There are no
extraordinary men… just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are
forced to deal with.
William Halsey.
The
nation is about to be taken down painful and quarrelous memory lanes in the
next few weeks. Eight out of every ten Nigerians who have only heard of
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Ahmadu Bello, Akintola, Maimalari, Nzeogwu, Ironsi and
the 30 months civil war, will soon hear conflicting versions of villany and
heroism, injuries and injustices, winners and losers and how the cumulative
lessons of the last fifty years should be read. Those who will tell the tales
will have their jobs complicated not just because there will be other voices
disputing their versions, but because fifty years since the nation was
violently launched on a radically different trajectory that has shaped its
essentials, there are recent events and developments that suggest that we have
not moved on at all. Some voices will remind us that history has many versions,
and they will display massive distances between 1966 and 2016.
Fifty
years after the murder of leaders from the North and West, an act that has had
attributed to it, every ill in Nigeria since then by many Nigerians (and upheld
by some as an act of supreme courage and patriotism even if informed by
unforgivable naivety), the illigimate product of that treasonable act, the Biafra
misadventure, is being exhumed. It is difficult in retrospect to remember that
Nzegwu and his compatriots never envisaged killing Northern and Western leaders
as a means of seceding from Nigeria by Igbo and other communities in the former
Eastern Nigeria today. By all accounts, their motives were to purge a Nigerian
nation they saw as exhibiting crippling limitations that were curable. Biafra
was not what they wanted; and no matter what you think of them, they were not,
certainly at the onset, irredentists. Two generations since 1966, a group of
Igbo people want to opt out of the nation. Many other Nigerians say they will
not stand in their way anymore.
Fifty
years ago, a poorly-conceived and executed act of violence against the Nigerian
state and people turned out to be more instrumental in changing the basic
structure and future of the nation than any other event. Regional and ethnic
factors which had always been major players in Nigerian politics were thrust
even more prominently into the heart of a nation that was attempting to come to
terms with inclusiveness as an indispenseable element of the democratic
process. Northerners will be reminded of the unjust killing of their leaders
and the reaction of military officers from the region who wrested power back
spilling more blood; led the nation through major structural changes; won a
civil war and engineered a unique and successful post-war reconciliation. Much
of the narratives from the northern end will potray a people wronged and
injured, but people nonetheless who stood firmly (and died in their thousands)
in support of a united Nigeria. A few voices will be raised in lamentation over
the failure of the ‘North’ to recapture its past glory and pace in addressing
the needs of its people. Blame for this will be located at the tragic events of
January 15, 1966.
Western
leaders and elders will hold up victims and fallen heroes, and an inventory of
sacrifices and losses the region made in the struggle to preserve Nigeria.
There will be loud but familiar lamentations over the failure of the federal
system to achieve its true essence, and this will be visited on a military that
shaped a plural nation after its own image, and refusal of elites from other
parts of Nigeria to adopt a progressive and fairer version of a federal system.
Voices from the West in support of a Nigerian nation as presently structured
will be mooted, and there will be a split in the ranks of leaders and elders
over whether to celebrate or condemn the state and record of the Nigerian
nation fifty years since 1966.
Elites
from many communities in the south-south will recall the agony of being
marginalized and victimized in circumstances they were marginal in influencing.
Some elements from a region which has acquired a major clout since 1966 may
recall playing second fiddle to the Igbo; northern political brinkmanship that
gave some of them some of their own space before 1966; the deliberate efforts
to liberate their territories from Biafra which resulted in prolongation of the
life of the war and, the efforts made since then to give them some autonomy and
greater political relevance by the military after the war.
By
an uncanny coincidence, agitations for Biafra are being more loudly re-engineered
almost 50 years after the tragic events of January 1966. The pattern of results
in the elections of March this year suggest that most Igbo political elites
have shut out the rest of Nigeria. This will be case until there is proof that
the 150,000 votes which President Buhari garnered in all the five eastern
states were genuinely expressions of the will of Igbo voters. If votes by the
APC candidate are a poor yardstick by which to measure the degree to which Igbo
elite feel the need to chart their own course in the political arena, the
resurgence of agitations for Biafra by Igbo generations unborn in 1970 is
threatening to exclude them entirely from Igbo or Nigerian politics. In any
case, it is safe to say that these are not the easiest of times for Igbo
leaders, political or otherwise. The impending cacophony that will meet the 50
years since the historic breach of the rights of Nigerians to live under a
democratic system will make sitting on fences more hazardous. Perhaps millions
of Igbo people scattered over every inch of Nigeria earning their living in peace
may also raise their voices in the din over whether Nigeria has a place for
them.
We
will be reminded once again that arguments over justice and equity are as old
as Nigeria, and violent attempts to redress perceived wrongs have always
created additional wrongs. The nation has a long way to go in addressing any
group’s basic grievances. It will, in fact, never entirely succeed in doing
this. But it has deep roots in all our lives, even in areas that cry the loudest
over marginalization. Few Nigerians will accept that entire sections can just
walk away, or bomb and shoot their ways out of the nation because it is neither
feasible nor acceptable. It is not feasible because our history and the way the
we live has made very Nigerian, Igbo and Kanuri and Fulani. It is not
acceptable because it is a solution that will create worse problems. This country
that many young Nigerians treat with contempt has paid its dues to exist as one
united nation, and will pay more if it becomes necessary. When we are done with
arguing over January 15, 2016, it will be useful to re-visit the need to teach
younger Nigerians their history. This will be the only guarantee that a few of
them will not be tempted to destroy a legacy every generation of Nigerians have
helped build, since 1914; and teach them that 1966 was just a major milestone
in an inevitably difficult, but ultimately rewarding journey.
Adamu Adamu
I am stepping into the very large shoes of my friend and
brother, Malam Adamu Adamu in taking over this column. I join others in praying
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Taala to guide him in his well – deserved elevated
position of Minister of Education.
