One Region, 5 Eunuchs

Over the last 18 months, since the coming together of my secondary school classmates, via a Whatsapp group, my typical day hardly ends without a visit to the platform. Besides the hearty exchanges, deep nostalgic feelings come flooding back, as many peers try to recall the high and low points of our five-year stay together in that great citadel of learning, County Grammar School, Ikwerre-Etche, Rivers state.

As a result of time and space constraints, there are many who haven’t seen one another physically over the last 39 years, since we bade ourselves teary goodbyes upon completion of our West African School Certificate(WASC) examinations.

You can then imagine the feeling of comraderie that flowed upon waking up in the wee hours of Saturday, February 20, 2021 to behold one of the bright lights of our set, the consummately dressed Henry Ideozu, firing on all cylinders.

Based in the United States of America (USA), over the last two decades, Ideozu, an Ekpeye man from Ahoada, Rivers state, regaled us with memories from our past, recalling in great details several events, some of which occurred over 40 years ago.

It was a testament of Ideozu’s prodigious memory as he recalled a Bible Knowledge examination question which rankled our young brains at the time.

Our now deceased BK teacher, Mr. A. I. Nwala had set for us, Form 2 students, the following as one of the questions: “The Acts of the Apostles is a misnomer. Discuss.”

Needless to say that we wandered in diverse directions, each approaching the poser from diverse prisms. Was the inclusion of the book, Acts of the Apostles, in the Bible the anticipated misnomer? Or, could it have centred around the evangelical mission of the Apostles? Now, because this event goes far back in time, I’m not sure what I proffered as answer at the time.

But while a youngster of about 11 could be forgiven for not easily locating a misnomer, I wonder whether the same can be said of grown men, who keep mute in the midst of several misnomers going on around and about them and their charge.

I am referring to the loud silence of Igbo leaders, especially governors of the region, who seem to have lost their voices as Nigeria tethers speedily towards the precipice.

While governors from other component parts of the country daily engage, with an aim at finding lasting solution to the increasing menace of herdsmen attacks across the land, banditry and influx of cattle into cities and remote villages nationwide, South east governors look on, like Alice in Wonderland.

Yet, South easterners who ply the Benin bye pass and the Abuja-Lokoja-Auchi expressway in their daily trips to and from the region routinely fall victims to the ravenous bandits. While those who are lucky end up paying huge ransom to secure their release, the less fortunate are returned in caskets for hapless relatives to bury. Yet, mum remains the word emanating from their governors, to whom they willingly surrounded immunity, in order to protect them.

For some two weeks now, Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo state and Samuel Ortom of Benue have frontally sought to take on the herdsmen’ menace. While Akeredolu ordered herdsmen inhabiting Ondo’s forest reserves to quit and get their businesses properly documented, Ortom on his part pointedly stated that his state does not have any land to cede to the herdsmen.

Even when push came to a shove in Oyo state and an individual, Sunday Adeyemi, popular as “Igboho”, chased out the Seriki Fulani of Ibarapa, who the people had accused of abetting the atrocities of criminal elements masquerading as herdsmen, governors of the region rallied round him. So much so that a directive by the Inspector General of Police for Igboho’s arrest was never effected. Much like Gani Adams of the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), before him. In fact, it is doubtful if anyone was taken into custody on account of the Ibarapa disturbances – a very remote possibility where the theatre of battle to be anywhere on Igbo soil.

Speaking on Politics Today, a Channel’s TV programme, on Monday, February 15, Akeredolu, Chairman, South West Governors Forum, had simply described Igboho as a child of circumstance. His words:”Sunday Igboho is a child of circumstance. We must look at the circumstance that led to each of these interventions.”

In neighbouring Edo state, the government last week reiterated that it will not provide any land for cattle grazing. A statement signed by Osarodion Ogie, Secretary to the State Government (SSG), insisted that the government’s position on the matter was clear and had not changed.

“Our position on the matter of grazing land is clear and has not shifted, which is that there is no free land for grazing in Edo state.

” Grazing is an economic activity just like poultry and piggery or any other agricultural enterprise. The Edo state government will not cede any land in the state for grazing,” the statement added.

Now, if the governors of the South east lived under the illusion that their northern overlords would exonerate them, or the people they lead, from the smouldering inferno, they had another thing coming.

Speaking on Channel’s TV Sunrise Daily on Friday, February 19, Bala Mohammed, governor of Bauchi state, said :”These bandits are not only Fulanis. In fact, they are terrorising Fulanis, but they have Fulani miscreants within them; they have Hausa, they have Igbo suppliers, and they have Yorubas.”

Notedly, the Bauchi governor had in the past described the Fulani as a global citizen who does not require a visa to come to Nigeria; just as he claimed that all the forests in the country belong to the Fulani. For full effect, he went on to describe all forests in Nigeria, including the South east, as “No man’s land.”

Only last week, he upped the ante, when he remarked that Fulani herdsmen had the right to bear AK-47 rifles in self-defence, contending that “Southern governors are wrong” on the issue.

Again, while governors from other regions took on the Bauchi helmsman, over the arms-bearing gambit, the five governors of the South East, more like the Ethiopian eunuch, tucked their tails between their legs. And said nothing.

On the flip side, an amorphous Eastern Security Network, ESN, reportedly set up by the Nnamdi Kanu-led Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), in the face of the multiplicity of non-state defence structures across the country, ironically led to three days of aerial and ground bombardment by the military – without a voice of restraint by governors of the region.

In fact, as it turned out, the Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodinma, giddilly accepted to be the fall guy for the faux pas, claiming to have been the one that invited the military to terrorise his people of Orlu.

Pray, when in Nigeria’s contemporary history did a governor ever assume the status of Commander-in-Chief, to enable him be able to call out the military?

So, while South east governors are ever eager to hang out an Nnamdi Kanu, their counterparts elsewhere rather act as spokespersons for insurgent groups, offering litany of excuses on their behalf. Even when these groups trail their guns and weapons of mass destruction on hapless citizens, including their own.

Consider the cow menace; consider also previous pampering of supposed repentant Boko Haram fighters, and the current attempts at financial appeasement for murderous bandits. Or, the OPC and the Sunday Igboho phenomenon in the South west, and the amnesty extended to the militants – or is it ‘agitators’ – of the Niger Delta region.

As in everything that has to do with the Igbo, however, different rule books are being applied. While many who qualify as leaders in the region are not in agreement with Kanu’s vision – much in the same way that leaders in the North and the South west do not readily support the tactics of their belligerent kith and kin – they are, nonetheless, quick to trade in Kanu and his co-travellers. Quite unlike the others.

Yet, the savagery associated with the others do not compare with the ideological bent of the IPOB. Assuming, without conceding, that Kanu is such an outlaw, how many times have his governors engaged him, or perhaps, recruit a Rev. Fr. Mbaka to seek to bring him back to the fold? What efforts have they made in seeking to address the agitations of his group?

For any thoroughbred Igbo, what the governors of the region have done is tantamount to sacrilege. In deed, as Igbo ethos teaches, ‘one requires to first chase away the kite, before chastising the chick for wondering too far.’ Never in Igbo cosmology is an elder permitted to chase a chick into the murderous fangs of a kite – which is exactly what the governors appear to have done with their ominous adherence to a culture of silence on matters that concern Ndigbo.

Bereft of the oratorical skills of an Azikiwe, and the developmental impetus of a Michael Okpara, it would appear that the Igbo are stuck, for now, with five eunuchs, who continue to sulk while a great foreboding hovers over the land.