The war front in the fight to protect Igbo DNA in nigeria has now moved from islamic north to the western sector, with the Oduduwa nation attacking Igbo from all directions. For the longest, the yoroba has been the most dogged opponents of Igbo interests in West Africa and the one nation that has made itself a danger to Igbo land. The yoroba has been a willing tool in the hands of all Igbo competitors in nigeria, those who desire to stem the dreaded Igbo competitiveness particularly in commerce. Being totally averse to a level playing field in economic policy implementation with its non-meritocratic, corrupt patronage system, the yoroba fears that it is in no position to win an economic contest with the Igbo; therefore it must oppose Igbo insterests everywhere, particularly in the niger delta, by ganging up with subversive elements against Igbo. It has used all kinds of strategy, overt and covert, working particularly with Ijaw in this case, to try to annex Igbo territories and settlements in the towns of Opobo, Bonny and others in the Niger Delta -- anywhere there's crude oil in Igbo land it thinks it can manipulate.
It was yoroba who came up with the idea of "shofisticated diplomacy" during the War that sold off Igbo/Biafran oil fields to Europe to acquire political support and ammunition from USSR and Western Europe to fight Igbo/Biafra. During that war, it was also a yoroba man named obafemi awolowo, who wrote and implemented the policy of hunger as intrument of war, that resulted in the starvation to death of millions of Biafran elderly, women and children, and nearly exterminated an entire generation of Igbo people.
In its latest conspiracy, the yoroba federal government of nigeria under the arch-Igbo hater, olusegun obasanjo, is conniving with Ijaw to annex Igbo settlements in the south Atlantic region. It wants to build a rail transport system linking the oil fields of Igbo land in Bonny, Opobo and PH, bypassing the major cities and economic nerve centers in the Igbo Interior, while linking Lagos and yorobaland to Biafran Oil Fields, in major a sabotage and economic enemy action lavied against the Igbo and unequalled in its potential to dislocage the Igbo/Biafran economy since the naval blockage of the war years.
This is not the time to go to sleep! The Igbo nation must now wake up and respond.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Focus on the Purple, blue and dotted lines: Igbo/Biafraland left out again in nigerian rail construction projects, financed with crude oil money from Igbo/Biafra land.
Map: nigerian new rail system planned to deny Igbo access to its coastal territories -- an economic terrorism being planned against the Igbo by yoroba federal government of nigeria, using the Ijaw nation, pop: less than Asaba.
Take note of the recommendations of the Alex Ogumudia panel: that a road should proceed from Ogun state through Ondo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers down to Cross Rivers State, cutting off the Igbo hinterland, to the coast. This is the new definition, within curent Nigerian official circles, of what constitutes the "Niger Delta." Take note also that it's not a panel which an "Hausa" Islamist/Shariarist bigot sits upon: its chaired by a Southern, Christian, Isoko - who probably has more Igbo roots than he currently cares to acknowledge, for indeed the Isoko are part Igbo. Now, the provocative aspect of this recommendation is its implication: its cutting off the Eastern access to the coast, and opening the West to direct access to the Niger Dleta, which in all its ramifying truth is Igbo land, annexed. The transport policy also recommended that a rail system proceeds from Warri to Ajaokuta to Abuja ending in Port-Harcourt, and from Port-Harcourt to Enugu, to Onitsha to Benin to Ife, to Abeokuta and ending in Lagos. It says nothing of an Aba, Afikpo, Umuahia, Okigwe, through Orlu to Awka, or Aba, Owerri, through Oguta Aboh, to Warri. these are natural routes given the structure of that terrain and the nature of his poetnatials. But it emphasizes access to the west as a signal policy which connects the Western epicenter (Lagos) to the hub of energy production in Nigeria - the epicenter of the new economy - which would be eventually linked to Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome through the Niger delta. Basically, the Igbo hinterland is cut off from access to this new economy. In other words, Onitsha may no longer be the gateway to the coast, nor would the East be the gateway to that potentially active economy of the Niger delta. This is the complexity of the Igbo condition in Nigeria, that the Igbo do not construct an alternative paradigm to engage power. The greatest threat to the Igbo in Nigeria, are indeed not the "Islamist Shriarist", its Igbo idiocy. We are pursuing rats (read the illusory) while our house(s) (read the Igbo homeland) is under domestic and international colonization. I ask peole to study Igbo anthropology closely, and to talk to Onwuejiogwu, on how the Igbo resisted these forms of the Carthaginian treaty in the past: we expand, occupy, and hybridize without warfare. The Igbo protected themselves through vigorous methods of resistance. Today, we just moan. But that's not quite my concern: mine is the incremental re-drawing of the Igbo map, and penetration of hallowed Igbo grounds, while the Igbo engage in blame games. Some say, hand our "chi" to Ndi ocha ( a project which in itself is abominable self-enslavement reminiscent of the later meaning of ***) and some say, let us run from this fight because we are overwhelmed (read the Biafra resistance), and I say that the Igbo has an alternative: it is to use our numbers, and our resources, and subdue the frontiers of this incipient catastrophe. Compared to the Igbo, the Ijaw population in the Niger delta is insignificant, yet the Ijaw are claiming today to be the key population of the Niger delta. The foundation of this fiction began with the awarding to the Ijaw of a population figure of 5% in 1973 as compensation for its the mostly Western Ijaw support for Nigeria against Biafra. The Ijaw were given the old Rivers state, and according to the letters of the population census of 1973/3, the old Rivers state was "Ijaw" - no Igbo, no Ogoni - just Ijaw, and they constituted 5% of the Nigerian population. This is fiction and we must begin toi challenge it. The annexation of Igbo land by the government of Nigeria, through all its official adjustments - from the state creation to the Mamman Nasir boundary adjustment - must become a political issue within Igbo land, and we must ressurect the reports of the Willinks commission to re-establish Igbo claim of the Niger delta, and Igbo rights over the wealth of the Niger delta. The alternative is to lie down and die. It makes no sense that today, all the five estuaries - all of them Igbo rivers - that form the Niger delta have been poisoned, and yet, nobody is talking about the environmental and human impact of oil exploration on the hinterland of the delta which indeed is what Igboland is, and making an issue out of it. But rather than raise these issues, offer a weighty challenge, and make the Nigerian government shiver in its boots as only the Igbo could make them, we pursue illusions. The real fight for Igbo survival will begin within Igboland,by real Igbo people, and must be based on clear paradigms. To tell me that conditions have changed, and that Ndi ocha are afraid of Islamic control of oil in the delta is a very blind, romantic assertion. First, the Yoruba have never presented themselves as "shariarist Islamic" militants, and the strategic alliance which the Yoruba have been building with the elements like the Isoko, the Itshekiri, the Urhobo, the Ijaw, and of course, the Edo groups, makes it impossible to dislodge them from our back yard with our current postures. The Yoruba are increasingly becoming "the Niger delta", and if we do not make an issue of this right now, Igbo children will wake up and discover that this generation was busy "na ako ibi oko" while other people were thinking and acting. They would have no more grounds beneath their feet. Please note that the Yoruba alliance with the Western Ijaw formed the strategic bridge head with which it has captured even the Eastern Ijaw with whom the Igbo were formerly interpellated, and the Yoruba bridgehead with the diapsoric black world, puts them consistently in an advantage that makes them capable of igniting a global black response if they wish it at any time. Ndi ocha have always taken note of this. It just seems that the contemporary Yoruba learnt all the tricks of the ancient Igbo while the contemporary Igbo lost it to the ways of the whiteman, and in pursuit of the white elephant. Today, as a result of the shifts in these alliances which the Igbo failed to maintain - through unique common services: the public service, the school system, the common market, etc etc, which are the means for cultural dispersion and control, most people no longer think the Igbo capable of mustering significant meaning and shadow authority. This is where any serious Igbo leadership should begin to work. It is not accidental that the great powers offer scholarships and fellowships to "outsiders" and spend their own money on foreign journalists, writers, students, scholars and other kinds of "visitor" programs, in order to mainatin a bridge of influence. The Igbo are today, in a position in which they are capable of exerting the same authority in Nigeria, and further building the REAL power bases whether they are in AsoRock or not. That should be the Igbo goal: that anybody who comes to power - whether or not they bear Igbo names - would jeopardize COLLECTIVE igbo interest at great peril. Its time to begin to contemplate how others did it. The template is there. The capacity is there. The only thing that is lacking is the clear minded ability to discern our place within the context of history. I'm afraid that what Aniedobe and Ani ( amazing co-incidence in names) recommend, in their willingness to accept another kind of Igbo subjectivity, is that Igbo be receptacles rather than makers of the history of the 21st century. Let me warn, that if the kind of scenario which Ani projects were that simple, the US would not be right now scratching its head over how to leave Iraq, or what to do about Iran. Intervention was contemplated by the Nixon government in 1975 in the Niger delta, the only reason why it didn't happen was (A) an awareness that the Igbo still had young men trained military and could mobilize against an invasion (B) that the terrain of South-Eastern Nigeria was very like Vietnam and was conducive for a long drwan out guerrilla resitance. So all that paradigm of intervention is nothing new. Kosovo as testing ground was different from Somalia. And as Iraq and Afghanistan is proving, its not as imple as "shock and awe." The interventionist paradigm will certainly shift, and it would be the lot of the most vulnerable to suffer, especially as oil/energy becomes the basis of global warfare and resistance. As others fight to defend their spaces, and maintain the dignity and autonomy of the self, we are making ourselves incapable of stemming the tide of the carpricious powers of the new century. The greatest challenge before the Igbo in the 21th century is how to be slave to none - whether to the West or the East: and we better start thinking fast, because history has consistently proved that neither is a pretty alternative. Meanwhile, our ancestors gnash their teeth in "ala mmuo" and wonder how come they bred such impotence. The Igbo are increasingly like that character Danda (in Nkem Nwankwo's novel of the same title) who prefered to tipple while real men took titles.
Obi Nwakanma
[ April 19, 2006, 04:49 AM: Message edited by: Amadi O. ]
___________________ achieve Biafra and show the difference Posts: 642 | From: Los Angeles, CA | Registered: Nov 2002
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olusegun obasanjo's score card of achievements in Igbo land, 1999 - 2006. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once an Igbo-hater, always an Igbo-hater. Eight years in power, nothing but gnashing of teeth for Ndiigbo. Every dog has its day. As obasanjo heads for the dustbin of history, it is a digre for the Igbo-hater:
The Dredging of the River Niger - contract awarded to Westminster Dredging Company by the Petroleum Trust Fund. Cancelled within months of obasanjo assuming power.
Onitsha Inland Port - abandoned along with dredging of the River Niger
Onitsha-Owerri Road - awarded to an unknown firm CCC. Under construction for 8 years and counting. By contrast Lagos-Otta expressway awarded to Julius Berger with tight completion schedule, naturally.
Oji River Thermal Plant - Destroyed by Nigerian army in “civil war. Left un-repaired since 1967. Visited by obasanjo who promised repair- to mock the Igbo.
Akanu Ibiam International Airport Enugu - Upgraded to international status after hue and cry by Igbo. N3 billion contract awarded to PW Construction Company. Budget approved, never released.
Enugu Coal Mines/Coal Fired Power Station - Destroyed by the Nigerian army during “civil war”. Abandoned afterwards.
Enugu International Trade Fair Complex - Permanent site started in 2001 with promise to deliver in 1 year. Yet to be completed in 2006
Alvan Ikoku College of Education - Not taken over by “federal government” like Adeyemi, Yaba etc.
Sam Mbakwe Cargo Airport - A peoples’ project “taken” over and sabotaged. Refused landing facilities.
Aba Dry Port - Designed and implemented on paper only. Abandoned in reality.
Alaoji Power Plant - Financed by Chinese. Taken over and relocated to Ogun State
Okigwe-Afikpo Road - Abandoned at Akaeze. Julius Berger withdrawn to spite the Igbo
UNTH Permanent Site - Abandoned at Ozala Akegbe. Overgrown by weeds
Abia & Imo States - Denied oil Producing/Niger-delta status. Ondo State now “Niger-delta”, naturally.
NSIBIDI PRESS tm
___________________ achieve Biafra and show the difference Posts: 642 | From: Los Angeles, CA | Registered: Nov 2002
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Nigeria: U.S. Explains Presence in Gulf of Guinea This Day (Lagos)
May 31, 2006 Posted to the web May 31, 2006
Eugene Agha Lagos
The United States Govern-ment yesterday explained its presence at the Gulf of Guinea where Nigeria's biggest oil field, Bonga Project, is located, saying the move was to help Nigeria secure the area from terrorists and other maritime criminals.
Responding to questions from reporters at the on-going Seapower for Africa symposium at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, Admiral Harry Ulrich, Commander of US Naval Forces, Europe, and Africa, dispelled insinuations making the rounds in Nigeria that the US warships presence in the region is for military purposes, especially to launch an attack on Nigeria or that an individual in the country is using them to actualise a course.
Ulrich said much as the Nigerian government is trying its best to secure the region, yet reports available to Washington indicate that the Gulf of Guinea is full of international criminals among which are terrorists, sea pirates and smugglers. Ulrich said considering the dependence of America on Nigeria's oil, they are bound to show concern.
According to him,"we hear series of stories for our presence in the Gulf of Guinea, but I want to say that we are concerned for Nigeria and we want to help her protect the region from the hands of maritime criminal.
°In all parts of the world, the US and any good nation want a safe coastal and safe coast for countries who are supplying their energy, and that is why we are often there. So there is nothing to fear for Nigeria," he assured.
In the meantime, South African Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), Vice Admiral Retiloe Mudimu, yesterday blamed the frequent disasters that have befell the maritime industry in the continent on the refusal of African states to implement the ratified conventions governing the industry.
He called for better ties among African countries on maritime disaster management.
Mudimu, while reacting to the high number of human and materials that were lost in the Tsunami disaster in Indonesia and the number of ship mishaps in Africa said even though the distance between African and Indonesia, the Tsunami disaster still had a devastating effect on Somalia, because there were no detection of the earthquake several hours after it occurred.
Captain Frank Charles Van Rooyen while presenting a paper titled "Disaster Management in Africa Appraisal of African Experience and Capability at the ongoing Seapower for Africa Symposium, going on at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja noted that despite all conventions which African States have ratified, they seem not to have enacted the ratified conventions in their respective countries.
Apart from not having the equipment in place to detect theses maritime disasters, he stated that often time low experience hand, were employed as crewmen on board vessels. Adding that at the time he was writing the paper, yet another disaster, another maritime disaster was unfolding, this time off the east coast of South Africa.
According to him, a Greek owned ship, Alexandros T Bulk carrier, sailing between Brazil and China with a load of steel, broke up and sank rapidly on the nigh of Wednesday, May 3, 2006, in sea conditions of gale force winds, high wave and relatively cold seawater.
Though, he acknowledged that about seven persons were rescued in the ship mishap, but that the remaining 26 crewmembers, including the captain, were reported missing, while some days later the search and rescue in the area had been called off.
He said that maritime disasters strike quickly and that they often change the lives of all those touched
Proffering some solutions to disaster management in Africa, he stated that Government of African States must be aware of the fact that mare appending their signatures on the ratified conventions do not necessarily mean that the problems of maritime disasters have been taking care off rather an implementation of the convention will bring about succour when disasters stick
Signatures do not necessarily lead to constant applications of the conventions.
quote: olusegun obasanjo's score card of achievements in Igbo land, 1999 - 2006.
Mazi Amadi O.,
This is eye popping mind shattering wicked in the face assault. Anyone who is still confused as to this Yoroba fool's attitude towards us must belong in outer space.
___________________ BIAFRA: The land of my ancestors now, yesterday and always. So it will be! Posts: 2482 | From: Ala Igbo | Registered: Apr 2004
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