The dog in Nigeria in times gone by had a bad name. It bit small children on the buttocks, was used as a scavenger, spread disease including rabies and had the nasty habit of copulating where ever it chose. An otherwise harmless agitation for independence from Nigeria by the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, has been led by loud-mouthed Nnamdi Kanu in a manner that has turned the movement into such a distasteful organisation that can be likened to a dog more nasty than the one depicted above. Nnamdi Kanu usually carries a large fan with the picture of a Biafran flag, is usually dressed in white with the Star Of David emblazoned on his back. What an affront to the Jews that he perhaps thinks himself a Jew. If he was a Jew he would not be behaving as senselessly as he is doing. Nigeria is a sovereign country. How can Nnamdi Kanu tell the whole world that he has a nuclear weapon, a secret service and a national guard? How can he go about calling everybody unprintable names including the Hausa/Fulani, the governors of the Igbo states, the leaders of the Igbo cultural group, Ohanaeze, the Yoruba ethnic group and anybody who does not support his Biafra movement? How can he decree that there will be no election in Anambra state in November, 2017, and none in Nigeria in 2019? For God’s sake who is Nnamdi Kanu? Where is he from? How can he be behaving like the emperor of Biafra in a sovereign state called Nigeria? How can he alienate everybody and hope to survive?
So the Nigerian government that has been looking for a reason to deal once and for all with the Igbo whom Nnamdi Kanu says he is speaking for promptly declares IPOB a terrorist organisation and proscribes it. This is the ultimate bad name, an excuse to roll out the tanks in a region in which not one soul has been lost to the protests going on there. Indeed it is the Nigerian government terrorising the citizens, Igbos, having over the last two years killed over a hundred of them as testified to by Amnesty International. What business has the army trying to control protesters in Eastern Nigeria when the job of the army is supposed to be defending Nigeria against external aggression? What is the job of the police? But Nigeria”’s Python Dance 2 sent to Igbo land was ostensibly to catch cultists, armed robbers, kidnappers and other hoodlums and is now supported by air force jets has instead been clashing with IPOB whose leader has now gone into hiding
IPOB are not the only people in the world campaigning for independence. Scotland wants to be independent from Britain. Catalonia wants to be independent from Spain. The Kurds want to be independent from Iraq. There are others. But none has been declared terrorists or proscribed. These other groups have been holding peaceful demonstrations. These countries have not mobilised their armies to stop the agitations. Yes, IPOB has sometimes been a hindrance from free movement in the enclave called eastern Nigeria. It is sometimes disruptive. How can Nnamdi Kanu and his group alienate everybody including the Igbo he is hoping to come with him to the Utopian Biafra and expect any sympathy from anybody?
The pitiable aspect of this whole thing is that Nnamdi Kanu, by his actions and statements, has endangered the lives of innocent Ndigbo. Surely, in dealing with the newly categorised terrorists the Nigeria troops will be happy to eliminate innocent Igbos with the guilty. Kanu provokes a one-sided `war’ urging the jobless, the touts, the traders and the gullible among us to fight the heavily armed Nigerian soldiers, claiming that he has the wherewithal to defend them. But in truth he has only his loud offensive mouth. Now the army arrives and his followers throw stones and brandish sticks to fight a heavily armed army looking for blood. Kanu is not intelligent enough to realise that he has played into the hands of those who ardently hate the Igbos and would like to deal with them once and for all! Now the die is cast. He has gone into hiding and the Nigerian army is gleefully announcing that it has found bombs in his house! What else does Kanu expect? If the Army likes it will say it has discovered nuclear weapons.
It is so shameful that Kanu is dropping the names of President Trump of the USA and the United Nations as those behind his IPOB. And the gullible among us swallow the bait. The United Nations have better things to do than to come and fight for flag waving dissidents in a sovereign country when there are more serious threats to world peace like North Korea, Syria, South Sudan, ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyar in Myanmar and so on. Even if President Trump sympathises with the Biafran cause he will not leave more pressing issues bedevilling his governance of the United States of America to come and protect Nnamdi Kanu and the unfortunate Igbos he is leading to destruction.
Buhari is right. This is a sovereign country. He is protecting its independence the best way he knows. And the best way is to do whatever he likes knowing that all he will get from the hundreds of other tribes who want to `chop’ the Igbo share of the `national cake’ will be whimpers and nothing else. And he can preserve the Hausa/Fulani ownership of the country. The United Nations declared the Fulani herdsmen as the fourth most dangerous terrorists in the world. Obviously Buhari does not agree with that classification and has done nothing to stop the herdsmen killing hundreds of Nigerians in the Middle Belt and Southern parts of Nigeria. To him IPOB are the most dangerous terrorists that need to be wiped out. The Boko Haram can continue blowing people up in North Eastern Nigeria. Destroying IPOB is more important to him because to him the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable and Nnamdi Kanu has given him the opportunity to make a statement. And there goes the emperor of Biafra! And the cowed governors and leaders of Igbo land thankfully hide behind Buhari and proscribe IPOB. Now they can have their peace. We can have elections in Anambra state. But in their whimpering submission they sell themselves out by agreeing that the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable! Here is where I disagree. Ndigbo will remain in Nigeria for now hoping that the Nigerian state can be re-engineered to give everybody a fair chance. If that is not done, in twenty, fifty years time, Biafra will come to be.