WHEN WILL OUR ELDERS STOP LYING TO THEMSELVES

The number one principle of ethics in all the Ethnic Nationalities in Eastern Region Biafra is: “An elder must never lie to himself or to his children.” The Igbo put it even more succinctly: “An elder must not sit idly by while a pregnant goat delivers its young while still tethered.” On September 08 2009, Sahara Reporter published a press release issued by an organization that calls itself “Change Nigeria Organization”. This document was signed by Rear Admiral Ndubisi Kanu Rtd.; Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade Rtd.; Solomon Asemota SAN; Alhaji Yerima Shettima; Oluwale Oshun; Fred Agbeyegbe; and Prof. Ben Obumselu. All these men are elders and each of them is more than fifty years old. So they know the history of Nigeria pretty well. So we expect that with the wealth of knowledge, expertise, and experience they have about Nigeria and the world they will come out boldly like elders and tell us the absolute truth, tell our people the absolute truth whether that truth be bitter or sweet.



In the press release they start off well by detailing in clear and unambiguous terms incontrovertible evidence that the nonsense, that boondoggle called One Nigeria has become a failed state; it has collapsed. They quote British historian, Lord Malcolm Hailey who said: “Nigeria is perhaps the most artificial of the many administrative units created in the course of European occupation of Africa”. They follow that up with another quotation from an American political scientist, Henry Bretton: “There is no universally acceptable and understood rationale for the existence and functioning of a state called Nigeria and all efforts at an artificial creation of a national mythology or a Nigerian ideology will be unproductive”. The Change Nigeria Organization correctly identified factors that are essential for the making of a Nation such as consanguinity (ancestral blood relationship), ethnography (possession of common customs, and habits); mythology (traditional beliefs and values of a people); religion (general mental and moral beliefs and attitudes relating to an unseen higher power and manifested in the behavior, language, mode of worship of the people); and language ( a body of words and non verbal behaviors used by a people to communicate and bind together their consanguinity, ethnography, mythology, and religion). They correctly surmise that none of these factors binding people together into a Nation can be seen in the contraption called One Nigeria.

They go further to point out that when the British forced all the Ethnic Nations in Nigeria together into this tattered patchwork quilt they call Nigeria, the British never consulted any of the Ethnic Nationalities to find out if they would want to be part of this nonsense or not. And so it was that the Igbo, Ijaw, Efik, Ibibio, Ogoja, Itsekiri, Esan, Urhobo, Isoko, Edo, Yoruba, Nupe, Tiv, Jukun, Hausa, Fulani, etc were just yoked together into this completely unworkable nonsense called Nigeria!

The Change Nigeria Organization correctly point out that in spite of the fact that Nigeria has become a failed state that the British have continued to work tirelessly to prop it up purely for the selfish interest of the British colonial masters who continue to govern Nigeria through the back door. The Change Nigeria Organization correctly point out that in places where Nations have come together to form Nation States, the individual Nations first exercised their sovereignty, then decided whether they wanted to be part of any federating union, after which they formally signed a memorandum specifying the conditions under which they will belong to the federation. Only after that did the Nations surrender their sovereignty to the federating Union. That was how Switzerland was formed. They even pointed out the situation in Britain itself where the English who had subjugated the Scot have now been forced to give back autonomy to the Scots who now have their own parliament, make their own laws and rule themselves. They concluded this with the example in the United States of America where the United States Government recognized the autonomy of the original indigenous Indian Nations in North America and consequently created the Autonomous Native American Nations which govern themselves.

The Change Nigeria Organization went on to give so many more examples but carefully and calculatedly shied away from mentioning federations that were forced together by military might which collapsed and dissolved and the different Nations went their separate ways. Stalin forcibly tied together the fourteen nations of the Caucuses with Russia and formed the federation of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). In 1991 president Mikhail Gorbachev while trying to restructure the USSR initiated the collapse of the Soviet Union which was further facilitated by Boris Yeltsin. The house of cards called the Soviet Union came crashing down. All the fourteen independent Nations [Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, plus Russia] went their separate ways. Today all fifteen of them are independent Nations and members of the United Nations and some of them are members of NATO. Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia used raw military power to hold the independent Nations in the federation of Yugoslavia together until his death. Then Slobodan Milosevic tried to continue to hold the independent nations of the Balkans captive. They rebelled and from 1991 the autonomous Nations started reclaiming their sovereignty; thus the new nations of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Macedonia, and finally Kosovo in 2008 all became sovereign independent States recognized by the EU, the USA, Canada, Australia, Russia, and other countries of the world plus the United Nations. Czechoslovakia, a federation of Czech and Slovak Republics dissolved in 1992 giving way to the emergence of two republics Czech Republic and Slovakia. All these happened in the past twenty years. But there were other federations like the Caribbean Federation, the East African Federation and many others all of which collapsed more than fifty years ago.

The Change Nigeria Organization has this information but did not want to tell our people about it. Why? Why did they not tell our people about federations like Nigeria that have since collapsed and the different Nations assumed their sovereignty and independence? Why didn’t they want our people to know that? But what really made us mad as hell is the naked lie that the Change Nigeria Organization trumpeted in their press release. Now listen to it. “We are thoroughly convinced that there is more than enough goodwill amongst the peoples of Nigeria to go into a meeting today and give the requisite consent to continue the union [which means One Nigeria]. This is the craziest thing that any sensible human being with even a half brain will say. Who did they consult? Which Nations in Eastern Region Biafra authorized them to make this statement; to claim that the Igbo, Ijaw, Efik, Ibibio, Ogoja, Itsekiri, Esan, Urhobo, Isoko, are quite willing to give their consent to continue to be part of the evil called One Nigeria? Who told them that? Of course nobody! This is how our elders have kept the people of Eastern Region Biafra in slavery and bondage for more than fifty years. These elders engage in highly criminal intellectual dishonesty. They know the truth but they will not tell our people the truth. They keep demanding for the creation of more kwashiorkor states where the governor is the boy boy of Ndi Awusa na Ndi Yoruba; yet they know that these states are nothing but shams. They talk about amnesty when it is their people that are being slaughtered by the Sokoto Caliphate. They pretend that Nigeria can be restructured when the Hausa Fulani Yoruba oligarchy and the Sokoto Caliphate have seized our ancestral lands, the minerals in them, and confiscated our rivers, lakes, and other waterways. They talk about election when they know full well that that there are no democratic elections in Nigeria. They talk about census figures when it is obvious to them that Nigeria has never conducted census. They simply allocate figures to local governments and states as they like. They talk about writing a new constitution when they know that Nigeria’s problem has nothing to do with constitution. Nigeria is just not a Nation; in fact it is not even a country. It is a geographical expression.

When the Change Nigeria Organization talks about writing a new true federal constitution and claiming that it is the panacea that will cure all the ills of Nigeria it is being deceitful, and disingenuous. In fact you could say that it is purposely lying to our people and deceiving them. All the members of the Change Nigeria Organization are old enough to know that between 1957 and January 1966 we had a federal constitution and that each of the three and later four regions had its own constitution, assembly, governor, premier, judiciary, civil service and the North had its own police force. Yet was Nigeria able to organize one single non controversial census? The answer is No. Was Nigeria ever able to organize one single non controversial federal election? The answer is No. In fact it was the use of the federal government police and army to rig the Western Regional Elections of 1965, and the imposition of the Akintola government on the people of Western Nigeria by the Federal Prime Minister, Malam Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and the Sarduana of Sokoto, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello and the Sokoto Caliphate which sparked uncontrollable rioting all over Yorubaland and lead to the army coup of January 15, 1966. Members of Change Nigeria Organization know this. They know that the federation of Nigeria was not working even pre 1966 when you could say there was true federalism. But they keep lying to themselves.

So why are they still mouthing this lie that somehow true federalism [whatever that means] will make Nigeria work for our people? Why? Why? Why? Selfishness and total absence of balls! They just don’t have the courage to call a spade a spade rather than a garden fork. When General Abacha drove Lt. Gen Alani Akinrinade out of Nigeria and he ran to the United States he addressed a conference of Yoruba people at Houston. There he literally told them that it is time for the Yoruba to secede from Nigeria. Today he is talking about true federalism. Bishop Gbonigi was the chairman of the committee that wrote the Oduduwa National Constitution. Why will he not tell the Yoruba that Oduduwa Republic is the only sensible thing for them today? No they are sneaking around talking about true federalism. As they waste their time kowtowing to the Hausa Fulani and the Sokoto Caliphate the barbarians are busy stealing everything that is worth anything in Eastern Region Biafra. Malam Sulaiman recently revealed that the federal government will establish three natural gas stations in Katsina State – one in Katsina, another in Funtua and the other in Malumfashi to supply energy to industries in Katsina. How many natural gas outlets are there in Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Imo, Baylesa, Delta, Abia, where the gas is mined? Yes how many? Tell us! Every important industry is located either in Northern Nigeria or in Western Nigeria. Take a look at Abuja and Lagos; which city in the Eastern Region comes close to their level of development. Those cities were built with your money from the Eastern Region. That is why your children are running to Northern Nigeria and to Lagos and Western Nigeria in search of jobs. The Emir of Kano Alhaji Ado Bayero recently called the Niger Delta freedom fighters criminals and accused them of bringing shame to Nigeria. Ado Bayero should know that it is the loafing parasites like him from the Caliphate who steal millions of dollars of our money every month, money that rightly belong to the oil producing communities in Eastern Region Biafra that are a disgrace and a shame to any country including Nigeria.

As for our elders they are lying to themselves and to their children. Our elders have sold themselves and us for pennies. Zik gave his children Yoruba names. How many of Awolowo’s children did Awolowo give Igbo names: how many of their children did Abubakar Tafawa Balewa or Ahmadu Bello give Igbo names? Go to Lagos and Abuja and you will find that almost all the rich elders from Eastern Region Biafra have mansions there and actually live there. They only visit their towns and villages in Eastern Region once or twice a year. How many Hausa Fulani and Yoruba have mansions in Calabar, Ikot Ekpene, Umuahia, Port Harcourt, Warri, Degema, Onitsha, Asaba, Awka, and Enugu and actually live there? How many? Are you people so stupid that you can’t even see?

Last week we showed you how our elders have lost the balls to stand up for the truth, for justice and for their rights and the rights of their children. Here you see it again. The question we want the younger generation to ask these elders from all over Eastern Region Biafra is when will they stop lying to us, deceiving us and when will they stop talking about the failed state called Nigeria and start talking about our sovereignty, independence and freedom for our people in their own sovereign independent State. When? Every young person should ask his parents and other elders this particular question.

May God bless all the smart and courageous people of Biafra and the sovereign independent State of Biafra!