Adamawa State governor Murtala Nyako’s open memo to his
colleagues failed to prevent the second bombing of Nyanya and the mass
slaughter of innocent Nigerians on May Day. Several villages are still
being decimated. And the more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped in Chibok
for sex slavery are yet to return home. By now, therefore, the retired
admiral of the ocean ought to be convinced that it is not the “federal
administration” headed by a man from the defunct Eastern Region that is
behind the terrorist acts.Many who have criticised Nyako and the content of his memo have glossed over one big lie that has upset some of us victims of violence in Nigeria. Through Nyako’s letter, I have learned that my biological father and perhaps one million other Nigerians had to be murdered, not on war fronts but in their villages, because they failed to condemn four army majors from that part of the country for staging a coup.
But I have a story to tell. In March 1968, people displaced by the war had fled my town and moved some 50km away because of advancing federal forces. My father Anikwe Nwamu had allowed his family members to join the fleeing IDPs (internally displaced persons) while he and a few other strong men stayed back to look after the community. Soon, the “troops” – ill-trained, inexperienced urchins hurriedly recruited to fight the war – reached my village and started setting fire to homes, uprooting young crops, slaughtering goats, chickens and cows. My father and his group approached them – 30-something armed men – and politely asked them why they were doing this to innocent villagers who didn’t know anything about the war. The soldiers arrested them and, at gunpoint, forced them to carry heavy objects as they were marched to a nearby camp where other “prisoners of war” had been assembled. It was at the camp that my father and two other men confronted them. And they were shot. Eyewitnesses later told us that, before my father died, he placed a curse on his attackers: “This will happen in your villages.”
Nyako was perhaps one of those soldiers that avoided the field of battle and invaded villages, killing women and children and setting fire to houses. Just like today’s “Boko Haram”. Since he was in the navy then, he probably operated in the Niger Delta where, I have learned, some did awful things like drowning young women in high seas after raping them. In some places, including my town, “gallant soldiers” put rifles into young women’s vaginas – and then fired shots! Children were thrown into raging fire! One day, they took scores of young men away; they never returned at the end of the war. Such were the exploits of “brave” military men who want to be praised.
So I lost my father and several other relations to a war of revenge? My father committed no crime, not even a war crime: he was too young to fight in World War II and he was not a Biafran soldier. At that time, I was only 3 and my mother was heavy with my sister Margaret. I trace most of the tribulations I have faced in life to his death. But I’m not the greatest loser: several other families that were wiped out had no one left to tell the story I’m telling today.
We the victims of terror in Nigeria have grown so large – from Bama through Katsina-Ala and Nyanya to Jos and Patani – that we may, one day, form an association to demand valid explanations from these merchants of violence. A good number of those who shot my father, I was told, hailed from the present-day Benue, Kogi and Plateau states. Recent happenings appear to suggest that the curse my father and thousands of other innocent victims placed on them has followed them. Look closely at the fate of all those that killed innocent civilians even during inter-tribal wars. He who lives by the sword will die by the sword. Let those exploding bombs, murdering students in their sleep and annihilating villages today watch it: The mills of Allah grind slowly. No evildoer can escape punishment.
By his memo, Nyako has convicted himself of the same crime of genocide he is accusing President Jonathan of. The one involving him, as I have shown, was organised in the most appalling manner. For no just cause: I’m sure even he knows he lied that “citizens of Eastern Nigeria origin” [let’s just call them “easterners”] did not condemn the coup of Jan. 15, 1966. At the time, President Nnamdi Azikiwe was abroad but he promptly issued a statement condemning the coup and mourning his friends especially Balewa whom he described as a humble good man. Gen. JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi rounded up the coup plotters and kept them in jail pending their trial and possible execution. Col. Emeka Ojukwu foiled the coup in Kano and put some suspects in jail too. Across the Eastern Region, it was grief and disapproval everywhere. So which “citizens” is Nyako referring to?
Also, Governor Nyako charges that easterners have not called their son Jonathan [who is giving them “a very bad name”] to order as he “takes wrong decisions and seems to be heading us to the abyss”. Have we really been supporting all of the present regime’s policies? Jonathan has not been as dangerous as some former leaders, but some of his greatest critics are easterners. I am one. I believe that President Jonathan has not been taking the right advice for ending terrorism in the country, especially as he and security chiefs once claimed that they knew those behind the evil that has killed over 7, 000 Nigerians in the past three years. The state, local and community governments have not done any better to arrest the slide, however.
My sources in the Presidency told me Jonathan doesn’t read newspapers and hardly watches TV. Indeed, he doesn’t give a damn! Maybe Nyako himself doesn’t watch the media; otherwise he would have read the opinions expressed daily by easterners on the way the country is governed. Since hundreds of schoolgirls were abducted in Chibok, protests and prayers in the various cities have been led by women from the east. And, had the president listened to good advice, there would have been a true state of emergency in at least 10 states and the FCT; democratic structures there would have been suspended and governors like Nyako would not have had a voice.
It’s dangerous to be a liberal leader. The First Republic politicians, Aguiyi-Ironsi, Murtala Muhammed, Shehu Shagari and Muhammadu Buhari had their governments truncated because they failed to move against “insurgents” or those with bad intentions in time. IBB and Obasanjo did not take chances; that is probably why they lasted long in office. I liken Jonathan to Aguiyi-Ironsi who spent time calming tempers even as the people refused to accept his gospel. He discovered too late that the people he trusted had betrayed him. Now, a full-blown war may be a few months away, but the president thinks an election can take place and he will contest and win.
While Jonathan dithers, his kinsmen have started moving their investments and families home. For Nyako really means business. Before he starts visiting the sins of Jonathan on easterners once again, wise ones would have relocated to safer parts of the country. But it’s better for Nigeria to expand, not shrink.
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REF http://leadership.ng/columns/369363/nyanya-nyako-victims
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