Opinion
By Ikenna Emewu
There will be class actions. Litigations will come from even individuals who were hurt, maimed, denied, dehumanised, and treated like slaves of Nigeria in Lagos at the incitement of these overtly powerful politicians that declared war on us unprovoked.
There will surely be consequences to addressing a lot of nagging legal issues on rights abuses.
It’s a deep-seated pain that the spokesman of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the APC presidential candidate at the February 25 election. Mr. Bayo Onanuga inflicted on the Igbo in Lagos.
This list of these individual members of the APC that declared war on the Igbo are Musliu Akinsanya (MC Oluomo) leader of parks and garages in Lagos and of course, Femi Fani-Kayode whose infamy in reckless words keeps mounting.
If MC Oluomo does not know because of his age, Fani Kayode knows as a man in his 60s that the Igbo race suffered a very terrible and excruciating genocide that ended just 53 years ago.
Bayo Onanuga who was 10 years old when the genocide raged and very well educated and informed as a journalist of high standing understands the gravity of the genocide in which this part of Nigeria lost about 3.5 million people within 30 months.
Everything sinister, outlandish, reprehensible, inhuman, and callous weapon was thrown into the mix, including deliberate massacres, the bombing of civilians in churches, markets, hospitals, refugee camps, schools, and many more was just normal.
The sores inflicted on those victims are still very open, painful, and festering. Onanuga, FFK, Akinsanya, and others in their clan sidestepped decorum to angle towards launching a repeat of that bitter act, and worst of all against a people that did absolutely nothing wrong in the law to deserve all these incitements to hate.
What this violence-spouting trio doesn’t know is that the victims of the first genocide are still alive and the pains fresh in them. Those victims include of course Igbo and other eastern Nigerians of Onanuga’s age who were stopped from going to school because of that genocide or whose schooling was truncated and never revived after they lost their family members and had nobody to rely on.
They include those of Fani Kayode’s age also who were just 6 or 7 years like him when the genocide was activated and they lost their bearing till today as victims.
My generation belongs to the kids and infants targeted to be starved to death because hunger was a very effective and acceptable weapon of war in Nigeria against the enemies.
They are still bleeding from all points and parts of the body from the injuries inflicted on them for which none ever apologised or rehabilitated them.
They swallowed all these, bore the pains of their property seized, assets confiscated, and not up to 1% given 20 pounds in lieu of whatever they had.
Again, these people incited another sinister propaganda with the sole intention of agitating the Yoruba race to inflict ethnic genocide on the Igbo. Their foot soldiers yielded to the call and trumped up vexatious charges without substance against the Igbo, none of them without proof.
I have lived in Lagos in all my career years, but for some short stints outside the city. I cannot guess how the Igbo population disrespects Lagos State or takes them for a ride. I would not guess where the allegation of Igbo making nonsense about Yoruba culture came from. I still cannot fathom how people who go about their slavish dedication to finding food for their family through their individual efforts as the outsiders to whom the commonwealth of Nigeria is alien muster the ego to be arrogant to their hosts.
And worst of all, apart from possible rare cases of individual inclinations which apply among Nd’Igbo, Yoruba, Nupe, and all other races of humanity, I cannot recall when the Igbo in Lagos ever laid claim to the ownership of Lagos or dubbed it a no man’s land.
All these were concocted by the Tinubu political clan these three baying for the blood of genocide represent to fuel ethnic killing against the Igbo.
All discerning Igbo are so grateful to the larger Yoruba ethnic group and indeed the real Lagosians for defying the nudging of Onanuga and his clan of haters, otherwise, what we witnessed in those two elections of February 25 and especially, March 18 would have been kid’s play. I salute the restraint of the Yoruba not to be incited into wholescale ethnic cleansing which was Onanuga, FFK, Akinsanya’s real intention.
These are people who have lived among you for generations and never created troubles, never became an economic burden to you, never had nuisance value to you, all of a sudden, because the Tinubu political clan wanted to win at all costs, Onanuga and others declared war on us. So sad
Truth be told, the Lagos people, which Onanuga, FFK, and Akinsanya, are not among, have been accommodating. Bayo Onanuga is from Ogun State. FFK is an Osun State native, while Akinsanya is rumoured to be of an Igbo father from somewhere in Oshimili South of Delta State, a claim that demands further probe to be proven. All of them migrated to Lagos, just like the governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu who never spoke out against their hate and incitement is said to have Ogun nativity. They all migrated to Lagos to take it over from the natives, contrary to the Igbo who migrated there just to find livelihood as individual citizens and find their way back home.
Since relationships flow along the lines of reciprocity, it is also possible that the Igbo have not been bad guests of Lagos, the reason they are accommodated.
But Onanuga and his clan turned the entire old good relationship upside down. FFK, a man whose reputation deficit should be properly examined and who has four wonderful kids from an Igbo mother declared that the Lagos Labour Party guber candidate is not Yoruba or Lagosian just because his mother is Igbo. It is well and time will reply to him adequately.
Onanuga can celebrate his electoral victory but can’t possibly celebrate escaping a barrage of limitations and claims of damages coming his way from those Igbo persons he victimized and who became the direct victims of his incitement.
So long as the constitution of Nigeria has not excluded the Igbo as citizens of Nigeria or streamlined the right to vote to alienate the Igbo from such powers and rights, Onanuga and his co-travellers will reap a load of legal backlash. It is just a matter of time.
Having traveled the beleaguered road that the Nigerian system has subjected us to, I don’t think any people in our position would take Onanuga’s declaration of war and further war for granted. He deliberately stabbed us in the heart and we should deliberately decide to rather die in his powerful hands than walk away in cowardice.
– March 29, 2023 @ 5:00 GMT |
Tags: Bayo Onanuga Femi Fani-Kayode Ikenna Emewu MC Oluomo
