UNEASY NEIGHBORS AND THE BIAFRA DIALOGUE PART 5 BY DR AUSTIN ORETTE

When people have been raised on a lie, anger becomes a weapon. This anger can be all consuming and blurs vision and can become self-destructive. This is what is happening today in the South-East geo-political zone of Nigeria.

The Federal Military Government failed to secure peace at the end of the Nigerian Civil War. They failed to prognosticate into the future and prevent the recurrence of the events that led to the civil war.

At the end of the war, Nigeria admitted the defeated Biafrans without asking them anything in return. The admission of Biafrans to Nigeria should have been done based on conditional loyalties. The leaders of the rebellion should have been punished and made to renounce their Biafran citizenship in public. None of these were done and their children who were raised on lies and propaganda are begging to emulate the traitors.

 They were not made to swear loyalty to Nigeria and   renounce Biafra for Nigerian citizenship. It is this failure that has resulted in proponents of Biafra reinventing history to justify their aggression towards the Nigerian State. At the time of surrender, the Biafrans propaganda agencies were not destroyed. The generation that started Biafra used these agencies to pass lies to their children.

While Nigerians were donating lands and sundry to Igbo people to restart their lives, the Biafrans were still nurturing hate and telling their children that Nigeria took all their monies from them and gave them twenty pounds in return. This was a gross lie. They painted every scenario that could make Nigeria the villain. The stories became carefully curated and embellished. No Nigerian pushed back because we wanted to maintain the peace.

 History was abolished from school and the Biafran narratives gained currency. Igbo people started beating their chest and started saying more outlandish things. As our parents were making sacrifices to reintegrate the Igbo people into Nigeria mainstream, a lot of the Igbo people started thinking those actions were appeasement. We just wanted peace.

All over Nigeria, you have Igbo markets. This is because many communities donated lands to the Igbo people to start these markets. Today, the Biafrans will say they got those places due to their hard work and Igbo ingenuity. Those markets became a congregation point for Igbo people outside Igbo land. They became successful and the true character of the Biafran came to life.

They will brag that they brought development and that the indigenes are just simply lazy and jealous. Alaba Market was donated to the Igbo people by Governor Lateef Jakande In 1979. This land was given to them as free leasehold in perpetuity. It became the Alaba Market. Since 1979 to this day, that market does not have any non-Igbo with a stall there. It is the same all over the country. The Igbo people will always carry out ethnic cleansing wherever they are trading.

 Empirical observations will show that you may not find a non-Igbo having a stall in Onitsha market or Aba market. How do they do it? They form cartels and fix prices. No one except members of these Igbo cartels can compete in these environments. Sooner or later, the Non-Igbo are forced to close or sell his place to another Igbo trader. This is how the Igbo market in Warri became Igbo market. These various actions lead to insularity and paranoia and they reinforce each other’s negative opinion about their host. Any minor disagreement becomes an attack on the entire Igbo people.

Governor Soludo recently demolished illegal structures in Onitsha. No one accused him of destroying properties belonging to the Igbo people. Illegal structures are demolished in Lagos and that becomes a war against Igbo people. Due to their insularity, the Igbo people reinforce and transmit these stories without any context. The Biafrans pick this up and there are more cries for Biafra.

At the end, everyone forgets what led to the demolition and the story becomes the wanton destruction of properties belonging to the Igbo people. Anger is stoked and proponents of Biafra flames the fire that will eventually incinerate every one. The initial action is forgotten and the Igbo people are now the victim.

This is similar to what led to our loss of the First Republic. This is what the present proponents of Biafra are conveniently forgetting. They seem to think the fire next time will be kind to them and they have become more bellicose. For every action, there is an equal opposite reaction.  The killing of the leaders of any people always leads to chaos and uprising. The killing of the ArchDuke of Sarajevo led to the First World War. The killing of    Habyarimana of Rwanda led to the Rwanda genocide. These actions happened because the leader is the collective consciousness of the people.

When Ahmadu Bello, Tafawa Balewa and other Northern leaders were killed, there was no spontaneous uprising in the North in spite of the taunting and provocations from the Biafrans. The last straw was when Aguyi Ironsi abolished the regions and there was a spontaneous uprising in the North.

One of the least talked about in these uprisings is the reciprocal uprising in the East where Northerners were slaughtered. In Elele, the Hausa quarters were raised by Igbo youth gangs called Bakassi boys, who slaughtered all the Hausa people including people from Benue who spoke Hausa. Some of the Northerners who were given passage to go to the North by train were all murdered. The train was stopped and all the Northerners on that train, including women and children, going back to the North were killed and their bodies thrown into the imo river. A woman named Halima who survived the attack wrote a book in Hausa about her ordeal.

When the Biafrans tell the story, they assume that they were not participants in this sordid ordeal. The Hausa Fulani have moved on as they understand that those were the losses of war. The Hausa/ Fulani are still skeptical as to why the Igbo people cannot come to the table of reconciliation. It is this attitude of the Biafrans that has made them come to the understanding that the Igbo people are not mature for leadership and will abuse power if they are given the opportunity. Anyone who has sympathy for Biafra should not be seen near the corridors of power in Nigeria. They are preoccupied with vengeance.

Have any Igbo acknowledged the ethnic cleansing that was perpetrated against the Hausa people in Okigwe , Port Harcourt , Owerri and the Igbo enclaves at the beginning of hostilities? What did those of us in the Midwest do to the Igbo people that they subjected our region to murder and mayhem? It was the season of alienation. The fact that the biafrans think their hands are clean is very disturbing. If Nigeria hates the Igbo people the way they claim, how come they make so much money and taunt us with their advancement? Who is really oppressing who? Under Sani Abacha, Ojukwu directed all federal government contracts to the Igbo people. More than 75 % of Jonathan’s cabinet was Igbo people. Obasanjo did more for the Igbo people than any other president mentioned here. The Igbo claim they have about 80 % of the houses in Abuja. Are these due to discrimination or favoritism? Obasanjo did more for the Igbo people than any other president in our history.

Those of us in the Midwest who were violated by the invading Biafra army have decided to bury the hatchet for the love of country. We were never compensated. The Hausa Fulani have been magnanimous to move on but the Igbo people who started the whole fracas cannot seem to find a way to develop a new sense of brotherhood.

Those who are pleading for Nnamdi Kanu are not Nigerians. I am afraid that with this new aggression and bellicosity of Biafrans, Nigerians will be forced to push the Igbo out of the federation. It is becoming very glaring that the Igbo people have mobbed so much lies and have developed a pathological hatred for Nigeria. This is the only way I can explain their perpetual anger towards other Nigerians. Nigeria is Igbo’s Problem and Igbo people are Nigerians’ problem. Their loyalty is to Biafra. This is the only reason why they exhume lies to justify their aggression towards Nigerians.

DR AUSTIN ORETTE WRITES FROM HOUSTON TEXAS