BIAFRA AS A METAPHOR 1 BY M A C ODU State Creation did immense damage to national development and has led to the emasculation of productive enterprise in Nigeria’s free enterprise price system. Federal revenue powered by petroleum resources led to overarching penchant for the military establishment to create states. The long term tangential intention was to weaken imminent Biafra by releasing neighbours of Ndigbo were increasingly frightened by overbearing Igbo avidity for wealth creation, their numerical strength and unrivalled influence in the productive processes of the region. There had been grouses about marginalization of minorities by Ndigbo during the first republic. Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Action Group had made inroads into National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroun (NCNC) controlled areas of the east as reprisal for NCNC inroad in the west. Campaign of calumny against Ndigbo was critical in Awolowo’s entry. Chief Michael Okpara, premier of Eastern Nigeria at the time, denied the minorities in the South-South zone new infrastructure for development as soon as election results favoured NCNC in the former eastern region. That misconduct further exacerbated relations and fears of domination plan that did not exist save in the minds of politicians. Okpara did not show remorse. However Ndigbo became unwanted in the economic systems of the South-South controlled by new governments there. The East Central State was singled out for denial of infrastructure for growth ever since. Biafra is a metaphor of revolt against Nigerian national leadership to slow down Ndigbo. Post Biafra War events have accentuated the disgust of the youth in the leadership of Nigeria that has meant increasing deprivation to the people of Igboland and this evolved the phenomenon called Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, (MASSOB). There is an aspect of the metaphor that is not so apparent. Young people aged twenty five and about that in Igboland at this time and slightly earlier, are incarnations of victims of Biafra War. Their agonies during that war compel prolivity to revolt and banditry. Ndigbo must rein in their children and distance them from wrong principles. Some of them have become daredevil robbers and ritual killers by default. MASSOB evolved from that breed of people who knew hardship and would want their teeming supporters to believe that revolt against Nigerian establishment would earn them Biafra. They are gullible to remote antecedents of nations that secured independence by revolt. It was easy on this account to persuade our youth that Biafra was worth working for in their inadequate exposure. The young men who had shunned formal education in MASSOB followership believed Mazi Uwazuruike and followed his dictates because the elite distanced themselves from the youth in spite of the lacuna in leadership of Ndigbo following the failure of Biafra. Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu who remains the only symbol of Igbo leadership polarized himself by entering party politics which Nigerian leadership found unpalatable. Ojukwu lost his bid for senate to a less visible entity and Igbo cause went into suspended animation. MASSOB is an interest group or pressure group. It is a legitimate instrument of civil society and should not have been treated with hostility visited upon it by security agents of our country. It is a metaphor shouting for amendments. It is a cry from the bottom of the social pyramid of Ndigbo. Their treatment as forces of destabilization of the Nigerian nation detracts from their fundamental human rights that guarantee freedom of association. It is of the same mould as Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) or Oduduwa Peoples’ Congress (OPC) and other similar formations. The goal desired in the rather harsh treatment of MASSOB derives kinetic energy from Biafra War. The same forces that emasculated the realisation of a just and egalitarian Nigerian society with common national ethos that must be anchored on positive responses to needs of the majority in the process and continuum of governance and higher appreciation of Natural Law, are at play. Indolent sharing of natural resources and fear of competition are the forces that dictated our trajectory in our development effort. That trajectory can only lead to ruination for the majority on the basis of shortsightedness of a few in leadership positions. Only productivity irrespective of tribe of its producers can pull Nigeria into the top leagues of the productive world. It should not matter what group in Nigeria prevails in the process. What matters is whether the nation is better off in the long run or not. Nothing else is worth contemplating in a democratic free enterprise economic system that we are laboring to engender. Fear of competition with Ndigbo has brought so much strain into national growth effort. While other nations group themselves into larger combines for higher levels of choice, Nigeria splits her own land into less and less viable units where the main goal is to attract national resource for symbols of development instead of actual creation of wealth for the majority which ought to have been largely assisted by competition in production and distribution for which Ndigbo are prevailing catalysts. The false leadership that we have so far had was tantamount to ethnic champions of sharing and consumption.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 07:38:54 +0000
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