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Nd’Igbo: Of Yoruba Battles and Escape to “Journalism”
It never ceases to amaze me to witness the ease with which young Igbo men escape into a cowardly retirement because they feel overwhelmed by the difficulties ahead of the Igbo nation. A favorite and frequent means employed in their escape is the never drying ink of their pen, which they tell us is their only way to contribute to a war that calls for sweat, brawn, blood, brain, and all four in combination from each Igbo person. Today, nearly every Igbo person is a “writer,” (whatever that means) and even when they publish their thoughts in non-Igbo newspapers, the only readers of their locutions are their fellow Igbo. Their writings amount to an Igbo monologue, and between the text, the enemy has ALWAYS discovered the emptiness and despair from which they write, and has appropriately ignored their ranting.
In a recent conversation, an Igbo sage suggested to me that the white man who gave us the aphorism “the pen is mightier than the sword” no longer believes in and does not practice what he teaches. Otherwise, our sage opined, the white man would not raise such powerful armies to fight far smaller enemies.
My friends, it is my position that the British handed Nd’Igbo the wrong kind of education and even religion. Even the physics they taught us did not and does not work, and once we get past the vain/ethnic chest-beating about what those brave scientists did during Biafra, it will become clear that the component of Biafran science and engineering that came from Britain comprised abandoned and defective 19th century know how.
So, why are so many Igbo persons escaping to journalism even when we don’t own one serious newspaper? When Abiola won an election and Nd’Awusa annulled it, Nd’Yoruba declared war, but, Nd’Igbo fought it. Most of them now in their thirties/forties, those foolish Igbo veterans of a Yoruba declared war are claiming that they have paid their dues to Nd’Igbo. Have they?
Also, should their not be a rule requiring every Igbo man to work in his field of study? Why should an Igbo parent waste money to send his son to school to study medicine only for the efulefu to come out and practice what Ambrose Ehirim describes as “Internet Crackpot” journalism?
Any Igbo man or woman who tells you he has paid his dues is an idiot. If you check that person well you will see an opportunist because that person set a limit to his committment based on when he thought he would become the Igbo emperor and start bilking all of us. When that did not come soon enough, he quit and started saying "I have paid my dues."
They may be right for saying they've paid their dues, therefore whatever they envisioned must continue, and must be carried on by a succeeding generation. How silly!
Of course, they paid their dues by being househusbands and baby-sitters their entire life of marriage.
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