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An ageing efulefu seeks his pay day

- chimpboy

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Originally posted by Amadi O.:
Believe me, those young men and women being murdered in the streets of Biafra at the instance of the outlaw nation have not sacrificed in vain. They and those in jail across the failed state are at the mountain top smiling with pride at the Biafran Rising Sun and the only nation of hope for the transformation of all of Africa, ie Biafra. It's only a matter of time.

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Massob, Ohaneze and Representation


By Okey Ndibe.


A French radio station rang me up three days ago seeking my comments on the ongoing trial of Mr. Ralph Uwazurike and other leaders of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra. I told the reporter that the wrong people were in the dock. Those who deserve to be tried, I insisted, are all those usurpers of leadership in Nigeria, past and present. The Nigerian state has no basis that I can see to charge anybody with treason. Uwazurike and his fellow victims of a misguided prosecution ought not to be hounded for stating what to many is self-evident: that Nigeria, as far as national identity goes, is a basket case.

MASSOB's victimisation is part of the general assault on people who seriously question the legitimacy of the territorial collectivity that announces itself as Nigeria. As nations go, Nigeria is not a settled question. Nor is it even, at bottom, a particularly serious proposition. A people freely belong to a nation, and do so only on the calculation that the nation affords them the best opportunity to actualise their corporate interests. There is nothing sacrosanct about any national arrangement. To pretend otherwise is to reify the idea of nations as such.

-Those who most fervently defend the integrity of the Nigerian state as currently constituted are, almost always, those who profit from the massive dysfunction that is Nigeria. When you hear Nigerian officials voicing "patriotic" sentiments, it is often because they have their mouths trained on the national trough. Fattening themselves on the "national cake," these misbegotten "leaders" essay to preach to their dispossessed, degraded and dehumanised brethren to "place all hands on deck." Nigerians would do well to pay attention not to such wooly entreaties from so-called Nigerian leaders but to the voices of discontent that ring out daily from the marginalised pits of Nigerian history.
Let me restate this more forcefully: Uwazurike and co have no case to answer before President Olusegun's government, nor do they owe apologies to anybody for describing Nigeria as it is: a failed nation. The Oodua People's Congress has come to the same conclusion. The restive militias in the Niger Delta have arrived at the same insight. The millions of impoverished youths in the North, betrayed by the current administration as they were in the past betrayed by governments led by selfish Northern rulers, know that Nigeria is a wishy washy concept, an idea that has wandered off into futility.

To defend Uwazurike and MASSOB's vision of an inarticulate Nigerian nation is not the same thing as believing that MASSOB has been mandated to speak for all Igbo. It is true that nobody elected Uwazurike as Biafra's leader, but it is also obvious that the man's mixture of quiet courage and eloquent dissection of the unjustness of the Nigerian nation has struck a chord with millions of Igbo from a broad spectrum of classes and interests. That a man like him would arise from obscurity to be seen by many as an embodiment of legitimate political cum moral desires is an indictment both of Nigeria's inept leadership, past and present, as well as a certain tendency among the presumptive Igbo leadership.

I was hardly surprised to read recently a headline in "Daily Champion", a national newspaper, to this effect: "Ohanaeze disowns Uwazuruike". But the tone of the report's opening paragraph gave me pause: "Ohaneze Ndigbo, the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, has said that it would not support therelease of the detained leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, urging him and his members to recant their agitation for the realisation of the Republic of Biafra."

According to the report, Ohaneze's position was expressed by the group's Secretary General, Joe Achuzia. Achuzia, a hero of the Biafran war, told the newspaper that "at no time did Ohanaeze or Ndigbo approve the cause of MASSOB." Achuzia, reported the paper, "said the warning had become necessary because of the apparent public misconception at the mention of any Igbo cause that Ndigbo were the architects and activists of MASSOB, stressing that at no time did Ohanaeze or Ndigbo give their backing to the activities of the non-violent group." Said Achuzia: "Ohanaeze cannot lend support to Uwazuruike other than ask Uwazuruike and his group to recant. They can fight against Igbo marginalisation if that is what they are fighting for under a different name, not actualisation of the sovereign state of Biafra...I want to make it abundantly clear that at no time did Ohanaeze or Ndigbo in any meeting of any kind sit down to fashion out an organisation called MASSOB."

Achuzia's warning would have been appropriate if anybody had seriously mistaken MASSOB and Uwazurike as the militant arm of Ohaneze. Such misconception seems highly unlikely. Achuzia's intervention came across as a desperate attempt to reclaim a representational status that was never really his organization's to begin with. If Achuzia's point is that Uwazurike and MASSOB don't speak for Igbos, then it ought to be underscored, in the same light, that Ohaneze has no mandate as the voice of Igbos either. Truth be told, Ohaneze is perceived by many as mostly a collection of old guard Igbo politicians, businessmen and tired activists out to ensure that, whatever government is in power, they may continue to receive invitations to come and grub. If Igbos ever voted to declare Ohaneze their "apex" cultural or political mouthpiece, then nobody informed me. At any rate, I am willing to bet that the majority of Igbos don't feel their deeper interests articulated by this self-styled apex organization. Most Igbos, I suspect, would view Ohaneze as a club of comfortable men whose preoccupations are extremely marginal if not self-serving.

It is in this department that Uwazurike appears to be winning the ratings war hands down. When Obasanjo's police lent themselves to the ignoble enterprise of abducting the governor of Anambra state, where was Ohaneze? When the agents of the same government led thugs on a three-day rampage of arson in the same state, Ohaneze could not make up its mind on a response. Instead, one official stated that the organization needed to study the situation. It then promptly slumbered off. It didn't matter to Ohaneze that what was destroyed was not the personal property of a governor whose face the president doesn't like. It did not make a difference that as much as thirty billion naira of damage was inflicted on the state in this orgy of destruction. When Obasanjo's government rewarded the suspected mastermind of the Anambra mayhem with an oil block, what was heard from Ohaneze? Muteness! A loud, resounding silence! When the PDP sneaked the suspected mastermind back into its fold, and in fact nominated him for elevation to the highest organ of the party, did Ohaneze feel outraged? No, it was too busy censuring Uwazurike to speak out on this travesty.

Nigerian roads are generally an eyesore, but those in the south-eastern part of the country are a scandal. Travel from Onitsha to Aba, from Enugu to Port Harcourt and you're going to have the bumpiest ride of your life. These roads are gutted and rutted, an unredeemed blight of macadam. What's worse, most Igbos believe that the deplorable condition of the roads was occasioned by deliberate, calculated neglect by successive federal governments, especially the present one. How many Ohaneze members can say they are proud of their organization's posture on the condition of these roads? In what way has the organization offered leadership in compelling a clearly reluctant Abuja to get cracking on the road crisis?

An organization with Ohaneze's ghastly record of achievement has no business chastising another group. If it wishes to become relevant, Ohaneze ought to ask itself if Nigeria, on its current terms, can be sustained for long. At a time when some foreign intelligence analysts are predicting Nigeria's descent into anarchy or worse, at a time when the nation is on the cusp of being held hostage to one man's outsized political ambitions, at a time when a true patriot like Wole Soyinka is warning of a climate of dictatorship, at a time when politicians in Abuja seem blissfully ignorant of the rising barometer of disaffection and deepening destitution in all the parts of the country, an organization like Ohaneze does itself little credit when it so tragically misreads the mood both of Igbos as well as other Nigerians. Nigeria may yet be saved. If that is to happen, then a profound soul searching must commence. The government must renounce this knee-jerk position that anybody who professes the untenability of Nigeria must be hauled before a magistrate. Unless the interests of all Nigerians, not the whims of the president and his small circle, are factored into the national calculus, we may be witnessing the nation's death knell. And it may come sooner than many, including Ohaneze, suspect.

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Lately, President Bush was cautious in addressing the senior citizen democrat as a fine man that called for immediate withdrawal of American troops in Iraq. That is respect even if he did not agree with him. It is no worship either. – Rick

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“In Igbo culture, we do not prostrate for an elder who poured ashes on himself, rather the children will use the broom to dust off the ashes from his body. Omo Omoruyi has poured ashes on his body when he stooped too low to beg for IBB’s forgiveness as a ploy to influence IBB to appoint him the chairman of contact and mobilization committee of the IBB presidential campaign.

As to the use of Igbo proverbs in your essay, you should do more research on Igbo culture before you find yourself struggling to explain your half-baked Igbo proverbs that you pasted all over your article. You should do more homework to understand the complexity of Igbo proverbs and how and when to apply them. Or you will be called an “efulefu.”

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