MIGRATION: Human Movement

 BY KRISTINA GARCIA

PENN TODAY

Chinaza Okonkwo, who majored in both philosophy and history, conducted an oral history project on pre-colonial Igbo philosophy. Image: Penn Today

The Wolf Undergraduate Humanities forum takes on the topic of migration, with individual research projects ranging from slavery debates within the Jewish Orthodox community to Southeast Asian refugee youth.

Migration has shaped the modern world, changing language and settlement patterns, along with art and governance. The Wolf Humanities Center, a hub for interdisciplinary humanities research and public programming, took migration as the theme for the 2021-22 academic year.

The Center took a broad approach, hosting events and supporting research about refugees and legality and how these concerns affect memory, identity, and a sense of self. Events took the form of films, lectures, and symposiums; a poetry reading; an exhibition; and a recital, on populations ranging from the Nordic Sámi to the Deaf community.

“When you start doing this sort of big interdisciplinary work, you should be doing it around issues that are demonstrably important,” says Jamal Elias, director of the Wolf Humanities Center, the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of the Humanities, and professor of religious studies.

The Center’s formal programming consists of three parts, the most well known of which is its public events. The Center also offers funding for manuscript development for assistant professors and project development for tenured associate professors, as well as fellowships promoting graduate and undergraduate study.

For the 2021-22 academic year, the Wolf Undergraduate Humanities Forum welcomed eight fellows. Their projects included exploration on Southeast Asian refugee youth from 1975 to 2000, slavery debates within the Jewish Orthodox community on the cusp of the Civil War, and Pakistan’s Bangla/Urdu divide in the mid-20th century.

While all students’ research topics must be connected to the annual theme, the fellowship can enable students to build off a project started elsewhere, says David Spafford, undergraduate humanities forum director and associate professor of pre-modern Japanese history. “Students come in with their own research projects, and the hope is that the fellowship will expand or enrich it,” he says. Fellows tend to be self-directed, instructors serve to facilitate dialogue rather than lead students to an expected outcome, he said.

As members of the Wolf Undergraduate Humanities Forum, fellows attend two-hour, biweekly meetings and private receptions with the Center’s guest speakers. This year, speakers included Pulitzer Prize-winning author and University of California Professor Viet Thanh Nyugen, who gave a public talk in March and also met with the undergraduate fellows to discuss migration, refugees, and literature.

Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his novel “The Sympathizer,” which follows an unnamed French/Vietnamese double agent during and after the Vietnam War. Nguyen also has a personal relationship to the topic; he and his family were refugees during the conflict.

At an event that was co-sponsored by the Department of English and the Asian American Studies Program, Nguyen described the United States as a contradictory country—one of beauty and brutality. He said dialogue is essential to span the divides. “It is so crucial that we do find the common points, in order to initiate the conversation,” Nguyen said.

During the Q&A, fellow Brendan Lui had an opportunity to ask Nguyen “Have you ever wanted to write about a place but questioned whether or not you could?”

Lui, whose work included a focus on labor migration in Europe, doesn’t have a connection to the continent. Instead, the political science major from Potomac, Maryland, became interested in the topic through his involvement with Philadelphia-based unions. He questioned why there was so much tension between established union members and newcomers and found that the more democratic-based unions in the E.U. facilitated the inclusion of migrant workers.

“You should do what you want to do,” Nguyen advised, noting that he had met a lot of non-Vietnamese people in Vietnamese studies.

What Lui was feeling was imposter syndrome, Nguyen said, “a normal set of feelings that shouldn’t prevent you from doing this kind of work.”

Lui and fellow May graduates Nico Fonseca and Chinaza Ruth Okonkwo presented their work at a research conference, “Migrant Subjects Across and Within.” Fonesca addressed the nomad in Latin American film, Lui spoke on trade unions and migrant workers, and Okonkwo presented on the Igbo diaspora and migration.

The students build off each other, challenging each other’s thinking and methodology. It’s “a productive tension,” says Fonseca, a double major in comparative literature and Latin American and Latinx Studies from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Learning about these different projects helps Okonkwo to absorb knowledge, she says. (Okonkwo uses she/they pronouns.) “Everyone’s unique and interesting take on migration is influential with me and my own intellectual journey.”

Like Nguyen, Okonkwo’s father was also a refugee, they said. Okonkwo, who majored in both philosophy and history, did an oral history project on pre-colonial Igbo philosophy, in part to foster a stronger connection to an ancestral way of life. “I should have a more tangible culture to hold on to,” says Okonkwo, who is from Los Angeles.

For Fonseca, who is interested in global indigeneity, Okonkwo’s project was “a really good example of how various relationships to the land were upended by colonialism, not just in the Americas, which is an easy way to think about it, but also across the African continent.”

Fonseca looked at indigenous philosophies in Latin American film, establishing a through line between the radical, Marxist-influenced cinema of the mid-20th century to contemporary, indigenous experimental documentary, finding that the “nomad” character was often a catalyst for social change.

The figure of the nomad is a metaphorical one, he says. The nomad is not only the lone wanderer but also conveys a sense of loss for his work and for the lack of a homeland for indigenous populations.

In all three projects, “we saw that migrants are trying to break through and find equal footing and belonging,” says Lui. This struggle became the common thread in their work.

Many of the undergraduate fellows are interested in pursuing subsequent advance degrees, including Okonkwo, who submatriculated into philosophy program at Penn while completing their undergraduate degree this semester.

Time spent as a Wolf Humanities Fellow, she says, will lay the foundation for her academic writing and thought. “This is something that I would consider future work,” says Okonkwo of her project.

Atiku’s Emergence Formally Ends The So-Called Rotational Presidency Principle...

BY ALFRED OBIORA UZOKWE

Former Nigeria Vice President Atiku Abubakar adresses the People's Democratic Party delegates during the Special convention in Abuja, Nigeria May 28, 2022 [Afolabi Sotunde/ Reuters]

Yesterday, at the PDP convention, a northerner in the person of Atiku, once again emerged as the presidential flag bearer. This is a party that once acceded to the principle of rotational presidency but still skimmed out other regions with interest in the top spot. Atiku has very strong odds of eventually becoming the president because depending on who the APC fields, the north will vote as a block. With this development, it is now official that Nigeria is a government of the people for the people by ONE region.

Unfortunately, the regions being marginalized lack the political cohesiveness that is necessary to break this hegemonic proclivity of the north. They bicker amongst themselves, gladly play the Brutus from within, readily accept crumbs in exchange for loyalty. But was it not honest Abe that said that a house divided never stands. If we keep doing what we have always done, we will keep getting the same result. Factionalization and infighting has made the south east unable to present a solid political block with a formidable common front.

In the end what is left in the south east? A people with no real say in affairs that govern every facet of their being for the past 50 years. Second Niger bridge, a project that is not only THE eastern gateway, but of national commercial import, is being done at the whims and caprices of those at the helm. The snail speed of work tells the story. Federal roads in the east are all but abandoned, only done at the whims of the helmsman. The people at the helm do projects in the south east with the mindset that they are doing them a favor, not that it is their right as part of the major tribe in Nigeria. Yet, the helmsmanship never gets to that part of Nigeria.

Now, my question is, since the idea of rotational presidency has been jettisoned, will Nigeria also do same to the quota systems in university admissions where candidates from certain regions are admitted with scores so low that one wonders how they will cope in the tertiary institutions? Will the quota system latently practiced in the employment of folks into the army, police and other parastatals now go away? No, it will not. The dominant region has become a master at having things both ways and they are not bashful about it.

While the south easterners spend most of their time pontificating in various outlets(nothing wrong with that); while we verbally joust on platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook; while we engage in the practice of “I can get to my potentials as an individual but will never get along with other south easterners for a better and bigger achievement”; while south easterners play the politics of self-immolation where those elected as governors fall our hand by leaving the states more desolate than they met them, the north has succeeded in perpetual rule of the so called giant of Africa. They have been doing it for 50 or more years and will continue. They know that he who holds power is like a piper that dictates the tune in an ensemble.

Ndi Igbo, as my mother’s people from Asaba would say, loanu ilolo – think deep. You can have all the commerce in Nigeria but without periodic political power and influence, those things that aid commerce like constant electricity to power industries, good roads to ferry goods, enabling environment like loans, etc, will continue to elude the southeast and we will never get to our full potential.

The beat goes on.

IGBO POLITICS: 2023: This House Has Fallen; To Rebuild It, We Must Break From Our Past

 

For Immediate Release May 30, 2023

By Kingsley Moghalu, ADC Presidential Aspirant

The desperation of politicians in the 2023 presidential election cycle gives cause for alarm. From N100 million presidential nomination forms to $35,000 delegate bribes and INEC’s shifting of the deadline for primaries, seemingly to accommodate the political party in power today, there are dangerous omens. 

It is up to us as Nigerians to decide if we will be fooled again in 2023. To make real progress, we must break from the past. We must now elect leaders who offer us a clear, coherent vision, competence, and a plan. 

As an aspirant for the responsibility of President of Nigeria in 2023 on the platform of the African Democratic Democratic Congress (ADC), I offer our country a clear vision and plan, articulated in my book Build, Innovate and Grow (BIG). The high Office of President of Nigeria is a job, not an entitlement based on the number of years a candidate has spent in politics or merely on personal ambition. In 2023 Nigerians should elect a candidate who has the competences, experience and performance track record that is directly relevant to the job. The core functions of the President of Nigeria are (1) Nation-building (managing diversity, building a united nation, and building strong institutions); (2) National Security; (3) Economy; and (4) Foreign Affairs and International Diplomacy.

Based on these requirements, I am the man for the job. A modern, 21st century President of Nigeria. As a United Nations official for 17 years in which I rose by dint of hard work and competence from entry level Officer to the highest career bracket of Director and served on special assignment at the political level of Under-Secretary-General, in New York, Cambodia, Croatia, Rwanda, and Switzerland, I led teams that achieved lasting results in rebuilding failed states such as our country has become today, in international security operations, and in traditional international diplomacy. 

I led resource mobilization and the building of global partnerships for the Geneva-based, $20billion Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria that has made social investments to support health systems and save lives in 140 countries including Nigeria. And as the founder and CEO of a global investment advisory firm in the private sector, I have advised and guided major foreign investors into Nigeria and other African countries. 

As a Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from 2009 to 2014, I led the execution of extensive reforms that saved the Nigerian financial system from collapse after the global financial crisis of 2008. Our work remains the stabilizing foundation of our financial system today. 

I also led the team that developed and introduced the Bank Verification Number (BVN) which now serves nearly 50 million Nigerians in the banking system. My team and I facilitated the introduction of Non-Interest (Islamic) Banking that advanced financial inclusion, as well as the digitalization of the payment system that made it possible for nearly 100 million Nigerians to make and receive payments on their mobile phones. As a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the CBN, I played an active leadership role, with other colleagues, in economic policy making that successfully crashed inflation from double digits to a single digit 8% by 2014. We managed foreign exchange policy successfully, with the Naira exchanging to the dollar at a rate in the range of N150-N165 to $1 during our tenure in office. These are transformative achievements in which one played a direct, leadership role. The impact of my life’s work so far has been deep, international, national, and local, empowering millions in Nigeria and around the world. 

Having been a traditional politician in and of itself, say as a state Governor or Senator, without the knowledge of or exposure to managing complex diversity, sophisticated security operations, national economic management, or foreign affairs, does not prepare such an individual to be an effective president of Nigeria. Our failure to understand this is why we tend to make the wrong leadership choices. This is the lesson we should learn from Nigeria today as the failed state our country has become. The presidency is a unique job, not a mere political promotion or an entitlement. 

In 2023, our present national crisis needs us to elect a President of Nigeria that will fix our economy, unite our diverse peoples, secure our territory and our people, and restore our standing in the world. I pledge to build and unify our country into One Nation with a common national ambition on which we all agree. We will proactively secure our country and its people in all of our geopolitical zones. We will build an economy that creates jobs and prosperity for our youth through innovation, manufacturing and skills through education reform that ends ASUU strikes permanently in Nigeria, and access to capital to start new businesses through a state-sponsored venture capital fund that will be managed efficiently by the private sector. 

With my knowledge, experience and networks in international relations, my Government will make Nigeria influential and powerful abroad once again, based into the stability and prosperity we will create at home. 

Fellow Nigerians, this house has fallen. Together, we will rebuild it to become stronger than it has ever been. 

Igbo Fight

BY EMEKA UGWUONYE

It is true that the Igbos fight among themselves more than any other ethnic group in Nigeria. That is judging from my own observations. When the Igbos fight among themselves, they don't know where to draw the line. Every fight among the Igbos is an existential fight - that is, they seek to permanently destroy each other. That is why it becomes impossible for them to reconcile after a fight.

For over 20 years as a lawyer in America, I saw a lot of that. Even a divorce between an Igbo woman and an Igbo husband will, on the average, be more bitter than a divorce between non-Igbos or between an Igbo spouse and a non-Igbo spouse. They don't know how to narrow a fight. They expand every fight into a total war. That is why a divorce case involving two Igbos in America will cost them more than if it were a divorce between two non-Igbos.

It is usually in Igbo-versus-Igbo divorce that one of the spouses will go as far as informing the immigration that the other spouse lied 20 years ago when he filed for his immigration papers. It is usually in Igbo-versus-Igbo divorce that one spouse will seek the deportation of the other spouse. It is usually in Igbo-versus-Igbo cases that one party informs the authorities about some distant crime the other party committed, which nobody else knew about.

I happened to intervene in a lot of Nigerian-versus-Nigerian disputes in America. I knew that it was worse among the Igbos. For instance, it was very difficult for an Igbo union or Association to hand over power from one administration to another peacefully without going to court. Very rarely! Usually, the new administration will sue the outgoing executive and accuse them of stealing and embezzlement (or any worse offense possible). They can do this over $2000 dispute. The Igbos hardly like mediation. They want their opponent to be dead. And he is willing to lose even his own life to achieve that.

It was in one of such cases that the leader of a new Igbo union administration testified in court against the leader of the outgoing administration. In his testimony in court he said:

"We contributed and contributed and contributed and he ate the money totaling $16,538". He had to repeat the word 'contributed' three times in order to show the judge that they made the contributions on more than one occasion. He was not educated enough to use a word that would have avoided repeating the word. Despite his lack of education, he was the most confident and loudest in court. Typical Igbo man.

The judge was so shocked to hear that a human being ate money. So the judge asked: "Do you mean he ate the money?". The man replied: "Yes, your Honor". The judge continued: "Even the change, the 38 cents?". He replied: "He ate every penny of the money we contributted". The judge winced and the jury were visibly confused.

At that point, I asked to approach the bench. The judge was happy. I explained to the judge that the man only meant that the other party embezzled the money, not that he ingested the money. Only then was the tension doused.

You know in Igbo language, the statement: "He ate rice" will be: "Orili rice" or "Orie rice". Also, in Igbo language, the statement: "He embezzled money" is "Orili ego" or "Orie ego". When an uneducated Igbo person wants to say that somebody embezzled money in English, he will likely say: "He ate the money".

Look at the World Igbo Congress! What happened? After the founding executive, there was so much infighting that they had 10 lawsuits in American courts and they were still looking for lawyers to file more suits pro bono. That was a terrible experience. The World Igbo Congress would have been the pan Igbo movement that would have advanced the Igbo interest worldwide and bring the Igbos together. But the moment one Igbo Governor gave them a donation of $15,000, some members wanted to overthrow their executive. And because every Igbo fight is war, they spread the fight as far and wide as possible. They challenged the legitimacy of their constitution. They challenged the ethnicity of some of the executive members and claimed they were no longer Igbos, that some of them were from Benue State. It was so bitter that it was impossible to reconcile them. The World Igbo Congress had to die. But Zumunta (the Nothern union) never had such problem. The Yoruba unions did not have anything like that.

When I say these things, some young Igbo men get upset. But I don't care. Many of them are too young to know history. Many of them are too uneducated to understand what is happening. Many of them lack practical experience they can refer to. For instance, I can refer to World Igbo Congress. One of the Founding leaders of World Igbo Congress is my friend. He is here on DPA and will probably read this. So, am I supposed to worry about what some uninformed Igbo brothers say? Not at all. The Igbos need serious reorientation to be able to make it. If the Federal Government of Nigeria was smart, they would simply have recruited some Igbos and set them against IPOB and watch them destroy themselves. Just get some Igbos. Give them their own radio and tell them to counter Radio Biafra, and they would do it perfectly well.

So, if you are a social scientist and they ask you to evaluate the readiness of the Igbos for anything serious, you will come back and report that they lack cohesion. They lack organizational discipline. An Anambra man will fight an Enugu man any day. Just tell him that Enugu people are backward and Wawa bush men that drink their tea with Okpa, instead of bread. He will fight him. And tell the Enugu man that the Anambra man is an Ijekebee man. (You see: The Igbo people did not invent tea. They did not invent bread. But they will abuse a fellow Igbo for drinking tea with Okpa instead of bread).

So, stop kidding yourselves, guys. You are not ready for anything yet. We need a lot of underground work to prepare our society if that is the direction we want to go. And the first thing we need to do is to be honest to ourselves. We are not the geniuses we think we are. We are actually behind. It is not what you do as an individual that will count, but what you can do as a group. Even the ants are better organized than the Igbos. Ask Nnia Nwodo. Ask Chimaroke and Jim Nwobod. Ask Jim Nwodo and CC Onoh. (Yes, I am aware of Awolowo and Akintola, Tinubu and Funsho Williams. Don't worry, I am well informed).

Nigerian Exorcist Preserves Traditional Artifacts To Keep Heritage

Father Paul Obayi. Image: Facebook

BY VALENTINE IWENWANNE

NSUKKA, NIGERIA (CNS) — A Catholic priest and designated exorcist is preserving traditional religious artifacts in a museum, to keep the local cultural heritage.

But in doing so, Father Father Paul Obayi is opposing a trend by Pentecostal preachers, who say the artifacts are symbols of idolatry and represent “evil spirits that bring bad luck.”

The artifacts are central to the traditional religions practiced by the region’s Igbo people, who see them as sacred and possessing supernatural powers. They include carvings of pagan deities and masks, said Father Obayi.

“I preserve them for future purposes, so that future generations will know what their fathers regarded as gods,” he told Catholic News Service. “They are mere artifacts and should not be regarded as gods; we need to preserve and watch them in the museum, there is no need to be afraid of them.”

Some of the artifacts are in the Deities Museum, a three-room museum located in the compound of St. Theresa Catholic Cathedral, which boasts of hundreds of totems, masks, a stuffed lion, and carvings of Igbo deities. Some of the remaining artifacts are stashed in an uncompleted building outside the cathedral.

Bishop Godfrey Igwebuike Onah of Nsukka appointed Father Obayi as chief exorcist, and the artifacts and other items are from the “deliverance services” the priest has conducted in towns and villages across Nigeria’s southeast.

“People voluntarily write letters inviting my ministry to come and remove the idols that are disturbing them; they write through a traditional leader in the community or eldest in the family,” he told CNS. “They sign it and send it over to the bishop through their parish priest, asking me to come and remove it for them.”

“Sometimes it comes from the bishop of my diocese, who must have been informed by the bishop of that diocese; he’ll then ask the parish priest to support and work with me, thus paving the way for support from the priest of the parish in local community or village where the exorcism will take place,” he told CNS.

The traditional Igbo society consists of clusters of individual families living in local autonomous communities. The ancient belief system of Odinala was practiced before the arrival of Christianity and colonialism and has a strong influence among the rural and village populations of the Igbo.

Odinala, the traditional cultural beliefs and practices of the Igbo people of southeast Nigeria, is a polytheistic faith that has a strong central deity at its head. It is a form of paganism where people pray to a spirit — represented by a statue — who intercedes on their behalf from a supreme being, or Chukwu.

Only a few believers of these ancient religions remain, and they endure persecution from the Christian majority.

Emmanuel Inyama, a professor of sociology of religion at Imo State University in Owerri, said when Africa was colonized, missionaries often attacked traditional religions in an effort to introduce Christianity.

Inyama said the loss of Igbo artifacts is a calamity that cuts off the old generation from the new ones.

“Those artifacts are reputed for having supernatural powers. So, what happened is that they were desecrated … So, when the spirits leave the artifacts or the items, it does not mean that the spirit is destroyed or is dead. What happened is that the gods have move away from the symbol.”

Father Obayi said people now believe that “we Catholic priests have power and authority over deities, unlike before, when they used to run to native doctors to come and remove the artifacts that are causing them spiritual and physical discomforts in their families.”

He said when he exorcises artifacts, people’s belief in God increases.

His museum is not yet fully functional. The artifacts are caked in dust, and some have been ravaged by termites. Father Obayi say he is still looking for helpers, and “that’s why they (artifacts) are laying scattered here while some of them are at the cathedral, and not well kept.”

“We need helpers to come to our aid to make these things standard and get chemicals and experts to preserve them, because they are made of wood and termite is eating them up,” he told CNS.

Lucky Were The Bodies

Armed soldiers were stationed here and there. Grannies wondered why we remained in the north. We should come home.

BY IFEANYICHUKWU EZE

I want to remember. No. I don’t want to keep remembering. But shouldn’t I? His face keeps popping up here and there, in my dreams, in my wakefulness, inciting me with his smile to come and play, as if he were here.

I want to ask him if he is fine, as we were when dawn fed us chants of cockerels, muezzins, and preachers. When our shadows grew shorter, like dots under our feet as the bright lone eye of the cloudless sky moved to the center, inviting our stomachs to cry for food. When the lone eye went to sleep, its mild colleague crept in to usher our game-tired bodies home.

On weekends we were fed with Indian films. We crowded a tiny parlor belonging to the only owner of a twelve-inch black-and-white screen. Or we huddled outside and struggled for space to look through a glint in the window. Or we passed broomsticks through the open window to part the curtains for our yearning eyes to see.

We fought wars, reenacting the Indian films we watched. Our regalia were green leaves from mango trees. Our swords — maize stalks — were sharp with playfulness. Our guns shot bullets of sound, torrents of our shrieks. We killed. We died and were resurrected with laughter.

Then we couldn’t leave our rooms. Or dream with closed eyes. For the next couple of days, the most popular phrase was “Sharia law.” Why should we stay at home because of some law? Clouds of smoke wrapped up neighboring communities, as if in reply. All of our men — fathers and boys armed with machetes, bows and arrows, sticks and spears — spread out in groups to defend the town, their faces darkened with soot. Some, including Tema, went off to the border. Mama wouldn’t allow me to go. But I had no liter of courage either. And then the army came.

Tema’s catapult always hung around his neck. When we went hunting for tswi-tswi in the fields, he was accurate with his target. I was never his match. Once, I struck and missed, scaring the bird away; despite the fury boiling in Tema’s eyes, a stream of chuckles cracked his face. They say he had a smiling face.

I saw him. He saw me. He smiled. I smiled back. The group marched away.

In February 2000, Kaduna was awakening from the rubble of religious crisis. Malali, one of its towns, was a swelling of people who had run away like an endangered species — from burnings, from lynchings common as air, escaping, if luck embraced you, from attacks by the burners and killers lusting over our end.

Everybody now belonged to a body of tribal consciousness — of identities as Christians and Muslims, southerners and northerners, natives and non-natives, pagans and believers. Words were tied like nooses around our necks.

People died. Friends, relatives, fathers, mothers, babies — dead. Families were charred to black ash. Bodies were lost. The dead were buried in graves, real or imaginary. Lucky were the bodies recovered and recognized, luckier still if given burial.

Fear hung in the air like a bad omen. Movement was regulated with a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Armed soldiers were stationed here and there. Trespassers didn’t wake up at dawn. The order was: gun them down. Vengeance for this, vengeance for that, was mused. Paranoid was the air we breathed. Relatives and friends in other parts of the country kept asking us to leave the state. Grannies wondered why we remained in the north. We should come home.

No more street play, hide-and-seek, card games, moonlight tales, aimless scampering about. No more Tema?

Like most families from the southern part of the country, we succumbed. The red sand and soft green trees of Nsukka welcomed us to the southeast. We stayed at our grandparents’ place, with a twelve-inch black-and-white TV. The wall clock still ticked, ageless. Framed photos hung on the walls. One of Grandpa’s large faces stared like it was daring you to do something silly. Seats were set around the spacious parlor — a door that led into Grandpa’s room inches away. It was always ajar. On windy days, the house howled through its roof.

Everything seemed as familiar as when I lived there years back. We had traveled home for Christmas. Grandma had requested that I be brought to stay with them. Three or four years old, I was driven in a Volkswagen by their neighbor from my own father’s house. Grandpa was lying down in a camp bed in front of the house, reading a newspaper — or was it a book? He didn’t move or say a word to me, though I was still crying.

Now, having spent much of my life growing up in the north, my Hausa was fluent. Better than my Igbo. Though we spoke Igbo at home, it was an exclusive preserve of communication with my parents, especially Papa, who would never want me to speak anything else. Igbo was my mother tongue; Hausa was not. He thought I should be a master of my mother tongue. He wanted me to be good at English too.

In the village, there was only Igbo, which limited me to just a few utterances. The words felt heavy on my lips. They sounded like I was learning the language anew. I listened more than I spoke. I didn’t want to be laughed at, let alone rebuked by Grandma, when I pronounced the words wrong. When I didn’t know which Igbo words to use — the appropriate words — I’d utter the Hausa or English equivalents. They came easily.

Once or twice, I went to Grandma for soap to wash the plates. The word had skipped me. I didn’t say ncha. Instead, I said sabulu. She said she didn’t understand. She continued stitching our torn clothes. My cousin told Grandma what I needed. I was relieved but disappointed. Grandma’s knowing smile stirred a growing feeling that had crept into me — that the whole world was staring at me, at my every deed, expecting me to be flawless, and I responded by coiling back into myself. I heard it said that I was quiet and shy.

The room I occupied was Grandpa’s. He had passed away a few years back after complaining of chest pain. There was a cupboard of books, a table by the window. From the window I could see flowers at the entrance to the front door and the wide path that met our colonial heritage, the market road whose asphalt surface had thinned away into patches here and there. One end led to the University of Nigeria, and the major town of Nsukka, while the other led to Nkwo market. On market days, Nkwo especially, the road was busy with people avoiding police checkpoints on other roads.

Across the road was the primary school where Grandpa had taught. As a teacher, he was nicknamed Masquerade. His moral strength, they said, scared away its offhand neighbor. If Grandpa had been loose, his mud house would have been a mansion, and his family would be living off the cake of his millions by now, but his pupils wouldn’t have grown into credible men and women. Mama said she was his pupil at some point. She made a face to indicate that the privilege hadn’t spared her anything. My last encounter with him was a hard thrashing I received for not feeding the goats. The night whined of their hunger.

The cupboard of books in Grandpa’s room was made of redwood. It was taller and bigger and housed more books than my father’s. If my appreciation for books and reading had so far been a hidden trait, the books in Grandpa’s cupboard baited it out. The meeting was irresistible. And the books were good company. I took solace in them. They saved me the discomfort of facing people, speaking to them, speaking Igbo to them, or being accused of avoiding them.

Some books I read willingly. Others, I felt, were very deep. I left these to read later. When I read Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind, I didn’t understand anything. But I read it anyway. When I became a philosophy major at the University of Nigeria years later, I was intrigued by his famous “ghost in the machine” metaphor — a critique of Cartesian dualism. But I liked Descartes’s dualism, not so much because of his subtle approval of modern science but because of his style of writing. And the famous “cogito, ergo sum” was a dictum I personalized in other ways. I sleep, therefore I am. I read, therefore I am. I write, therefore I am.

The cupboard was dusty for lack of use since its owner had gone. I would take out the books and beat off the dust or blow it away. I liked the smell — their musty perfume. When I flipped through their pages, the buzzing rustle tickled my ears. Sometimes I would hold a book in my hand just to enjoy the feel of its weight.

The ones that tickled me were The River Between and Weep Not, Child by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Mission to Kala by Mongo Beti, The White Man of God by Kenjo Jumbam, Chike and the River by Chinua Achebe, The African Child by Camara Laye, Zambia Shall Be Free by Kenneth Kaunda, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwe Armah, Toads for Supper by Chukwuemeka Ike, A Fresh Start by Helen Ovbiagele, Sammy Going South by W. H. Canaway, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, The Dignity of Man by Russell W. Davenport, Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot, and Remove the Heart of Stone by Donal Dorr. Most of the books presented me with a world similar to the one I lived in — dirt roads, cornrowed hair, black skins, and straw beds.

I was hungry for more books. I would strip the cupboard of all the books just to find something new to read. Some books had lost pages or even covers. I read them like that. A copy of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart was falling apart. There was James Hadley Chase’s Tiger by the Tail and, under the pen name Raymond Marshall, You Find Him, I’ll Fix Him. I read Grandpa’s lesson notes and letters and marveled at his handwriting, at the old black-and-white photos of his not-quite-younger years.

I learned new words and expressions, which I wrote down on sheets of paper and later transferred into a notebook. I became obsessed with the dictionary. An old Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary was handy. I wanted to know every word. I thought I could. But there was always something new. One new word. Two more. A dozen more. In senior secondary, my classmates would call me Dictionary. I was at ease with words and their meanings, and it was an honor to be looked up to in class or approached to explain the meanings of new or unfamiliar words.

Chores kept me briefly away from reading. Every day after morning prayers, I swept the compound with a broom made of palm fronds and washed the plates before and after meals. We went to the farm on Saturdays. It was a new experience: tilling the soil, weeding, making ridges. Afterward, we gathered firewood and brought it home.

In the fields, I looked forward to reading, so much that I remained locked up within myself, digesting words, sounds, and voices, replaying them in my mind, rolling over new words — Igbo words too — in quiet dialogue with myself.

While Grandpa’s books fed me, the news from Kaduna was that life was getting back to normal. Business was beginning to bubble. People who had left now returned, Christians among Christians, Muslims among Muslims. But I was excited. I hoped Tema had returned — from wherever. I wanted to go back, to be with my friend, to laugh, to play on the streets, to hold hands, to behold the city again, to bask under her sky without fear. We would make traps. We would go hunting. My trap would catch nothing. His would catch a dozen bush rats. We would make kites and fly them. They would take our dreams to the sky. His would fly higher than mine. We would slice empty tins and make miniatures of our dream cars.

And I would tell him of the books I had read, of the new words I had learned. I would show him my notebook with many words. He would nod at my accomplishment.

I wondered what he could have been up to. Reading like me, perhaps, or going to the farm. Hunting? When our teacher, Mr. John, had asked us what we wanted to be in the future, Tema had always said he wanted to play. I didn’t know what I wanted either. Playing seemed the most feasible thing to do.

“Happy birthday,” Mama said. It was November 23.

But it was immaterial. Tema didn’t return. He was never found.

ABOUT IFEANYICHUKWU EZE:

Ifeanyichukwu Eze studied philosophy at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He explores survival as it reveals layers of being, the utopia of place, and the intersections between faith, identity, mental health, and death. His work has appeared in Adda, The Offing, The Temz, The Dark, Agbowo, Akuko, and a few other places. A fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency, Eze was longlisted for the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and won second prize in the inaugural Akuko Writers’ Prize, 2020.

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INTERVIEW: Osinachi Nwachukwu: Untold Story About Cause Of Death Of Popular Female Gospel Singer

Osinachi Nwachukwu

Osinachi’s Eldest sister has confirmed official cause of death! SHE DIED OF BLOOD CLOTHING FROM HER HUSBAND STUMPING ON HER CHEST AS HE BEAT HER!

The sister of the late gospel music artiste who died last week of alleged Cancer of the throat, Sister Osinachi Nwachukwu, today, revealed to Vanguard Metro that, her sister died as a result of a cluster of blood in the chest from the kicking she got from her husband, Mr Peter Nwachukwu.

Speaking with one of the family members, Ms Favour Made, who is the elder sister of the late Osinachi, she exposed all the inhumane treatments her sister got from her husband, before her untimely death.

She spoke with Juliet Umeh

Q: We heard it was cancer that killed Osinachi.

She did not die of cancer. The husband, Mr Peter Nwachukwu hit her with his leg on the chest. All this while, he has been beating her but my sister hides all that she was passing through from us.

Before now, we have told her to come out of the marriage, we told her that they are not divorcing and that it’s just a separation. But she felt that God is against divorce.

We told her that separation is not a sin but just for her to stay alive and take care of her children. She will always tell us to relax and that the man will change.

So when the man kicked her in the chest, she fell down and he took her to the hospital but he did not even tell us.

It was her friend who lives in Ebonyi state that called her twin sister because Osinachi has a twin sister, to ask, ‘did your Sister tell you that Peter hit her on the chest? the sister then told her no.

It was the hitting on the chest that killed her.

My brother had to ask the doctor what killed her and the doctor said that there were clusters of blood on her chest.

Unfortunately, they did not tell the doctor that she was kicked in the chest because the doctor could have known what to do if he had an idea of what happened.

Each time we talked to her, she will be pleading for peace and if we move to act, she will tell us no, that we should calm down.

Q: Where was your sister residing and how many children did she have? Also, where is her husband now?

My late sister Osinachi was living in Abuja with her husband and four children, three boys and one girl.

My younger brother who has gone to see the children said Nwachukwu is not arrested, he is in his house in Abuja. When my brother got there, the children were so happy to see him and they told him that they want to come and see their grandmother who is my mother.

Q: Where are her children presently?

The children are with their father. My brother has gone to Abuja to see the children. But I told him not to go alone because the man is a beast that he should go with somebody.

Q:So what is the husband saying now?

The husband is just boasting. Before now, he told the twin sister that he is going to separate her and her sister who was his wife. He doesn’t allow us to come near Osinachi. Since Osinachi got married to him, she has never visited our village, Isuochi in Abia state.

She only visited our village when our father died in 2017.

Even the day they were coming for my father’s burial, as he was speeding, Osinachi told him to please take it easy the was he was driving, the next thing he did was to slap her. It was my little sister, the second to our last born who was with her in the car that told me this. When my little sister wanted to act, Osinachi started begging again and told her to calm down. If I were in that vehicle, I would just have given him his own slap without saying a word.

Osinachi has a very soft heart. Even her twin sister is more courageous than herself.

Now on her sickbed in the hospital, when the twin sister visited, Nwachukwu didn’t allow her to stay with Osinachi. Then Osinachi started begging the husband to allow her sister to stay because she was passing from heart pain, but the man refused.

There, Nwachukwu ordered her out of the hospital. Osinachi then begged the sister to leave hence her husband refused.

Q: What position are you in the family and how many are you?

I am the first daughter of the family and we are six girls and one boy which made us seven.

The boy is the fourth born and he is 30 years old.

Q: Where is Peter from and what does he do?

He is from Nnewi in Anambra State. He doesn’t have any known job to me.

In fact, he ordered my sister to release to him the password of her YouTube music channel and when my sister said no, he spat on her and also told her that the money in his account was finished.

Q: I learnt he is your sister’s manager?

Yes, he acts like one. If my sister is booked for a program, the money charged for the program is paid into his account. He is the one that will negotiate the price.

All monies were paid into his account and my sister will be left with little or nothing. This was somebody that God had lifted up.

He feels that we have nobody because our first son is late, he died before my father died in 2017. So he believes that the only brother I have cannot do anything.

He feels we have nobody to speak for us.

He told us that if Osinachi did not come back alive, she will come back dead.

Q:How did you get the information about your sister’s death?

When my sister died, he didn’t tell us.

It was other people that told us about her death. It was one of her friends she contacted to cook jollof rice that called Osinachi’s twin sister to ask if she had heard anything. She said that the time she got to that hospital, she didn’t see Osinachi on her bed. The man did not tell us.

Then, when we put a call across to him, he didn’t pick it up until around 8 pm when he started calling my brother. Meanwhile, we were told that she died in the afternoon but we got the news from other people around 5 pm.

So around 8 pm, Nwachukwu then called my brother that he has never been allowed to come near them. He casually told him that his wife is dead, that he should come.

My brother then asked him, Is it now that he wants him to come to his house.

Nwachukwu also called my mother and said that his wife is late.

My mother now asked him that, so he has fulfilled his promise of killing her? He then switched off his phone.

Q:What’s your mother saying right now?

She only wants to see her grandchildren since her daughter is already gone.

The children have been longing to come but Nwachukwu had never allowed them.

The children do not know their mother’s village except when my father died.

Even when my sister visits Enugu where we live for the program, her flight is always booked back to Abuja on the same day. He doesn’t allow her to come to our house in Enugu.

My mother did not do Omugwo, that is to take care of any of those four children when they were born.

In fact, when Osinachi had her second child, she called me to tell me that this man wants to kill her. I went there to bring her home. After some time, Nwachukwu came with some people to plead and he was forgiven.

So, after that incident, I don’t know what he did to my sister that whatever he does to her, my sister will not talk. Even if she wants to talk, she will tell outsiders.

Q:How did Osinachi meet Nwachukwu?

It was where they went for a program. Nwachukwu saw how my sister was ministering, he then fell in love with her

Vanguard News Nigeria

Soludo’s Truth Commission

Charles Chukwuma Soludo

BY UGOJI EGBUJO

Gov Soludo has hit the ground running. But while running on slippery ground, haste should be made slowly.

Soludo has taken the bull by the horns. He is courageous. But with an angry bull, deep in a china shop, courage must be tempered with tact. While brimstones are still falling and daggers are still drawn, what’s the incentive to tell hurtful self-indicting truths? If Soludo had timed his truth commission with tact, he would have scheduled it for the post ceasefire period.

The magnificent Aguata local govt headquarters has been razed. A senseless culture of arson is afoot. It was razed the day Soludo named a truth commission. Hands and feet must be on deck to check the menace.

But a truth commission, no matter how noble, is not a fire bridge squad. A truth commission is supposed to excavate skeletons hidden by the rubble so that the living can heal. So that tomorrow can see yesterday. A truth commission constituted in the active case of atrocities will become, at best, a commission of inquiry. If Soludo wants a spade, let him go for a spade.

It’s important to make haste to alleviate poverty. A sensible governor must hurry to clear the mountains of filth choking and dehumanizing Okpoko people. Gov Soludo started well. Prosperity and well being can’t return without security. So Soludo started well. But politicians are politicians. And sometimes, the cheering carries them away.

So instead of running, they start galloping. Otherwise, how did Soludo, who touts himself as a solution provider, seek to inject a truth commission into the crises in the southeast without involving the other governors. Truth commission sounds lofty. And politicians want to claim ownership of ideas. But even lofty ideals, hastily and poorly conceived, can be grandiose.

Truth Commission is Restorative justice. The aim always is to unearth and consequently help healing and prevention. It’s hoped that Soludo Solution, at its core, isn’t this roadside cosmetology that this Truth Commission reeks of. It can’t be arrogance. And it’s not charlatanism. Soludo should know; he should know that going solo would be futile.

He should know that true leadership involves the building of cohesion. His first task ought to be the mobilization of his brother-governors and Igbo leadership to collectively pull in the federal government. A clear-eyed, soberly reflective pan Igbo village meeting with the full involvement of the southeast governments and the federal government is the only solution.

Hopefully, Soludo isn’t playing to the gallery. Because he is a breath of fresh air. It would be sad to see him fall prey to charlatanism which has crippled Igbo politics. Any truth-telling must start from Soludo and to Soludo. If Soludo bothered to study the South African Truth Commission, he would have appreciated the caliber of the head of that commission. And the pivotal role the acceptability of the head of the commission played. A divisive character can’t head a truth commission. If Soludo had reflected on the Oputa panel, he would have appreciated that everything rested on the gravitas of Justice Oputa. Any truth commission instituted in Igboland over this crisis must be headed and peopled with people like Justice Oputa and Desmond Tutu.

A truth commission is not a playfield for rabid sensationalism and cunning political chicanery masquerading as human rights crusading. Of what use is a truth commission in which the stakeholders have not expressed any confidence. How will that commission attract confidence if it looks like a knee jerk contraption? Bringing in people from across the Southeast states to participate in an Anambra Truth Commission is divisive in itself. The Igbo nation should sit together, Oha and Ezes, to harness the power and spirit of the collective. The Igbo need thoroughgoing, bone-deep unity, not facades. This isn’t the time for showmanship.

Soludo’s immediate job is fire fighting. Since he looks like the natural leader, yet a newcomer, he must stoop to forge fellowship with other Southeast leaders. Then the governors must come together to reason with the youths. The IPOB and the other youth groups should yield to dialogue with the governors and southeast politicians, and religious leaders. That way, any criminals feasting on the motherland can be isolated. When common grounds are reached, the governors and other leaders should go to the federal government with demands, concessions and guarantees. It must be done in the spirit of give-and-take. A concerted political effort from the southeast will yield peaceful and progressive outcomes.

Any one-man show is a kindergarten comedy.

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Osi Umenyiora on Giants signing Nigerian OT prospect Roy Mbaeteka: 'This is what dreams are made of'

Graphic Image: Igor Lazarevic

MICHAEL BACA

EAST RUTTERFORD, NJ (NFL) - Osi Umenyiora's dream of producing NFL prospects out of Nigeria has been realized.

The New York Giants on Friday announced the signing of offensive tackle Roy Mbaeteka, a Nigerian product of the NFL's International Player Program. After mentoring Mbaeteka through the process as an inexperienced prospect, Umenyiora was ecstatic to learn his protégé was signed by an NFL team and the ripple effect it may have in Africa going forward.

"Hard to describe what has just happened here," Umenyiora tweeted upon the announcement. "I'm an emotional wreck. What this means for so many people where We come from is impossible to explain. Thank you Giants. This is what dreams are made of."

Mbaeteka, a 6-foot-9, 320-pound prospect, is one of 13 athletes from nine countries who were selected to compete for a spot in the league's 2022 International Player Program. Instituted in 2017, the program has produced current NFL players like Efe Obada, Jakob Johnson and Jordan Mailata. The Giants are hoping Mbaeteka is the next Mailata, who went on to become the Eagles' starting left tackle in three years despite not having any football experience as a rookie from Australia.

"Once you see him, you know he's physically imposing and in a year or two if you immerse him in football culture, he's going to be fantastic," Umenyiora said, via the team's website. "The Giants took a chance. Not much of a chance, I think. When you see him working, you're going to know what he's about. He is big, strong, physical, extremely intelligent, very athletic. He's built to play offensive tackle in the league. In fact, he reminds me quite a bit of (former Giants teammate) Kareem McKenzie. He has the same temperament. He's very smart, but he's a very athletic player."

Umenyiora has been an integral part of the NFL's international growth since retiring from the league in 2014. The 12-year NFL veteran is one of the founders of NFL Africa and a co-founder of The Uprise, a football program based in Nigeria with the purpose of discovering future NFL prospects. Umenyiora believes Mbaeteka is the first of many Africans yet to be discovered.

"I realized there are so many incredible athletes over there -- I'm talking a hundred times better than I was as an athlete," Umenyiora said. "And they have no chance of bettering their lives, no chance to actually do something constructive with their lives because of the situation over there. In America and in the West, you have opportunities for these guys to do something with all the incredible talent that they have. I recognized that and I decided I was going to start a program to help get these guys opportunities in America. We've had camps in South Africa, Ghana, Senegal. I have scouts in these locations and they're looking for the best athletes we can find and once we find them, we bring them to a location and we start to train them."

Born in London, Umenyiora lived in Nigeria from ages 7-14 before coming to America and discovering his football talent as a teenager. A second-round pick by the Giants out of Troy University, Umenyiora went on to become a two-time Super Bowl champion in New York and finished his career fourth on the franchise's all-time sack list (75.0).

After landing in New York the conventional way in 2003, Umenyiora is now dedicated to helping teams find NFL-caliber talent in uncustomary methods. Befittingly enough, it's his former team taking a leap of faith on a 22-year-old Nigerian, and Umenyiora believes it will be the start of something big.

"A lot of people think this was me, but I had nothing to do with this," Umenyiora said. "The Giants decided they were going to fly him in. They did this on their own. They saw him, they liked him, they flew him in yesterday, and he blew them away. They offered him a contract and here we are. For it to be the Giants of all teams, it means the world to me, it really does.

"What the Giants have done here is truly hard to put into words. There are so many people in Nigeria and in Africa who are going to see this and right now they're going to have hope. Before, they were hopeless. They're going to see this as hope and they're going to start working and working toward something, however unrealistic it is. At least now, they will see that it is possible. They've changed the world, they really have."

Mentored By Osi Umenyiora, Nigerian OT Roy Mbaeteka Signs With Giants

Roy Mbaeteka and Osi Umenyiora. Image: NY Giants

BY MICHAEL EISEN

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (NY GIANTS) – The Giants signed one of their most intriguing, noteworthy and unforeseen prospects of this or any offseason.

Roy Mbaeteka is a 6-9, 320-pound offensive tackle who has no high school or college football experience. That's hardly surprising, considering he's lived his entire life in Nigeria. His nascent football career has also included stops in London and Arizona. Now he's heading to the Quest Diagnostics Training Center, where the Giants believe he can develop into an NFL-caliber lineman.


So does one of Mbaeteka's mentors, former Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora, who lived in Nigeria as a youngster and was perhaps the first to spot the 22-year-old's talent.

"Once you see him, you know he's physically imposing and in a year or two if you immerse him in football culture, he's going to be fantastic," Umenyiora said in a phone conversation from his home in London. "The Giants took a chance. Not much of a chance, I think. When you see him working, you're going to know what he's about.

"He is big, strong, physical, extremely intelligent, very athletic. He's built to play offensive tackle in the league. In fact, he reminds me quite a bit of Kareem McKenzie (a former tackle who, like Umenyiora, played on the Giants' Super Bowl XLII and XLVI teams). He has the same temperament. He's very smart, but he's a very athletic player."

Umenyiora is fourth on the Giants' career sack list with 75.0 and a member of the franchise's Ring of Honor. Since concluding his 12-year career in 2014, he has worked in a variety of roles to help the NFL grow internationally. Last year, Umenyiora was one of the founders of NFL Africa, which is part of the league's International Player Pathway program (IPP).

Born in London, Umenyiora lived in Nigeria from ages 7-14. He has made numerous visits to the country and finding potential NFL players both there and throughout Africa has become one of his great passions. He and Ejike Ugboaja, a former Nigerian basketball player, founded a program there they call The Uprise.

"I realized there are so many incredible athletes over there – I'm talking a hundred times better than I was as an athlete," Umenyiora said. "And they have no chance of bettering their lives, no chance to actually do something constructive with their lives because of the situation over there.

"In America and in the West, you have opportunities for these guys to do something with all the incredible talent that they have. I recognized that and I decided I was going to start a program to help get these guys opportunities in America. We've had camps in South Africa, Ghana, Senegal. I have scouts in these locations and they're looking for the best athletes we can find and once we find them, we bring them to a location and we start to train them."

Mbaeteka was first spotted by Umenyiora at a camp in Nigeria in May 2021. He was one of three players selected to train at the NFL Academy in London in October. Three months later, the NFL announced that he was one of 13 players selected to compete for a spot in the 2022 International Player Pathway program. Mbaeteka was one of three potential linemen to travel to Arizona to work with former NFL center LeCharles Bentley. "He's been immersed in football for the last couple of months," Umenyiora said.

The NFL held a showcase for the international players in Arizona that was attended by Giants scout Jeremy Breit, who was so impressed with Mbaeteka that the team flew him to New Jersey yesterday and signed him today.

"When the Giants brought him in, they took him to the board and drew things and asked him all these questions and he was able to answer them, because that's what he's been working on this entire time," Umenyiora said. "He's highly intelligent. I guess they were blown away by the fact that he was able to do all that stuff."

Umenyiora believes Mbaeteka can equal or succeed the success of Jordan Mailata, an Australian native who had no prior football experience when he joined the Philadelphia Eagles and is now the team's starting left tackle.

"If you have the physical attributes, you can make that transition rather easily," Umenyiora said. "And I can tell you in Africa there's hundreds of thousands of people who have those attributes who just need an opportunity and we're going to provide it for them."

Umenyiora is thrilled the Giants are giving that chance to Mbaeteka.

"A lot of people think this was me, but I had nothing to do with this," Umenyiora said. "The Giants decided they were going to fly him in. They did this on their own. They saw him, they liked him, they flew him in yesterday, and he blew them away. They offered him a contract and here we are. For it to be the Giants of all teams, it means the world to me, it really does.

"What the Giants have done here is truly hard to put into words. There are so many people in Nigeria and in Africa who are going to see this and right now they're going to have hope. Before, they were hopeless. They're going to see this as hope and they're going to start working and working toward something, however unrealistic it is. At least now, they will see that it is possible. They've changed the world, they really have."

Giants Sign Nigerian OT Roy Mbaeteka

BY JOHN FENNELLY

NEW YORK (GIANTS WIRE) - Many NFL teams are spanning the globe these days to find players and you can count the New York Giants as one of them.

On Friday, they announced the signing of Roy Mbaeteka is a 6-foot-9, 320-pound offensive tackle from Nigeria who was mentored by former Giants great Osi Umenyiora in the NFL Africa initiative, which is part of the league’s International Player Pathway program (IPP).

Mbaeteka has no high school or college experience but the Giants are hoping he can be molded into a competitive player much the way the Philadelphia Eagles did with Jordan Mailata, a former Australian rugby star who is now a starter at tackle on their offensive line.

“Once you see him, you know he’s physically imposing and in a year or two if you immerse him in football culture, he’s going to be fantastic,” Umenyiora told Giants.com in a phone conversation from his home in London.

“The Giants took a chance. Not much of a chance, I think. When you see him working, you’re going to know what he’s about. . . He is big, strong, physical, extremely intelligent, very athletic. He’s built to play offensive tackle in the league. In fact, he reminds me quite a bit of Kareem McKenzie. He has the same temperament. He’s very smart, but he’s a very athletic player.”

Osi has been very active in developing international talent for the NFL, especially in Africa. He downplayed his role in bringing the Giants and Mbaeteka together.

“A lot of people think this was me, but I had nothing to do with this,” Umenyiora said. “The Giants decided they were going to fly him in. They did this on their own. They saw him, they liked him, they flew him in [on Thursday], and he blew them away. They offered him a contract and here we are. For it to be the Giants of all teams, it means the world to me, it really does.

“What the Giants have done here is truly hard to put into words. There are so many people in Nigeria and in Africa who are going to see this and right now they’re going to have hope. Before, they were hopeless. They’re going to see this as hope and they’re going to start working and working toward something, however unrealistic it is. At least now, they will see that it is possible. They’ve changed the world, they really have.”

“If you have the physical attributes, you can make that transition rather easily. And I can tell you in Africa there’s hundreds of thousands of people who have those attributes who just need an opportunity and we’re going to provide it for them.”

Pastor Tunde Bakare And The Lies Of A Failed State

BY CHUKS ILOEGBUNAM

Image via The Biafra Telegraph

Pastor Tunde Bakare of The Citadel Global Community Church recently spoke through his hat while preaching a sermon. He told his congregation that, during the January 15, 1966 military action that toppled the First Republic, the soldiers that took Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa removed his turban, poured wine on his head and force-fed him with the alcohol. For abominating him, Balewa, just before he was shot, pronounced a cause on Ndigbo, to the effect that no one from the ethnic group will ever bear rule over Nigeria. Mr. Bakare’s story, fanciful as it sounds, is a pack of lies. This article, therefore, is to educate Mr. Bakare and others of his misguided persuasion with the truth, of which Jesus, the Christ said in John 8: 32: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

On the mundane level, no one removed any turban from Sir Abubakar’s head. The turban is a headdress. Soldiers invaded the Prime Minister’s official residence at around 3am, when the man was in bed. Did he sleep turbaned? Do people sleep in their headdresses? Apart from that picture in which presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari appeared in suit and tie, wearing a wan smile and looking almost comical with his receding hairline, there hardly is another photograph of the man in which a cap does not adorn his head. Would his traditional fondness for full dressing gear ever mean that he went to bed in a hat? Do women sleep with all those accessories they routinely assembled on their heads for public events? Tafawa Balewa’s turban was not removed because he wasn’t wearing one when his adversaries closed in on him.

Muslims are by injunction forbidden to consume alcoholic beverages. The story that the Prime Minister was bathed in wine and inebriated with it is aimed at sustaining the opprobrium first established by revisionists in 1966. Also his recovered body showed clearly that he hadn’t been shot. The lies spewed by Mr. Bakare have one source. They always had a single objective: the monopoly of political power by the geo-political north. There are many such lies still enjoying vibrancy in the country. Three of them should suffice for our argument. One, when General Aguiyi-Ironsi’s regime was toppled, Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon, who succeeded him, was going to sunder the country by announcing the Republic of Northern Nigeria, for the simple reason that political power had left the region. Gowon is still denying this fact, despite incontrovertible evidence to its certitude. (See the document marked CAB/128/41 at the British Public Records Office at Kew Gardens, London. It contained the minutes of the British Cabinet meeting of August 2, 1966 that was declassified after a 30-year moratorium. It incontrovertibly shows Gowon’s secessionist tendency after they assassinated General Aguiyi-Ironsi.) Two, Gowon said in his maiden speech as Head of State that there was no basis for Nigerian unity. He denies the statement to this day. As a matter of fact, his government disingenuously published a misleading version of his speech, claiming that he had only discounted national unity in a unitary dispensation. But, the BBC Monitoring Service recorded Gowon’s broadcast live, and the transcript is forever available. It has Gowon saying, “Suffice it to say that putting all considerations to the test, political, economic as well as social, the basis of unity is not there…” Three. Nigeria’s military leaders met in Aburi, Ghana, on January 4 & 5, 1967, for a conference to avert the contingency of civil war. They reached an agreement. Back in Nigeria, Gowon reneged on the agreement, an infamy he denies to this day, even though the Aburi proceedings were audio-recorded from start to finish. Had the agreement been implemented, the civil war might well have never occurred.

The military action of January 1966 was called and is still called an Igbo coup. How could a putsch intended to install the Yoruba Chief Obafemi Awolowo, as Prime Minister be an Igbo coup? Here’s Major Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu: “Neither myself nor any other lads was in the least interested in governing the country. We were soldiers and not politicians. We had earmarked from the list known to every soldier in this operation who would be what. Chief Obafemi Awolowo was, for example, to be released from jail immediately and to be made the Executive President of Nigeria.” See West Africa magazine of July 29, 1967, page 981. And here’s Major Adewale Ademoyega: “At the end of the first week of January, Major Anuforo and I arranged to meet Captain Udeaja, a young engineering graduate from the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham, UK. We met in Major Chukwuka’s house at the Ikeja Cantonment but Chukwuka himself was not there. Having briefed Udeaja generally and got his consent, we gave him his task. He was to fly a special plane provided for the purpose to Calabar on the morning of D-Day, to effect the release of Chief Awolowo and bring him to Lagos on the plane. We had already arranged for a plane of the Nigeria Air Force to be made available that morning. This was done through Major Nzegwu (not Nzeogwu) of the Air Force.” See Adewale Ademoyega: Why We Struck: The Story of the First Nigerian Coup, Evans Brothers Limited, Ibadan, 1981; pp 68-69.

The Nzeogwu and Ademoyega stories were corroborated by no less a person than Chief Awolowo, thusly: “It was learnt after the January coup that the authors had planned to release me from Calabar, fly me to Lagos, and install me as Head of State whether I liked it or not. If I refused the offer, they were prepared to govern in my name until I was persuaded to accept the offer. The authors of the coup had no plan to govern the country under a military administration.” See Obafemi Awolowo, My March Through Prison, Macmillan Nigeria Publishers Limited, Ilupeju Lagos, 1985; page 297.

In spite of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the myth of the Igbo coup has been sustained to this day. According to Ademoyega, the innermost circle of the coup plot was composed of three Majors: Adewale Ademoyega from Ode Remo in today’s Ogun State, a History graduate of the University of London; Emmanuel Ifeajuna from Onitsha, a University of Ibadan Science graduate; and Chukwuma Nzeogwu from Okpanam, a town bordering Asaba in present day Delta State. Besides these facts, there were 50 Majors in the Nigerian Army on the morning of the coup; 24 of them were Igbo. About 20 of these knew nothing of the coup and never participated in its execution. The coup cost the life of Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Chinyelu Unegbe, the Quarter-Master General of the Nigerian Army. Chinyelu Unegbe was Igbo from Ozubulu in today’s Anambra State. General Aguiyi-Ironsi put down the coup; he was Igbo from Umuana Ndume in Umuhia in the present Abia State. These facts have never constituted extenuating circumstances. The coup must forever be labelled an Igbo coup, a lie from the pit of hell that continues to be used as a basis for the sporadic massacring of Ndigbo and their consignment to fourth-class citizenship in their own country.

All these lies are the reason Nigeria is a failed state. And unless these lies and countless others are finally and permanently abrogated, Nigeria’s chances of resurrection are unequivocally non-existent. In a sense Pastor Bakare is a tool in the hands of forces he scarcely recognises. The fibs he told his church members were as old as 1966. The precursors are from the top echelons of Northern Nigerian hegemony, but their lies first surfaced in book form when the Hudahuda Publishing Company of Zaria published John M. Paden’s Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto in 1986. This is Professor Omo Omoruyi in The Tale of June 12; The Betrayal of the Democratic Rights of Nigerians (1993) (Press Alliance Network Limited; 1999.) “President Babangida ruled out any Yoruba person if Chief Abiola who had been with the military and the North in various capacities could not win the support of the ethno-military clique. He ruled out the Igbo on the argument that the country and definitely the North would not buy an Igbo then or in the near future. More seriously, he argued that the Yoruba and the Igbo did not have strong representation in the Armed Forces to provide them with the kind of protection they would need. This is still at the heart of democratisation today” (page 253).

Professor Omoruyi, who was the Director-General of the Centre for Democratic Studies and, more importantly, Babangida’s closest confidant, sought clarification from the military President. “This was when (General Babangida) called my attention to the feeling in the North about an Igbo as President. He thought that it would violate the curse placed on the Igbo by the late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa before he was executed on January 15, 1966. Sir Abubakar was quoted to have said: ‘I know you are going to kill me; you will never get a Prime Minister like me. The Igbo will suffer for twenty-five years.’” (Page 262.)

Now, under Pastor Bakare, the consummate wielder of the microphone, the falsehoods got added embellishment. The curse preventing any Igbo from becoming President over a period of 25 years assumed eternal dimensions. The snippety nonsense of turban and wine got thrown in. No one seemed to underscore the impotence of the curse by General Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo being Balewa’s immediate successor. I reacted thus to this story in Ironsi: Nigeria, The Army, Power And Politics (Press Alliance 1999; and Eminent Biographies 2019): “The story that was put out claimed that Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa ‘cursed’ the Igbo, saying they will not rule Nigeria for 25 years. By the time Babangida used this fiction to discount an Igbo President in 1993, 27 years had elapsed since Sir Abubakar died. Yet, the “curse” was still potent. Babangida himself had no qualms marrying into a “cursed” ethnic group and raising four children who by extension must be half cursed. The main point here is that, apart from Sir Abubakar’s lack of locus standi to curse the Igbo, (how many million curses will the thousands of Igbo victims of the 1966 pogrom utter?), the story is patently false. Its authors lacked authenticity because their story was bereft of citation and attribution. The most detailed account of the interrogation of those that carried out the coup of January 1966 was released by the regime of General Yakubu Gowon. The details also appear in Crisis And Conflict in Nigeria: A Documentary Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, 1971) by A. H. M Kirk-Greene. Nowhere is there anything about any curse. No authority ever corroborated the story. Yet this fiction is what the Clique has held on to in the protracted subjugation of Ndigbo. That was why Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, a principled officer and gentleman, was ignominiously removed as Chief of General Staff within months of his appointment. That was why Ndigbo led the formation of the PDP and gave it their all, only for the currently acclaimed Igbo leader, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, to be given a short shrift.” (pp 242-243.)

According to Omo Omoruyi, Chief M. K. O. Abiola’s presidential election victory was nullified because it was not backed by what he called Ethno-Military Clique of Northern Nigeria. General Babangida posited in 1993 that, “the Yoruba and the Igbo did not have strong representation in the Armed Forces to provide them with the kind of protection they would need.” Yoruba and Igbo representation in the military today are for more minuscular today than ever before, due to the conscious and deliberate nepotistic policy of the man at the helm today. Besides, no one has bothered to decipher the Caliphate’s thinking on 2023. Perhaps the assumption is that its deafening silence is symptomatic of non-alignment? How could this be when Sultan Dasuki was one of the prime forces against Chief Abiola’s presidential election? All these point to the fact that, in the ultimate, even the Jagaban would discover that he washed his hands and cracked a nut for an errant fowl to carry the seed away. At that point only would the incalculable harm done to Yoruba and Southern interests by the forward-looking politics of Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu become ever so clear.

To return to phantom curses and negative repercussions! Pastor Bakare needs to ask himself this fundamental question: Why is the curse for bad behaviour unidirectional? A sensible answer to that question may assist him in coming to terms with a myriad of other questions. Those who killed General Aguiyi-Ironsi in July 1966 have the longest streets in Abuja named after them. Apart from Aguiyi-Ironsi, they also killed countless other officers, including Lieutenant Colonels Israel Okoro, Gabriel Okonweze and Francis Adekunle Fajuyi, and Majors Nzegwu, Emelifonwu, Nnamani, Ihedigbo, Obienu, Ekanem, P. C. Obi, Isong, Ogunro; and 11 Captains, and 13 Lieutenants, and 128 NCOs and Other Ranks. They went ahead with a pogrom that cost 50,000 lives of Eastern Nigerians, mostly Ndigbo. Why have the perpetrators of the nsoani never been visited by a curse? Nigeria has five functional international airports. Two of them are named after the mass murderers of July, August, September and October 1966.

They claimed that wine was poured on Tafawa Balewa, and that alcohol was forced down his throat. Compare it to the following: “Thirdly, the evidence disclosed that it was not merely a case of Northerners descending on Easterners and shooting, matcheting and clubbing them to death. They embarked on various methods of torture and humiliation. One method was described by the 72nd witness – Dick Iwebi. This punishment is one of the most dreadful ways of crucifying a person. A heavy rod is tied across the back of the chest of the victim with the hands stretched and secured firmly on the rod. While the victim may still be standing on his legs, he is as helpless as a man nailed to a cross. In this position they then proceed to torture the victim by plucking his eyes, cutting his tongue and cutting his testicles.” See The Report of the Justice G. C. M Onyiuke Tribunal on the Massacre of Ndigbo in 1966, Tollbrook Publishers Limited, Ikeja Lagos, pp 125-126. Dear Pastor Bakare, who got cursed for this atrocity?

The thoughtful must ask what informed Pastor Bakare’s timing for his peculiar sermon. But the answer is all too obvious. The presidential election is next year and people who should only be seen and never heard are bursting eardrums hectoring all-comers for an Igbo President of Nigeria. It is important that their agitation is shot down before it gets a chance of taking off and actually flying. Of course, anti-Igbo propaganda was never a spontaneous thing. Its real name is INSIDOUS. To exemplify: In 1954, Emmanuel Ifeajuna won the gold medal in the High Jump event of the British Empire and Commonwealth Games held in Vancouver, Canada. Ifeajuna was not just the first Nigerian, but also the first Black African, to win an international sports event. Back here in Nigeria, those that must never be cursed set up a national Sports Hall of Fame, which, to this day, does not include Ifeajuna’s name. Those who recall that Chioma Ajunwa is the first Nigerian to win an Olympic gold (in the long jump in Atlanta 1996) must go check out “their” sports “Hall of Fame”. Chances are that her name is not there. Not because she committed any offence but because of “from where she from come from”! Yes, it is a capital offence to come from the Igbo country. In 1995, Gideon Akaluka, a young Igbo trader based in Kano was accused of desecrating the Koran. He was locked up. But an organised mob broke into his Police cell, dragged him out, beheaded him and danced through Kano metropolis with his bodiless head. Does Bakare know that not one person was cursed for this atrocity?

The injustice against Ndigbo is pervasive. Take the National Honours. Every head of every hamlet in the far North is an MFR or an OFR or a CFR or a CON or a GCON. Not so for Ndigbo. That is why a personage like Eze (Professor) Green Onyekaba Nwankwo, a distinguished traditional ruler, an accomplished academic who set up the Department of Finance at the University of Lagos, a former Executive Director in charge of banking and monetary policy in the Central Bank of Nigeria and the author of over 20 books has only the MON – the least of all the honours Nigeria can offer. The iniquity is most eloquent in the military. Unless they are in the Education Corps or the Medical Corps or the Physical Training Corps, hardly any Igbo gets promoted above the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Those of us campaigning for an Igbo President of Nigeria are looking at more than the spectacle of a politician from the ethnic group enjoying the tenancy of Aso Rock. That is too simple. We are demanding equal rights. We are saying that a country indexed on lies already collapsed before it got the chance to take a first step to nationhood. An Igbo President is supposed to be the antidote to nearly 60 years of a people’s subjugation. People have no business forgetting that there is a distinction between being a slave and being enslaved. Ndigbo are no slaves. That was why in 1803, 75 of them rebelled at Dunbar Creek in Georgia, USA, took control of the slave ship carrying them, drowned their captors and chose to walk into the ocean rather than be slaves to white slave masters. That was why, between 1791 and 1804 they rebelled and overthrew the French regime in Haiti to establish an independent country founded and governed by ex-slaves. That is why the Igbo, indigenous to their current geographical space for millennia, find intolerable their insolent subjugation by recent migrants from the Fouta Djalon whose numbers no credible census has put at more than 5 percent of the Nigerian population.

The systematic enslavement of Ndigbo in what is supposed to be their own country has got to be terminated. The epic Igbo struggle has taken various forms and will continue to do so. A prime example is their attempt at secession in the 1960s. Britain, and a genocidal war in which “Starvation is a legitimate instrument of warfare” thwarted them. Back inside Nigeria they are compelled to permanently stand back and keep bloody quiet forever. For any sigh, groan or moan of theirs, goons, troops, the Police and paramilitary contingents are deployed with extreme prejudice and excessive numbers against them. They are called terrorists while those that have stopped Kaduna State and wiped out innocent thousands in many parts of the country are termed bandits and treated with kid gloves. They have been branded “a spot in a circle,” a military euphemism underscoring their unenviable situation as targets for continued massacring.

There is news for the liars and the killers. Nigeria is unsustainable on the diet of lies and more lies. It is true that those that laid into Ndigbo in the 1960s and killed them in the tens of thousands got rewarded with high political offices and oil blocks and whatnot. But the kill-and-go ship of Ndigbo finally steamed into turbulent waters. Although census exercises in Nigeria are a huge joke, there are at least 40 million Ndigbo in Nigeria today. Nobody and no country can manufacture enough weapons to wipe them off the face of the country. Even in the extremely unlikely event of all Igbo in Nigeria getting killed, there are millions of them abroad today. From their number, at least a thousand will eventually pay a visit to the mother country, these question pouring from their flaming tongues: “Why did you slay my mother? Why did you massacre my father? Why did you annihilate my sister? Why did you exterminate my brother?”

For all of the above, and especially at the lectern, the microphone should never be a justification for verbal diarrhoea. So, Mr. Preacher Bakare, the next time the sound of your voice is amplified by the electronics of public address systems, you must endeavour to annexe some circumspection. On disseminating the falsehoods of those who claim the right to perpetually sit and fart on all our heads, you must do two things: DESIST and CEASE!

 Chuks Iloegbunam is the author of The Case for an Igbo President of Nigeria.