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Apart from embarking on restructuring the country, the full implementation of the post war slogan of “no victor, no vanquished” as well as that of Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation programmes may just be what could heal the wounds inflicted by the civil war
By Goddy Ikeh
THE annual Remembrance Day on Wednesday, January 15, has come and gone, but concerns still linger over agitations for self-determination from the South East, marginalization of some southern states and worsening security situation, 50 years after the end of the Nigerian civil war in 1970.
Aside the usual parades by the armed forces and the laying of wreaths on Wednesday across the country by the president, governors, service chiefs, the leadership of the National Assembly, the Judiciary and members of the diplomatic corps, some Nigerian groups and Channels Television lined up week-long programmes to mark the event.
In one of the events tagged ‘Never Again’ in Lagos, Prof Anya O. Anya, noted that violence cannot provide the solution to the problems facing Nigeria. He said that Nigeria should learn from the mistakes of the past and what some say was a failure of leadership.
According to him, Nigeria is not the only country that has gone through such a situation as the civil war and that losing a war is not necessarily a badge of failure.
In his remarks at the event, Major General Obi Umahi (rtd), said that history must be brought back into the Nigerian education and school syllabus and that the aim of the conference was to sensitise Nigerians on the need for forgiveness, healing, and national cohesion.
According to Channels Television report, Umahi urged Nigerians to see the present situation in the country as a moment for national reflection and stressed that there was an urgent need to build bridges of unity and peace.
In his keynote address, Professor Pat Utomi said that the collapse of culture was one of the major problems of Nigeria and called for a joint effort to fix the problem.
Speaking in the same vein, Professor Wole Soyinka declared his support for the Western Nigeria Security Network, popularly known as ‘Amotekun’. He described the security outfit as a pleasant New Year gift, saying it has shown that the yearnings of Nigerians prevailed.
In his speech, the renowned Nigerian historian, Prof. Banji Akintoye, raised an alarm over what he described as the worrying moods in Nigeria. Akintoye, who is the leader, Assembly of All Yoruba Groups Worldwide, warned that he has “good reasons to fear today that the character of the affairs in the country these days, and the prevailing mood among Nigerians, are chillingly similar to the character of the affairs in the nation in the months leading to the civil war”.
Akintoye noted that the federal government is being managed in ways that make it look like an exclusive preserve of a particular minority. “There seems to be an agenda being pursued to establish this minority in all positions of command in the Executive, Administrative, Judicial and Security Services of our Country.
“The voices of the majority register protests continually and are continually disrespected and ignored. The state of law is patently being subsumed to the needs of that agenda, with seriously damaging effects on human rights. These situations are inevitably fostering, among the Peoples of the Middle Belt and South of our country, the feeling that they are being reduced to the status of conquered Peoples in Nigeria.
He called on the Nigerian government to terminate all this descent towards horrific war and speedily move the country into the state of law, the state of mutual respect among hundreds of nations and the state of order and peace.
Akintoye also urged the federal government to restructure the country in order to give the country a true and generally acceptable federal structure. According to him, restructuring would enable different sections of the country to develop their resources for the conquest of poverty in their domains, for the elevation of the quality of life of their citizens, and for their contributions to the overall prosperity of Nigeria.
And to make restructuring produce a full and abiding good for the country, he noted that Nigeria must now, for the first time, correct a serious mistake which it has been making from the beginning, especially from the beginning of independent Nigeria.
“That mistake is that we have been ignoring the fundamental fact that underlies our country. The fundamental fact is that Nigeria is a Country of many different nations, of nations that are in some respects radically different – in their cultures, their political traditions, their perceptions of acceptable reality, their expectations, and their desires and goals. Ignoring this fundamental, we have almost continuously let our country wobble and teeter on the brink of violent implosion, and we have continually inflicted serious pains upon ourselves. We fought and ended a Civil War, but we have never really moved measurably away from the brinks of Civil War.
“We have now seen enough to be convinced that we must not continue to ignore the fundamental. The fundamental will not go away; it is we who must harmonize the structure and management of our country with the fundamental. Refusing to recognize and harmonize with the fundamental would certainly continue our country’s slide towards dissolution, and might soon complete that process. Consciously recognizing and harmonizing with the fundamental would almost certainly give our country a long and stable lease of life.
“But that means that if we do agree and choose to continue to live together as one country, then we all (all sections of our country) must together work out, agree upon, and thoroughly respect the agreed conditions and demands of our living together as one country. We must now, absolutely, and without further delay, address our fundamental and let our country, our Nations, and our people have peace. The mounting mood of our younger generation and our youths – the overwhelming and most heavily distressed majority of our country’s population – is deafeningly, and increasingly impatiently, demanding this. We are already in a crisis.
“If we, in our sober deference to reality, find that we can no longer hold together as one entity, then let us together peacefully find a rational solution, and let us Never Again plunge into any kind of War among us. It is subhuman to continue to suffer pain and brutalization without trying to get rid of it. And it is insanity to keep doing a thing the same way over and over and expect a different outcome. I am confident that we Nigerians can make a success of doing the desperately needful now,” he said.
Speaking in another programme on Channels Television on Friday, January 18, titled Healing, Reconciliation and Reintegration, General Umahi blamed hatred, ethnicity for the war and called for a change of attitude. He also blamed the leadership for not doing much to change the wrong attitude of seeing victory at the polls as opportunity to recruit ad appoint his kinsmen to positions of authority and ignoring the Federal Character law, which is constitutionally required for appointments at the federal level.
He equally frowned at the treatment of Ibos since the war ended which has robbed the country of some of the inventions recorded by the southeasterners during the war. The panelists urged the federal government to exploit and develop the potentialities of every Nigerian no matter their ethnicity.
Reacting to the issue that some young Nigerians, who have little or no knowledge of the civil war era, have indeed moved on with their lives through inter-tribal marriages, the panelists noted that the inter-tribal marriages can only help in the healing process, but that the pains inflicted by the war, which have been passed on from one generation to another, would take several decades to heal. And there should be deliberate efforts by the federal government to take decisive actions to make good the post war slogan of “No Victor, No Vanquished” by establishing strategic projects in the South East zone to compensate for the failure to
implement the post war programme of Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation.
In another programme on the civil war on Channels Television, Prof. Epiphany Azinge, frowned at the use of starvation by the Nigerian government as an instrument of war. This singular action resulted in the death of thousands of children from malnutrition in Biafra. Azinge also condemned the massacre of hundreds of Asaba men, who were brutally murdered during the war and called for apology and compensation from the federal government.
In his apparent reaction to some of these contentious issues raised by some Nigerians on the reasons for the war and the failure of the federal government to implement its post war slogan and programmes, General Yakubu Gowon, who was the Head of State, said in a television interview that the failure to properly execute the post war slogan and programmes was due to the change of government in 1975, when he was overthrown, due to differences in policies.
“Unfortunately, the change of government did not allow the programmes to be completed,” he said.
Gowon recalled that the breakdown of a number of peace talks between Nigeria and Biafra and the insistence by the Biafran leader Odumegwu Ojukwu on sticking to the “Aburi Accord” (which favoured Confederation for Nigeria) and the declaration of Biafra by Ojukwu led to the declaration of war.
For General IBM Haruna, who was a prominent player in the war, admitted that “war was never the solution” to the Nigerian problems at the time.
Several other war veterans on both the Nigerian and Biafran sides agreed with the views of General Haruna that the issues would have been resolved without going to war.
However, what has not been said is that apart from the remote and immediate causes of the civil war, the youthful ages of the military officers in charge of the affairs of Nigeria in the 1960s might have played a significant role in plunging the country into one of Africa’s most destructive conflicts.
Jan. 12, 2020 @ 19:35 GMT |
Tags: Concerns linger as drums of war persist 50 years after Nigeria’s civil war
