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B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News |
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MASSOB: To kill or to let die
MASSOB is every inch an Igbo child, fathered by Hausa-Fulani, and mid-wifed into birth by the Yorubas. Ask any good mother and she will tell you that there is never a time to kill a child " not even an evil child. Anyone who expects reasonable Igbos to take up a stance overtly aggressive towards MASSOB is na�ve. To expect the Igbos to stand aside while the fathers of this child attempt to kill it is to downplay the powerful tender feelings of a mother towards the child she bore.
To kill MASSOB is an option which Nigeria, as co-parents of MASSOB, does not have the moral authority to do. It is better to let die than to kill, and for the Igbos, letting MASSOB die is the moral equivalence of delivering a twin birth to an evil forest, back in the days when twin births were a taboo, and a mother sorrowed her way to the forest and back, bitter at a society that disavowed her children's right to exist. The Igbos, still smarting from the horrors of the Nigerian civil war, will not soon forget that MASSOB was raped into being by the silent war of economic and political marginalisation of the Igbos, prosecuted against them by a long line of military and civilian dictators.
Time is when time was, when Igbo librarians jumped into fronts of war armed only with machetes and sticks, and Okoko Ndem made poetries of war that befuddled the aggressors, and Effiong went about his prosecution of the war with blue-collars, like the factory workers of the old British empire, and the General rattled mightly to dispel attention from the dry venom pouches of the fangless snake that was Biafra. And many heroes were made on the Nigerian side. There was Obasanjo, he of the potbelly, and Adekunle who did not mind Igbo blood, and many other tortoises whose alleged heroics were freely displayed in the mushroom field that was the Biafran war theatre. And many Igbos died and many Biafran children starved to death. And the Igbos will not soon forget. You do not understand MASSOB if you do not understand the Nigerian civil war and all its entrails.
To revisionists, the Nigerian/Biafran civil war was a war of political aggression initiated by the Igbos, and made probable by Igbo actions set in motion by the Nzeogwu/Ifeajuna led coup of 1966. In reality, while no one should downplay the political antecedents of the war, it was a war of economic aggression provoked by the Northerners and made inevitable by the pogrom of Igbos in Northern Nigeria. While revenge for the death of the Saduana was tributary, the main object of the pogrom of the Igbos was to engineer a violent economic displacement of the Igbos starting with their economic bases in the North. I state these general principles of the root causes of the Nigerian civil war knowing that economic and political issues are always inextricably intertwined. But suffice it to say that the economic displacement of the Igbos was concomitant with their political displacement; the Nigerian state being the fountain of nearly all economic activities in the country, the hegemonic control of the state apparatus by the Hausa-Fulani enfringed everyone else, especially the Igbos. Let no one tell you otherwise.
The Nigerian civil war was a war of economic jihad when the Hausa-Fulani's rose, led by the great Northern Nigerian military caucus of the Gowons, Garbas, Murtala Mohammeds, to wrestle control of the state apparatus from the Igbos and to consciously pursue a programme of economic marginalisation of the Igbos. The Nzeogwu/Ifeajuna-led coup was only a pretext to what ended up a violent political and economic overthrow of the Igbos. Let this generation not forget that Nzeogwu/Ifeajuna's coup was at a time when looting of the treasury was a National past time and he who had control of the state had control of the national purse. That logic has continued unabated even in the so called democratic dispensation.
If you understand the economic basis of the Nigerian civil war, you will understand that the war has not yet ended, thirty four years after the political theatre was closed. Nigerian leaders have pursued a policy of economic and political marginalisation of the Igbos, in part to negate what the Northerners consider an over powering private sector advantage of the enterprising Igbos, and in part to assuage the baseless fear that the political empowerment of the Igbos will spell the beginning of the dismemberment of Nigeria, a country precariously perched on the brink of disintegration and whose only purpose for being is the exploitation of the oil fields of Southern Nigeria by leave of a Northern ruling class that is itself growing increasingly weary of this political union.
Nigeria has been under the spell of a cold and silent war for well over thirty years and its immediate offshoot is the MASSOB and their more militant cousins in other ethnic groups. Those of us, unabashed Nigerian Nationalists who happen to be Igbos, do not view MASSOB with angry passions; we wished it a still birth. We contemplated its gestation in the wombs of Igbo tribalists with the wry hope that it aborts. This was a child of incest, fathered by the gang rape of Igbo collectives, and we wished that the cellulite-laden legs of its mother would crumble long before her travails give birth to a curious species, having the blood of its Igbo mother, and looking every bit like Nigerian antecedents of military and civilian dictators that fathered it.
MASSOB may be an embarrassment to us Nigerian nationalists, but to deny the birth of this reality is to deny the fact that Nigeria urged MASSOB into being. MASSOB has a right to exist because we brought it into being, has a right not to be killed because it would outrage our morality to do so, and has every right to be let die because it is in the ultimate best interest of the country to do so. Many reasonable Nigerians who truly believe in the unity of the country realise that the marginalisation of the indomitable Igbos is a growing and gathering danger. To attempt to kill MASSOB will only exacerbate that danger and will set in motion a chain of events that will ultimately lead to the unravelling of the country. Again, I caution that those who think of MASSOB as standing for the dismemberment of Nigeria through non-violent means do not understand MASSOBIA which is a movement predicated on the marginalisation of the Igbos. MASSOB is impelled not by love for a separate Igbo nation but by MASSOBIA, revulsion and anger, inflamed by political and economic exclusion of the Igbos from centres of power and authority in Nigeria.
Nigeria must allow MASSOB to die by taking away the purpose for its being. If Nigerian leaders are truly interested in National unity, they must realise that the marginalisation of the Igbos has transcended political gamesmanship, it has become a circumstance of imperative morality that must be immediately addressed. MASSOB feeds off the resentment of the Igbos to their political and economic relegation and to kill MASSOB without reintegration of the Igbos will not kill MASSOBIA. In fact, the person who will cast the first stones of Nigerian disintegration is the person or group who will attempt to kill MASSOB without first taking away MASSOBIA.
And that is why the quest by the Igbos to produce the next President of Nigeria in 2007 is a pivotal issue that may well decide the fate of our country. Do not ask me how it should happen. Do not ask me if an Hausa-Fulani should be forced to vote for an Igbo President. Do not ask me if a Yoruba should be forced to vote for an Igbo President. First guarantee that 2007 would be free and fair. First go ask Anenih and Ogbeh and all the king makers and then come back to me. First tell me that the Northern military apparatus controlled by Babangida and his cohorts will not come blaring out of the barracks if their man is not made the next President by any means necessary.
The violation of the political will of the people is in fact, the root cause of the perennial tension that grips this country along with the institutionalisation of tribal and religious hostilities. These issues must be dealt with, but the most exigent issue facing Nigeria today is the end of the silent war of economic and political aggression against the Igbos. Nigeria can signify an end to that war by yielding to a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction come 2007. When Nigeria makes that impossible, it makes MASSOBIA probable and it makes MASSOB inevitable. It is up to us to decide whether MASSOB shall embarrass us all or die an early and unremarkable death.
Whichever way Nigeria decides to go, let it never be said that a person who chooses non-violent means of political expression, and was not in breach of any allegiance to Nigeria, and has not given aid or comfort to any known enemy of Nigeria has committed treason. Let us not mock our collective efforts so, for there is no democracy save in an association of a people with their government, such that non-violent speech may be the people's weapon to keep in check, a government disposed to tyranny and overreach. When a government cannot guarantee the civil liberties of her people, it is a government that you and I should not belong to. Nigeria has a chance to show us if it is worth belonging to by respecting the civil liberties of our people to engage in political expression that does not aid or comfort any known enemy of the country.
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