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if you are not pro-Igbo, you do not have an audience here, b/c then you are not one of "our people". And to think Yorubas are the tribalists... Just ask the respected Prof. Mobolaji Aluko.

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I came away feeling that the guy did not deserve the assault on his parents and immediate family that he was subjected to. It also showed the crudity with which some people engage in conversations on this board - esp. when you are seen to espouse a position starkly devoid of praise worshipping the Igbo race.

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I don't know what happens in London, but Howard is no Nsukka where even an Eastern minority like Isaac Adaka Boro was harassed and haunted down for the better part of his stay in the school, just for thinking the unthinkabe in the heartland of the igbos and contesting for elective position of the students' union.

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No. Anyway, as the war drew closer, it became expedient to have a minority face in the union, in a bid to sway the minority's opinion to the cause.

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Read my words very carefully. I deliberately used the word cause. History bears me witness that a cause, as opposed to a war, literally starts in the mind of the people, and in the course of time, translates to expression. So, the cause was the prelude to the physical war in 1967. Gat it?

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UPGA (a party formed by the NCNC and other parties )

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I came away feeling that the guy did not deserve the assault on his parents and immediate family that he was subjected to.

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That thing about Aluko's family was started by no less aperson than Osetutu with Way point1 providing the ammunition. Pls refer: ....

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Kevin Nwanna:
Thanks for your response to Ubanese's article. You have covered most of the
field. But I will add just a few caps to your eloquent response:
One, Ubanese argues that the Igbo should apologize to the minorities of the
East for acts allegedly committed by the Igbo against their minority
neighbors. He did not specify on what these crimes are. Nor does anybody,
except those who specifically talk in general terms about discrimination
against the eastern minorities. The facts of Igbo acts discrimination
against their neighbours do not also bear out. For one, a look at the public
service in Eastern Nigeria in the period, shows that the minorities of
Eastern Nigeria had equal, and sometimes were disproportionately represented
at all segments of government bureaucracy. There were no known conditions,
at least to my knowledge, when individual Igbo were promoted above their
minority neighbors in normal, routine civil service processes, or given
unfair advantage in access to government credits, or in the distribution of
government development programs. The first class Eastern Nigerian cities ?
Enugu, Calabar, Port-Harcourt, Umuahia, Aba, Onitsha, Owerri, were long
established by colonial authorities, and were equally open to any Easterner
in the pursuit of their legal businesses. In many cases, the civil
administrators of these cities were from the Eastern minority groups,
appointed through normal civil service procedures, in non-discriminatory
processes.
The first Southern Nigerian to be sent to Sandhurst was an Ijo, George
Kurubo, in 1954 when Nnamdi Azikiwe began to encourage the rapid
commissioning of Eastern Nigerians into the officers Corp for a new
post-colonial Army. He is just one example of minority Easterners who
benefited from the state as "Easterners". Ken Saro-wiwa often claimed to
have gone to school , from the secondary to the university level "on
government scholarship". What he did not often say, was that it was on the
Eastern Regional government scholarship. And there are numerous of them -
from the Oyibos, the Daukorus, the Lolomaris, the Greens, the Beredugos and
so on, who became the central figures of Nigeria's oil sector, who were
beneficiaries of the Eastern Nigerian government scholarship. There are
numerous examples. Specifically about Biafran atrocities in the minority
areas, we should remind Ubanese of the question that the reporter from the
Observer Newspaper in London threw at the British foreign minister in 1969,
who was justifying the British support for the war against Biafra, with the
claim that Eastern minority groups were also being liberated from Igbo
hegemony, which was one of the central themes of that war: "why then are
these minority elements, caught in the conflict, running into Biafra held
areas for refuge rather than run to Nigerian held territories?." ( see
interview with Justice P.K. Nwokedi, Vanguard, 1998) I shouldn't say more.
But let us bear in mind, that the effective time, in which it could be said
that Eastern minorities came under any indigenous rule with the Igbo was
from 1954, when home rule was granted by the British. Before then, the
Eastern region was run by the British colonial administration, and so the
Igbo could not have "oppressed" the minorities prior to 1954. Even then, the
first leader of government business in 1954 was a minority, Eyo Ita. The
East was the only region where a minority could have been elected and
supported in parliament as premier by the majority group. The much touted
appearance of Nnamdi Azikiwe to displace Eyo Ita, has also been historically
disfigured. First is that people often do not take account of the fact that
as party leader under the parliamentary system, Nnamdi Azikiwe was also the
leader of his party in parliament. That is why a by-election was effected.
It was inconceivable in 1954, when the East became self-governing, that the
only leader of the party to act as leader of opposition of the three parties
- the NCNC, the AG and the NPC ? all of them angling for the leadership of
the country in that transitory period would be Azikiwe of the NCNC. Those
who do not understand the workings of the Westminster system which Nigeria
was operating at the time, and the full implication for the NCNC of its
party leader operating out of power in that period, have infused all kinds
of ahistoricities on the move to make Azikiwe take full control of his party
leadership in government; after acting as leader of opposition in the west
from 1951.
Nevertheless, it is also remarkable that Azikiwe's greatest opposition in
the Eastern house, those who backed Eyo Ita to the hilt, refused calls to
resign, and resigned from the NCNC after he was removed were top Igbo
leaders and politicians in that period: Nwapa, Eni Njoku, Jaja Wachukwu etc.
That Azikiwe won his greatest support in the elections that later took place
after the dissolution of parliament in the Eastern minority areas, and had
far more protest votes against him in the Igbo areas, in that period, is
also constantly overlooked by commentators with a stake in falsehood.
Talking about apologies: in 1970, Ukapbi Asika, in spite of being warned
against it by certain of his advisers, issued a strong public apology
(widely reported in the papers) on behalf of the Igbo "for what the Igbo had
done to the minorities in the past?. It was of course, a justificatory
apology ? part of the rhetoric of the war aim for which he fought against
the Igbo. But it has since taken a life of its own, with the consequence
that since then, every eastern minority has cottoned on to Asika's theme of
Igbo complicity in the oppression of their minority neighbours. But a look
at history in fact vindicates the Igbo, as Kevin Ani has clearly
demonstrated. Aside from the fact, as I already said, that the Igbo were
effectively on the same boat with their minority neighbours from 1954 to
1967, a period of 13 years, the minorities of the East have run their own
governments, independent of the Igbo, from 1967 to date, a period of 35
years. They should effectively count the thirteen years of their association
with the Igbo as wasted, and should have marched on to greater glory in the
last 35 years, when the Igbo had been effectively demobilized and
disempowered, and thus incapable of impacting on the fortune of the
minorities in any significant way. This blame the Igbo excuse has gone on
for too long. I do not personally feel the kind of guilt Ubanese wants to
impose on the Igbo conscience ? one that demonizes the Igbo unjustifiably,
and consistently promoted as part of the Nigerian narrative of the
miscellany of Igbo sins.
I will not even bother talking about Igbo leadership, and the selective
policies that were used deliberately to contain the Igbo. For one, Agwu
Okpanku, Cambridge-educated columnist at the Renaissance newspapers in Enugu
was put in detention precisely for speaking out in his column with the
article "Killing Biafra." He was the first journalist to be detained by
Jacob Gowon in 1970. Sam Mbakwe, long before it became fashionable for human
rights lawyers to go to jail, spent time in jail over his vocal fight for
Igbo property rights in Biafra. Igbo business leaders led by Z.C Obi went to
Asika to get him to use his position to redress most of the injustice
emergent against the Igbo. Asika advised them to "approach the matter
legally". They went to the chambers of Obafemi Awolowo, who asked them to
first pay a non-negotiable fee of One million pounds into his account before
he could brook the matter. There was no Igbo with that kind of resources
even by 1973. But let me quickly point that in the period from 1970 to 1983,
the generation of Igbo leaders who stood for the Igbo were still fairly in
place and active. The devastation of the Igbo became clear when the Igbo
"sabo" group - the Nzeribes, the Iwuanyanwus etc came of age, and when the
generation that fought the Igbo in the battlefields, many of theme the young
lieutenants whom Ironsi had promoted by edict in 1966, and who were the key
figures of the 1966 pogrom, swooped into place from the Buhari government of
1983. It has been a progressive decimation of the Igbo ever since. The new
phase is the one, when the Igbo, completely discombobulated by the turn of
events will turn in and begin to blame themselves. It is the psychology of
the victim, who believes that God or nature or forces beyond him is
punishing him for his own inadequacies. Partly true, but mostly untrue. It
is the psychology of the dispossessed.
Obi Kevin Nwanna:
Thanks for your response to Ubanese's article. You have covered most of the
field. But I will add just a few caps to your eloquent response:
One, Ubanese argues that the Igbo should apologize to the minorities of the
East for acts allegedly committed by the Igbo against their minority
neighbors. He did not specify on what these crimes are. Nor does anybody,
except those who specifically talk in general terms about discrimination
against the eastern minorities. The facts of Igbo acts discrimination
against their neighbours do not also bear out. For one, a look at the public
service in Eastern Nigeria in the period, shows that the minorities of
Eastern Nigeria had equal, and sometimes were disproportionately represented
at all segments of government bureaucracy. There were no known conditions,
at least to my knowledge, when individual Igbo were promoted above their
minority neighbors in normal, routine civil service processes, or given
unfair advantage in access to government credits, or in the distribution of
government development programs. The first class Eastern Nigerian cities ?
Enugu, Calabar, Port-Harcourt, Umuahia, Aba, Onitsha, Owerri, were long
established by colonial authorities, and were equally open to any Easterner
in the pursuit of their legal businesses. In many cases, the civil
administrators of these cities were from the Eastern minority groups,
appointed through normal civil service procedures, in non-discriminatory
processes.
The first Southern Nigerian to be sent to Sandhurst was an Ijo, George
Kurubo, in 1954 when Nnamdi Azikiwe began to encourage the rapid
commissioning of Eastern Nigerians into the officers Corp for a new
post-colonial Army. He is just one example of minority Easterners who
benefited from the state as "Easterners". Ken Saro-wiwa often claimed to
have gone to school , from the secondary to the university level "on
government scholarship". What he did not often say, was that it was on the
Eastern Regional government scholarship. And there are numerous of them -
from the Oyibos, the Daukorus, the Lolomaris, the Greens, the Beredugos and
so on, who became the central figures of Nigeria's oil sector, who were
beneficiaries of the Eastern Nigerian government scholarship. There are
numerous examples. Specifically about Biafran atrocities in the minority
areas, we should remind Ubanese of the question that the reporter from the
Observer Newspaper in London threw at the British foreign minister in 1969,
who was justifying the British support for the war against Biafra, with the
claim that Eastern minority groups were also being liberated from Igbo
hegemony, which was one of the central themes of that war: "why then are
these minority elements, caught in the conflict, running into Biafra held
areas for refuge rather than run to Nigerian held territories?." ( see
interview with Justice P.K. Nwokedi, Vanguard, 1998) I shouldn't say more.
But let us bear in mind, that the effective time, in which it could be said
that Eastern minorities came under any indigenous rule with the Igbo was
from 1954, when home rule was granted by the British. Before then, the
Eastern region was run by the British colonial administration, and so the
Igbo could not have "oppressed" the minorities prior to 1954. Even then, the
first leader of government business in 1954 was a minority, Eyo Ita. The
East was the only region where a minority could have been elected and
supported in parliament as premier by the majority group. The much touted
appearance of Nnamdi Azikiwe to displace Eyo Ita, has also been historically
disfigured. First is that people often do not take account of the fact that
as party leader under the parliamentary system, Nnamdi Azikiwe was also the
leader of his party in parliament. That is why a by-election was effected.
It was inconceivable in 1954, when the East became self-governing, that the
only leader of the party to act as leader of opposition of the three parties
- the NCNC, the AG and the NPC ? all of them angling for the leadership of
the country in that transitory period would be Azikiwe of the NCNC. Those
who do not understand the workings of the Westminster system which Nigeria
was operating at the time, and the full implication for the NCNC of its
party leader operating out of power in that period, have infused all kinds
of ahistoricities on the move to make Azikiwe take full control of his party
leadership in government; after acting as leader of opposition in the west
from 1951.
Nevertheless, it is also remarkable that Azikiwe's greatest opposition in
the Eastern house, those who backed Eyo Ita to the hilt, refused calls to
resign, and resigned from the NCNC after he was removed were top Igbo
leaders and politicians in that period: Nwapa, Eni Njoku, Jaja Wachukwu etc.
That Azikiwe won his greatest support in the elections that later took place
after the dissolution of parliament in the Eastern minority areas, and had
far more protest votes against him in the Igbo areas, in that period, is
also constantly overlooked by commentators with a stake in falsehood.
Talking about apologies: in 1970, Ukapbi Asika, in spite of being warned
against it by certain of his advisers, issued a strong public apology
(widely reported in the papers) on behalf of the Igbo "for what the Igbo had
done to the minorities in the past?. It was of course, a justificatory
apology ? part of the rhetoric of the war aim for which he fought against
the Igbo. But it has since taken a life of its own, with the consequence
that since then, every eastern minority has cottoned on to Asika's theme of
Igbo complicity in the oppression of their minority neighbours. But a look
at history in fact vindicates the Igbo, as Kevin Ani has clearly
demonstrated. Aside from the fact, as I already said, that the Igbo were
effectively on the same boat with their minority neighbours from 1954 to
1967, a period of 13 years, the minorities of the East have run their own
governments, independent of the Igbo, from 1967 to date, a period of 35
years. They should effectively count the thirteen years of their association
with the Igbo as wasted, and should have marched on to greater glory in the
last 35 years, when the Igbo had been effectively demobilized and
disempowered, and thus incapable of impacting on the fortune of the
minorities in any significant way. This blame the Igbo excuse has gone on
for too long. I do not personally feel the kind of guilt Ubanese wants to
impose on the Igbo conscience ? one that demonizes the Igbo unjustifiably,
and consistently promoted as part of the Nigerian narrative of the
miscellany of Igbo sins.
I will not even bother talking about Igbo leadership, and the selective
policies that were used deliberately to contain the Igbo. For one, Agwu
Okpanku, Cambridge-educated columnist at the Renaissance newspapers in Enugu
was put in detention precisely for speaking out in his column with the
article "Killing Biafra." He was the first journalist to be detained by
Jacob Gowon in 1970. Sam Mbakwe, long before it became fashionable for human
rights lawyers to go to jail, spent time in jail over his vocal fight for
Igbo property rights in Biafra. Igbo business leaders led by Z.C Obi went to
Asika to get him to use his position to redress most of the injustice
emergent against the Igbo. Asika advised them to "approach the matter
legally". They went to the chambers of Obafemi Awolowo, who asked them to
first pay a non-negotiable fee of One million pounds into his account before
he could brook the matter. There was no Igbo with that kind of resources
even by 1973. But let me quickly point that in the period from 1970 to 1983,
the generation of Igbo leaders who stood for the Igbo were still fairly in
place and active. The devastation of the Igbo became clear when the Igbo
"sabo" group - the Nzeribes, the Iwuanyanwus etc came of age, and when the
generation that fought the Igbo in the battlefields, many of theme the young
lieutenants whom Ironsi had promoted by edict in 1966, and who were the key
figures of the 1966 pogrom, swooped into place from the Buhari government of
1983. It has been a progressive decimation of the Igbo ever since. The new
phase is the one, when the Igbo, completely discombobulated by the turn of
events will turn in and begin to blame themselves. It is the psychology of
the victim, who believes that God or nature or forces beyond him is
punishing him for his own inadequacies. Partly true, but mostly untrue. It
is the psychology of the dispossessed.
Obi

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it is inconclusive that Adekunle is Yoruba. What stops me from adopting Okechukwu as my handle just like Ogbuefi Adekunle did?.

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