Nigerian youth. Stand up. Take charge. Chart a new course for yourselves and country. Dump the corrosive hate, abuse and violence of your forebears. It is time to reach across the political, ethnic and religious aisle to hold hands of your brothers. It is time to forge cross country alliances, to organise conferences and seminars on combining your strengths for nation building.
It was sudden and served with the thunder of awe and shock. That last Tuesday’s Kaduna Declaration by a gaggle of supposed Northern youth organisations, possibly motivated from the shadows by the Northern Elders Forum, in particular, Professor Ango Abdullahi, which issued the frightening ultimatum demanding all Igbo living in northern Nigeria to vacate the region before October 1, 2017 or be ejected. Here are excerpts of that declaration:
“From today, June 6, 2017, when this proclamation is signed, the North, a critical player in the Nigerian project, hereby declares that it will no longer be disposed to coexisting with the Igbos and shall take definite steps to end the partnership by pulling out of the current federal arrangement.
“We are hereby placing the Nigerian authorities and the entire nation on notice that as from the 1st October 2017, we shall commence the implementation of visible actions to prove to the whole world that we are no longer part of any federal union that should do with the Igbos.
“From that date, effective, peaceful and safe mop-up of all the remnants of the stubborn Igbos that neglect to heed this quit notice shall commence to finally eject them from every part of the North.”
The Declaration also threatened to use, “effective, peaceful and safe mop-up,” a morbid euphemism for violence. All of which throws up horrific images of the pre-civil war pogroms and several riots thereafter in which the Igbo lost lives and properties. I am not sure why the ultimatum’s grace period is 116 days. Perhaps time long enough to uproot and tote buildings, family and business assets in Dangote trailers from the north to the East? How horribly nice and kind.
It is an irony of history that the Arewa youths chose October 1, 2017 as their expulsion deadline. That is the day we ought be celebrating our nation’s 57th anniversary of independence, after a long struggle, from oppressive British colonial rule. That day, the auguries portend, may mark the beginning of the end of the marriage or amalgamation, 113 years ago in 1904, that birthed Nigeria.
The Arewa Youths’ declaration is, in my view, an unprovoked declaration of war. For though I am throughly vexed by the abusive and buccal excesses of some “Biafra extremists,” I am unaware of reports of physical assault or expulsion order, by the Igbo, on any Northerner. The reasons given for the declaration, including Igbo leaders not condemning pro- Biafra activists, are ridiculous comedy.
But it is not a laughing matter. It is not a joke. The threat is real. No matter, how the Arewa youths are publicly chastised by some leaders, it will be foolhardiness to dismiss the Kaduna Declaration as an impotent threat. It is not. Lesser threats in the North have ended, despite police and security agencies presence, in bloody mob orgies destroying lives and properties, particularly of the Igbo tribe.
It is imperative therefore that this country, this government, the elders and leaders must not idly by while a bloody war looms. I commend the prompt and strong condemnation of the Kaduna Declaration by Mallam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State, some other governors and other brave, wise Nigerians. But that is not enough. The arrest order on the Arewa Youth leaders must be executed. Professor Ango Abdullahi should be warned to desist from trying to set the nation on fire even in his old age. Indeed, the Kaduna Declaration is treasonous. We will return to this question.
It is my take that the architects of the Kaduna Declaration gave scant thought to its likely ripple consequences on the nation, including the north. Disastrous is the word. Let us look at two likely aftermath of the expulsion of the Igbo:
One: The easily excitable northern mobs will, from October 1, sweep across the region with the rage of death and destruction, scouring for the “stubborn” Igbo to kill. This will be an inadvertent invitation to the murderous Boko Haram terrorists to a sumptuous vulture feast of blood, gore and mayhem. The ensuing terrorists’ and mob freewheeling conflagration may flare beyond control and consume not just the Igbo, but all citizens not least the northerners.
Two: The expulsion of the Igbo, just one of Nigeria’s 300 ethnic tribes, many bitterly discontented, may trigger a flood of ethnic and regional breakaways from Nigeria. Our country is a hotbed of angry peoples and tribes, not because of the Igbo but due to our glaringly unjust and oppressive political and economic systems. Let’s go down history to refresh our memories.
Some 27 years ago, April 22, 1990, an army officer, Major Gideon Orkar from Benue State, Middle Belt region, in a coup propelled largely by Middle Belt and South-South officers broadcast a statement excising five Northern states: Sokoto, Borno, Katsina, Kano and Bauchi, from the Nigerian union. The nation was shocked. Here is an excerpt of the reason Orkar gave for the coup, on behalf of the coup officers, 42 of whom were executed, after the coup attempt failed:
He said: “We wish to emphasise that this is not just another coup but a well-conceived, planned and executed revolution for the marginalised, oppressed and enslaved peoples of the Middle Belt and the South with a view to freeing ourselves and children yet unborn from eternal slavery and colonisation by a clique of this country.”
Ride the time machine from 27 years ago to the present and just a few hours after the Kaduna Declaration. An ethnic group, Middle Belt Youth Council responded promptly to the Arewa youths expulsion order on the Igbo. They declared: “in an event one part of the country decides to go away as a separate entity, the Middle Belt is also ready to make an independent statement,” adding, “the Middle Belt region will accommodate the Igbos if the North chases them out of their states.”
Also note that the Niger Delta remains a cauldron of the embittered and the restive due to the decades old ruthless rape of its oil/gas resources and terrible despoliation of its environment. A tinder box teeming with active militants. The region may yet unfurl plans for its independence from the country.
Read again, the Orkar coup declaration. Unlike it, the Kaduna Declaration, is without aggrieved issues of oppression, marginalization and enslavement by any other tribe including the Igbo they seek to expel. What then, is the Arewa youths’ grouse? That the Igbo is agitating for a split with the union? This country has a standing army, security agencies, a constitution and legislative structure to manage threats to the land. It is not for some regional youth to claim that government is comatose possibly because the violence it expects government to unleash on the Igbo is not happening. Therefore it seizes the powers of government and illegally expels bonafide citizens from its region and light the embers of war. That is treason. It is a coup attempt.
It may also be right to conjecture that the North was so vexatiously upset, as to react spontaneously, to the persistent torrents of caustic abuse and threats, spewed non stop against President Buhari, the north and other Nigerians, by some loose cannon, pro-Biafra adherents, led by that noisome pestilence called Nnamdi Kanu, who was elevated to the unearned status of populist radical by Buhari’s blundering drama of incarcerating Kanu and soldiers’ killing of unarmed IPOB’s protesters. I will not, ever support, the Kaduna Declaration, but I must say the outpouring of irritating abuses, by “Biafra extremists” on just about anybody, got the goat of many, including the Igbo.
Long before, during and after the May 30, Biafra Day celebrations by pro-Biafra agitators, some self proclaimed “Biafra extremists” had always and still continue to flood social media with opinions and messages of bogus bravado, abuse and portends of violence. These extremists, many who write from safe comfy zones, including foreign countries, far away, physically and psychologically, from the protests and demonstrations, who contribute no kobo to the cause, took over the social media with bile laden abuses, calls for bloody vengeance and war.
These paper tigers dredge up the civil war’s deepest horrors, not because they want, we as a people, to never forget the sad lessons of that war and to forge a better future but to drive hate. They urge hapless suffering Igbo youth to take to the streets and spill their blood while they run their own businesses and earn salaries. They arrogantly label Buhari “EwuHausa”. They dismiss Nigeria as a zoo, though I must admit that I am not too far away from being in concert with that imagery except that it is language roiled in raw abuse and hate.
They persistently label neighbour tribes saboteurs. They aver that the pains and struggles of other tribes against the system is divine punishment for not supporting Biafra. Then they produced a map of Biafra that co-opts the same “saboteur” tribes of the South-South region to the chagrin and irritation of many. They create enemies and love to play perpetually victims. They emit loud noise, lacking in wisdom, strategy or plan.
Now that the Arewa youths have matched their abusive exertions, have they worked out how the precious lives and asset, estimated in multi billions, of their kith and kin would be secured in the threatening north? No. Instead they flippantly ask all Igbo to return from the north.
Perhaps the hordes of Igbo returnees will trek barefooted, without the fruits of their lifelong labour, from the north to the unprepared embrace of a Biafra lacking plans to accommodate, feed and sustain the thousands of the displaced that will pour into “Biafra.” Even Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt required direct supernatural grace, support and sustenance from God Almighty to succeed. Perhaps time to pray.
In the 47 years since the civil war ended, the reckless “Biafra extremists” have whined about hate and enemies rather than be more politically cohesive at home, or reach out for political rapprochement and re-alignments, with even their nearest neighbors to establish a strong political negotiation block. In this period, the Igbo have evolved a confusing culture of a babble of opposing and antagonising political noise that keep shooting down possibilities of an umbrella ethnic voice, of one political block or single Igbo leader, key to effective political negotiations. The outcome? A strange leadership lacuna. Even Odumegwu Ojukwu was nicely chewed into irrelevance by his own people’s lack of support for his bid to run for President of Nigeria.
Unlike Governor El Rufai who has boldly spoken and condemned the Kaduna Declaration or the Northern Elders Forum led by the irredentist Ango Abdullahi who have openly supported the Arewa youths provoking Kaduna Declaration, Igbo political leaders have kept strange silence on Biafra issues or even IPOB, either out of cowardly fear or collusion. For whatever reason the silence is dangerous, giving birth to pregnant innuendos. It also creates a yawning leadership gap left for populist demagogues to exploit.
That silence and gap gave rise to the likes of Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB cohorts whose stock in trade is the lacking-in-brains broadcast of abuse and treasonable materials by videos, on radio and organising street protests, using poor unarmed Igbo youths as cannon fodder, before armed to the teeth soldiers, notorious brutal bullies of citizens.
The blood of those young men shot to death cries for vengeance not only against the soldiers who shot them but against the “extremist Biafrans” who from the shadows urge and send the young men, same age as their own sons in foreign schools, to their early deaths. I do not know who advised Nnamdi Kanu to finally use his brains to organise the peaceful sit-in strategy of May 30. As he may have realised brains triumphs over brawn for the peaceful sit at home protest, more than his abusive exertions and confront protests, had the nation in a fizzy tizzy.
In all of these bizarre drama of abuse, violence and portends of war, the role of Nigerian youth – North, East, South and West – is being zombies and willing expendables in their elders and leaders ruthless chess game of political and tribal gerrymandering orchestrated for their own selfish personal gains. It would seem that our youth are quite incapable of independent critical thought. Their heads appear filled with vascular bundles of muscles from the protuberances of the posterior than with gray matter. They seem to suffer an acute pathological condition of ossified mental faculties and an over active muscularity and violent reaction to the simplest of issues. They must engage in critical thinking to save this country.
It completely beats me that our young seem not smart enough to understand that tribe, religion or region are not the problems of Nigeria. That a small but powerful coterie of selfish, ruthless and manipulative men among our elite, elders and political leaders across the country, is the problem of the country.
The inheritances, these leaders have bequeathed to the youth, save their own children, is decades of economic plunder, incompetence, zero productivity and industrial growth, gross corruption, sharing and stealing of free oil allocations, terrible infrastructure, sick values, despicable health and education standards and lack of potable water and electric power. They revel in indoctrinating the young with ethnic and religious hatred and use them to fight for selfish personal interests.
I wonder why the Arewa youth are not bright enough to ask Ango Abdullahi, the Northern Elders Forum and political leaders of the north why the region has one of the world’s poorest development indicators from rampant disease, poverty and lack of jobs. Is the Igbo the reason for the sad socioeconomic conditions of the northern youths and majority of its peoples? They ought ask what became of the free billions upon billions of free revenues in federal allocations shared every month, every year, for the past decades to northern state and local governments. Did the Igbo eat up the allocations?
Likewise, Igbo youth need to take their elders, elite and leaders to task before tackling external saboteurs and enemies. Why have their billionaire governors, politicians and contractors, despite billions upon billions in monthly federal allocations and contracts over the decades left the land desolate with massive erosions, terrible roads, grinding poverty, zero public sector driven manufacturing or industry. Is it the northerners who looted the federal allocations and executed terrible roads with multi billion contracts?
This story is the same in all the regions of the country. Take the Niger Delta resource control agitation. It led to the creation of 13 percent revenue derivation, the Niger Delta Development Commission and the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs. How have these impacted on the welfare of the poor of the region. The poor is getting poor while the elites and politicians with acolytes feed fat, looting the NDDC, the ministry and derivation funds
I tell you, the young folks from across Nigeria, if you have not noticed, that the biggest common denominator in your country is dirt poverty. I tell you, if you do not know it, that the future of this country belongs to you and your children, not the rogue old men filling you with hatred and urging you to war. They have lived all their lives producing nothing but splurging with their children in unearned and obscene opulence. I tell you, Nigerian youths, to focus on the real and common enemy: your rogue elders and leaders not yourselves.
Nigerian youth. Stand up. Take charge. Chart a new course for yourselves and country. Dump the corrosive hate, abuse and violence of your forebears. It is time to reach across the political, ethnic and religious aisle to hold hands of your brothers. It is time to forge cross country alliances, to organise conferences and seminars on combining your strengths for nation building.
It is time for create a new Nigeria for your own children. It is time to restructure the country on the basis of equity, justice and fairness for all. It is time to tear down the corrupt unitary system of government and the rogue federation account, that shares the nation’s resources as free loot to men accountable to nobody. It is time to create a new nation where all children must be educated in world class schools, get treatment in world class hospitals.
It is time to create a nation united and managed by God fearing patriots driven by core values of equity, empathy, truth, honesty, trust and mutual respect. It is time for visionary and aggressively productive, globally competitive leaders who see the challenge of the future as global competitiveness and beating America or Japan in agriculture, industry and cutting edge technology. You, the young must be different. You must jettison the divisive, hateful, unjust, inefficient, unproductive, corrupt and poverty riven society, your forebears created for you.
Bottomline: This is not the Nigeria of 1967. Much water has cascaded over the bridge since the war. As Biafra activists must have now realized from the Kaduna Declaration challenge, abuses do not a nation make. The Arewa youths will also find out that expelling bona fide citizens of a country and spoiling for war, will only end in bloody regret for all Nigerians, the North inclusive. While destroy yourselves? Why remain slaves of the past.
Permit me to warn that those advocating war may be lucky to receive the charred cinders of what will left of a former entity called Nigeria because another war will last no less than two decades of ferocious, genocidal, bitter and factious war of attrition involving hordes of war lords. The decimation and desolation will be so horrendous, the world will be horrified by the scale of its barbarism and carnage.
Know that the greedy elites and elders and leaders of today do not give a damn. Their hearts are hardened and their vision blinded with arrogance, pride, power, corruption and unearned wealth. If this country is left to their devises, know then that we are on an inexorable journey to self destruct. It is only the youth that can save Nigeria. If only they will stop thinking with the muscles of their buttocks and use the gray matter in their heads, to ask questions, to engage in intellectual rigour and critical thought, to acquire a keen sense of history and importantly to move from the narrow meanness of local ethnic competition to the larger platform of global competitiveness.
Ken Tadaferua is a media and marketing communications consultant. Twitter: @ktadaferua
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