BIAFRA: BEFORE THE COCK CROWS

Call it the curse of Ham, and you may be right. Call it the black man’s plague and you are still not far from the truth. But anywhere you see the man of colour whether in Europe, in the Caribbean, America, Asia or even in the African continent, one striking feature is the apparent lack of unity. The only thing the black man agrees upon is to agree on nothing. Since 1876 when the Scramble for Africa was started by King Leopold of Belgium, one of the pathologies which made the partitioning of Africa so easy was the disunity that existed and still exists among the blacks. This is the reason why slave trade flourished n black African nations as we became easy pickings for the colonial masters who capitalised on our penchant for disunity to further disunite us.

At the beginning of Apartheid government in South Africa, five million whites suppressed and subjugated 28 million blacks because of the inability of the South African people to come together in the spirit of unity. It will be recalled that the Xhosas and Zulu people of South Africa have been fighting for close to 200 years prior to this time.

Our beloved nation, Nigeria is over 100 years old as a federation, dating back to January 1, 1914 when the Northern and Southern protectorates were merged together, yet there remains a big chasm in our ranks. The 2015 elections was an eye-opener when politicians campaigned across tribal lines and even Nigerians voted ditto. In Lagos, in particular, a certain political party sufficiently used the ethnic card to curry votes from Igbos who reside in Lagos.

It is not unusual to hear Africans lay the blame of African nations at the doorstep of supposed colonial masters who had left the shores of Africa for God knows when. It is only when we want to speak with both sides of the mouth and are ignorant of history that we would wholly lay the blame of our disunity on the colonial masters that ‘divided’ us. The truth of the matter, however, is that the colonial masters merely capitalised on our disunity to entrench their hegemony.

In Rwanda, for instance, the Hutus and Tutsis have shared common distrust and dislike for one another ever before the first white man stepped on the soils of Kigali. How does one explain the massacre of 1.2 million people in 90 days without the help of a nuclear weapon or hydrogen bomb? So bad was the Rwanda genocide (not war) that the Hutus also killed fellow Hutus who abode the Tutsis ‘cockroaches’. It was called Operation Cut the Tall Trees and it involved neighbours against neighbours, brothers against brothers, even husbands against wives.

In Nigeria, today, over three decades after the end of the civil war, the ghost of Biafra is coming back to haunt us like the walking dead. It is looking like a thriller night. The arrowhead of the renewed Biafra agitation this time around is not a Sandhurst-trained colonel from a rich aristocratic background like Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu. It is a UK emigrant named Nnamdi Kalu who is popularly referred to as ‘Director’ by his followers. He founded the media-savvy organisation known as Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The organisation is affiliated with an active diplomatic arm (Biafra Diplomatic Mission Worldwide), online TV (Biafra Television) and radio (Radio Biafra) stations, an online newspaper (Biafra Times), and active social media outlets (including a Facebook page with 223,000 Likes).

In February Kanu opened an “Embassy” of the Republic of Biafra in Spain; IPOB claims to have members in more than 80 countries. Kanu was arrested by operatives of the State Security Services (SSS) in Lagos in October 2015, and has been in detention since then even after a federal court ruling deemed the activist’s detention unlawful. Since then, IPOB has regularly held street protests, calling for his release. Several people have been reported killed in clashes with the police and military.

At this point, it is crucial to ask some pertinent questions. After all, the elders of our land say to get the right answers, we need to ask the right questions. Is it true that the average Hausa man hates the average Igbo man and vice-versa? Is it true that an Igbo man can never become the president of Nigeria given the political hegemony of the North?

Is it true that if an Ebele had won the re-election bid in 2015 and not a Muhammadu, the Ghost of Biafra will be sleeping quietly in its grave? Will going our separate ways, ala the Brexit path, do us much good? Has it helped the USSR or Yugoslavia? Who really stands to benefit from the fall out of the Biafran agitation? Is it the poor woman plying her wares in Aba or Onitsha market or the young Ikechuckwu in Nekede (or Oko) trying to hustle and survive against all odds?

In all honesty, I sincerely believe that our major problem in this country is not really our multi-ethnic composition. The major problem as I see it is the greed and inordinate ambition of the ruling class. The typical Hausa man basically has no qualms about who becomes the president or not. Likewise the average Yoruba or Igbo man. All the masses care about is where their daily bread would come from. The ruling elite merely play the ethnic card to capitalise on the emotional stress of the masses and turn them against each others. Jedy Omisore, Ministry of Information & Strategy, Alausa, Lagos