Nigeria’s unfairness to the Igbo, a ticking time bomb – Nnia Nwodo

Excerpts from an interview granted Vanguard Newspapers

Question: What is your view on the IPOB agitation for Biafra Republic, Fulani herdsmen attacks in the South-East and the response of the security agencies?

Answer: If you read my inaugural speech, you will find answers to all these questions. My views are in the public domain. The law enforcement agencies should not dramatize to the nation that their headship confers immunity on some criminals from a section of a country and they give a high handed approach to those who do not come from that part of the country. The selective prosecution of criminals in our country and the exertion of brute force on certain areas of the country even when they are not criminals destroy the very foundation on which this federation is founded. There is an increased ethnic consciousness across the length and breadth of this country and fired separatist interests, and at no time since the end of the civil war has the basis of our unity been eccentric as it is today.

Regarding the IPOB, I don’t know what else you want me to say that will be different from what I have said in the past. Where I come from and where I represent, the people of the South-East feel they are second class citizens in this country. They feel there is an unspoken understanding between the other parts of the country to punish them for the civil war, to exclude them from the commanding heights of the economy and from sensitive positions in the federation and even the way our politicians have been treated is nothing to write home about.

Ever since the war ended, the state of federal roads in the South-East remains the same. The mineral resources still remain the same till today. Of recent, an Igbo was Minister of Petroleum, and for the first time in the history of Nigeria, the financial activities of NNPC were available by a click of the mouse to anyone in and out of Nigeria. You could see how much is being spent in a month. It was the first time NNPC posted profit.

He was rewarded with a demotion from minister to a directorship on NNPC’s board. I had been minister twice. All parastatals under a ministry report to the minister. Former President Goodluck Jonathan once appointed me to the governing council of a university. I tore the letter of appointment. I saw it as an insult. Not because of lack of humility but because he did not appreciate what I represented.

It’s not me as a person, but imagine an Igbo man who has been appointed a minister twice and former presidential candidate to be reduced to the level of governing council member in a university in Igbo land. This is a man from South-South but he treated us the same way that the Buhari administration is treating us.

I don’t desire any appointment by this administration, I have served my turn but these are clear examples of how Igbo are treated. I don’t think there are up to four Igbo commissioners of police in this administration in a place where you have not less than 40 commissioners of police. We have been found to be politically incompetent to handle security matters in Nigeria. But we have been found to be physically competent to be foot soldiers in the war front, especially the Boko Haram war where the level of mortality is high. This is not a true federation.

In Lagos, we have Igbo who have built house approved by the government but had not been given certificate of occupancy by the government for more than 15 years. There are Igbo representatives in the Lagos State House of Assembly can’t we have at least one Igbo at the executive council?

The Nigerian Customs charges Igbo twice the cost of clearing his goods through the sea ports. They pay at the ports and are waylaid on the roads and extorted.

Our people are displeased and this has compounded anger in our youths and they have passed a vote of no confidence in us their fathers as not presenting their disgust and, so, have taken their destiny in their hands.

They say they do not want to be part of this federation anymore.

In our constitution, there are freedoms of expression and association and their own way of dramatising these is to ask for the state of Biafra. If the Nigerian state does not respond to the active state of maginalisation of some people in our federation and restructure it, Biafra becomes an inevitable answer for every Igbo man.

The way these boys are treated by the law enforcement agencies, discriminately, is unconstitutional. Now in the social media, the Oduduwa Republic has been declared. The Odua People’s Congress, OPC, carries on like a military force in South-West Nigeria and their leadership goes around in convoy saluted by police at checkpoints. Boko Haram is an armed organisation fighting the sovereignty of Nigeria. In areas where they captured territories, they depose traditional rulers, install new ones, install local administrations and mounted flags. Not one of them is in a law court in Nigeria. Government negotiated with them, spent large sums of money with phoney negotiators. Those of them who decide to change, married Chibok girls and came back to Nigeria were hosted in the Presidential villa.

But the young man with a placard in the street of Aba or Port Harcourt on Biafra is either maimed to death or thrown into a river or slaughtered and the allegation of 21 of them missing has not been investigated by the police. If you are a Nigerian son being treated wickedly by your government how will you feel?

If I didn’t mean well for the resolution of these problems, why did I not encourage these boys to foment more trouble?

I have asked the government, the boys accused you of killing 11 of them in Port-Harcourt, but you denied saying only one died.

Last Monday, people demonstrated against this government in Lagos, Abuja and Ijebu-Ode and other places, the police were walking side by side with them. Why would that of Igbo be different? Because they cannot be heard here they are taking their case to the Pope, Africa Union and the United Nations. In the social media, you find lots of abuses on this administration and nobody has accused anybody of treasonable felony. With all due respect, the Nigerian federation has been unfair to the Igbo and I call it a ticking time bomb.

Vanguard, February 12, 2017

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