Nnamdi Azikiwe "Address To The Igbo People"

 

This address was delivered at the Igbo State Assembly held at Aba, Nigeria, on June 25, 1949. In this address, Nnamdi mentioned the bad press, discrimination and marginalization of Igbos under the British government and called for Igbos to fight for their self-determination but under Nigeria and Cameroon, which will later lead up to the United States of Africa.

Harbingers of a new day for the Ibo nation, having selected me to preside over the deliberations of this assembly of the Ibo nation, I am conscious of the fact that you have not done so because of any extraordinary attributes in me. I realise that I am not the oldest among you, nor the wisest, nor the wealthiest, nor the most experienced, nor the most learned. I am therefore grateful to you for elevating me to this high pedestal.

The Ibo people have reached a cross-road and it is for us to decide which is the right course to follow. We are confronted with routes leading to diverse goals, but as I see it, there is only one road that I can safely recommend for us to tread, and it is the road to self-determination for the Ibo within the framework of a federated commonwealth of Nigeria and the Cameroons, leading to a United States of Africa. Other roads, in my opinion, are calculated to lead us astray from the path of national self-realization.

It would appear that God has specially created the Ibo people to suffer persecution and be victimised because of their resolute will to live. Since suffering is the label of our tribe, we can afford to be sacrificed for the ultimate redemption of the children of Africa. Is it not fortunate that the Ibo are among the few remnants of indigenous African nations who are still not spoliated by the artificial niceties of Western materialism? Is it not historically significant that throughout the glorious history of Africa, the Ibo is one of the select few to have escaped the humiliation of a conqueror’s sword or to be a victim of a Carthaginian treaty? Search through the records of African history and you will fail to find an occasion when, in any pitched battle, any African nation has either marched across Ibo territory or subjected the Ibo nation to a humiliating conquest. Instead, there is record to show that the martial prowess of the Ibo, at all stages of human history, has rivaled them not only to survive persecution, but also to adapt themselves to the role thus thrust upon them by history, of preserving all that is best and most noble in African culture and tradition. Placed in this high estate, the Ibo cannot shirk the responsibility conferred on it by its manifest destiny. Having undergone a course of suffering the Ibo must therefore enter into its heritage by asserting its birthright, without apologies.

Follow me in a kaleidoscopic study of the Ibo. Four million strong in man-power! Our agricultural resources include economic and food crops which are the basis of modern civilisation, not to mention fruits and vegetables which flourish in the tropics! Our mineral resources include coal, lignite, lead, antimony, iron, diatomite, clay, oil, tin! Our forest products include timber of economic value, including iroko and mahogany! Our fauna and flora are marvels of the world! Our land is blessed by waterways of world renown, including the River Niger, Imo River, Cross River! Our ports are among the best known in the continent of Africa. Yet in spite of these natural advantages, which illustrate without doubt the potential wealth of the Ibo, we are among the least developed in Nigeria, economically, and we are so ostracised socially, that we have become extraneous in the political institutions of Nigeria.

I have not come here today in order to catalogue the disabilities which the Ibo suffer, in spite of our potential wealth, in spite of our teeming man-power, in spite of our vitality as an indigenous African people; suffice it to say that it would enable you to appreciate the manifest destiny of the Ibo if I enumerated some of the acts of discrimination against us as a people. Socially, the British Press has not been sparing in describing us as ‘the most hated in Nigeria’. In this unholy crusade, the Daily Mirror, The Times, The Economist, News Review and the Daily Mail have been in the forefront. In the Nigerian Press, you are living witnesses of what has happened in the last eighteen months, when Lagos, Zaria and Calabar sections of the Nigerian Press were virtually encouraged to provoke us to tendentious propaganda. It is needless for me to tell you that today, both in England and in West Africa, the expression ‘Ibo’ has become a word of opprobrium.

Politically, you have seen with your own eyes how four million people were disenfranchized by the British, for decades, because of our alleged backwardness. We have never been represented on the Executive Council, and not one Ibo town has had the franchise, despite the fact that our native political institutions are essentially democratic—in fact, more democratic than any other nation in Africa, in spite of our extreme individualism.
Economically, we have laboured under onerous taxation measures, without receiving sufficient social amenities to justify them. We have been taxed without representation, and our contributions in taxes have been used to develop other areas, Out of proportion to the incidence of taxation in those areas. It would seem that we are becoming a victim of economic annihilation through a gradual but studied process. What are my reasons for cataloguing these disabilities and interpreting them as calculated to emasculate us, and so render us impotent to assert our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

I shall now state the facts which should be well known to any honest student of Nigerian history. On the social plane, it will be found that outside of Government College at Umauhia, there is no other secondary school run by the British Government in Nigeria in Ibo-land. There is not one secondary school for girls run by the British Government in our part of the country. In the Northern and Western Provinces, the contrary is the case. If a survey of the hospital facilities in Ibo-land were made, embarrassing results might show some sort of discrimination. Outside of Port Harcourt, fire protection is not provided in any Igbo town. And yet we have been under the protection of Great Britain for many decades!

On the economic plane, I cannot sufficiently impress you because you are too familiar with the victimization which is our fate. Look at our roads; how many of them are tarred, compared, for example, with the roads in other parts of the country? Those of you who have travelled to this assembly by road are witnesses of the corrugated and utterly unworthy state of the roads which traverse Ibo-land, in spite of the fact that four million Ibo people pay taxes in order, among others, to have good roads. With roads must be considered the system of communications, water and electricity supplies. How many of our towns, for example, have complete postal, telegraph, telephone and wireless services, compared to towns in other areas of Nigeria? How many have pipe-borne water supplies? How many have electricity undertakings? Does not the Ibo tax-payer fulfill his civic duty? Why, then, must he be a victim of studied official victimization?

Today, these disabilities have been intensified. There is a movement to disregard traditional organization in the Ibo nation by the introduction of a specious system of a form of local government. The placing of the Ibo nation in an artificial regionalization scheme has left an unfair impression of attempted domination by minorities of the Ibo people. In the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council the electoral college system has aided in the complete disenfranchisement of the Ibo. As a climax, spurious leadership is being foisted upon us—a mis-leadership which receives official recognition, thus stultifying the legitimate aspirations of the Ibo. This leadership shows a palpable disloyalty to the Ibo and loyalty to an alien protecting power.

The only worthwhile stand we can make as a nation is to assert our right to self-determination, as a unit of a prospective Federal Commonwealth of Nigeria and the Cameroons, where our rights will be respected and safeguarded. Roughly speaking, there are twenty main dialectal regions in the Ibo nation, which can be conveniently departmentalized as Provinces of an Ibo State, to wit: Mbamili in the northwest, Aniocha in the west, Anidinma and Ukwuani in the southeast, Nsukka and Udi in the north, Awgu, Awka and Onitsha in the centre, Ogbaru in the south, Abakaliki and Afikpo in the northwest, Okigwi, Orlu, Owerri and Mbaise in the east, Ngwa, Bende, Abiriba Ohafia and Etche in the southwest. These Provinces can have their territorial boundaries delimited, they can select their capitals, and then can conveniently develop their resources both for their common benefit and for those of the other nationalities who make up this great country called Nigeria and the Cameroons.

The keynote in this address is self-determination for the Igbo. Let us establish an Igbo State, based on linguistic and ethnic factors, enabling us to take our place side by side with the other linguistic and ethnic groups which make up Nigeria and the Cameroons. With the Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri, Yoruba, Ibibio (Iboku), Angus (Bi-Rom), Tiv, Ijaw, Edo, Urhobo, ltsekiri, Nupe, Igalla, Ogaja, Gwari, Duala, Bali and other nationalities asserting their right to self-determination each as separate as the fingers, but united with others as a part of the same hand, we can reclaim Nigeria and the Cameroons from this degradation which it has pleased the forces of European imperialism to impose upon us.

Therefore, our meeting today is of momentous importance in the history of the Ibo, in that opportunity has been presented to us to heed the call of a despoiled race, to answer the summons to redeem a ravished continent, to rally forces to the defence of a humiliated country, and to arouse national consciousness in a demoralized but dynamic nation.

SOURCE

Nnamdi Azikiwe (1961). Zik: A Selection from the Speeches of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Governor-General of the Federation of Nigeria formerly President of the Nigerian Senate formerly Premier of the Eastern Region of Nigeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Arch TV Show Interview With Amaka

ARCH TV INTERVIEW WITH AMAKA QUEENETTE

Amaka Queenette

Views from the Arch TV Show interview Amaka The Igbo Princess February 2022. The interview followed no particular guidelines and covered topics of spirituality, growing up in Saint Louis and the Illuminati.

Interviewer: Good morning Amaka how are you doing today.

Amaka: I am well today thank you so much for asking thank you so much for having me. I’m super psyched to be here.

Interviewer: That’s wonderful so tell me Amaka where exactly are you from? I know you live in Los Angeles right now but where were you born and raised?

Amaka: Well I was born and raised right here in St. Louis Missouri of course. I love my hometown and it’s just so exciting to be back home.

Interviewer: Ok because people refer to you as an Igbo princess like an African queen or something so I wasn’t sure if you were born in Africa and raised in St. Louis. What’s your African connection exactly.

Amaka: I was born and raised in America but I have Igbo heritage that I love to embrace.

Interviewer: Now, what’s Igbo?

Amaka: It is a tribe based out of Nigeria. It’s a culture and language. Most black Americans probably have some Igbo heritage.

Interviewer: Ok that’s cool and I hear you speak a little Igbo too. Let me hear you say something in the Igbo language.

Amaka: Ifunanya

Interviewer: Which means?

Amaka: When learning a new language you have to learn how to say love first.

Interviewer: I agree with this. So Amaka tell me what was it like growing up in St. Louis and how did you manage to escape some of the stereotypical things that occur to people here?

Amaka: Growing up in St. Louis was really fun and I have a lot of family here and they’ve always supported me throughout my entire life. It was always fun playing with my cousins and stuff like that but also the Saint Louis culture can be kind of rough and that definitely made me strong. Early on as a child I realized that a lot of the negatives that come with the city was something I did not want to be apart of so I was able to make the differentiation as a child regarding what I wanted and what I didn’t want and having an understanding of what you want what you don’t want can help take you down the right path so I think that’s how I was able to escape some of the stereotypical things that occur to people here.

Interviewer: Real facts spoken right there. So I listened to some of your music and I’m surprised it was actually really really good I really really like the “Love U” track and the “One Time” hits. Do you write the lyrics to your songs?

Amaka: Hahaha, yes, I definitely write the lyrics to all my songs. All my songs are written with passion and they come from my heart.

Anambra State Is Bleeding

BY CHIKA UNIGWE

What is happening in my beloved Anambra State? The news coming out of the state is heartbreaking. All is not well in the South East but Anambra, particularly, is bleeding furiously and at a terrifying rate. The euphoria that greeted the election of Prof. Soludo is being eclipsed by the barrage of bad news coming out of the state.

I had hoped we could capitalise on the relative calm that surrounded the gubernatorial election itself, and the joy at its outcome to ride into a bright, new dawn. We would show the rest of the South East how to work a state. Sadly, that’s not quite how things are working out.

Every day, there’s more news of attacks and killings and abductions and overall mayhem. Last week alone, about 20 young men were killed by hoodlums at a funeral in Ebenebe, Awka North Local Government, where the corpse was desecrated too. The coffin was allegedly opened and the corpse shot at multiple times and beaten. Some have said those responsible are cultists.

In the same week, as the funeral in Ebenebe was invaded by armed thugs, 84-year-old Prof. I. O. Onyemelukwe was shot and killed by armed men at Oko on his way back from Enugu to Nanka. His daughter, the writer and lawyer, Cheluchi Onyemelukwe, wrote a tender, beautiful eulogy to her brilliant father – who served Anambra State (and Nigeria) as a public servant and as an academic – on Facebook writing that “Despite the circumstances of his death, we are grateful to God for a life well-lived, a joyful feisty life lived every single second, a life committed to doing good…” Per reports, “the gunmen killed Prof. Onyemelukwe in the less than one hour operation, while abducting two men, who were said to have been unable to answer questions about the self-determination struggle of the IPOB.”

The week before the murders at Oko and Ebenebe, the Chairman/CEO of Ofoma Associates Limited, Chief Gab Ofoma, was shot and killed around the Ukpor-Lilu-Orsumoghu-Azia-Mbosi road (which connects Anambra and Imo State) on his way back to Port-Harcourt from his ancestral home in Nnewi. Per an eyewitness’s report on Olisa TV, he was killed probably because “he was riding in an SUV and looked like a ‘big man.”

This week has started with the report of two high profile kidnappings in Ozubulu, and the theft of a car. There is an accompanying video of a man whose singlet has turned red from blood being carried onto an okada, presumably to a hospital for treatment. A Tweeter user in Uyo claims that when his friends from Anambra State visit the state, they forgo their fancy cars for public transport for fear of being victims of kidnappers or car snatchers. There are rumour of students at girls’ school sexually assaulted by some unknown hoodlums. How has this become our new normal? How do we go on like this?

Anambra’s self-designated motto of Light of the nation feels very much like an irony at this point because whatever light Anambra has, is shrouded in darkness. Insecurity all over Nigeria is a problem, but Anambra State seems to be in some sort of scary free fall where unknown gunmen, cultists, hoodlums, gangsters, agitators etc. etc. are operating with brazen impunity, wasting lives at will simply because they can.

The incoming administration of Prof. Soludo will have its hand full if we are to reverse the trend and have some light break through the dark, evil cloud enveloping the state.

Ndi Igbo say that an elder cannot be at home and watch a goat give birth while tethered. Recently, the Anambra State Elders Council met and per an extract of their communique published in the Daily Post: “The Council after an in-depth deliberation of the current security challenges decided that to address the increasing security crisis in the state, advice (sic) that traditional rulers of various communities and president’s-general, as well as religious leader (sic) and all the stakeholders to ensure that the youth imbibe the right values in order (sic) avoid destructive vices like violence and drug abuse.”

With all due respect to the elders, and without access to the entire communique, the time for advising is gone, and now is the time for action. You cannot advise away wanton killing of anyone who “looks like a big man.” Or the desecration of a corpse. Or the invasion of a funeral to kill more people. Or the abduction of those who disagree with your politics.

Anambra has to show that it is serious about security. If not in this present administration under which the evil is expanding, then in the eagerly awaited incoming one. Prof. Soludo has his work cut out for him. He has promised to be a transformational leader, so we are looking to him to bring sanity back to our beloved state. How to do this? A friend whose opinion I respect suggests that once he takes over, Soludo should ask for the deployment of all security forces. If that’s not enough to reverse the trend, then he must introduce vigilante groups.

This is certain: Prof. Soludo will be inheriting huge challenges. I wish him the wisdom, the capability and the willingness to drag Anambra State into the path of sustained healing.

Soludo As Moses Of Igboland?

BY SUNNY IGOANUGO

Chukwuma Charles Soludo

I was one of those who agreed that Chukwuma Charles Soludo, had grown beyond being governor of Anambra State. As one of the star-boys of the Southeast, if not Nigeria, I supported the view that he should rather be gunning to be president.

So, when I heard some people asking, what he is looking for in Anambra, I couldn’t agree more. But beyond this, I also had another personal grudge against him. I wasn’t enamoured of his politics. That I must confess.

Here’s why! I was completely scandalised by his apparent approval of the shenanigan of the crowd in Awka either from the government in power or the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), in recent years, as it seemed to me then.

His notorious statement in the wake of the 2017 governorship election that Anambra was not broken and needed no fixing really did it for me. It practically gnawed at my innards.

Firstly, coming from Anambra I could attest that Soludo’s position was not factual. Anambra was broken on many fronts then and even to a great length. Besides, the manner he emerged APGA candidate for the November 6, 2021 governorship election after the party switched to its invidious tactics of banning potential threats, was for me a confirmation of my worst fears.

But look at me now taking the front seat as a cheerleader. I’ve already gone full circle. His actions and pronouncements are the turning point.

I have begun to see signs that Anambra, my state might, just be on the verge of another clean break, in the same manner Chris Ngige and Peter Obi, broke away from the Chinwoke Mbadinuju parlous era.

Soludo’s high-priced academic credentials have never been the major appeal to me too, because many leaders I know with similar pedigree had failed in the past and are still failing now. We’re currently dealing with one of them in the Southeast, making waves in the media for his many gaffes. The use to which those credentials are to be put, was, for me the important issue.

You can now see why I find the vibes coming from Awka, as quite alluring. One, that Soludo was able to gather the 80-man Oby Ezekwesili-led transition committee in such a jiffy is a feat only a man with immense reach and capacity could.

As Woodrow Wilson, former US president wrote in his book, What is Progress? ”The direction is just as important as the impetus of motion.”

This early hand Soludo has shown looks good. It is a fundamental departure from the current picture in the state. What is more? To think that the eggheads are conducting the task on pro bono basis, also says quite much. Many had wondered from whence Anambra would source the funds to pay them, given their pedigree.

Imagine what this committee, which parades the very best of the Nigeria’s elite thinkers in all the sectors of the economy and the professions is capable of coming out with. And without pay to boot.

Again, the man of the moment hits another bulls eye. He has shunned flamboyance for a lean government structure. He has dumped the tag, Your Excellency for his first name, Charles. “Call me Charles, Charlie, Charlie Nwamgbafo, or Mr. Governor,” he says.

Not a few have complained that in recent years of Governor Willie Obiano, Anambra government house and around it had turned into places of obnoxious revelling, uncontrollable binges and other illicit activities, at the expense of the people’s commonwealth.

In fact, you may have heard that the governor-elect is currently at a loggerheads with the powers in Awka over the budget of his inauguration, insisting that it be cut down from the more than N600million to just N20million and that instead of a fanfare at the new International Conference Centre, in Awka, he would prefer to be sworn in inside government house banquet hall. The way to go, you might say.

But that is not the true picture. Hear the correct version from the man himself: ”I do not wish any event, dancers or players and all that. I just want to show up for work, like every first workday. Though it is going to be a Friday, which is the weekend, I’m going to work for over eight hours that day.

“No ceremony, no event, no party, nothing. Not even 10 Kobo will be spent. So the people who are saying N20million has been budgeted should go and tell us where they will get that money. It is going to be work, work, work, and that is what we’ll epitomise.”

Then the icing on the cake: “If a Pakistani will give us 24 hours of electricity, I will bring him and make him commissioner for utilities. What the people care about is the services they get and not necessarily who did it. We want to get good results here. What matters is the result. Accountability is a must here.” Okwu agwu! Palava finish!

But here comes the bigger task. Outside fixing Anambra, the larger picture is the mandate the governor-elect has been grappling with since July 2017. Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the apex decision-making body of the Igbo in Nigeria and worldwide had handed him with the job of creating the template for transforming the fortunes of Igboland, by designing a new economic and political development agenda for the people.

This task was laid on the shoulders the ex-CBN boss, who is leading a 100-member Planning and Strategy of a body drawn from the seven states under Ohanaeze’s influence – the five core states of Igboland, plus Delta and Rivers.

Named South East Development Company (SEDECO), the body created by former President General of Ohanaeze, Nnia Nwodo, also has the likes of Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, Deputy and Ferdinand Agu, as part of the membership.

But no sooner after, it was beset with lethargy arising from the attitude of the Igbo governors who were supposed to provide it with the financial and political lifelines, achieving very little as a result.

But with Soludo, becoming the governor, the idea, may soon receive the jolt in the arm it requires to give it life once more.

Imagine that all Igbo states are able to grow one million palm trees in each of the states, yearly within the next five years with a corresponding growth of processing industries for the palm produce both on high, medium and small scale levels, maximise its coal resources for power generation. Part of the mandate given to committee is to design the framework for achieving this.

Other items on the card is to take inventory of all mineral resources and design a carefully scripted plan for engaging the federal government in their exploitation; the development of a refinery for petroleum resources; a paradigm shift to greenhouses methodology for vegetable production using the Netherlands experience as a typology and a deliberate policy for the development of ICT hubs in the states of the region to encourage human capital development.

Soludo and his team were also directed to work on the educational curriculum of the zone that would focus on the development of skills among men and women and recommend appropriate policies to states to improve the educational standards in their schools at all levels and growth of reliable financial institutions for mortgage, small scale business financing and research.

Imagine if, as he did with the Ezekwesili committee, he is able to convince and mobilise his colleague-governors to toe this line and therefrom, provide the wherewithal for the attainment of the agenda. How would Ala Igbo turn out before the expiration of his eight years?

He has already demonstrated his ability to mobilise, meaning that transforming Anambra into a dream Taiwan or Dubai, may not be a tall order after all.

If he adds into the kitty, the integration of Igboland to produce a giant economy, given its immense human and natural resources, what else would prevent the area from joining the elite club of a first world?

Indeed, some people believe Soludo already has his job cut for him. For instance, they say that raising N50trillion from Ndigbo is as easy as sleeping and waking up. It only needs someone who knows what keys to press on the piano to produce a melodious tune.

Incidentally, the Soludo committee was Ohanaeze’s response to the quit notice given to Igbo people by some groups in the North in that year. With the signs of social, political, and economic danger still hanging in the air like the sword of Damocles, many believe that an economically-viable Igboland is the buffer to withstand such a threat. With a self-sufficient Igbo enclave, who needs a Nigerian president?

When ala Igbo becomes an economic superpower, who says Nigeria won’t beg them with kolanut and spirits to send them a son for the same redemption? And who is likely to be the one?

Would Soludo be the Moses to lead Ndigbo out of Egypt? The naysayers are already accusing him of talking too much. But what if he matches action with words? Wouldn’t that divide the Red Sea and allow free passage of the people?

What, Exactly, Do Nigerians Want From Ndigbo?

BY IKECHUKWU AMAECHI

THE usual refrain on the lips of Nigerian leaders, particularly those who successfully prosecuted the brutal civil war against the breakaway Biafran Republic is the indivisibility of the country.

One of them, General Ibrahim Babangida, in an interview with Arise Television on August 7, 2021 to mark his 80th birthday anniversary, put it rather bluntly: “When we were in the military, we talked about certain issues about Nigeria: the unity of Nigeria as far as we were concerned was a settled issue.”

While it would have been good if the unity of Nigeria was a settled issue, happenings in the country tend to suggest otherwise unless the unity Babangida and his ilk talk about is the agreement by those who won the war to exclude those that lost.

Otherwise, what kind of unity is it in a country where a people that constitute a significant percentage of the population are hated and despised not for any crime committed but for simply being who they are – Igbo. Two recent events prompted this reflection.

First, was the shameful conversion of the sacred altar of God by a Catholic priest as a launch pad for his vitriol against Igbo congregants in his parish.

On Sunday, February 6, Rev. Fr. James Anelu, the priest-in-charge of Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Ewu-Owa Gberigbe, Ikorodu, Lagos State, abruptly, without provocation, stopped the singing of soul-lifting Igbo choruses and songs during a service he was conducting.

In a video that went viral, the visibly angry clergy pontificated that the excesses of Ndigbo must be curtailed if they are to be kept from “dominating other people in this parish”.

And what was the crime of the Igbo parishioners? They were joyfully singing and dancing to the altar of God during the second collection.

To the embittered and resentful priest, singing Igbo songs in a Catholic church in Yoruba land is an act of domination.

He was so incensed that he uttered a heresy: The spirit of God in any place recognises only languages indigenous to that geographical location.

It is instructive that Fr. Anelu is not Yoruba. If he had enquired about the history of the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, he will probably find out that over 65 per cent of the money used in building the church and running it, including feeding him, was contributed by Igbo parishioners.

Barely 24 hours later, an obviously embarrassed Alfred Adewale Martins, the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, issued a “disclaimer” directing Anelu to proceed on “an indefinite leave of absence”.

In the suspension letter which he personally signed, Archbishop Martins urged all “Catholic faithful to hold on to the faith and continue in our worship of God as one big family united in love and not separated by language, culture and race”.

I doubt if Anelu, wherever he is now, is penitent. He is simply consumed by hate. He is a victim of prejudice. And we commit a serious error of judgement if we think he is an outlier.

The second incident happened in Yola, Adamawa State. An Igbo businessman, Vincent Umeh, who lives in the state, bought a house from a willing seller, Ismail Mamman. Today, he cannot live in the property not because of any infraction of the law but simply because he is Igbo.

A Deputy Commissioner of Police, DCP, Ibrahim Baba Zango, currently serving in Lagos, says it is an insult for an Igbo to be his neighbour in Yola.

Umeh should reverse the purchase deal or face bitter consequences, including risking his life, DCP Babazango decreed. “We are a homogeneous community, I don’t want you; you can’t be my next door neighbour, I swear. What sort of insult is this? Can any Northerner move now to the South-East, say Onitsha and just bump into any neighbourhood to buy a property; just like that?” DCP Babazango asked Umeh on phone.

Such chutzpa may strike some as bizarre. But it is not. Just like Fr. Anelu, DCP Babazango is also not an outlier.

That is the humiliation Ndigbo are subjected to in their own country every day. From Lagos to Sokoto; from Bayelsa to Kebbi, they are being harassed every day for daring to invest and own properties in their own country.

Most times, some of these harassments are state-sanctioned. For instance, two weeks ago, the Kano State Sharia police, Hisbah, destroyed nearly four million bottles of beer in a crackdown on alcoholic beverages. The bottles were crushed into the ground by bulldozers in front of cheering crowds. After the bulldozers had done the job, Hisbah operatives then lit the crushed remains on fire and allowed the blaze to burn into the night.

“Kano is a sharia state and the sale, consumption and possession of alcoholic substances are prohibited,” the head of the religious police, Haruna Ibn Sina, crowed after supervising the mindless ruining of people’s lives.

Most of these businesses being destroyed are owned by Ndigbo. There is no law in Nigeria banning alcohol. Nigeria is deemed a secular state, yet Sharia law trumps the Constitution when Igbo businesses are involved. Nobody raises a whimper in defence of the right of the people to do legitimate business in their own country.

The irony is that just like Fr. Anelu who is sustained by offerings made by his Igbo parishioners, Hisbah officials are paid with money raised from the Value Added Tax, VAT, paid on the same alcoholic beverages they destroy with glee.

Those who blame Nnamdi Kalu and his Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, mentees for preaching secession ignore the asinine antics of Fr. Anelu and DCP Babazangos of this country, the same way those who blame Chukwuemeka Odimegwu-Ojukwu for declaring an independent Biafran nation in 1967 conveniently gloss over the waves of pogrom that resulted in the killing of thousands of innocent Igbo folks, patriotic Nigerians, most of them born in the North, with no other place to call home until the well-organised slaughter began in 1966.

Between May and October 1966, more than 30,000 Igbos and other Biafrans were killed in Northern Nigeria, and between October 1966 and June 1967 more than 100,000 more were massacred. In some instances pregnant women were killed, unborn babies pulled out of their wombs and murdered as well. Many of the victims were beheaded.

Those who defend that bestiality by invoking the equally condemnable killings in the January 15, 1966 coup conveniently ignore the fact that the Military Head of State and Supreme Commander of the Nigerian Army, Major-General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, and the cream of the Igbo officer corps were wiped out in the revenge coup of July 29, 1966.

They also forget that long before the January 15, 1966 coup, which was conveniently branded an Igbo putsch by those who had an extermination agenda, pogrom had been the lot of Ndigbo in the North.

A report, “Chronology of recorded killings of Biafrans in Nigeria: From June 22, 1945 to September 28, 2013”, put it this way: “The first incident in which the murder of Igbo people took place in Nigeria was in Jos on June 22, 1945. Hundreds of Ndigbo were murdered by the Hausa-Fulani during the pogrom and tens of thousands of pounds sterling worth of their property either looted or destroyed. No single person was apprehended or charged by the British regime nor an enquiry set to determine the “official” cause of this gruesome act.

“The second mass killing of Igbos and other Biafrans happened in Kano in 1953. In both cases, thousands of Igbo people with their families were brutally murdered and their property looted.”

What those who raise the spectre of Igbo domination simply because Ndigbo are everywhere forget is that the people love adventure. It did not start today and it is very unlikely to end tomorrow. Many Igbo leaders were born outside Igboland. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was born in Zungeru, a town in Niger State, on November 16, 1904, ten years before Nigeria’s birth after the amalgamation in 1914. Odumegwu-Ojukwu was born in the same Zungeru on November 4, 1933.

The fact is that Ndigbo love travelling. They enjoy it. That is who they are. Do they dominate their environments? No. Rather, they help in building up wherever they sojourn. That is a virtue not a vice, which should not call for envy and bad blood.

If all other Nigerians can imbibe that culture, the country will be better for it. Those who don’t want Ndigbo out of Nigeria and yet will not allow them to enjoy their full rights as citizens are the problems of this country, not Ndigbo.

How The media Failed Japan’s Most Vulnerable Immigrants

 

BY DREUX RICHARD

TOKYO (JAPAN TODAY) - The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a strange institution. It’s responsible for the way Japan is perceived abroad, and it decides who receives the opportunity to immigrate. But its jurisdiction over the lives of immigrants largely vanishes when they reach Japan. It’s also the most influential agency that does not play a meaningful role in developing the government’s legislative agenda. Senior MoFA officials can only watch in dismay as less prestigious agencies, including some of Japan’s most corrupt, devise legislation that erodes the rights of immigrants and damages Japan’s international reputation.

A proposed overhaul of Japan’s detention system, scuttled in 2021 after the death of detainee Wishma Rathnayake and a resulting wave of protests, was especially unpopular with Japanese diplomats. The Kishida administration has revived it anyway, with parliamentary debate anticipated this summer. Until recently, MoFA relied on the press to guard against legislative aggression toward immigrants, quietly passing sensitive information to reporters who covered the Ministry of Justice, which enforces immigration law.

According to MoFA officials who acted as my sources during the 10 years I covered immigration, their current reluctance to cooperate with journalists is related to the sense, among the agency’s staff, that the media has become “much louder, but much less effective” on issues of immigration.

The officials I spoke with traced this problem to 2019, when a detainee starved to death at a detention center in Nagasaki, following a four-week hunger strike.

The Ministry of Justice cleared the detention center of wrongdoing, issuing a report that contained several defamatory statements about the detainee. He was not, as the ministry’s findings suggested, a hardened criminal or a deadbeat father—not according to court records, not according to his family.

The report went on to claim that it wasn’t possible to return the detainee to Nigeria because he refused to cooperate with the deportation process in January 2019. But the report also documented a meeting in May of 2019 where the detainee begged to be deported. As one MoFA official dryly observed, “May comes after January.”

The death was covered in Japan’s major newspapers, as well as a variety of global outlets. All of them printed the government’s claims without attempting to verify them. Not a single reporter succeeded in confirming the identity of the detainee, a native of southeastern Nigeria who came to Japan 19 years earlier to look for work in the leather tanneries of Hyogo Prefecture. His name was Gerald “Sunny” Okafor.

An important story about the destruction of a family was overlooked. Okafor’s widow, who is deaf, struggled to raise her daughter alone after her husband was detained, pushing her to the brink of psychological collapse. Immigration officials took advantage of her vulnerability, pressuring her to file for divorce and promising—disingenuously—that it would expedite Okafor’s release.

The media also failed to uncover administrative malpractice at the detention center, which led Mr. Okafor to believe that steps were being taken to expedite his return to Nigeria. After learning this wasn’t true, he refused to receive intravenous fluids, precipitating his death. The Nigerian embassy helped the Ministry of Justice cover up these mistakes, leaving a paper trail in Okafor’s immigration file.

The success of this cover-up has undermined the best opportunity to sink the proposed immigration reforms, which were developed in response to Okafor’s death. The reforms are based on the insulting notion that the detention center could have saved Okafor if it had possessed greater powers of coercion—the power to sanction his attorneys, for instance, if they pushed too aggressively for their client’s release.

But the press has helped to turn Okafor’s death into a non-story, by disseminating state propaganda that diminishes the death’s significance, then responding to that propaganda with opinion essays instead of investigations.

“The media approaches the immigration debate as an ideological matter, rather than a test of the integrity of Japan’s institutions,” observed one MoFA official who monitored Mr. Okafor’s case. “That’s not helpful to people in government who are trying to fix the system, because it doesn’t change anybody’s mind. It only inflames existing disagreements.”

If disobeying the instructions of immigration officials becomes a criminal offense, as the government has now proposed, it will be made possible by the collapse of non-partisan relationships between trustworthy elements of Japan’s government and their counterparts in the press.

In an era of journalism where editorial decisions are shaped by web traffic and algorithms, the loss of knowledgeable sources may not strike every media professional as a matter of concern. Reporters didn’t need to speak with anyone who knew Mr. Okafor in order to write about him, or to decide that it was no longer necessary to write about him — even as parliament debated legislation that resulted from his death.

“They got the answers they needed,” Okafor’s widow observed in our most recent correspondence. “And in such a convenient way: from no one, from nowhere.”

For six years, Dreux Richard covered Japan’s Nigerian community for a daily newspaper in Tokyo. His first book, Every Human Intention: Japan in the New Century, was published by Pantheon in 2021.

© Japan Today

Japanese Media And The Ghost Of Sunny Okafor—Nigerian Immigrant Who Starved To Death In Protest

"But the press has helped to turn Okafor’s death into a non-story, by disseminating state propaganda that diminishes the death’s significance, then responding to that propaganda with opinion essays instead of investigations."

BY DREUX RICHARD

Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) is a strange institution. It’s responsible for the way Japan is perceived abroad, and it decides who receives the opportunity to immigrate. Senior MoFA officials can only watch in dismay as less prestigious agencies, including some of Japan’s most corrupt, devise legislation that erodes the rights of immigrants and damages Japan’s international reputation. A proposed overhaul of Japan’s detention system, scuttled in 2021 after the death of detainee Wishma Rathnayake and a resulting wave of protests, was especially unpopular with Japanese diplomats. Until recently, MoFA relied on the press to guard against legislative aggression toward immigrants, quietly passing sensitive information to reporters who covered the Ministry of Justice, which enforces immigration law. According to MoFA officials who acted as my sources during the 10 years I covered immigration, their current reluctance to cooperate with journalists is related to the sense, among the agency’s staff, that the media has become “much louder, but much less effective” on issues of immigration. The officials I spoke with traced this problem to 2019, when a detainee starved to death at a detention center in Nagasaki, following a four-week hunger strike. The Ministry of Justice cleared the detention center of wrongdoing, issuing a report that contained several defamatory statements about the detainee. He was not, as the ministry’s findings suggested, a hardened criminal or a deadbeat father—not according to court records, not according to his family. The report went on to claim that it wasn’t possible to return the detainee to Nigeria because he refused to cooperate with the deportation process in January 2019. But the report also documented a meeting in May of 2019 where the detainee begged to be deported. As one MoFA official dryly observed, “May comes after January.” The death was covered in Japan’s major newspapers, as well as a variety of global outlets. All of them printed the government’s claims without attempting to verify them. Not a single reporter succeeded in confirming the identity of the detainee, a native of southeastern Nigeria who came to Japan 19 years earlier to look for work in the leather tanneries of Hyogo Prefecture. His name was Gerald “Sunny” Okafor. An important story about the destruction of a family was overlooked. Okafor’s widow, who is deaf, struggled to raise her daughter alone after her husband was detained, pushing her to the brink of psychological collapse. Immigration officials took advantage of her vulnerability, pressuring her to file for divorce and promising—disingenuously—that it would expedite Okafor’s release. The media also failed to uncover administrative malpractice at the detention center, which led Mr. Okafor to believe that steps were being taken to expedite his return to Nigeria. After learning this wasn’t true, he refused to receive intravenous fluids, precipitating his death. The Nigerian embassy helped the Ministry of Justice cover up these mistakes, leaving a paper trail in Okafor’s immigration file. The success of this cover-up has undermined the best opportunity to sink the proposed immigration reforms, which were developed in response to Okafor’s death. The reforms are based on the insulting notion that the detention center could have saved Okafor if it had possessed greater powers of coercion—the power to sanction his attorneys, for instance, if they pushed too aggressively for their client’s release. But the press has helped to turn Okafor’s death into a non-story, by disseminating state propaganda that diminishes the death’s significance, then responding to that propaganda with opinion essays instead of investigations. “The media approaches the immigration debate as an ideological matter, rather than a test of the integrity of Japan’s institutions,” observed one MoFA official who monitored Mr. Okafor’s case. “That’s not helpful to people in government who are trying to fix the system, because it doesn’t change anybody’s mind. It only inflames existing disagreements.” If disobeying the instructions of immigration officials becomes a criminal offense, as the government has now proposed, it will be made possible by the collapse of non-partisan relationships between trustworthy elements of Japan’s government and their counterparts in the press. In an era of journalism where editorial decisions are shaped by web traffic and algorithms, the loss of knowledgeable sources may not strike every media professional as a matter of concern. Reporters didn’t need to speak with anyone who knew Mr. Okafor in order to write about him, or to decide that it was no longer necessary to write about him — even as parliament debated legislation that resulted from his death. “They got the answers they needed,” Okafor’s widow observed in our most recent correspondence. “And in such a convenient way: from no one, from nowhere.” For six years, Dreux Richard covered Japan’s Nigerian community for a daily newspaper in Tokyo. His first book, Every Human Intention: Japan in the New Century, was published by Pantheon in 2021. This article originally appeared in Japan Today and has been edited for our audience.

Now That The Southeast Is Burning

"Even a 90-minute trip from Onicha to Owere seems like a death wish. Those who are alive are robbed of sleep. Those unlucky are robbed of life."

BY MITTERAND OKORIE

Southeastern Nigeria is witnessing a baptism of blood, sweat and tears. For a region known as Nigeria's most peaceful not long ago, its slide into wanton state and non-state violence is a reality of grave concern. The actors are variegated, as are the typologies of the violence: assassinations and targeted killing of law enforcement officers; citizens terrorized by sit-at-home enforcers; indiscriminate arrests and extra-judicial killings by military forces; contract killing and armed robberies, etc.



People travelling in tinted SUVs do so at grave personal risk today. Worse still if they're travelling with police or army escort. Others going about their businesses are also unsafe. Even a 90-minute trip from Onicha to Owere seems like a death wish. Those who are alive are robbed of sleep. Those unlucky are robbed of life.



This sorry path was a destination foretold and forewarned, but there is certainly enough blame to go round. There is the inertia caused by poor governance in the region. We have governors who do not pay salaries, who owe pensioners, who do not create employment, who do not respond to the open extortion of their citizens by police officers. They also failed to respond to the loss of lives in Igbo communities at the hands of Fulani-herder militias. Their lack of legitimacy created the vacuum that Nnamdi Kanu occupied and exploited.




Read Also: Nnamdi Kanu: A visit to the Afaraukwu monument of bullet holes



Then you have IPOB/ESN, whose agents felt the only way to assert their grievances and those of the region was to burn down police stations and target security agents. It seemed like a good gamble to endure since no one loved the police, and the Fulani herders were run out of our bushes. Finally, there is Buhari's government breaching international law to rendition Kanu to Nigeria and initiate a contrived trial. Sure, the violence preceded Kanu's rendition, but his shambolic trial made it worse. One mustn’t forget the multiple jailbreaks across the region, which unleashed into the society, people who are supposed to be locked up.



At first, many in the region quickly rationalized the utility of IPOB/ESN's actions, even as the group treated the Southeast like their personal gulag. Some even believed they were exercising freewill solidarity towards the Biafran course. But the danger of riding a tiger is that one can easily end up in the animal's belly. To disagree with IPOB was to be called names and, in some cases, threatened. We heard all kinds of silly rationalizations for their crude strategies. Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela were even dubiously cited as justification for the carnage in our land.

The escalation of danger to the present precipice reminds me of the boiling frog theory. The theory holds that the frog reacts to a pot of boiling water in two ways. If the frog is suddenly thrust into steaming water, it will immediately jump out. However, if the animal is put into water which is then boiled slowly, it will not perceive the danger. Instead, it will keep adjusting to the temperature of the boiling pot until it is cooked to death. The provenance of this claim is not known, but it serves as a relevant metaphor for how an entire region somnambulated in the face of danger until it is too late. Even politicians shamelessly sought to take advantage of IPOB's seeming popularity despite their misguided tactics. Some of us also took refuge in our silence and said nothing. We watched people conveniently declare after every attack that it is the work of the DSS. We cowardly denied the truth of our own eyes and chose the warmth of a convenient lie.




Read Also: Under IPOB's present reign, Ndigbo have the foretaste of a different Biafra



Things have now come to a head. The Southeast is now a custodian of some of the most lethal elements in the country. Too many faceless killers, too many unknown gunmen and too many unknown soldiers. Neither life nor property is safe, no matter the lies we try to tell ourselves. Without some modicum of certainty and normalcy, a society begins to fold into itself. When this happens, people and investments flee. Those who stay are often unable to commit their resources to the land. Those who flee do so with pain and trauma that may take a lot of time to heal. Slowly and steadily, such a land surrenders its promise to the dark forces that have cordoned it from light. We may act like all is well, but we are just ignoring the corpses piling up in our courtyards. It does not change the reality.



With 2023 elections fast approaching, Buhari has the Southeast region, which he hates so much, where he wants it. He knows that IPOB is now a fragmented entity, laden with internal squabbles. It cannot bring under control the violence it started. All manner of killers now operate under their logo, with or without their permission. It is a lesson of how not to start what you cannot finish.



Buhari knows that the impetus of the Biafran agitation has now been muddied, if not overtaken by an orgy of senseless violence. He needn't worry about Nigeria's territorial integrity anymore. He has taken a ringside seat to watch the region crumble and burn. Campaign season will soon commence, and politicians and their supporters will be doing so at enormous risk. An unimaginable apathy may plague election turnout. The danger is that even if people braved the climate of fear to vote, a shady INEC will have found sufficient alibi to underreport the numbers. For a region struggling to pull its weight nationally, our shackles only seem to be multiplying.





In a time like this, the age-old Igbo adage that says, "onye ajuru anaghi aju onwe ya" comes to mind, and I dare add, provides some comfort. The Southeast must rise and free itself from the pestilence of its current captors, whomever they may be.

Dance Film Depicting Igbo Creation Story Makes Pittsburgh Premiere

A still from "Obi Mbu"

BY BILL O'DRISCOLL

PITTSBURG (WESA FM) - While exploring his African roots, Nigerian-Swedish artist Mikael Owunna discovered that even many of his family members in Nigeria had never heard some of the stories that might be considered foundational to their culture.

Take the tale he and co-director Marques Redd tell in “Obi Mbu (The Primordial House): An Igbo Creation Myth,” their 30-minute experimental dance film making its Pittsburgh premiere Fri., Feb. 25, at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater.

The story concerns the male deity Chukwu and the female deity Eke-Nnechukwu, whose relationship goes from unity in the blackness of space to a state of discord and separation that brings the world into existence. The two characters are played, wordlessly, by Corey Bourbonniere and Victoria Watford, two Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre dancers who – in photographer Owunna’s signature style – are adorned with streaks of body paint and photographed under ultraviolet light so as to suggest cosmic beings.

Owunna, who grew up in Pittsburgh, is the son of a Nigerian-Swedish mother and Nigerian father, and learned of this creation story through research, some of it conducted with Redd, an independent scholar based in Pittsburgh. But he discovered that for many Igbo people in Nigeria, colonization and other factors had erased much knowledge of traditional belief systems. That loss was further confirmed in a moving episode that followed the film’s world premiere, in September, at ClampArt gallery, in New York City.

“After the screening, an Igbo woman from Nigeria came up to me and she was almost moved to tears, and told me how meaningful it was for her to see and also learn her creation story for the first time,” said Owunna.

Owunna, a photographer with a growing international profile, began the film as pandemic project – a COVID-safe way to transition from still imagery to live performance. “Obi Mbu” was shot entirely in one small room in his Uptown studio, with movement direction by Ursula Payne, and sound design by Herman Pearl, aka Soy Sos. The project was supported by the Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh Grants Program, a partnership of The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments.

“Obi Mbu” has no dialogue, with just a bit of on-screen text to orient viewers. “We wanted the expressivity of the movement, of the art, of the images that you see on the walls of the set to really push the story forward,” said Redd.

Since that premiere, in New York, the film has also screened in Los Angeles, and Raleigh, North Carolina. It was all part of a big year for Owunna, who also did his first public artwork, right here in Pittsburgh – including a permanent, mural-sized photo Downtown – and his first solo exhibition, in New York.

The Pittsburgh premiere is 7 p.m. Fri., Feb 25. It’s followed by a panel discussion featuring the creative team.

Admission is $10 to $25 on a “pay what moves you” sliding scale. More information is here.

Retooling Igbo Language In Era Of Digital Pedagogy

BY UCHENNA AGBEDO

Image: Reddit

Today, the 21st day of February 2022, the United Nations through its organ, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) marks the International Mother Language Day (IMLD) originally proclaimed by the General Conference of UNESCO in November 1999, a special day which the UN General Assembly ratified in its Resolution of 2002. Following that landmark proclamation, the United Nations General Assembly, had in its resolution A/RES/61/266 of 16 May 2007, enjoined Member States “to promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world”. The UN General Assembly, by the same resolution proclaimed the following year, 2008 as the International Year of Languages, to “promote unity in diversity and international understanding, through multilingualism and multiculturalism,” thus designating UNESCO as the lead agency for the Year.

International Mother Language Day is driven by the mindset, which not only recognises language and multilingual education as veritable catalysts for inclusiveness, but also advances the Sustainable Development Goals’ focus on leaving no one behind. This tallies with UNESCO’s position that “education, based on the first language or mother tongue, must begin from the early years as early childhood care and education is the foundation of learning”.

Contemporary times have witnessed rebounding consciousness about the centrality and primacy of language in guaranteeing cultural diversity and intercultural dialogic exchanges, strengthening cooperation and attaining quality education for all, building all-inclusive knowledge societies, preserving cultural heritage, as well as galvanising political will for deploying the limitless resources of science and technology to sustainable development. It is against this background that this year’s theme – ‘Using technology for multilingual learning: Challenges and opportunities’ – speaks to the potential role of technology in advancing multilingual education and supporting the development of an all-inclusive quality pedagogy. This represents a clarion call on policy makers, educators and teachers, parents and families to scale up their commitment to mother tongue education, and inclusion in education to advance education recovery especially in the context of post-COVID-19 pandemic. It is in sync with the 2019 Cali Commitment to Equity and Inclusion in Education and the United Nations International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032), which places multilingualism at the heart of indigenous peoples’ development with UNESCO as the arrowhead.

Digital pedagogy, which derives its roots from the Constructivism Theory, is the use of contemporary digital technologies in teaching and learning. As a type of digital education tool (also referred to as Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) or e-Learning) that is applicable to online, hybrid and face-to-face learning environments, this innovative use of digital tools and technologies during teaching and learning, has collaboration, playfulness/tinkering, focus on process and building as its key components. One of such digital tools is the Digital Pedagogy Toolkit designed by Jisc’s Digital Practice Team led by Chris Thomson, meant to support academic staff to make informed choices about how they use technology to underpin the curriculum, provide ideas and inspiration for how staff can overcome barriers to using technology, promote current approaches in curriculum design theory to ensure technology meets the learning outcomes of the course, module or programme of study, dispel a range of misconceptions about what can and cannot be achieved by using technology. As a challenge-based approach, the toolkit presents a series of scenarios based in real-world situations that institutions have been grappling with such as delivering live online learning with students, designing engaging VLE courses or managing digital communities of practice, and describes areas of digital practice one may want to develop.

Perhaps, advocating the deployment of digital tools that provide for synchronous and asynchronous Igbo pedagogical platforms may sound outlandish or utopian in the light of near or total absence of strong web presence in most hinterland communities of Igbo land. This is not excluding other daunting challenges bordering on skills, motivation, knowledge and environmental factors, dearth of digital competencies and support staff, lack of staff’s access to required digital tools, absence of guidelines, key policies and measures for evaluating the effectiveness of online delivery, for instance, as well as monitoring and managing learner expectations.

Nonetheless, as herculean as these challenges may sound, digital pedagogy remains the way to go. There is no viable alternative course of action for rolling back the digital pedagogy revolution ignited by digital technologies. Following a rash of school closures in 2020 precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the world employed technology-driven solutions to ensure continuity of teaching and learning. The ugly experiences of many learners in developing societies such as Africa, who lacked the requisite Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) that would have facilitated distance learning, might have diminished the pedagogic relevance of technology. However, it is a proven fact that technology holds all the aces in addressing a great deal of education’s greatest challenges today in the light of its pivotal role in reinventing equitable and inclusive lifelong learning opportunities for all as guided by UNESCO’s core principles of inclusion and equity, hence the strong emphasis on mother tongue education, which represents a key component of inclusion in education.




The foregoing underscores the urgency of exploring technologies and their potential in enhancing the role of teachers in the teaching and learning of the Igbo language.

Herein lies the inescapable option of Igbo digital pedagogy if the language and its owners hope to escape the rampaging proboscis of globalisation currently gobbling up their rich tapestry of cultural heritage, and indeed all the valuable resources that are of strategic importance for preserving their unique modes of thinking and expression, identity construction, in-group integration, education and development.

The gloomy UNESCO report suggests that a language disappears every two weeks, taking with it an entire cultural and intellectual heritage’ with not less than 43 per cent of the estimated 6000 languages spoken in the world being endangered.

Regrettably, the Igbo language belongs to this hapless league of endangered languages, whether considered from the theoretical prism of Joshua Fishman’s (1991) Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS), which recognises the degree to which intergenerational transmission of the language remains intact as the key factor in gauging the relative safety of an endangered language or Lewis & Simons’ (2010) Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS) that evaluates a language’s literacy acquisition status, identity function, state of intergenerational language transmission, vehicular and a societal profile of its generational use.

Going by the UNESCO’s template for global assessment of the state of world’s languages, Igbo falls within Level 7 of both Fishman’s GIDS and Lewis & Simons’ EGIDS and meets UNESCO’s criterion for fitting into an ‘endangered language’ frame, which states that “the child-bearing generation knows the language well enough to use it with their elders but it is not transmitting it to their children.”

It is in the light of the unfolding scenario in the global linguistic ecosystem that we have observed elsewhere that language endangerment is a serious social problem, which has elicited clarion calls from renowned language scholars for owners of such languages to develop renewed interests in their languages as one effective way of reversing the ugly trend.

In particular, foremost Nigerian linguists, Ayo Bamgbose (Professor Emeritus) and Professor Nọlue Emenanjọ (of blessed memory) had expressed a consensual view that “the fate of an endangered language may well lie in the hands of the owners of the language themselves and in their will to make it survive”.

As it concerns the Igbo language, Centre for Igbo Studies (CIS), University of Nigeria, has been in the vanguard spearheading fine-honed advocacy for reimagining Igbo studies. Its Igbo Ezue colloquium – a linguo-cultural renaissance featuring homecoming of Ndigbo in Homeland and the Diaspora cum maiden international conference – slated for the last quarter of the year 2022, represents one of such practical steps towards igniting emotional commitment in Ndigbo to promote, develop and sustain their language and cultural heritage.

Furthermore, we argue for the practical implementation of the mother tongue policy of UNESCO. As it concerns Igbo in our educational institutions, for instance, we call for the immediate formulation and implementation of a policy that makes Igbo language a compulsory subject in primary/secondary schools in Southeast states and a credit pass in Igbo as a precondition for admission into tertiary institutions in Igboland; mounting of Use of Igbo as a course in the General Studies programme of tertiary institutions in the Southeast region of Nigeria; reward system in form of scholarship schemes for students who elect to study Igbo in higher institutions and automatic employment on graduation.

These steps align with the consensus among language scholars and researchers that appropriate measures must be taken to ensure the maintenance of languages by way of revitalisation and spare them the frightful prospects of endangerment, attrition and outright death. The case of Igbo is not different.

Therefore, as the world marks this year’s International Mother Language Day, it presents an auspicious moment for Ndigbo to reflect on the endangered character of their God-given language (for which almost everybody is currently bemoaning listlessly) and make a resolute commitment to change the unsavoury narrative through the instrumentality of digital pedagogy, which accords Igbo a rightful place in education systems, the public domain and digital space; as well as practical implementation of the UNESCO’s mother tongue policy as it concerns the Igbo language, literature and culture. Perhaps, in this way, the significance of International Mother Language Day would have rubbed off on Igbo and by extension reformatted its motherboard; rebooted its floundering gait; rekindled its dwindling embers; and re-gigged the waning interest of Ndigbo in their mother language.

Agbedo is a Professor of Linguistics and Director, Centre for Igbo Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Killings By Unknown Gunmen: Is South-East Becoming A Failed Zone?

BY STEVE OKO, VANGUARD

The resurgence of the activities of the ominous unknown gunmen in the South-East geopolitical zones in the recent weeks is becoming worrisome.

Unknown gunmen became a phenomenon in the zone in the aftermath of the #EndSARS protests in 2020, got to an alarming height up till mid-2021 but began to show a downward curve before the end of the same year.

However, with the recent incidents in some communities in the zone particularly Imo, Ebonyi, and lately Abia (a hitherto relatively peaceful state), it is no longer in doubt that the unknown gunmen are on the prowl again in the region which prided itself as the most peaceful, enterprising and resourceful in the country.

The inability of the government to unravel the mystery behind this or to unveil the real identity of the masterminds of this group has also not helped matters, and in fact, is to blame for its persistence.

There has been a blame game between security agencies and the agitators of self-determination in the zone on who is behind the octopus masquerade and whose interests it serves.

While Government continues to point accusing fingers at the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, the pro-Biafra group has not minced words in their allegation that security agents in collaboration with some “treacherous governors” in the zone are sponsoring the activities of the group to disrepute, discredit and demonise IPOB, and ultimately justify the on-going clamp down on the group especially the Eastern Security Network, ESN.

There have also been allegations that the festering insecurity in the zone is politically motivated.

The mode of operation of these unknown gunmen in some instances leaves members of the public more confused on who actually is behind the mysterious masquerade.

For instance, could security agents really be the ones killing their colleagues to create a certain impression?

But another disturbing poser is: could agitators of self-determination truly be burning down houses of fellow folks as recently witnessed in Imo communities and in the Mgbowo community of Enugu State where men in security uniforms were conspicuously observed in a viral video carrying out these atrocities with impunity?

Who are truly the people behind the mysterious unknown gunmen?

Despite the narratives of each of the sides, the fact remains that South East is burning! The fire is ragging so fast that if nothing urgent is done to extinguish the inferno, the entire zone will soon be consumed.

In less than two weeks unknown gunmen killed security agents on roadblocks in Enugu, a number of houses in Umuonyeoka Community in Ihitteafoukwu, Ahiazu Mbaise Local Government Area of Imo State were burnt down by armed men suspected to be law enforcement agents.

The “unknown gunmen” reportedly razed residential houses belonging to one Sonyval and Chinonso Madu, siblings of one Mr Uche Madu, who is alleged to be a member of ESN.

According to reports, the unknown gunmen stormed the area in seven cars shooting sporadically before heading to the Uche Madu compound.

A community source, who pleaded anonymity, told newsmen that “they came to apprehend Mr Uche Madu and when they couldn’t get him, all hell was let loose and they allegedly descended on the country home of his siblings, Sonyval and Chinonso Madu, which they set ablaze without allowing even a single pin to be evacuated from the building.”

Following the magnitude of damage inflicted on innocent folks in the community, the House of Representatives had mandated the Inspector General of Police, IGP; as well as the Chief of Army Staff, COAS, to investigate the incident and ascertain the true identify of the masterminds.

Despite denials of any involvement by the security agencies in the atrocity, what doesn’t add up is how armed men in seven vehicles would storm a community, operate for about two hours unchallenged, and disappear into the thin air without a trace.

It is certainly an ominous sign of a failed state!

There have also been calls for a probe of the alleged involvement of the operatives of Ebubeagu regional security outfit in the mystery unknown gunmen.

A coalition of South-East Youth Leaders, COSEYL, has called for their arrest describing their actions as “wicked and barbaric.”

The youth group while condemning the overzealousness of the security apparatus, expressed displeasure on the alleged jungle justice being meted out to suspects.

COSEYL in a statement by its President-General, Goodluck Ibem, over last week’s incident in Imo State called for the investigation and prosecution of the group over the barbarity.

”We are not in the stone age where anyone or persons will wake up one morning, accuse someone of being a criminal and kill the said person.

“We are in the 21st century where we have the rule of law and the constitution guarding the people and government activities as regards governance. For Ebubeagu security operatives to wake up and start killing Igbo youths in whatever guise is totally unacceptable.

“Most of the houses in the affected communities have been burnt down and destroyed while the little few persons who escaped being killed have run away leaving those communities empty without anyone or animal sited anywhere. Those towns are now ghosted communities, without any living thing.

“One of the disturbing incidences in the community was a situation where a woman received matchets cuts in her head, hand and other parts of her body because of her inability to provide her husband or tell the Ebubeagu operatives where her husband went to.

“This is unbecoming of a sane society. Ndi-Imo and Ndi-Igbo must rise and condemn in its entirety this despicable act by these so-called Ebubeagu security operatives.

“The courts remain the last arbiter and no one has the constitutional right or powers to take the life of another man at will. It is unlawful and a criminal act to torture, maim or kill anyone on the premise of being a criminal.

“Houses and properties that were destroyed in those Communities, which court gave such orders? These operatives just assumed the duties of the courts and went ahead to destroy peoples homes and assets without recourse to the law of the land. Too sad.

“We warn those Ebubeagu security operatives to stop forthwith the extrajudicial killings now and we demand that those found wanting or culpable of extrajudicial killings in Imo State should be made to face the music. Enough said,” COSEYL warned.

South-East governors are yet to be forgiven by the people over the shabby way and manner they handled the inauguration of Ebubeagu contrary to the yearnings of majority folks that preferred a regionally coordinated security outfit. The governors are being accused of hijacking the Ebubeagu outfit and working in cahoots with the federal government to suppress the opposition and also use them to identify and spy on key supporters of the growing agitation for self-determination.

Unfortunately, the governors seem to be more consumed and preoccupied with their 2023 ambitions instead of genuinely and selflessly addressing the menacing security challenges in the zone.

Some of them have also not really delivered nor used their advantaged position to better the lots of their people, a sad commentary that accounts for the growing loss of confidence in the governors.

It’s only those who want to massage the truth that may still argue between the governors and promoters of self-determination agitators who truly calls the shots in the zone.

If the truth must be told, the governors have since lost the confidence of the people due to underperformance, insincerity and non-commitment to the cause of the zone.

As if those were not enough, the recent invasion of a Cattle Market in Omumauzor, Ukwa West, Abia State where about eight persons were killed and some others wounded in a midnight raid by armed bandits, are all pointers that South East is boiling.

The revelation by Gov Okezie Ikpeazu when he visited the scene where he disclosed that the yet-to-be-identified attackers did not come from the immediate community according to preliminary investigations, yet threw a challenge that much remains to be done by the intelligence community on the sources of the rising insecurity in South East.

So far, nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack just as the motive of the invaders is yet to be known.

Although Government had announced some measures including siting a military base in the area to boost security in the environment, how these measures would prefer a permanent solution to the unknown gunmen malady remains a mystery.

Kidnapping for ransom has become regular around Abia North and Okigwe axis where a number of abductions by armed bandits have been witnessed in recent times.

Students and lecturers of Abia State University Uturu, Marist Academy Uturu, as well as innocent commuters plying the Uturu Isuikwuato route, have variously fallen victims of these hoodlums suspected to be Fulani herdsmen, thus compounding the sources of the festering insecurity in South East.

Worried by the ugly development, Co-Chair of Interfaith Peace and Dialogue Forum, Bishop Sunday Onuoha has blamed the intelligence community for the persistence of the activities of unknown gunmen in the South East.

Bishop Onuoha told Saturday Vanguard that it was either the intelligence community was not alive to its responsibilities or the government was not making use of the intelligence at its disposal.

He said that the persistence of the unknown gunmen saga in the zone was suggestive that there was a leadership failure in the country.

“If the intelligence community cannot gather intelligence to unravel those behind this, it then means we don’t have a country”, the cleric lamented.

He urged Government to quickly engage those who feel aggrieved in the zone and genuinely address their grievances in the interest of national peace.

“ If there are people who are angry, what stops the Government from engaging them in a dialogue to resolve their grievances?” He queried.

Meanwhile, the police have said the force was not yet overwhelmed despite the resurgence of unknown gunmen in the zone.

Zonal Police Public Relations Officer in charge of Zone 9, Umuahia, Mr Kingsley Iredibia, told Saturday Vanguard that the force was making efforts to put the challenge under control.

He said that police were synergising with other security agencies including the Ebubeagu security outfit to contain the challenge.

The Police Spokesman expressed hope that the challenge would soon be permanently overcome.

How long shall the zone wait for the much-expected federal succour or intervention?

Should South-East governors, the political elite and other critical stakeholders sit complacently and watch the zone go on flames?

After The Holocaust, Now African Slavery Also Hits Instagram

BY ALLISON KAPLAN SOMMER

A sculpture of former slave and later abolitionist writer Olaudah Equiano, on display at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, England. Now his story is also being told on Instagram. Credit: AP Photo/Russell Contreras

Three years after generating hundreds of millions of views by recounting the tragic story of a teenage girl during the Holocaust, Equiano.Stories hopes to do the same for another traumatic historical event

On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2019, billboards suddenly appeared along Tel Aviv’s highways featuring a hand holding a cellphone behind barbed wire and the question “What if a girl in the Holocaust had Instagram?”

Nearly three years on, very different-looking billboards but with a similar message have started appearing in the city. This time, a young African boy holds up a smartphone with a text reading: “1756. I’ve been kidnapped into slavery. And I’m recording it all,” inviting viewers to follow @equiano.stories on Instagram.

Signs have also gone up across Chicago Transit Authority train stations, in the midst of Black History Month in the United States, advertising Equiano.Stories as a new “feature film exclusively on Instagram.”

Those 2019 billboards kicked off the campaign known as Eva.Stories, a fictional Instagram account for a real girl: a 13-year-old Hungarian Jew called Eva Heyman. Based on the diary of the real Eva, the Eva.Stories account took followers on a journey through posts on the popular platform Instagram Stories. They experienced her life until the Nazis invaded, her forced move to a Jewish ghetto and, ultimately, her deportation to Auschwitz in 1944.

The high-budget effort was a viral success, with hundreds of millions of views globally, translation into various languages and an additional account on Snapchat. It also sparked a fierce debate over whether bringing the Holocaust to Instagram was an innovative way of bringing history to a new generation in their online comfort zone, or represented a cheapening and dumbing-down of Holocaust education.

Now the creators of Eva.Stories are bringing an equally sensitive historical trauma, African slavery, to the social media platform as well.

Yvonne Mbanefo, a British-Nigerian historian and cultural consultant for entertainment and media projects, recounts that when the team behind Eva.Stories – led by Israeli-American billionaire entrepreneur Mati Kochavi, and his daughters Maya and Adi – asked her to help helm the Equiano project, the controversy surrounding the original gave her little hesitation.

“It actually turned out that my daughter had seen Eva.Stories. When I told her about this company that approached me and that they have a novel concept of telling stories to young people on Instagram, she said, ‘Oh, I’ve watched it!’ So it really intrigued me that a Black teenager in London would watch a film about Holocaust and love it so much. I knew it would be a winner if we could do the same for slavery.”

What really sold her on the idea, Mbanefo says, was the fact that the project the Kochavis conceived would establish the character of Equiano as a happy child in his Igbo village – the pre-colonial Nigerian culture Mbanefo specializes in – and feature the details of his culture and life, before his horrific journey into slavery begins.

“Stories like this usually begin in enslavement. This one was starting from freedom. That was what really intrigued me,” she says.

‘Very natural progression’

Like Eva.Stories, the Equiano narrative is built around a real-life experience. Olaudah Equiano was kidnapped as a young boy from an Igbo village in West Africa, in 1756, enslaved and brought to the Caribbean.

The real Equiano bought his freedom when he was about 20 years old, moved to London and published a bestselling and influential memoir in 1789. His book, “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,” is credited with helping to end the practice of slavery in Britain.

In the Instagram videos, photos and posts, Equiano shares details about a joyful village life in Africa with his followers. They will accompany him as he is kidnapped from his home and witness the brutal existence on a slave ship bound for the Caribbean.

Equiano.Stories went live on Instagram on Wednesday, with more than 500 short videos, stills and posts to be uploaded on an hourly basis as the main character speaks directly to followers. According to its creators, Eva.Stories garnered some 300 million views within the first 48 hours of its release, a figure they hope to match or exceed.

Following their Holocaust narrative with a story about slavery felt like a “very natural progression,” says Maya Kochavi, the 30-year-old co-founder of Stelo Stories, the Kochavi family’s company that is based in New York and Tel Aviv.

“We began with something that was our story – our holocaust, the Jewish Holocaust. And we moved to the African holocaust: it felt like the right next step. We knew going into ‘Eva’ that so many kids don’t know enough about the Holocaust and that it was not being taught enough in schools … and [there’s] a lack of interest because it feels like something that happened so long ago. And we were very passionate about changing this. And we know the same is true for slavery: that it’s not taught enough and kids don’t know enough about it,” Kochavi explains.

The Equiano.Stories film was shot on a Hollywood-level movie set in South Africa, where the village and slave ship were recreated in detail. Before filming began, Mbanefo first traveled to Nigeria, to a village as close to Equiano’s as possible to prepare herself mentally and to conduct research. Heading down to South Africa and entering the slave ship set for the first time, she says she “put on the chains that the slaves wore” to gain a deeper understanding of the suffering her character endured.

The experience of filming was not only emotional for her. “During the filming of the slave ship scenes, every single person on the film set cried at one point – from the actors to the security people to the snake catchers we needed to keep snakes off the set,” she recalls. “It was an amazing environment where color didn’t matter. Everyone just wanted this thing to work.”

Like Eva.Stories, the Equiano project is certain to spark debate. Does the use of a social media platform to relate the painful and tragic history of slavery degrade the dignity of those who suffered? Or is it an invaluable tool that will help a new generation process history more effectively than merely reading about it in books or hearing a narrative intoned to them in a traditional documentary format?

Maya Kochavi says that, for her, that debate is obsolete, conducted by those who haven’t watched the “Eva” project, which in her eyes proved the effectiveness of what she sees as a new “genre” of storytelling.

“One of the reasons we think that people today can really connect with Equiano, regardless of the fact that he lived 300 years ago, regardless of their culture and where they come from, regardless of how much they know about this story, is because the genre essentially creates a kind of universal language,” she says, holding up her smartphone for emphasis.

“Kids will say, ‘Equiano may look different from me, but he films his life the way that I film my life.’ I believe that creates a connection between us across time and space and culture. It creates a universal language, and the really powerful way that kids today … will relate to this boy.”

‘Community of creators’

Any potential criticism of white Israelis initiating such a project has been anticipated and blunted not only by Mbanefo’s central role in the collaborative endeavor, but the fact that Stelo Stories developed the project in close cooperation with Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History – the nation’s oldest independent museum of Black history and a Smithsonian affiliate.

“We don’t believe in having one voice tell a story,” says Adi Kochavi, 33. “Each one of our stories has a community of creators. We have partners in Yvonne and the museum, and we’ve been working with them for the past two years on every aspect of this film.”

On the same day Equiano.Stories dropped, the Chicago museum planned to unveil an exhibition featuring a handcrafted replica of the thatched-roof huts seen in the film, surrounded by African art and interwoven with interactive digital experiences and screens showing scenes from the Instagram experience.

Another educational dimension of the project are short lessons embedded in the Instagram posts, explaining what viewers see in the film, both historically and culturally, which followers can access by clicking mid-clip for more information – an interactive element that did not exist in the “Eva” project. Another interactive addition is an accompanying app where Equiano fans can use a “mixed reality AI-dance tutorial” that will teach them the steps of the Nigerian dances seen in the film.

Both Eva.Stories and Equiano.Stories were funded through the deep pockets of the sisters’ billionaire father Mati Kochavi, whose mega-deals in security and infrastructure have underwritten a series of media endeavors. Most prominent among these is the media and technology company Vocativ, run by Adi.

According to the sisters, “Eva” and “Equiano” are the first two installments in a planned series of 10 interactive stories of young people from history. The third installment, featuring a 14th-century Italian musician, has already been filmed and will be released this summer.

Once the Stelo Stories brand is established, the sisters say, they will transition to a more traditional business model. The first two projects involved “topics that are so incredibly sensitive, we didn’t want to make money from either one,” they say.

For the team that worked on the project for more than two years – and saw its release delayed for over a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic – its release felt like anticipating the birth of a baby, Mbanefo says.

“I can’t wait for this to come out – not just for white and other non-Black people to watch and learn from, but also for Black people,” she says. “Even in Nigeria, not many people who are from the Igbo community know about the story of Olaudah Equiano. We live in a world where everything changes so quickly. Young people need role models, and there are very few Black role models. So I believe this project will help young people reconnect to a new role model they can learn from.”

When Eva.Stories was released in 2019, Maya Kochavi recalls, “We could see through the reactions that people just cared about Eva so much. … We’re hoping that people will love and care that deeply about Equiano, and through that care about the story of what happened to him.”