Let me first thank you for taking the time and making the effort to query the palpable lethargy or disarray which has preoccupied and apparently neutralized the intellectual firepower of contemporary Igbo elite. My reaction to your submission shall be limited, for now, since the essay is still a work in progress. As provocative as what you have written thus far may sound, I still look forward to a conclusion of your current trend of thought.
The much I can say, for now, is that the emphasis on generational divide in the task before our folks, by your repeated mention of the old versus young intellectuals, could engender unnecessary misgivings even though such an outcome may not have been your intent. The Ikemba’s quote contained in your piece is quite clear in the invitation to the young in our midst to muster the gumption to step up to the plate and assume the lead to make up the deficiencies of the older ones. It is, therefore, confusing to try to explain the inability of the young Igbo intellectual elite like you to rise up to the challenge of this era by providing a long list of old intellectuals who may have not met your expectations of them for a variety of reasons.
Since you made a special mention of me, I feel compelled to let you understand that, based on my limited means, I have always endeavored to make my own input into our collective struggle as a people in as many ways as I could and as I speak, I am still in the trenches trying my utmost daily to open up new vistas of hope for the future of our people. I have written sundry articles on Biafra and also have been instrumental in proposing the systematic implementation of the Biafra Memorial Project (BMP) to which the Osondu Foundation has always been committed. The Osondu Newsletter, which later metamorphosed into the online outlet, Osondu website debuted here in the Washington, DC metro in the 1990s. If you get the chance to browse the site, especially the first three volumes of the Osondu Newsletter, you can still appreciate the seriousness of the effort made at the time to portray the injustices meted to our folks in Nigeria as well as the determination to restore our dignity and cultural pride through the pursuit of Igbo Renaissance. May I also refer you to the effort being made through the World Igbo Environmental Foundation (WIEF) to seek a real-time revitalization of the Igbo spirit by restoration of the sanctity and integrity of the Igbo ancestral home base which is currently being overwhelmed by neglect and widespread decay and degradation. To facilitate quicker actualization of WIEF’s mission at ground zero, the four cardinal ideological tenets of the Green Movement has been proposed and elucidated for easy universal application by groups and individuals as they deem suitable to their own circumstances.
I have written no books thus far, but I believe that I have generated and compiled enough material over the years to write more than a few. I also know that there are alternative effective means of harnessing and deploying the power of the written word beyond just publication of books. If you however, know of parties interested in partnering with me in book-publishing, endeavor, I shall definitely like to explore that.
Okenwa Nwosu, MD
Founder, Physicians Omni Health Group
Maryland, USA
…Congratulations on this excellent essay. This is a major intervention that our people will come to recognize as a turning point in probing the seemingly inexplicable inaction of our intellectuals to confront the Igbo genocide and its aftermath. The essay surely ends this very depressing lethargy. The Igbo nation will triumph. Let no one ever doubt this outcome. All we need is to be unwavering and eternally focused.
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
Leading Scholar, Igbo Genocide 1966-1970
This is a subject I have been thinking quite a lot about lately. I wasn’t born during the war or the events that preceded it and my understanding of these things were largely shaped by the “victors history” fed to me in school. My parents and older relations didn’t speak in too much detail about it; they seemed to want to shield us from the horrors they witnessed.
In the past few years, though, I’ve suddenly found that I really need to develop a more accurate picture of this period in our history. In many ways I’m similar to someone like Ike Ude (whose work I admire) – culturally transcendent, largely apolitical, committed to aesthetics and style – but I feel the need to say something more, more culturally and historically specific. So thanks on the reference to the writers who are expressing insightful views on the subject… I will definitely be looking them up.
One thing, though a subject that I have encountered a lot lately is the effective use of propaganda to solicit sympathy and support for the Igbo cause… Many critics view the use of words like “pogrom” and “genocide” as being slightly overstating the situation…
Uchenna
Performing Arts and Music Analyst
Comb & Razor Blog
In order that the events in Biafra in the 1960s become no more than a fading memory, essays such as this, should remind us of what did happen and what was learned as a result. It is important to draw upon the experience of past conflicts as a means of assessing lessons learned. And having done some research myself, I found Ambrose Ehirim’s analysis to be completely accurate. He has written a very impressive and thoughtful article. While one does not have to agree entirely with each and every statement, my overall impression is very positive. Mr. Ehirim has obviously done a lot of reading, perhaps more than have many of those he rebukes. The issues he raises are troubling, and alas, very real.
Jonathan A. Goetz
Hermosa Beach, California
Ambrose Ehirim’s article “The Tragedy of the Igbo Intellectual” sets out to rescue, seeking to justify the young Igbo intellectual elite for inaction and blaming the old intellectual elite for lack of profound leadership. His discussion of a “notable few” who wrote “extensively and exhaustively” is plausible and informative, but sheds little light on who needs to be writing more on the course of events in Biafra. However, I admire his energy and courage in his work, so far. I have no reason to question Ehirim’s conclusion that the lack of profound leadership is a tragedy or the fact that nothing much should be expected of the young Igbo intellectual. (Nor is it startling to learn that many books have been written on internal strife, wars, genocide and “pogrom” to make a case of crimes committed against humanity; it hardly seems necessary for Ehirim to demonstrate that every Igbo should write a book about the “pogrom” and Biafra.) I do think, however, that Ehirim dodged the issue of including himself as part of the Igbo problem, thus declining to take up the mantle of Igbo leadership with reference to Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu’s quote.
Ardis Hamilton
The Hamilton Group
Real Estate Investors
Los Angeles, California
There were many omissions in Ambrose Ehirim’s article. First, I share Ehirim’s concern for his people. Their energy and talents, however, do not lead me to ignore the needs and rights of the minorities. The Efiks, Ijaws, Ibibios, Annangs, Kalabaris, Ogojas and others have been taken advantage of by their Igbo neighbors for decades. These minority tribes had asked repeatedly for independence from the Igbos since the 1950s.
The minority people within the East preferred to be free of Igbo domination by having states of their own as promised by the Federal government. But the Biafran leadership denied them the same right it claimed for itself vis-Ã -vis the rest of Nigeria, the right of self determination and protection from victimization.
Within the Eastern region and prior to secession and afterwards, there was no free expression of opinion by the minority groups, and Biafra was created without any democratic consultation of the minorities. Hand-picked representatives voted for secession or were locked up in Enugu. After the Biafran army had taken hundreds of hostages to its shrinking enclave it dared to call for a plebiscite in the victimized areas. Reports of Biafran terror and intimidation to ensure support from non-Igbo areas never reached the American public because of the press’s quick identification of the Biafrans as the underdog. I have reports of burnings of villages, mass graves, and massacre of non-Igbo civilians by Biafran forces. But these things made the Biafrans look more like Nazis than Jews and conflicted with our preconceptions about the situation. They were therefore given no publicity.
For Igbo secession to succeed, it needed to annex the territory of neighboring tribes and in particular to have the oil resources and facilities of Port Harcourt in Ijaw territory.
Gerald F. Obozome
Claremont, California
Everything in my professional life began when I came to Los Angeles from Israel and enrolled at Los Angeles College of Fashion Design where I learned about scholarship, determination and the wisdom of patience. Over the years I made friends through Ambrose and Ambrose has always made me feel a valued, competent, independent woman. All the friends I met through Ambrose, each in their way, gave me their support and helped me to find the freedom I needed to think and do the things I love doing best: acting and fashion design. Ambrose, you are a rare gem and your writing speaks a lot about the person that you are and with this stimulating and important essay, I am moved.
Ruth Uloma Ehirim
Uloma Fashion Designers
Hollywood, California
Ambrose Ehirim Replies:
My thanks to Okenwa Nwosu for his generous response and above all for the links he provided for my access perhaps before the completion of this article in which he “still look forward to a conclusion of” my “current trend of thought.” In addition to being a leading figure in Igbo Diaspora, a regular contributor to Igbo-related forums with great ideas and quite a critic of a retarded World Igbo Congress that has nothing to show for being Igbo umbrella other than keeping records of funny books, Nwosu is also a practicing medical doctor in the state of Maryland. Given his formidable credentials, his response deserves to be taken seriously with his reputation of intelligence and integrity.
One assertion by Nwosu I have no intention of attempting to rebut is that “based on my limited means, I have always endeavored to make my own input into our collective struggle as a people in as many ways as I could and as I speak, I am still in the trenches trying my utmost daily to open up new vistas of hope for the future of our people.”
Indeed, his own serious commitment to the Igbo cause is very important because after browsing the Osondu website and the links to World Igbo Environmental Foundation, it took me aback to Igbo Forum a couple of years ago where he posted images of a decaying and abandoned Onitsha, the hub of African marketplace in the continent. To judge by those images and video shots, apart from what I believe was an intended pleasure trip back home, and if the purpose was making the environment better and safer healthwise, the goal has not been met yet, with the agenda seemingly abandoned, and in that regard, one would be compelled to ask why the drive was stopped midway by someone of Nwosu’s magnitude.
Dr. Nwosu’s response is based entirely upon the premise that the old intellectuals should be wholly blamed for the problems grand and small that have engulfed the Igbo people – home and abroad – pointing fingers at me in particular and I will be coming to that part in a minute. At the same time, to repeat what I wrote in the first part of this essay, I made it patently clear talking about we, and that we, is a collective of Igbo Diaspora which may include the writer with regards to the American social system in which much advantage should have been taken, for onward objectivity by Igbo Diaspora, just like our other immigrant counterparts.
I had implied the need of the intellectuals as a machinery in any organized society which is much expected of the Igbo Diaspora intellectuals to use in effecting change within a sound framework of the Igbo nation, and by doing that, the confusion and chaos that seemed to have drowned us wouldn’t have arrived had the intellectuals not been forced to go with any flow on the basis of their weakness. And I do not see any disability in Nwosu, who has, in my assessment, the ability to subdue and deal with the fools and ruffians that are destroying Igbo land by way of political thuggery.
As it also happened, I did try to get in touch with Dr Chima J. Korieh at the Department of History, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who in partnership with Dr. Ifeanyi Ezeonu at the Department of Sociology, Brock University, St Catherine, Ontario, Canada, regarding the call for papers on the pogrom in which the premier issue is now in print,to be published sometime this year in Mbari – The International Journal of Igbo Studies, and scholars and authors have until March 09, 2009 to submit their papers for review for the special issue which goes in print in April. I understand the quarterly will be gracing libraries of many institutions here in the United States and Canada.
Speaking with Korieh and laying much emphasis on the pogrom and why it is important we should never stop keeping records and embarking on research projects to eke out a complete analysis of this horrible event –the Igbo genocide – he told me he had been attending a lot of meetings and seminars, and the Igbo Studies Association, which I’m already aware of, normally holds seminars on the pogrom the first week of April, hosted at Howard University, Washington, DC.
There are many reasons why Ezeonu and his colleague Korieh at Marquette University are desperately calling for papers on the Biafran genocide. And one of them, as I suggested while we spoke on the phone, is: the intent to preserve materials (testimonies, documentaries on tapes and perhaps currently plans to digitize testimonies and eye witness accounts, and even duplicating the tapes into Motion JPEG files, as well as other formats for computer and television viewing) about the pogrom and catastrophic Civil War to the future generations. These are worthy projects I believe if every Igbo-related organization, foundations or trusts should embark on and for mankind to be alert, the pogrom and the lessons learned would not be in vain. With that practically put into perspective, the pains, the feelings, the emotion of the events and the separation from families; the stories will be told until eternity. And most importantly, the time is now because aging survivors of the pogrom may not be around upon commencement of conduction of interviews even if it has to be done by a generation yet unknown, thus the importance of keeping records.
Just like the story of the Igbo man who survived the pogrom from the hands of hoodlums and Nigerian vandals lying in circumstances which are of an exclusive economic nature. For nearly twenty-something years before the pogrom Igbos gradually managed to capture not only commerce and industry but they also succeeded in acquiring, by means of purchase and lease, a huge amount of landed property in Kano, Jos, Lagos and all the big cities including Port Harcourt where Igbos owned almost every landed property stretching from the Ogbunabali area on the outskirts of Trans Amadi Industrial Layout to Diobu (Mile 1 through Mile 3).
Or the story of Egbebelu Ugobelu who was in combat during the war and almost starved to death because of Awolowo’s initiated economic blockade that denied food and medicine to the shores of Biafra and as a result, women, infants and children were desperately starved to death. Even before the Civil War erupted on failures from the federal Nigeria side to respect the Aburi Accord, huge numbers of Igbo men and women including infants and children had already been murdered or displaced with parents taken away. Yes, Gowon’s-led genocidal campaign against the Igbo nation by not upholding the decisions at Aburi was a moral abomination. Obafemi Awolowo, who had conspired with his colleagues in Action Group to overthrow the government of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and sentenced to ten years in prison by Justice George Sodeinde Sowemimo later to be released by Ojukwu in anticipation of either staying neutral or declaring Oduduwa Republic, all of a sudden, made a 180-degrees turn telling the world that starvation was a war strategy, that their enemies should not be fed fatter in order to fight them harder. But what he seems to have forgotten, or more likely remembered, but would not say, was that Ojukwu could have left him locked up until the war was over, or possibly eliminated him as a “strategy of war.” In a desperate search for food, and according to Ugobelu, a whole lot happened:
“…Before long we were eating rats, lizards, grasshoppers and frogs. Snakes and tortoise were known to be eaten by some towns... The first time I tasted a snake, it was just the juice…We would be searching for food at times and encounter some civilians who braved it and came to search for food also, I mean within a mile to the forward location. Often they came to see if there were some ripe palm fruits to cut down or some fairly ripe bananas and plantains to cut down…When someone discovered a bunch of bananas somewhere, he kept checking and praying that someone else didn’t see it; sometimes he covered it up. The idea was to allow it to be fairly ripe. Nine times out of ten, he lost because maybe ten or more others had indeed seen it and were also waiting and praying….Besides, I was looking for a family member principally for the purpose of knowing his or her address in order to fill out an allotment form so that he or she would be drawing my allotment, and in the event of my death, if it so happened…”
These and hundreds of thousands of testimonies are the kind of stories that need to be told for a broader reach and for generations to come. These are stories that require funding; that research centers have to be built and stories that needs a museum for posterity. These are stories foundations, trusts and organizations need to be collecting data on.
I must honestly thank scholar Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe whose response first popped up in my mail box, and who is unquestionably impeccable recognizing the fact that I am a scholar of his devoted works on Igbo genocide 1966-1970, and as part of awareness that “never again” which sends a message that Igbos are alert and there shouldn’t be any illusions about demolishing the Igbo nation, any further. The Igbo nation must rise to the occasion and it’s just a question of time.
For Uchenna, the African classical music analyst at the Comb & Razor Blog with whom I have quite often exchanged ideas on musicology dating back to the days of Action, Doves, Apostles, even E.T. Mensah and Funkees, and a brief response to the first part of this essay, I salute you, and let me add this to your curious mind about shielding the truth. Like the Holocaust which is taught in many universities, social-cultural institutions, colleges and community colleges; even secondary schools and intermediate schools throughout the United States and Europe, the crippled Igbo intellectual is one of several reasons why the pogrom is not taught in Igbo-related schools and higher institutions because he lacks the courage and political power to initiate that. In most of these institutions in the United States and Europe, the Holocaust is taught with an endowed chair and all sorts of funding inspired and drawn from a wide range of collective Jewish organizations. The Holocaust is taught with fear and trembling, with reverence for the subject and respect for its victims almost everywhere.
But the disturbances and the Igbo genocide of 1966-1970 and why it is not taught in schools in “Nigeria” or elsewhere today is (are) another issue to ponder and clearly a tragedy on the side of the Igbo intellectual.
And the question here is how could this be done? Well, the fact is there will not be much worthwhile teaching and scholarship – and in the long run not much vital memory of the Igbo genocide – unless schools, colleges, universities, endowed chairs, research centers, museums, publishers, and other educational institutions provide encouragement and support for the important work that lies ahead.
And how could this be established? A do-nothing World Igbo Congress, the so-called “Igbo Umbrella” could be used here as an example. Since the WIC was founded about sixteen years ago with the idea of being Igbo umbrella what would one say WIC has achieved all these years save for invite its adversaries to expose its dirty laundry and when a collective, confused bunch of Igbo Diaspora efulefu, a worthless bunch dismisses, their guests will be scratching their heads wondering about how messy such an elite body just could not get things done.
I must also thank my learned friend Jonathan Goetz for his contribution and observations in what is looking more like disappearing from the face of this planet and who for some reason has developed a great deal of interest studying the Igbo genocide. For now, the Igbo hagglers are bent on what is in there for them in terms of loot sharing. But nevertheless, time will tell. In addition to that, I thank Ardis Hamilton, as well, for his unbiased contribution.
For Gerald Obozome, let me set the following record straight before addressing your point of view; and maybe, you do not know what you are talking about, and I can sense you belong to the Port Harcourt mainland stock of Omoku/Ikwerre/Etche; and by confiscating Igbo assets and belongings earned through hard work declaring them abandoned property without reparations despite all the injuries that occurred, that’s OK in your mind and I hope your conscience is very clear – though it is a mystery to me how someone who thinks he is level headed could so misconstrue the straightforward meaning of what I wrote.
But whoever could have imagined that Ken Saro-Wiwa who fought on the Nigerian side in order to coerce and steal Igbo properties would end up being a victim by the people he aligned himself with in plundering and demolishing the Igbo nation? Whoever could have imagined that the same Britain that supplied arms to the Nigerian vandals in its genocidal campaign against the Igbo nation would today be intervening through military support for the federal government in the Niger Delta? Whoever could have imagined that Roland Ekperi, the President of the Ijaw People’s Association, (IPA), and his followers in London will today be waving their placards singing solidarity songs in the quest to free its detainees and liberate Niger Delta? Whoever could have imagined that Shell Petroleum Development Company, Chevron Nigeria Limited, Nigeria Agip Oil Company Limited, Mobil Producing Nigeria Limited, Pan Ocean Oil Corporation and Elf Petroleum Company Limited would be the firms to destroy the lands of Niger Delta polluting its environment and would not give back anything in appreciation for tapping the “oil rich region’s” natural resources? And whoever could have imagined that Igbo would have no hands in such a mess as the Ijaw nation and other ethnic minorities had thought in the past?
As a little kid, growing up in Accra, Ghana, I witnessed when much was discussed about “Nigeria’s” problems huge and tiny through the pre and post Civil War eras. I also read thoroughly an emerging continent going through the pains of colonialism coupled with the scramble that left the entire continent in the hands of its captors by way of its resource control and how it should be put into place in terms of power and delegated ruling elites.
Britain, in particular, succeeded in determining how power should be brokered in every of its enclave it colonized along the West African Coast. They had succeeded because they had been able to come in between a people that had no idea what was about to happen when the rush and quest for sovereignty heated up within the regions it fabricated and joined up even though the people in question had nothing in common from the kind of food they ate, their custom and way of life; and how they conducted business in general.
Britain did not envision a one Nigeria which was their own doing as a result of the settings which brought about a hindsight that a divided Nigeria was not going to be in their own interest. But that hunch somehow provided an avenue of loopholes from around which a Northern Nigeria influence became the ruling elites from an inflated proportion that gave the North the edge, thus coming up with a questionable political party that had no basis winning by a so-called “majority” as suggested by majority rule in any democracy.
However, the problem, henceforth, would surface and a fabricated nation as ordained by the imperialists would never be the same again. During the constitutional conferences and the debates that followed which would lead to independence, the late Chief Awolowo had foreseen the irrelevance of a Nigerian state, sophistically analyzing that there’s no such thing as Nigeria, that it was only a “geographical expression” which suggested a one united Nigeria was just a mirage. Awolowo was right and we are now living witnesses. And had it been at the time of these constitutional conferences and “logical debates” the founders of a fabricated state had societal vision like Awolowo did, perhaps the irrelevance of a one united Nigeria would have arise, and perhaps different nationalities would have emerged as it eventually happened in the Balkans.
But the discovery of oil had persuaded the imperialists not to give up the idea of a fabricated state with the northern ruling elites as its machinery to keep these fabricated states viable and in tact through majority rule which would ultimately lead to a bastardized corrupt administration within few years of the nation’s sovereignty.
I have held numerous debates while exchanging greetings with my comrades and these interesting and intellectual discourses have been most of the time, if not all, situations regarding a troubled nation like a fabricated Nigeria ignoring the classic case of the Balkanization theory.
Nevertheless, the setting up of the Willink Commission to study the agitation of ethnic minorities to carve out autonomy based on resource control and self determination engineered more interesting scenarios. After all said and done, the Mid-West was created to pacify the ethnic minorities which actually was not enough to address the principles of resource control considering the fact that the Ijaw nation was all over including the riverine areas.
Mid-West was a hotbed of every major ethnic group in that fabricated state. There was the Hausa speaking Mid-West, the Igbo speaking Mid-West and a Yoruba speaking Mid-West spreading from Auchi, Asaba and Benin, joined by other ethnic minorities – the Itsekiris, the Isokos, the Esans, the Urhobos, and the rest of which culture was very much varied.
On the other hand, along the Bight of Biafra, there were other ethnic minorities, too, on the deltas of Opobo, Brass, Bonny, Calabar and Oron whose agitation for self determination erupted when a young and energetic lad by the name of Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro began a movement to sort out the problems of a fabricated state and wanted out to determine that a bunch had been amiss when watering down the mess of oil revenue and the abandonment of the creeks where oil flowed in abundance to sustain a fabricated state.
If you Google Boro’s name it takes exactly 0.20 seconds to discover that he worked briefly as a teacher, then joined the police force and was stationed in Port Harcourt. It takes no longer than it is taking you to read this sentence to find out that Boro had gone AWOL for a job as an instructor at the Man O’War Bay Character and Leadership Center in Western Cameroon. You will also find out Boro spent two years at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka studying chemistry. Also, you will find out the Ijaw nation has a date that observes Isaac Boro’s Day as a national holiday. If you have more time to browse Google image on Boro, you will find pictures of Boro including the ones he had on a military fatigue, English suit and his boyish days.
Boro started a movement that was ill-timed, not even necessary, and provocative at a time when the imperialists had set up a tone detrimental to his “oil rich region” when a one Nigeria had been the round table conference requiring effectiveness of dialogue and diplomacy to sort things out without bloodshed and perhaps to a fabricated nation that may somehow break up, one day.
Boro started the Niger-Delta militancy group fighting against an establishment put together by the imperialists. Boro sold out. He made his mistakes and the genesis of the ongoing conflicts in the Niger-Delta areas was his own making and he paid dearly for it. And something that must be borne in mind is that Nd’Igbo had nothing to do with issues of concern to Niger-Delta when Boro and his youngish colleagues fought against a Nigeria set up established by the imperialists regarding resource control and self determination with the flowing Niger-Delta oil being the center of attraction in what would be the mother of all conflicts.
Was oil really the issue in building a profound national state despite the minorities that encompassed the Easter Region when Nd’Igbo who came up with the practical idea there’s no substitute for hard work; building bridges, dwelling comfortably among their other ethnic neighbors and providing goods and services which became a trademark for the Igbo nation knowing for the fact that Igbo people were industrious and prospered wherever they dwelled? Nd’Igbo made Port Harcourt what it is today. They built homes, established series of businesses and ran the city effectively.
But the problem of the ethnic minorities was that either they had been brainwashed to have been insane on the ground that Igbo people would run them over in the event an Igbo-related sovereignty emerges through some kind of dialogue based on regionalization, or they were just ignorant. Though Boro had nothing against Nd’Igbo when he started his movement in the company of his colleagues to liberate Niger-Delta from “bondage” and the inexplicable events that would follow in his quest for self determination for the Ijaw nation, there was no such thing as Biafra being “created without any democratic consultation of the minorities” claimed by Obozome or force-fed him in the nihilist Nigeria of his youth.
And I would assume Obozome likes reading jargon because he had no explanation to where more than 400 Igbo men and women “waiting for evacuation at Kano International Airport” were murdered in the most horrible way by armed Northern nihilists; in Lafenwa, near Abeokuta where hundreds of railway workers, all of Igbo origin, were rounded up and murdered by Northern Nigerian soldiers from the Abeokuta Garrison; in Awka, where civilians were forced to drink urine by the Nigerian vandals; in Okigwe where hundreds of innocent people were lined up and shot execution style; in Afor Umuohiagu near Owerri where more than 300 civilians were killed, most of them women and children; inside the Ikeja barracks on the orders of Lieutenant Nuhu to the mutineers to execute all officers of Eastern Nigeria origin; mass arrests and execution of officers of Eastern Nigeria origin, most of them, if not all, Igbo officers in Apapa, Yaba and Surulere; in Asaba, the “male death march and drowning,” and the list of these atrocities by the Nigerian vandals goes on and on, and on.
Irrespective of what happened, after the pogrom and Civil War, the intellectual community came to appreciate, and admire the courage of the Igbo people – for having a choice and refusing to be enslaved. The same sense of estrangement and rootlessness that is going on now in the Niger-Delta by the Niger-Delta insurgents against a federal government they once sided with during the Biafran conflict shows how deeply troubled a fabricated state has been since its independence. But Biafra did have a choice when they were being persecuted from place to place in a country supposedly to be free and just, and belonging to all of us, which is why in the Ahiara document, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu declared:
“Fellow countrymen and women, You, the people of Eastern Nigeria: Conscious of the supreme authority of Almighty God over all mankind, of your duty to yourselves and posterity; aware that you can no longer be protected in your lives and in your property by any government based outside Eastern Nigeria; believing that you are born free and have certain inalienable rights which can best be preserved by yourselves; unwilling to be unfree partners in any association of a political or economic nature; rejecting the authority of person or persons other than the military government of Eastern Nigeria to make any imposition of whatever kind or nature upon you; determined to dissolve all political and other ties between you and the former federal republic of Nigeria; prepared to enter into such association, treaty or alliance with any sovereign state within the former federal republic of Nigeria and elsewhere on such terms and conditions as best to subserve your common good…”
It should be borne in mind that the Ahiara Declaration was made after a joint session of the “Consultative Assembly and the Advisory Committee of Chiefs and Elders” which adequately was represented from every province in the region and passed a resolution authorizing Ojukwu “to declare at the earliest practicable date Eastern Nigeria, a free, sovereign and independent state by the name and title of Republic of Biafra.” And Igbo people had no problem with resource control and wherever creek oil flowed from to keep a fabricated nation afloat. In that regard, pointing it out clearly on plebiscite, Odumegwu Ojukwu, again:
“At the present moment, the Nigerian army has occupied some non-Igbo areas of Biafra. But this cannot be regarded as a settlement of the ‘minority question.’ This is why we have suggested a plebiscite. Under adequate international supervision, the people of these areas should be given the chance to choose whether they want to belong to Nigeria or to Biafra. Plebiscites have been used… to determine what grouping is most acceptable to the people of disputed areas. If Nigeria believes that she is really defending the true wishes of the minorities, she should accept our proposal for a plebiscite in the disputed areas of Nigeria and Biafra.”
Boro’s call sheet – Samuel Owonam and Nothingham Dick – had put together a plan recruiting men within the creeks to help fight for their cause; the liberation of Niger-Delta from the hands of a fabricated national state called “Nigeria.” Boro and his men created the Niger-Delta Volunteer Force, battle ready and blowing up oil pipelines engaging law enforcement officers in an all out war declaring the Niger-Delta as a sovereign nation. Boro was fighting Nigeria and not the Igbo nation when all the mess he created became an act of war. So Obozome’s exclamations are swollen tabloid rumors and had no basis; it is misinformation and lunatic.
Yakubu Gowon’s-led federal Nigeria’s decision to guarantee the ethnic minorities’ security by the creation of more states within the Eastern region ranks among the more fateful of many fateful steps taken in the fear-filled year of 1967. In retrospect, and with full knowledge of its consequences, was it wise for the “Niger Deltas?” And who is now bearing the consequences in its aftermath? Are the “Niger Deltas” better off today after all these years of formal ceasefire in a war that consumed about 3 million souls? Or could it really have been that, at the moment when Igbos were investing their money building homes and setting up businesses in the Port Harcourt metropolis that the Ijaws, the Ogonis, the Kalabaris and their other delta co-dwellers were just envy for Igbos persistent hard work that paid off which had their minds poisoned with bigotry and hatred? And where did Igbo people go wrong in what had been ignited by Gowon for firing the first shot in a war that shouldn’t have erupted in the first place had the Aburi accord been respected, and would drag on for more than 30 months?
Ruth, I do not have words to express my gratitude but to say thank you very much for the kind words and, I am glad you have maintained your composure all these years.
In light of what has been revealed on “The Tragedy of the Igbo Intellectual” and crimes committed against mankind by the Nigerian vandals in the course of this controversy, I am, needless to say, that a whole lot has been learned which would help the next generation pick up interest with regards to facts and logics about the pogrom and Biafra-Nigeria War.
I thank everyone who has written, but especially Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Okenwa Nwosu, Ardis Hamilton, Uchenna of Comb & Razor Blog, and Gerald Obozome for stretching my thoughts and Jonathan Goetz.
Guardian of Nd’Igbo
At the beginning of this decade, around March 2000, to be precise, a heated debate erupted on Igbo Charter and Australian-based Frances Elekwachi was among many others who championed its cause to be drawn on the board for deliberations and adoptions. I, for one, engaged in some of the debates with my colleagues at Biafra Nigeria World, (BNW) and Biafra Liberation Movement. Also, I had written in detail a platform proposing the best possible way of dealing with the subject matter in question, all reflecting on the status quo – how things use to be and how better off we were back in the day of our forebears. But knowing Igbo Diaspora for who they are, that proposal was killed instantly by a gang that had problems digesting the contents of the project. Thus while every state bears the same obligation to care for all who are in its charge, like a national state, sovereignty means independence not only with respect to national custom, but also with respect to the deeper questions of national constitution and purpose which was the whole idea of Igbo Charter.
Almost ten years has gone by and Igbos still don’t have a charter with its mission statement as guardian of the physical well-being of Igbo people all around the world. That vigorous debate in 2000, had it gone through and been effected and envisioned as a polity that would among other things permit the establishment of an independent Igbo national culture based on the unique perspective of Nd’Igbo; and also assist Igbos in developing a character suitable for a life of self-reliance and independence. By the time Elekwachi brought out his document, he saw clearly what the circumstances of statelessness had brought Nd’Igbo, especially Igbo Diaspora to the brink of collapse. It was in this fashion Igbos lost everything because they did not have the political power even up until today as I pen this piece.
Yet beyond the prospects for creating a charter or constitution for the Igbo nation, the document also would have achieved something important for “Nigeria’s” Igbo identity. By deliberately forging an internal Igbo document, the forum (then at Igbo Forum) would have introduced the idea that Igbo is not merely another democratic fabric on the shores of the West African coast, but a project of Igbo people seeking to chart its own course among the nations. I would assume Igbo Charter died a natural death since no Igbo Diaspora intellectual wants to talk about it ever since or maybe some of these intellectuals have compromised with the new breeds who lost every sense of purpose for they seem to be living a better life than their forebears which probably could have been the root of all the mess as survey after survey shows how the new breeds do not care and just do not get it. It is a tragedy.
To be sure, the newer generation who seem to be talking tough on the grounds of better life and better living environment slamming our forebears as not having the opportunity that they, the newer generation has today, and that if they (our forebears) had lived in today’s world, that they (our forebears) wouldn’t have been able to do “jack,” because of the fierce competitiveness and the bore, nuclear family mold they (newer generation) had to deal with. But all the rhetoric about a better privileged, nuclear family mold has been exposed as a mere rhetorical balderdash, and no way close or parallel to the days of our forebears when a brother gets his brother covered and a sister plays her dual feminine role – mother and nurse, no matter the circumstances; and building of community steadfast.
Nowadays, in the explosive, nuclear family mold as adopted upon exploring the shores of America, brothers can no longer dwell together or eat from the same dish; families and communities becomes impotent and fast disappearing as authorities preside over family matters; women abandon domestic work for 24/7 working days thus elevated to head of household; men lose their jobs, socio-economic status and becomes arm chair quarter backs in their living rooms with a new title of house husband; parents no longer spend quality time with their children for they have been trapped living above their means and caught up with all sorts of bills that can never be consolidated until God knows when; praying together which helped keep family values intact disappears from the family’s timetable and families and communities at a time more pacific becomes jumbled and bellicose.
It was during the days of the Igbo Union back in the day that we had character and values even though our forebears had limited resources and in many instances did not have the kind of education and exposure that we possess today, yet they prevailed in organizing themselves and getting things done. It was during the Igbo Union era that the display of character was measured by the way Igbo men and women were raised and were able to point out failings, not only with regard to this or that person, but also with regard to the entire people. Like character which embodied our forebears, they were able to form associations in which individuals work together over a period of many years, even a lifetime to achieve a common purpose. In Igbo vernacular, like the
boy-boy, that is, the apprentice who learns a trade form his
nnaukwu, that is, his master (Big Daddy) who in most cases is a relative or a townsfolk, and after some time he is allowed to start up his own business independently which tells a man of character because over the years of apprenticeship his spirit was not bent out of shape by adversity or duress, defeat or victory, and the chain of reaction goes on and on as the pillar of that very branch of trade eventually becomes an institution of its own where townsfolk learn to trade.
And on this note, I put the effective role of the intellectuals into perspective. Without the proper guidance of the intellectual by way of character and examples, the
boy-boy probably would leave prematurely on many grounds; for example, say his
nnaukwu never treated him well compared to other apprentice from around the block where they trade on the same merchandise. On the other hand, without a proper training by the intellectual, the
nnaukwu might have his shop fold up through careless business decisions. This is why it is important to be thorough in every trade which brings about the effectiveness of the intellectual and these instances relies on how we handle ourselves as intellectuals on any given day under any circumstances.
Take for instance, a state governor or commissioner from any Igbo-related state visiting the shores of this land probably on a goodwill message tour to update the Diaspora on the affairs of state from the native land which comes as usual by a group of organizing committees who coordinates between the governor/commissioner and his or her host of dignitaries. Remember the governor’s visit was meant to update Diaspora on the affairs of state and he or she is running the state on transparency and accountability. But the truth of the matter is that when this said governor arrive the United States he or she is not prepared by the organizers to update his kinsfolk on the goings on, rather he or she is whisked away, sometimes hidden with nobody knowing his whereabouts until the behind closed doors meeting with apologetic lobbyists for “high ranking” positions back home, local businessmen and some prestigious integrationists that has nothing to do with the governors visit is over.
And it is at this point that I come to the fore to question the role of the intellectuals who supposedly should be giving form and content to mass liberation movements that changes society. So who should be blamed right here, the governor or the intellectual who organized the august visit?
Nevertheless, the truth is that Igbo homeland desperately need Igbo Diaspora, it is their anchor in reality; just as Igbo Diaspora needs Igbo homeland of which in combination makes them think politically which harnesses a lot of stuff from education to infrastructures. Such work is very difficult, but it must be done if both homeland and Diaspora are to survive. Like the controversial “medical mission” errands which I will be writing about in a different article, those of us here in Diaspora (anywhere within the Western Hemisphere) should think about political and cultural utopianism, for our destinies are fused, because neither of our communities can survive without the development of a sound Igbo political tradition, which will teach us to think realistically about our natural being, our politics, our economics, our culture and our foreign relations.
Notes:
1). The Tragedy of the Igbo Intellectual (Ambrose Ehirim, The Ambrose Ehirim Files)
2). Sam Amadi, Colonial Legacy, Elite Dissension and the making of Genocide: The Story of Biafra
3). Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo and Samuel U. Ifejika, Biafra: The Making of a Nation
4). Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Biafra: Selected Speeches and Random Thoughts
5). Dan Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations
6). Egbebelu Ugobelu, Biafra War Revisited, A Concise and Accurate Account of Events That Led To the Nigerian Civil War
7). Patrick A. Anwunah, The Nigeria-Biafra War (1967-1970): My Memoirs
8). Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
9). Max Siollun (Essay on Isaac Boro) at Max Siollun Website
