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Gowon has no business praying in Igboland *Abia visit mockery to Ironsi, PDP tackles Otti
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has launched an intensive attack on Alex Otti, Governor-elect in Abia State over his invitation of Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s war-time Head of State as a special guest for special prayers ahead of his inauguration on May 29, saying the decision stoked some grave implications.
Among the implications was that the former Head of State, not only led to the annihilation of millions of Igbo people during the civil war, through deliberate hunger, and bombardment of civilian targets, but was in fact at the centre of the coup that led to the killing of the late Aguyi Ironsi, first Nigerian Head of State and an indigene of Umuahia, the Abia State capital, where the inauguration would take place.
The PDP, in a statement, by Abraham Amah, the Vice Chairman, of the state chapter, maintained that Gowon was the wrongest person to pray in Igboland, let alone Umuahia, adding that without first apologising for his past roles, the attempt would amount to gross insensitivity to the feelings of the people.
The full statement, read: “The attention of the Abia PDP has been drawn to a news item in circulation on social media indicating that Nigeria’s former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon would on Sunday April 23, 2023 lead a prayer session in one Master’s Vessel Church Umuahia, Abia State under the auspices of his pet project, Nigeria Prays, to herald a new Abia. Whatever ‘a new Abia’ means.
“The press release signed by the Abia State Coordinator of Nigeria Prays, Apostle Chuks Alozie named General Yakubu Gowon and the Abia governor-elect Dr. Alex Otti as special guests of honour, Vice Chancellor of the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Prof. Madu Ofo Iwe as guest speaker and Governor Okezie Ikpeazu as chief host.
“While the PDP does not object to praying for Abia State and Nigeria at large at any given time, we are worried about the choice of General Yakubu Gowon as a special guest of honour and the Team Lead as well as the timing of the prayer session. The name, Yakubu Gowon is unsettling to many people in the South East given the ignoble roles he played during the Biafran Civil War for which he is yet to render any public apology.
“Moreover, the choice of General Gowon as the guest of honour at an event in the home town of slain General Aguiyi Ironsi who was killed by coupists among whom was General Gowon and the subsequent pogrom and fratricidal 30-month Biafran Civil War that led to the massacre of millions of South Easterners in an orchestrated orgy of violence smacks of indifference and insensitivity to the sensibilities of the people of South East. To many, it sounds like the eventual triumph over the conquest of the South East and perpetuation of dominance over the Igbo nation.
“The PDP wonders if there are no other men of God who could be called upon to lead the prayer session except the very Yakubu Gowon who oversaw the genocidal killing of the people of the South East and the continuous implementation of the State-policy for her subjugation and marginalisation in all facets of Nigeria’s national life. It beats our imagination and quite irreconcilably that a state like Abia that has produced a Catholic Bishop and other high ranking members of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN that are well versed in the word and sacrament would settle for a man whose hands are tainted with the blood of defenseless Igbos to pray for the State. This is an aberration that finds no place of comfort in the face of every imaginable scrutiny.
“Up till today, General Yakubu Gowon remains unrepentant and is yet to publicly admit his mistakes in the Civil War, including reneging on the international treaty at Aburi, Ghana where the most plausible solutions to the intractable questions of Nigeria’s unity were soundly proffered by himself, General Emeka Ojukwu and members of international community.
“The only way the prayer session would make meaning to the millions of South Easterners, dead and alive, is for General Gowon to use the opportunity of the prayer session and convert it to a moment of truth and apologise to the people for his role in the atrocious war that led to the untimely death of millions of our very resourceful people.
“And to those who have become overzealous with the prospects of a Labour Party government in Abia State and are looking for very many ways, howbeit meaningless, to identify with the Labour Party, let us warn that this prayer session is one of the many fruitless efforts that has derailed and has no significance in the lives of Abians. This prayer session under Gowon’s watch will only bring back memories of old wounds and rather than healing, would only make the wounds afresh except there is a public atonement for the sins.
“We call on the organisers of the prayer session to prevail upon General Yakubu Gowon to admit his errors before, during and after the Biafran Civil War and apologise to the people of the South East while he is still alive and write his name in gold because no time is late to do the right thing. He should borrow a leaf from former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel who after more than 70 years apologised for the Holocaust and opened the doors of Germany to millions of migrants from Africa and the Middle East to change the narrative about Germany’s inhumanity as portrayed by the fascist Nazis. To the members of the PDP and the good people of Abia State, we urge everyone to remain calm, peaceful and have an abiding faith in the ability of Abians to make Abia a better place for all of us.”
I will always refer to the encounter I once had with Kenneth Idiodi. He was then the leader of the Rosicrucian Society in Nigeria, otherwise known as Amok. It was a sit-down at Zodiac Hotel Enugu. Then, I was the reporter of The Guardian in the Coal City.
You know the Amok faith bases its philosophy or belief on the law of Retributive Justice – the law of Karma. That is to say, everything you do in life has its rewards or punishment in equal measure – much like the measure you give, the measure you receive.
I don’t know how much this society draws or links this belief from or with the Bible, but I do recall Jesus Christ warning Simon Peter – return your sword to the scabbard – for he who kills by the sword, dies by the sword.
As a child growing up I listened to one of the epics of Oriental Brothers with the lyrics – ogbu mma ga-esi n’mma na, ogba egbe ga-esi n’egbe na ooo! Translated – he who kills by the sword will die by the sword, he who kills by the gun will die by the nozzle of the gun.
Now, here is where this is relevant in present Nigerian reality – the reason I’m putting details of that encounter out publicly once again, having done so previously.
During that encounter, Idiodi used one event in Nigeria to illustrate his point. He told me of a Nigerian leader who commanded the troop that carried out the Asaba massacre in the heat of the Nigerian civil war – an episode, said to have claimed over 2,000 able-bodied men who had come out to welcome the Nigerian soldiers with songs and dances only to fall in the hail of bullets that descended on them like rainstorms – was not spared by fate.
That commander was to meet his own death in a hail of bullets even as a Head of State. He never mentioned the name of the military top brass. But I used my tongue to count my teeth to come to the answer. You could also do same – use your tongue.
Now, how does this relate? You may have followed the outing of General Yakubu Gowon at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, Abuja, where he presented his autobiography titled: My Life of Duty and Allegiance, that contained what seemed his memoir on the Nigerian civil war, which he prosecuted as Head of State.
I’m sure you must have been observing the debate therefrom that event. Now, I’m not so much enamoured of the debate as I’m of the nuances surrounding that unfortunate episode and the role of Gowon in it, given my takeaway from that Idiodi encounter some two decades ago.
Does Gowon, now a nonagenarian really believe that presenting a pious, if not saintly account of himself to the world as snippets of his book, which I picked up here and there suggests, truly suffices for the atrocities of that period?
Take the Asaba massacre for example. Was that the handiwork of Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, whom the former Head of State seems to blame for everything that went wrong. Was he also the one that commanded that mass slaughtering of innocent men?
Under your nose as Head of State, you watched citizens slaughtered mercilessly like infested herds in the streets – you watched young girls corralled into leprosy colonies and wantonly raped before being wasted – you watched as train coaches bearing people fleeing the scene were stopped and their human cargoes thrown alive into River Benue like rotten goods for fishes to feast on – you watched all these and didn’t lift a finger.
Then as Head of State, you not only supervised but watched millions of children with distended stomachs, tiny feet, glazy eyes, heavy heads on ropelike necks, practically begging for death to come quickly and save them from further punishment.
You supervised and watched the cataclysmic eruptions from the blitzkrieg on churches, markets and hospitals – all to keep Nigeria together. In your mind the brutal and merciless butchery of innocent people who were not soldiers and had nothing to do with the war could be explained away just like that?
O! It was Ojukwu that caused it. Ojukwu was the one who released the bombs, caused the blockades that led to the kwashiorkor that killed millions or other atrocities thereof? What a pity!
Now, I return to Idiodi. How else could anyone interpret today’s Nigeria without introducing the law of retributive justice that the Amok leader spoke of? How do you fault the link of the commander who massacred over 2,000 souls dying by the barrel of the same gun, even as Head of State?
How could anyone fail to relate what is happening to our Gowon today with the past? This is a Geneal that wakes up to see hundreds of his brothers and sisters being buried in mass graves as was done during the onslaught he supervised against another people and he still thinks it has nothing to do with him?
Now, the story you told at that event in Abuja on Tuesday, is not new. You simply repeated yourself. My interpretation of that event is that you’re a man undergoing daily torture. You wouldn’t be a human being otherwise, given what is before you, which didn’t start today.
You’re probably trying to escape your fate by appealing to public sympathy. How helpful could that be in the face of the clear evidence of your culpability in the deliberate wasting of more than three million souls? Nobody would believe you.
Yes! They could humour you. But that’s the best anyone could do for you. I hear money rained like a fountain and that you left the scene with billions of naira in your kitty. At 90? Haba General!
Now, here is the thing General. None of these would help.
None would work. You have tried prayers. But you forget that the prayer of sinner is an abomination and a reproach before God, unless he repents. You have also written the book. Surely, this too would end up in the trashcan of history – meaningless piece of conjectures, propaganda, half-truths and outright lies – perhaps!
But, why don’t you try the one thing you have been running away from, for more than five decades – go on your knees in total supplication and surrender, repentance and penance – then rise, call all Nigerians and empty yourself with the truth.
Thereafter openly apologise to the millions of souls whose tormenting wailing you probably hear every day during your disturbed sleep and in your quiet moments, but choose to suppress with these baby tales. Ask them for forgiveness, genuinely and see. There may lie the answer you seek.
Try that and see if it wouldn’t be a more efficacious cure for this decades-old wound than this Ojukwu-bashing and those wasted prayer sessions. You might not only have atoned for the past, but saved the future. May God guide you.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice
“Now that the court has ruled against it, we are sure that, in the coming days, we will witness a mass exodus from the ruling party,” were the words with which the African Democratic Congress (ADC) welcomed Wednesday’s ruling of the Federal High Court, Abuja reversing the deadline for party primaries, among others.
Bolaji Abdullahi, spokesman, who conveyed the party’s excitement over the development, said it viewed the ruling as vindication of its objections to key aspects of the electoral body’s guidelines at the time they were issued.
Recalling its specific objections to the strict timelines on membership registration as well as the conduct of party primaries, the statement, said: “The decision of the court on these issues, including those that directly contradict the constitution, is therefore a welcome vindication of our position.”
Stressing that the ruling, which removed the impediment placed by the guidelines on politicians who wished to seek alternative platforms to contest elections, was a positive development that would promote freedom of association, the statement, added: “We believed at the time that that particular restriction was designed to prevent people from leaving the ruling party, APC.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Cuba on Thursday that the United States was laser-focused on changing the communist system, after the island was stunned by a US indictment of its former president Raul Castro.
The US military announced that the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its escort warships had entered the Caribbean, although President Donald Trump, asked if the deployment was meant to intimidate Cuba, said, “No, not at all.”
Rubio, a Cuban American and vociferous opponent of Havana’s government, described the island 90 miles (145 kilometres) from the US shore as a “failed state” as it suffers a major economic crisis.
“Their economic system doesn’t work. It’s broken, and you can’t fix it with the current political system that’s in place. What they’ve gotten used to all these years is just buying time and waiting us out.
“They’re not going to be able to wait us out or buy time. We’re very serious. We’re very focused. The US preference is always a diplomatic solution, but President Donald Trump has other options at his disposal.”
Stating that Cuba had tentatively accepted an offer by the United States of $100 million in aid in return for reforms, he said it was unclear if the United States would accept Cuba’s terms, as Washington insists on circumventing the military-backed conglomerate GAESA, which dominates the island’s economy.
Rubio said Thursday that the GAESA chief’s Florida-based sister, Adys Lastres Morera, had been arrested and was being held by US immigration authorities, adding in an X post: “Managing real estate assets…while also aiding Havana’s communist regime, until I terminated her permanent resident status.”
The charges against Raul Castro — younger brother of Fidel Castro, the late iconic US nemesis who led Cuba’s communist revolution that culminated in 1959 — stem from the deadly downing of two civilian planes manned by anti-Castro pilots in 1996.
Cuban authorities called on citizens to protest the “despicable” indictment, with the official newspaper Granma urging Cubans to gather outside the US embassy in Havana on Friday at 7:30 am (1230 GMT).
“This isn’t really an accusation, something from more than 30 years ago, but rather a public attack on a public figure,” Fabian Fernandez, a 30-year-old accountant, told AFP in Havana.
Trump in January seized on a US domestic indictment of Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro to send in US forces to depose him and take him into custody.
“The idea is to say, we can do to you what we did to Nicolas Maduro,” said Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
The Maduro operation led to the end of free oil from Venezuela to Cuba, which relied on its ally for nearly half its needs.
Cubans have suffered power outages of up to 20 hours a day and taps running dry.
Runaway inflation has caused the price of basic goods to soar and mountains of trash have piled up on the streets of Havana.
In addition to murder, Castro has been charged with conspiracy to kill Americans and destruction of aircraft.
The Cuban government called the 1996 shootdown was “legitimate self-defense” against an airspace violation.
China and Russia both criticized Trump’s steps on Cuba, which come as he tries to end an unpopular war he started with Israel against Iran.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a press briefing that Washington “should stop brandishing the sanctions stick and the judicial stick against Cuba and stop threatening force at every turn.”
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We believe that under no circumstances should such methods — which border on violence — be used against either former or current heads of state.
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