"This county is cursed!"
M. O. Ené
egbedaa@aol.com
Monday, February 4, 2002
OUR SEPTEMBER 11?
Do you know of a Nigerian who wishes the country ill? I don't. I have not heard of any sane soul who would rejoice over the death of innocent, law-abiding citizens. Except for the connoisseurs of "collateral-damage" coldness, I don't see how anyone would wish a disaster on fellow countrymen and women, or blame the poor victims. Sunday, January 27, 2002 did not shake my basic belief in the eventual triumph of good over evil; rather, it reinforces my belief in a certain correlation between the nurture of nations and manmade misfortunes that eventually come their way. As much as we are angry at the structure and leadership of Nigeria, there is no denying that something died in us when the magnitude of the Ikeja Cantonment bomb blast became known, especially with the drowning of children in a chemically contaminated canal called Oke-Afa Canal.
Those who thought that the fire and fury of September 11 could never come closer home now wonder if it was an accident or an act of sabotage. It doesn't matter to me. It is manmade and, as John Donne put it, anyone's death distresses me because I am a part of humanity. For the record, we can only go with what Cantonment Commandant Brigadier-General Endem George said: "I must first of all apologize on behalf of the military on what is happening at the Ikeja Cantonment. There is no political connotation to it. It is an accident. It has to do with the storage system in the ammunition depot at the cantonment. And high caliber bombs are involved. There was the need to improve on the storage facilities in the place. …. The higher authority is aware but unfortunately this accident happened before the higher authority could do something." So "the [known] higher authority" stands indicted.
THE PRESIDENT DIDN'T DISAPPOINT
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Commander-in-Chief of Nigerian Armed Forces, Chief (General) Olusegun Obasanjo (retired): "I didn't need to be here to see anything because my being here will not solve anything. … Shut up. I took the opportunity of being here to see what could be done. I don't need to be here. …. I really don't need to be here."
Really?
Read on: "So far I have not heard of any loss of life in the incident." This was nearly 24 hours after an armory with high-caliber bombs blew up in a city of estimated 12 million people, over 12 hours after the BBC had numbers in hundreds, and photos of the explosion reminded people worldwide of Hiroshima. Obasanjo later claimed: "When I visited the site of the tragic explosion at the Ikeja Cantonment on Monday morning, no loss of life was reported to me and my comment then was to thank God that no life was lost." Chineke, please forgive us. "If I had received any reported case of loss of life, I would have cancelled my trip to Katsina and would have remained in Lagos for the day." Huh? Now, that's not something you tell a country of intelligent people. [A week later he says: "If I knew there was so much death…"] Why weren't the New York and Venezuela trips canceled outright in Katsina when he "knew" it was not party fireworks? It took a unanimously adopted motion of the House of Representatives to abort the jamboree of estacode hustlers. The pleasure of an impeachment procedure would have been that of Speaker Ghali Umar Na'Abba, for very obvious reasons. Then the C-in-C delivered the icing exactly one week after: "I did not expect the barracks to contain area boys and other characters"! As an uncle would say, I don't think this thing is empty-handed. Insult to injury never had a more apt application.
Those who thought I was bashing our dear president must now send me an apology. I don't write to make anyone happy, not that I don't want everyone to be happy, mind you. This is a free world and, thanks to the Internet and its dedicated FOC content-providers and hardworking webmasters, the world is our canvass -- not the almajerized, Bakassized, Egbesued and OPC-ed Nigeria, where, if you speak out of turn, some thugs could knock down your bedroom window. It's good that President Obasanjo has tendered a generalized apology, as he did in Asaba recently for "blood on the Niger." But we still remember the "Go to hell" in Atlanta, the psychoanalyses of Ikemba Nnewi and Prof. Sam Aluko, and the traitor coding by junior Minister Modupe Adelaja. The more intriguing thing here is that the president felt he didn't have to be there. I agree -- I said so in 1999; he's the president we should never have had twice. I now know the man considers the job of a democratic president beneath him. He forgot to pay police and retired soldiers until they "mutinied." I bet God forgot to tell St. Aremu to pay the workers after the interests have bulged the 2003 'reelection armory.' President Obasanjo was offered a chance to correct the popular impressions that he is vengeful, uncaring, rude, crude, and arrogant; he blew it. And he blew it where it really matters: on his home front. The spin that he would have been accused of favoritism is hogwash: Ikeja is in Lagos, a cosmopolitan city and the country's chief commercial city, not in the backwoods of Ota.
ENTER ATIKU
I recently wrote a piece on the annoying rudeness prevailing in Nigeria. I showed that the president is not the only culprit in this culture of crudity. We have heard from the likes of Dupe Adelaja. But President Obasanjo was getting more of the flak. Vice President Abubakar Atiku is now stepping out with his own brand of badmouthing and flip-flop fibs. We still remember the Sharia saga: different strokes for different folks. He said recently that Ndiigbo no longer go to school. Well, Imo State, one of the core Igbo states, produced more Catholic priests last year than all graduates produced in Atiku's home state. Imo presented TWICE more students [78495] for 2001 national joint matriculation examination than six states in northern Nigeria combined [Zamfara: 523; Yobe: 1,337; Taraba: 2,149; Kebbi: 2,190; Katsina: 2,449; and Borno: 3,076.] Or, did someone get the headcount wrong, again? Nothing to cheer, but we must wonder why Atiku is telling tall tales.
The other day, Atiku asked Nigerians to defend democracy! Which democracy? Vice President Atiku's humongous financial 'dividends of democracy' are legendary and no secret; a pitiful fraction could have built six modern armories in the six zones and one for Abuja -- outside foreseeable city limits. Then the bomb blast, and he came to defend his boss, saying "nobody knew that there were casualties elsewhere." Hello? He was lucky the angry army folk didn't have more than sample sachets of water and pebbles. It was the people's turn to practice presidential rudeness: "Go away," they screamed. "We no want you…. Obasanjo came that day, he say make we shut up, may be you self want to beat us." For his own personal safety, he was whisked away. At a conference in the safety of Murtala Muhammad Airport, he sashayed into the long line of Biafra-blighted Nigerians. Evidently the fascination with Biafra is now taking a turn for the worse. It is becoming a disease.
THE BLIGHT OF BIAFRA
Whenever there is a disaster these days, someone makes a mind-boggling Biafra connection. And it is never an ex-Biafran or new Biafran. President Obasanjo started it in 1999 with the injection of "fear" of Biafra into his electioneering campaign against Dr. Alex Ekwueme. Long after federal forces demolished the town of Odi on the orders of the President, he visited the still traumatized citizens. Instead of apologizing to the people whose dreams he had dashed, he told them to be grateful for he saved them from a worse fate from Biafra! Then there was the Tiv Massacre. "Not since Biafra" became a mantra. We waited with bated breath for the storming of some market town in Katisna State, where locals butchered men of the police force, as some restless youths had done in or around Odi. The president lost his resolve. January, as he rested in nearby Ota Farm before heading on a state visit to Katsina, Ikeja erupted. Enter Abubakar Atiku. Since "not since Biafra" was now a cliché, he went for the frontiers of repulsive revisionism. Atiku claimed from his recollection as a "witness" to the perpetration of pogrom, and without any records, that on no day was 600 people killed. You don't say! No, they killed less a day for 30 months. Hear him: "I am a witness to the civil war, not even the during the civil war did we lose the number of lives we lost in one day."
Maybe the pogrom witnessed by Atiku in his operational base somewhere in Adamawa was less than 600 in a day. But throughout the North, during the May 29, 1966 Major Massacre, 30,000 people of Eastern and Midwestern extractions were butchered like unwholesome Christmas chickens by bloodthirsty, supposedly sane fellow citizens. Then, after the July 29 Military Mutiny came the Final Solution of September 29, 1966 (in the North and in the West) to bring the toll to official 50,000 for mostly two days of vile violence. On the war proper, Atiku was NOT in Biafra. If he were, he would have chosen his words carefully. I was there. The 1968 air raid on jam-packed Orie Awgu market was bestial at best. Mercenary pilots emerged out of the clear blue skies and made mincemeat of people. There is simply no basis for comparison, not numbers and not circumstances. Ikeja was a callous crime by a lousy leadership; the commandant admitted that much. Awgu was a deliberate decision by Gowon to kill ordinary people who had no problems with army majors and lieutenant colonels jostling for power. The people of Ikeja lived with the bombs; the bombs came to Awgu. There are other incomparable one-day disasters in Biafra: the Asaba Massacre, where the entire male population of a community was wiped out while screaming "one Nigeria" -- as ordered by the executing officers of 2nd Division of Nigerian Army under Colonel Murtala Muhammad. I bet he has heard of the so-called "Abagana Ambush." High-caliber ammo exploded too, and the unconfirmed numbers are higher. Unless Atiku is telling us that he meant "Nigeria" without the Biafra territory, then he should be more careful with his words. "Civil war," indeed.
LESSONS TO LEARN
I have heard an earful of atrocities committed in Nigeria these past four decades, the unlawful killings made to look kosher, the stealing, etc. Unless Nigeria closes the book on these atrocities, the evil forces unleashed shall haunt the country. I think it was the President himself who boasted that the people would rise and defend democracy if the army returned. Obviously President Obasanjo was trying too hard to civilianize his cerebral sensors. I doubt he believed it himself. If you read Obsanjo's speech in faraway Katsina, you will notice how hard he, in trying to explain his Lagos gaffe, exonerated the army and instead blamed the victims who went jumping into the polluted Oke-Afa Canal, called "chemical canal" by some press. By "the need to educate the people" to "forestall such panic-powered tragedy in the future," Obasanjo is telling us never to panic when next we hear bombs exploding. That was in poor taste, but what is new? The issue here however, is that no one stopped to defend democracy when they thought the army was coming back. Thanks to wireless technology, the Governor of Lagos garnered enough chutzpah to emerge and to declare gleefully that it was no coup. Praise God!
So, instead of going toe-to-toe with the Vee Pee on his unstudied motor-mouthedness about Biafra, let me give it to him straight: there is nothing to defend. This democracy is anything but. If tomorrow a 'Major Muhammad Mustapha Sani' mouths the magic "my fellow countrymen and women" -- and backs it up with a volley of AK 47 -- the people would once again prefer the "chemical canal" to the defense of a bunch of banditos stealing them blind. But the most important lesson here is that the so-called leaders do not give a hoot about the people. Hear Governor of Lagos State Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu explain the blast late that Sunday: "The accident is from high caliber bombs in the armory of the army at Ikeja Military Cantonment. The speculation about a coup is not correct. …. There is no problem. The Presidency is aware. The President is safe and sound and all democratic-elected officers are safe." Really? And so to the "chemical canal" the electorate goes! Though the man from Chicago has been commended for his actions, the actions were guided more by the desire to survive politically. With the way things are going, the army taking over strategic positions and the police on strike, he should keep that instinct handy and the walkie-talkies on.
CURSED OR ON COURSE?
After calling family and friends in Lagos, I realized later that I needed to call Chyke-- or so we called him. I had no idea he lived in Isolo, which doesn't mean much to my knowledge of Lagos geography. By January 30, he was already in Enugu with his family! All was well; well, "well" was with withstanding the shock; physically, that is. Emotionally and spiritually, everyone was a bag of nerves. I tried to calm Chyke; were he not in London with daddy dearest during the war, he would not be "overreacting." He gave me an earful until I reminded him that I live close to the twin towers hit on September 11, 2001, and that we didn't run home. In any case, he would soon return, as was the case after post-Abiola election-annulment flight. Not this time, he assured me. His only worry was that criminals had taken over the Coal City. The village is okay, but there is no light, no decent water supply, and no good school in which to enroll his children, who do not speak Igbo. "Serves you right," I managed not to let go.
Chyke went on to catalogue avoidable deaths and destructions since May 30, 1999. He said that at least 30,000 people had died needlessly. I don't know about that figure, but then again who knows. More are being butchered in the latest Hausa-Yoruba ethnic enmity in Lagos as I write. I was not going to argue. Chyke needed to vent; I let him. I listened and oh-ed and ah-ed at appropriate intervals. Then he said something about IBB looking like a saint. I stopped to think about it. Have we forgotten so soon? Is there a secret yearning out there for a benevolent dictatorship? Do we really know what we want? "Are you still there?" Yes, and you were saying….
"This country is cursed!"
It sounded more like "coursed," or maybe that was what I wanted to hear: "This country is on course to its destiny.' I was in no mood for grammar gymnastics or pandering phonetics. You couldn't argue with a fellow who felt so much bitterness at seeing his country go down the drains to the dogs. But I wondered: Cursed by whom? God caused, not cursed, creation; no, not the wonderful works in a perfect paradise. I think "this country" has committed so many atrocities it needs to atone for them, or the blood of the victims would vent vengefully and vilify the dividends of democracy. I think that any corner of earth is a perfect place for human habitation. Contrary to Chyke's contention, I think the area we know today as Nigeria is abundantly blessed. Maybe, according Biafra's General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, ex-Quartermaster-General of the Nigerian Army, "this regime is cursed." Whichever, this much I know: Our problems are self-inflicted.
CONCLUSION
We must ask ourselves why the new fascination with Biafra, the once unspeakable word. Remember when it was written with small "b" and in quotes? Recall that General Yakubu Gowon wanted to kill the word, changing the Bight of Biafra to "Bight of Bonny." (Apparently, he didn't know the etymology of Anglicized word "Bonny."). Well, we are back to square one: angry and unfulfilled Nigerians making a mean mountain out of our collective iniquity and, in the process, luring Ndiigbo into the emerging eye of the storm, as in 1966. The worst is still down the road; and I did warn that the Igbo should sit this one out -- even if it kills them. Nigeria has done things that must be revisited. The solution is more spiritual than physical. The Oputa Panel was a good beginning. Many issues were not properly resolved, and this explains the army of rancid revisionists. Lies won't cut it, no matter our ethnic extractions. Nigerians need to seize the moment and do some serious soul-searching, forgive each other, and propel the future generations on a charted course, not mired in the curse of victims of our vile violence.
Everything else is embellishment.
