Connect with us

Nigeria In One Minute

Vera Osuji’s homily: A sour note for Igbo leaders

Published

on

One Year Of Extreme Pain

I have known Vera for sometime now. She has always struck me as a very bright young lass, with a defined role in life. Very confident and easy going. She was one of my protégés who stood out amongst the rest as one who would sure footedly succeed our generation of Investment Bankers with the way she went about her duties as a cub broker.

When she called and said she had written something on the Biafra situation, I did not hesitate to lend her my platform to air her views. I asked her to immediately send her write up and as soon as I got it sent it to my diligent partner to upload it on my blog and hers too. Moji’s blog has a wider reach and is one of the most influential blogs in the country today.

I must confess that I did not have the time to read the report but trusting in what I know of Vera believed very strongly that the prose would be of high standard and that she would marshal her arguments in such a way that I would be proud of.
So when I eventually got round to reading her views, I was not only struck by the strength of her arguments but felt shame for our Igbo leaders. These questions were the same questions I had asked in my article, ‘ Biafra, what Biafra’. The issue today is not secession, it is not the discrimination or otherwise being faced by the Igbo man in today’s Nigeria, it is simply the failure of leadership by those who the igbos have entrusted with the mantle to lead them.

That is the true ring in Vera’s write up. That is why Vera is today crying, this is why Vera’s generation just may not have the quality of life that is expected. This is why today, Vera and Nnamdi Kanu are on different platforms seeking different solutions to the same problem of desolation and neglect facing the Igbo man in our country today. Please let us not forget that these issues are not only limited to the Igbo, it faces every tribe and culture in our country today. It is a massive failure of a generation of leaders, those Wole Soyinka has called the wasted generation.

They have squandered the beautiful legacy the British left for us, they have recycled their incompetent and impotent leadership, leaving us famished with hunger, lack of infrastructure and hopelessly fatigued from pain and tears. Pushing us to suicidal thoughts of separation and segregation. Or how do you explain as Vera has pointed out Kanu looking for war as a landlocked people surrounded by tribes that would not give them access to sea ports.

Read also: Noise for Biafra- A strategic or sentimental agitation

It is the frustration of being a young person in Nigeria where we have lost all hope for a resurgence. I feel Vera’s frustrations, her pain and her tears. Hers is a triple jeopardy. Apart from the fact that she is Igbo, she is of a young generation where she has to fight and beg for pittance from the tables of the overlords and the pigs they call their children and lastly she is a woman with all the disadvantages that comes with being of the softer gender.

Vera’s tears today is the cry of all womanhood, not just the Igbo lady, it is the cry of all young people not just the Igbo young person, it is the cry of all disenfranchised Nigerians seeking to hold responsible the idiots who have moved us as a Nation to such a despicable state. A state of mass hunger, a country of pedophilic miasma, a visionless assemblage of hitlarian despots, queezing and killing us all mercilessly.

How do you hold accountable leaders who have received and squandered over three trillion Naira belonging to the Igbo people since civil war. Akpabio in just 8 years rebuilt Akwa Ibom with far less money allocated to the Igbo nation. Today, no Igbo town can hold a candle beside any Akwa Ibom village. Today the Igbo man remains a slave to his leaders, a Nation of Osus’, rejected by their leaders and pitied by the rest of us.

Vera’s pain and tears should galvanize all patriots not the Kanu variant to look for peaceful but very effective solutions to our problems in our Country. Vera’s tears tells me succinctly that it is not just an Igbo problem, it is a problem faced by all the peoples and nations that make up our big blind country, failure will make us all beasts with no Nation as my dear Fela Anikulapo Kuti will say.

RipplesNigeria …without borders, without fears

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now