LAST week the Attorney-General of the Federation reportedly declared MASSOB a rebel group, how constitutional is that declaration?
“I most powerfully, I most unambiguously, and most responsibly, disagree with the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Akin Olujimi, my very good friend in declaring MASSOB a rebel group. MASSOB is not a rebel group. It is a group formed for self determination of the Ndi-Igbo, a major, indeed one of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria. MASSOB is no more than OPC, whose main thrust is self determination by the Yoruba in having an Odua Republic.
The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) also belonging to the Hausa-Fulani was formed to protect the interest of that geo-political zone of the country. And you will also notice that in like manner, the Middle Belt comprising particularly the Benue and Plateau people are now being vociferous, saying that they are not part and parcel of that monolithic North, that they have their own identity, called the Middle Belt. That they want to be known as the Middle-Belt Congress.
So MASSOB therefore, is an idea whose time has come. MASSOB is a phenomenon, it is a loud statement by the Igbo, that their marginalization and pauperisation which commenced before the outbreak of the civil war, have not stopped. It is a loud statement by the Igbo that the 3Rs of rehabilitation, reconstruction and reconciliation declared by General Yakubu Gowon in January 1970 when the civil war ended have never be merged in Nigeria.
It is a loud statement that even as we talk, there is virtually no presence of the Federal Government in Igbo land, in terms of industries, roads, infrastructure, in fact unarguably, it is in the heart of Igbo land that you have the worst roads in Nigeria today. I am a pan-Nigerian, I go across Nigeria at least, three times a year. So I am making a statement of fact.
The Igbo man is known to be gregarious, the Igbo man is known to be enterprising, the Igbo man is known to be hardworking and consumate. But all these have paled into insignificance in terms of the position of the Igbo man in Nigeria today. He has been made to remain a mere trader, who takes the night bus, living Aba, Umuahia, Owerri, Onitsha, Okija, Awka, in the night and arriving the following morning in Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna, Kano, Maiduguri and then buying or selling and going back again by night bus.
That is why the casualties you normally see in the luxury buses when they are attacked by armed robbers are normally in content more than 95% Igbo. So for that busy Igbo man to have heeded a call by an organisation called MASSOB, headed by one Ralph Uwazuruike, a lawyer, which he formed a few years ago, across Nigeria, from Enugu to Umuahia, from Onitsha to Lagos, from Benin City to Abuja, from Kaduna to Kano, from Maiduguri to Kafanchan, from Port Harcourt to Calabar, to have heeded that call, that all of them as a mark of protest should lock up their stores and shops, and not go to their offices, and stop the business of the day, and for Nigeria to have literally grinded to a halt because of that singular call, make a very loud statement that the Igbo are protesting against their place within the polity, within this geographical expression, within this contraption, within this project called Nigeria. And that is why rather than taking such a symbolic action as a rebellion, I think the Federal Government should go back to the drawing board to ask the question, what went wrong?
How come, rather than having a country that is cemented together, a country that is unified as one geographical entity, how come that the disparate ethnic nationalities are today beating the Cymbals of Separation, beating the drums of war and ethnic cleavages louder than before.
How come that in Nigeria today no one really says I am a Nigerian, all the person tries to say is that I am an Igbo man, I am an Hausa man or I am a Yoruba man, or I am an Edo man, or an Urhobo man, or Itsekiri man. How come that Nigerians believe more in their town union, village union, which they must attend every Saturday, or every Sunday, or at least once every month, and the place would be brimming? How come when you call for a Nigerian conference or a meeting having to do with Nigeria nobody goes there.
Wasn’t Tafawa Balewa therefore right when he said that he believed Nigeria was a piece of historical mistake. Wasn’t Obafemi Awolowo right then when he once declared that Nigeria was a mere geographical expression. That there is no Nigerian in the same sense as we have the Welsh, as we have the Irish, as we have the Englishman.
Is that therefore a loud statement for saying that something must be done to this behemoth edifice called Nigeria, this sleeping elephant. Something should be done in terms of restructuring. Can we not therefore say that it probably was a mistake that Biafra was not allowed to go in 1967, that perhaps had Biafra been allowed to go, we probably would be having a beautiful small Japanese-like country side-by-side a sprawling edifice called Nigeria.
Can we not see with the benefit of hindsight why Major Isaac Adaka Boro with a rag-tag, and unequipped army had to take up arms against the fatherland in 1966, in a major insurrection in the Niger-Delta for which he was tried and jailed.
Can we not see therefore why the problems of Nigeria rather than receding, are actually multiplying, with mutual distrust, with ethnic cleavages gaining an upper hand, can we not see why there is a need for a restructuring. I see the call by MASSOB not as a rebellion but as a statement of an ethnic group that is dissatisfied with the status-quo and wants a change that would be beneficial to them.
What MASSOB has done is not more than what the Niger Delta people are doing, is not more than what the OPC have been doing. It is not more than what the ACF is doing”.
Under the law, the action by MASSOB does it amount to a treasonable act?
“No, treason is taking up arms. There is a difference between treason and treasonable act. Treason is actually waging war against your motherland. If Biafra had succeeded, it would not be treason. It could have been treason because they did not succeed. When a military coup occurs, it is treason. If it fails, because the people will be apprehended, tried, and shot, but if it succeeds it becomes a new legal authority or regime. MASSOB is not levelling war against Nigeria, they did not take up arms against Nigeria.
They simply gave instructions to their people to say protest our marginalisation within the scheme of things on 50-50 date. And the people headed their call. It is a constitutional guaranteed right.
They were not violent, they did not even go on rallies and processions, they merely said today, we are withdrawing our services, I have never seen a more democratic, a more honourable way of venting your grievances. That is according to Mahatma Gandhi’s peaceful and non-violent resistance as a philosophy for which they should even be commended. The Igbo should be commended for doing something so orderly, so peacefully, so democratic”.
