By Tochukwu Okorie
For many years the conspiracy has continued to grow. The attempt to bully Igbos into silence and into accepting blame for the criminal massacre of thousands of civilians in the infamous Asaba massacre, the starving of three million Igbo children to death by a deliberate policy, and the mass murder of young population of Igbos in a 30-month genocide perpetrated by Nigerian forces.
For many years Igbos have endured stigmatization, ill-characterization and exclusion in a country they are forced to call home, a fact which goes to highlight a 50-year old falsehood that there was no victor and there was no vanquished.
For 50 years the line between the victor and the vanquished has grown into a chasm, a gulf that no amount of bullying, lying and pretences can fill. That line has been so clearly delineated that only the fool among Igbos would be oblivious to the fact that Igbos are a conquered people.
The conqueror has taken every opportunity to rub it in and throw it in their faces that they are second class, subhuman elements that are good only as fetchers of water and hewers of wood. What is even more insulting than that Igbos are expected to accept their fate and lick their wound in absolute silence?
Any attempt to voice their pain is always met with brutal repression and further massacre of their youths.
As Igbos all over the world sat at home yesterday to honour the memory of the victims of that genocide, what came to mind was the Igbo Landing of May 28, 1803. Is it sheer coincidence or is it providence that the last days of the month of May bear such horrifying significance for the Igbo nation?
The Igbo Landing was a day some 75 Igbo slaves said, “we cannot be alive to see our own ears with our own eyes.” It was a day of zero tolerance for dehumanization to which death was a preferred option.
A few years ago, in a rabid knee-jerk reaction to IPOB’s declaration of May 30 as an annual day of remembrance in honour of those who gave their lives for their freedom, governors of the states of Nigeria’s South East, having been severely bullied notably by the combination of all the other ethnic groups in Nigeria including those of South West, South-South and the Middle Belt (North Central), proscribed IPOB and branded an armless group as a terrorist organization, a phenomenon roundly condemned and rejected by the overwhelming majority of Igbo youths.
Since its inauguration in 2015, the administration of Muhammadu Buhari who incidentally was a key player in that genocide, has progressively tainted IPOB with questionable terrorism allegations and dissipated considerable energy into forcing that narrative down the throat of Nigerians especially their Igbo compatriots.
The unconcealed intention is to inspire mass hate and denunciation for the group whose only sin was to dare to say, give us our rightful place at the table or let us go.
However, that move has only served to open the eyes of millions of Nigerians most of whom did not experience or know anything about the genocide sold as a civil war prior to 2015. They have progressively seen the abuse the Igbos have had to endure and have been asking questions.
Questions about the civil war, questions about Awolowo’s food blockade, Asaba massacre and other gruesome crimes against humanity committed in a 30-month macabre war.
Yesterday May 30, 2021, to the surprise of the oppressor, the whole world stood still for the memory of the Biafra genocide. Tweeter was abuzz and the airwaves were filled with expressions of solidarity. Perhaps to the chagrin of the oppressor, even political leaders of the South East refused to be bullied this time as they all lent their weight to the sit-at-home.
For the records, Igbos stayed home, not for fear or because of the threat by IPOB or even that of the rampaging Nigerian forces who continue to commit atrocities in the South East. They did because they have understood that the man they were told was a rabble-rouser was actually not a rabble rouser but an agent of awakening for a people inoculated with slumbering amnesia about who they are and where they are coming from. Igbos have come full circle and have realized the significance of May 30, a history that the oppressor would want to be wished away and forgotten.
As Igbos continue to lick their wound, the wound has kept festering, unnoticed by the government of Nigeria and governments across Nigeria. The leaders of Nigeria, quite sadly, have failed to realize that from North East to North West, and from North Central to the South, the phenomenon of banditry, Unknown Gunmen, School Kidnapping, attacks on police and military posts and general instability that have engulfed the country are the scathing effects of a wound that would not heal, a wound which was hitherto localized to the Igbos but now deepening and festering across Nigeria. They are also refusing to recognize that it has developed into gangrene that no balm of denial can heal from the surface.
Except and until we all agree to apply a medicine capable of tackling the wound from its roots, we are doomed to watching as the country gets consumed in its fast widening sore. Whenever we wake to that realization, and I hope it will not be too late, we will realize that Igbos may have been vanquished, but the spirit of the great Igbo Landing is alive in every Igbo man and woman no matter where they live. Then it will be time to truly and deliberately integrate Igbos into Nigeria rather than characterize them with silly dog whistles or indulging those who lay claim to ownership of all lands in Nigeria.
We will realize that a 30-month genocide cannot just be wished away or swept under the carpet but must be squarely addressed and given its place in the history books. We will realize that Igbos deserve, at the very least, an apology for the healing process to genuinely begin. It bears reiterating that continuous alienation of Igbos is a sure road to the self fulfilling prophecy of Nigeria’s destruction. The only medicine that is guaranteed to heal Nigeria of its festering wound is a deliberate policy of acceptance and integration which must begin with an apology in recognition of the atrocities committed against Igbos in the so-called civil war.
And if we still loathe Igbos that much, if we still see them as a vile cancerous ethnicity, if we still see them as ordinary spare parts sellers, I recommend a veritable and permanent cure. Let Igbos go.