By Lasisi Olagunju
There is an undeclared war going on in the South East. The headlines, in frightening details, painted the lurid portrait yesterday: “Gunmen kill 7 military men, raze police stations;” “Gunmen raze courts in Imo, Abia CID building burnt down;” “IPOB’s stay-at-home order: Tension in Ebonyi, Imo, others.” Then the big one: “Ahmed Gulak shot dead in Owerri.” We should be worried.
Today is the last day of May 2021. It has been a full month of violent deaths, tragic crashes and clashes. The fact that things appear reaching a climax in May smells deja vu. General Abdulsalami Abubakar has not told us why he chose May 29, 1999 as the commencement date for this democracy. Was it a code? A decision that canceled October 1, our Independence Day, from our political diary must be very significant to those who took it. Nigeria’s structural problem started on May 24, 1966 when JTU Aguiyi Ironsi abolished the regions and centralized the country’s administrative structure. In quick forward march from that misadventure was the May 29, 1966 deadly reactions from the north. It was called the May Pogrom, an organized massacre of helpless people – and it claimed hundreds of Igbo lives. Then came the counter killings in the east and the May 30, 1967 declaration of the Republic of Biafra – all cascading into a 30-month civil war that killed about 100,000 soldiers and two million civilians. The crisis which threatens to climax today is, therefore, not just a reaction to the present systemic injustice, it is also of historical nostalgia. Other parts of Nigeria clink glasses every May 29 celebrating democratic civilian rule; reflective, sad, angry Igbo families see the celebrations as mocking them, their defeat. They spend the day to remember the dead, count and recount losses – and get restive in their blood-soaked enclave.
Has Nigeria decided to fight yet another war in that corridor? Three weeks ago, President Muhammadu Buhari met with his security chiefs where he “approved new measures” to deal with the “growing insecurity” in the south east and the south south. The security measures, according to the Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba, would not be disclosed to the public. Briefing journalists after the meeting, Mr Baba said “we have some measures which we have outlined and have been approved by the council and we will see how we can change the narrative within the quickest possible means to restore law and order and restore peace in that area. We solicit all law-abiding citizens to work with us to identify and deal with the situation. That is that; I may not go into the details of how we will do that.” The National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno also told journalists that there were those he described as enablers of crime who would be dealt with while there was the need to find quick responses that would mitigate the growing threats to the nation and its stability. “These enablers are discussed in detail and Mr President has already given direction on how to deal with them,” he said. What were those measures?
Some felons, valorized as “unknown gunmen”, have been killing poor security operatives in the east. Most of the murdered were Igbo officers and men. The gunmen have been setting on fire symbols of state power – most of the burnt structures were Igbo assets. The birds of the felons are defiling their own nest. But, the state, just like it did with Boko Haram, has responded like the blind shooting into the marketplace. The attackers are seldom hit; it is the Igbo earth that is scorched in regrettable deaths and destruction. I am not exactly a fan of the Igbo as a body of political people. They, like any other ethnic group, have their stock excesses – but their elites are the very worst in befriending their tormentors and abandoning their chi and their backers. Their goats run after any palm frond, no matter who is holding it. They forget that when the palm wine tapper allows his hemorrhoid to be seen while atop the raffia palm tree, what he taps no longer appeals to anyone. They do that repeatedly- even Emeka Ojukwu came back from exile and joined the ultra-northern NPN. But, then, among them, there are wonderful persons I always know that one could fight shoulder-to-shoulder with and who won’t desert the front in hot pursuit of looted power. The ordinary Igbo man is that honourable person. And he is the one bearing the brunt of today’s madness.
The Igbo say water has bones, if you do not chew it, you won’t know. The Nigerian state appears determined not to take any prisoner in Igboland. It appears doing more than police action there. There are soldiers on the street enforcing compliance with Nigeria’s ‘non-negotiable’ unity. But here is where the bone in the water comes in: the Igbo response has not been less lethal. An American soldier was asked why a Vietnamese village was bombed out of existence. He told the Associated Press: “We had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it.” Both sides in the Abuja vs Igbo conflict, like the unnamed US soldier in Vietnam, appear intent on destroying the land as an acceptable price for its safety.
Is Nigeria answering the Igbo question right? We have learnt no lessons. Declaring a full-blown war on the south east in addition to the interminable ones with terrorists in the north east and the north west and parts of the north central cannot end in praise. We do not have a history of learning from past errors. From the middle belt to the south, repetitive afflictions rise and rebound to our shame. For instance, in Benue, the Nigerian government is tying down the Tiv lion for the feline Fulani to eat in bits. We read of horrendous killings and hear grating cries of per-second bereavement. Forty-two persons were reportedly murdered there as last week was preparing to close. But how far can the murderers do that without consequences? There was the tragic Tiv riot of 1964 and its lingering aftermath. Whatever happened that time has not taught those wielding power in Abuja lessons. Seeking to overrun Tivland failed in 1964; it will fail even in more catastrophic degrees today. I can read the same in the blood-soaked soil of south eastern Nigeria.
If there are prancing leopards everywhere in the south today, who is to blame? Blame the north and the incumbent president, both of whom have become potent threats to the south in all existential ways. Can you force someone to love you – especially when your eyes wear the colours of hatred? The Igbo, for historical reasons, resent their Nigerianness. Yes. That is very apparent. They fought a civil war with Nigeria. Yes. But was it not the same Igbo that soon after the war provided a deputy for President Shehu Shagari? They forgot everything – the war, the pogroms and whatever else they suffered. They moved on with ‘One Nigeria’, earning their living, eating, compromising until this government happened to the country and quarantined them like lepers. The Igbo, after the civil war, interred all cries and whispers of secession. It appeared all they desired from Nigeria was fair treatment and justice. Then, Buhari, the conquistador, came with his Bayajidda sword and started giving them the snake treatment. We should be worried. The boys munching peace in Igboland today are not the old boys defeated in 1970. Nigeria cannot win this war. It should negotiate the future with everybody, including the Igbo.
Back to May 29.
Democracy clocked 22 years on Saturday, May 29, in Nigeria. If you ask the person next to you, they may likely say it has been all air, no substance. The deregulated disaster of recent years has particularly put a question mark on the popular definition of that form of government. On Saturday, I read Benue, Plateau, Zamfara and Niger folks who stressed that it has been about pains and deathly pangs all the way. One said he was “living like a refugee;” another said his loss of all his three buildings was his gains from this democracy; yet there was the one who agonized that “tears, hunger and bloodshed” had been the lot of the people. “I can no longer visit my village because it has been taken over by the Fulani” was the experience of a retired Controller of Prisons from Benue.
Now to something positive.
This democracy, warts and all, is not completely about dream killers and mass murders. If the eyes can look well enough, it should see its neighbour, the nose. There has been some progress made in certain areas. And we have our governors, not Abuja, to thank. Each of them, in their own ways, has struggled to fill gaps. They plug holes that were dug in the highways of their people by the progressively failing Nigerian State.
I live in Ibadan, Oyo State, so I can speak on what I see. And I am citing just one instance. Three years ago, I had a reason to go to the NYSC Orientation Camp in Iseyin. The road to take was the 65km Moniya (Ibadan)-Iseyin road. I was on that road as a reporter in 1996 or ’97 when it was reworked and commissioned by Col. Ahmed Usman, now late. Twenty-three years after that reportorial experience, I met a road that was more ghastly than horror. As I groaned in the car, I pitied others, including poor, fragile corps members in creaky buses. There was also the ever-present fear of the grim terrain presenting a perfect field of play for marauding herdsmen. It was a 40-minute trip that took three hours; a journey I wouldn’t wish for my enemy. So, when in 2019, Governor Seyi Makinde said he would reconstruct the road and deliver it in 18 months, I laughed and simply glazed his words in cynical frames. But, today, the road is ready, rebuilt and it is marvelous in our eyes. If I had not been a victim, perhaps I would be on the other cynical, sniggering side. But I suffered it, and I am bold to state that because of a decision that was right, a million others won’t go through what I went through.
Now, have you asked why the 127km Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is an endless construction site with no delivery date? Why has Abuja not completed one road in six years and governors are inaugurating roads every year? Ask please. Oyo has benefited from a positive change of guards – in the governor’s office and on the reconstructed road. I could see that the governor has serially cut himself off from a past of jinxes and has breathed fresh air into what he has had to do. I see what has happened to that Iseyin road as a metaphor for what can happen to Nigeria and its democracy if the head is right. That is why we won’t stop demanding a structural rebirth of the negotiated Nigeria that existed before Aguiyi Ironsi and his May 24, 1966 unification tragedy. We can recreate our nation; we can rescue our lives from the pains of Nigeria without going through another civil war. We can, only if we are audacious enough to confront the principals and principalities. And we will, God willing.
