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President Muhammadu Buhari government, no doubt has a lot of problems to deal with from security to provision of infrastructure, but the unresolved incessant agitation for the sovereign state of Biafra may be a great distraction if not carefully handled
| By Anayo Ezugwu | Dec 14, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT |
IT WAS another day of anxiety in some cities in the South-East and Abuja, federal capital territory on Tuesday, December 1, as members and sympathisers of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, again took to the streets to protest the continued detention of Nnmadi Kanu, their leader. The protesters in their thousands virtually shut down social and commercial activities, as they thronged the streets in non-violent manner calling for Kanu’s release.
In Onitsha, commercial city of Anambra State and its environs of Obosi and Nkpor, commercial activities and vehicular movements were grounded as the protesters marched from the Niger Bridge head to the former Ogbunike toll gate, disrupting the flow of traffic for several hours before normalcy was restored by the military in non-violent manner. Similar protest marches took place in Aba, Abia State and Abuja, where commercial activities were also shut down. But on December 2, the protest turned bloody with the Joint Taskforce comprising the police, army and other arms of security agencies allegedly shot and killed unarmed protesters in Onitsha. Consequently, some trucks and a mosque were allegedly torched.
In Abuja, the agitators turned out in hundreds and thronged the magistrate court at Wuse Zone 2, where the detained pro-Biafra leader was scheduled to appear. But the trial was stalled following the death of the father of the chief magistrate presiding over the case.
Irked by the audacity of the whole protest marches, Solomon Arase, inspector general of Police, warned agitators against continued threats to the peace of the country or face wrath of the law. In a statement signed by Olabisi Kolawole, Police public relations officer, Arase warned members of the IPOB and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, that the police would no longer tolerate the current prolific resorts to protests around South-Eastern Nigeria.
Arase said: “The latest manifestation of this threat is the attempt to blockade the Onitsha end of Niger Bridge on December 1, 2015, an action that caused major hardship to innocent and law abiding motorists, and citizens. The act also occasioned serious dislocation of business activities.” The police chief described the threat by the groups and its members as an attempt to test the will of security agencies in Nigeria.
To stem the tide, Arase has, thus, ordered the deployment of police mobile force across Nigeria to reinforce security in all the state commands and arrest erring agitators. He warned: “Any person or group of persons so arrested in furtherance to the enforcement of this order will be made to face the full wrath of the law.”
The warning clearly suggests an imminent showdown with agitators who had earlier announced that they would be on the streets for three days on protest for the release of Kanu, who is also the leader of Biafra Radio. But it appears that the protesters may have many more days on the streets than envisaged.
This is because of the new twist being introduced into the case against the IPOB leader does not suggest that he will be out of detention soon. On Monday, November 23, when the embattled Kanu appeared before the chief magistrate court in Abuja, the federal government announced the withdrawal of the charges against him and asked the trial court to hands off because Kanu would be facing graver charges which could not be handled by the court.
Moses Idakwo, prosecution counsel, informed the court that Kanu would now be charged for acts of terrorism, which is above the purview of the magistrate court. Hence, he would have to remain in security custody. The IPOB leader has been in detention since Saturday, October 17, when he was picked up at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, by the Department of the State Security, DSS.
In the last few months, Kanu and his pro-Biafra group have left nobody in doubt they want the creation of the sovereign state of Biafra. In pressing for his unconditional freedom, members and supporters of his group have been holding protest marches in major cities in the South-East and South-South, calling for secession. The group, apart from calling for an unconditional release of Kanu, argued that the South-East had been neglected and marginalised by the federal government for too long and that they were tired of the forced marriage called Nigeria.
According to the agitators, the poor distribution of the country resources has led to underdevelopment and poor infrastructure in the region. This, they argued, had consequently resulted in the high number of employment among the youths in the South-East, the highest rate of bad roads caused by erosion and therefore, cut off some communities from the rest of the country.
The IPOB specifically charged that the situation had worsened in the past six months of the President Muhammadu Buhari regime, claiming that all the positions in the three branches of the federal government that mattered had been handed over to indigenes of the north while only few Igbo people are serving as ministers. The current situation in the country, the group argued, is totally against the spirit of the Nigerian Constitution, which directs that no section of the country predominates over the rest and that all positions must be distributed in such a manner as to conform to the federal character.
Hence, the agitators said it was their right to agitate for self-determination in line with the international laws. The IPOB, therefore, threatened to invoke Art 1(2) of the United Nations charter as well as other international laws to assert the third generation’s right for political autonomy.
Getting the international backing for self-determination for the South-Eastern region of Nigeria may not be as easy as the agitators are looking at it. This is because the Nigerian 1999 Constitution does not give a room for the kind of the manoeuvre that may help their case. In fact, the preamble of the Constitution states categorically that the entire people of Nigeria agreed that the country should be one indivisible and indissoluble sovereign nation.
Monday Onyekachi Ubani, human rights lawyer, in an interview with Realnews said the international laws made provisions for self-determination which the Biafran agitators could explore but lamented that the local laws in the country do not support their agenda. “Some of the United Nations instruments recognise self-determination for any group of persons. How this is being done is usually through constitutional means. Currently, there is no known law either in the Constitution for such in our local law but the international law does. And of course, most of the countries in the world subscribe to the international law. We are a member of the UN. One of the things about universal declaration is peoples’ right to self-determination. But doing it within the polity where you are, the agitation and procedures for referendum to determine whether you want to be on your own must be done legally within the law of the land,” Ubani said.
The lawyer said that the South-East had the right to cry out if they felt marginalised in the country, but for their grievances to be addressed they must pass through the proper channel. “Some of us are coming out to say yes the Igbo have a right to complain about marginalisation. The Igbo have a right to complain about certain things that is not right within our polity. But we must find a way of addressing it so that others will have to give us respect and know that we are not putting ourselves in a pitiable situation because we are the most hardworking people in this country. We are industrious and there are many good sides of being an Igbo. So, Igbo man should not in any way do things that will make him look like a crying baby within the polity,” Ubani said.
Evidently, the cry of marginalisation by the Igbo and a return to Biafra are not new to the whole country. The struggle for the sovereign state of Biafra actually started in 1967 and led to the Nigerian civil war, which ended in 1970.
Even the late Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, who led the Biafran war against Nigeria in the 1960s, in partial recognition of the activities of the MASSOB, talked of “a Biafra of the mind.” But the latest struggle appears to go beyond the mind and actual resuscitation of the struggle seems to have never really gone away.
The current agitation actually has its roots in the establishment of the popular Radio Biafra in 2012. Kanu seemed to have got his inspiration from the way Ben Onwuka, a lawyer and activist, was running the Biafra Zionist Movement, BZM, which he founded in 2012 and decided that with the Radio Biafra, he would mobilise people faster and better for the course.
With the BZM, Onwuka had staged an abortive invasion of the Enugu State Government House, the symbolic “Biafran seat of power.”
Even before the BZM and the Radio Biafra, there was the MASSOB, which was established by Ralph Uwazuruike, a lawyer, as a non-violent organisation, in 1990s. To get the organisation acceptable by the Igbo, Uwazurike mustered the youth, held rallies and planted the Biafran flags where possible. These actions have often gotten the organisation into serious trouble with the police and security agencies. But the organisation has also been trudging on propagating the gospel of self-determination in the region.
The three organisations appear to have fused into one in the current struggle as there has been no clear division or dissent of any of them in the current agitation.
Nevertheless, President Buhari has sent a clear warning to the agitators that he would not allow them to make the country ungovernable for him. On Saturday, November 21, he warned that the unity of the nation was not negotiable and that government would not fold its arms and watch some individuals or groups threaten the unity of Nigeria.
The president stated this at the occasions of the investiture of Nnaemeka Alfred Ugochukwu Achebe, Obi of Onitsha, as chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and graduation ceremony at the Nigeria Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, NIPSS, Kuru, Jos.
Consequently, Buhari urged the Biafran agitators to submit to peaceful and democratic means of expressing themselves saying: “Your right to protest is limited by the rights of others to safety and peaceful existence. We can offer our contrary opinions without violating the law of the land or threatening law and order.”
Also concerned by the threat posed by the unabated street protests, governors of the South-East states and leaders of thoughts held a meeting in Enugu on Sunday, November 22. The meeting agreed to set up a committee to parley with the pro-Biafran activists and the federal government over the issue.
A communiqué issued after the meeting said the proposed committee would dialogue with the MASOB, and IPOB, the two major pro-Biafran groups. In the communiqué read by Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State, at the Enugu State Government House, said the meeting would help to find a lasting solution to the issue.
Okorocha said that the meeting similarly resolved to send a delegation of the South-East elders to meet with President Buhari over the “marginalisation” of the zone, as well as other outstanding socio-economic issues that hindered development in the region. “The elders also examined other issues, including poor state of infrastructural facilities in the South-East, marginalisation in federal appointments and other socio-economic issues that impact on the economic development of the South-East and resolved to support the decision of the South-East governors to set up an Economic Council and urged them to interface with the federal government on remedial measures. A delegation of the elders of the South-East was mandated to meet with the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he said.
But the MASSOB, which has since joined forces with the IPOB in the struggle, reportedly rejected the outcome of the South East Governors’ Forum and elders’ meeting on ways to end the agitation and protests.
Uchenna Madu, MASSOB’s factional national director of information, told newsmen in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, on Wednesday, November 25, that they were not satisfied with the meeting of the Igbo leaders because they did not show any seriousness to the plight of Kanu. Madu said: “How can revered Igbo leaders waste a whole day in a marathon meeting without discussing our simple demand of Nnamdi Kanu’s release? Are they afraid of the Northern oligarchy, Western alliance with the North or President Muhammadu Buhari?”
But even in the North, the agitation is also causing some worries. For instance, the North-East Youths Peace Development Initiate, NYPDI, a group of northern youths, recently advised the federal government to dialogue with those agitating for a sovereign state of Biafra instead of using force. The NYPDI also dissociated itself from the call for the Igbo in the north to quit the area, saying such idea would lead to crisis in the country.
Kyari Idris Abubakar, national president of the group, in a statement, said: “Like those of us who have been suffering from insurgency in the past years we would not hesitate to advice against anything that would lead to violence in the country.” Abubakar, therefore, appealed to President Buhari, the service chiefs and minister of interior to step into the matter before it degenerates into chaos.
On his part, Sa’ad Abubakar III, Sultan of Sokoto, while also expressing his concern on the growing agitation, promised that a delegation from the northern traditional council would be sent to the South-East on the issue. The Sultan who is not saying when the delegation would be sent, raised the concern at the second general assembly of the Northern Traditional Rulers’ Council which held in Kaduna on Monday, November 23.
He noted that there were millions of Igbo people living and doing business in various states in the country peacefully and helping the economy to grow. He said millions of Igbo people were against the agitation for an independent state and that a delegation would be sent so that peace would reign.
Prominent Nigerians have expressed concern for the agitation for Biafra. Ebongabasi Ekpe-Juda, security consultant and social commentator, said the government must act very fast to meet the needs and aspirations of the agitators in order to save the country from anarchy. “The agitation going on in the South-East is a dangerous thing. Honestly, I’m afraid of the unity of this country because this is how it started in other clans and then it grew to eventual division. The Igbo feel very cheated in President Buhari distribution of key positions and this, I think, is the main cause of that agitation.
“But if we don’t come to round table to dialogue now it may eventually lead to what we will not like. No force can stop what I have seen. I think the government should get round and talk to the leaders of South-East and see how to pacify them. I once heard that they have handed their demands to the British Prime Minister, if that is true, and they have consulted other world leaders. If the UN discusses that matter, we will not be able to stop it from happening. It’s for the government to call them now and ask them what they want,” Ekpe-Juda said.
With many Nigerians calling on the federal government to intervene in the matter and the agitators insisting on actualising their dreams of an independent Biafran state, this looks like a litmus test for the Buhari government whose hands are already full looking for solution to resolve the Boko Haram insurgence, bad economy and decay in infrastructure. Whatever it takes, Nigerians, definitely, would want to avoid anything that will lead to another civil war or the breakup of the country. But, as it is, the decision is for the Buhari government to make.
— Dec 14, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT
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