Columns
No General Gowon! Two million children needn’t die to keep Nigeria one!
Published
2 weeks agoon
By Sunny Igboanugo
Would you do the same thing today as you did then? This was a question I put to the late Ikemba Nnewi, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu in one of the several meetings I had with him while he was alive. Of course it was all about his Biafra Story. He turned to me with his trademark bulging eyes almost boring holes in my forehead. Then, chuckling, as usual, he retorted: How do you expect me, at 70 to do the same thing the same way I did it in my 30s.
I didn’t press further. That was enough. There was no need to. The response was indicative of his acknowledgement that some of the decisions and actions he took, prior, during and even after, as the leader of the Biafran effort turned out to be mistakes, some out of youthful exuberance and he wouldn’t travel the same route in his later years, given the wisdom and benefit of age. Ojukwu died on November 26, 2011 at 78, many years after that interview.
The same question was posed to Yakubu Gowon, Ojukwu’s opposite number, who prosecuted the same war on behalf of Nigeria, during an engagement with Daily Trust, as one of the events to mark the 90th birthday anniversary of the General, who today, is the longest-serving military leader – 1966-1975 – nine years.
In the interview I read at the weekend, he was asked if he would have acted differently given another opportunity. His answer was emphatic. No! It was then followed with a long narrative of how he needed to do anything and everything to keep Nigeria together and to prevent it from disintegrating. He embellished it by going into a chest-beating mode about how he achieved the Biafran defeat without outside help.
Hear him: “I don’t think I would have done anything differently. Every effort was made to make sure that the situation did not degenerate into a breakaway. I had a duty to make sure that the breakup of the country did not happen. We had to fight for two and a half years and made sure that there was no interference from outside.
“There was no question of allowing any nation or power to get involved in our crisis. If you remember, in the Congo you had United Nations forces made up of Nigerian troops and others from other parts of Africa to deal with the problem. At least we were able to deal with that problem and make sure we were able to live again as a people. So, I couldn’t have done it differently.”
Now, this is where I have a problem with the General. His penchant for sticking to the same narrative for more than 60 years since that awful event, is what rankles. I never heard Gowon, either before or in the recent, admit for once that there was any mistake on his part in the series of events before, during and even after the war.
It is not only regrettable, it is tragic! What the former Head of State, said invariably, is that he would still have killed over three million Igbo, two million of them, women and children, as some estimates would have it, just to keep Nigeria together and there was no other way he could have gone about it and achieved the same purpose.
Now, you would have thought age was playing a fast one on him and either he did not grasp the question put to him quite clearly or he lacked the articulacy to string together a credible, believable and more judicious answer. But that is hardly the case. This is the same string of logic he has maintained all through in his account of the war – a narrative that flows principally from the propaganda components of the Nigerian war managers.
It means, were the war fought over again, and were he to preside, he would’ve still sanction the soldiers who wantonly shot at the able-bodied youths that congregated at the Ogbogologo Square in Asaba to welcome them with drumming and dancing, killing an estimated 2,000 of them in one fell-swoop – the notorious Asaba massacre.
He’s saying that he would still be silent while Russian and Egyptian pilots, who conducted those deadly flights dropped their lethal contents in market places, hospitals and other sacred places, which left decapitated human parts scattered in different directions apart from burying many more in deep holes made by the impacts of the blitzkriegs.
Even with the benefit of hindsight and the present picture of Nigeria, Gowon, at 90, and 60 years after the war is still maintaining that he would still ignore those pictures of thousands of children with chicken legs, distended stomachs, glazy eyes buried in shrunken socket, mounted on heavy, hairless heads. How else does anyone describe tragedy?
Even in his own narrative about the war, Gowon still found an uncanny way of pushing the blame outside his domain, despite being the Head of State during the outbreak of hostilities that eventually led to it. Hearing him talk about how the South East decided to secede from Nigeria, as the sole culprit, you’d think that Ndigbo, who occupied the area just woke up one day and decided to break out from Nigeria to form Biafra.
Not in the Daily Trust encounter, nor anywhere else where he gave his account, had anyone heard Gowon mention the hundreds of Ndigbo, slaughtered in different places in the north – the pregnant women, whose bowels were torn open with daggers and their unborn babies pulled out, the headless bodies that were littered everywhere in all the cities and town, the young Igbo ladies that were corralled into leprosy colonies and forced to mate with the inmates and the other atrocities that formed the story of the pogrom of that era that happened under his nose without raising a finger.
Those headless bodies and others in various stages of decapitation which arrived in train coaches in Enugu and other tales of mindless atrocities committed against Ndigbo and the need to give the survivors a safe haven, were the reasons Ojukwu gave as immediate cause of the demand for Biafra and therefore the war. Any critical mind would have expected Gowon to speak to this, either to debunk it or give his own argument as to why it was not enough to demand for self-governance.
But mum has always been the word. As he has always been wont, all you hear is the repetitive, one-sided, puerile, spurious and mostly obtuse monologue of keeping Nigeria together, as he maintained in the latest outing, where he told his host: “I have always said that if there’s no secession, there wouldn’t be a break out and there wouldn’t be a question of civil war because it got to the stage that the situation was getting pretty clear that a part of the country, the South-east wanted to secede. My duty and profession at that time demanded to make sure that we kept the country together. And that was how it happened.”
I never even knew him to be a narcissist or possessing any element of that trait in his blood. Indeed, I had always taken the General as the humblest Nigerian leader ever. That was until I heard his gloating in that interview. He even accepted himself being likened to Abraham Lincoln. Of course he should be cut his slacks. Lincoln won a civil war in America while he won the Nigerian edition. So, he’s right.
But then what? Okay, he succeeded in “keeping Nigeria together.” How is the face of that Nigeria today? Is he happy with the optics as well as the sights and sounds? That same America of Lincoln has progressively integrated all segments and component parts of the society and progressively worked at it that all the veneer of discrimination has almost been eliminated to create equality of all citizens.
Today, the picture of a black man is hanging somewhere in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington as a product of the war against slavery Lincoln fought. But what do you have here? At the same time the highest Igbo man in power in Nigeria today is the misery Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives. Yet, not a whimper from the General.
Intriguingly, the snake, which bit Ndigbo so many years ago, seems to have found its way into the General’s backyard. Like the South East, the North Central part of Nigeria, has remained a theatre of wanton human carnage for many years now. Gowon’s kins have been served the same fate, if not worse, of which made Ojukwu pick up arms and say ENOUGH!
Yes! Probably not by jets dropping bombs or fighters firing at fleeing children, but the results are as devastating. I wonder why the General kept silent on that in last weekend’s encounter, just as he has done over the years. Probably the Daily Trust host didn’t ask. It would have been great to know if his idea of one Nigeria included his own kits now scattered in IDP camps all over Nigeria.
Once in Enugu, I interviewed a President of the Rosicrucian Order (AMORC), some decades back. I listened to him connect the Asaba massacre – the bodies of those young men torn apart by bullets, which became eyesore evidence of the darkness of some human hearts – with the bullet-riddled body of an ex-Nigerian leader fingered as the purveyor of that calamity after his assailants waylaid him during a coup.
He had used that connection to adumbrate his teaching about the efficacy of the Law of Karma and how every man must be served with the same plate he did others. I don’t know how this applies to Gowon. But I’m sure that as he clinks glasses in celebration last weekend, a part of his inner voice might be tugging at his heart to remind him of his brothers languishing in those IDP camps, after being chased from their ancestral homes by some brutal invaders.
From what I hear, those now living like refugees, the likes that were replete in Biafra are the lucky ones. Others who were not lucky, faced the worst kind of deaths possible, delivered to them by the same people on whose behest their fathers and brothers visited Igboland with the worst kind of mindless bestiality.
As he sips his wine and digs into that rich plater, the picture of Sunday Igboho at No 10 Donning Street, submitting a letter in demand for the Yoruba Nation, is currently on display everywhere in the media. So are the pictures of the devastation by Boko Haram and other terrorist group who have carved a fiefdom in the North East as well as their brothers doing no less in the North West.
What this suggests is that Ojukwu’s idea of Confederation, which was at the core of the Aburi Accord, and the immediate trigger of the war, might not be a bad idea after all. The idea, which principally was an advocacy for a loose centre for Nigeria, might have allowed for those who see western education as a sin to conduct their own affairs devoid of that external pollution. It would have saved the lives of thousands of Nigerians that have lost their lives in military formations, churches, mosques and plazas.
Gowon swears that he suddenly took ill on return from Aburi, hence could not announce the content of the Aburi Accord. Other accounts think he lied. But whether he lied or not, the fact remains that Ojukwu made the announcement and all he asked was clear. It was not strange either. Rather, it was for Nigeria to be modelled after Great Britain, made up of Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England.
As he buries his teeth into that chicken breast, the General must be reminded that the echoes of anguish reverberating from communities in Benue, Jos, Taraba, Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara are as loud as those in Igboland and that the people of Ibarapa in Oyo State and Owo in Ondo, are still reeling from their own share of pains from the cold hand of gunmen. Those pains might not be there had the Ojukwu variant of the Aburi document been allowed to work.
Even more, the clime called Nigeria today, could have presented the African version of Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Dubai by the competition that could have endured. It would mean sustaining the spirit of what was already on ground in the different regions before the war, had the Confederation idea been allowed to fester. Granted, military rule truncated that idea through the unitary system that it came with, but Confederation would have restored the country back to the status quo ante.
Now, I might not like the idea of mockery and taunting from the traducers of the General who are claiming that God allowed him to live this long to punish him with memories of his people suffering the same fate as the Igbo people he supervised their near annihilation. That would be dancing on the graves and memories of those victims. I’d rather go with the positive side that as the Chief Actor in that horrible theatre of tragedy, Gowon is being offered the opportunity of righting the wrongs of the past.
I think at 90 he must have borne the burden from the images of those children that starved to death long enough and must now offload it by offering the needed apology. I think 60 years is long enough to tell the whole truth as he knows them. That might serve as the adequate penance and restitution he needs to meet God by the time he finally boards the flight that is already taxiing at the tarmac.
Otherwise, to continue to maintain the not-guilty narrative is akin to claiming sainthood. I think his sticking to this unconvincing narrative is to please man. What’s the benefit of looking good to man and displeasing God? If at 90, he is still claiming to have got things right at 32 even with the present picture of the country starring him in the face and saying the direct opposite, it means an uncanny attemp to compete with God for infallibility. That in itself is a great sin and no sinner can see God. Not one with the burden of those two million children of Biafra.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo and I’m The Tiny Voice!
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Columns
Between Jezebel and Esther: My letter to Iyom Bianca Ojukwu
Published
13 hours agoon
November 2, 2024
Between Jezebel and Esther: My letter to Iyom Bianca Ojukwu
By Sunny Igboanugo
Iyom,
I feel compelled to write this letter to you today for several reasons. I had thought it was a bad joke taken too far when I saw your name among the seven nominees named by President Bola Tinubu to his cabinet on Friday, October 25, 2024. My immediate reaction was that the move would have elicited a prompt and angry riposte from you.
I had thought that you would have issued a statement instantly, rejecting the offer as an outright rubbish and warned the purveyors of that inglorious attempt to delete your name from their paper and from their lips permanently. In my Facebook account, I had described you as a deity, which would instantly reject a tainted sacrifice and rather than bless the assault and insult, visit its anger on the harbinger.
When none of such happened, I had hoped that you had decided to take the second option, which was to ignore the move as an irritation, not worthy of your attention. That was until I saw you in body and spirit at the Senate Chambers of the National Assembly fielding questions from the members, some of them salivating like Pavlov dogs, not being able to take their eyes off you, to the extent that Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President had to intervene and demand that they concentrated on the issue at hand.
You could then imagine my emotions at this development. Disappointment is a huge understatement to describe my feelings! I was completely gutted – speechless – eviscerated! How do I describe it? I have not really gotten over this feeling and I had hoped to wake up to the realisation that it was all a bad dream. I have since woken up, the morning after and discovered that it was not a nightmare after all, hence this letter.
I must confess that I know very little about you as a person, having not had any close encounter with you at all. But before I left Enugu to Lagos, I was a regular visitor to the Number 4 Isi-Uzor Street, Independent Layout, home of the late Ikemba Nnewi, Eze Igbo Gburugburu, in my 10-year-stint as the Correspondent of The Guardian, in Enugu. Needless to say that sitting down in the same company with Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, was one of my most cherished experiences as a journalist.
However, I discovered that during those many years, I never set my eyes on you except during ceremonies that required your presence. One of such occasions was at the celebration of the taking of that title from Adama Nri, at the said residence. Another occasion was during the state banquet in honour of then President Olusegun Obasanjo during an official visit to Enugu.
I recall how the Dikedioramma Ndigbo, Amuma N’Egbe-Igwe, Odenigbo Ngwo, who was seated on the same table with the former President, sprang from his seat and rushed to the entrance of the hall to personally lead you to the seat beside him. Outside its fascination and drama that sent a reverberating sensation in the entire hall, neither the significance nor the optics was not lost on anyone. It underscored your place in the heart of the revered Igbo leader and by extension Ndigbo in general.
Though I have not had the privilege of meeting you in person, those who did, have always given you out as highly cerebral, articulate and resourceful. The rest I had always picked from your other public engagements in the media. I recall some of your epistles on the crisis in the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) leadership, which pitted you against some of the elements of the party in Anambra State.
So, in the main, I know that you are not just a beautiful face. Aside being intellectually-mobile, you also have a name to yourself – both your family name and the one you decided to pick up through marriage. You were not only born with the proverbial silver spoon, you are also the owner of gold and silver yourself.
Your personal outlook, also suggests that your closet must be suffusing with nice apparels, while your treasure box must be filled with precious jewels of silver, gold, peals and diamonds. Therefore, it ought to be obvious that these are not your desires in making this move. It would be terrible otherwise.
Now, who could have forgotten that hot slap you delivered to Ebelechukwu Obiano, wife of Willie Obiano, former Governor of Anambra State, as part of the fallouts of the APGA leadership issue? The echoes are yet resonating across the land. That singular incident clearly established demonstrable evidence that you are also a no-nonsense, fearless character, not beholding to any form of inanities of high office.
So, the question is why this? Interestingly, just a few days before this uncanny development, during your keynote address at the annual national conference and convention of the American Veterans of Igbo Descent (AVID) in Dallas, Texas in USA, you accused Igbo leaders of “conspiracy of silence” while using the case of “illegal” detention of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, to elaborate your position.
You were specifically quoted as saying: “It is only when the leaders in Igboland rise up, jettison their perceived conspiracy of silence and confront the truth will there be the slightest possibility of healing and recovery from the unfortunate condition which Igboland currently finds itself in.
“The initial nonchalant attitude towards his (Kanu’s) illegal rendition and continued unlawful incarceration contributed greatly towards inflaming the tensions within the South-east region today. This nonchalant attitude also brought about the unforeseen consequences of opportunistic criminal elements not even remotely connected with the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) coming into the picture.”
Now, what does your being named to Tinubu’s cabinet a few days after this outing and your subsequent acceptance of same suggest? Is it your own way of breaking this “conspiracy of silence?” Is it your own answer to dealing with the issue, which by your own account from that US outing shows you are quite seized of the subject in today’s Igboland?
I ask, Iyom, because I know something must have impelled you to travel this route? Are we expecting that MNK, would be free soon? Were you promised that freedom for the IPOB leader is tied to your playing a role in Tinubu’s government as a quid pro quo, and you had to bend backwards to accept, in order to save Igboland and the people you love so much from the current suffering? Was that the deal?
If in the affirmative, be it known that this journey will have the blessings and prayers of Ndigbo. The spirit the land will bless the footstep. But if on the other hand and in the unlikely event that it is out of hunger for power, perks of office, glamour and the klieg-light, it will be most unfortunate – a most terrible mistake of tragic proportion.
I will not be the one to tell you that APC is a disaster that is happening already. It is not only the most underwhelming government in the history of Nigeria today, it is the most brutal, insensitive, soulless and clueless. The outcry in the street out there tells the full story.
The number of people jumping into the lagoons in Lagos alone and those drinking Snipper to end it all rather than continuing the terrible life of odindu onwu ka mma, are almost competing with those being killed in the streets or in the bushes where their abductors kept them over inability to pay ransoms. The nightmare is indescribable.
But that is on a general level. Specifically, for Ndigbo, it is a totally different tale altogether. It is the civil war doing an encore in a different form. Yes! You may argue that the civil war was more devastating. But that could only be in terms of magnitude of physical damage. But in terms of the spirit driving the current situation, there is hardly any difference.
The bombardment of market places, hospitals, schools and churches may not be there, or the images of the refugee camps of children with distended stomachs, glazy eyes buried in sunken sockets on oblong, hairless heads, carried by tiny necks, but there is another form of blitzkrieg. It is evident as you travel from Enugu to Onitsha or Owerri to Onitsha. Yes! It is there in the eyes of the the people, depicting nothing less than the fears and hopelessness of the war-time hue. It is there in the villages in the noticeable peace of the graveyard that assaults the usually serene firmaments.
There is no mistaking the deliberate wickedness against Ndigbo these past nine years of APC government in Nigeria. It is not only deliberate, it is intentional. Right from the formation of the party, the structure from the distribution of the officers to the appointments in its governments, has been designed to exclude and deny them a space at the dining table.
Any Igbo man or woman laying claim to being part of the APC structure, is simply joking. Not even some lick-spittle elements going overboard to build a university in Igboland where Tinubu would be taught as a subject would change anything. After all, did an Igbo governor not describe Muhammadu Buhari, his predecessor as “next to God?”
What did it fetch him. The people it is meant to please know the game and could distinguish between the pure buffoonery of such outing so quickly so soon. Instead of advancing the course of the people, it only attracts more disdain and deepens the mockery.
Did the same Buhari not ignore him with that trademark disdainful, dismissive expression reserved for Ndigbo alone, when push came to shove? Despite obviously believing that Buhari would make him President if only he could prove how much he could hurt Ndigbo, he did not even get up to five votes at the APC convention for all his efforts at kowtowing, grovelling and spittle-licking to achieve that selfish, if not shameful ambition.
Even the case of MNK depicts another example of the prevailing APC mindset. Before you, every revered Igbo man had tried and failed. They were snubbed in the most disdainful, scornful manner. Ben Nwabueze, had died begging for his freedom.
Mbazulike Amaechi, had pleaded for it as the last favour the Nigeria he fought for its independent should gift him. He died begging. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, went the same way. Not even his June 12 affinity with Tinubu could swing the favour for him. George Obiozo, former President of Ohanaeze, came from the angle of diplomacy. With his immense on-the-field experience, including working as former Director General of the prestigious Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) and Ambassador of Nigeria to the US, he travelled through the known channels. He failed.
Then came his successor, Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, a business mogul, a powerful politician with links to men of timber and calibre, coconut and juggernaut like him across the land. He came pulling his own strings, thinking it would work. Did it? Nada! They all died. The thickness of the bad blood was just too hard and heavy to penetrate.
Incidentally, those in the same shoes of the IPOB leader and even with worse cases, are now walking the streets as free men after receiving less than a tap on the wrist, even going ahead to up the ante. The other day, one made a song and dance of a fresh move as he was seen submitting a letter to Number 10 Donning Street, the United Kingdom seat of power for a separate state of the Yoruba people.
As you are reading this letter, nothing has come out of the attempt beyond the usual banal statement from Abuja. In fact, the next day, a video of groups of people throwing their hands in the air amid solidarity songs for that purpose, went viral on social media.
Funny enough, at the death of each of the Igbo leaders, the same people they prostrated for to seek freedom of their son, some, as their last wish, would be the first to issue press statements professing their greatness, how highly they were held in the scheme of things and how Nigeria would miss them.
I wonder if anyone would miss the intended pun? Certainly not you! The mockery were clearly obvious in each case. I hope this would not be your fate by the time this whole saga is over and the history of today is written tomorrow. That is the APC government you chose to work for. We shall see!
Iyom, let me conclude this letter by reminding you of the biblical depiction of Jezebel and Esther. Both were wives of powerful kings. The former loved power for its sake and used it for destruction, the other did not court power, but when it was entrusted on her, she used it to do good – to save her people. Where will history find you?
May the day never come when you will mount the rostrum to sell this wicked government – which I suspect could be the real reason for your appointment – as others before you have done, just to remain in office even as a junior Minister, which I personally believe is an insult to what you represent. Your intentions must be nobler and your deeds evident.
Nwa agu a-di ata afifia. You need not reply me. The answer I seek will come in few days – or let us say – months from now. Iyom, anya saa! May God lead your footsteps!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo and I am The Tiny Voice!
Columns
APC-effect: Oh NLC! Oh Ajaero! Now the dog has lost its teeth!
Published
3 weeks agoon
October 11, 2024
Anyone that has pity, should direct it to the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). They need right now, more than they need the public microphones and loudspeakers – the tools of their trade, which have followed them over the years like a second clothing – their visible accoutrements in the past when men were men and did not live in mortal fear. How are the mighty fallen!
Specifically, please donate your pity to Joe Ajaero, the President of the union for the junior elements in the Nigerian workforce. Have you seen him lately? Didn’t you see what he has been reduced to? The once boisterous Joe, who was the terror itself to the Ministers of Power, who handled the privatisation of the electricity sector under former President Goodluck Jonathan, now seems a shadow of himself.
I should know who Joe was, because, more than many Nigerians, I was right there in the locus in quo, when the transformation in the sector was going on and had more than a passing knowledge of who Joe was to the big ogas at the apex of the top echelon of that building at the Federal Secretariat in the Central Business District (CBD), in the heart of Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Joe was a name that was mentioned in whispers lest it struck the wrong chord and the walls echoed the sound into the wrong ears. That was when he was the General Secretary of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE), a position from which he moved into his present office in 2023, after first failing to clinch it at first in March, 2015, when he lost out to Ayuba Wabba, his predecessor.
Today, all that is gone! Gone are the energy, the vibrancy, the audaciousness – the strong, bold and authoritative roars, now replaced with nothing more than the faint, almost inaudible and insipid sound – no more than the whimpering of a death-threatened lion facing the last days of an agonising fate.
What has led to this sudden transition? Well, I’ll tell you – right away. It is the APC-effect. You’ll ask further, what is this one? And I’ll answer – APC-effect is a disorder that the sufferer gets by simply breathing-in a special preparation the All Progressives Congress, the party that came into power in Nigeria in 2015 released into the firmament, which creates immediate mental numbness and inability to articulate or project critical thinking.
You may have heard of Stockholm Syndrome – that coping mechanism to a captive or abusive situation – that makes a victim develop positive feelings toward their captors or abusers over time! More like it. But this variant – the APC-effect is even deeper and more complex. It was developed by the masters in the game – crafts-men adept in the use of all the local ingredients and tools replete in Nigeria to achieve their purpose.
Let me illustrate. There is this local story about oturupopo – the woodpecker – the bird that uses its beak to design and even cut down trees. It once boasted that the day its mother would die, all the trees in the forest would be brought down to celebrate her. Now, on the fateful day, when the mother died, fate played a big one, as the woodpecker developed a huge boil on its beak, rendering its tool and capacity useless.
I explain! Every keen observer in the country and beyond, knows that God, the all-knowing creator, handed a special gift to every segment of Nigeria. The Igbo man has a special gift for business and transforming his environment. Failure stares you in the face if you try to engage or compete with the Igbo in any sort of business – from selling biscuits to importing heavy-duty equipment. You can only try.
Your land remains fallow and underdeveloped because the Igbo man has not discovered it. Once he comes around that mundane, banal and unused environment is electrified and enlivened. Mud houses soon transform to storey-buildings and items, hitherto termed useless, become valuable and sources of income. See, in Lagos alone, how Alaba International Market, Trade-Fair Complex, Ago Palace Way, places, which only yesterday, were completely uninhabitable lands, some of them complete swamps have become thriving entities.
On the other hand, a large percentage of Nigerians will go hungry and many yet battle with protein deficiencies the day agricultural items from the North cease coming into the South. From cows to rams, chickens to fish, grains of all kinds, potatoes to yams, onions to peppers – rice, yams, groundnuts, apples, mangoes and oranges many Nigerians look up to that part of the country for sustenance.
The Yoruba are the voice of Nigeria. Outside having their fair share in other areas of the economy, the Yoruba views on any issue, in the main, more or less influence national views if not represent them. What they lack in the features the other two represent in Nigeria, the rest lack in shaping public opinion or setting national agenda. Their inputs in this regard are either complementary or playing catch-up.
That the media are today dominated by the Yoruba, takes root from this tendency. The bulk of social crusading and civil society activism are embedded and expressed through the voices of prominent Yoruba, past and present. Right from the heydays of Nigeria’s political build-up outside the historic activities of the founding fathers, the names of Fumilayo Raansome Kuti, Wole Soyinka, Tai Solarin and Gani Faweihinmi, ring louder than many of their contemporaries.
The likes of Segun Okeowo, who led the famous Ali Must Go protest, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who through his music became the conscience of the nation, Alao Aka-Bashorun, of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), era who fought the military fearlessly, alongside Patricia Kuye, the female activist and lawyer who came after, Femi Falana, Beko Ransome-Kuti among others, had led the pack.
Even Bola Ahmed Tinubu, today’s President of Nigeria alongside other leaders of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) like Adekunle Ajasin, Abraham Adesanya, Ayo Adebanjo, Ayo Opadokun, Alani Akirinade and the rest who practically confronted the Ibrahim Babangida-Sani Abacha juntas, had played individual and collective roles in this regard.
There-in lies the koko, as we say here. Remember the case of Ali Bongo – yes – the Gabonese President? I’m sure that picture of him sitting helplessly in his palatial building is now replaying in your head. Quite pitiable, if you ask me. He had pled with his countrymen to – go and make noise? Did anyone listen to him? No! His pleas – very passionate – came to naught, because, those that were supposed to “make noise,” were his captors.
Same with Brother Ajaero! Those to make his noise are his captors – the APC! That’s the boil on the beak of the oturupopo. Yesterday, he would have simply run to Bourdillon and the din from the emitting noise therefrom, would have deafened even the whales in the Atlantic Ocean. But pitiably, Bourdillon has moved to Aso Rock. Would a kingdom battle against itself? Never! Didn’t the bible say so?
Yes! Bourdillon became Aso Rock since 2015 when the APC moved in. And in there are many rooms with large beds where insider has found luxury. Who would blame them for settling down, relaxing and sleeping comfortably? Ayuba Wabba, never pretended. As an insider himself, he knew any attempt to hero-act would be futile. He simply found his own room, went to bed and slept for eight years.
Now, see where Ajaero’s heroic attempt landed him. The other day, he was pumelled to a pulp in Owerri, despite being nwa-afor – son of the soil. The baptism of fire was delivered by the APC iron hand. And nobody said piim! I’m sure he might still be undergoing some Ogwuma and Aboniki therapy till date. Even the privilege of travelling out to enjoy the cool breeze of Oyibo land, where his predecessors went to unwind occasionally, has also been denied. There APC machinery is making sure of that.
Just imagine the Nigerian firmament of today, had Bourdillon maintained its original address! Just picture! If your memory is no longer that sharp – I know you have a lot befuddling your head right now – Google will help you. Just type in Ojota Protest and refresh your memory. Don’t bother about the faces you see there. Don’t ask where they are. They are still here with us – alive, well and kicking.
They have each found their own beds in the Aso Rock mansion. Many of them have discovered the hidden nectars of life and cannot savour its sweetness enough. Some have even found new interests – like hunting games in the bush, while others, having lost out in filling Room Number 16, have now concentrated in their business of winning souls – if you say misleading souls, na you sabi. Some, yes, you still see them on television – their voices still strident and their passions, virulent yet, but their fancies are now different.
So, to whom does Ajaero turn? Is it to his brothers in the East, who are busy on phone negotiating for the next container of goods, which he knows he would sell – because whether the soap lathers or not, ladies must have their bath – or to his fatalistic friends in the North, who have been told where power derives and what happens to anyone challenging authority?
Does he look beyond the shores to his friends abroad? No dice! They will not help, because they are the beneficiaries. My people say when the streets are empty of hoodlums, it means hunger for the harlots, because the loots they get from their victims end up the brothels. The ugliness here is the reason for his friends in Europe and America to enjoy the best things of life.
For all you care, pity the antelope in the vice grip of the lion, grit your teeth at its pains as the lion’s claws dig into its flesh, but remember the death of that lion is nigh if it shows mercy and allows it listens to you and allows its victim to go. Who will fill the vaults of their banks to enable them lend at almost zero per cent that would recreate the Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerbergs or Elon Musks? Who will come with sacks full of raw cash to buy a whole street in London or Atlanta? Who would wash his hands with champagne in the pub with glittering lights and naked women?
So, you see why you must pity Brother Joe and his NLC? The situation that created Ojota, has multiplied a thousand times over. Like joke, fuel moved from N68 to N142. Then, we the victims were told its over. It is now fully deregulated. We adjusted. Then they returned and we wondered why. Didn’t you tell us you no longer have a hand? We were greeted with silence as it moved to N189. We resigned to hope and prayer. After all, the wise one is coming.
With the brain of Socrates, Aristotle and even Einstein put together the Bourdillon of our time would change everything with Renewed Hope, they had boasted. After all, wasn’t Bourdillon the creator of Lagos – a fallow wasteland infested with wild animals and dangerous reptiles – now transformed to a mega city that makes Luxembourg ugly.
But Bourdillon came! Now, the money the poor man was saving to buy fan, cannot even buy the blade. Just like Fela Anikulapo Kuti predicted in his song, his hope of enjoying cool breeze has evaporated. Enjoyment can never come his way. From N187, fuel moved to N550, then N580, N600, N617, N870 and now N1,300!
Now, Ajaero, seems wiser. He seems to have understood how hot water kills the tortoise! His now feeble voice of protest, seems to betray that much. I’m sure his people must have spoken to him in that tone that reflects the obvious – nwokem baa n’uno. Go inside and rest. But does he need to be told? Nobody in Nigeria today needs be told that the situation is worse than the dreaded period of Sani Abacha, reputed to be the most despotic in the history of Nigeria.
Worse still, unlike Festus Usifo, his counterpart in the Trade Union Congress (TUC), who apart from being a somewhat collaborator – I heard him the other day defending why fuel must cost so much – is not only an insider, but qualifies for a room in the Aso Rock mansion, Ajaero does not enjoy the same status.
Reason? He is an Igbo man. APC has a special place for Ndigbo. No Igbo man has a room in Aso Rock mansion. None has equal status in APC as the other ethnic groups in Nigeria. Never mind those prancing about – whether governors, lawmakers or party faithful – they merely pretending. They all know they’re simply enjoying senior jokes and when the chips are down, would be shown where they belong.
That of course would be outside the mansion, somewhere in the scotching son, where they will be cleaning their brows with their hands as they sweat it out under the inclement weather. That is what he must also contend with. It will even be a miracle if he survives the NLC job. For that is also a privilege. So, for my Brother Joe, you have my pity! Let others donate theirs too!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
Columns
Dangote fuel: Nigeria will get mercy when they deserve it!
Published
2 months agoon
September 18, 2024
By Sunny Igboanugo
Dangote, NNPC: Too early to cry, too late to beg Tinubu
Greed is one of the most debilitating diseases a man could suffer, if not the most devastating. Now, let me tell you about greed. In fact, let me cite an example of how destructive the demon of greed could be both to the person that becomes a victim by coming under its grips and the society that shares as a victim.
Did you know about Pablo Escobar? Full name: Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria! He was not only the most notorious drug baron in Columbia, if not world history, but the richest criminal of global reckon, amassing, before his death in 1993, more than $30billion from the production and sale of hard drugs. In today’s rating, the raking of the infamous drug-lord, founder of the Medellin Cartel, has been put at well over $70billion.
Now, imagine if he were still alive. His earnings must have hit trillions of dollars. But never doubt that he would not only have remained in that business, but would have continued to accumulate more, regardless the havoc of his wicked enterprise. Why? Simple – the spirit of money. Irrespective the amount of money he must have amassed, he would still be in it. After all, he was, until he was finally caged by the law and died as a result.
In fact, one account quoted Roberto Escobar, accountant to the late kingpin, as saying the gang spent $2,500 a month for buying rubber bands to wrap his stacks of cash alone. Just imagine that. You’re talking about more than N5million in today’s equivalent. Mind you, we’re not talking about electronics or garments – those tiny rubber used in binding money – $2,500 worth monthly. Damn! That must be truckloads of bags of the stuff. Just to bind money! Yet, he never stopped. That is the disease of greed.
It is as contagions as the substance Escobar and his gang sold – more intoxicating than the hardest liquor – more deleterious than cancer – and more dangerous than the worst crime. It steals the soul from the victim and replaces it with stone or something more innate and more lifeless. It turns human beings into monsters – merciless beasts that kill and destroy without pity.
Now, take a sample of how beastly Escobar was. I’ll start with what he did to those who opposed him. A judge, was said to have given a judgement against him in court. Guess what he did? The judge was kidnapped by his henchmen and brought before him. After the personal encounter, the unfortunate jurist, one in many of his victims, was taken into a helicopter and flown high enough and let off in the middle of the city, head-first, so that when he crashed on the hard ground, the mess made by the brain that splashed on the ground, decorated the road like a paint. That was to teach others to be more prudent with their ideas.
That was just one part. There were other more blood-chilling stories. Though an outlaw himself, he was said to be merciless against those who went against the rules, particularly pinching his money. Ordinarily, you became stupendously rich by working in his well-knit organisation. But that was until you got itchy fingers. Then, you were taught a practical lesson of the difference in his diametrically opposing world – of maximum pleasure and agonising pains.
For it was said of him that stealing from his vast wealth was the greatest sin in his empire. The consequences, was in fact, worse than attempting to double-cross him. You could picture what such punishment would be! Horrible death! Hanging could the most merciful. Otherwise, you could be fed alive to one of his pet pythons, thrown into the crocodile-infested ponds to be feasted upon, fried in a drum of boiling oil or simply burnt alive on a stake.
Now, does it offend your sensibilities to situate or comprehend that such a man could be so brutal against those who tried to pay him back in his own coins – the same measure he was using in cheating the system and destroying the society? An irony and contradiction in terms, you might say!
Then I say, my compatriots – that is the same way you cannot make sense of what is happening in your country, Nigeria today. It made no sense to you yesterday, it is not making sense today and it will not make sense tomorrow. That, of course is because you don’t belong to their world – a dusky world, where everything is conducted in pitch-black darkness – a soulless world controlled by the demon of greed.
So, this Monday morning, September 16, 2024, when Rufai Oseni, a popular voice on national affairs and one of the anchors of The Morning Show, a breakfast programme on Arise News Television, after doing what he knows how to do best – dissecting the issue of Nigeria in the clearest terms – for the umpteenth time, concluded by appealing to the conscience of the powers that be in Nigeria – those responsible for the current excruciating suffering in the country – to soften their legs on the pedal, reduce the speed and slow down the galloping vehicle with which they are driving the collective fate of Nigerians down the slopy hill, the question, I asked myself was, did he understand?
For emphasis, he had tried logic, remonstrating that the money they were amassing today, would be useless to them at death and behind them. He emphasised that their children would squander the same accumulated wealth by wasting them on mundane fancies, only for things to return to the basics. Yes! The same children would be left groping for survival, simply because they made no meaningful contributions in creating the wealth. Touching and convincing argument to make, you’d suppose.
His words: “Have mercy! Have mercy on Nigerians. Stop the stealing, reduce the corruption. The hardship is too much. Nigerians are dying of poverty, hunger and disease.” With a glint in his eyes, he pled again: “Have mercy! Stop killing Nigerians!” Who was he addressing? That was the question I asked myself.
It was akin to that scene in the court of Venice in Shakespeare’s epic – The Merchant of Venice – where Portia pleaded with Shylock, the Jewish merchant to have mercy and spare the life of Antonio, but which was ignored because he (Shylock), wanted nothing outside having his pound of flesh, to satisfy his urge for vengeance for past wrongdoing for which he bore years of grudge.
In the same TV show on Monday, Ojy Okpe, the face of What’s Trending, a segment of the programme, played a trending video in the social media of a Nigerian mother going by the tag – the _victorious_chisom, passionately begging President Bola Tinubu and wife, Oluremi, to have mercy on her and her children.
“Dear President,” she began, “the hardship is telling on us, especially we, widows, like me. I’m a widow of two children who are still toddlers. I became a widow, Your Excellency Sir, because of the insecurity in Nigeria. My late husband was kidnapped in 2022 and was killed, despite paying ransom. Your Excellency, I’m law-abiding, I’m hardworking. And despite being a widow whose children were made fatherless due to insecurity, I still keep pushing. I still live in Nigeria. I still stay and live in Nigeria.
“My dear President, please I’m begging, the hardship is too much, the hardship is telling on us. Many young widows are suffering. Please pity us. Have mercy on us. Dear First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, please, you’re a mother and you’re a wife and I know and I believe you know what we are going through, especially young widows like us.”
Then, the clincher: “At this point, I’m fed up. I’m tired. I can’t take it any longer!” That was how she ended. The rest of her sad story was told by tiny droplets of tears lurking at the corners of both eyes, refusing to flow down. Who knows how long she had been crying for the tears to have become that tiny that you’d have to look hard enough to observe them?
If you had watched as I did, I’m sure you heard clearly, when Reuben Abati, another anchor in the programme, stated the obvious in his concluding comments. “She spoke for the rest of us,” he had said. No! She didn’t! She rather spoke for the millions of voiceless families that are worse than her – mothers dying in silence, who have no access to phones, not to talk about data or media space to post the littlest snippets of their anguish.
She spoke for families who have buried one or two of their children due to lack of money to buy cheap medicines to treat common malaria – millions of others who go to bed with empty stomachs and have done so for days and weeks on end and millions more who are waiting to be swallowed up by the elements.
If I were close to that woman, I would have asked her to save her breath, wipe her tears and wait for the appropriate time, because that moment is coming when she would need them. Surely, by that time, nobody would need to tell her it is time to cry. But not now that petrol is still selling at N1,000. No! After all, it is still cheaper than the price in Togo and Benin Republic. Didn’t IMF say so? Aren’t they the masters we listen to? They said Nigeria is still selling cheaper than other countries. Why? Why should it be cheaper when we need all the money to keep the Villa comfortable? Or don’t they know that in there is where we have “Thinking People” – whose brains are sharper than Socrates and Aristotle put together – the reason they’re taking such BOLD decisions to redeem years of mess? These Nigerians self! Did they think that deep thinking is conducted under inclement weather? No! Such thinking need the coziest environments such as diamond-encrusted chairs and ornamental beds inside the bellies of N5billion yachts to conduct.
That said, she should therefore await the time she can no longer afford data or must have sold her phone and other belongings and found a space with her children in the cold streets, if not a worse situation. The road she is currently trodding would surely lead her to her destination where she would find the right corners to cry at the appropriate time, assuming she could muster the strength to shed tears at that point. Of course, she would not be alone there. That’s for sure. She would have company – plenty!
As for her appeal to Tinubu, what mercy does she want the President and family to show? Is Tinubu the cause of her situation? Didn’t he meet a bad economy, inherited from Muhammadu Buhari, his predecessor? Come to think of it, didn’t he alert the nation early enough that he would continue Buhari’s “legacies,” where he stopped? If Buhari flogged them with koboko and he’s now flogging them with snakes and scorpions, what crime did he commit? Isn’t that the idea of promise kept?
These Nigerians self! Didn’t the woman hear him tell his China host that he’s a “reformer?” How else are reforms conducted? What else is reform than spending money like it is going out of fashion – buying new Presidential planes, acquiring new yachts, exotic cars for himself, renovating mansions and putting other facilities in place for pleasuring himself and those now “serving” the country? Didn’t she hear him say subsidy is gone? Did he have water in his mouth when he said so last year or was his voice not audible enough?
Coming to the issue everyone is complaining about, was he the one that employed the people at the NNPCL or did they see him around Dangote? Why should he demand anything from them? Do they want to knock his head together with those voracious, avaricious and powerful members of the Vested Interest Club that have dared his predecessors to move against them?
Is it this Presidency that he crossed seven rivers and seven forest to get, confronting all the elements in the wilderness to boot, that these troublesome Nigerians now want him to fritter away by leading him to confront such monstrous behemoth with bare hands. Ko le wek! E no go work for them! If the woman wants mercy, let her direct her tears to the appropriate quarters. Why does she want to stain his clothes with her tears? Why should anyone blame him for the pervading greed that has been there even when he was still hustling in Chicago – whose origin is as old as Nigeria itself?
Even the legendary Fela sang about it – the N2.8billion, missing oil money! What was the verdict of Justice Ayo Irikefe? Didn’t he look into his crystal ball and declare that no oil money was missing. So, kini big deal? If the problem was not dealt with in 1979, how could he, Tinubu fix it now? In fact, why should he?
Besides, how many times and for how long would he continue to sing it like a song that Nigeria under him is like a woman in labour who must bear the pangs of it no matter how long it lasts? What’s with Nigeria about impatience? Even if the woman dies, what about it? She wouldn’t be the first. Many other women have died and many others waiting to die. Right now, even when some are reeling under the pangs of childbirth, many are at this minute enjoying the pleasure – and asking for more – that would make them visit the labour room tomorrow to bear the same pain.
Come to think of it, what did they contribute to his road to the Villa? Didn’t they hear him recount how he snatched, grabbed and ran with power? Did they think he would go through all that and not enjoy his prize to the fullest?
Did they think a world-class accountant with enough sharp memories to be able to last him a lifetime – that goes to bed with figures, forgets easily? Did they think he didn’t hear the trolls and catcalls during those days of Bala-blu-bulaba? They were laughing then and calling him names. Who’s laughing now?
What were they thinking he alluded to when on the night of March 1, 2023, after Mahmoud Yakubu, the INEC chairman declared him winner of the presidential election he told them – I hear you! Loud and clear?! This is surely payback time to them for their move through their “votes” or lack of it. O! How they would – in full!
Did they think that his memory is so short as to forget the favours – such as losing Lagos and Abuja? What if the courts had not come to his rescue? What if those judges had believed Peter Obi that 25 per cent votes in Abuja is like the Use of English in JAMB – a compulsory subject each student must pass or Atiku Abubakar, who insisted he was nowhere near Chicago State University, not to talk about possessing their certificate?
Next time they should know how to cast their votes. You get mercy when you deserve it. Yes! Nyesom Wike, his henchman in the FCT has promised Abuja will never happen again. Lagos, was an error too that the MC Oluomo and other leg-men have since corrected! Maybe when these people learn to cooperate and stop voting nonsense! May be then, “Sister Mercy” might have returned from the market! But for now, she’s still on her journey yet. Her heading home would either be in 2027 or 2031. That is a long time to start shedding tears now!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice
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November 3, 2024 3:39 am
November 3, 2024 3:39 am
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