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Nwosu comes with fresh impetus, as ADC coalition tsunami hits Anambra
By Sunny Igboanugo
One of the oft-asked questions regarding the mess, critics accuse Charles Chukwuma Soludo of making in and of Anambra, is what is the alternative? It is a response that comes from the mindset of seeing the current political trajectory in state as one in a quandary.
Well, that question may not be necessary anymore because a tsunami is in the offing. The tempest about to sweep through the streets is already rumbling at the bottom of the sea preparatory to unleashing its full strength with an echo that would reverberate far beyond the state to the national level and even beyond in tow.
Many people had come to the conclusion that in their political choices, they had actually sold the dog to buy the monkey in the state, by electing Soludo governor in 2021 as replacement for Willie Obiano, his predecessor, whose underwhelming performance could only be captured in that symbolic picture of the obviously-rattled and confused lone man sitting in the Abuja office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), with eyes darting in different directions like a frightened rat captured by a trap.
No doubt many had thought that Soludo would bring the breath of fresh air from the preceding eight years of binges, revellings and sheer debauchery in the state. They had believed in the flowery tales of instant transformation of that enclave in the manner never seen before in Nigeria and even in black Africa.
They could not wait to see the Anambra version of the Burj Khalifa, or something even more remarkable than the world’s tallest building, which today, symbolises Dubai as the biggest thing to happen to the world since the days of Egyptian pyramids.
How would anyone blame them? This was their son, who had hitherto crossed the proverbial seven wildernesses and seven seas. They saw him once play at the big stage, hobnobbing with the high and mighty and they believed as one in that crowd the anointing of mega tales associated to them would reach the state.
Is it every day that the land sprouts out the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria? How many of their neighbours have been so privileged? So, they believed him when he said he would install air-conditioners in the streets of Awka, Onitsha and Nnewi and line the lands of Ekwulobia, Ihiala and Nteje with pure gold.
They heard him say that these towns under him would mimic and replicate the Silicon Valley, the United States hub housing all manner of global industrial icons and that everywhere would become a galaxy of glittering stars with breathtaking modern edifices dotting every part of Anambra landscape. They heard all these and shouted in unison – voila! – the Dubai-Taiwan of Africa is here.
But it is more than three years hence and counting and what did the people see? Like the proverbial shell of the snail asked where the mother is – nowhere to be found. No Burj Khalifa! No Silicon Valley! No glittering skies. The Anambra Government House, he is showcasing – where the commonwealth of the people is supposedly sunk, is not even his idea.
It was a project conceived as far back as the days of Chukwuemeka Ezeife, the first civilian governor of the state. It was that government that did the design and ancillary spade-works, before it was awarded by his successors. In fact, it is said that the late Chinwoke Mbadinuju had even done more than 40 per cent of the construction work in the complex, before he was kicked out of office.
He not only did the adjourning environment, which he named the Ekwueme Square, after Alex Ekwueme, former Vice President of Nigeria and his former boss, but the dual carriageway to the complex. While Peter Obi, characteristically did not look in that direction, Chris Ngige and Obiano, could also have added one brick here and rod there.
Yet Soludo carries on and prances about as if it is his exclusive. Daily, he rolls out the drums to celebrate it. Indeed, Soludo’s exclusive idea might not go beyond the Ekwulobia flyover. But that project is not even up to the standard of the Agege Bridge in Lagos. There are also a sprinkle of other local roads here and there.
The question in most lips, remains, is this the limit of all his tall idea? Is this all the people would get from showcasing a former CBN governor after spending four years at the helm of affairs in a state like Anambra? Where is the record of the state maintaining the first position in Education in Nigeria? How come that record has now sunk to the extent that the state is struggling at the bottom ladder? Even the Uga-Amawbia road, the most ambitious of them all, count for nothing in terms of his promises and expectations. In four years?
But had he stopped at that dismal outing in terms of not meeting the terms of agreement with his employers, had he stopped at scoring zero on the Dubai-Taiwan delivery, there might be some leg-room to negotiate the obvious catastrophe. But the monumental failure has since been accentuated with bad politics. As governor, Soludo ought to naturally assume the political leadership of the state. In other words, it ought to be his remit to point the political direction to the people.
Now, that is where the disaster has become more evident. Out of sheer selfishness and personal survival the governor has delved into a most dangerous political hara-kiri. His gambit to drag the state into the APC – a political Golgotha akin to handing the people over to be crucified permanently on the cross by their sworn enemies.
The highpoint of that posturing was the recent endorsement of President Bola Tinubu for a second term in office in 2027 – a unilateral decision taken by himself and perhaps the coterie of hangers-on within his circle – with neither consultation now approval with the people. Not only that APC from the days of Muhammadu Buhari, its first President was an anathema to Anambra people, who had rejected it from the outset but that Tinubu’s twin actions of handing the South East the short end of the stick in national affairs and his disastrous performance in office, made matters all the worse.
Indeed, not a few found Soludo’s fawning and grovelling around Tinubu during his official visit to Anambra in May, not only completely distasteful but the endorsement offer, utterly gutting and nauseating. What is more? The governor’s gesture is seen as not out of conviction, but totally personal, propelled out of fear of losing the second term in office.
The meaning is that he simply offered the people on a slaughter slab to clearly demonstrable sworn enemies just to preserve himself and his political future, exclusive of their collective interest. This not only amounts to a cowardly act, but a new low. Anambra political trajectory is known for resistance. His predecessors had displayed uncommon bravery and courage while facing similar threats with Chris Ngige and Obi as demonstrable examples.
This obvious betrayal at the political front is not the final blow but the major push! Now ndi-Anambra have risen. The swords are out, unsheathed from the scabbards for what pundits say is going to be a never-seen-before political battle. The battle-cries are becoming louder by the day. Stop him now! Soludo must go! Down APC! Down Soludo! Two sides of the same coin! They not only ring in the heart of the people, but in the streets, the markets and the homes.
Before the new turn of political events, the state had found itself in the dilemma of either-or. For obvious reasons, many pundits saw the battle for the November 8 governorship election in the state as a choice limited between either Soludo or APC’s Nicholas Ukachukwu. It was supposed to be a fait accompli situation.
But enter the African Democratic Congress (ADC)! Since the party was mentioned as the choice for the proposed national coalition of political parties, the nickel dropped. It has now become the new destination for many politicians in the state looking for escape route from the asphyxiating political firmament currently prevalent not only in the state, but across Nigeria.
Enter John Chumah Nwosu! He is the new name reverberating across the entire political spectrum today – the new kid on the block – the arrowhead and beneficiary of the new momentum. An Information Communication Technology (ICT) guru, Nwosu, a native of Oduda, Newichi, Nnewi, and the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Jetlink Group Limited, appears to come fully-packed.
Urbane, unobtrusive and soft-spoken, he is currently gathering the arsenal to launch a major political battle in the state billed to commence in few weeks from now. His intention is to liberate Anambra from what he calls Soludo’s years of inertia, decked in empty promises. Listening to him unpack his package gives the impression of a man planning to lead a major revolution.
The agenda of his government, he told WhirlwindNews, would be erected on the foundation of what he calls SHEEEMS – Security, Health, Education, Economy, Enterprise, Market and Social Welfare. The focus, he says would be on infrastructure, including a rail-line for the Onitsha-Nnewi-Awka axis of the state, fair taxation and business-friendly environment, that would focus on a balance of modern and smart method of taxation and compassion for the peoples economic survival.
Hear him: “I believe in the power of good governance. I know that, with the right leadership, Anambra can rise to greater heights and become a beacon of hope and progress, not just for the South East but for all of Nigeria. My vision is to provide a government that is grounded in equity, efficiency, and empathy – one that prioritizes the wellbeing of its citizens above all else.
“This is more than a political aspiration. It is a heartfelt call to service for my people. I envision a government that prioritises the grassroots, one that brings security, development, and prosperity to every corner of Anambra. Together, we can create a future where opportunities are endless and the lives of our people are uplifted.”
Political talks? May be, may be not! But the more important dimension is that Anambra people no longer have a fait accompli situation handed to them in either choosing from a Soludo or the APC, considered two sides of a badly-damaged coin. They now have a choice in a third force – the ADC – in Nwosu. That in itself has become an elixir to the suffocating political firmament in the state.
In fact, the revolution many envisage might happen in Nigeria in 2027, should the coalition politicians are putting together succeed, is envisioned to commence with the Anambra election. This is more so, with Peter Obi, former governor of the state coming into the picture.
It is a big boost that the Labour Party (LP) candidate, who has become one of the biggest events in Nigeria’s history, since breaking into the scene with his monstrous political movement, and becoming one of the biggest names in today’s politics, is playing a major role in that coalition arrangement.
In fact, with the LP, which ought to be the biggest political force in the state completely out of the way, having been relegated to the background due to unending crises pummelling it from all sides, the fortunes of the ADC is predictable. It simply provided the succour to those who could not stand the hitherto syndicate in the state.
That obviously accounts for the vibe across informed political circles. There are talks that Agu Awka, the seat of power in the state is in panic. Officials, hitherto haughty shoulder-raising are said to have switched into a jittery mode graduating int frenzy as they attempt to fashion out a credible response to the political behemoth welling up against them.
As the threat of an abrupt end to the tenancy at that magnificent edifice in Awka he has just completed, becomes real, his traducers have dug in. They have kept up the pressure, reminding the people what true leadership truly looks like and what they are missing in the state. They cite the neighbouring Abia for instance.
Now hear this: “Two governors, same region. One a former Managing Director of bank, decided to convert a government house built by his predecessor into a hotel because he deemed it too luxurious and costly to maintain in line with cost, value and responsible governance. The other governor, a Professor of Finance and former Governor of the Central Bank, made it a priority to build a brand-new extravagant government house – and even held a lavish commissioning ceremony to unveil it.
“When faced with the same issues, they made completely different choices. This is why educational qualification should not be the only basis for selecting leaders…True leadership is about values, vision and the willingness to put people above personal legacy.” Does this sound familiar? Well, that is the new message today.
Of course, given the nation’s political experience, especially in recent years, those plotting the impending tsunami against Soludo confess the task ahead would not be a walk in the park. They know there are still many barriers to destroy and many hurdles to scale over. But many of them are battle-tested, old political war-horses.
Will the earthquake happen? Big question. What is sure, however, is as all eyes focus on Anambra once again and as the storms gather with the ADC train continuing to garner the momentum, while speeding through the rails, not a few people in the state will breathe better with the new opportunity in view.
Who would blame them if they permit themselves a few drinks, even if they may not yet call the party? After all, have they not seen enough?
Nigerians have been warned to be on the lookout during the festive period this week, as Muslims across the world mark the Eid-Kabir, authorities of the Nigerian Army, warned on Monday, as intelligence has filtered in that terrorists would use the opportunity to launch attacks against civilian targets.
Sani Uba, a Colonel and spokesman of the Joint Task Force of the military in a statement, warned the general public to be on security alert, citing indications of the possibility of isolated attempts by Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists to exploit the
Sani, Media Information Officer, Headquarters Joint Task Force (North East) Operation HADIN KAI, who noted that the strikes would employ the use of suicide bombers and IEDs, particularly in areas of high population concentration, however, assured that the military had deployed troops and surveillance, and fully activated ISR assets to critical and vulnerable locations ahead of the Wednesday celebrations.
He said in the statement: “Patrols have been intensified, and security forces are operating in close coordination with sister agencies, the CJTF, and community vigilance groups to forestall any threat and guarantee a secure festive period for all residents.
The statement, further advise the public to conduct Eid prayers and festivities as close to their homes and familiar localities as possible, and avoid large open gatherings where practicable, adding: “Exercise heightened vigilance in crowded public spaces such as markets, motor parks, banking halls, and prayer grounds.
“Report any suspicious persons, unattended objects, or unusual movements to the nearest military checkpoint, police station, or civil-military liaison point immediately.
“Cooperate fully with security personnel during patrols and screening operations. Avoid unnecessary movement, particularly at night or in areas with limited security presence. Refrain from spreading unverified information or rumours capable of causing public panic. Rely only on official information from verified government and security channels.”
Stressing the roles of traditional rulers, religious leaders, media organisations, and community stakeholders to actively engage their communities and encourage the timely reporting of credible security information ahead of and during the celebration period, the statement said: “Your cooperation with security forces remains invaluable to the success of ongoing operations
“The Command remains resolute in its determination to deny terrorists any freedom of action and ensure that the Eid El Kabir celebrations proceed in an atmosphere of peace, safety, and dignity for all. The Theatre Command wishes the entire Muslim community a peaceful and rewarding Eid El Kabir celebration.”
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The Insecurity Triad: Azikiwe, Awolowo, and Chinweizu — Nigeria’s Elite Class of Framework Builders
By Max Amuchie
Last Sunday, I indicated that this week’s edition of The Sunday Stew would pay tribute to the late political economist and public intellectual, Claude Ake. That tribute remains, but its timing has shifted. Later this year will mark the 30th anniversary of his passing — a more fitting moment to revisit the life and legacy of one of Africa’s most consequential intellectual minds. Until then, this column turns to a related but less discussed tradition in Nigerian thought: the rare lineage of framework builders who operated outside the academy yet reshaped how society understood itself.
Nigeria’s intellectual landscape faces a persistent challenge: not the total absence of indigenous frameworks, but their relative scarcity and limited institutional consolidation. Much of our analytical vocabulary still arrives pre-assembled from elsewhere — adapted to Nigerian conditions rather than born from them. We reach habitually for tools forged in other fires, calibrated for other crises, and carrying the residue of other civilisational assumptions. The consequence is not merely intellectual dependency. It is explanatory incompleteness. Borrowed frameworks, however sophisticated, can illuminate local realities, but they do not always capture the structures beneath them.
Yet Nigeria has never been entirely without its own framework builders. What it has lacked is not indigenous conceptual production itself, but its sustained institutionalisation. Alongside the academy, it has historically produced another tradition — rarer, more independent, and deeply sovereign in character.
It is a tradition built largely beyond university faculties and disciplinary boundaries. Its practitioners did not merely interpret events; they created new conceptual vocabularies. They refused inherited explanatory tools when those tools proved insufficient, choosing instead to engineer indigenous frameworks for immediate national and civilisational questions. Their objective was not institutional approval but conceptual sovereignty.
This is the elite class of Nigeria’s framework builders. And it is within this largely extra-academic lineage — one operating beyond the formal boundaries of university production and disciplinary gatekeeping — that figures such as Azikiwe, Awolowo, and Chinweizu emerge — not merely as statesmen or writers, but as framework builders. Each refused the role of interpreter. Each chose, instead, the more demanding vocation of architect.
Nnamdi Azikiwe: The Newsroom as Primary Laboratory
To understand what Azikiwe accomplished, one must resist the temptation to reduce him to his political biography — to the president, the governor-general, the nationalist icon. These are accurate descriptions, but they obscure the more foundational achievement. Before Azikiwe was any of those things, he was a theorist of communications power.
His intellectual contribution extended beyond communications infrastructure into explicit framework construction. Through Zikism in Africa and works such as Renascent Africa and Liberia in World Politics, he advanced a political philosophy centred on spiritual balance, social regeneration, mental emancipation, economic reconstruction, and political resurgence. Zikism was not merely nationalist rhetoric. It was an indigenous ideological framework — an attempt to articulate a distinctly African vocabulary for liberation, modernity, and civilisational renewal.
Azikiwe understood, with unusual clarity for his era, that newspapers were not passive instruments of reportage. They were engines of consciousness formation. Through The West African Pilot, launched in 1937, he built a mass communications infrastructure designed not merely to inform but to manufacture national awareness where none yet existed in consolidated form. The newsroom became a laboratory of political imagination.
The West African Pilot therefore functioned not only as a newspaper but as the transmission mechanism for Zikism itself — a vehicle through which ideas moved from theory into public consciousness.
This was framework building in the most consequential sense: the creation of a conceptual technology — the politically purposive newsroom — that could transform the relationship between a population and its own self-understanding.
Azikiwe drew from global traditions of activist journalism but adapted them into a distinctly West African instrument of nationalist mobilisation.
The lesson for the contemporary era is unmistakable, and uncomfortable. The modern digital newsroom has, in large measure, abandoned this mandate. Optimised for traffic, calibrated for virality, and disciplined by the imperatives of advertising revenue, it has become a largely reactive institution — faster than its predecessors, but shallower in purpose. Azikiwe‘s example issues a rebuke and a challenge in equal measure: the newsroom cannot survive, in any meaningful civilisational sense, as a purely commercial machine. It must recover its older mandate as a theory laboratory — a place where original socio-political frameworks are serialised, tested, refined, and introduced into the public square. The medium has changed. The obligation has not.
Obafemi Awolowo: The Geometry of State Architecture
Where Azikiwe worked through the newsroom, Awolowo worked through the monograph. And where Azikiwe’s primary instrument was consciousness, Awolowo’s was structure.
Awolowo approached the Nigerian state with something that can only be described as geometric discipline. He did not merely criticise colonial administration or lament political dysfunction. He subjected the Nigerian project to systematic, structural examination. Through works such as Path to Nigerian Freedom (1947) and Thoughts on Nigerian Constitution (1966), he mapped constitutional arrangements, regional balances, socio-economic organisation, and the friction points embedded within the federation with a precision that distinguished him from his contemporaries. He treated governance as architecture — as a designed system with load-bearing elements, stress points, and the capacity to collapse if its internal logic was violated.
This temperament is what separates framework builders from analysts. The analyst produces interpretation. The framework builder produces a map of the system generating the events that require interpretation. Awolowo was interested not in the headline but in the structure producing the headline — and he was willing to do the painstaking intellectual labour of rendering that structure visible and legible.
The diagnosis of state fragility demands this same architectural temperament today. Nigeria’s security crisis is narrated, almost universally, at the level of events: the attack, the abduction, the reprisal, the press release, the lament.
But events are symptoms. Framework builders map systems. They move beneath the surface of occurrence to identify the structural arrangements generating those occurrences — the incentive structures, the sovereignty vacuums, the institutional failures that are not aberrations but outputs of a deeper logic.
His engagement with federal design, regional autonomy, and constitutional engineering reflected an understanding of governance not as administration alone, but as institutional geometry.
Awolowo‘s method remains not only valid but urgently necessary.
Chinweizu Ibekwe: The Mandate of the Intellectual Border Guard
If Azikiwe built the communications laboratory and Awolowo built the architectural method, Chinweizu performed a different but equally indispensable function. He stood watch.
Chinweizu‘s role was expressed not only through critique but through conceptual production. Among his notable interventions was Culturecide — his framework describing the systematic erosion, displacement, and destruction of indigenous cultural systems through external domination and internalised dependency. It was an attempt to name a process that conventional political language often failed to capture: the destruction of a people’s civilisational software while the institutional hardware of the state remained formally intact.
Through works such as The West and the Rest of Us (1975) and Decolonising the African Mind (1987), Chinweizu issued one of the sharpest warnings in Nigerian — and indeed African — intellectual history: the danger of mental capture. He challenged imported analytical vocabularies with a directness that was, by design, confrontational. He questioned the dependence on external civilisational lenses for interpreting African realities. He argued, with sustained rigour and deliberate provocation, that a society which cannot explain itself to itself in its own conceptual terms is a society that remains, whatever its formal independence, intellectually colonised.
His role was that of an intellectual border guard. Not merely a critic — a guardian of the threshold between conceptual sovereignty and conceptual dependency.
The challenge Chinweizu issued has not expired. It has, if anything, intensified. For every contemporary Nigerian thinker, his questions remain active and uncomfortable: Where are your own tools? What indigenous vocabulary explains your society? What framework have you built rather than borrowed? What analytical structure emerges from your own reading of your own conditions — rather than from the application of a foreign theoretical template to a local dataset?
These are not rhetorical questions. They are the standard by which any serious tradition of framework building must measure itself.
The Lineage and Its Continuation
Azikiwe built both the communications laboratory and the ideological architecture of Zikism. Awolowo built the architectural method of state design. Chinweizu defended conceptual sovereignty while naming the dangers of civilisational erosion through frameworks such as Culturecide.
Together, they constitute a tradition — dispersed across time, never formalised as a school, but coherent in its underlying conviction: that the most consequential intellectual work is the construction of original frameworks capable of explaining a society to itself.
The Insecurity Triad is offered in continuity with that tradition. It is an attempt, specific to this moment and these conditions, to construct an indigenous diagnostic framework for Nigeria’s security crisis and its relationship to state decay — one that does not merely apply existing theory but builds the conceptual architecture from the ground up, from the evidence of Nigerian and Sahelian experience, on its own terms.
The tradition is older than any single framework. What matters is that it continues — that each generation of Nigerian thinkers refuses the false comfort of borrowed explanation and accepts, instead, the more demanding obligation of original construction.
Nations are sustained not only by institutions, but by the concepts through which they understand themselves.
That obligation is not academic. It is civilisational.
A Note on This Moment
This is the twelfth edition of The Sunday Stew.
Three months ago, this column launched with a single ambition: to occupy a different intellectual space — one between journalism and scholarship, between immediate events and deeper structures, where Nigeria’s crises could be examined not only through reportage or theory, but through original reflection and framework construction. What has emerged from that ambition has exceeded the original brief.
In twelve editions, this column has produced two original analytical frameworks. The Insecurity Triad — theorising the mechanism by which armed networks sustain themselves relative to state authority through the convergence of a ransom economy, land contestation, and ideological capture — has been presented and deposited across six scholarly repositories, and has received scholarly engagement.
It has increasingly moved beyond commentary toward contribution within debates on the Nigerian state.
The Trinity of State Decay, developed as its companion diagnostic, theorises the structural condition that the Triad sustains: a decoupling into rival sovereignties, in which the state performs authority it no longer possesses while shadow orders exercise authority the state has vacated.
These are not borrowed frameworks dressed in local language. They were built here, in this column, for this crisis.
That is what this lineage — from Azikiwe to Awolowo to Chinweizu — ultimately demands: not admiration, but continuation. The Sunday Stew is, in its modest but deliberate way, an attempt to honour that demand.
Twelve editions. Two frameworks. The work continues.
Trust is Sacred. Stay Seasoned.
Dr. Max Amuchie is the CEO of Sundiata Post and architect of The Insecurity Triad and Trinity of State Decay. He writes The Sunday Stew, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria and Africa in a global context.
X — @MaxAmuchie | Email: max.a@sundiatapost.com | Tel: +234(0)8053069436
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
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