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09.06.2012 Feature Article

Ndigbo: The Days of Self-Pity and Defensive Advancement are Gone. Now is Time to Truly Advance.

Ndigbo: The Days of Self-Pity and Defensive Advancement are Gone. Now is Time to Truly Advance.
09.06.2012 LISTEN

I'm aware that there are men who do not believe in God, and some of them have even digressed as far as saying that they are “Gods.” While these groups are, there are still others who believe that what Africans picked up through courses and had in the last century was in every way better than the documented line of education and religion introduced by the west. As it is today and in other to define life in its fullest terms, many have found religion taking the center stage in all relations. This quest to impose individual gods on men produced the many ignorant zealots who go about killing and spilling blood in the name of the one whom they slave for. Others whose belly is their gods adopt kidnappings – even of children, pregnant women, and clergies. With these and a lot more at stake in mind, I do not intend to jump here on board the band-wagon of argument of opinions that consequently follow. There is, however, an established and accepted standard which, through centuries, have defied all oppositions. Many who first received it now tend to either reject it or relate to/with it passively solely because of the many unnecessary conflicts which man's desires often threaten to impose. There is God. He is Peace Himself, and He gives His people peace. Compulsion is not found in Him because justice deals with every transaction. Therefore, every zeal, quest and patterned course to impose one's own definition of peace unjustly will meet with self-opposition. Those who have died (especially the Igbo as statistics have repeatedly proven), whether in the hands of the Nigerian government or in the hands of Boko Haram, the terror arm of the North, or even by the frustration-driven kidnappings in the South, now face things which are higher than our wishes for them, therefore, let mourning be reserved for and expended on the living and not the dead because every man's human existence is related to his flesh's limited time frame. The times to mourn people are now and those to be mourned are the so-called leaders and their terror gangs.

I address the Igbo youths: those who work, in every way, for the good of Igbo land, those who have sacrificed for it, those who are indifferent to it, and those who bring destruction and judgment upon themselves. I address you because esi na ulọ adị mma apu na ama. Our father, late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu said: “Because I am involved;” I now say: because you are involved. It is because you are involved that you must know and seek the only path to true peace and happiness. The killings, the raping, the robberies, the looting, the injustices and the deaths must stop forthwith! Those Igbo sons who kidnap as a means of livelihood must blame their ignorance because one man's death doesn't necessarily translate to another's living and success, nor does it bring any feeling of security or peace. Only Jesus Christ paid for the full price of salvation and peace (you may dispute this but you will eventually confess it). You started with kidnapping because you said “there was no job, but now you have added rapping and killing to it. Who has bewitched you?

Do I need to talk about the Igbo governors and political leaders held bound by their allegiance to falsehood; everything is bare. To these people and their wicked thoughts: “Unless we protect the interests of our masters who are the taskmasters of our people and have always wanted us annihilated, we will lose our political positions and contract graces.” You therefore mortgage your people and their future solely for your political desires and posts which always come to nothing after all. Because of your slave-mentalities, you have perverted and helped to pervert justice in your areas of jurisdiction. And those who have refused to be nonchalant about your failures, secrets and wickedness, you have often tried to silence in many ways. And when you loot, it's often with alarming, obsessive, aggressive and challenging impunity. When your masters kill the Igbo, your brothers and sisters, they equally compel you to declare that none of your people were killed, and you comply because you are “protecting” your political and thieving carriers and interests[1]. Some of you even went as far as crying that the Igbo must remain in the North and be wiped off as the sacrificial lamb for the extension of his never-imagined political position in a never-satisfied and Igbo-hating One Nigeria[2]. As a result, your brothers and sisters now become puns in your hands and in the hands of those whose terror breaks the silence of the nights. Yet you would do nothing because nwata nna ya dunyere ohi na eji ụkwụ agbawa uzọ. These things and more have their time of accountability and judgment now.

Now, let me tell you, my people, why these things must stop forthwith and why whoever continues on the desires for these abominations will be struck by the hand of divine justice. The Igbo were known as hardworking, accommodating and full of positive visions. That was before the war – to the eyes of many. The injustices through the pogrom, war, genocide and the subsequent Nigeria's campaigns for Igbo marginalization and extinction[3]helped to tighten the noose on every Igbo so much so that the desire for survival becomes more defined and focused. From the time of Nigeria's pogrom and genocide against Igbo/Biafra to this day, surviving and living have remained the greatest challenges for the Igbo who are not only ready, but willing, able and gifted to reach enviable heights. Survival became the food they eat. Yet, survival is a blessed thing, for who thrives without surviving? Ask the Chinese why they celebrate each meal with a perfected uniqueness and you may yet hear a story.

The genocide extorted from my people so much that they had nothing left but their will to survive and their believe in Chị. Awolowo's money deprivation campaign which followed the end of the war, and Gowon's “divide-and-rule” of Igbo land imposed so much strain on the Igbo generation that many literally ran away and to many other African countries and holes, and hid their origin. To this day, there are many Igbo in different African countries whose children may not yet know what being Igbo means. These and a lot more are the many consequences of the British-backed Nigeria's genocide campaign against Igbo, the indigenous people of Biafra. The obvious result of these and more of the many atrocious acts of the Nigerian government against the Igbo produced a tensed-up and survive-or-die Igbo – creating a mindset in the people to seek for help far away from home and in lands where help is not. These happened to our brothers in Germany in the hands of Hitler and his killing machine, it happened to the Igbo in the falsely amalgamated and created Nigeria, and it will not be repeated.

However, the Igbo of today must know that, even as God kept the Israelites in the wilderness without change of shoes, He has equally kept us in the red sea of Nigeria. With clarity of thoughts and mind, I need to state here that deaths for the Nigeria story no longer belong to the Igbo; rather those who compel slavery through false unity are those whom Pharaoh's nemesis would befall because they neither fear God nor do they have respect for man. All of Igbo, including those whose claims and excuses for running away from Anigbo have remained their 'quest for survival in an Igbo-hating country,' must know that every Igbo is affected as the other in the Nigeria plots. I was in Abuja when it was almost a desert; Ndigbo developed it and made it business-friendly. There are many of such places in Igbo land: who stops those developing the bush-Abuja from doing same at home? With the likes of the Igbo governor who is purported to be building a billions-of-naira complex in Abuja[4]while his state needs such buildings and his subjects every job they can get from it, ignorance becomes shameful, foolish, pathetic and punishable. The Igbo governor who creates factory jobs and settles insecurity has indeed started his journey towards earning true Igbo respect which cannot be refuted in any area of creation once given. The freedom of Igbo/Biafra is here; therefore, this calls for celebration, readiness and conscious, non-appealing advancements, and not for feelings of uncertainty, despair, and fear among our youths, governors, parents and leaders.

Nigeria is dead and has remained a death trap for souls and nations destined for greatness. Therefore those bound by the decayed cords of the dead imposter called Nigeria must wriggle themselves free and stand in their light and freedom. The governors in whose chariots Igbo youths are often killed in MASSOB must straighten things or be bound heavily by the burden of insanity and lack of wholeness. Those who rob and rape, who kidnap and kill for fear of exposure will, forthwith, be stopped permanently by unseen hands. The Igbo governors, senators, commissioners, ministers, politicians, religious/academic/traditional rulers who support, ignore or deny the daily killings of Ndigbo in Northern Nigeria, at home, and by the Nigeria forces will, forthwith, be possessed with fear, influence and presence of uncertain justice and judgment so much so that the need for true salvation becomes their priorities. The Igbo women are working far below their powers and graces because the strength of women are far overwhelming before the muscles of the many ignorant and powerless men/leaders the Nigerian government have continually carved out and thrust upon Ndigbo and Igbo land. Every excuse, hitherto, by our women for not proving themselves as true “helpmeets” will no longer suffice. Our women must immediately form organizations to oppose, in their gifted ways, the invading spirit of Dan Fodio, the killing machine of the Nigerian government, and the racist and wicked diplomacies, politics and policies of the rivaling world in Anigbo. All the Pro-Biafra organizations - unborn, dormant, indecisive or active - must wake up now and be fulfilled in their duties. MASSOB, Bilie 1&2, VOBI, Ekwe-Nche, RBL, BZM, IWA, WIC, Ohanaeze, and several other Igbo bodies must, without further delays or excuses, reach and forge a common front towards Igbo emancipation and a manifested independence of the Republic of Biafra. Those who lead political parties in Igbo land must do so, first of all, for the full benefits of Ndigbo and their nation. Those who plan and wait for what they will do for the Igbo emancipation in 2015 must begin to do it now because Nigeria will be long gone from significance and reality when 2015 happens on the scene.

Those who oppose this and the independence of Biafra, from within or without, already knew they are bound and headed for failure and doom and that every magic has a soul-price; that's why they have turned against themselves. But it's not about to stop until justice is fully established regarding Nigeria and its many atrocities. Those who died from Boko Haram lived by their choices of eternity even before the enemy struck. Those too small and immature for personal conscious decisions were justly addressed by God from where they came and will return. It ought not to be for those who died that men still worry; it should be because of the dead and ever-dead future which everyone has seen in a Nigeria of this status quo. Nigeria is not! Let all men go their ways and prosper, or destroy themselves depending on whom they have surrendered their hearts to. A man is not who has nowhere his soul derives strength, yet all truths are bare. Those who do not believe in God have what they still worship, albeit, in more pitiable ignorance. Spare no more sorrows on the dead, rather, use the stories of yesterdays to plumb the ideal and anticipated consequences of our actions and inactions forthwith. The Igbo must return home. Those who complain of land scarcity must receive grace to build skyscrapers and condominiums, those who complain of insecurity will be used to bring law, order, justice and peace in our lands, and those whose cries center on lack of job opportunities must create jobs and employ people. All that the Igbo/Biafra needs for its freedom has been released; therefore, it's time to advance and to do so with deep-rooted and foreknown fearlessness and certainty of purpose.

When Jesus was about being sacrificed, he said to the crying Hebrew women: “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, 'Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!' Then “they will say to the mountains, 'Fall on us!' and to the hills, 'Cover us!'” For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Luke 23:28-31. These are times to paint the thresholds with blood because the angel of justice and judgment is passing over Nigeria and over Igbo land. In all of this, Biafra suddenly stands and a new era is revealed and a new chapter opened in Africa, and indeed, the whole world.

Written by Ikechukwu Enyiagu, [email protected]

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