Rebutting Fani-Kayode’s anti-Igbo slander (1) By Tochukwu Ezukanma In his article: The bitter truth about the Igbo, Femi Fani-Kayode spectacularly exhibited his ignorance, narrow-mindedness, xenophobia and penchant for lying. The three part article is a shameless convulsion of Nigerian history, brazenly, skewed against the Igbo. It is tendentious rubbish, just a piece of trash that should be consigned to the dustbin. . The first part of his article, a rambling outburst on who owns Lagos, is some nonsensical rhapsody. He wrote, “Lagos and the South-West are the land and the patrimony of the Yoruba and we will not allow anyone, no matter how fond of them we may be, to take it away from us or share it with us in the name of being nice, patriotism, one Nigeria or anything else.” At some other point, he wrote, “One Nigeria, yes, but no one should spit in our faces or covet our land, our treasure, our success, our history, our virtues, our being and our heritage and attempt to claim those for themselves simply because we took them in on a rainy day.” These are emotional hyperboles that make no sense. Who wants to take Lagos and the South-West from the Yoruba? Who is spitting in the Yoruba face and poised to dispossess them of their “treasure, success, history, virtues, being and heritage?” Secondly, if the Yoruba can live, work and invest in other parts of Nigeria, that is, “share” other parts of Nigeria with their indigenous owners, why would Nigerians from other ethnic groups not be able to live, work and invest in Lagos and South-West. He falsely stated that the Igbo introduced tribalism into Southern Nigerian politics with the speeches made by Charles Onyeama in 1945 and by Nnamdi Azikiwe in 1948 to the Igbo State Union in which they said that with time, “the Igbo will dominate Nigeria and lead Africa”. He also lied that it was the Igbo “We own everything”, “We must have everything” and “We must control everything” that led to the alienation of “the Yoruba from them and the establishment of the Action Group (AG) in April 1951. Ethnic blustering in pre-independent Nigeria was not limited to Igbo politicians. Ahmadu Bello and Obafemi Awolowo were known to have blurted some ethnic and religious bluffs. Interestingly, these periodic ethnic bombasts did not deepen or widen the tribal fault lines. And Nigerians, at least, Southern Nigerians remained politically indifferent to tribe, as they mostly revered and admired Nnamdi Azikiwe, the great Zik of Africa and the leader of the National Council for Nigeria & Cameroons (NCNC). Not surprisingly, in the election to the Western Region House of Assembly in December 1951, the Yoruba voted overwhelming for the NCNC. The NCNC, an Igbo dominated political party, defeated the Awolowo led political party, Action Group, in the Yoruba region. Was that not a powerful proof that politics in Southern Nigeria, and even, Nigerian, as of then, was detribalized and that the Yoruba were not estranged from the Igbo? With that electoral victory, Nnamdi Azikiwe was to be the Premier of the Western Region. To forestall the emergence of a democratically elected Igbo as the Premier of the Yoruba region, Obafemi Awolowo, in a monumental act of tribalism, engineered a cross carpet and stole the premiership of the Western Region from Azikiwe. It was that Awolowo’s tribal-motivated political sleight of the hand that introduced tribalism in Nigerian politics. Up till that point, the dream of the Nigerian founding fathers that any Nigerian, irrespective of his ethnicity, can contest political office, win elections and serve in any part of the country was still alive. It was Obafemi Awolowo that killed that dream. Femi Fani-Kayode rightly stated that the Yoruba “were producing lawyers, doctors, accountants and university graduates, at least three generations, before the Igbo”. According to him, the Yoruba produced their first university graduate in1875 and the Igbo produced their first in 1935. But it is barefaced falsehood to write that “and they (the Igbo) have been trying to catch up with us (Yoruba) ever since” Less than twenty years after the Igbo produced their first graduates, they caught up with the Yoruba and overtook them in business and the professions, and the Yoruba joined some other ethnic groups of Nigeria in whining and whimpering over “Igbo domination”. Essentially, by 1966, the Igbo held sway over Nigeria with their disproportionate representation in all the key areas of the Nigerian public and social life. An Igbo dominated group of army majors (four Igbo and one Yoruba) carried out the first coup in Nigeria. But the coup was not in any way a tribal coup. The majors were actuated by an idealistic, but somewhat warped, vision for Nigeria and driven by their ill-disgested dosage of socialist doctrines. Fascinatingly, and also, attesting to the non- tribal character of the coup, the coup plotters were ideologically sympathetic to Obafemi Awolowo, who was, then, after being convicted of treasonable felony, wasting away in jail. According to some apocryphal sources, their plans included releasing Awolowo from jail and installing him as the prime minister of Nigeria. That, as the dust settled, three of the most important Hausa/Fulani leaders laid dead and no Igbo leader was killed, sowed the seed of distrust among the different ethnic groups and further aggravated the problems of Nigeria. However, only an impulsive lair could have written, as Femi Fani-Kayode did, that, in addition to killing these leaders, they (the coup plotters), “in some cases, mocked, tortured and maimed them before doing so, took pictures of their dead and mutilated bodies and killed their wives and children as well”. There was no wanton, indiscriminate or vengeful killing in the January 15, 1966 coup. Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria maciln18@yahoo 0803 529 2908 Rebutting Fani-Kayode’s anti-Igbo slander (2) By Tochukwu Ezukanma Fani-Kayode’s vindictive delight, in the killing of Aguiyi-Ironsi and “no fewer than 300 Igbo army officers and approximately 50,000 Igbo civilians” in the revenge coup by Northern Nigeria army officers on July 29, 1966, reeked of sadism. Normally, coup plotters target centers of power and not unarmed, harmless civilians. By dawn on July 30, 1966, the revenge coup had succeeded and the Hausa/Fulani had seized power. But lamentably, the Northern Regional government continued to instigate and orchestrate, and northern soldiers continued to spearhead, the mass murder of Igbo civilians. That mass murder of unarmed and harmless civilians for no crime of theirs but their ethnicity was an unpardonable crime against humanity. And that no one was brought to book for it remains a moral blemish on this country. He wrote that the Igbo “made their biggest mistake of all by provoking a full scale military conflict with Nigeria… by storming Mid-West and attempting to enter Yorubaland through Ore and capture it”. Did the Igbo not reserve the right to defend themselves and strike back at their enemies in a war? The war started on July 6, 1967 when the Nigerian army, the 1st Division, commanded by Lt Col Shuwa, attacked Biafra. With the war raging and Nigerian forces gunning for the Biafran capital of Enugu, what was wrong with Biafran soldiers storming across River Niger and fighting to capture Lagos, the then capital of Nigeria? It was the 2nd Division under the command of Lt Col Muritala Mohammed that fought back the Biafran Army from Ore to Onitsha, and not “the Third Marine Commando (a primarily Yoruba force under the command of Col. Benjamin Adekunle)”, as Fani-Kayode spuriously stated. He lied that the Yoruba are “exceptionally nice” to the Igbo and “treated the Igbo with love, respect and kindness after the civil war” As the saga of human misery, especially, the continued starvation to death of hundreds of thousands of children in Biafra, stirred the conscience of even the most conscienceless, Obafemi Awolowo was quoted as saying that, “hunger is an instrument of war and we will not hesitate to use it”. At the end of the war, Yakubu Gowon, in line with his no victor, no vanquished policy, assuaged the fears of the defeated, and in place of their despondency, gave them a glimmer of hope. But, at that nadir of Igbo powerlessness and helplessness, Obafemi Awolowo saw the opportunity to extract his “pound of flesh”. As Finance Minister, he evolved a banking policy that further pauperized the Igbo: the Igbo, irrespective of how much they had in Biafran currency (hundreds of thousands of pounds, millions of pounds), received a paltry amount of 20 Nigerian pounds in exchange. He banned the importation of stockfish and second hand clothing, two mainstay of Igbo entrepreneurship. And deliberately implemented the indigenization program - that massive buying over of foreign business interests by Nigerians - immediately after the war when the Igbo were still financially strapped, so, as to ensure that the Igbo did not participate in it. His statement that the Yoruba “saved the jobs that the Igbo held before the civil war for them to come to when the war ended” is totally untrue. The Yoruba gleefully took over the jobs the Igbo left in Lagos, South-West and other parts of Nigeria. At the end of the war, the Igbo could not retrieve these jobs; they mostly started all over again from the scratch. Even, presently, the government of Lagos State is anti-Igbo. As Governor, Ahmed Tinubu, for the flimsiest reasons, closed down several markets predominately populated by Igbo traders. Governor Fashola is on Tinubu’s trail with his own anti-Igbo policies. The cruelty and brutality evinced by KAI officials in dealing with street hawkers and roadside traders are partly dictated by tribal hate. Most street hawkers and traders are Igbo. In a TV interview, the KAI Marshal General, Danjuma Maigeri, a retired army officer, not given to the verbal sophistry of politicians, affirmed the anti-Igbo orientation of KAI operations. He talked about his agency’s resolve to ruthlessly deal with “these people coming into Lagos, instead of going to other states” and stem their influx into Lagos. Who are “these people” you may wonder. They are, he said, “those people –dirty people looking like animals - from Abakaliki”. Abakaliki is in Igboland. So, “these people”, “dirty people looking like animals from Abakiliki” are Igbo. The Igbo, despite enormous historical and geographical odds and repeated setbacks, have excelled across the whole spectrum of the Nigerian social life. A proud, courageous, resourceful and enterprising people, unencumbered by blind loyalty to authority, slavish obsequiousness to culture and maudlin affection for tribe, the Igbo live, work and invest in every part of the country. And wherever they are, they are distinguished by their unrivaled capabilities as businessmen, professionals, leaders and nation builders. A female Hausa lawyer summed it up in her own words, “without the Igbo, Nigeria would have been in the Dark Ages”. In writing about his “bitter truth about the Igbo”, Femi Fani-Kayode revealed the bitter truth about himself. From his article, one sensed a bigoted, spiteful mind consumed by tribalism and hatred for the Igbo. But that is hardly surprising because “nkali adi adi anya nma”, that is, “the eyes resent superiority”. In other words, people will always resent (and hate) those that are better than them. Albert Einstein was making a similar point when he said that “great minds will always encounter violent opposition from mediocre minds.” Essentially, Femi Fani-Kayode’s article is a relentless slander of a great people by a petty mind. Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria. maclin18@yahoo 0803 529 2908
Posted on: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 11:26:56 +0000
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