Opinion: Has the past come upon us?

by Jimanze Ego-Alowes

nigerians

The real work then on Nigeria is on her history. We must all recover the truths that were sacrificed to achieve Gowonic victory. It is this victory that kills us, boko haram and what not. And before many think it is a small matter, let us remind ourselves that it was her historic and historical lies that brought the former Soviet Union down.

A lot of things are wrong with the nation. Let us for this purpose review a recent if typical article written by one Ekene Nwabichili in The Guardian of 28-10-13. It was titled, Gov Obi’s anti-Igbo legacy. The question that immediately comes to mind is how can a Nigerian, an especially Igbo writer, be so happily misinformed.

We hold no opinions for or against his views on Obi. But we object to his rather quixotic side assertions. We shall take them one by one. He writes; like most people who came to Lagos in search of the good things of life, Mr. Obi was a man of modest means when he left Onitsha and arrived in Lagos in the mid 1980s, but he had become a billionaire before he went into politics. Lagos welcomed him heartily like millions of others.

How can a Nigerian say Lagos welcomed him, as if Lagos has a choice to welcome or not welcome citizens. Now, why did the Lagos/Southwest join Gen. Gowon to repudiate peacefully reached agreements at Aburi and plunge Nigeria into further and senseless bloodletting? Was their purpose to quarantine the Igbo in the East and never welcome them outside the east, after their institution of Gowon’s one Nigeria? Space will not allow us; we would have commented on the barbarity going on in the North in which Igbo and other Nigerians are targets and the culpability of parties to the matter in spite of their Pharisee style righteousness.

Again he goes on; in the mass hysteria generated by this development, a lot of Nigerians seemed to forget that the removal of beggars from Lagos streets is part of the effort to beautify the metropolis so that it can assume the status of a megacity.

Now even if we are not all geographers we all can at least goggle. A mega city against the self serving malicious propaganda and lies of the Lagos state government is in no way related to making a city beautiful. In fact megacities by definition may never be beautiful. If you checked on the internet, none of the world’s leading megacities is by any account a member of the world’s most beautiful cities. A mega city only means one thing. And that is a mega (big/compounded) city. Having once traded as an estate developer and agent I understand the technical name is a conurbation.

So the thesis that you are driving beggars to beautify a city is nonsense and has no basis in logic. Yet this error has been bought into by many who chose lap up official but false righteousness.

Next he speculates isn’t Yorubaland one place where there was no abandoned property syndrome after the civil war of 1967-70?

On this we were quite troubled. This is especially since we have earlier written on this and related matter of who bears the guilt of abandoned property saga. But we repeat for the sake of emphasis. The abandoned property saga is a policy design and execution of the North/Gowon and the Southwest/Awolowo or if you liked the victorious federal powers; that is, their Security Council members. A key pointer to this is that it was then Colonel David Mark a northerner who superintended at it. Yes, the then Rivers peoples may have been the prompters and definitely the beneficiaries but it was the north and the southwest that as Security Council victors, approved, designed and executed the policy. So no good cheers should go to them. They are more culpable than the Rivers people in the matter even if only as the approving authority.

But that is their good point. The real tragedy and for which the southwest alongside the north is indicted is as follows. Let us grant that the southwest did not do abandoned property in her own region. The historical fact also is that the north, the more senior member of the two Security Council did not too. And now the tragedy begins. The same north and or their leaders and the southwest and or their leaders, who were so compassionate for the Igbo that they preserved their properties and even collected rents for them, found the Christian conscience to design and approve the mass-murder of non combatant Biafran/Igbo and what not.

Now the question arises if the Igbo life is so worthless, why preserve their properties? Would Goebbels have been so heartlessly cunning? Or even Hitler?

Earlier one Uche Igwe in Punch of 25-09-13 dropped a literary atom bomb on his page. He wrote; and the late political sage, Mallam Aminu Kanu. Aminu kano a political sage? I was aghast. How on earth could an Aminu Kano be called a sage by the elites, here writers of the very people he participated in their mass murder? Besides the great investigative work published by Chuks Iloegbuna the matter of Aminu Kano as a mass murderer and genocidist is well documented by the British Museum, African section. But to be fair to this young man it was the elder Chinua Achebe who may have misled him. Achebe for reasons only he knows insisted against available evidence to the contrary to call Aminu Kano a good man, a saint. Now it is being improved on. He is now both saint and sage. Can a Jewish journalist or writer ever make such a mistake, call a Hermann Goering a saint, a sage? Igbo ronu.

Now cross over to a typical other Nigerian. Let us chose Balarabe Musa who trades under the banner of an elder statesman, a nationalist and even a human rights activist. In a recent The guardian 29-10-13 report, Balarabe Musa advocated that Colonel Anthony Nyiam should not make the panel appointed by President Jonathan on the national conference. His objection? That Nyiam was part of a coup attempt in which they planned to excise a part of northern Nigeria. That would have been wonderful if there were no other circumstances to it.

Now the record shows that Gowon’s and group’s first purpose was to do as Nyiam and group planned. That is to dismember Nigeria by the north pulling out, that is excising the south from the federation. It was the British who advised Gowon and horde against it. Perhaps if Nyiam like gowon had succeeded, the British would have come in to advise as appropriate; please don’t dismember Nigeria it is our beloved creation. The point is that even more than us they needed a Nigeria as an imperial stump.

As if this was not enough the same Balarabe Musa in a recent Punch interview hailed Gowon and Murtala and even Buhari as three of Nigerian nationalist great leaders. Of course he is aware of the facts that Gowon conducted a genocidal war on the Igbo and that Murtala buried innocent men from whole villages alive in the misanthropic guise of fighting a civil war. Now how can those who planned and executed genocide on their nationals be nationalists?

However a careful and well informed reader of the Balarabe assertion will know that he is avoiding naming Abacha/Babangida as a greater leader than Gowon and Murtala, as a concession to the other member group of the Security Council. Yet both Abacha and Babangida are kinder, gentler souls than Gowon and Murtala. This is as far as ascertainable historical records show.

In historical judgment you don’t judge a man by your vain imaginings of what he could have done in a given or projected circumstance. You judge him on what he has done in his own actual and given circumstances. Whatever it is Abacha or Babangida none was ever accused of mass murder or genocide. That they would have done worse than Gowon or Murtala is a historically invalid conjecture. The historical burden is that they did not do and Gowon and Murtala did.

The case of Gowon is apparently well stated by the bible on the matter of Judas. In Mathew 18:7 the holy writ writes:  Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

To repeat such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!

And to have partaken in genocide is to be the worst a man can be. So for Balarabe, a man who merely mouthed a desire to excise a part of the country remains un-forgiven and another who took part in planning and executing mass murder washes up a hero?

The real work then on Nigeria is on her history. We must all recover the truths that were sacrificed to achieve Gowonic victory. It is this victory that kills us, boko haram and what not. And before many think it is a small matter, let us remind ourselves that it was her historic and historical lies that brought the former Soviet Union down. We need to tell ourselves the truth and re-begin the journey of nationhood in truth. No nation can endure whose past is maintained as a bundle of lies of murderers made over as heroes or villains cropping up as sages.

Even the attempt to silence Nigerians in telling their story has official approval. OBJ a marginal player as our history goes was simply doing the biddings of his masters, when he chose to abolish the teaching of history in our secondary schools. If a nation cannot endure being told her past, she cannot endure the lies or silence thereof. And this truth lest we forget must include what we have all done bestially wrong, whether it is the Igbo/ Nzeogwu/Ojukwu or Gowon/North or Awolowo/Southwest all the truth must be told. And the hero must be sacrificed to save the community and never vice versa. Our dedication is and must be to Nigeria, never to a hero. Heroes are like serviettes, very dispensable.

 

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Read this article in the Sun Newspapers

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

 

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