My
recent article, the Messages of Ahiara, an incisive piece buttressed with logic
and reason, which refuted some popular but erroneous notions of tribalism and
secession in Nigeria, drew a lot of hostile responses from some of my readers.
They lobbed curses and hauled invectives at me. However, to me, it was all
exhilarating. I relish rejoinders to my writings, be them abusive or
appreciative.
One of my milder critics accused me
of demonstrated dislike for Biafra and its leadership. Yes, I detest the Biafra
leadership because, in its recklessness, arrogance and despotism, it brought about the
death of hundreds of thousands at the glory of their youth and the starvation
to death of more than one million hapless and
blameless men, women and
children. It dismantled the Igbo power structure, painstakingly put together
over decades by the likes of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, and Michael
Okpara, and set the Igbo back by at least 100 years. Why would any Igbo not
despise a leadership that brought so much, avoidable, suffering, pain and
sorrow to the Igbo?
Some of my detractors argued that
secession was a necessary response to the mass-murder of the Igbo in northern
Nigeria. Undoubtedly, that orchestrated slaughter of the innocent for no
offense of theirs but their ethnicity was unconscionable. However, it would be
selective amnesia to forget that the July 29th 1966 coup and the attendant
anti-Igbo riots in the North did not sprout out of a void. They were in
reprisal for an earlier coup in January 1966 in which an Igbo dominated group
of army officers murdered the most important Hausa/Fulani political and
military leaders (Ahmadu Bello, Tafawa Belewa and Zakari Miamalari) without
killing any Igbo leader. And following the coup, the Igbo in the North became
too celebrative; dancing and singing to a Rex Lawson song and telling their
Hausa neighbors that the bleating of a goat in the song was Ahmadu Bello (the
most important Hausa/Fulani leader) howling like a goat as he was being killed
by Major Nzeogwu. It was the discriminatory killings and gratuitous mockery of
the memory of their most important leader, amongst other reasons, that set the
stage for the July 1966 anti-Igbo coup and the attendant anti-Igbo riots.
After the killings in the January
and July coups and that unsurpassed butchery of Igbo civilians in northern
Nigeria, there was a desperate need for peace in the country. In search of
peace, the regional governors, David Ejoor, Usman Katsina, Robert Adebayo and
Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, and the Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, met at Aburi in Ghana,
where they agreed on and signed the Aburi Accord. The most significant aspect
of the accord was constitutional: the reduction of the powers of the federal
government by devolution of additional powers to regional
governments. Long ago, an Igbo professor of political science at Howard
University in Washington, DC told me that Yakubu Gowon implemented the Aburi
Accord. To me, his statement was not only unbelievable but sacrilegious. I lost
my temper at what I thought was historical revisionism taken to a nauseating
extreme. The elderly professor must have understood my problem. I was suffering
from a hangover of the Biafran propaganda. I was under the stupefying hold of
the lies we were fed in Biafra. For he stated, “don’t worry, with time, in the
course of your reading and research, you will find out that Gowon implemented
the Aburi Accord”.
Years later, I found out that Gowon
implemented the Aburi Accord. In his book, Power Sharing in Nigerian
Federation, Chukwuemeka Nwokedi wrote that, “Apart from minor adjustments to
the Aburi Accord, in other to still retain the corporate nature of Nigeria”,
Gowon implemented the Aburi Accord with Decree 8; “and the regions acquired
more powers than they have ever had”. That was months before the continued
wrangling between Ojukwu and Gowon led to the creation of states. But did
Ojukwu not declare Biafra and we marched out to war on the mantra, “On Aburi We
Stand”. According to other writers, the minor adjustments Gowon made
to the accord was the cancelation of two articles of the accord, which stated
that any region can secede from Nigeria at will, and that the federal
government can, on no account, impose a state of emergency on any region.
Ojukwu’s advisers urged him to accept Decree 8 because Gowon had “gone more
than far enough”. He refused.
The removal of the two articles of
the accord did not in any way imperil the lives and property of the Igbo and
other peoples of Eastern Region. Ojukwu’s squabbling, against the advice of his
advisers, over the two articles was solely motivated by personal ambition.
Following Ojukwu’s declaration of Biafra, the war inevitably started. As it
raged on, it was obvious that a negotiated settlement to the war would be most
advantageous to the Igbo. Ojukwu’s obsession with maintaining himself in power
stalled the peace talks that would have extracted for the Igbo a number of
concessions from the federal government. Despite the enormous toll of the war,
especially, on human lives, he kept protecting his position and power, until it
became untenable. And, as Biafra collapsed, he ran away; Biafra surrendered
unconditionally.
A litany of the falsehood we were
fed in Biafra is beyond the scope of this article. David Klinghoffer was right
when he wrote that, “Widespread misinformation poisons a culture”. The enduring
grip of these falsehoods on Igbo minds continues to poison both Igbo culture
and psyche. They make us paranoid – we feel surrounded by enemies committed to our
destruction, and in our suspicion of these “enemies” we see ulterior
motives in every act, no matter how well-intended and benign, by other
Nigerians. In addition, they make us feel like innocent victims of the
evil devices of an alliance of the other Nigerian ethnic groups. And like
perennial victims we refuse to take responsibilities for our actions; we find
psychological refuge in blaming others, the Yoruba, Hausa/Fulani, etc, for our
problems.
Blaming others for your problems is
gratifying but destructive; it reinforces the feeling of
victimhood. The mindset that sustains a feeling of victimhood is
antithetical to victory. Therefore, a victim remains a loser until he changes
his mindset. For our own good, the Igbo need to change their attitude towards
Nigeria and the other peoples of Nigeria. This demands rising above the
misinformation of the Biafran propaganda by embracing some incontrovertible
historical facts. This will enable us to realize that our problems
stemmed not from the hatred and wicked machination of the Hausa, Yoruba and
other ethnic groups of Nigeria, but from repeated political blunders of Igbo
leaders, especially, Chukwuemeka Ojukwu.
Otherwise, our political fortune,
clout and relevance will continue to decline. It has declined to a point, where
a proud and resourceful people that, in their triumphalism, once boasted of
dominating not only Nigeria but the whole of Africa now whimper and snivel over
trivialities like a disconsolate old widow.
Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos,
Nigeria and can be reached at maciln18@yahoo.com.
Credit: http://saharareporters.com
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