40 days of mourning our heroes

KWENU! Our culture, our future

40 days of mourning our heroes

CHINEDU MADUABUM

Onitsha, Nigeria

Monday, May 17, 2004

For 30 months between 1967 and 1970, the sun did not rise in Igboland. It was darkness as in the Dark Age in history, when the Jews of the true gospel of Christ were haunted and killed all over the world. Igbo women and children were butchered in the most grotesque manner, even women in actual labour. Our land -- Aladimma -- was blockade from all corners. No retreat, no surrender. We were haunted and killed... sorry butchered like unwholesome Christmas chickens. In millions we counted our losses outside the more than 500,000 prior to the war. They are the ones we are mourning.

Their names are numerous and so we cannot name all of them but, at least, we can remember those who are closely related to us. I therefore seize this opportunity, which has been made possible by the most dedicated, website of the Igbo cause – KWENU -- to remember our grandfather, father, uncle, brother and friend: the late Capt. Stephen Ernest Oranuka Maduabum, who was executed before the war actually started. He forms a magnitude of our sons and daughters who lost their lives. To all of them I say: May your spirit wait while we regain the land so that we can transfer your bones to a special memorial ground -- like that of Jacob -- in the land which the Lord shall give us.

Your efforts were not in vain because it was a perfect design. A grain of corn abideth alone in the soil and after three days sprang up. For three years, your bloods were sown in the soil and alone you all abideth, waiting for the third day to spring up. Three years after the war the Igbo people started “germinating” but there was still time because it requires seven weeks for harvest to come. How do I know you may ask?

In Igbo cosmology, a woman is expected to mourn her husband for izu ato (12 days) without coming outside the house. This number twelve is also written as 3 (1+2 =3) according Pythagoras theory. It represents also the three years of blockade which Alexander Madiebo wrote,

“… For 30 months under a total blockade and with little more than their will [our heroes] to survive, waged a war against Nigeria.”

After the twelve (12) days or three Igbo weeks, comes another period of izu asa or 7 Igbo weeks, which is 28 days. Within the period the woman can come out of the house and even greet people, but she cannot go to the market or any public gatherings. It is only after the 28 days (7 weeks) in addition to the initial 12, making it 40 that she is free to go out and even think of someone to cover her as the case may be. It marks the end of a 40-day period of mourning.

So how is this related to Biafra?

The seven weeks represent the seven weeks of harvest or feast of Pentecost according to Jewish feast. It is a period of the wilderness wandering. After the end of the war, the blockade was open. The Igbo people can go out and come. They were socially excluded in Nigeria. Till date, we are still mourning and the question I ask is: Shall we continue to mourn? When are we going to bring back their bones into a place were we should rejoice even as we mourn?

It took 40 days in the cultural sketch, so it shall take 40 divisions of time in the real plan. And today we are three years short of that period. For seven weeks we have been in the desert, living as third-class citizens in a place, which we suffered to build. Of course it was the pattern but it is now time to separate the wheat from the tares. It is only within the seven weeks that the wheat is mixed with the tare and I have explained this in one of my articles – Am I an Igbo man?

By 2007, we would be in the 40^th year and we expect the “woman” to be socially free. It is not by chance, neither is it by the effort of man; rather, it is by virtue of the culture that makes the woman to be free and no man can change it or amend it because it existed before this generation was born and will continue to exist. It is not like the constitutional law that is amended. Thus, as soon as Biafra is 40, the same Almighty who made it possible for a woman in the sketch has already designed it that by the said period, Biafra shall be free to behold his presence as his portion for this end time.

This is our time to start gathering the bones of our heroes in readiness for that great day when they will be remembered no more outside the land but in the land, in a special memorial ground.