The
massacre Of Igbos: Okorocha’s statement unfortunate
By Uzoma Ahamefule
 |
| Okorocha |
Fellow
concerned Nigerians, whose pain I share with visa-versa, I address you all
under compulsion as a patriotic citizen of the federal Republic of Nigeria
with agony of helplessness and deep sense of responsibility. The aches from my
tears of sorrow are uncontrollably wetting my lips to tremble because the
answers to my many questions about Nigeria seem very far to reach.
You are
probably asking; why this lamentation? You can ask that over and over again
because your relatives are not involved in the killings in the north. I am
lamenting because the massacre of the Christians in the north particularly the
Igbos is painfully a reminiscent of the genocide in 1966 that led to the
Nigerian Biafran war. I am lamenting because I am painfully mourning the deaths
of fellows in the north and their forceful exodus is agonizingly evocative of
another abandoned properties in the making.
I am lamenting because the Igbos
have always been at the receiving end at any crisis in Nigeria, call
it religion, politics or ethnicity they have always paid the ultimate price. I
am lamenting because many of the Igbos that have been killed like idiots will
get a mass burial in the north against Igbo tradition, that is, if their
corpses are discovered. I am lamenting because President Goodluck Jonathan from
a southern minority is the president of Nigeria, therefore everywhere
should be ungovernable. Where is one love and unity?
I am still lamenting and
weeping because many of the Igbos in the north now are homeless refugees hiding
without food in their stomachs and without knowing whether they will be killed
in the next minute. If you beat a child at least it is fair enough to allow
that child to cry out some emotions. I am crying because I am emotionally and
psychologically down. News just got to me that a friend of mine was one of the
people murdered in the Kano
bomb, thus, I am furious.
And with
this at the back of my mind, if what was credited to Chief Rochas Okorocha, the
governor of Imo state, in the media that the killing of the Igbos in Kano was a fabricated
story should be true, then, it is very unfortunate. These were the words of
Okorocha as described and quoted by Champion newspaper, “Okorocha told Governor
Rabiu Kwankwaso that he was personally disturbed at the rate of phone calls and
text messages that were sent to the east that many souls of Igbo people were
killed in the multiple bomb blasts of Kano which necessitated his visit to see
for himself.
The Imo governor noted that on his arrival he went to Sabon Gari
where many of his people live, ‘but after going round and meeting with
virtually everybody all of them denied that the story of killings of Igbo
people were cooked for unknown reason, as such they are baseless and unfounded’
He said already he had directed that all those that have started running away
to stay behind as there was no basis for their leaving Kano …”
This declaration
is unacceptable when you remember the number of Igbos that were reported by Nigerian
newspapers to have been murdered in that very particular bomb blast. This
statement is disappointingly full of hopelessness for those Imolites that are
still alive in Kano
and had nursed the notion that their amiable governor would be magnanimous enough
to understand the precarious danger they were in and rescue them from roaring
lions. Alas!
They have misconceived and must be disillusioned. In custom to
traditions, it was very painful to see the agonizing faces of those bereaved
families wailing in sorrow beside the graves of their departed ones in mark of
respects to their final and untimely journey beyond. And Okorocha captured all
this pitiful moments but yet decided to play politics with the emotions of the
people by telling those affected to close their mouths and clean their
crocodile tears because they were all fabricated deaths and burials.
I know that
Okorocha has always been a political show man that likes playing to the gallery
for accolades which turned him to an occasional traffic controller in Owerri
and an economics teacher in the secondary schools as if he had had less works
in the office. Because Okorocha is dreaming of the president seat of Nigeria, he has
already started playing the dirty politics now with the lives of the Igbos annoyingly.
Okorocha went to Kano
to smoothen his presidential ambition and not on a mission of finding out the
situation of the Igbos as he claimed. Here are the words of Ohaneze Ndigbo
Chairman in Kano
state Chief Tobias Idika refuting the claim of Okocha, “He came for his own
political business. He did not come to see Ndigbo.
He did not set foot in the
community […] We have evidence of 55 dead Igbos – there names and their corpses
…” According to information reaching me, Okorocha is scheming to remain the governor
of Imo state in 2015 and then to contest the presidential election in 2019, and
based on that he would not like to be seen as a tribalist. Hence, after meeting
Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, he ate ‘Suya’ and chewed ‘Gworo’ and made such
regrettable proclamation because his families are not involved.
Okorocha is a
Nigerian and after being a governor he should be over qualified to aspire for
the seat in Aso Rock but not deceptively by the way he did. We must be honest
at all times and criticise objectively, Chief Rochas Okorocha is doing well in
Imo state. But that is not the purpose of this article, but his statement in Kano. I like Okorocha as
a philanthropist that is putting smiles on the faces of the people but a square
peg must be put in a round hole.
Because
everything about the Igbos has been politicised in Nigeria to the extent that
whenever an Igbo man stands up against injustice meted to a fellow Igbo which
ordinarily the person would still have done if it had happened to a Benue man
etc., the person is immediately branded a tribalist. Why do Igbo politicians
allow themselves to be boxed into this state of shading away from the Igbo course
or not openly identifying themselves with Igbo problems like other elites from
other tribes? Is the civil war not over? Does it mean that every Igbo elite
that speaks about injustice against Ndigbo wants secession, therefore has got
no political future at the federal level? And obviously it was because of this
mindset that
Okorocha had told such a blatant lie about the dead Igbos for his
presidential ideas to be accepted in the north as a nationalist or a patriot. It
was exactly the same frame of mind that made Chief Jim Nwobodo in 1999 during
PDP primaries in Jos to address the congregation in Hausa language without
using Igbo language, but he forgot that he has been condemned irredeemably
beyond his redemption to remain Igbo man till eternity. It is equally the same
reason that makes the Igbo elites to abandon the harmless Igbo youths who are
MOSSOB members to indiscriminate arrest and imprisonment in the hands of the
authorities when the Hausa and Yoruba elites etc. never stopped protecting
their youths under any forum. What is wrong with Igbos?
Okorocha
should know that he is not more patriotic than some of us therefore he should
call a spade a spade for all of us to have the desired atmosphere. It would be
recalled that I had earlier supported Okorocha’s government through one of my
articles titled “Igbo president may be the first president to be impeached in Nigeria,” you
can Google it. In that article I equally pointed out few things that were
against ethics and norms of democracy and advised Okorocha from my point of
view.
In the same manner I advise him again to concentrate on giving Imolites
dividend of democracy because his performance will catapult him to any height
and should not get himself distracted with the presidential idea like the way
he is going about it now.
I equally advise him to beware of those green snakes
in green grass that are in his cabinet. A late political juggernaut K.O Mbadiwe
described them as a “political Edi Abali” (those that will be with you in the
afternoon but in the night they move with their lanterns to your political
enemies), they are very dangerous and be wary of them because they will betray
you like they betrayed Chief Ikedi Ohakim. Rochas, this “political Edi Abali’s”
are advising you to failure therefore, ignore them to save your political life
and please as a temporarily safety measure send a rescue team to the north immediately
and evacuate those Imolites that are willing to come back but are trapped
financially or otherwise. In the same manner I advice all the eastern and south
south governors to take politics out of this issue because life is very
precious and save the lives of their indigenes because they are the primary
targets.
The killings
of the Christians in the north are ungodly, barbaric, and senseless and must
stop now. Every honest Nigerian must rise in condemnation of this evil.
Irrespective of tribe or religion it will always be beneficiary that we in
unison at all times condemn wickedness whether it was meted to Yorubas, Hausas,
Igbos or Efiks etc. for peace and tranquillity.
While I
commiserate with the bereaved families and pray that God grants them fortitude
to bear the loss, may the souls of the departed victims rest in peace, Amen.
My last
respect for a brave man who saw tomorrow, the lion that guided his people, Eze
Igbo gburugburu, the Ikemba of Nnewi, Colonel Emeka Odimegwu Ojukwu, Ijele
Ndigbo, rest in peace until we see to part no more. Adieu!
Uzoma Ahamefule
A concerned patriotic citizen writes from Vienna, Austria.
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