Letter to Nnamdi Kanu
Dear Nnamdi,
Ndeewo! It wasn’t much of a surprise to some of us that you simply disappeared at a time you should be leading your empty-headed Biafran soldiers to war. By now, those unquestioning and hare-brained supporters of yours must have realised that your motive was to cause katakata for people and run away! I pray they smoke you out and given the treatment reserved for felons. It is the only bulwark against repeating the no-victor-no-vanquished mistake of January, 1970!
You never impressed me a bit since you began your doomed agitation. The impression one formed about you, especially during your inglorious sojourn in London, was that of a disturbed young man suited for a sanatorium! How you avoided life in a sanatorium and found your way to Nigeria to be worshipped by roughnecks, failed elders and supposed intellectuals is the story for another day.
It is now clear that you and your admirers were blinded and blurred by hate! Reference here is to your stiff-necked admirers on social media who egged you on, conscious that theirs was a ruinous course of action. Sadly, the so-called Igbo Leaders of Thought (IgLET) and Igbo intelligentsia we all thought would rein you in chose to clam up, believing you will do their dirty job for them. Some of them, including IPOB online warriors, are shamelessly singing the integration tune!
It is sickening but it is also true that you have the misfortune of coming from an environment where elders, for whatever reasons, elect to queue behind bandits! This must have conditioned you to become the stubborn fly in the Igbo proverb that followed the corpse into the grave. If the so-called elders had added their voices, instead of waiting for you to do the dirty job for them, may be you would have realized that the road you chose to tread led nowhere!
As you remain on the run, it may surprise you, contrary to your expectations, that there are no reprisal attacks and, there will be none, as a result of the unprovoked attack on Hausa, Fulani and Yoruba residents in the south east. This is because elders and leaders of thought in the north, south west and the south-south, quite unlike IgLET, preach peaceful co-existence! Shame on you!
I hear your biological father, a traditional ruler, was your number one fan and major supporter of your deviancy! How sad! You and your deviant father have proved the Igbo right in the proverb that says ‘the son who was ordered by his father to go and rob does not go stealthily but roughly breaks down the door’! From all indications, the trouble you, your father and your bloodthirsty supporters have caused is about to consume you!
Now, let’s put your charge of marginalization to the test to see ho far it stands. Frankly, it is the south west, more than any other zone, which should complain of marginalization. You know the south west was home to the candidate who was denied the presidency after he neatly won it. I am talking about late Chief MKO Abiola and the June 12, 1993 election.
What the south west did and why Nigerians and, indeed the civilized world respected and supported their stand was that there was never a time the south west threatened to pull out of Nigeria over June 12! Of course, misguided street urchins and uninformed Area Boys made noises to that effect but no voice of substance in Yorubaland identified with the idea.
By the way, do you even know that, as recent as the rudderless Goodluck Jonathan administration era, there was no way any Yoruba politician could have constitutionally ascended the presidency in the event of a vacancy? Yes, the Yoruba voted massively for Goodluck Jonathan but they never featured in the first eleven of his government. Yet, the Yoruba did not resort to abuses and insults and threats for being sidelined by the Jonathan administration! The facts are there for you and your barely-literate supporters to crosscheck!
It is strange that one of the reasons you gave for your agitation is that the present leadership in Nigeria ‘is marginalising Ndigbo. You think it was okay when the south east called the shot under Goodluck Jonathan, right? And, you see this is a birthright that must apply to all administrations, right? You are wrong and you failed to take a lesson from the Yoruba who see politics as a game in which you build bridges. Wherever you are hiding now, I just hope you will have the time to purge yourself of the hate and arrogance in you.
And, let me take you a little back in time! If you have any brain in that your thick skull, you could not have forgotten that a senior citizen of this great country was elected the second most powerful Nigerian nine years after the end of the civil war! Oh yes! I am referring to HE Dr. Alexander Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme who ran and won on the NPN ticket with Alhaji Shehu Shagari. That was nine years after the civil war! And this was in the genuine spirit of No victor, No vanquished! I know this fact of history may be lost on you and your deranged supporters.
Now, when Dr. Ekwueme was number two, no politician from the south west featured in the top four! The senate president was Dr. Joseph Wayas while the speaker of the House of Representatives was Chief Edwin Ume Ezeoke with Chief Adisa Akinloye ( aka Adisco Champagne) as chairman of the ruling national Party of Nigeria, NPN. There was no complaint of marginalization or threatened to tear up the country! Tell me, where, exactly, is this marginalization stuff coming from?
Of course, the law will soon catch up with you. And, by the time some sense is whipped into your thick skull, other thick-skulled potential separatists will think twice before attempting to replicate your foolish misadventure!
The country cannot and, must not, repeat the mistake of 1967! Nigeria kwenu!
Magaji < [email protected] > is based in Abuja