeoffs in
the inner chambers of the presidential (kitchen) cabinet and of course,
the more notable utterances of Mr. President himself.
But if there appears any
definite track on which Mr. President appears permanently assailed, even
as the truth is to the contrary, it is his perceived attitude to Ndigbo.
Initially, I had wondered why he had to be tackled with such persistent
questioning of his individual attitude to a whole Igbo race, a vital
section of Nigeria and one historical strand of Nigeria's political
tripod.
Of course, bereft of proper
understanding of Nigeria, such as ignorance about the workings of
government, it is disturbing that having played on the scene of Nigeria as
Mr. President has done; I mean hanging on with such recurrent relevance
and eventual impact at the very final deciding stages of national life,
since May 9, 1969, we should have duly appreciated the person, the power
wielder, the factors propelling him - but not in the least leaving out his
fact-based attitude to individual ethnic groups.
With little or no manifest
experience on how this Nation is run - that is in failing to make the
right efforts at ascertaining the laid down rules for allocation of
national resources (revenue sharing) many a commentator had carried on as
if Nigeria had operated basically on the shiftless stead on which the
President of the Federation was unchallengeable and could set out to rein
in on a particular section of the country.
But let us even pretend that a
President can do that and over the years, Olusegun Obasanjo had had the
privilege of being in charge - this time both generally in Nigeria and
specifically in the Igbo areas - in their times of need. Reaching back to
my personal experience in this five and half years, I find it hard to make
out the basis of such claim that Obasanjo hates the Igbo, that is even as
I am aware that it is more vehemently promoted by those of us who have had
the best opportunities of our better culture, political exposure and state
privileges.
As a governor of one of the
Igbo states, I have yet to ascertain or be made to the claim of whole
hatred and intent at extermination. Enugu State has never had to go
begging for its allocation at any time in these years. Enugu State has not
had to be humiliated, as such is not part of the constitutional provision,
to get its dues in the national coffers.
Right in time, Mr. President
directed the building of an ultramodern International Trade Fair Complex,
whose completion has virtually arrived 70 per cent in construction work
done so far. He has also awarded the extension of the runway of the Enugu
Airport (now renamed Akan Ibiam) Airport, Enugu, to facilitate its
international status. Although our government in Enugu built the Augustine
Nnamani (Agbani) Campus of the Nigeria Law School, Mr. President accepted
the project as the school and indeed adopted the financial cost on behalf
of the Federal Government, such that we are almost decided on what refunds
are due to Enugu State now. We have as well had reasons to embark on
reconstruction, rehabilitation and re-channelling of Federal roads and
waterways for which we have gotten refunds and commendations. We are still
strongly indebted to Mr. President for the vast water project for greater
Enugu of which the completion will put behind us the failure of past
administrations to follow up on the trends of water development started in
the First Republic.
But while I apply the attitude
of Mr. President to Enugu in determining what I can boldly admit as his
very warm and friendly disposition to Ndigbo, I can say that I have, as
well, had the benefit of such well developed accounts of the Nigeria -
Biafra War of which the then Colonel Obasanjo exhibited a flair for
reconciliation and harmonization which no other person has yet revealed.
This was a time it could be said that if he was hateful of Ndigbo, at all,
he actually had their soft underbelly when his advancing Third Marine
Division defeated the Biafra army.
In that period, we had a
situation where the deans of the Biafra regime, ...especially those who
had made mediations and reconciliation impossible, as the late General
Philip Effiong broadcast to the Biafra nation, had voluntarily removed
themselves from our midst... (see Reluctant Rebel; Fola Oyewole, p. 182
Now, you can try to picture the situation of Biafrans at the horrendous
end of war days completely left at the mercy of the conquering forces,
headed by a presumed dyed-in-the-wool Igbo hater and tormentor, himself.
Let's not mince words, Colonel
Olusegun Obasanjo was that leading conqueror and right before him was the
Igbo underbelly at Amichi where he found the abandoned remnants of
Igbo/Biafra leadership debating their surrender speech (see Gbulie, Ben,
The Fall of Biafra, pp. 250 - 161; Oyewole; Reluctant Rebel, pp 192 - 194;
Achuzia, JOG; Requiem Biafra, pp 337- 340; Odogwu, Bernard, No Place to
Hide (Crises and conflicts inside Biafra), pp 177 - 181). It is still
difficult to understand why many of those actors are either too discrete
to step forward and restate the facts of the scenario fairly as well as
they have been represented in well publicized accounts. May be, they have
been too stunned by the duplicity of such more prominent Biafra leaders
who have gotten more of government patronage and recognition, since the
war.
Otherwise, it remains a wonder
that the ready response of Obasanjo as in assisting to structure the
surrender speech so as to avoid such emotional words and obvious pitfalls
that could endanger the masses on both sides, and the subsequent ways he
handled the entire end of war could not earn him a place in the inner
recesses of Igbo leadership mind. Mark my word, Igbo leadership mind,
because the hapless downtrodden did grasp their precarious and perilous
state in which their soon exiled leadership left them.
Of course, wars are terrible
but as has been proven in recent times, not even the vast technology that
can bring about quick victory can make end of wars less messy. End of any
war can be very messy. The enemy may be overjoyed and get into a firing
frenzy. The enemy, who has had to endure the trauma of the war days, may
want to avenge the privations right at the point of obtaining victory. The
ordinary folk among the vanquished who had been barraged by the propaganda
of possible extinction can turn suicidal in defence to the last man and
such will only result in human carnage, the like of which would not have
been witnessed in Africa.
There was also the peculiar
case of the makers of the January 1966 coup who faced possible re-arrest
and instant execution in the hands of highly aggrieved former colleagues
who had sworn to avenge their actions. One, the active ex-Sand Hurst
officer, Colonel Tim Onwuatuegwu, had to die in the same circumstances
others had dreaded, see
Gbulie: The Fall of Biafra, pp. 162 -2639. Certainly not so for the
officers who fell into the hands of Colonel Obasanjo at Amichi and
elsewhere in the then crumbling Biafra.
This then Colonel Olusegun
Obasanjo had crisscrossed Igboland, disarming troops, reinstructing his
charged and belligerent officers and men, distributing relief to ensure a
stemming of the hunger plague that was employed to wage the war and in
fact helping communities to assemble leadership to respond effectively to
the East Central State government in Enugu. In these cases, and in such
specific interactions with identifiable Igbo families, Obasanjo was never
accused of, let alone be provably ascribed with, sadism, which was one
common development among conquering soldiers. Indeed, Obasanjo was to
personally punish by execution at Umuchima, in Orlu area, a Nigerian
soldier, who was apprehended and paraded before him for attempting to rape
a female refugee, (see Effiong, Philip; Re-integration: True or False, pp
28 - 30). At Awomama, in the same area, he had to order the execution of
another soldier who killed an unarmed Biafran soldier who had long
abandoned the struggle and had moved in the crowd of refugees.
Of course, Obasanjo could not
have been the most popular officer in the gathering of the same Igbo
military brass who were defeated by his army yet, one thing they have
never tried to impress in this free world was any form of sadism or
deliberate blunder in his handling of the surrender. Without belittling
the efforts of such other Nigerian officers who played decent roles in
that tempting stage and acted as civilized men, Obasanjo's record of the
last days of the war has yet to be equalled by any such enterprise in
modern Africa. Indeed, as Onukaba Adinoyi Ojo summed it up in his book,
�Olusegun Obasanjo...in the eyes of time...�Obasanjo handled his
relationship with the Biafran leadership and indeed the entire Biafran
people after the surrender with a lot of panache and humanism (p. 151 J.
Obasanjo has followed this
disposition with a very great attachment and eventual adoption of the
mother of his friend, the late Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, who lived for
several decades thereafter under his cozy sonship and just passed on, in
Okpanam. In and out of military or government, Obasanjo pursued for this
blessed woman such essentials of life that she had to live 103 years, 37 of which were after
the death of her beloved son, Chukwuma, in 1967. I personally had the
privilege of visiting this blessed woman, in company of her other adopted
son, Barrister J.S.P.C Nwokolo, and in that course had the benefit of
hearing her rich testimonies, the
feel of her world of contentment and love as a woman living in the
glory of two illustrious sons - Obasanjo and Nwokolo.
It is even a wonder to me that
since the death of this remarkable woman, none of these who claim Igbo
hatred against Obasanjo ever made any statement, that is much as we all
know that they never tried to link with the mother of the young man who
stood out in his representation the usual Igbo iron will and courage.
Of course, Obasanjo, we know,
played a role in the nomination of Ukpabi Asika as the Administrator of
East Central State. He was reported to have furthered the chances of the
people in his efforts at strengthening the only civilian of the heads of
the then 12 states. It was this Obasanjo who made it a personal duty to
reconcile Asika with the Great Zik when Asika swore that he was set for
full battle with the then influential master of Nigeria politics over the
allocation of market stalls in Onitsha main market. As Onukaba Ojo puts it
in Olusegun Obasanjo...(p. 180J, the General counselled Asika to see sense
in patching up things with Zik, since the Great man represented much of
Igbo feeling and aspiration. This relationship with Asika and family, we
know, has also continued, even as the intellectual administrator quit this
stage a few weeks ago.
Records also showed that
contrary to unfounded positions, Obasanjo suggested the boldest moves for
Ndigbo to reclaim their property in Port Harcourt and elsewhere. He was
said to have urged Ukpabi Asika to put Ndigbo on the train from Enugu, in
1974, to storm Port Harcourt en masse to reclaim what rightly belonged to
them. Hear him: �I did not fight the war for the Igbos to lose their
properties in Nigeria,� he yelled at Ken Saro Wiwa who was disappointed
that he did not go for the whole story that Ndigbo exploited them in the
then regional government and should lose everything in Port Harcourt
(AdinoyiOjo . . . Olusegun Obasanjo . . . pp. 194 - 195). He reasoned that
way and so proposed because he rightly believed that the people were being
unjustly treated in the policy of dispossession called abandoned property.
Initially, I had believed that
it was customary for the defeated to see the conqueror in such endless
train of resentment, especially if the conquered has yet to resolve
matters of ego in accepting results emanating from superior tactics and
armour. I had assumed that it was a normal way of the military never to
accept defeat so that the individual officers could maintain a certain
level of sanity and hope, if only to have somebody to pile one's blames
on.
This belief has already worn
when I came to realize that it has not been a popular position that
Obasanjo ever acted in ways for which we would ascribe to him an Igbo
hater or sadism. Indeed, I discovered that this whole claim of hatred had
emanated mainly from one or two leading actors on the side of Biafra who
have yet to accept the possibility of being seen to be resoundingly
defeated in modern warfare by forces led by Obasanjo, a back water Egba
boy who only hoped to be an automobile mechanic, son of a mere farmer and
an "engineer officer", not even Sand Hurst-trained, who ought not know
swift and effective deployment of troops.
It quickly dawned on me, as I
am sure it would have for others, that some of us have claimed a duty in
presenting Obasanjo in such perpetual bad light so that he would never
savour any form of reciprocal filial(ty) attendant upon such high-minded
disposition and handling of the last days of a major civil war.
Against this background, it
baffles me that a certain considerable weight of Igbo elite opinion has
run unchallenged in this bid to impugn the character of another as in
desperately fixing it in the minds of every Igbo man that this is an Igbo
hater.
To some extent, it looks very
unreasonable that such wild elite claims emanating from their personal
political misfortune could be sold to the generality of Ndigbo who should
have seen the unabating tirade and bashing as designed by personal fancies
and peculiar/pecuniary interests.
I had believed that we have
long gone beyond this kindergarten imputations riding elite fantasies and
manipulations suitable only for war years. It is possible that such views
that held to present the people with common imaginary enemies worked for
the enterprise of those years, but it is not quite reasonable to always
reach back in time to begin to portray men in their individual enterprises
as hating the generality of Ndigbo, for reasons nobody has convinced me
about. I am not for it and I do not think anybody hates the generality of
Enugu people, same the whole Igbo.
� Nnamani is the governor
of Enugu State.
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