FEATURE ARTICLE

Chigachi EkeMonday, September 21, 2015
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Port Harcourt

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DOWN WITH RADIO BIAFRA!

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adio Biafra said that Yorubas were traitors not to be trusted. That Hausas were evil worse than the Aids virus and Ebola. That Owelle Rochas Okorocha was a homosexual and a traitor. Though elected governor, Okorocha could never qualify as traditional ruler in Igboland on account of his Hausa father. That President Muhammadu Buhari was a rapist, pedophile and terrorist. That Ohaneze Ndigbo was dubious and incompetent. That Nnamdi Kanu of Radio Biafra might yield to his sympathizers' call for fund to procure weapons, etc.

Hearing the resentful Kanu on 102.1FM made me remember my good friend Dr. Ben Goodman Okoro. Each time he writes me the last line at the bottom of his page reads: The only condition necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to keep silent. Kanu is succeeding in his anti-Igbo enterprise because Ohaneze, Aka Ikenga, Igbo governors, World Igbo Congress, Ezes/Onyendus Ndigbo at home and in the Diaspora are keeping quiet. Kanu is thundering because Nigeria shot itself in the foot suppressing information on the causes, course and consequences of the Biafran/Nigerian war.

Everyone has been blackmailed into silence in Igboland. Kanu scares his own kinsmen with threats of scandal, "Do you know the information we have on each one of you?" After seeing the manner he mangles his undeclared enemies no right thinking Igbo leader will risk calling him to order as he could blow the trumpet on such a leader. Everyone is afraid and only him talking. That, exactly, is the real danger: The end is truly nigh the moment an entire people tremble under one man who claims a monopoly on truth. Therefore, in the event of breakdown in law and order those who could have prevented it would be judged harshly, and even more so, than the unhappy instigator.

The 1994 Rwanda genocide started with a Hutu radio broadcast urging Hutus to arm themselves against Tutsis demonized as cockroaches, trees, evil, etc. Intelligent Hutus did nothing to counter the dangerous message. When the massacre began they were killed alongside Tutsis by Hutu militias. For one hundred days the nebulous international community folded its hands and did nothing while Tutsi children were hacked with long knives and axes. The question on the lips of civilized men and savages alike was how could people be so heartless axing a man even after he stopped breathing? That is the power of hatred.

Europe also asked the same question. When Nazi propaganda started demonizing European Jews decent Germans did nothing to counter it. Mass hysteria blinded Germans of good conscience from speaking out. Then Adolf Hitler adored as "leader" made the cardinal mistake of overestimating his own strength; the same mistake seen in Kanu who is praised today as "teacher." In the end six million Jews were not only murdered, some fourteen millions died world-wide in the madness.

This could have been averted had Germans themselves exposed Hitler as the greatest threat to his own people. They did no such thing preferring instead to cheer themselves into an early grave. Today, Germans are the wiser. You cannot stand in Berlin and instigate hatred without suffering the consequences. The German government would on its own bring down such a person before the person brings down the roof over everyone's head. Igbos, also known as Ndigbo, must do something about Radio Biafra before it brings down the roof over their heads.

To condemn Kanu's insults is to confirm Ndigbo's confidence in those he maligned; especially Yorubas who have the grace to appoint Igbos into their state governments, Hausas, Okorocha and former Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi. As decent people Ndigbo hold Buhari, in particular, in great honour while leaving his legacy since 1962 when he joined the military for posterity to judge. Kanu's opinion does not reflect Ndigbo's. Obviously the collective sin of these people was in removing former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan from office. But there is a second truth about them which Kanu would rather not entertain in his monologue of ignorance. Let's take a look at the immense contributions of two of his victims-Professor Wole Soyinka and Okorocha, to the survival of Ndigbo.

Soyinka openly condemned the Igbo Holocaust of 1967-1970. So vocal was this great mind that Gen. Yakubu Gowon personally ordered his imprisonment without trial. A free Soyinka was a danger to the establishment so he was locked away in the far North. Then the killings escalated to a maddening frenzy. Alone in his lonely cell Soyinka continued to defend Igbos by writing his powerful "The Man Died" on rolls of toilet paper which he smuggled out to his publishers. He was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature because this powerful novel profiles man's irrepressible spirit against the forces of darkness. Anywhere on the earth surface Soyinka is studied the names "Biafra" and "Ibo" are hotly debated on account of this brilliant literature.

One would have expected a research-based Radio Biafra to acknowledge Soyinka's rare courage and not vilify him. Soyinka is not the only Yoruba son to stick out his neck for Ndigbo, did the great Col. Francis Fajuyi not pay the supreme sacrifice protecting our own son Gen. JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi? Hearing the collective scorn Radio Biafra pours on Yorubas would break the hearts of those Fajuyi left behind.

Before becoming governor Okorocha trained thousands of indigent Igbo children in his elite secondary schools free of charge. Meaning that with the exception of Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, very few Igbos surpassed Okorocha in the advancement of Ndigbo. If Ndigbo deem it fit to elect him governor who is Kanu to call Okorocha a Hausa? Okorocha is an Igbo man, as long as one or both of his parents are Igbo. Odumegwu-Ojukwu himself set a precedent when he publicly endorsed Okorocha as "my son." By this pronouncement any child born of a single/married Igbo mother and non-Igbo father is automatically an Igbo man. Progressive Igbos are ever on the forward march and never backward.

I now warn of an imminent crisis should any Igbo man or woman continue to be discriminated against under any subterfuge. In Igboland we are all equal because I know where Radio Biafra is headed. Kanu is dangerous branding Okorocha unfit to sit on a traditional ruler's stool. What stops him from broadcasting tomorrow that this senator or that professor cannot be crowned a traditional ruler because his great grandfather was a cook in the colonial army? Ndigbo whole heartedly apologize to Okorocha for Kanu's insults. The ways of Chukwu Okike Abiama, whom Kanu loves to invoke, are strange as He often turns the rejected pillar into the corner stone.

As with Kanu, so are certain Hausas and Yorubas who stir up anti-Igbo sentiments for political gains. Before former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Gen. Theophilus Danjuma some high-profile Yorubas repeatedly insulted Ndigbo as "traitors" and "rebels," only to be rewarded by the duo. Those in the habit of calling Ironsi a "drunken general" should be held fully accountable for what is happening today. Ironsi could not be a useless desk top general since he earned his ranks under British officers on merit rather than catchment.

Ndigbo will not give or take insults. The burden is on Hausa and Yoruba leaders to clamp down on Igbo haters as necessary step to neutralizing Radio Biafra. The relentless attack on peace loving Igbos fuels the hatred on Radio Biafra. That is why Kanu can never be convicted in the International Criminal Court, ICC, without first convicting his tormentors. He is the victim and not the victimizer. Northern emirs know it. Yoruba obas know it. And Buhari himself knows it.

But Kanu must be isolated as he has no place in the scheme of things for his indiscretion. Compare his outbursts with Goddy Uwazurike's cold reasoning or Ralph Uwazurike's non-violent approach. What Kanu saw and called for armed struggle, informed Isaiah Chukwuemekaobi saw and called for calm. Kanu's defeat in any contest is guaranteed as his opponents know how to make him fall upon his own sword in anger. Such predictable entity is hardly a leadership material for besieged Igbos who must live by camouflage, or what WEB du Bois called patent defence.

For his intellectual foreclosure Kanu must be urgently isolated. He has closed his mind to other possibilities as his revolution has one aim alone-Biafra or nothing. What about alternate Igbo President? His means is violence even though revolution can be accomplished by dialogue. His process is immediate but trend analysis suggests the birth of a new nation often takes time. A necessary condition for every successful revolution is diplomacy where you recruit allies, or friendly countries and institutions, to back your nationalist project. But Biafra has no allies within and without Africa as Kanu paints everyone with the same grotesque brush. He insults every nation, nationality and creed. Power is dangerous in his hands as he is a poor revolutionary.

Ndigbo refused to be lured into a generational war. Igbo children are not going to the war front again. They are going to world-class universities where power flows from. A handful of Iranian graduates recently forced the world Super Powers to negotiate at the nuclear roundtable. Believe it or not "cowardly" Yorubas, not "brave" Igbos, are closer to where Iran is today. Yoruba children rule today because their wise parents preferred to be a live dog to a dead lion; they refused to war-war over June 12.

Ndigbo must rethink strength and weakness, and even Biafra and Nigeria. In this revaluation they must remember the wisdom of their own son Chinua Achebe: How often do we stand in the house of a coward to point out the ruins of what used to be a strong man's home?

Dominus vobiscum.

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