From Southwest to Southeast: Lessons in Patriotism
Southern Governors
In Nigeria the words "Biafra Day" means different things depending on where a Nigerian stands or comes from. For the Igbo from the Southeast of the nation it is a day to remember those Igbos who died during the three-year tragic civil war. For this group also it is a day to press in their demand for a separate existence from Nigeria. Whether this demand is supported by the entire Ndigbo or not is not yet determined but there is a smaller but very radical and violent group hellbent on forcing their will down the throat of every Igbo man and woman. They are the Indigenous People of Biafra, (IPOB) led by the demagogic, angry and unconscionable Nnmadi Kanu who has been in detention for close to three years since he was repatriated from Kenya in 2021 and a splinter group from IPOB led by equally angry and ferocious Simon Ekpa based in Finland.
In the absence of Nnamdi Kanu who is in detention and in court on trial for treason, Simon Ekpa is pressing on even with more destructions with the agitation. A very destructive strategy he uses is what IPOB has dubbed "Sit at Home" which coerces all Igbo to stay in their houses every Monday. For a very active and dynamic business people, this command enforced with guns and other weapons has been very traumatic to Igboland ruining their economy. The federal government had to lockdown the Southeast with heavy military presence so that elections could be held in Anambra State in 2022.
IPOB wants the governors of the five Southeastern states to declare 30th May a public holiday to be called Biafra Day. 30 May, 1967 was the day, Lt. Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu declared Biafra an independent republic; it led to a civil war which lasted till January 1970 and it was estimated that a million people died on both sides of the divide, more on the eastern side for the obvious reason that the war was fought on its ground. This year's anniversary of May 30 was especially tense because the symbol of that agitation remain in detention with his lawyers fighting hard in court to set him free. The day also coincided with the examinations of the West Africa Examination Council, WAEC, which conducts the Senior School Certificate examinations. IPOB wanted WAEC to postpone the exam, an impossibility considering that other parts of the nation also write the same exams.
For the governors in the Southeast, a call for a public holiday is a difficult one especially because of the SSCE exams which the WAEC will not postpone. For the Governor of Abia state which is the home state of Nnamdi Kanu, it was particularly worrisome. Alex Otti who was still settling down as governor had won an election on the platform of Labour Party that came to limelight only because of the sudden popularity of Peter Obi, an Igbo man who was the party's presidential candidate in the 2023 elections. Obi had taken the nation by storm in an outing that displayed his charisma, character and spartan lifestyle, rare qualities which Nigerians, especially youths of other tribes other than Igbo thought was absent in the usual Nigerian leadership. Obi won the hearts of many Nigerians and looked set to clinch the coveted presidency. Obi was the candidate the Igbo has been looking for to win the presidency that has been beyond them since the end of the civil war in 1970.
Today, it is difficult to fathom the desire of IPOB for their agitation. Is the agitation about separation or about the presidency? The Obi presidency pitched the Igbo against their timeless rivals in the politics of Nigeria, the Yoruba. Even though some Yoruba youths believed in Obi and many megachurches pastored by Yoruba leaders gave support to Obi, Obidients did not cease in their abuses and propaganda against anything that is Yoruba. All the same the Yoruba had also one of them, Bola Tinubu running for the presidency and that heightened the rivalry. If Obi had won the presidency, would Ndigbo have continued the agitation? Would IPOB have been disbanded? Probably, yes, because even one of the things that made MASSOB, the Igbo agitation group from which IPOB sprang from, eventually collapse was due to the emergence of Dr Goodluck Jonathan, the president that was massively supported by Ndigbo because he had an Igbo root. His forbears are said to have migrated to Otuoke in Bayelsa state from Igboland, and in fact he shares name with Igbo political icon, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe. As soon as Goodluck Jonathan won, MASSOB changed tactics and lent great support to President Jonathan. IPOB splintered from MASSOB only when President Jonathan did not get the second term when Muhammad Buhari, a president with only his Fulani tribe in his heart, defeated him.
The Yoruba, the eternal rival of Igbo also have their version of IPOB. Odua nation, they call it. There are other groups with different names but common separatists objective among the Yoruba. The difference between the Ndigbo IPOB and the Yoruba Odua nation is that surprisingly the Odua nation is led by illiterates who made their mark in political thuggery. And that belies the very huge advance the Yoruba made in education under their iconic leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. One Odua version led by Banji Akintoye, a retired professor of history though cerebral, failed to galvanize the ethnic nationality. Professor Akintoye, seems a tribal bigot who from his utterances looks like he has been pressing for a separate Yoruba nation since the time of Obafemi Awolowo, the Yoruba iconic leader. However, it gladdens the heart the role the Yoruba governors have played in the quest for this separation where they have maintained a stoic stance for unity of Nigeria while fighting former President Muhammadu Buhari. They have been most courageous and deployed intellectual agility to the struggle against the Fulani herdsmen posing a threat to the security of the region. Under their former leader, late Rotimi Akeredolu, the former governor of Ondo state they responded very courageously to Buhari's parochialism. When Buhari failed to stop the Fulani herders from kidnapping and killing the Yoruba on their land, the Southwest governors went ahead to form Amotekun, a security outfit to confront the terror Fulani herdsmen, not minding the unconstitutionality of such a move. Later Amotekun was enabled and backed-up by law promulgated by the House of Assembly in the Southwest States. On their part, the Southeastern governors were timid and they did nothing until they saw more terrorism of the herdsmen. Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo state, an APC governor broached the formation of Ebubeagu, a security outfit but it was weak in composition and therefore has not been as effective as its Yoruba counterpart. Amotekun formed by the Southwest governors was fully manned by their appointees but Ebubeagu still comprises the police, the Army and the DSS, all security forces of the Federal Government which have been complicit in the fight against the Fulani marauders.
With little violence the Yoruba agitators have been more audacious than the IPOB. Twice now they have actually proclaimed the independence of the Yoruba nation. The first time they stormed a radio station in Ibadan, the political capital of the Yoruba, the seat of Chief Obafemi Awolowo's government. In a recent attempt, they actually went to the Oyo state Secretariat, Ibadan, where Awolowo once ruled, removed the flag of Nigeria and replaced it with the Odua nation's flag. It was the Amotekun that was first called in to confront them, after which the soldiers arrived. Many of them were overpowered and arrested. Their leader, Modupe Onitiri-Abiola, a woman, bore the name of Abiola, the winner of the June 12, 1993 elections that was annulled by ex-military President Ibrahim Babangida. As expected, Modupe Onitiri-Abiola was quickly denounced by the Moshood Abiola family. Earlier she had made a broadcast on Facebook announcing a coup; was quickly investigated and her house in Ibadan pulled down. Up to the time of writing her location has not been determined but it is likely that she has fled the country. Other locations where the group camped for training and from where they moved to perpetrate their treasonable acts were located and many more people were arrested and their ammunition seized by the security forces. But much more definitive and worthy of emulation by their Southeast counterparts is the joint action the six governors took when they met recently in Lagos, where the Lagos state governor, Babajide Sanwoolu played host to them. The six governors in their communique denounced the group that attempted to seize power illegally. They denounced, very strongly the call for a separate nation for the Yoruba.
I think that kind of action should recommend itself to the governors in the Southeast too if they still regard themselves as leaders in Nigeria. Their inability to take a resolute decision against the secessionists demand made them complicit in the forays of IPOB that has killed thousands of Ndigbo and ruined the businesses of many. The call for a public holiday by the lawyer of Nnamdi Kanu, Aloy Ejimakor to mark 30th May as "Biafra Day," must be denounced, except it is limited to the Southeast and not a national holiday, because it cannot be accepted by all Nigerians. The Biafra that was declared on May, 30, 1967 and which led to untold deaths was the same Biafra that the rump of Ojukwu’s forces surrendered and declared loyalty to then Federal Military Government led by General Yakubu Gowon.
However, it is necessary for the governors of the Southeast in consultation with their counterparts in other parts of the nation to declare a public holiday to remember the heroes and heroines of the civil war in the former Eastern Region. As Governor Alex Otti said, it is necessary to soothe the emotions of the people who lost their relatives. But nothing of Biafra must be remembered because it signfied a day that brothers took arms against brothers because of the ambition of just one man. And no word such as "genocidal onslaught" as Alex Otti stated must be proclaimed again by a public officer because it is an inflammable word that can only accentuate war in the hearts of the Igbo, especially the violent IPOB now said to have been infiltrated by armed robbers and miscreants.
It is ironic that it is the very Aba where Alex Otti spoke his "genocidal onslaught" words that five soldiers of the Nigerian Army, three of them Igbo, on peacekeeping mission were murdered by IPOB members. While Otti has since been running from pillar-to-post to give scholarships to the children of soldiers affected, ostensibly to assuage the military who are known for reprisal attacks in the past, President Bola Tinubu has asked the Army to fish out the perpetrators of the killings.
Ohaneze Ndigbo the umbrella socio-cultural body for all Igbo is afraid of a reprisal attack and its president, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu has asked the soldiers to only fish out the perpetrators and to limit their attack on the area where the killings took place. So far the military has arrested some suspects who are currently being interrogated. In the past there had been reprisal attacks by the military. In Odi, in Bayelsa state, Zaki Biam, in Benue state and Okuama, in Delta state, the military had moved massively to destroy whole communities when their men were killed. In conclusion, Governor Otti and his colleagues must avoid incendiary words not to give the impression of disguised support to the destructive acts of IPOB or any such groups.
Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos