Hata baada ya zaidi ya miaka arobaini tangu vita iishe kati ya Shirikisho la Nigeria na Wabiafra waliojitenga, bado kuna chuki na ubaguzi.
There is deep suspicion among other Nigerians about Igbos because of what happened more than 40 years ago. Igbos still face discrimination. And not one Igbo has served as president of Nigeria since January 1966 when the country's first president , Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, was forced out of office in a military coup. Almost all the rulers of Nigeria since independence have been Northerners, Hausa/Fulani, except Gowon who came from a small tribe in the Middle Belt which was then part of Northern Nigeria. Besides Zik, Obasanjo, a Yoruba, is the only other Southerner who has served as Nigeria's head of state since the country won independence more than 50 years ago in October 1960; and so did General Aguiyi Ironsi as military ruler for about six months during that tumultuous period when the country was on the brink of chaos following the January 1966 military coup, himself only to be assassinated in July the same year.
But even when Azikiwe was president, the effective ruler of the Nigerian Federation was Ahmadu Bello, a Fulani, from the royal family in Sokoto, who served as the premier of Northern Nigeria. His party, the Northern People's Congress, dominated the federal legislature. The Nigerian prime minister himself, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, also a Fulani, was fully controlled by Ahmadu Bello. He had risen to power as a member of the Northern People's Congress, a party controlled by Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, and was a mere stooge, serving Northern interests even if he did not want to. He was in a very difficult position. Many Nigerians, including a significant number of Igbos, felt he was doing his best but couldn't do much because he was controlled by Ahmadu Bello. And as Margery Perham, who had been in and out of Nigeria since the 1930s and knew many Nigerian leaders well, stated: the assassination of Tafawa Balewa was "regretted (by many Nigerians). His honourable character and difficult position in relation to the dominant premier of the north were understood." - (Margery Perham"Nigeria's Civil War," in Colin Legum and John Drysdale, eds., Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents 1968 - 1969, London: Africa Research Limited, 1969, p. 6).
The new military head of state, General Aguiyi Ironsi, and his colleagues in the ruling Supreme Military Council whose members came from all three regions, called a meeting of various leaders, including chiefs, from all parts of the country in September 1966 to discuss the future of Nigeria. "All possible solutions were considered. But even while the conference was sitting there was a new wave of massacres in the northern towns in which Ibo and other Easterners were killed, often in the most revolting manner. Estimates of the number killed varied from three to thirty thousand and the survivors fled back to the east to inflame their families and clansmen with hatred for their oppressors and a desire to cut all links with the Federation." - (Ibid.)
In spite of all that, Ojukwu, who was then the military governor of Eastern Nigeria, aliwaambia Waibo wenzake kwamba warudi Nigeria Kaskazini kwa sababu ni nyumbani kwao. He still felt that it was important to maintain the unity of Nigeria and save the federation.
Tatizo ni kwamba Wanigeria wengine hawakuwaona Waibo kama ndugu zao, hasa Nigeria Kaskazini, ingawa wengi wao walikuwa wameoana kwa miaka mingi sana. Even Azikiwe himself was born in Northern Nigeria and spoke Hausa fluently; he was also fluent in Yoruba. And he believed in one Nigeria. Hata kabla ya uhuru, he stated in his writings that Nigerians are one, united by bonds of history, whether they liked it or not. But it was a sentiment that was not shared by his colleagues. The Northern premier, Ahmadu Bello, did not believe in one Nigeria. And he said so; Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the leader of Western Nigeria, didn't either.
Katika kitabu chake, Path to Nigerian Freedom, published in 1947, Awolowo, aliandika wazi kwamba hakuna Winigeria; a sentiment echoed by his Northern counterpart, Ahmadu Bello. Awolowo bluntly stated in his book: "Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no 'Nigerians."' Hakuishia hapo. Akaendelea kusema kwamba watu wanaoitwa, au wanao jiita Wanigeria, are different from each other as much as Waingereza walivyo tofauti na Wafaransa na kadhalika.
Halafu, miaka michache baada ya kitabu chake kuchapishwa, Awo articulated virtually the same position at the constitutional conference on the future of Nigeria held in London in August 1953 when he threatened secession of the Western Region. In fact, he walked out of the conference. As George Padmore who knew all the Nigerian leaders - including Azikiwe at least since the mid-1940s when they were together at the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England, in 1945 - stated in his book Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa, published in 1956, only about three years after the constitutional talks on Nigeria's independence:
"Since the emergence of Yoruba tribalism as a virile force in Nigerian politics, the Action Group leaders (led by Obafemi Awolowo) have been demanding that Lagos be incorporated into the Western Region....This has been opposed by the other regional political leaders....Unable to agree among themselves over the administration of the town, all the delegates agreed to let Mr. Lyttelton (the Secretary of State for the Colonies) decide the issue. He decided that Lagos should remain the federal capital....The decision so annoyed the Westerners that their leader, Mr. Awolowo, walked out of the Conference and threatened secession of the Western Region from the rest of Nigeria." - (George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa, London: Dennis Dobson, 1956, p. 285).
Secession has always been on the mind of Nigerians from the time the North and the South were united in 1914, and after the Nigerian federation was formed years later in the mid-1940s, comprising three massive regions: North, East and West.
Kwahiyo siyo kitu cha kushangaza hata kidogo kwamba the Nigerian Federation almost collapsed when the Igbos and other Eastern Nigerians were being massacred in 1966. And it is rank dishonesty to blame them for the catastrophe that ensued. They were the victims.
Na walipoanza kukimbia kutoka kaskazini na sehemu zingine za Shirikisho la Nigeria kurudi jimboni kwao mashariki, walikuwa hawakimbilii mafuta, to secure the oil fields for themselves. They were running for their lives. In fact, there were no oil fields in Igboland; and I don't know of any which have been discovered there since then, at not least not in the Igbo heartland. The oil fields are in Ogoniland and other areas occupied by minority groups. But the Igbos have intermarried with the Ogoni, the Efik, the Ijaw, the Itsekiri and other groups in the Niger Delta and are therefore an integral part of that region.
Even during the Nigerian civil war, many people from the smaller ethnic groups in Eastern Nigeria supported secession. The federal government disputed that. Ojukwu asked the government to hold a plebiscite to determine if minority groups wanted to be part of Biafra. Gowon refused to do that because he knew Ojukwu told the truth when he said secession of the region had the support of other groups and not just the Igbos.
Even the chief commander of the Biafran forces during the war, General Philip Effiong, was a member of one of the minority groups and even served as Biafra's deputy head of state under Ojukwu and briefly as Biafra's head of state after Ojukwu left for Ivory Coast. He was an Ibibio, not an Igbo. Many other senior officers in the Biafran army came from different ethnic groups in the Eastern region; all the officers were not Igbo.
If the Igbos and other Easterners wanted oil for themselves, they would have demanded that in the 1950s soon after oil was discovered in the Niger Delta and when the other two regions - North and West - wanted to secede from the Nigerian Federation during that time. That would have been perfect timing and they would have told the Yoruba of the Western Region and the Hausa/Fulani of Northern Nigeria that if you want to pull out of the Federation, that's fine. That's the end of the Federation - we are also leaving. But that's not what the Eastern leaders said. They worked hard to save the federation. There was not a single Igbo leader - Azikiwe, Dr. Michael Okpara, Jaja Wachuku and others - who threatened secession; instead, it was their counterparts in Northern and Western Nigeria who did.
Azikiwe served as Nigeria's first president; Michael Okpara, premier of Eastern Nigeria, and Jaja Wachuku, Nigeria's first minister of foreign affairs. And they were strong nationalists and Pan-Africanists. In fact, when Jaja Wachuku was Nigeria's minister of foreign affairs, he defended the Zanzibar Revolution and told the American ambassador to Nigeria, Averell Harriman, that he had known Abdulrahman Babu - whom the Americans feared so much - for many years and that he was a true African nationalist who would not accept to be used by anybody as a puppet; not by the Chinese, not by the Russians, or anybody else. His commitment was to Africa. Harriman sent a telegram to the American Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, informing him what Jaja Wachuku said about Babu. Prime Minister Balewa also defended Karume saying he was an African nationalist, nothing else.
None of these Igbo leaders - Zik, Okpara and Wachuku - wanted the Nigerian Federation to collapse.
Tragically, the Nigerian Federation rests on what Chinua Achebe calls "a triad." The Hausa/Fulani, the Yoruba and the Igbo, the country's three main ethnic groups, constitute the triad. And everyone of them is virtually a nation. They are nations within a nation. The fate of all the other groups in Nigeria, about 250 of them, is inextricably linked with the fate of the Big Three. And justice has been elusive for them.
Even among The Big Three, the Igbo have suffered injustice at the hands of their fellow countrymen. It is a perennial problem.
Ethnic minorities complain about domination by the Big Three; the Big Three themselves have their own complaints, prompting Wole Soyinka, a strong Pan-Africanist and great admirer of Nyerere and Nkrumah who were also strong Pan-Africanists, to state in despair that Nigeria may be just an illusion, and that he does not rule out disintegration as a solution to the Nigerian problem. He has expressed that sentiment in his book, The Open Sore of A Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis. As he put it:
"When I listen therefore to some pontificating voice declaring that the unity of Nigeria is non-negotiable, I detect only wooly or opportunistic thinking....There is absolutely no foundation in the absolute for such a declaration....
We did not shy from the probability of a civil war and the possible disintegration of the country as a consequence....With all the imponderables that confronted the nation, with all the variables of sectarian interests, some of them overlapping, others canceling one another, I frankly could not advance any invulnerable reason for my preference for a solution that did not involve disintegration.
I had been involved in discussions with countless numbers of people...businessmen, intellectuals, students, traders, professionals, clergymen. The mood for them was this: Let us prepare for the inevitable separation or, at best, the loosest arrangement possible, such as confederation.
During the most violent day of the anti-Babangida riots, trapped within the tumult of thousands that submerged my car, sat, drummed, or danced on it, voices would ring out with shouts of 'Lead us out of this mess called Nigeria!' 'I am ready, recruit me. Let's go our own way'....
All highly emotive, born out of deep frustration, but one must be careful not to dismiss such voices as products of an abnormal moment, of a temporary phase. They were outbursts that conveyed a summation of positions argued in offices, marketplaces, bus stops, factories, palace courtyards and more secretive recesses of traditional enclaves, classrooms and debating halls. They were a continuation of discourses begun in 1960, and even long before then. We heard them during the various Leaders of Thought meetings after the countercoup of July 1966, we heard the then head of state, Yakubu Gowon, declare loud and clear that there was no longer any basis for Nigerian unity. We were deafened by the apotheothis of such sentiment in the roar of guns during the Biafran war....Every day still reminds us that the factors that led to Biafra neither were ephemeral nor can be held to be permanently exorcised." - (Wole Soyinka, The Open Sore of A Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 31 - 32).
The dissolution of the federation is still being discussed by many Nigerians today as a viable option. And if it does happen one day, other Nigerians will not have to worry about the Igbos, and the Igbos will not have to worry about being marginalised or attacked in their own country.
In one of my previous posts, I quoted two Northern Nigerian leaders who made it clear that they hated Igbos and did not want them to live in Northern Nigeria. Hiyo ilkuwa ni mifano miwili tu to illustrate the point I was making then. Kulikuwa na wengine waliosema yafwatayo katika bunge lao la kaskazini, Northern House of Assembly, February-March 1964:
Mallam Bashari Umaru:
"I would like (you), as the Minister of Land and Survey, to revoke forthwith all Certificates of Occupancy from the hands of the Ibos resident in the Region (Applause)."
Mr. A. A. Abogede (Representative of Igala East):
"I am very glad that we are in Moslem country, and the Government of Northern Nigeria allowed some few Christians in the Region to enjoy themselves according to the belief of their Religion, but building of hotels should be taken away from the Ibos and even if we find some Christians who are interested in building hotels and have no money to do so, the Government should aid them, instead of allowing Ibos to continue with the hotels."
Dr. Iya Abubakar (Special Member: Lecturer, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria):
"I am one of the strong believers in Nigerian Unity and I have hoped for our having a United Nigeria, but certainly if the present trend of affairs continues, then I hope the Government will investigate first the desirability and secondly the possibility of extending Northernization policy to the petty traders (Applause)."
Mallam Ibrahim Muse (Representative of Igala North-West):
"Mr. Chairman, Sir, well, first and foremost, what I have to say before this honourable House is that we should send a delegate to meet our honourable Premier to move a Motion in this very Budget Session that all Ibos working in the Civil Service of Northern Nigeria, including the Native Authorities, whether they are contractors, or not, should be repatriated at once."
Mallam Bashari Umaru:
"There should be no contracts either from the Government, Native Authorities, or private enterprises given to Ibo Contractors. (Government Bench: 'Good talk' and shouts of 'Fire southerners'). Again, Mr. Chairman, the Foreign Firms too should be given time limit to replace all Ibos in their firms by some other people."
Alhaji Usman Liman (Representative of Sarkin Musawa):
"What brought the Ibos into this Region? They were here since the Colonial days. Had it not been for the Colonial Rule there would hardly have been any Ibo in this Region. Now that there is no Colonial Rule the Ibos should go back to their Region. There should be no hesitation about this matter. Mr. Chairman, North is for Northerners, East for Easterners, West for Westerners, and the Federation for us all (Applause)."
The Premier, Alhaji The Honourable Sir Ahmadu Bello, K.B.E., Sardauna of Sokoto:
"It is my most earnest desire that every post in the Region, however small it is, be filled by a Northerner (Applause)."
The Minister of Land and Survey, Alhaji The Honourable Ibrahim Musa Gashash, O.B.E.:
"Mr. Chairman, Sir, I do not like to take up much of the time of this House in making explanations, but I would like to assure Members that having heard their demands about Ibos holding land in Northern Nigeria, my Ministry will do all it can to see that the demands of (the) members are met. How to do this, when to do it, all this should not be disclosed. In due course, you will see what will happen (Applause)." - (Colin Legum and John Drysdale, eds., Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents 1968 - 1969, London: Africa Research Limited, 1969, pp. 664 - 665).
It wasn't long before they did, and before the rest of the world saw what happened to the Igbos in Northern Nigeria.
Viongozi wote hao wa Nigeria Kaskazini walishangiliwa katika bunge lao. Ni vizuri hawakuficha hata kidogo chuki yao. Walionyesha wazi wanawachukia Waibo na hawawataki Nigeria Kaskazini. The lives and wellbeing of the Igbos meant absolutely nothing to them. Waibo wakalazimishwa kurudi walikotoka, jimbo la mashariki ya shirikisho la Nigeria. Lakini walilazimishwa kwa kuuawa. Ikawabidi wajitenge.
The rest is history. Up to 2 million lives were lost for nothing, simply because the people wanted to live in peace and security in their home region to which they had been forced to flee. They were forced to do so by their fellow countrymen who didn't want to live with them and treat them as fellow citizens, thus validating, in a very tragic way, Awolowo's statement: "Nigeria is a mere geographical expression. There are no Nigerians."
Just remember Haile Selassie's prophetic warning: "It is us today. It will be you tomorrow."
Nyerere anapolaumiwa kwa kuitambua Biafra kwa sababu ya "Ukatoliki" wake na sababu zingine za kipuuzi kwamba he compromised his Pan-African ideals kwa sababu ni mmoja wa viongozi aliyesisitiza umuhimu wa umoja wa nchi za Kiafrika, hakikisha kwamba you know what you're talking about; you know all the facts kabla hujaanza kumlaumu Mwalimu au kusema chochote kuhusu kitu ambacho hukijui. Chunguza, jifunze, na jua ukweli, badala ya kuropoka tu.
If it has not sunk in yet, read again what the Northern Nigerian leaders said about the Igbos. They would make Hitler proud.
