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The
MASSOB Igbo cause
By Okenwa Enyeribe
Blatant neglect of the South Eastern enclave of Nigeria and massive injustice
meted to its inhabitants over the years by the Nigerian government, has forced
them to seek a non-violent cause of self- determination through a propagatory
group - The Movement For The Actualization of the Sovereign State of
Biafra. (MASSOB) led by Chief Raph Uwazurike.
Although I was young during the Civil War, I
experienced the events to the extent that a two-minute move saved my life. As I
was coming back from school, I wanted to climb a cashew tree to pluck cashew
nuts but changed my mind and two minutes later a Nigerian jet bomber tore the
cashew tree into shreds. In the present Nigeria, the injustice that triggered
the Civil War has assumed an unprecedented dimension. There is massive
suppression, oppression.
Dehumanization, marginalisation, pauperization of the people of the
South East, the Igbos and the Niger Deltans.
At the end of the Civil War in 1970 General Yakubu
Gowon declared 3Rs - reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction. It is unfortunate that the 3Rs were
applied to the Nigerian side leaving the defeated Biafrans.
Hence all Biafrans were directed to deposit their
Biafran currencies in the banks and each depositor was given twenty Nigerian
pounds irrespective of how many million Biafran pounds he paid in. This was
criminally done to pauperise the region and to disposses the inhabitants of
their wealth. How do you view the fact that since the war ended (34 years now),
no Igbo man has been appointed into the National Security Council. What about
the issue of presidency of this country which has been classified as an
“untouchable” to the Igbos - an exclusive criminal reserve of
the West and the North?
It has been stated that the major issues involved in
the MASSOB drama “qualify as a subject of serious examination by all
patriotic Nigerians because of their capability to disrupt the arrangement on
the political chess board of Nigeria”. The question is: Is the political chess board of Nigeria
stable? What, with the official corruption permeating high government places,
illegal bunkering and stealing of petroleum products by government and private
individuals (Thisday, September 25, 2004, p.46), government ardent insensitivity to lack of
basic infrastructure (at least light and water) to the populace, ethnic
violence of dreadful dimensions, poverty and hunger in the land.
The stigma of the war is always in the cerebrum of
any Nigerian dealing with an Igbo man. The Igbo man is used for selfish
political ends. Little did Dr. Alex Ekwueme know that he was being used to give
credibility to the doctored PDP Presidential primaries of 1999 and 2003. Even
Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu had been
used to drum support for both Shagari and Abacha governments. What of the Chukwumerijes and the
Ofonagoros. The list is endless.
The Federal government takes external loans for world
bank assisted capital projects which are never sited in Igbo land and the debt
service of which must be extended to the region. Government infrastructure must
not be provided for the South East because they were “Conquered” in
the war. Roads in the Igbo enclave present a picture of gullies, pot holes and
mud, seriously frustrating economic activities and investment. The region of
the Niger Delta is an eye-sore. There is complete destruction of their natural
ecological and economic life. Their God-given natural resource crude oil has
rather brought them woes. The rivers are polluted by oil spillage killing
useful aquatic life and rendering the water useless. Their forests and farm
lands are devastated by oil exploration. Unfortunately, the Nigerian government
provides no remedies to the people to curb the effects of these atrocities.
They do not have good drinking water food and roads. The only good road
traversing the Niger Delta is the East - West road constructed during the
war to siphon petroleum products from Port Harcourt as a result of collapse of
the Onitsha Bridge.
Another issue that elicits deep reflection is the
massacre of Igbos in Nigeria any time there is a little eruption somewhere. It
happened in the pogrom of 1966 and also many times in Kano, Kaduna and Jos.
I am writing this piece in my refugee make-shift
beside my shop, my residence having been completely burnt during the Numan
Community clashes of June 8. On that day I took refuge in a nursery school and
slept there till the following day using Neem leaves to wipe of mosquitoes. There was no food and it was the
biggest risk trying to go out of my hiding place due to sporadic gunshots. When
my thirst became unbearable, I had to scoop rain water that dropped on the
floor through the leaking roof with both hands. On reaching my house the next
day, everything was in ashes. My medical books, compounding equipment and household
items all, estimated at over two million naira gone. Why burning my house and valuables if I am accepted here? I
thank God I escaped alive. Many
other Igbos died in similar clashes. This has been the fate of Igbos in Lagos,
Kano, Kaduna and Jos. We are the victims of ethnic rivalry in Nigeria.
Authur Nzeribe’s Chameleonic prescription of
achieving Igbo President under the camouflage of MASSOB (Sunday Independent,
September 26, 2004, p.B8) is his typical equivocating wild goose chase well
documented in Nigerian affairs. His recipe is a spectroscopic flight of fancy
of a rigmarole designed to ridicule the Igbo cause for his selfish interests
and should utterly be discountenanced. The MASSOB project is neither a NPP hoodwink nor a Babangida (ABN) or senate
melodrama.
The unrestrained injustice meted to the Igbo man in
Nigeria leaves him with no option but self-determination, which can effectively
and viably be achieved via a non violent struggle, hence the quest for MASSOB.
Persistent ethnic and communal up heavals in Nigeria call for strict
meditation. Chief Raph Uwazurike should be commended for aspiring to achieve
freedom and peace for this people in a venture exclusive of violence (The News
September 27, 2004, p.23). Non-violent struggle for self determination by any
oppressed nationality is enshrined in the United Nations and African charter of
human rights.
Progressive stakeholders in the Nigerian State like
the patriots (FRA Williams & Co), Civil Rights Goods (Mrs Obe Gani
Fawehinmi, Chima Ubani etc) ethnic militia (OPC, Asari Dokubo and the Ijaw
militants) and eminent elders statesmen (Anthony Enahoro, Ndubuisi Kanu, Umaru
Abubakar, Wole Soyinka and Bolaji Akinyemi) have persistently called for the
restructuring of this country for it to progress. Convocation of a restructuring sovereign national conference
that will conduct a “multiloque” to resolve the acrimony among the
various ethnic groups that compose the Nigeria nation is advisable. The Federal Government’s resolve
to dialogue with the leadership of the armed struggle in the Niger Delta (9
p.m. Network News, September 29, 2004) is a good tiding - a local
commencement of restructuring
anyway.
Enyeribe,
a Pharmacist, wrote in from Numan
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