By Maazi Oluchi Ibe and Kester Kenn Klomegah Undoubtedly, Nigeria has entered a period of political uncertainty. With the next presi...
By Maazi Oluchi Ibe
and Kester Kenn Klomegah
Undoubtedly, Nigeria has entered a period of political
uncertainty. With the next presidential election fast approaching, some
politicians and experts are strongly advocating for, among others, a
constitutional review considered as the best way to preserve peace and
stability in the country. The reviewed constitution will take into account the
ethnic diversity and provide for equal representation of southern and eastern
regions in the federal system of governance.
In an early September interview, Maazi Oluchi Ibe, a
historian and a former lecturer at Gregory University, a private educational
institution named after Pope Gregory, located in Uturu, Abia State of Nigeria,
talks to Kester Kenn Klomegah, about the political developments, the reasons
for economic disparity and the Biafrans’ unquenchable desire for political
freedom and self-determination.
Here are the
interview excerpts.
Kester Kenn Klomegah: Do you consider an urgent
constitutional review as the first step towards national integration in the
Federal Republic of Nigeria?
Maazi Oluchi Ibe: I think
it is better to look at this issue from the perspective of who, in the
present-day Nigeria, wants integration. If the Hausa, Fulani, or Yoruba want
integration or re-integration for that matter, they are welcomed to it. There
is a section of Nigeria that has long gone beyond the idea of integration. That
part is the Biafra which has been under forceful military occupation by Nigeria
since 1970. Biafra gave Nigeria a clear, unambiguous path to integration at
Aburi in 1967. What Biafrans saw clearly in 1967 is what the rest of Nigeria is
contemplating today. Biafrans are also telling Nigerians today that that we saw
53 years ago is no longer tenable. Possibly in a couple of decades, Nigeria
will wake up to that reality too.
The net minimum for any look at the Nigerian constitution is
a simple declaration for a plebiscite amongst the people of Biafra for
self-determination. That remains the only basis. However, it is important we
let those who feel concerned and who think that a mere constitutional review
will solve the Nigerian quagmire, to know that history our guide. Every
Nigerian constitution was watered on the blood of Biafrans. From 1945, to as
recent as August 25th, 2020 when young Biafrans holding a peaceful meeting were
shot to death at Emene Enugu, it has been genocide and countless killings of
Biafrans. What then is the guarantee that the next constitutional review will
not follow suit?
We will not cease saying that what ails Nigeria is beyond
constitution making and reviews. What ails Nigeria is the forceful amalgamation
of incompatible entities into a geographical expression. Is it not callous that
pre-war Europe made up of multi-ethnic nations who were mired in ceaseless wars
until they unbundled through the creation of ethnic nations will turn round in
Africa and create exactly what made old Europe unstable for centuries? Even the
two Germans that were separated in 1945 have joined back together as one
nation. That is the natural order of things. Same Europeans came to African and
forced ethnic nation, some as twice the population of an average European
nation, into forceful unions with others as large and they think it will stand?
No, it will not stand as the former USSR has proved, ditto, Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia and in Africa, Eritrea, and Sudan. To further muddle the waters, the
British allowed two contentious expansionist religions that are almost equal in
population to live in one geographical space called Nigeria. What sort of
idiotic experiment was that? Imagine what it has caused since 1914 in terms of
human lives, mainly the lives of innocent Biafrans. No, it is not a
constitutional review matter.
KKK: Why are there rising blatant criticisms about
the current constitution adopted in 1999?
MOI: Simply because
Nigeria has never had a constitution. Even the so called ‘famed’ 1963
Republican constitution was a gross failure and that was why the army step in a
mere three years after its proclamation. The current infamous 1999 constitution
was merely a baring of the fangs that in the past were covered with a glove.
The ‘good’ thing about this constitution was that its criminal creators did not
hide the fact that it was a creation of a military decree. Imagine the impunity
and the blood cuddling guts of declaring a military decree as emanating from
‘We the People!’ That very first statement in that piece of paper was and is a
blatant lie and they are not hiding the fact.
KKK: What are the narratives and the reasons for
underdevelopment in the Biafra State?
MOI: Some of the greatest
disaster that befell Biafra from the war of independence were so subtle that an
unconscious mind will hardly notice them, while many were so conspicuous that
they scream to the high heaves for all to see. For instance, the divide and
rule system introduced by the British colonizers where perfected by the Fulani
oligarchy that took over Nigeria with Biafrans at the receiving end.
Across a once peaceful land compared to what was obtainable
in other sections of Nigeria, the conquering caliphate army imposed all sorts
of divisions, ethnic, geographic, demographic, and so on. That is why today,
they would rather want Biafrans to fight within themselves over artificial
boundaries they created to divide us, like their British did. Such externally
imposed divisive tendencies does not call for economic development. But, we are
more conscious of such subtleties now.
In addition, there is what Professor Chidi Osuagwu, defined
as the deprivation of Knowledge and its concomitant effect over the decades on
Biafran economy. Professor Chidi Osuagwu, Federal University of Technology,
Owerri, Imo state, had done an article on Igbo deprivations in Nigeria from
where the excerpt on the missionary school’s take over came from. Immediately
after the war, the Nigerian caliphate government struck at the lifeblood of
Biafran development, that is, the Missionary Schools. They took over the mission
schools after the war aimed at slowing down and degrading the booming
educational Sector in Biafraland that was the driver of Biafran progress.
Today, the state of education in Biafraland viz-a-viz what was obtainable
pre-Biafran war of independence speaks volume.
By consciously shutting down economic activities in
Biafraland through strangulatory policies, significant amongst them the £20
policy, that is, giving Biafrans only £20 without putting into consideration
whatever holdings Biafrans held in their prewar bank accounts which the
conquering army confiscated. Their nationalization decree of 1972 that turned
over all major companies and conglomerated into the Nigerian caliphate
governments’ hands. Other examples are the policy of importing from far away
Lagos instead of nearby Port Harcourt and other natural seaports available in
Biafraland. Mind you, Port Harcourt seaport was opened as far back as 1917, but
today lies fallow. The cumulative effect of these policies was the forceful
dispersal of Biafran youths from our homeland. Today they remain the largest
economic migrant group the whole of Africa.
These glaring constraints naturally forced an implosion
leading to insecurities which were in turn blamed on the people and used as an
excuse to militarize the land. Biafra is the most militarized region today in
West Africa, if not the whole of Africa. Why not militarize the North with an
ongoing war that has lasted over ten years?
Let us also not forget that by consciously imposing
political leadership akin to the warrant chiefs the British imposed on
Biafraland during the colonial period, the present Nigerian system has a grip
on what gets done and what does not in Biafraland. What brings home the truth
of the parlous economic situation in Biafraland today is not to compare it with
what obtains in Northern Nigeria but to recall the fact the pre 1967 economic
indices showed the then Eastern region (Biafra) as the fastest developing
economy in the world.
KKK: How do you envisage women’s role in the
current struggle for freedom, peace, and development in Biafra State?
MOI: Biafran women are
the most resilient in Africa if not world over. Possibly no other group of
women have passed through what they did and are still passing through in
contemporary history. These were women who lost children, siblings, husbands,
fathers, and mothers in the genocidal war Nigeria imposed on Biafra in 1967. 53
years after they are still forced to endure rapine, and harassment in their
very homes and farms by terrorist herdsmen buoyed by Nigerian government. Yes,
they are very patient but whenever their patience dissipates as it has, you are
going to be confronted with a different level of struggle. No other people know
this more than the British who thinking that Biafran women were as docile as
their British counterpart of the early 20th century crossed the invisible line.
The now famous Aba women war of 1929, remember was fought solely by Biafran
women based on same issues as has been confronting their nation since 1970.
It is only in this part of the world that you have women
having equal if not superior rights to men. That was why when confronted by the
British judicial panel over the Aba women’s war, on why the women listened to
their menfolk and went on rampage, the angry women leaders of the revolution
had retorted, ‘here, men do not speak for us!’ This, when published in the
British press in the 1930s was picked up by British women suffragettes and
became their catchphrase, ‘here men do not speak for us, as reported by Harry
Gailey. Gailey authored “The Road to Aba: A Study of British Administrative
Policy in Eastern Nigeria” and was published by New York University Press in
1970.
KKK: Is human rights violations becoming a thorny
issue in Nigeria? Why armed northern Islamic attacks on Christian-dominated
southwestern and southeastern States?
MOI: Human rights
violations and armed Northern Islamic attacks on Christians have gone beyond
the description, ‘thorny.’ It is now an existential threat. It is a
choreographed, preplanned attempt at not just ethnic cleansing but a grand
Islamization conquest in their quest to ‘deep the Koran into the Atlantic,’ as
promised them by their forebears. This is happening with impunity with tens of
thousands killed as the world watch without lifting a finger. What did we do?
Is it wrong to be Christian and Biafran? What makes our own Christianity
different from that of the rest of the world that they have refused to help?
How come all the international news media have refused mentioning the daily
carnage? Who says Biafra with its 95% Christian population, an ancient
democratic and republican system, sharing the best of contemporary Western
ideas cannot be helped to be a bastion against militant Islamism that poses a
great threat not just to Biafrans but the rest of the world? It is
unbelievable.
KKK: Does Buhari’s administration recognize all
the issues you have discussed above?
MOI: How can someone who
subscribes to the philosophy that ‘Western knowledge’ is bad recognize any of
these issues? These issues are diametrically opposed to his ideals and what he
has come to execute. He has been sincere in stating, in clear terms, all he has
been doing are pro-militant Islam and anti-westernization and modernity.
Buhari’s administration is completely blind to these important facts. The
federal government would rather exacerbate them than otherwise.
KKK: What are the expectations from regional
organizations, especially the Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS), and of course, the African Union?
MOI: They do not exist.
There is no point wasting energy on things that do not exist unless we want to
get entangled in an empty academic exercise. When last for instance did ECOWAS
or African union make a statement on the daily bloodshed in Nigeria?
Unfortunately for ECOWAS, Africa and the Western world that
have refused to raise a finger and are all seating on the sideline waiting for
Nigeria to implode, that implosion will come sooner or later and when 200
million refuges start streaming all over Africa and into the Western world, a
world that could not handle six million Syrian refuges, maybe, then all our
eyes will open. This is the time for the world to halt the recalcitrant
marauding Nigerian legal and illegal security forces bent on decapitating everything
on their path to the total domination of our space.
This is the time for the world to force Nigeria to a round
table. This forced amalgamation of 1914 has not worked and will never work. Our
situation is not that of a window dressed constitutional review. We are all
worlds apart. There is simply two diametrically opposed cosmological views that
cannot live side by side in this space. It happened in India and in 1947/8, the
British did the right thing – separated Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan. That
right thing – separation, is our minimum demand.
Kester Kenn Klomegah
is a passionate and frequent contributor to Global Research.
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