BIA-FRA
…..The True Hope Of The Rising Sun
Written By
Mr. Ben
Introduction
The Igbo race inhabiting under the abode of the created Nigeria, has and is being, and will always be a shadow of its full potential. It has been in existence for centuries before the conceptualization called Nigeria. However, the amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates by Lord Frederick Lugard in 1914 that saw the name, ‘’Nigeria’’ come into existence became anaoogous to when the eldest child of the family is made to serve or be under watch of the youngest child.
The Nigerian contraption had its validity for a century. Sadly, despite its validity elapsing on 31st of December 2014/1st of January, 2015 and concretely following up as a result, Nigeria is still in existence and the Igbo race (tribe) is fast becoming walking in shadows!
Table Of Contents
Chapter 1 Who Are The Igbos?
Chapter 2 : The Nigerian Effect
Chapter 3: The Igbo Before The Civil War
Chapter 4 The Igbo After The Civil War
Chapter 5: The Way Forward
Chapter 1
Who Are The Igbos?
The Igbos are one of the major tribes in present Nigeria. Situated in the southeastern part of the country, it comprises of the core states: Imo, Anambara, Enugu, Abia, Ebonyi, Enugu. Igbo is an indigenous language to the people and considered one of the oldest languages in Africa. Not only limited to the southeast, the Igbo tribe has its existence extended in the South-South region which includes states as Delta, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Bayelsa, Benue and Edo (whose ancient name Is ‘Igodomigodo’, meaning in Igbo language, ‘the key that unlocks all keys’). There are indigenous Igbo people in the middle-belt states such as Kogi and Benue.
The presence of the Igbo tribe extends beyond the shores of today’s Nigeria. According to Wikipedia, ‘’The Igbo people are an ethnic group found in …, Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea…’’Britannica asserts this about the Igbo as ‘’People chiefly in Southeastern Nigeria who speak Igbo, a language of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo family’’
Before the pre-colonial era, Igbos have traditionally been engaged in subsistence farming. ‘’Most Igbo traditionally have been subsistence farmers, their staples being yams, cassava and Taro’’ (Britannica). They have been a self-sufficient people since the dawn of time. A typical Igbo man, together with his polygamous family, work on the farm, having observed and observing the rites that take place on all market days. The Wikipedia puts it in perspective: ‘’The Igbo calendar…is the traditional calendar system of the people from present-day Nigeria. The calendar has 13 months in a year (Afo), 7 weeks in a month (Onwa) and four market days (Eke, Orie, Afo na Nkwo) in a week (Izu) plus an extra day at the end of the year in the last month…’’
The Igbos are defined by the uniqueness of their graphic system of communication, the ancient writing technique known as Nsibidi. ‘’Nsibidi is an ancient system of graphic communication indigenous to the Ejagham peoples of the southeastern Nigeria and Southwestern Cameroon in the Cross River region. It is also used by neigbouring Ibibio, Efik and Igbo peoples…’’ (Inscribing Meaning: Nsibidi/National Museum of African Art, africa.si.edu). It has been in existence since 400 A.D (Wikipedia).
Minority Rights, a non-profit organization, asserts, ‘’…Igbos are believed to have originated as a people several thousand years ago in the area where the Benue flows into the River Niger (Ancient name: Oshimiri Obaro).
They live in autonomous communities and practiced an acephalous system of government where men and women had a say in the politics of their communities. Men and wield equal rights to vote for and against the ruling chiefs of their independent communities. The acephalous government practiced by the Igbos did not have head. The Igbos did not live as one. Hence, they lived in autonomies. Each community would have its leadership on egalitarian grounds.
Some quarters claim that the word ‘’Igbo’’ is fully pronounced as ‘’Ndi Igbo Oche’’, which means ‘’Ancient people’’. They claim they are the oldest people on and are at the center of the earth (Zero- degree longitude and latitude)!
The Biafra recognition, a name synonymous with the entirety of the Igbo race, existed 500 years before Nigeria was created (allafrica.com), according to Barrister Emeka Emekesiri, the presumed founder of the Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB)
Unequivocally, the Igbo tribe who had been in existence for thousands of years before the creation of Nigeria, currently being under the watch of the latter, whose meaning has no inclination to or consonance with the language, calls for attention.
Chapter 2
The Nigerian Effect
Lord Frederick Lugard amalgamates the northern and southern protectorates of what is today known as Nigeria in 1914. The name, ‘Nigeria’ is coined by Lady Flora Shaw, who becomes wife of Lord Frederick Lugard. The Amalgamation document ascertains a century of existence. Subsequently, members whose habitation and nationality would be seen as Nigeria and Nigerians respectively would negotiates terms of co-existence, either to go separate ways or remain as one. 2015 becomes the year when Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, then president of the federal republic of Nigeria, calls for a CONFAB (a national conference), intended to negotiate terms of existence amongst all representing tribes that constitute the Nigerian state. Alas, all goes to no avail.
Nigeria is made up of over two hundred ethic groups and five hundred distinct languages, cultures and peculiar customary practices. The ‘genius’ of Lord Frederick Lugard to ‘integrate’, under the umbrella of amalgamating tribes found in the northern and southern protectorates, including the Igbos, into a rather ‘strange’ identity, Nigeria, is fascinating. The Nigerian identity is ‘strange’ in that, as previously stated, it has no corresponding meaning to all indigenous languages and recognition of the major tribes---Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa.
The people who presently identify themselves as Nigerians come from various tribes whose existence predates the creation of a corporation alien to them. Nigeria becomes an independent entity officially on the 1st day of October, 1960. Before then, there is no Nigerian Nationality (It was then known as ‘British Nigeria’). For those born before 1st of October 1960 in present Nigeria, and given the established premise, what was their identity?
The national conference, otherwise known as CONFAB, hit the rocks by making no headway. Nigeria is still in existence. This time, however, it is plaguing subtly in the ocean of oblivion due to current default navigation patterns.
The Nigerian effect has kept the tribe known as the Igbo to its knees. It has been a tale of marginalization, particularly after the Civil war. Has this always been the case since inception?
Chapter 3
Igbos Before The Civil War
Sir, Ahmadu Bello, a prominent northern politician who, on paper, was one of the referred ‘founding fathers’ that led to the independence of Nigeria, was making certain remarks about the Igbos in an interview he granted to a British Journalist:
‘’…Well, the Igbos like to dominate everybody. If they go to the village or town, they want to monopolize everything in that area’’
(The link to the interview is found on Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=5_odAY4rVz8)
The Igbos are naturally an industrious people who believe in the dignity of diligence, expansion of savviness in the form of commence and enterprise and legacy of independence. Being a people with such orientations distinguishes them from other tribes. Their acephalous psyche creates the rationale, the need for living in autonomous communities. Simply, it was the philosophy of the Igbo in the pre-slavery era was ‘’live, let me live’’. That has been the cultural ideology of this tribe before slavery, colonialism and advent of what is still existing as Nigeria.
Consequently, this peculiar thought pattern has attracted envy from certain quarters, particularly the political elites who are not inclined to, familiar with or fascinated about the way of life of the Igbos. A prime example was Sir Ahmadu Bello, the direct descendant of Uthnam Dan Fodio, a Fulani man.
Nigeria’s foremost system of government was regionalism. Then, it was the Northern, Eastern and Western regions. Each region ran its socio-economic, cultural and political affairs. At the time, the eastern economy was the most prosperous, not only in Nigeria but also Africa as a whole. That inspired the like of Chief Obafemi Awolowo who painstakingly devoted the most active years of his life to develop the western region in terms of granting free education to his people (the Yoruba youths and those interested in learning basic western education), providing media (the creation of the National Television Authority in Ibadan in 1948), infrastructural facilities such as good roads, medical facilities, schools, affordable housing and other interests.
The steady economic growth of the eastern region before the broke-out 1967-1970 Civil War (as it was called) contributed to one of the reasons Nigeria was one of the most visited, if not the most visited in the world.
In the political and military scenes, Igbos were at the forefront. The first ceremonial president, one of the chief proponents for the independence of Nigeria from the British colonial rule, Chief. Dr. Nnamdi Azkiwe, believed in the Óne-Nigeria ideology to the point he convinced Tafawa Balewa to be in sync by being comfortable with Tafawa Balewa, a school teacher then, being prime minister. However, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Sir Ahmadu Bello and others had their reservations about One Nigeria. For instance, while Dr. Nnamdi Azkiwe was heralding One Nigeria and parading himself as a nationalist, then styled as the ‘Zik of Africa’, Chief Obafemi Awolowo was engaged in assiduously developing the western region (the present states as Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Kwara, Kogi and Ondo), ‘Zik of Africa ’was playing to the gallery of the one-Nigeria phenomenon but practically contributing next to nothing, feats by Chief Obafemi Awolowo. The saving grace was the prowess and indefatigability of Chief M.I Opara and his team, then in charge and responsible for the fast-growing eastern economy.
The election that saw Dr. Nnamdi Azkiwe, an Igbo man, win an election in Lagos state prior to the 1966 coup, would have created the impression of how workable the One-Nigeria Ideology was. How wrong he was! Instead, Chief Obafemi Awolowo stressed the need, explicating to his people, on the rationale an Igbo man, in the person of Dr. Nnnamdi Azikwe, should not be a leader in a place he is not originally from. The birth of tribalism took effect as the first political cross-carpeting from the Zik-led National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) to Awolowo’s political party, Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) In 1951 (Party Cross-Carpeting in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: Cases and Causes, ResearchGate. September 2016). That s aw the emergence of the ugly headiness of chaos puncturing the political and social fabrics of the pre-independent Nigerian state.
A few years after independence, there was an apparently insurmountable discord in the political atmosphere which called for a military intervention. Under the watchful eyes of the first military head of state, Major General Aguiyi Ironsi, an Igbo man and a believer of the One Nigeria ideology, Nigeria’s journey or militarization begun. However, his administration was short-lived as he was assassinated about six months later. He died 29TH of July 1966. Months before, precisely 15th of January 1966, Lt. Col. Chukwuma Nzeogwu and other junior military officers, having been dissatisfied with the outcome of the failing Nigerian state, planned to overhaul the system in a bid to bring about sanity to the system, creating a revamped Nigeria. What Lt. Col. Chukwuma Nzeogwu (Kaduna Nzeogwu, as he was called, because he was born and bred in Kaduna, then British Nigeria in 1937) thought would engender a lasting solution to the prevailing crisis became an ultimate recipe for disaster…
Consequently, the coup became what was called an Igbo Coup because of the presence of the involvement of Kaduna Nzeogwu, an Igbo man, whose live was based in the northern part of the then British Nigeria). Though the coup failed, leading to the arrest and execution of the coup plotters, there was a claim the intent behind the so-called Igbo coup was to ensure no other than the person of…Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba man, became president!
Meanwhile, the massacre and mayhems meted on the Igbos in the north were concerns the then governor of the eastern region, Lt. Col. Odumegu Chukwuemeka Ojukwu (late), raised but such attention got to the deaf ears of the government.
Chapter 4
Igbos After The Civil War
The Civil War of 1967-1970 became a turning point that would cause full-fledged marginalization of the Igbos. Over three million Igbos lost their lives. Children became orphans; wives became widows. Starvation and malnutrition, the bio weaponries, were actually the main cause of deaths. Three years of untold agony and lifelong mental damage. Chief Obafemi Awolowo was instrumental to the Nigerian government having an upper hand in the situation. He advised the Nigerian government to cut off food supply being received in the affected eastern region via the Cameroonian border, the available aid be lacking in iodine salt and other benefits from such a source be blocked!
Lt. Col. Odumegu Chkwuemeka Ojukwu saw the need for a separate nation, having realized the marginalization of his people has been met with no consideration, despite being recognized as Nigerians. Together with his second in command, Col. Effiong, the identity known as Biafra was birthed (30th of May, 1967). The name was coined by Chief Opigo, an Ijaw man from the present-day South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria, from the Bight of Biafra. The war later became the Nigeria-Biafra war which would linger for three years.
Though General Yakubu Gowon (Retired), the then head of state, called for the end of the war under a ‘no winner, no vanquished situation’ in 1970, the Igbo race subsequently became a shadow of itself. The properties owned by the Igbos in Lagos and other regions in the west were seized and claimed by the indigenes of those lands. Worse still, abandoned properties owned by the Igbos in present-day Delta and River states (possibly Akwa Ibom, Cross River and Bayelsa states) were also seized and claimed. This time, such claims to the Igbo-owned houses and other assets would have to be on grounds that those who would eventually claim them would change their names and names of their ancestral lands (villages, communities and towns)! That was done to make sure there is a dissociation from their Igbo identity. Before the Civil War, the eastern region comprised of the entire south-south and southeastern geopolitical zones
After the war, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, then finance minister, gave each surviving victim (the Igbo man) twenty British Pounds to start his live again! An ordeal every Igbo man who lived through the travails of the war and is still alive will live to remember…
Despite the Gowon’s post-Civil War Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation programs, the eastern region is met with no government presence. It has been deliberately under-developed by the federal government for decades. It took individuals from that region (whose parents possibly had to struggle through the war and start off again) to collectively make that region a look-alike of what it used to be, pre-Civil War.
The introduction of the Naira as legal tender came into the scene. January 1, 1973 was the date. Before then, Nigeria was using the Pound (and pen) currencies. It is fascinating the NAIRA has no direct denotation or meaning to any spoken languages to indigenous people (or their tribal affiliations) currently in Nigeria, just as the name ‘Nigeria’ (only that Flora Shaw asserted she got the coinage from the ‘Niger-area’ recognition. It should be noted that River Niger was anciently called OSHIMIRIOBARO, centuries before Mungo Park’s ‘discovery’ known as River Niger in 1888, whose source is said to come from the Fruta Jalon Island in Guinea). What is the Naira? Some thinkers around the political circles empirically assert that the NAIRA is an acronym stands for Never Allow Igbos Rule Again. Apart from Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (2010-2015), no other Igbo man had emerged president since 1st of January, 1973!
Omoleye Sowore, activist, prisoner of conscience, former presidential aspirant and owner of the media platform, Sahara Reporters had this to say about the Igbos: ‘’Nigeria has an Igbo problem. There is a secret memo in the country not to allow Igbos ever take leadership…’’ He also stated that ‘’Igbos can’t thrive in current Nigeria’’. Why? They are marginalized. Watch the full video of the interview on Youtube at: https://youtu.be/wMby93KEFI?si=4eHu97b4QS6Foh5A
Chapter 5
The Way Forward
The marginalization of the Igbo ethnic group becomes obvious as each day passes. Reacting to being treated as second-class citizens, despite being identified as Nigerians (howbeit, by being coarced) beginning with the resistance by Lt. Col. Odumegu Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, Ralph Uwazurike, Nnamdi Kanu and other concerned human rights activists, regardless of their envisioned methods of approach, it has always been a clarion call for the way forward for the Igbo Tribe.
Sowore sums it up: ‘’Nigeria must break up for Igbos to survive’’. To a large extent, Nigeria has to break up for Igbos to breakthrough!
The only true way for the Igbo man to not only survive but also live to the fullness of his potential is…BIA-FRA, which is the true hope of the rising of the rising sun.