by Ibraheem A. Waziri
Some
including Achebe are still contesting that the kill was not an Igbo
carefully planned affair but rather a coup plotted against all Nigerian
leaders of then.
It’s just that ignorance reign in Nigeria or our public intellectuals
do not have passion for details and deep philosophical enquiry into the
nature and realities of our socio-cultural formation and its history
for the best of their opinions. These can be the only open and not so
stretched explanations to Chinua Achebe’s blatant, below status and
insincere depiction of the Nigerian Civil War of 1967 to 70 in the light
of a so called jihadist expansionist goal of Muslims of northern
Nigeria.
The opinion summary of his latest book,
There Was a Country, as he published in The Guardian of London Tuesday, 2nd 2012, makes bold this meaningless assertion:
“But if the diabolical disregard for human life seen during the war
was not due to the northern military elite’s jihadist or genocidal
obsession, then why were there more small arms used on Biafran soil than
during the entire second world war? Why were there 100,000 casualties
on the much larger Nigerian side compared with more than 2 million –
mainly children – Biafrans killed?”
Needless to mention that Achebe is not alone in this kind of
portrayal that is typical of recent Igbo ‘intellectuals’ when it comes
to discussing the civil war. The task of re-educating them and the crop
of their students is therefore necessary if the dream of a greater
Nigeria in fair neighbourliness is to be realised.
Yes, northern Nigerians are mainly and majorly proud and faithful
Muslims with unique culture and a record of close interactions with
other world civilisations since time. They have for long known and
understood that not everybody must look like them or believe in what
they believed in, before peace, social cohesion and fair neighborliness
are justifiably established. In fact it can be authoritatively said that
northern Nigeria of the 1960s, formed one the most cosmopolitan and
accommodating social spaces in the whole world.
When the former Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah wanted to initiate
and draft then Nigeria’s Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and the
Premier of the Northern Region Ahmadu Bello into his Pan-Africanism,
they clearly told him that they were not racists and believed in the
universal nature of truth, justice, fairness and equality of humankind
regardless of race or ethnicity and that reflected the way they managed
northern Nigeria and the country in general.
It was this world-view with its values and norms guiding intra and
inter-pinning of human relations that saw a northern Nigeria of the
1960s as a home to many Igbo. In modern history the top one percent of
the most literate and influential Igbo personalities once lived in
northern Nigeria or spoke Hausa, the dominant language in the North. It
was here that Major Chukuma Kaduna Nzeogwu’s parents settled and gave
birth to him in 1937. He grew up with all opportunities unhindered and
got the award of love, justice and trust of the then Premier of the
Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello until he finally, easily and safely
got access to him, in the night, in his house, in the privacy of his
bedroom and killed him in front of his wife with no struggle, no any
suspecting guard to check him or even ask him hard questions. It is
finished. Brutus killed his Caesar in cold blood of treachery, hatred
and breach of trust. Describing a similar situation in the same
operation kill, where Major Ifeajuna, an Igbo soldier and Major
Nzeagwu’s co-kill planner and partner, shot Brigadier Maimalari, Bernard
Odogwu, an Igbo Nigerian diplomat at the times of the events, in his
book, No Place to Hide – Crises and Conflicts inside Biafra, clearly put
it, “I am particularly shocked at the news that Major Ifeajuna
personally shot and killed his mentor, Brigadier Maimalari. My God! That
must have been Caesar and Brutus come alive…”
What then could have been the fate of other Igbo in many parts of the
North who enjoyed the same love, trust and protection of the other
northerners who began to see a new streak of arrogance, condescension in
the behavior of the Igbo, who were illusioned in the new leadership of
General Ironsi to the extent that, as told by our parents, they used to
mock the northerners, imitating the cries and squeaks of Abubakar Tafawa
Balewa before he died in the hands of Major Ifeajuna. Still Igbo
intellectuals engage in this mockery as the Nigerian military historian
Max Siollun, recently re-told the story of Nzeogwu’s kill, which clearly
portrayed Ahmadu Bello as a coward and a simpleton, who hide behind his
wife when he saw that Nzeagwu was certain to get him. These
provocations and the details of stories such as captured by David
Muffett, a British colonial officer who wrote the account of the 1966
coup in a book titled, Let Truth Be Told, outlining the Igbo elite’s
detailed plan to take control of not only the political structures but
even the social structures of the North by killing all the then northern
emirs in the final.
Some including Achebe are still contesting that the kill was not an
Igbo carefully planned affair but rather a coup plotted against all
Nigerian leaders of then. Yet all Igbo in prominent positions were
missed in the fire and it was said Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe was missed because
he was out of the country for a medical checkup. The question is could
they have missed Sir Ahmadu Bello or Abubakar Tafawa Balewa if any was
on a medical trip or they would have postponed the operations for more
appropriate date that would guarantee and ensure an all inclusive kill?
Yet, the pogroms that followed the events and the civil war were
unfortunate (more objective details of which were written by Elechi
Amadi in Sunset at Biafra). But the characterisation of northerners as
Muslim jihadists who were already prepared and ready to stage a ‘holy
jihad’ against Igbo, as a reason for the war is very untrue and
intellectually insincere. Just because Igbo intellectuals have to find
reasons then it doesn’t mean every reason must be dashed out. Just
because they need someone to blame doesn’t mean the 21st century image
of fundamentalist Islam must be projected backward into the story of
Nigeria to justify a perspective.
Besides what religion did the major actors of the war on the federal
side professed? General Yakubu Gowon, General Theopilus Danjuma and
General Joseph Garba, were Christians. Chief Awolowo, the intellectual
architect of the war was a Christian. General Olusegun Obasanjo and
General Adekunle were all not northerners. The prominent name in the
commands that is a core Muslim northerner was only General Murtala
Muhammed. Even if all the others were Muslims, what sense could it have
made for the Muslims to have fought the Igbo only to establish the
leadership of General Yakubu Gowon who was a Christian, the same and
only reason they supposedly could have fought the Igbo? Gowon enjoyed
the support of all Muslim northerners as my good friend Alhaji Yakubu
Musa, currently a media assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan, who is
from a devout Muslim family, once mentioned how he was named Yakubu in
celebration of Gowon’s visit to Kano on a day that coincided with his
birthday.
No. The truth of the matter is Igbo betrayed the trust given to them
in the then northern Nigeria by the singular act of betrayal of Nzeagwu
on Ahmadu Bello and the subsequent poor management of their relationship
with their hosts that bred suspicion of complicity in the plans of the
kill and a thought of greater conspiracy.
The way forward is not to employ a wider and more efficient
propaganda machinery to score cheap sympathy and sponsor the production
of a sensationalist movie in the Holly Wood, Tears of the Sun, starring
Bruce Willis and displaying that northern Nigerian Muslim Hausa will
attempt to do the same in the present Nigeria and in the recent future
and can be stopped only by the Americans.
The way forward is to always tell the truth, accept faults, take
responsibilities for errors and constantly preach the gospel of keeping
trust, commitments and fair neighbourliness. Let’s make the younger
generation and the entire world know that we are one in Nigeria and the
top one per cent of Igbo most informed political and public
intellectuals lived in the North or even spoke Hausa.
This ranging from Chinua Achebe himself, Cyprian Ekwensi, Major
Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeagwu, General Emeka Ojukwu or Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe.
Cyprian Ekwensi even copied and translated the literary work of my
uncle; John Tafida Umaru titled, Jiki Magayi, from Hausa to English,
titled it, African Night Entertainment, and dubbed it his own without
acknowledgement, adding to his literary stock, achievement and fame.
The world must know the good contribution their living in the North and
speaking its language brought into their skills and perspectives, that,
which won them the accolades they so celebrate and rejoice in, today. A
fact, which they and their friends always want to hide!
YNaija.com
Teachers
of the Federal Government Girls Secondary School in Benin City, have
threatened to down tools over an attack on some of them by some
suspected thugs.
