INTERVIEW: Imo Can Be Nigeria’s Tourism Hub

Amanze Obi. Image: Twitter

BY CHRIS UBA

The Director-General of the Ahiajoku Institute, Owerri, Imo State, Dr Amanze Obi, in this interview says the institute, modeled after the Goethe Institute and Instituto Italiano De Cultura, is a research and cultural centre and an offshoot of the 40-year old Ahiajoku Lecture Series. Obi, who is also a former Commissioner for Information and Strategy, as well Culture and Tourism in the state, is the author of two books – Perspectives in International Politics (1998) and Delicate Distress: An Interpreter’s Account of the Nigerian Dilemma (2013). He also says Imo State can actually become the cultural and intellectual hub of the country using the vehicle of the institute. Chris Uba provides the excerpts:
What is the Ahiajoku festival all about?

The Ahiajoku Festival has been on for 40 years. It started in 1979 under the governorship of Sam Mabakwe. It was started by Mbakwe in 1979.

What really is the concept and its objectives?
Now, on the whole concept of Ahiajoku. Ahiajoku is an Igbo word, which has to do with fertility and harvest. You know that in Igbo cosmology, yam is the king of crops. And when you are talking about fertility of crops, you are invariably talking about yam cultivation, fertility and harvest. So, Ahiajoku is like the goddess of fertility in Igbo cosmology. And so, in 1979, some Igbo leaders of thoughts, and some cultural enthusiasts as well as intellectuals came together and started asking questions: who are the Igbos? Where are they coming from? Where do we go from here? What is behind our history? Nine years after the civil war, how do we reinvigorate those things that we are known for? What is our contribution to the world civilization and the entire world view of mankind? What is Igbo perspective? It was based on interrogations such as these that the idea of Ahiajoku Festival came up. And so, the Ahiajoku Lecture started as a lecture series. It was supposed to be an annual intellectual harvest, where the best of the Igbo come together, one person comes up , gives a lecture on issues that have to do with Igbo culture and civilisation in the context of world affairs .

So, it has been on. The first lecture series was given by Professor M.J.S Echerue on November 30, 1979. And the title of his lecture was: A Mater of Identity. Forty years after, the same Echerue was invited to come and give the 40th Anniversary Lecture. What we did this year was to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Ahiajoku Festival. And we thought in our wisdom that the man who gave the lecture 40 years ago should come back to give this year’s lecture good enough, he was still alive and strong. And so, we invited him. He gave again the lecture that was held in November 30, this year. Ahaijoku Festival holds last weekend of every November. So, it does not have to be 30th of November, it could be 26th. It has to be the last weekend of every November. So, he gave this year’s lecture, which was entitled: “Ogueri Mba: We Shall Survive”. He gave the lecture and that his lecture marked the 40th Anniversary of Ahiajoku Festival.

In the 40-year-history of Ahiajoku Festival, the lecture has virtually every year. There were one or two misses under the military regime, for instance. But under Rochas Okorocha, for eight years he was in the saddle, for seven years, Ahiajoku Festival did not hold. So, the whole thing was forgotten. It was abandoned. And this is one festival that is the highest cultural intellectual festival that Igbos can boast of; it is more intellectual as I said earlier on than cultural. Because what we do there is to come and intellectualize on Igbo world view and civilization. The cultural angle was just something that was added after some years. When it started, it was a one-day event.

And a lecture would just hold:

The Ahiajoku Lecture. But over the years, it was rebranded, from being a lecture series, it became a festival. So, under that festivalship, you will have a cultural mate; you have the colloquium and then you have the lecture. When I staged it in 2010, when I was the Commissioner for Culture and Tourism, the then lecturer was Professor Chinedu Nebo, former Vice Chancellor of University of Nigeria. He gave the lecture in 2010. We had all these strands. The colloquium was there. That was also what we had this year. But what has changed was that, this year, under the leadership of our new governor, Emeka Ihedioha, the lecture series has been elevated to an institute ,where a Director-General was appointed to oversee the affairs of the institute and I happen to be the Director –General. That is the first person that has been appointed as the DG of the institute. The institute has just been set up.

What are the duties of the institute?

The institute will now be responsible for holding of Ahiajoku Lecture. The institute has a lot of other things to do beyond Ahiajoku Festival. And so, now that we have done with Ahiajoku Festival we have other programmes in the New Year. We are going to have world conference on Igbo language and on Igbo world view. It is coming up, noted, but we are working on it. So, we are going to be having international conferences; we are going to be having workshops on films, on music, on literature, on theatre. We are going to be having cultural exchanges. We are going to be having language exchanges. We are going to be having a lot of things that will promote Igbo language and culture; things that will get Igbo language to mix with other languages. People can come from Germany or wherever, and come and learn Igbo language. We also send people to those places to also learn their languages.

That is the language and cultural exchange I was talking about. If you know Goethe Institute, in Lagos, and Italian Cultural Institute; if you know these two institutes, the Ahiajoku Institute is being modeled after these two institutes. And so, there are so many things, we will be doing. Most of the things we do we will do with partners in these areas that I have mentioned: in the area of music, in the area of literature; in the area of drama, in the area of photography and so on. So, from time-to-time, we will be inviting them to workshop so that we can know the areas they think we can research into and collaborate; and hold conferences or lectures or workshops as the case me be. So, the institute will be busy with issues like these. But then, we must remember that every November we will hold the annual Ahiajoku Lecture which is its fulcrum. It is the constant strand.

Does the Ahiajoku Concept have economic objectives? How are the activities of the institute funded?
Are you talking about revenue generation, or something? Ordinarily, I wouldn’t want to talk much about seeing it as revenue generating agency but I know it will generate something. Like the international I said we are going to have, of course, a lot of money will come into the programme. Companies, corporate bodies, and high net worth individuals will contribute money. We will depend on a lot of sponsorship; we will not depend solely on government to finance and fund all these programmes.

Government can fund Ahiajoku Festival but we don’t expect the government to fund every other thing we are doing. So, we are expecting that in partnership with corporate bodies and organisations and high net-worth individuals, a lot of money will flow and people will register for some of these things to be able to participate. So, at the end of the day, we will not just breakeven, we will make some money for the government, you know. But the whole idea is not about money making. Life and living is not necessarily about money making, but if you add value to the society, which is what the whole idea is all about. It is going to add a lot of value.

The tourism aspect?

Yes, that is the tourism aspect you are talking about because we also want to promote the Mbari cultural element; we have it here and so much can be done with that Mbari. So, when we have a cultural festival and we invite people from outside to come and see what we have to offer. And they come here and stay; we have a lot of hotels. If what they have seen interests them, they will come back another time. So, Imo can actually become the tourism, cultural and intellectual hub of this country if it uses the vehicle of Ahiajoku Institute to actualise some of the things we have put on the table.

Any plans to incorporate the Igbo Nollywood version into the institute’s programme?
They are covered by those things I listed. When I mentioned music, I mentioned theatre; they are all part of it. So, Nollywood will be part of the people we will be interested in what they do once in a while, we can invite them for a talk. So that they can give us an idea of the areas we can collaborate and work together, then, whether it is workshop or conference or anything we can do about the festival and organise it, we will work in collaboration with them. So, we have an open house where people can come and share ideas with us and based on those ideas we can implement something tangible. You must culture and language and if you don’t have a culture you don’t exist. These are the bases of human existence. And people must go back to their roots. To promote these things otherwise you will be floating on the surface of reality.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Harriet As Igbo

Cynthia Chinasaokwu Erivo as Harriet Tubman in a scene from "Harriet." Image: Glenn Wilson/Associated Press

BY BIKO AGOZINO

This is not a spoiler. “Harriet” is a film without spoilers because the audience already can tell how the movie was going to end. What I would like to comment on are the symbolic representations that the director, Kasi Lemmons, brought into the narrative that will not make sense to viewers who are not familiar with the background Igbo world views of both Harriet Tubman and the actress who played that role, Cynthia Chinasaokwu Erivo.

Some critics reportedly protested against the casting of the award-winning “British” actress and singer to play the role of the iconic African American hero but if only the protesters knew that it is a case of an Igbo woman being portrayed by another Igbo woman. Besides, African Americans have played the roles of Africans in Hollywood without protests from Africans, who simply admire good acting by our Black brothers and sisters.

There was a carving that the father of Minty, short for Araminta, gave her when she went to tell him that she was fleeing to freedom from slavery. She kept it with her always just as Frederick Douglass kept a piece of wood that an elderly enslaved man gave him after he was beaten by an overseer. According to Douglass, no one ever beat him again in his life for he kept that piece of wood with him, just as the old man told him.


The Igbo call such a piece of wood or carving, Ofo na Ogu, the symbol of innocence and blessings. The director, Kasi Lemmons, was probably reminding us throughout the movie that Harriet Tubman held Ofo and Ogu as a blessed innocent person and that that, in addition to her strong faith in God, was part of the reasons why she was bold in fighting for freedom from slavery for all, unlike Django who only went back to unchain his boo.

Harriet repeatedly claimed that she heard the voice of God but that was attributed, even by Black abolitionists, to “possible brain damage” from her head injury as a child when she was found in a barn with the white boy. The Igbo will agree with her claim that she heard the voice of God because the Igbo also believe that God is present in everyone as Chi, or God, a part of the Great God or Chiukwu, also known as Chineke, God the creator. Such a God or Chi would never subscribe to the pro-slavery gospel that the Black preacher was paid to preach to the congregation of the enslaved who were called upon to obey their masters and work hard for them as an honor to a white God. Harriet did not say amen to that prayer.

It is a shame that the leading actress, Cynthia Erivo, chose to go by her English first name when her Igbo name would have been more appropriate to the role. Chinasaokwu, the name that her Igbo parents gave her in England when she was born, means God answers accusations. Just as Minty dropped her slave name and chose a free name, perhaps to evade slave catchers who continued to search for runaway enslaved people especially after the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Cynthia should be challenged by her fans to drop the slave name and adopt her Igbo name, Chinasa, as her first name in honor of Harriet if not in honor of her own family. Her real last name, Erivo, literally translates as the unfed or the starving, a strange name that echoes memories of the mass starvation of the Igbo in Biafra, during which 3.1 million died. The actress owes it to herself to recover her Igbo name as her first name.

Incidentally, the name Harriet and her original slave name, Araminta, may have onomatopeic meanings in Igbo as Ha aya eti – they will never beat us – and Ala mu nta – my little land, or Aninta, a common Igbo name. Hayeti is, by coincidence, similar to the name that the Haitian Igbo revolutionaries gave to their new republic – Ayeti – and that is the way they still spell it in creole today, like the way that Harriet said that people pronounced Rit, her mother’s name that she took. It means in Igbo, they will never beat us. Even the name of the director of this movie, Kasi, also transliterates in Igbo as to console, suggesting the consolation for those who have suffered great injustice without being offered reparative justice.

Moreover, the name Moses that was attributed to Harriet by almost everyone, may also have an Igbo-sounding meaning – Moshishi, or the spirit said to say. The enslavers could not believe that an African woman was capable of leading such daring raids to free the enslaved and lead them to freedom in their hundreds. They claimed that she was a white abolitionist in “blackface,” which must have been a popular pastime of influential white men then and even now.

The Harriet model of womanist activism can be found in Ogu Umunwanyi, during which Igbo women declared war against colonialism in 1929, only 16 years after Harriet passed away; the Abeokuta women’s rebellion against taxation in 1945; the Kikuyu women’s uprising against forced labor in the 1950s; the South African women’s defiance against the pass laws of apartheid in the 1950s; and the Liberian women’s praying of the devil back to hell to end the bloody civil war in the 1990s.

Unlike Western feminist activists who seek gender-separatism, the Africana womanists are exemplary in the sense that their demands always included the interests of suffering men and women in articulation or intersectionality instead of seeking divisive gender essentialism. This is part of the reasons why Professor Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi theorized that womanism was more appropriate than feminism as a description of the interests of African women within cultures that also inevitably include men as allies who can also be opponents in some ways but cannot be pigeon-holed essentially as all the enemies of “womandom.” The film, “Harriet,” showed that not even all white men were enemies during slavery given the important role played by white abolitionists, though some white women were among the worst enslavers and some Black men worked for the slave catchers to earn some money.

Harriet was fond of singing the freedom song, “Go down, Moses, go down to Egypt land and tell old Pharaoh to let my people go,” as a rallying signal for the enslaved to join the underground railroad to freedom. The biblical Moses was called an Egyptian and so, Harriet was not a Black Moses – the biblical Moses was obviously not white. The fact that Harriet was suspected to be a man goes to challenge the Western invention of women as gendered in submissive relations under patriarchy whereas gender is not a central feature of the conception of people in African cultures where generation, not gender, is more deferential and hegemonic, according to Oyeronke Oyemumi in “The Invention of Women.”

Harriet carried a gun with her for protection and used it to threaten some of her own family members who were too scared to go with her to freedom. But when she had the opportunity to shoot and kill her enslavers, she chose not to kill. This may seem strange to many fans of Hollywood who have come to expect the hero to be a blood-thirsty maniac in Tarantino movies. However, to the Igbo who suffered genocide, pogroms and mass killings in Nigeria without resorting to retaliatory killings, it is normal to leave the gravest wrongs in the hands of our Chi and instead invest our energies into rebuilding our beloved communities in accordance with the African philosophy of nonviolence that Gandhi admitted that he was taught in Africa and Martin Luther King Jr. followed to lead the Civil Rights Movement.

A puzzle that the film tried to solve was why many poor whites who did not enslave Africans continued to fight in support of what the film called the “lost cause” of slavery even after the Africans had asserted their right to freedom as fellow human beings. W.E.B. Du Bois explained this with the theory of the psychological wages of whiteness.

However, the film differed slightly from the conventional interpretation of this theory by explaining that, according to Du Bois, it was not just psychological wages because there were huge structural privileges to even poor whites that they would like to defend – not to mention the hefty rewards placed on the heads of “Moses” and the runaway enslaved people to motivate poor whites to join the posse to try and recapture them.

Also, the young white men were motivated by their lust for the bodies of young Black girls who were gang raped even “before their first blood” perhaps because they were brought up to think of Black girls as “pigs to be sold or eaten” but never to be loved by white men who fathered children that looked exactly like them and still enslaved their own flesh and blood or sold them for money.

The film represented Harriet leading a unit of African American soldiers in battle during the Civil War at the historic Combahee River point of the Black Womanist Rebellion statement. This was the only time that a woman commanded men in battle during the Civil War. It came to pass in fulfillment of the vision that Harriet shared with the young white man who was trying to recapture her as his property even though she prayed for him to survive typhoid as a child.

She had disarmed him and made him climb down from his white horse, knelt him down and aimed his own rifle at him, and told him to listen to the coming sounds of the Civil War even before the war started. She prophesied that he was going to die with thousands of other young white men fighting for a lost cause.

Then she rode off on his white horse, which did not discriminate between a white male rider and a black female rider. That war soon took an estimated 750,000 lives but it could have been avoided if white people simply accepted the fact that Black people were equally human and not property. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Dr. Agozino is a Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Virginia Tech. He can be reached at agozino@vt.edu.

SOURCE: SAN FRANCISCO BAY VIEW

Ireland-Based Women Group Empowers Children With Disabilities

Image courtesy of Anambra State Association Women Ireland

BY OSIBEROHA OSIBE

AWKA, ANAMBRA (THE GUARDIAN)--A non-governmental organisation has empowered three special centres in Anambra State and tasked wealthy members of the public to see it as a challenge to give hope and succour to the less privileged.

The group, Anambra State Association Women Ireland (ASA WOMEN Ireland) presented school desks with chairs, wheel chairs, computers and accessories, among other educational equipment to Recdott Secondary School, Ozubulu, Diocesan Special Education Centre, Nnewi, and Special Education Centre, Umuchu, all in the state.

Speaking at the handover ceremony, the group’s President, Lady Theodora Ayagwu said the organisation, comprising of women of Anambra State descent, was formed and registered in 2012 to uplift the less privileged in the state.

Ayagwu said they mobilise for fund and materials abroad and channel them home to add value and give back to society. She said aside donating school materials, the group also carries out cancer awareness for women.Also, the group’s Vice President, Nonye Anuche said the gesture was to give children with disabilities a sense of belonging, especially during the festive period.

Anuche berated parents, who hide children with disabilities, urging them to bring them out for proper care.Delivering a paper entitled, World of Disability and Health, a lecturer with Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Dr. Ifeyinwa Iloh, said people should focus more on abilities, rather than disabilities of an individual, stressing that there is ability in any disability.

I Will Respect Independence Of Imo Judiciary ― Ihedioha

Emeka Ihedioha

BY CHIDI NKWOPARA

OWERRI, IMO STATE (VANGUARD)--Governor Emeka Ihedioha of Imo State, weekend, reiterated his campaign promise to “respect and uphold the independence of the State Judiciary”. Ihedioha, who stated this when he swore-in nine new Judges in Owerri, also reassured the citizenry that his administration would religiously stick to the rule of law.

“It is not in doubt that the twin factors of Independence of the Judiciary and full observance of the rule of law, are the panacea for good governance. This administration will observe and respect all of them”, Ihedioha said. While saying that “the three arms of government must coexist as separate organs of government independently, but collaboratively,”

Ihedioha equally disclosed that his administration has maintained a symbiotic relationship with other arms of government, assuring that plans were in top gear, to enhance the status of the judicial system in the State after several years of palpable neglect. “We have reconstituted the Judicial Service Commission. We have started the renovation of the Judges Quarters. We have also ensured payment of salaries and allowances of Judges as at when due and provided official guards for them”, Ihedioha said. He explained that his administration achieved these feats within a short period of time, despite the prevailing financial constraints. The Governor revealed that, of the 33 Judges recommended for an appointment across the federation by the National Judicial Council, NJC, nine Judges, the highest, was approved for Imo State. “The NJC approved nine Judges for Imo State, which is the highest, trailed by Rivers State, which got approval for four Judges. This is a testimony of our unwavering resolve to entrenching the tenets of rule of law in our State, which can be achieved with an efficient and formidable judiciary”, Ihedioha said.

He recalled steps taken by his administration on assumption of office to boost the State judiciary, which led to the appointment of magistrates, Inspectors of Court, bailiffs and other judicial staff. While noting that these measures were taken to ensure an effective justice delivery system in the State, the Governor advised the new Judges to discharge their duties fairly and ensure they do justice to all manner of people without fear or favour. Speaking earlier, the Chief Judge of Imo State, Justice Paschal Nnadi, said “Governor Emeka Ihedioha has revitalized the Judiciary in the State, and this has translated to numerous gains to the judicial system, including expeditious handling of cases”, Justice Nnadi said. He expressed gratitude to the Governor for “rejuvenating the judiciary and assured that the judiciary in the State, will continue to serve justice to all”. Justice Ihuoma Grace Chukwunyere, who spoke on behalf of the newly inaugurated Judges, assured that they will uphold the law at all times.

2020: Real Reasons Igbo Should Not Be talking Of Presidency Now – Sen. Abaribe

Enynnaya Abaribe. Image: Twitter

BY SEUN OPEJOBI

The Senate Minority Leader, Eyinnaya Abaribe, has pointed out reasons why the South East should not be talking about 2023 presidency now.

Abaribe stated that the South East should be talking about teaming up with others to make Nigeria a better place and not 2023 presidency.

The Abia South Senator in a chat with Vanguard also lamented that the structure of the country was very bad, hence the need to jettison calls for presidency.

He said: “I think what you are doing now is that you are also creating this same thing that we are decrying. We are saying that it is too early for anybody to be talking about who will take whatever and the times are very dire. And instead of looking at that you are asking other questions.

“OK, an Igbo becoming the next President, if it doesn’t change your life today, in what way will that help you? So, what we are interested in is how do we get this country to be better and I have made this point repeatedly before and let me repeat it: the structure of the country should be changed before we start thinking about who gets what and I believe and I stay on that.

“The structure is so bad that it is very difficult for you to make the country work. That’s the point. At the moment, the country has turned into a unitary government and we merely mouth federalism.

“And so, it makes it near impossible for you to even do mere security. A local government chairman can’t even secure his environment and he’s called the chief security officer of his local government. He can’t call a DPO to say ‘how do we secure our area?”

SOURCE: DAILY POST

What Do The Igbos Want?

Obi Nwakanma image via STIAS

BY OBI NWAKANMA

In Biafra, under three years, they were making their own rockets and calculating its distances; distilling their own oil and making aviation fuel, creating in their Chemical and Biological laboratories, new cures for diseases like Cholera, shaping their own spare parts, and turning the entire East into a vast workshop, as Ojukwu put it.

At the end of the war, the Ukpabi Asika regime brought together these Biafran scientists and set up PRODA. The initiative led, in the first five years between 1970-1975 under the late Prof. Gordian Ezekwe and Mang Ndukwe, to designs of industrial machinery models and prototypes for the East Central State Industrial Masterplan, which remain undeveloped even today. The Murtala/Obasanjo regime took over PRODA in 1975 by decree, starved it of funds, and basically destroyed its aims.

Secondly, Federal government policies centralized all potentials for innovation and entrepreneurship. Before 1983, states had their Ministries of Trade and Industry. These were charged with local business registration, trade, and investment promotion, and so on. But today in Nigeria, if you wish to do any business, you'd have to go to Abuja (it used to be Lagos) to register under the Corporate Affairs Commission. It used to be that local business registration was state and municipal functions. The concentration of the leverage for trade utterly limited Igbo entrepreneurs, particularly in the era of import licensing, once your quota was exhausted, you could not do business.

This affected the old Igbo money in Aba and Onitsha, who were the arrow-heads of innovation and traditional partners in the advance of Igbo industrial economy. It is remarkable that as at 1985, a least by a book published by the Oxford Economist Tom Forrest in 1980, The Advance of African Capital, the Igbo had the highest investment in machine tools industries in all of Africa, and the highest depth of investment in rural, cottage industries. In his prediction in 1980, if that rate of investment continued, according to Forrest in 1980, the Igbo part of Africa would accomplish an industrial revolution by 1987. Now, by 1983/85, Federal government policies helped to dismantle the growth of indigenous Igbo Industry through its targeted national economic policies. As I have said, there is a corollary between industrial development and innovation.

Thirdly, the severe, strategic staunching of huge capital in-flow into the East starved Igbo businesses and institutions of the capacity to utilize or even expand their capacities. There were no strategic Federal Capital projects in the East. There were no huge infrastructural investments in the East. The last major Federal government investment in Igbo land was the Niger Bridge which was commissioned in 1966. Any region starved of government funds experiences catatony and attrition. Private capital is often not enough to create the kind of synergy necessary for innovation. Rather than invest in the East, from 1970 to date, the Federal government has strategically closed down every capacity for technological advancement in the East and stripped that region of its capacity.

By 1966, the Eastern Nigerian Gas masterplan had been completed under Okpara. But in its review of a Nigeria gas masterplan, the Federal government strategically circumvented the East. Oil and Gas are under Federal oversight. The Trans-Amadi to Aba Industrial Gas network/linkage had been completed in 1966, to pipe gas from Port-Harcourt to Aba. The Federal government let that go into abeyance and uprooted the already reticulated pipes. The East was denied access to energy with the destruction of the Power stations during the war.

The Mbakwe government sought to remedy this by embarking on two highly critical area of investment necessary for industrial life: the 5 Zonal water projects, which were 75 completed by 1983, and set for commissioning in 1984, which was to supply clean water for domestic and industrial use to all parts of the old Imo state, and the Amaraku and Izombe Power stations, under the Imo Rural Electrification Project. These were the first ever massive independent power projects ever carried out by any state government in Nigeria which would have made significant part of Igbo land energy independent today. The supply of daily electricity was possible in Imo as at 1984. The Amaraku station had come on stream, and the Izombe Gas station was underway, when Buhari and his men struck.

The first order of business under the Buhari govt in January 1984, was to declare all that investment by Mbakwe "white elephant projects." They were abandoned, and left to decay.

Ground had already been acquired and cleared on the Umuahia-Okigwe road to commence work by the South Korean Auto firm, Hyundai, under a partnership with Imo for the Hyundai Assembly plant in Umuahia, to cater to a West African market. The first order of business under the Buhari government in January 1984, was to declare all that investment by Mbakwe "white elephant projects." They were abandoned, and left to decay. The equipment at the Amaraku power station was later sold in parts by Joe Aneke during Abacha's government. Some of the industries like the Paint and Resins company, and the Aluminium Extrusion plant in Inyishi were privatized, and sold. Projects like the massive Ezinachi Clay & Brick works at Okigwe are at various stages of decay, as memorial to all that effort.

Forthly, you may not remember but Odumegwu Ojukwu founded and opened the first Nigerian University of Technology - the University of Technology Port-Harcourt in 1967, under the leadership of prof. Kenneth Dike. He had also compelled Shell to establish the First Petroleum Technology Training Institute in Port-Harcourt in 1966. All these were dismantled. The PTI was take from Port-Harcourt to Warri, while University of Tech, P/H was reduced to a campus of UNN, until 1975, when it became Uniport. You will recall that for years, up till 1981, the only institutions of higher learning in Central Eastern Nigeria were the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, IMT Enugu and Alvan Ikoku College of Ed, in Owerri. There is no innovation without centers of strategic research.

Mbakwe and Jim Nwobodo changed all that in 1981, when they pushed through their various states Assembly, the bills establishing the old Anambra State Univ. of Tech (ASUTHECH), under the presidency of Kenneth Dike, and the IMOSU with its five campuses under the presidency of Prof MJC Echeruo. The master plan for these universities as epicenters of research and innovation in the East were effectively grounded with the second coming of the military in 1984, and the diminution of their mission through underfunding, etc. As I have said, I have given you the very short version. After a brief glimpse of light between 1979-83, Igbo land witnessed the highest form of attrition from 1983- date, and the destruction of the efforts of its public leadership to restore it to its feet has been strategic.

Some have been intimidated, and the Igbo themselves have grown very cynical from that experience of deep alienation from Nigeria. I think you should be a little less cynical of Igbo attempts to re-situate themselves in the Nigerian federation: starved of funds, starved of investments, subjected to regulatory strictures from a powerful central government which sees the East in adversarial terms, and often threatened, the Igbo themselves grew cynical of it all. You may recall, the first move by the governors of the former Eastern Region to meet under the aegis of the old Eastern Region's Governors Conference in 1999, was basically checkmated by Obasanjo who threatened them after they called for confederation in response to the Sharia issue in the North.

Their attempts to establish liaison offices in Enugu and create a regional partnership was considered very threatening by the federal government under Obasanjo, that not too long after, they abandoned that move, and that was it. If people cannot be allowed to organize for the good of their constituents, then it only means one thing: it is not in the interest of certain vested interests in Nigeria for a return of a common ground in the Eastern part of Nigeria because establishing that kind of common ground threatens the balance of power. It is even immaterial if such a common ground leads to Nigeria's ultimate benefit. There are people who just find the idea of a common, progressive partnership of the old Eastern Region threatening to their own long term interests. This is precisely what is going on - its undercurrent. This of course cannot be permitted to go on forever. A generation arises which often says, "No! in Thunder."

The Trans-Amadi to Aba Industrial Gas network/linkage had been completed in 1966, to pipe gas from Port Harcourt to Aba. The FG let that go into abeyance and uprooted the already reticulated pipes.

Igbo population is quite huge, and people who truly know understand that the Igbo constitute the single largest ethnic nation in Nigeria. Much has been made about how this so-called "small" Igbo land space could accommodate the vast Igbo population. But People also forget that Igbo land accommodated Igbo who fled from everywhere else in 1967. So, the question of whether Igbo land is large enough to contain the Igbo is a non-issue. In any case, Biafra is not only the land of the Igbo. It goes far beyond Igbo land. But even for the sake of building scenarios, we stick to Igbo land alone - the great Igbo cities of Enugu, Port-Harcourt, Owerri, Aba, Onitsha, Asaba, Abakaliki, Umuahia, Awka and Onitsha are yet to be reach even 30% of their capacities.

New arteries can be built, facilities expanded; there are innovative ways of moving populations through new transportation platforms -underneath, above, on the surface, and by waterways. The East of Nigeria has one of the most complex and connected, and largely disused system of natural river waterways in the world. New, ecologically habitable towns can be expanded to form new cities from the Grade A Townships - Agbor, Obiaruku, Aboh, Oguta, Mgbidi, Orlu, Ihiala, Amawbia/Ekwuluobia, Elele/Ahoada, Owerrinta, Bonny, Asa, Arochukwu, Afikpo, Okigwe, and so on. The Igbo will be fine. The Japanese and the Dutch, for example, have proved that there are innovative ways of using constricted space.

As for the economy: it is supply and demand. New economic policies will integrated Igbo economy to the central West African and West African Markets. The Igbo will create a new vast export network, unhindered by idiotic economic and foreign policies. The re-activation of the PH port systems will for e.g. open the closed economic corridor once and for all to global trade. As anybody knows, it might take a fast train no more than 45 minutes to move goods from the Warri or Sapele ports to Aba and even in less time to Onitsha. As Diette Spiff once observed while playing golf at Oguta, all it would take to connect Warri and Oguta is just a long bridge, and the vast economic movement will commence between Warri and its traditional trading areas of Onitsha and the rest of the East.

The quantum of economic activity will see the growth of that corridor between Aba-Oguta- Obiaruku down to Warri as the crow flies. The impact of trade between the Calabar ports and Aba will explode. In fact, the old trading stations along the Qua-Iboe River (the Cross River) at Arochukwu, Afikpo, down to Oron and Mamfe in the Cameroons will explode and create new prosperity and new opportunities. I am giving the short version. So, the Igbo will be alright. They would simply be just able to define their own development strategies, deploy their highly trained manpower currently wasting unutilized, and the basis of its vast middle class will create new consumers, and generate an internal energy that will thrive on Igbo innovation, industry, and know-how, which Nigeria currently suppresses. This is exactly one very possible scenario.

So, Tanko Yakassi is wrong. May be if the Igbo leave Kano, the Emir will no longer need to buy his bulb from an Igbo trader in Kano. He will have to buy it either from an Hausa, a Fulani, a Lebanese, or some such person. But those will have to come to Igbo land to buy it first before selling to the Emir. There was a time when all of West Africa came to Onitsha or Aba to buy and trade because it was safe, and those cities were the largest market emporia in the continent. People came from as far away as the Congo to buy stuff in Aba and sell in the Congo. It could happen again, only this time on a vaster, more controlled scale. The network of Igbo global trade will not stop if they left Nigeria. In fact, they will have more access to an indigenous credit system that would expand that trade, currently unobtainable and unavailable today to them, because Nigeria makes it impossible for Igbo business to grow through all kinds of restrictions strategically imposed on it, including port restrictions.

However, although I do think that the Igbo would do quite well alone, they could do a lot better with Nigeria, if the conditions are right. This agitation is for the conditions to be made right; for Nigeria and its political and economic policies to stop being a wedge on Igbo aspirations. And Igbo aspiration is quite simple: to match the rest of the developed world inch by every inch, and not to be held down by the Nigerian millstone of corruption, inefficiency, and inferiority. The Igbo think that control of their public policies on education, research and innovation, economic and monetary policies, and recruitment, control and deployment of its own work force both in public and private sectors will give them the leverage they need to build a coherent and civilized society.

They point to the example of Biafra, where under three years, they were making their own rockets and calculating its distances; distilling their own oil and making aviation fuel, creating in their Chemical and Biological laboratories, new cures for diseases like Cholera, shaping their own spare parts, and turning the entire East into a vast workshop, as Ojukwu put it, while Nigeria was busy doing owambe, importing even toothpick, and creating new wartime millionaires from corrupt contracting systems by a powerful oligopoly. It is a fallacy much driven by ignorance that Igbo will not thrive and that Igbo land will not accommodate Igbo population if they leave. That is not true. There is no scientific basis for it.

The dynamics of human movement will take great care of all that. It’s a lame excuse. What people who wish for Nigeria to stay together should do is not to make such puerile statements, because it is meaningless. What we should all do is to find the strategic means of containing Igbo discontent by LISTENING to the Igbo, and seeking peaceful and productive ways of fully freeing their energy to instigate growth both of themselves and of Nigeria within Nigeria for everyone's benefit. Threatening them will not work. It has never worked, and it is important to understand a bit of Igbo cultural psychology: the more you threaten him, the more the Igbo person digs in very stubbornly. Igbo, with a long tradition of diplomacy, thrive on consensus not on threat of the use of force, or the like.

Frankly, those who continue to think that the Igbo have no options are yet to understand the complexity of this movement as we speak. They still look at the surface of events while the train is revving and about to leave the station. We need to work very carefully on this issue. I myself, I prefer Nigeria. I like its color of many peoples and cultures. That in itself is the very condition for growth and regeneration. A single Igbo nation may be more prosperous, but will be less interesting, and that is the more valid argument.

From Living In Bondage To Lionheart: Nollywood's Thorny Path To Its Digital Future

Living in Bondage: Breaking Free, produced by Charles Okpaleke and directed by Ramsey Noah in his directorial debut is a Sequel to the 1992 release.

BY EDWIN OKOLO

In January 2019, American media giant, Netflix, made a splash by premiering Genevieve Nnaji’s directorial debut, Lionheart, exclusively on its streaming service. In a deal brokered by Funa Maduka, months before, at the Toronto International Film Festival, Ms. Nnaji became the first Nigerian filmmaker to debut their project to an international audience in this way, paving the way for the flurry of Nigerian films that would follow in the coming months and closing the circle of digital distribution for online content that began exactly 10 years before with a little show about sexual awareness. To understand how Nigerian media made the leap from video clubs and viewing centers to a winner-takes-all streaming war, we need to go down a tunnel of tax havens, gambling banks and the rise of social currency.

The Internet knocks but once

The first media wave began in 1992 with Living In Bondage (which 27 years later has been revived with a second installment). There are many accounts of how the film was made, but what was not in contention was how successful it became. Funded almost entirely by businessmen turned financiers, the first iteration of Nollywood was almost entirely profit-driven and rode the direct-to-video wave for most of the 90s churning out the bulk of content that today has a second life as Tumblr memes and the subversive work of the sisters behind Instagram account Nolly.Babes. The mass of films from that era eventually led to the rise of the first generation of Nollywood A-listers, whose ascension led to controversies like the G8 ban of 2004, and set in motion the eventual decline of the O.G Nollywood marketer and the rise of what we refer to today as ‘New Nollywood.’ That decline was marked by a decided shift in the viewing habits of Nigerians.

There are many reasons for this decline. The first generation of Nigerians raised on some form of cable television came into adolescence hungry for global content. Piracy soared in response to their demand, competing with and eventually decimating Nollywood pulp cinema.

A presidential order by Olusegun Obasanjo in 2001 led to the introduction of Global Systems for Mobile (GSM) Telecommunication networks into Nigeria. New licenses and impressive waivers on operational taxes drew major South African players MTN to invest in the Nigerian markets and usher in privatised, profit-focused mobile telephony. By 2005, MTN, Glo and Econet had introduced mobile internet services to the media market. A direct consequence of this was that it became significantly easier for young people to not only curate the content that they consumed but to also seek out niche content that was either unavailable because it was currently out of syndication or unavailable because terrestrial television stations could not afford to license them. Hunched over desktop screens and cheap Chinese disc players, Nigerians gorged themselves on content.

The second major catalyst was the Blackberry Internet Service (BIS). A unique feature of the Blackberry Service Suite, created specifically as a business tool for Blackberry, a major mobile player in the 2000’s; the BIS was a closed Internet Service Provider network that clients could access for a certain fee and it offered a heavily discounted alternative to the exorbitant data charges of the mobile networks offering similar services at the time. While created primarily for businesses, the BIS network’s significantly cheaper data services encouraged early experimentation with streaming and downloading of digital content for entertainment. Websites like NotJustOk and Jaguda were the first to capitalize on this new craving for digital media created by Nigerians for Nigerian consumption. Early P2P sharing platforms like Limewire were all the rage.

 

The Academy Awards disqualified Lionheart in its foreign language film category.

The third and most influential catalyst was social media. Before the advent of Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006, it was incredibly difficult to build local communities around media interests. Fandoms were rare in Nigeria, and it was difficult and expensive to organize or participate in events that celebrated mutual interest in any kind of activity. Yahoo Groups and Yahoo 360 had offered rudimentary versions of fan-based platforms but they had been targeted primarily to Western audiences. Facebook groups, however, were easier to navigate and provided a neat and impersonal solution that simply allowed fans of a TV show or musician to ‘opt-in’ to groups and pages that had relevant information about these interests and allowed fans to find each other virtually. By 2010, it wasn’t uncommon to find fan-managed celebrity Facebook groups and pages with 100,000 fans. Twitter would accelerate the process through live-tweeting, real-time reviews and analysis of shows as they aired. Combined with the ‘opt-in’ feature of Twitter’s follow model, fans were incentivised by social currency to offer their opinions on digital content and media companies were more likely to create content that would trigger that kind of engagement.

Social media, in combination with cheaper mobile internet, meant there was a steady stream of conversation happening at any point in time in already segmented audience groups. All that was left was to create media content that specifically catered to the needs of these groups and a pioneer to get things started.

Media moves online
That pioneer turned out to be MTV. The product was MTV Shuga, a YA-oriented television show that drew from the true-grit model of Western tween television shows revolving specifically on how a group of teens and young adults dealt with the fallout of either living with or interacting with people with HIV. The hysteria around HIV was at its peak in 2009 and MTV Shuga was one of the first shows that did an excellent job of destigmatising the condition. The show also launched the careers of Lupita N’yongo and Nick Mutuma. Released originally only to Kenyan audiences, the enduring buzz around the show led to an online release on YouTube and its second season in 2012. The concurrent release of the show online opened MTV Shuga to an otherwise ignored demographic and most likely inspired the showrunners to move the show West to Lagos for a follow-up season. It seems too much of a coincidence that Ndani TV, Guaranty Trust Bank’s innovative media offshoot, was launched in the same year.

MTV Shuga Naija was a runaway success. Like it had with Lupita, the show launched the careers of Dorcas Shola Fapson and Timini Egbuson, proving unequivocally that there was an audience for content accessible only by streaming. There was an audience, primed for conversations, looking for content to engage with.

Until that point, Tajudeen Adepetun of Consolidated Media Associates and AlphaVision Productions had been the only showrunner to find a sweet spot between accessible storytelling and passable execution. He had conquered television with shows like Everyday People & Treasures, and engineered Nigeria’s enduring obsession with Mexican telenovelas but seemed unwilling to expand into digital. Even his archive of beloved television soaps remained in syndication on terrestrial television. It would take the intervention of Nigeria’s banks to change things.

Guaranty Trust Bank was the first to launch a digital media imprint. Ndani TV, its imprint, was launched early 2012 evolving from a quarterly newsletter of the same name. In its primary role as a content marketing platform for the bank, the platform was helmed by Lola Odedina and Jade Osiberu with Mohammed Attah as the channel’s first showrunner. Without any prior experience in creating content specifically for a digital platform, Ndani experimented with interview style shows, before striking gold with scripted web shows. Gidi Up, their first web show, was a huge gamble.

The studio invested heavily in the show’s production values and hired relatively unknown actors as the show’s six leads. Even the choice to have a multi-lead cast and flesh out multiple storylines was a gamble itself. But the storytelling and Osiberu’s understanding of youth culture helped transform their ambitious ideas into a cult-making season of entertainment. Overt with their branding and ruthless with their advertising, Ndani became synonymous with new media; following the success of Gidi Up with tailored shows like the Youtube juggernaut Skinny Girl In Transit and Rumour Has It.

United Bank for Africa, (now defunct) Diamond Bank, and Access Bank launched RED TV and Accelerate TV to carve their own niches on YouTube and tap into the goodwill that Ndani extended to GTB. Emboldened by the success of Ndani’s programming, both platforms began to experiment with finding their own formats. High profile partnerships with EbonyLife’s Temi Abudu and director Kemi Adetiba led to Accelerate TV’s scripted reality TV show On The Real and their wildly successful interview series King Women. RED TV experimented with meta-comedy, hiring comedian Koye Kekere-Ekun to expand his social media shtick into a detective series called Inspector K.

Ndani has remained the front runner in the race to dominate YouTube despite tragedies like the loss of all its footage for a highly anticipated third season of Gidi Up, and scandals like its reactive decision to scrub the Ndani channel of its 2019 show Oga Pastor mid-season to avoid getting entangled in a co-incidental religious scandal involving a high-profile pastor. But it has also lost significant ground to shows like Accelerate TV’s The Shade Corner (which took three years and two seasons to find its level) and RED TV’s surprise hit The Men’s Corner.

The only real contender for the Big Three on YouTube at this time is LowlaDee productions, an independent production company run by Dolapo ‘Lowladee’ Adeleke. Adeleke’s production company made its name with This Is It, a crowd-pleasing rom-com manufactured to leverage the combined West African and East African digital biomes.

A free for all

The big three (Accelerate, Ndani and RED) got a few years’ head start before the technology evolved enough to shed much of the prohibitive costs that had kept independent players from entering the market. Now that those barriers are gone, digital media content is well and truly anyone’s game.

Long-time veteran Jason Njoku, in partnership with his wife and business partner Mary Remmy Njoku, were early adopters of streaming apps whose primarily sell is exclusive, locally created content. Her shows Husbands of Lagos and Festac Town helped streaming platform IrokoTV pivot away from its archive of vintage Nollywood content and build a contemporary fanbase.

The Njokus have been so successful at creating digital content and courting digital audiences that Mary Remmy was able to broker a major takeover deal with French media giant Canal+. The sale speaks to the current state of Nigeria’s digital media and the growth that has occurred in the last decade. Mrs. Njoku’s sale is phenomenal because Rok Studios is less than 5 years old and until its sale was run independent of external funding.

There is, of course, Linda Ikeji’s attempt to expand her media empire beyond blogging with her Linda Ikeji TV streaming service that had early viral shows like King Tonto and Oyinbo Wives of Nollywood. SceneOneTV (owned by Funke ‘Jenifa’ Akindele) is a niche but self-perpetuating vehicle for Akindele’s personal projects that include the now-labored Jenifa’s Diary and a spinoff show, Aiyetoro Town. Even media mogul Mo Abudu got in on the action with EbonyLife ON (which was sold to audiences by exclusively streaming its glossy legal drama ‘Castle and Castle’ on the platform). Streaming is such a competitive market that even DSTV, feeling the burn of digital media, created ShowMax, its own answer to the streaming wars and the primary distribution vehicle, for its big-ticket show, the Big Brother Naija franchise.

An inevitable consequence of the local audiences finally paying top money for their entertainment is that they now have demands. After nearly 8 years of majorly phenomenal press, Ndani suddenly found itself in a maelstrom of bad press. Agitations have long simmered about the firm’s alleged disinterest in the fans’ concerns, as encapsulated by their refusal to release an official statement on Gidi Up, and consequently the decision to pull its preacher thriller, Oga Pastor, off-air mid-season and replace it with Phases, a show shot and released so hastily its working title was changed after the first episode had aired. Fans have openly promised to boycott and are voting with their clicks and money.

How will the next decade of Nigerian film and television media evolve?

It is hard to predict. Nigerian innovators like Joel Benson are already experimenting with 3D imaging and augmented reality in the same market, ‘Asaba Nollywood’ still coughs up enough pulp cinema to keep the poorest Nigerians entertained. However, it is more difficult to predict if the big three will stay fascinated with their content marketing platforms enough to finance them for another decade without a clear path to independence and profitability. Cheaper tools mean Nigerians are directing and attempting ambitious projects at much younger ages than we’ve ever seen; figuring out the logistics of distribution and revenue channels as they go along.

In a nutshell, while the industry has never been this potent, it remains to be seen if this potency will lead to an expansion or an implosion.

Edwin Okolo is a journalist, fashion critic, and artisanal crocheter. He has written for the New York Times, Native Magazine, African Arguments, and Sable Lit. He is the editor-in-chief at YNaija.com

Terrorism: MASSOB Tells Igbo To Vacate Borno, Others

BY CHUKWUDI AKASIKE

Worried about the killings of Christians by members of the Boko Haram sect and other terrorist groups in the North, the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra has called on the Igbo in the region to return home.

MASSOB stated that it was necessary for the Igbo to heed the call to return to the South-East in order to avoid being killed by terrorist groups who had recently made Christians their targets.

The National Director of Information of the pro-Biafran group, Sunday Okereafor, who made this call while speaking with The PUNCH on Sunday, explained that refusal to heed MASSOB’s advice on the need to return home could be dangerous.

He stated, “We have told the Igbo in the North to come back home. Uwazurike sent a lot of vehicles to the North two years ago to bring the Igbo people there back home, but they refused to come back home.

“Over 100 vehicles were moved to Kaduna and other states in the North, where you have Fulani people; Borno, Kano, Kaduna and Plateau states. But most of our brothers there are saying no, they are not coming back and that nothing will happen to them.

“We are again calling on our brothers to leave the North and come back to the South-East. But if they say no, ISIS, Boko Haram and herdsmen will kill them. They should come back home to remain alive with their children. We are tired of these killings and we want our people to come back home.”

He added that MASSOB would not stand and watch Igbo people being killed by terrorists in the North, adding that the South-East was economically viable for Igbo people and others to do business.

Okereafor, however, noted that MASSOB was not afraid of the terrorists should they decide to come to the South-East.

He said, “On the killings of Christians in the North by ISIS, ISWAP and Boko Haram, we are prepared for the terrorists. MASSOB is saying that we are prepared to defend our land.

“We cannot watch while they push us to the wall, kill us and kill our children. We have economic opportunities in the South-East; we have enough food here.”

CopyrightPUNCH.
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The Giant Prison of Africa

J. Ezike

BY J. EZIKE

It was a blood-filled season in 2019. Amidst the background scenes of ritual jihads in the defunct establishment that flaunts itself as Nigeria, the world sat, as usual, with bowls of popcorn and bottles of champagne watching and reveling in dark lust. And I wondered again at the hypocrisy of the United Nations and its acclaimed charter that represents the universal expression of freedom and swears to uphold an integrated humanity. For many months, the indignation welled up in me and I tried to process my anger into words of literature and poetic bullets aimed at the conspiracy to keep the black continent in perpetual backwardness. Whenever I am forced within to arm my right hand with a pen and shoot polemics, those who are navigating the slave ship in Africa from Europe and North America are quick to tag me as racist. But then I wondered; what can be more racist than a white man enslaving millions of black men through proxy and keeps them bound in the chains of poverty and hopelessness? What can be more racist than a white man who denies Africans the fundamental human rights he accords to Europeans by ensuring that those elected as “presidential slaves” exact the will of the feudal lords? It is almost as if there is a fetish dream in the consciousness of Europe to forestall the progress of Africa and deny Africans their rightful place. I am just trying to think loud and wide. I am trying to study this racial behavior that predates my conception in April 19/20, 1987. I am trying to make sense of this white man’s psyche that gives him the mental license to think of the black man as an inferior being. If this is not racism, if this is not hate personified then, we must begin to find an explanation to this phenomenon.

There is nothing uniquely unjust in the Nigerian tyranny that has its roots buried deep in earth’s canal. The Fulani actors in Asorock who are only enforcing the colonial impulse of Britain, and exercising the continual dehumanization of the tribal constituents are not intelligent to know that in their desperate attempt to strangle the Igbo man, the Yoruba man and the rest of the 250 ethnic nationalities, he inadvertently brings the knell to his own funeral. The mentality of “Born-to-rule and One-Nigeria,” aspires to the feudalistic sermons of Britain that promotes the destruction of black minds. And when the mind is shackled the body becomes a prisoner. And this is why 200 million “Nigerians” can conveniently allow themselves to be bundled in a messy pile and bolted into false identities and citizenship. This is why they relax themselves with the fate installed upon them by the jailer who acquired the slavehouse from unilever for 865,000 British pounds in 1899 and lumped hundreds of ethnic nationalities into this giant prison of Africa. This is why a “proud slave” will confidently pronounce himself or herself as a “Nigerian” on world stage, unabashed. This is why the ignorance of self and the slavery of mind are visceral. This is why the inhabitants of this giant prison are still grappling with the myth of independence and punished for their “inability to reason” and have allowed their minds to be captured and kept confined by the jailer in Europe. And their crime is attributed to their faulty thought process, their grave mindset that makes their brains handicap.

It was a blood-filled season in 2019. Amidst the background scenes of ritual jihads in the defunct establishment that flaunts itself as Nigeria, the world sat, as usual, with bowls of popcorn and bottles of champagne watching and reveling in dark lust. And I wondered again at the hypocrisy of the United Nations and its acclaimed charter that represents the universal expression of freedom and swears to uphold an integrated humanity. For many months, the indignation welled up in me and I tried to process my anger into words of literature and poetic bullets aimed at the conspiracy to keep the black continent in perpetual backwardness. Whenever I am forced within to arm my right hand with a pen and shoot polemics, those who are navigating the slave ship in Africa from Europe and North America are quick to tag me as racist. But then I wondered; what can be more racist than a white man enslaving millions of black men through proxy and keeps them bound in the chains of poverty and hopelessness? What can be more racist than a white man who denies Africans the fundamental human rights he accords to Europeans by ensuring that those elected as “presidential slaves” exact the will of the feudal lords? It is almost as if there is a fetish dream in the consciousness of Europe to forestall the progress of Africa and deny Africans their rightful place. I am just trying to think loud and wide. I am trying to study this racial behavior that predates my conception in April 19/20, 1987. I am trying to make sense of this white man’s psyche that gives him the mental license to think of the black man as an inferior being. If this is not racism, if this is not hate personified then, we must begin to find an explanation to this phenomenon.

There is nothing uniquely unjust in the Nigerian tyranny that has its roots buried deep in earth’s canal. The Fulani actors in Asorock who are only enforcing the colonial impulse of Britain, and exercising the continual dehumanization of the tribal constituents are not intelligent to know that in their desperate attempt to strangle the Igbo man, the Yoruba man and the rest of the 250 ethnic nationalities, he inadvertently brings the knell to his own funeral. The mentality of “Born-to-rule and One-Nigeria,” aspires to the feudalistic sermons of Britain that promotes the destruction of black minds. And when the mind is shackled the body becomes a prisoner. And this is why 200 million “Nigerians” can conveniently allow themselves to be bundled in a messy pile and bolted into false identities and citizenship. This is why they relax themselves with the fate installed upon them by the jailer who acquired the slavehouse from unilever for 865,000 British pounds in 1899 and lumped hundreds of ethnic nationalities into this giant prison of Africa. This is why a “proud slave” will confidently pronounce himself or herself as a “Nigerian” on world stage, unabashed. This is why the ignorance of self and the slavery of mind are visceral. This is why the inhabitants of this giant prison are still grappling with the myth of independence and punished for their “inability to reason” and have allowed their minds to be captured and kept confined by the jailer in Europe. And their crime is attributed to their faulty thought process, their grave mindset that makes their brains handicap.


I am angry. I am so angry not at the jailer who is simply exercising the aim of survival. Rather, I am angry at the people, I mean the so-called Nigerians who have made themselves the generational stepping stone for European bliss. And have lost the stimulus to respond to their woes through the dictates of their sixth sense. It is this sixth sense that opens their eyes to see beyond the smiling façade of the British feudal barons who would rather prefer that their prisoners shove coal in hell and die away like mosquitoes struck by the hammer of self-genocide than to let go of their investment of 1899. And I have asked this question so many times. Why is it that “Nigerians” have chosen to implore this fate upon themselves? There is a conspicuous absence of resistance, especially by the Yoruba, against the Fulani actors and their primitive politics. Why is it hard to understand that when Northern Nigeria and its caliphate is strangled out of power, the Middle-belt, the South-West and the South-East will extricate themselves from the British prison and chart a new course and realign their sense of Nationhood with the preordained boundaries, cultures and identities prior to colonial pestilence. I think back to the years of 1899-1914 through the eye of history and begin to wonder that if none of the ethnic nationalities gave their unanimous consent to the jailers in Europe then how did we become “Nigerians”? If nations are built on the basis of common language, identical value systems and through the political endorsement of a community of people, then, who on earth gave Britain the audacity to lump us in a prison and purchase our lands for 865,000 pounds and call us by the derogatory name “NiggerAreans” and usurp our economic and political autonomy? Who, I say?

In Nigeria, all we have known is blood and violence. Suffering and Smiling is the lyrics of our national anthem. I look at Nigerians in this mire, in this circus of death and wonder what happened to their sense of anger. I have seen youths in Ohaneze who sing praises to Asorock in order to break bread with thieves. I know ladies in Benin who spread their pillars apart and auction their universal center for peanuts that will fetch them sanitary pads. I know boys in Warri who turned their hard fate into adventures of the grave-hearted and found new love for the thirst of urine to beat the ever-brutish sun of the Sahara. I know families in Onitsha who risked their lineage on the Mediterranean Sea to witness the light of Europe and re-baptize themselves as slaves of the jailers. I have seen masses in Bayelsa and Rivers who know nothing about the signatures of a progressive society and lack experiential knowledge of how the welfare of citizens in sensible worlds are made a priority but can only imagine it through Hollywood pictures. I have felt the palpable agonies of the common man and woman who have fried their tears in the sun of Lagos to feed their starving children. I have seen Enugu and Ebonyi victims victimized again and again by uniformed hounds and killed for sport. I have seen desperate Yorubas who chant “One-Nigeria” but yet in the deepest place of their hearts are secretly nursing the ambition of escaping the brutal hardship and find sanity in a sane society. And all of these people seem to share one thing in common: they all have been naked before the elements of tyranny but do not want to admit the source of their woes and the way out.

In Canada, where I am temporarily domiciled, I have met Yorubas especially in Quebec who admitted that to be a Nigerian is to be a prisoner in one’s own country. These people were once the die-hard promoters of the caliphate-imposed ideology of “One-Nigeria” but suddenly underwent a revival after marveling at the New World’s sense of progressive politics. These people were once chartered accountants, doctors, engineers, pastors etcetera… but are now bent on menial jobs in a desperate attempt to achieve the far-fetched experience of being treated first as humans. They are part of the millions of human talents drained away from their ancestral lands and are forced by economic and political circumstances to nest their dreams in an alien refuge.

It must be said that this giant prison will consume us all if the Yoruba leadership do not subscribe to the “prison break” currently being championed by conscious groups and opinion leaders of IPOB, LNC, OPC, MASSOB. Before we can escape, before we can break away, those of us on the receiving end of the Fulani brutality must push aside sentiments and emotions and wield the sword of survival. I use the word – “sword” deliberately because whether we’ve realized it or not, the Fulani North and its caliphate is on a southward sweep and curse be upon the Yoruba land if a second civil war is born in 2020 as a result of their greed that seats on logic and the urgency of self-preservation. And I have always said that if Tinubu decides to repeat the grave mistake of Awolowo, his descendants will disown his name. This piece will bear me witness in the many years to come.

None of us will escape unscathed when the rain starts to fall because the Fulani knows nothing but divide and conquer. As the call for regional referendum for Biafra, Oduduwa and Middle-Belt is being strategically delayed by Britain – the jailer in Europe, the Christians who are the prisoners in Nigeria continue to fall to the swords of the Fulani whose only import and verifiable talent is terrorism. And whose trade name floats as Miyetti Allah, Fulani Herdsmen, Boko Haram, Maitatsine, Yatatsine and ISWAP. And it is pertinent to state here that in the course of this Dan Fodio-inspired conquest, the Middle-Belt region will be the First Prison House to burn and become the Forgotten Memory. General Theophilus Danjuma will do himself and his people a great favor to break his silence and tell the world what he knows about Asorock. His long-lived political correctness isn’t helping anybody. Those who want to speak should speak or forever remain cowards!

We do not want ceremonial speakers or over-fed billionaires to contaminate our consciousness with their servile diplomacy and loyalty to the Butchers of Men. We mean business. This is a case of life and death. And posterity is at stake. 2019 brought our knees lower to the ground before the North. It gave us reasons to mourn and reasons to question the union on the basis of fact and existence. And the fact is that Nigeria is defunct and the existential truth is that we are prisoners of Britain and the Fulani North. We spurn the ministry of freedom marketed by others at our own detriment. We reject our liberty to the utmost pleasure of the jailer in Europe. We stand to the national anthem for the renewal of our death sentence. And the meek shall become the sheep on the altar of Fulani slaughter.

“Enough is enough” should be our anthem as we walk into 2020. We were battered and stomped out of our farmlands. Our women were raped in the greens of the forests. Bodies beheaded as tribute to the Sokoto Caliphate. Our lands inked with the bloods of our people. Enough is indeed enough. If we do not break away from this prison, this prison will consume thousands of us in 2020. The South and the Middle-Belt have the power to banish the Fulani into memory, to reduce them to a tiny colony. We have all it takes to humble these blood-suckers and commit their pride to the grave. We have what it takes to dispossess them of the steering wheel and navigate the ship of slavery to the House of Referendum. This is not the chess of oil and power. And I want to believe we have outgrown that argument. For when it comes to oil, Biafra is committed towards the arrangement that will see it fit that the oil in our land is funneled to the South-West, the Middle-Belt and the Caliphate North. Those who decide to reject this peaceful option and insist on the continuity of this prison will ultimately unleash a Pandora box of regional conflagration.

May the New Year 2020, bring common sense and strategic unity in the Southern Protectorate as we pursue the good intention of releasing all the ethnic nationalities out of the Giant Prison of Africa.

SOURCE: OPINION NIGERIA

2023 Presidency And The Search For The Igbo Leader

BY DONS EZE/NATIONAL CONCORD 

At the risk of being labelled ethnic jingoists, we have been searching for the leader of the over sixty million Igbo living in this entrapment called Nigeria, and the several million others scattered in all the continents across the globe. This has become necessary in view of the present state of the Igbo, not only in Nigeria, but worldwide.

In our search, we see that the Igbo are like sheep without a shepherd. They are like a ship without an anchor, rudderless. The Igbo no longer have any say in Nigeria. They grumble about marginalization, and about not getting their fair share in the scheme of things.

For the Igbo politicians, they do not seem to have a bearing. They are chattels, articles of trade, being tossed about. Some of them had even regretted ever standing with the Igbo in the past, which they said, had cost them fortunes. For that, they swore never to be with the Igbo again. With eyes on 2023, they decided to turn their backs on the people. But they now seem to have met their Waterloo!

In the meantime, it is either that Femi Fani Kayode, a Yoruba man, speaks for the Igbo, or that Nnamdi Kanu in faraway London, continues to be a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Every other person is dumb, afraid to speak.

We were told that the reason why the Igbo is in such a hopeless situation is because they are republican. “The Igbo have no king”, “Igbo enwe eze”. Every Igbo man is a king in his own right. Nobody is subservient to the other. The people will tell you: “Onye k’ibu?”,” Who are you?” “Esi be gi eje b’onye?”, “Does your house lead to anybody’s home?”

As far as we know, “Igbo were eze”, “Igbo have king”. But the Igbo king is not ready-made. He is not divinely ordained, thrust from the sky or propped by the spirit. The Igbo king is also not David, who was fetched from the field where he was tending his father’s sheep, and made a king.

The Igbo king is work in progress. It is earned. It is worked for. Before you become an Igbo king, or an Igbo leader, you must work for it. You must make sacrifices. You cannot stay in the comfort of your room and become an Igbo king, or Igbo leader. Before you eat an omelet, you must break an egg.

Professor Cyril Onwumechili equates Igbo kingship to “scientific culture”, which recognizes “no kings and chiefs with divine knowledge”. In science as in Igbo, he says, “promotion is by achievement”. Since everybody has the right to attend and express his views in a scientific seminar, in Igbo village assembly, everybody has the freedom to express his views, and decisions arrived at by consensus.

Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe became the Igbo leader even before a reception organized for him and his two other colleagues, Dr, Simeon Onwu and Dr. Akanu Ibiam, as first Igbo university graduates, by the Igbo Union in Lagos in 1934. Mr. Dennis Osadebay who was the first Igbo Union President, did not become the Igbo leader. It was Azikiwe, using his incisive pen and his chain of newspapers, with the West African Pilot as the flagship, that worked himself into the Igbo heart.

He took on the colonialists headlong and also championed the Igbo cause. This automatically made himself the Igbo leader. Azikiwe became the Igbo leader before becoming the leader of NCNC, and he took the Igbo along with him, to that political party.

When Azikiwe left to become the Governor General of Nigeria, he handed the baton over to Dr. Michael Okpara. Okpara did not fold his arms. He led the NCNC to form an alliance with a faction of the Action Group loyal to Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and the Aminu Kano led Northern Elements Peoples Union (NEPU), to form the United Progressives Grand Alliance (UPGA), which he used to consolidate the position of the Igbo in Nigeria. The Igbo then saw Okpara as their leader.

The circumstances of the 1966-1967 crisis forced on Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu to carry the Igbo load. He carried it with every sense of responsibility. Ojukwu sacrificed everything to ensure that Igbo were not wiped out from the surface of the earth. This qualified him to become the Igbo leader.

When Dr. Alex Ekwueme was the Vice President of Nigeria, he was not particularly the toast of the Igbo. But when he went to the Constitutional Conference during the Abacha regime, he began to shine like a million star. It was to Ekwueme’s credit that we now have the present six geopolitical zonal arrangement. He followed it up by leading a group of progressive Nigerians, known as the G.20, which frontally confronted Abacha, and asked him to relinquish political power.

When Abacha died, the G.20 metamorphosed to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), with Ekwueme as their leader, and almost the entire Igbo followed him to the PDP. Even when the PDP denied Ekwueme a Presidential ticket, the Igbo still stuck with the party.

When Odumegwu Ojukwu pitched tent with the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), he succeeded in snatching Anambra and Imo states from the PDP, and maintained a sizeable presence in many other states. APGA became the toast and the hope of the Igbo. But that hope was dashed as soon as Ojukwu departed.

Now, as we journey towards 2023, we begin to search who will lead the Igbo to the Promised Land? We look around, but do not see any. The Igbo are like orphans, no leader. Nobody wants to make sacrifices.

The Igbo have no political base. They are partyless. They are like tenants in the PDP, they have crashed APGA, and they are far away from the APC. Unless there is divine intervention, we do not see any future for the Igbo in 2023.

SOURCE: NATIONAL CONCORD

Igbo Agenda: We Need To Re-Strategize – Obiorah Okonkwo

Obiorah Okonkwo

BY VINCENT UJUMADU

A Chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Dr Obiorah Okonkwo warned weekend that the only way for the Igbo to remain relevant in the Nigeria project was for her people to re-strategize on how to achieve their desired goals under the circumstances they found themselves. Delivering a paper titled, ‘Ndigbo in contemporary Nigeria: Social, Cultural, Political and Economic Reflections’ at the 2019 Umunri Colloquium at Enugwu Ukwu in Njikoka local government area of Anambra State, Okonkwo, who is aspiring to govern Anambra State in 2022, observed that individual achievements of Igbo people could not be equated to the collective achievements of the Igbo nation.

According to him, despite the mansions and individual successes being recorded by the Igbo in all parts of the country, the allegation of marginalization against Igbo had continued because the people were not getting equitable share from the nation’s commonwealth.

He said: “We need to constantly interrogate ourselves in order for us to build a future that will work for the Igbo people. I believe that the sort of individualism that has replaced communalism in Igbo land has left us at the mercy of development. This individualism has left us thinking more about the self than our communities.

“Today we see a new wave of Igbo entrepreneurship, which is a growth from what the Igbo had been known for, namely innovation, ingenuity and risk-taking, which are all core requirements for success in business.

“What has happened is that we have transformed from mere trading in goods to developing and managing big businesses across various sectors. Despite all that, the Igbo people still lament.

“The Igbo must, therefore, quit lamenting and begin to see the opportunities we have missed as new opportunities for growth. If the Igbo political landscape must be reworked, the Igbo must ensure that their businesses lead.

“When we achieve that, then we can use it to swing political power to our advantage. It is simply about using economic power to negotiate political power to your favour, even if you are not the one sitting in the office.

“The central message is that we have to go back to our old values, which is what made us who we are. And we have to look into our leadership selection process. I am advocating selection plus election.

“The system of democracy of all comers has not helped us to produce great leaders who are groomed and who are prepared for the service of the people.

“So, until we get that right, we will continue to have wrong representation in this country and we will continue to lose our grip on the affairs of the nation.

SOURCE: VANGUARD

Igbo Group Bans Chieftaincy Titles In Germany

Ndigbo Germany. Image: Facebook

Ndi-Igbo Germany (N.I.G.), the apex body of all Igbo unions in Germany has placed a ban on the conferment of traditional Igbo titles on its members of the group in Germany.

This is contained in a statement jointly signed by Engr. Oge Ozofor and Mazi Tony Dominic, the coordinator and the general secretary of the group respectively.

The statement which described the practice as an aberration reads: “As custodians of our culture in foreign land, N.I.G from inception has strived to maintain the purity and the essence of our culture. To this end, we have successfully banned all forms of falsification, commercialization or impersonation of Igbo traditional titles of Ozo, Nze, Eze, Onowu or such similar titles here in Germany.

“The conferment of such titles is the prerogative of specific Igbo communities/kingdoms in Igbo land. Such conferment is a celebration and recognition of consistent contributions of positive influence and development made to the specific community or the larger society by the recipient. Chieftaincy or title taking is a personal issue which is based and hinged on particular autonomous communities who could, after the title-taking, address the recipient as Chief, Eze, Ogbuefi, etc of that community.

“In clear text, we want to bring to the notice of the public, all the embassies of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the state governments of all the South-East states, their Ministries of Culture and Chieftaincy Affairs, their State Council of Chiefs and Traditional Rulers that any person, persons parading himself/herself as Ozo, Nze, Ogbuefi, Onowu (XY name) OF GERMANY or such similar tittles are nothing but imposters and impersonators and should be treated as such.

“Ndi-Igbo Germany (N.I.G.) the only authentic apex body of all Igbo unions in Germany does not confer and does not recognize such traditional titles. They are non-existent in Germany.

“Ndi-Igbo Germany is calling on all Ndi-Igbo, both home and abroad to join hands with us and halt this cultural aberration which erodes, cheapens and bastardizes our value system of hard work, honesty, benefits and reward system. We call on all Igbo diaspora groups in the world to join us and take similar stand.’

SOURCE: SUN NEWS ONLINE