By BEN OGU
Every question tends to elicit an answer to a puzzle, and without presuming or presupposing, it anticipates a clarification, which it can establish or refute based on known and extant behaviors. From the 1914 amalgamation and the imposed name Nigeria on the numerous nationalities of former British colonies, to the incident of the Nigerian civil war, and present quagmiric political disaster, one wonders and asks: are the leaders of Southern Nigeria stooge hirelings instituted to subjugate their own people under the Northern Fulani hegemony as a necessary condition to keep Nigeria? From the federal to the state and grassroots communities, local councils and villages, leaders and kinsmen of Southern Nigeria work frantically as hired proxy and surrogate representatives of Northern power to continuously subjugate the South under their lordship and interests.
In a desperate-to-rule obsession in the pre-war era of 1967, a non-Fulani Gowon of the North insisted on being Nigerian head of state against known and established military seniority hierarchy and tradition. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu resisted, insisting instead on Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, a Yoruba, or other Yoruba senior officers to be head of state, even excluding himself, Ojukwu of Igbo extraction. But the Northern group staged a coup and installed Gowon over his seniors in the army, against all military traditions and antecedents. This provoked the ire of the entire catastrophe that spiraled into a civil war as a result of Ojukwu’s defiance of Gowon’s illegitimacy. Against this background, bearing in mind that Ojukwu stood for the right of the Yoruba and the South, one wonders, against all imagination and common sense, why the Yoruba South West joined forces with the same North against the Igbo South East that defended the right of the Yoruba to be Nigerian head of state, which caused the war. Till date, the Igbo remain the long-time scapegoated and sacrificed victims of that war.
It is on record that the North were the first ever to reject Nigerian unity, against Nnamdi Azikiwe’s naivety and myopia hell-bent on a unified Nigeria. Aguiyi Ironsi still went even further with the gospel of one indivisible Nigeria and eventually paid with his life. On the contrary, the Yorubas remain the foremost protagonists of regionalism and self-determination against Nigerian unity. Obafemi Awolowo, the foremost Yoruba statesman, never tolerated or believed in an indivisible Nigeria. His optimum desire was regionalism and the Yoruba nation, which he gave his best, with Nigeria as secondary. Yet, following the Aburi accord of Ghana, which upheld regionalism, federalism or even confederalism, which Gowon allegedly agreed to but later reneged on, one wonders again why the Yoruba South West did not join forces with Ojukwu’s regional vision that conforms with their political ideology and inclination; instead, they took a swing to the Northern reluctant unity against their natural disposition for regionalism and self-determination. Their tipping to the side of the federal government of Gowon’s Nigeria and the North to exterminate the South Eastern neighbors for Nigeria remains an unimaginable action of clinical inconsistency that defies logic.
The Southern Differential
Following the same trend was the incident of the activist Ken Saro-Wiwa of the then South Eastern Nigeria, who was executed by Northern Abacha for forming the Movement for the Survival of his Ogoni people and his protest against oil environmental degradation and destruction of his people. His people allowed him to be eliminated as ransom to keep Nigeria and the oil at the expense of his life and the Ogoni people. How did the present South South and the entire Southern Nigeria resist his execution for advocating for his people? Nobody took his side. How many Northerners, including those armed to the teeth to ravage the country, have been executed to keep and save Nigeria? Yet all the South were and remain either passive collaborators, spectators, or active accomplices to imprison or execute their own people fighting to save their people in any part of the South to save Nigeria, which remains unsaved. In 1993, Ibrahim Babangida scuttled the overwhelmingly won presidential election of Moshood Abiola, a Yoruba South West. The Yoruba and the rest of the South condoned it to keep Nigerian unity. Abiola lost his life in the long run. Convinced of the gullibility of the entire South and his people, they were placated with the caricature of the ephemeral June 12 “Democracy Day” memorial, to keep Nigeria at the cost of his blood.
Further, in 1999, the same Babangida from the North again scuttled the presidential ambition of Dr. Alex Ekwueme of the South East in a malicious conspiracy of Igbophobia. Whiteouting Ekwueme’s presidency, he shortchanged him with Olusegun Obasanjo to further placate the Yoruba against the Igbo in a divide-and-rule selective scheme, tactfully to incite disaffection and bad blood between the two ethnic groups, again making the South their minions and servile pawns used at the beck and call of the North without any consequences.
Then came Sunday Adeyemo Igboho of Oyo South West, who rose to challenge the unprovoked invasion, kidnappings, killings and destruction of his Oyo people and farmlands, and subsequently declared the Oduduwa sovereign nation along with the Biafrans. Declared wanted by a Northern Buhari-led regime then, he was self-exiled and later arrested and detained for confronting unjust aggressors and invaders of his people, without prosecuting the killer invaders. To keep Nigeria to the detriment of the survival of the Yoruba West and Southern Nigeria, neither the Yoruba South West nor the entire South rose in defense of Sunday Igboho or resisted the treatment meted to him for acts of self-defense. All were muted and he was silenced to keep the union.
With the continuous murderous spread of the ravaging killer herdsmen across the entire South, Nnamdi Kanu rose from the South East in defense and against the invasion and massacre of the South East by the Northern Fulani invaders, leading to his eventual resuscitation of the Biafran dream in interrogation of the validity of the Nigerian state. A combined self-determination protest and declaration of Biafran and Oduduwa nations unnerved the Nigerian government, which became hysterical and troubled by an uncommon coalition that might rock the floundering unity engine; they went for Nnamdi Kanu and yet did nothing about the killer invaders. Neither the Yoruba West, the Igbo South East nor the entire Southern Nigeria rose to confront the federal government for the murderous invasion, kidnapping and massacre of the South East or the South West by the Northern Fulani herdsmen, nor questioned the government for a glaring nepotism. It was the formation of Nnamdi Kanu’s ESN security outfit, following the Yoruba Amotekun security for self-defense against the deadly invaders, and the passivity and silence of the South East politicians and governors, that caught the attention of the true patriots of Nigeria and the South East minions, who quickly bounced on Nnamdi Kanu and diagnosed him as fathomed terrorism and anti-Nigeria. His own people of the South East were the Judas that marked him inch by inch, kissed, lured and handed him over to his jailers, to keep Nigeria going as one, while doing nothing against the Northern Fulani predators.
All levels of Nigerian courts acquitted Nnamdi Kanu of the jungle verdict, and yet they contrived to jail him to consolidate Nigeria. Ironically, while Buhari of the Fulani North whose regime accused and arrested him could not jail him, it was a Southerner, Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government that put him in jail to massage and satisfy the Northern wish to keep Nigeria. While Ojukwu became the victim for defending the truth, justice and right of Yoruba leadership, Aguiyi Ironsi lost his life defending Nigerian unity, Ken Saro-Wiwa of the South shed his blood for confronting Nigeria in defense of his people, Moshood Abiola paid with his life for confronting Nigeria in quest of his electoral justice, Sunday Igboho was marked for advocating for his people of South West safety, Nnamdi Kanu was incarcerated for life for the same reason, the EndSARS protesters, mainly from the South, were messed up in Lagos for revolting against Nigeria, all with the cooperation of their people.
After previous Nigerian presidents failed to run a Muslim–Muslim presidential ticket, only a Southerner, Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Southern Nigeria, broke the jinx to successfully impose a Muslim–Muslim ticket on the South in a back-to-back run without any challenge, because it favours the North.
In the long analysis, the question that blares at the face of the Southern Nigerian people is: are the Southern leaders proxy stooges for the Fulani North against the South? Could there be a subterranean unwritten pact making Southern Nigeria a subject and Holocaust sacrifice to keep Nigeria, and by extension, the Muslim religion, at the expense of the South? Besides, whosoever must sit at the seat of Aso Rock can only be there successfully on the condition that he satisfies their exclusive political preferences and cravings, or he vacates.
The South South are conditioned to hate the Igbo to the advantage of the North. The Yoruba are inclined to hate the Igbo to the advantage of the North, and all of them are mutually resentful against each other in favor of the North. Worse still, the Igbos, the most self-hating and self-destructive group, their politicians and governors as money-mechanized group, aided by a senseless Igbo-enweze (Igbo have no King) ultra-republicanism, all work as a team of errand toys and robots to massage the cravings and advantage of the North, who stand as deities in control of their destiny. That is why the Imo state politicians spearheaded the extermination of their own citizens in the name of IPOB, in order to keep Nigeria, because they rose to defend their people, while these politicians did nothing to the aggressors of their people.
Superfluity of Prophets and Dearth of Prophetic Voices
Southern Nigeria has a great flood of prophetic and megaphonic Catholic and non-Catholic bishops, archbishops, pastors and men of God and liberation ministers more than the North and the whole world. Some are employed by and work for the federal government as chancellors and pro-chancellors of state and federal universities, government chaplaincies and important panels and committees. Ironically, there seems to be a prevailing prevaricating oratory, intellectual evasiveness and managed cautious silence among them, just to maintain a flowery religious sanctimoniousness and political correctness at the expense of the endangered masses, including the incarceration of freedom fighters like Nnamdi Kanu and others. This disposition of say-or-do-nothing attitude about the ills of the country, and in particular the intimidation and subjugation of Southern Nigeria and Christians, collaborates with and enables the boldness of the existential selective injustices, as their neutrality and caution serve an acquiescence, or a given that all is well. Most of our men of God and the pulpit of the South are only heroes of opportunistic election-gambling prophecies, who forecast who God told them will win or lose the election, while others feature in intellectual write-ups that hardly stir the fly of injustice against the South, Christianity, or the entire country. On the contrary, and most annoyingly, the Muslim clerics vocally and boldly intimidate us, and insist that sharia should be adopted in the constitution without challenge. Others irascibly intimidate the South and the entire country with a gush of entitlement that makes everyone cuddle in dread that the country belongs to them. The Southern and Christian senators mope in cooperation with the numbness of a statue. All go with no consequence of reaction as if to say all is right because they are from the other side, creating a concession that the country belongs to a certain select group whose pawn and playtoy the other part—the South—are.
The Catholic voice as a balancing equation
In the history of this country, a certain group and religious sect continuously maintained the monopoly of unprovoked intimidation and massacre of other Nigerians, who only ran for dear life. But one fateful day, their cheap victims refused to run, and braced up for headlong confrontation, believing that their aggressors also have blood to protect. It was the usual vulnerable victims that turned lions that tamed them for caution. While no thanks to some Muslim clerics for their constant inflammable speeches in assertion for religious and political birthright and monopoly of intimidation and domination, it is scandalous that the prophetic voice of Christian clergymen is tied to their extreme apolitical comfort and political correctness. This makes every Nigerian regime maintain a wicked dealing to sinfully docile and passive citizens and Southerners. But thanks to the uncommon difference made by the Catholic bishops, which resonated in a sigh of breath of gratitude from a cowed and cuddled Nigerian mass that has always been in dearth, but in need of prophetic voices to echo their suppressed humanity, and long to have it more in abundance.
The reverberating wave of Cardinal John Onaiyekan and his group of Catholic bishops at the seat of power in Abuja recently represents the balance of equation in a country where only a certain religious sect and incumbent regime hold the license of unchallenged monologue and monopoly of terror against a silent majority. Ideal prophetic responsibility should perforce stir the comfort and passivity of true shepherds towards the vulnerability of their flock. Not to stand as the voice of the voiceless oppressed, or maintain saintly neutrality, or play to the gallery of political neutrality, apolitical hibernation and monastic nicety to maintain false peace while the people burn, is complicity. Pacifism is a welcome Christian philosophy of peace, but becomes dangerous when it arms the oppressor.
Nigeria, a common patrimony and project
It has been unequivocally voiced that Nigeria is not a homogeneous nation or country of one people, but an accretion of disparities of people glossily lumped together for foreigners’ economic utility. But this historically and anthropologically self-evident truth could be ignored and the country managed and harnessed as a common patrimony and project, by blending the citizens socially, politically and linguistically into an adhesive and inseparable entity that eliminates ethnic lines with a socio-political orientation that embraces blindness to religious chauvinism, where all see themselves as one humanity. Only on that platform is the country a common patrimony and project that belongs to all, discriminates and excludes none, and where no religion projects a primitive primordial emotion of superiority, and none is presumed to play a second fiddle. Nigeria would be the ideal and model of all nations and a haven, if weaponization of religious chauvinism and political and economic brigandry is reduced and in fact if it becomes an officially circular state, where all live in the dictate of their best conscience of mutual compassion and empathy.
The absence of the above setting, with glaring institutionalized theocratic and ethnocentric and religious imposition, unarguably makes Nigeria a pre-1914 setting and, in fact, an alternative. But having been inadvertently allowed to be otherwise, why would Southern Nigeria play the victim pawn, as though it is not a common patrimony and project? Or, is it a consensual pact that the Igbo, the Yoruba, the South South, the Middle Belt or the entire South submit their blood and religion as sacrifice to appease the gods of unity and indissolubility? And why do the South East governors and politicians, of all the rest, give up their people as libation poured to the god of unity in a country of common patrimony?
*Rev. Fr. Ogu writes from Imo State
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