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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Tuesday, June 6, 2017
Igbo Position on Nigerian Restructuring
Fifty years since this grievous atrocity, the Nigerian state and all its other citizens have consistently refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing. Instead Nigeria and Nigerians have remorselessly maintained that the heinous genocide of the Igbo should not be counted as crime.
( June 5, 2017, New York Times, Sri Lanka Guardian) The
need to restructure the Nigerian state has gained a populist currency
in the past few years. Especially, since the beginning of this year,
2017 it has become a consensus call coming from almost all the ethnical,
political and geographical sections that make up the corporate Nigerian
state. Recently the champions of this call for a new and different
Nigeria have gained an overwhelming numerical strength. Therefore their
voices are increasingly getting stronger, louder and urgent. The fear
and seemingly mysterious fog that earlier surrounded this now deafening
call for change and the enthronement of a new order seems to have
suddenly cleared up. And now with a clearer picture the argument to
restructure Nigeria becomes more compelling and can simply not be
ignored or wished away any longer by those who traditionally oppose it.
As the days go by the rank of those in opposition of a restructured
Nigeria continues to decline and pale in the face of so many
incontestable and overpowering evidences in support. It has now become
clear that the current Nigerian state does not and cannot work as it is
presently structured. Therefore, the majority of the country’s
stakeholders have finally accepted that the existing Nigerian state
structure is not viable and cannot be sustained any much longer. Many
genuine patriotic Nigerians are seeking for real solutions and a
considerable majority tends to believe that what is needed is a Nigerian
country that works on a structure where the diverse ethnical,
political, religious and social units are forming a confederating union.
Nigeria currently exists on a structure that is centrally controlled or
administered – a federal government. It has been like this since the
military intervention in the government of the country in January, 1966.
In order to effectively control the political turmoil and mayhem taking
place in the Western Region of the country and forestall the
unconscionable corruptive and overarching manipulations of the federal
power by the politicians who wielded its reigns, the army which took
power through a military coup d’état adopted the federal government
structure effective immediately. During the past 50 years, practical
experiences and ensuing events have shown clearly that this centralized
control of natural resources and political power is not working for the
country: Hence the need for something new, something different.
That something new is the now much talked about restructured Nigeria. An
important highlight of this now popular and highly recommended
restructuring is the fact that the advocates want much of the powers for
the day to day running of the grassroots components of Nigeria to be
vested in the local governments of the different contiguous regions.
Restructure advocates want the federal government to be stripped of the
control of much of the powers which it hitherto has. Some of those
powers which are presently exclusively and entirely reposed on the
federal government are natural resources control, education, law
enforcement, etc. The advocates of restructure contend that they want
especially the control of natural resources, law enforcement and
education to be decentralized and devolved to the regional centers. Most
importantly, the advocates argue that this envisaged new arrangement
will enable the different regional power centers to develop and grow
each at their own pace, without unduly interfering with or holding up
their neighbors. It is expected that with this new arrangement the
central government can exclusively control the collective national
military, external affairs, some aspects of the judiciary and other
matters as are determined to represent a federal Nigerian image and
interests.
Basically, what most of the advocates of restructure have in mind is
that they still want to preserve Nigeria as a unit – one Nigeria must
exist no matter what. Perhaps, they are convinced that because the
different incongruous ethnical, cultural and religious groups of peoples
within the fictitious geographical enclave have stayed together long
enough and successfully established amongst themselves some inseparable
familial bonds. As a result, the love of country and fellow citizens has
become deeply ingrained in the peoples. In their mind; by some magic
the forced Nigerian marriage has finally turned into love and bliss
affair and, no one should put asunder the sacred bond of one Nigeria
which was joined together by foreigners – the officiating colonial
British priests.
It is not difficult to see that the advocates for this new structure
believe fervently that the fire of Nigeria’s national brotherly love now
burns so wonderfully bright. That the peoples of this dreamed of
nirvana new one Nigeria can actually build a communal fire in a faraway
imaginary center and still get warmed up in their various separate
semi-autonomous regions so long as they all go by the name “Nigeria.”
These Nigerian patriots like some sinister manipulative spouse abusers
are trying hard to impress on the different ethnical, religious and
cultural Nigerian partners that they will be nothing and cannot exist
without attaching themselves to the “one Nigerian” fiction. In this way
the manipulating restructure advocates believe they have sufficiently
convinced the irreconcilable peoples and that they now believe that they
cannot exist on their own if they did not append themselves to the one
Nigerian elixir.
The ethnic Igbo people of eastern Nigeria are a part of this present
Nigerian union. When the time comes, Igbo people are also expected to
form a part of this proposed restructured one Nigeria. But for some
obvious and fundamental reasons the Igbo cannot possibly be a part of
this planned new Nigeria, no matter how attractive. On the 29th of May
1966 the Igbo renounced forever their Nigerian citizenship. On that date
Nigeria as a state and its other citizens began to ethnically cleanse
Nigeria of its Igbo inhabitants. Subsequently, the outrageous hate
induced Nigerian mass murder and expulsion of the Igbo from the country
was advanced further. After the Igbo had been successfully expelled from
Nigeria, the Nigerian state and all its citizens embarked on a
premeditated genocidal war campaign against the escaped Igbo nation.
Nigeria’s declared intention at the outset of the war was to wipe out
the Igbo as a people from the Earth. Nigeria actively pursued that goal
by mustering a viscous merciless host of men and machines and attacked
the Igbo in their ancestral homeland where they ran to take refuge.
Consequently, a quarter of Igbo population was murdered by the Nigerian
state. Of the 3.5 million easterners or former Biafrans murdered by
Nigeria, 3.1 of them were Igbo people.
Fifty years since this grievous atrocity, the Nigerian state and all its
other citizens have consistently refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
Instead Nigeria and Nigerians have remorselessly maintained that the
heinous genocide of the Igbo should not be counted as crime. Thus
emboldened, since the past fifty years Nigeria has pursued systematic
state policies that are geared toward the persecution, the
marginalization and exclusion of the ethnic Igbo from the Nigerian
social, political and economic affairs. The ultimate aim of everything
of course is to finally exterminate the Igbo. Truly, the unrepentant
Nigerian program of the genocide of the Igbo remains an enduring
project.
For these and other reasons, the Igbo have resolved that they will not
have any part in the proposed restructured new country of Nigeria. The
Igbo have unambiguously stated that they are not interested in going
into any union with any other national group in Nigeria. Therefore,
while the Igbo wish Nigeria and Nigerians well in their quest to finding
a workable solution to their national problem, the Igbo have
unequivocally opted for a separate Igbo identity and the separation of
their territory from the Nigerian state.