NNAMDI KANU’S IMPRISONMENT (SHOW ME THE LAW): A VOICE FROM THE PAST

By High Chief Nkem Ossai

Happy birthday to me but I am not in any mood to celebrate.

“We are a people who choose to hunger a little to remain alive instead of feeding fat to become respectable corpses.” ….. -Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu

Growing up in rural Biafra land was excruciatingly pleasant though the evil of the war was everywhere around us. The war was intense, its brutality, monstrous and its humanity, zero. I was in my preteen years when, I saw all these (which a child should not normally be allowed to see), but I care more about food than the wickedness, the unconscionable anger and the heartlessness of the Nigerian soldiers who raped, killed, maimed without discrimination.

The kind of anger visited on the young Biafran republic: men women and children, was no different from the gass chambers used by the Germans against the Jews that obliterated six million of them. If Nigeria had that type of gass then, they would have used it on Igbos. Let it be known that history will forever continue to remember the killings, the rape, the abduction of Igbo young girls, women and children who were never seen again till date.

The Awolowo’s so called, “hunger is a weapon of war policy” which they tried their best to justify, was nothing but a reflection of a people without soul and without conscience. As I became a man, it downed on me that there is no difference between the gass chambers used on the Jews and Awolowo’s “hunger chambers.” All through human history, some cultures have displayed their inability to be human and their desire to destroy others. So many people among the tribes in Nigeria cannot, in any good conscience, be exonerated from this set of people.

However, the joy and euphoria of having a new nation was all over us. For us youngsters, the enthusiasm of being free from Nigeria strengthened our resolve to endure the unimaginable harm that the war has come to inflict on us.

After the pogrom of 1966, where the North murdered anything that has breadth with a semblance of the Igbo person, the Biafrans resolved to fight even if it means fighting with their bare hands. With that resolve, they were able to face Nigeria, the English, the Russians, the Egyptians and several other Arab countries that resolved to obliterate the Igbo race from the face of the earth. It will be noteworthy to point out, at this juncture, that the brutality that the Benue Plateau regions face today in the hands of the Fulani herdsmen and bandits may have been a retributive justice arising from their dastardly destruction and plunder of Igbo land during the thirty months war.

And so after three years of bloody battle, without food, without hospitals and medicines, and of course, without anything in the nature of humanity, the Igbos came home with a hope to bandage their wounds and move on, oblivious of a heavier blow that is being packaged by a nation that was making mouth with a deceptive, “no victor no vanquished” beautifully and of course, wickedly weaved by no other person but a man they have magnanimously released from Calabar prison at the onset of the war. You know, when your enemy punishes you, it’s normal and expected but when your friend punishes you, it devastates. Obafemi Awolowo whom Nigeria sentenced to life in prison for treasonable felony in 3rd August, 1963 but was released by the government of Eastern Nigeria under Col. Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu, hatched and planned the economic banditry whose intent was to destroy the social fabrics and drive a six inches nail into the souls of the Igbo people.

This takes us to the “£20 master plan” meant to finally break the carmel’s back and perhaps end the economic oligarchy of the Igbos since the creation of the enclave called Nigeria by Britain in 1914. This was a master stroke coming immediately after the cessation of hostilities in 1970. The purpose of this was to nail the coffin of Igbo economic dominance and by implication end their rise to political and economic power forever. It was well planned and well executed, however, in exacting this mindless and evil machination, they failed to seek the mind of ‘God of the Igbos’.

Thus began the silent war by Nigeria that would obliterate the Igbo man’s economic hegemony in Nigeria. The policy of “no industrialization and no federal presence” in any part of Igbo land” was also notoriously executed and mercilessly entrenched in addition to their monies forcefully ceased from them till date. The sense was to see how they will survive without money and without employment. But, they never thought of the mind of the God of Ndigbo.
It was that canopy and tribulations that provided a springboard that launched Uwazurike to form the Movement for the Survival of the Sovereign State of Biafra. Uwazurike did his best to bring the attention of the world to the suffering and injustice of Nigeria on Igbos. This was to lead to more sufferings and killings of the Igbos in several places in Nigeria with attendant destruction of properties belonging to Igbos, more especially in the North. The Igbos became the target for all that is evil. They were broken almost beyond redemption but again, God was there for them.

Understandably, Uwazurike did his best in bringing this generational injustice on Igbos to the world but the world turned a black eye. He was overwhelmed and thereafter forced to take the part of, “if you cannot beat them, join them.” He compromised when the weight of Nigeria on him became unbearable. So, God who says, He will never leave his children orphans, sent Nnamdi Kanu. Nnamdi Kanu, an English educated political economist, a visionary and now a confirmed prophet of our time, began by revealing what would happen in Nigeria, seven years ahead of time. As it is common with humanity, no one believed him or paid heed to his cries. Like our Lord Jesus Christ, some of his own people despised him and gave him away to his enemies with imprint until seven years after. The rest as they say is now history.

Like I said earlier, I was in my preteen years and in primary 4 when the war broke out. We were a family of six, an average family so to say. We lacked nothing but we were not rich. My father was a well known farmer, rich in yam bans, animal husbandry and cassava farms. When we were handed £20 out of all that we had in African Continental Bank, it seemed like a suicidal recipe. Yet no one could do anything about it. We recoiled and kissed the floor in prayers to the Lord God the mighty one in battle and what follows thereafter was an ‘economic supernova’ of harvest in all that the Igbos are engaged in.

With what is happening to Igbo people in Nigeria today: the imprisonment of Nnamdi Kanu allegedly without any law, the countless social and political injustices meted out to Igbos, it is very important we continue to put to mind the words of our eternal leader above.

Today, amongst us, there is still ample evidence of people who are feeding fat to become respectable corpses” exactly as Ojukwu had rightly predicted.

‌When I remember the recent mindless demolition of Igbo properties in Lagos, and the recent Lagos governor’s anguish on learning about Ibeto Sea Port in Port Harcourt, the traditional ruler in Lagos who threatened to drive Igbos to the lagoon if they fail to vote for their preferred candidate, the actions of Fani Kayode, the intransigent and unrepentant Omo Reno, I ask myself: how long will the Igbos continue to endure this man’s inhumanity to man. It has even come to the point where the government rewards those who are unkind to Igbos with high profile appointments. This attitude has even encouraged some Igbo political class to join forces with the enemy to fight their own people because, as they believe, stomach infrastructure is all that matters.

May Chukwu Okike Abiama continue to be faithful and merciful to his people. In the face of all these devastating and unimaginable injustices, we shall continue to tarry, God’s willing.