ACHEBE'S IGBO BEFORE OTHERS FAIRY TALES BY S KADIRI
Awolowo has been vilified by Achebe and his ilk for giving only £20 to Biafrans irrespective of what individual Biafran claimed to have lodged in the bank before the war.
Achebe, as a head of external broadcasting service in the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Lagos before he fled to the East during July 1966 coup, was on super scale salary. Based on that fact Nigerians will like to know if he had any saving in the bank at the time he fled Eastward; How much money did he have in his bank account and what happened to the money? Without waiting for Achebe to answer the questions I venture to assert that those who fled to the East in 1966 and had money in the bank withdrew them in cash and travelled with them to the East as money was the easiest of
all physical properties they could travel with. And even if one assumes that those who fled eastward left their savings and deposits behind un-withdrawn, the simplest thing for claimants to do after the war was to present their bank account books or last statements of account from the banks to reclaim their savings or deposits. Legally that should be private affairs between the banks and their customers with which Awolowo as the Minister of Finance had nothing to do. Before Awolowo died, he explained that it was a committee set up by him that recommended a social welfare package of £20 to everyone from the war affected area that desired it since Biafra’s currency was not legal. Thus, the £20 was not a payment in lieu of what individual Igbo had in the bank before the war but a survival gift to those who requested for it. It might interest Achebe and his ilk to know that when Awolowo was Minister of Finance a Nigerian Pound (£) exchanged at one British Guinea (21Shillings or £1. 1Shilling) while a Nigerian Pound exchanged at one US dollar eighty-two cents ($1.82). £20 was a big money then!!
Another excerpt from Achebe’s book states, “The original ideal of one Nigeria was pressed by the leaders and intellectuals from the Eastern Region. With all their shortcomings, they had this idea to build the country as one. The first to object were Northerners led by the Sardauna, who were followed closely by the Awolowo clique that had created the Action Group.” Historically, while it is a fact that Awolowo founded EGBE OMO ODUDUWA (A Society of the Descendants of ODUDUWA) in London in 1945, the Ibo state Union under the Chairmanship of one Mr. Chuba Ikpeazu had existed in London since 1943. When Egbe Omo Oduduwa was formally launched in Lagos in 1948 by Adeyemo Alakija, Akinola Maja, Kofo Abayomi, Bode Thomas, H O Davies, Akanni Doherty etc, Awlowo was not there and the Ibo state Union in Nigeria had been in existence for over two years. Awolowo only helped later to inaugurate a branch of Egbe Omo Oduduwa in Ibadan. It was not until May 1948 that Jamiyyar Mutanen Arewa (Northern People’s Congress) was founded in Zaria by Dr R A B Dikko. In fact the Northern People’s Congress was a regional organisation that embraced all the tribes in the North while Ibo State Union and Egbe Omo Odudua excluded all minority tribes in their region from membership. While one could be a member of Egbe Omo Oduduwa and join any political Party in the country, all members of the Ibo state Union were affiliated to the NCNC. For instance H O Davies was one of the founders of Egbe Omo Oduduwa and he belonged to the NCNC party until he died. It is indisputable that the first tribal interest organisation in Nigeria was Ibo State Union and others just copied them.
How then can one reconcile the idea of building Nigeria as one country through Ibo state Union of which Nnamdi Azikwe was its President since 1949 upwards? Rummaging through Nigeria Year Book, 1956, published in Lagos when Nigeria was still a colony, it was stated that Egbe Omo Oduduwa remained just a reply to the Ibo State Union; in other words, as an assembly which catered for the social and cultural progress of the Yorubas. On the Action Group the Year book stated, “Today the Action Group is as important as any other political party in the country; it is certainly better organised than the rest. The Action Group believes in a socialist commonwealth but also in the solidarity of the parts and the unity of all.”
In Achebe’s lecture at The Guardian Silver Jubilee on October 9, 2008, in Lagos Dr. Osuji was irritated over the claim of Achebe that Igbos, more than other Nigerians, worked for Nigeria’s independence. And Dr. Osuji remarked, “That claim is arrant nonsense. Nigeria’s independence struggle, as it was, began with the 1920s Lagos crowd, with such non-Igbo folk as Herbert Macaulay, H. O Davies etc. It is part of Igbo misguided arrogance for them to always see themselves as working more than other persons for common good. If truth be said, we all know that Igbos have many character flaws, including selfishness. Igbos are generally unprincipled and opportunistic and work for their individual self interests not social interests.” Much as one would strongly object to Dr Osuji’s sweeping generalisation of painting negative characters on Igbos it is worthwhile to know that, in the history of warfare, General Chukwu Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu was the first commander in chief in the world that ever deserted his soldiers in an ongoing war to seek asylum abroad. After over ten years in exile, Ojukwu returned to Nigeria in early 1982 having been pardoned by the *Jihadist,* President Alhaji Shewu Shagari, of the NPN led government. While wounded, maimed and crippled Biafra’s war veterans roam about in Igbo towns and cities to beg for alms in order to live, Ojukwu negotiated and got his monthly pension as a retired Lieutenant- Colonel (the rank he held in the Nigeria Army before secession) from the Federal Government until his death! Ojukwu was never a revolutionary but a petty bourgeois and a reactionary.
If Achebe’s tribal belief and expression is applied to the historical events narrated above, it will be correct to say that the Igbo leaders in the NCNC, Benjamin Nnamdi Azikwe and Michael Ihenokura Okpara hated Yoruba people and their leader Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo who also happened to be the leader of Action Group Party that controlled the government of Western Region in 1962.
The hatred of the Igbo leaders, Azikwe and Okpara, for the Yoruba people caused them to conspire with the Jihadists, Ahmadu Bello and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of the NPC to declare a state of emergency in the Western Region and thereby overthrew the government of the Action Group elected by the Yoruba People.
The purpose of Azikwe and Okpara in overthrowing the elected government of Yoruba land was to pave way for their own Igbo people to dominate the Yoruba people.
The thirteen Emergency Acts signed into law by the Igbo Governor General Azikwe made it possible to restrict and put under house arrest members of the Action Group and its leader Awolowo from 29 May 1962. Awolowo was restricted and put under house arrest at an Island called Leki until November 2, 1962 when he and some members of his Party were charged to court for planning to overthrow the federal coalition government of Igbo (NCNC) and Hausa (NPC). Awolowo was remanded in prison until he was convicted in September 1963 to ten years imprisonment. Soon after Awolowo had been convicted the leader of Hausa’s NPC, Ahmadu Bello, and the leader of Igbo’s NCNC, Michael Ihenokura Okpara, began to quarrel among them-selves over who should dominate Yoruba land and its people. Yoruba people demonstrated violently against their subjugation and demanded the release of the Action Group leader and his comrades from prison.
Protests persisted until 15th January 1966 when some Army Majors struck against the civilian government. The Army Major’s coup was hijacked by Igbo infiltrators who betrayed not only the coup planners to would be Igbo victims but failed to execute their own part of the coup against fellow Igbo. Consequently, all the people killed in the first coup both civilians and military officers, except one, were non Igbo Nigerians. Had the Igbo Acting President Nwafor Orizu, Igbo Premiers of the East and Midwest, Okpara and Osadebey, been killed just as the coup executors did to the Hausa Prime Minister of the Federation, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Hausa Premier of North, Ahmadu Bello and the Premier of the West, Samuel Ladoke Akintola, the coup would have been seen by Nigerians in general as having been carried out in the national interest. There was no valid reason either why all the military officers killed in the coup, except one, were people of Northern and Western Regions only.
According to Captain Gbulie (see page 66, Nigeria’s Five Majors) Captain Goddy Ude was issued with a .38-calibre pistol and ample live ammunition by the plotters in Kaduna on Thursday, 13 January 1966 and sent him by road to the 5th Battalion in Kano where Lt. Colonel Ojukwu was the Commanding Officer. The idea was not to kill Ojukwu but to thwart any attempt to subvert the coup by the 5th Battalion, but Captain Goddy Ude played game with Ojukwu. However, the Igbo man that hijacked the coup of the Five Majors, Major-General Johnson Thompson Umunnakwe Aguiyi Ironsi appointed an Igbo man Pius Okigbo as his economic adviser, another Igbo man G Onyuike became the Attorney General and Francis Nwokedi an Igbo man was appointed a one-man commission of enquiry on the establishment of an administrative machinery for Nigeria and the unification of the five public services (four regions and the federal) and judicial services in Nigeria. At the same time Igbo traders in the North made postcards out two different cartoons that were published in the West African Pilot newspaper owned by Nnamdi Azikwe. One had the picture of Ahmadu Bello lying with the face up and a cock, the party symbol of NCNC, standing on his chest crowing. The other postcard featured Ahmadu Bello, Balewa and Akintola knocking at the gate of heaven and an Angel coming out saying, this is heaven no rigging. These cards were being sold by Igbo traders throughout Northern Nigeria and they helped a lot to create the impression that the coup was an Igbo takeover of Nigeria. Moreover, while General Ironsi refused to release political prisoners, especially Awolowo, he promulgated the unification decree no. 34 amalgamating the federal and regional civil services on the 24th of May 1966 and riot broke out in the North on the 29th of May 1966 in protest against the decree. Two months later a coup d’état by Northern soldiers in the army occurred and many Igbo army officers including Ironsi were killed.
On August 2, 1966 and after three years, nine months and one day in Prison in which the coalition government of Igbo NCNC and Hausa NPC had put him, Awolowo was released by the Middle-belt born new military Head of State Lieutenant –Colonel Yakubu Gowon.
Achebe’s personal impression about the Nigerian civil war is an unnecessary distraction from the main problem confronting Nigeria today. With the geographical area of nine-hundred and twenty-three thousand, seven-hundred and seventy-three square kilometres, Nigeria will conveniently contain Belgium, France, Netherlands, Italy, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein and Malta altogether and still have three-thousand four-hundred and twenty-four square kilometres extra space of land left. In contrast with many countries of Europe, Nigeria is endowed with abundant rain forest, Savannah grassland, fertile soil for agriculture all the year round, verse mineral resources (liquid & solid) and a climate devoid of major natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons or cyclones. Educationally, there is no academic degree in this world, real or honorary, that one would not find at least five Nigerians possessing it. That is why Nigeria’s index of manpower is the highest in the world and which explains why there are more PHDs and professors in the government of Nigeria than anywhere else around the world. By nature Nigeria is a readymade paradise on earth but hitherto her rulers have succeeded in transforming the Nigerian state into carrion and turning one of the richest diverse geographies in the world into most embarrassing atrophy.
Whenever Nigerian rulers collude to loot the national treasury and take care of one another at the expense of the masses, they always use ethnic and religious smokescreens to blindfold and deceive ordinary Nigerians to accept and support their loots. When it comes to money, religion and tribe are just weapons with which the rulers fight amongst themselves so as to decide who gets the largest share of the loot.
Thus, their political quarrel is always about whom among them should hold the spade to share, within themselves, the cake that none of them but nature has baked for Nigeria. The rulers of Nigeria are neither benevolent to the citizens nor feel responsible for their welfare.
In 1966 when Achebe was head of external broadcasting service, Nigeria had a government run by Local Purchase Order, which produced goods and services even though at ten per cent inflated price. Since 1985 and hitherto, Nigeria has had governments by consultancy, producing only heavy economic jargons and beautiful acronyms. The consultants are the rulers of Nigeria and the civil servants who have become millionaires and billionaires in terms of dollar and pound sterling as they steal public funds appropriated for industrial and infrastructural developments of Nigeria. Thus the typical ethnic chauvinism with which Achebe was acquainted in the ‘60s has been replaced with Federal Character in stealing, robbery and theft of national patrimony by people from all tribes in Nigeria.
Although all federal characterised thieves retain stolen funds only for themselves, they fraudulently turn around to say that the positions they hold in government are on behalf of their specific tribe. The federal characterised thieves in Nigeria wrongly classify their acts of appropriating public funds to themselves as corruption instead of stealing therefore we find thieves talking about fighting corruption. Why is it that ordinary Nigerians who can barbeque his/her fellow Nigerian for stealing one Naira look with indifference when public servants and rulers steal trillions of Naira budgeted for infrastructures, Schools, Health care deliveries, electricity, water and oil refineries? The reason is that Nigeria is being governed in English Language which ninety-eight per cent of Nigerians cannot read, write or understand properly. Yet, Awolowo warned in his book, Path to Nigerian Freedom, published in 1947 that, “The existence of a microscopic literary class would lead to exploitation of the great majority of illiterates by the intelligentsia.” That was why Awolowo invested so much on free primary education in the Western Region but his enemies who thought that education should be exclusive right of privileged few destroyed it.
Therefore the literary class at federal, state and local government level in Nigeria has now become millionaires not because they are industrious and hard working but because of their connections with oil money through the so called revenue allocations, oil block gifts and fuel subsidy’s rackets. No Nigerian language has a word for million, billion or trillion. Hence, there is no equivalent monetary quantity calculated in millions, billions or trillions in any of Nigeria’s ethnic languages. Since millions, billions and trillions are beyond the arithmetical imagination of most Nigerians who are illiterates, it means that absolute majority of Nigerians do not have financial understanding of what constitutes a million-, a billion- and a trillion Naira whenever the rulers of Nigeria are exposed of stealing such huge amounts from the public.
That is the main reason why majority of Nigerians are passive onlookers to the robberies perpetrated by their rulers.
After the civil war in which the slogan from the Federal side was one Nigeria, one people, the question of who governs Nigeria should not be based on regional, religious and ethnic belongings. Yet, the rulers of Nigeria inserted into the constitution what was called ‘Federal Character’ in appointments to public service. Through ‘Federal Character’ individual Nigerians have been able to masque their self interest as tribal, religious or regional interest. Whereas, competence should be the deciding factor while choosing a Presidential Candidate, it is predetermined in Nigeria that the President and his deputy should come not only from specific areas of the country but that any of the candidates should either be a Euro-Christian or Arab-Islamic God’s worshiper. In spite of the fact that the next Presidential election will be in year 2015 intensive campaigns have already begun about whether the current President should contest for second term or not. Since the defining issue about a President in Nigeria is not if he has ruled justly and efficiently to the benefit of the populace but which tribe or part of the country he comes from, some are demanding that a Northerner should take over as President in 2015. Some Northerners joined in to say that since all previously elected Presidents of Nigeria were Muslims they demand that the next President should be a Northern Christian. On his part, the former Governor of Abia State (1999 – 2007) declared that the civil war would not be regarded as having ended unless Good-luck Jonathan is succeeded by an Igbo man as a President (see www. Vanguardngr.com/2012/10/2015-igbo-presidency-will-finally-end-the-civil-war-kalu/). Actually the masses of Nigeria do not care if their President has his face carved up with tribal marks horizontally and vertically or if he speaks Ijaw, Urhobo, Ibibio, Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba or if he is a Christian or a Muslim. They rather care for the President who will give them a fair share of amenities and who is not possessed by the primitive passion of greedy acquisition of Nigeria’s patrimony for himself, his family and his cronies.
Achebe, as a head of external broadcasting service in the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Lagos before he fled to the East during July 1966 coup, was on super scale salary. Based on that fact Nigerians will like to know if he had any saving in the bank at the time he fled Eastward; How much money did he have in his bank account and what happened to the money? Without waiting for Achebe to answer the questions I venture to assert that those who fled to the East in 1966 and had money in the bank withdrew them in cash and travelled with them to the East as money was the easiest of
all physical properties they could travel with. And even if one assumes that those who fled eastward left their savings and deposits behind un-withdrawn, the simplest thing for claimants to do after the war was to present their bank account books or last statements of account from the banks to reclaim their savings or deposits. Legally that should be private affairs between the banks and their customers with which Awolowo as the Minister of Finance had nothing to do. Before Awolowo died, he explained that it was a committee set up by him that recommended a social welfare package of £20 to everyone from the war affected area that desired it since Biafra’s currency was not legal. Thus, the £20 was not a payment in lieu of what individual Igbo had in the bank before the war but a survival gift to those who requested for it. It might interest Achebe and his ilk to know that when Awolowo was Minister of Finance a Nigerian Pound (£) exchanged at one British Guinea (21Shillings or £1. 1Shilling) while a Nigerian Pound exchanged at one US dollar eighty-two cents ($1.82). £20 was a big money then!!
Another excerpt from Achebe’s book states, “The original ideal of one Nigeria was pressed by the leaders and intellectuals from the Eastern Region. With all their shortcomings, they had this idea to build the country as one. The first to object were Northerners led by the Sardauna, who were followed closely by the Awolowo clique that had created the Action Group.” Historically, while it is a fact that Awolowo founded EGBE OMO ODUDUWA (A Society of the Descendants of ODUDUWA) in London in 1945, the Ibo state Union under the Chairmanship of one Mr. Chuba Ikpeazu had existed in London since 1943. When Egbe Omo Oduduwa was formally launched in Lagos in 1948 by Adeyemo Alakija, Akinola Maja, Kofo Abayomi, Bode Thomas, H O Davies, Akanni Doherty etc, Awlowo was not there and the Ibo state Union in Nigeria had been in existence for over two years. Awolowo only helped later to inaugurate a branch of Egbe Omo Oduduwa in Ibadan. It was not until May 1948 that Jamiyyar Mutanen Arewa (Northern People’s Congress) was founded in Zaria by Dr R A B Dikko. In fact the Northern People’s Congress was a regional organisation that embraced all the tribes in the North while Ibo State Union and Egbe Omo Odudua excluded all minority tribes in their region from membership. While one could be a member of Egbe Omo Oduduwa and join any political Party in the country, all members of the Ibo state Union were affiliated to the NCNC. For instance H O Davies was one of the founders of Egbe Omo Oduduwa and he belonged to the NCNC party until he died. It is indisputable that the first tribal interest organisation in Nigeria was Ibo State Union and others just copied them.
How then can one reconcile the idea of building Nigeria as one country through Ibo state Union of which Nnamdi Azikwe was its President since 1949 upwards? Rummaging through Nigeria Year Book, 1956, published in Lagos when Nigeria was still a colony, it was stated that Egbe Omo Oduduwa remained just a reply to the Ibo State Union; in other words, as an assembly which catered for the social and cultural progress of the Yorubas. On the Action Group the Year book stated, “Today the Action Group is as important as any other political party in the country; it is certainly better organised than the rest. The Action Group believes in a socialist commonwealth but also in the solidarity of the parts and the unity of all.”
In Achebe’s lecture at The Guardian Silver Jubilee on October 9, 2008, in Lagos Dr. Osuji was irritated over the claim of Achebe that Igbos, more than other Nigerians, worked for Nigeria’s independence. And Dr. Osuji remarked, “That claim is arrant nonsense. Nigeria’s independence struggle, as it was, began with the 1920s Lagos crowd, with such non-Igbo folk as Herbert Macaulay, H. O Davies etc. It is part of Igbo misguided arrogance for them to always see themselves as working more than other persons for common good. If truth be said, we all know that Igbos have many character flaws, including selfishness. Igbos are generally unprincipled and opportunistic and work for their individual self interests not social interests.” Much as one would strongly object to Dr Osuji’s sweeping generalisation of painting negative characters on Igbos it is worthwhile to know that, in the history of warfare, General Chukwu Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu was the first commander in chief in the world that ever deserted his soldiers in an ongoing war to seek asylum abroad. After over ten years in exile, Ojukwu returned to Nigeria in early 1982 having been pardoned by the *Jihadist,* President Alhaji Shewu Shagari, of the NPN led government. While wounded, maimed and crippled Biafra’s war veterans roam about in Igbo towns and cities to beg for alms in order to live, Ojukwu negotiated and got his monthly pension as a retired Lieutenant- Colonel (the rank he held in the Nigeria Army before secession) from the Federal Government until his death! Ojukwu was never a revolutionary but a petty bourgeois and a reactionary.
If Achebe’s tribal belief and expression is applied to the historical events narrated above, it will be correct to say that the Igbo leaders in the NCNC, Benjamin Nnamdi Azikwe and Michael Ihenokura Okpara hated Yoruba people and their leader Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo who also happened to be the leader of Action Group Party that controlled the government of Western Region in 1962.
The hatred of the Igbo leaders, Azikwe and Okpara, for the Yoruba people caused them to conspire with the Jihadists, Ahmadu Bello and Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of the NPC to declare a state of emergency in the Western Region and thereby overthrew the government of the Action Group elected by the Yoruba People.
The purpose of Azikwe and Okpara in overthrowing the elected government of Yoruba land was to pave way for their own Igbo people to dominate the Yoruba people.
The thirteen Emergency Acts signed into law by the Igbo Governor General Azikwe made it possible to restrict and put under house arrest members of the Action Group and its leader Awolowo from 29 May 1962. Awolowo was restricted and put under house arrest at an Island called Leki until November 2, 1962 when he and some members of his Party were charged to court for planning to overthrow the federal coalition government of Igbo (NCNC) and Hausa (NPC). Awolowo was remanded in prison until he was convicted in September 1963 to ten years imprisonment. Soon after Awolowo had been convicted the leader of Hausa’s NPC, Ahmadu Bello, and the leader of Igbo’s NCNC, Michael Ihenokura Okpara, began to quarrel among them-selves over who should dominate Yoruba land and its people. Yoruba people demonstrated violently against their subjugation and demanded the release of the Action Group leader and his comrades from prison.
Protests persisted until 15th January 1966 when some Army Majors struck against the civilian government. The Army Major’s coup was hijacked by Igbo infiltrators who betrayed not only the coup planners to would be Igbo victims but failed to execute their own part of the coup against fellow Igbo. Consequently, all the people killed in the first coup both civilians and military officers, except one, were non Igbo Nigerians. Had the Igbo Acting President Nwafor Orizu, Igbo Premiers of the East and Midwest, Okpara and Osadebey, been killed just as the coup executors did to the Hausa Prime Minister of the Federation, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Hausa Premier of North, Ahmadu Bello and the Premier of the West, Samuel Ladoke Akintola, the coup would have been seen by Nigerians in general as having been carried out in the national interest. There was no valid reason either why all the military officers killed in the coup, except one, were people of Northern and Western Regions only.
According to Captain Gbulie (see page 66, Nigeria’s Five Majors) Captain Goddy Ude was issued with a .38-calibre pistol and ample live ammunition by the plotters in Kaduna on Thursday, 13 January 1966 and sent him by road to the 5th Battalion in Kano where Lt. Colonel Ojukwu was the Commanding Officer. The idea was not to kill Ojukwu but to thwart any attempt to subvert the coup by the 5th Battalion, but Captain Goddy Ude played game with Ojukwu. However, the Igbo man that hijacked the coup of the Five Majors, Major-General Johnson Thompson Umunnakwe Aguiyi Ironsi appointed an Igbo man Pius Okigbo as his economic adviser, another Igbo man G Onyuike became the Attorney General and Francis Nwokedi an Igbo man was appointed a one-man commission of enquiry on the establishment of an administrative machinery for Nigeria and the unification of the five public services (four regions and the federal) and judicial services in Nigeria. At the same time Igbo traders in the North made postcards out two different cartoons that were published in the West African Pilot newspaper owned by Nnamdi Azikwe. One had the picture of Ahmadu Bello lying with the face up and a cock, the party symbol of NCNC, standing on his chest crowing. The other postcard featured Ahmadu Bello, Balewa and Akintola knocking at the gate of heaven and an Angel coming out saying, this is heaven no rigging. These cards were being sold by Igbo traders throughout Northern Nigeria and they helped a lot to create the impression that the coup was an Igbo takeover of Nigeria. Moreover, while General Ironsi refused to release political prisoners, especially Awolowo, he promulgated the unification decree no. 34 amalgamating the federal and regional civil services on the 24th of May 1966 and riot broke out in the North on the 29th of May 1966 in protest against the decree. Two months later a coup d’état by Northern soldiers in the army occurred and many Igbo army officers including Ironsi were killed.
On August 2, 1966 and after three years, nine months and one day in Prison in which the coalition government of Igbo NCNC and Hausa NPC had put him, Awolowo was released by the Middle-belt born new military Head of State Lieutenant –Colonel Yakubu Gowon.
Achebe’s personal impression about the Nigerian civil war is an unnecessary distraction from the main problem confronting Nigeria today. With the geographical area of nine-hundred and twenty-three thousand, seven-hundred and seventy-three square kilometres, Nigeria will conveniently contain Belgium, France, Netherlands, Italy, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein and Malta altogether and still have three-thousand four-hundred and twenty-four square kilometres extra space of land left. In contrast with many countries of Europe, Nigeria is endowed with abundant rain forest, Savannah grassland, fertile soil for agriculture all the year round, verse mineral resources (liquid & solid) and a climate devoid of major natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons or cyclones. Educationally, there is no academic degree in this world, real or honorary, that one would not find at least five Nigerians possessing it. That is why Nigeria’s index of manpower is the highest in the world and which explains why there are more PHDs and professors in the government of Nigeria than anywhere else around the world. By nature Nigeria is a readymade paradise on earth but hitherto her rulers have succeeded in transforming the Nigerian state into carrion and turning one of the richest diverse geographies in the world into most embarrassing atrophy.
Whenever Nigerian rulers collude to loot the national treasury and take care of one another at the expense of the masses, they always use ethnic and religious smokescreens to blindfold and deceive ordinary Nigerians to accept and support their loots. When it comes to money, religion and tribe are just weapons with which the rulers fight amongst themselves so as to decide who gets the largest share of the loot.
Thus, their political quarrel is always about whom among them should hold the spade to share, within themselves, the cake that none of them but nature has baked for Nigeria. The rulers of Nigeria are neither benevolent to the citizens nor feel responsible for their welfare.
In 1966 when Achebe was head of external broadcasting service, Nigeria had a government run by Local Purchase Order, which produced goods and services even though at ten per cent inflated price. Since 1985 and hitherto, Nigeria has had governments by consultancy, producing only heavy economic jargons and beautiful acronyms. The consultants are the rulers of Nigeria and the civil servants who have become millionaires and billionaires in terms of dollar and pound sterling as they steal public funds appropriated for industrial and infrastructural developments of Nigeria. Thus the typical ethnic chauvinism with which Achebe was acquainted in the ‘60s has been replaced with Federal Character in stealing, robbery and theft of national patrimony by people from all tribes in Nigeria.
Although all federal characterised thieves retain stolen funds only for themselves, they fraudulently turn around to say that the positions they hold in government are on behalf of their specific tribe. The federal characterised thieves in Nigeria wrongly classify their acts of appropriating public funds to themselves as corruption instead of stealing therefore we find thieves talking about fighting corruption. Why is it that ordinary Nigerians who can barbeque his/her fellow Nigerian for stealing one Naira look with indifference when public servants and rulers steal trillions of Naira budgeted for infrastructures, Schools, Health care deliveries, electricity, water and oil refineries? The reason is that Nigeria is being governed in English Language which ninety-eight per cent of Nigerians cannot read, write or understand properly. Yet, Awolowo warned in his book, Path to Nigerian Freedom, published in 1947 that, “The existence of a microscopic literary class would lead to exploitation of the great majority of illiterates by the intelligentsia.” That was why Awolowo invested so much on free primary education in the Western Region but his enemies who thought that education should be exclusive right of privileged few destroyed it.
Therefore the literary class at federal, state and local government level in Nigeria has now become millionaires not because they are industrious and hard working but because of their connections with oil money through the so called revenue allocations, oil block gifts and fuel subsidy’s rackets. No Nigerian language has a word for million, billion or trillion. Hence, there is no equivalent monetary quantity calculated in millions, billions or trillions in any of Nigeria’s ethnic languages. Since millions, billions and trillions are beyond the arithmetical imagination of most Nigerians who are illiterates, it means that absolute majority of Nigerians do not have financial understanding of what constitutes a million-, a billion- and a trillion Naira whenever the rulers of Nigeria are exposed of stealing such huge amounts from the public.
That is the main reason why majority of Nigerians are passive onlookers to the robberies perpetrated by their rulers.
After the civil war in which the slogan from the Federal side was one Nigeria, one people, the question of who governs Nigeria should not be based on regional, religious and ethnic belongings. Yet, the rulers of Nigeria inserted into the constitution what was called ‘Federal Character’ in appointments to public service. Through ‘Federal Character’ individual Nigerians have been able to masque their self interest as tribal, religious or regional interest. Whereas, competence should be the deciding factor while choosing a Presidential Candidate, it is predetermined in Nigeria that the President and his deputy should come not only from specific areas of the country but that any of the candidates should either be a Euro-Christian or Arab-Islamic God’s worshiper. In spite of the fact that the next Presidential election will be in year 2015 intensive campaigns have already begun about whether the current President should contest for second term or not. Since the defining issue about a President in Nigeria is not if he has ruled justly and efficiently to the benefit of the populace but which tribe or part of the country he comes from, some are demanding that a Northerner should take over as President in 2015. Some Northerners joined in to say that since all previously elected Presidents of Nigeria were Muslims they demand that the next President should be a Northern Christian. On his part, the former Governor of Abia State (1999 – 2007) declared that the civil war would not be regarded as having ended unless Good-luck Jonathan is succeeded by an Igbo man as a President (see www. Vanguardngr.com/2012/10/2015-igbo-presidency-will-finally-end-the-civil-war-kalu/). Actually the masses of Nigeria do not care if their President has his face carved up with tribal marks horizontally and vertically or if he speaks Ijaw, Urhobo, Ibibio, Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba or if he is a Christian or a Muslim. They rather care for the President who will give them a fair share of amenities and who is not possessed by the primitive passion of greedy acquisition of Nigeria’s patrimony for himself, his family and his cronies.
good job lucabracee! didn't know u owned a blog
ReplyDeletewww.somewhereinmoscow.blogspot.com
hi ,thanks for checking it out..yea i do but i have not been posting the article i have done due to work commitments will check out yours as well
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