By Steve Osuji
A Yoruba adage says the wind blew and revealed the sordid behind of the chicken… this adage, without equivocation, refers to someone I once held in very high esteem, Dr. Jide Oluwajuyitan.
My Oga in two great media establishments, THE GUARDIAN and THE NATION, where one had long active years of journalism practice.
Dr. Jide’s last artice in his column in The Nation, seems to reveal a trait I had always suspected he had. The wind blew and I saw the darker side of my oga.
Apart from upending and disembowelling Nigeria’s history, he presents Igbo and Fulani as the major trouble with Nigeria.
Dr Oluwajuyitan by his writing, poured malice and hatred on the Igbo in a way never done by a supposedly enlightened mind.
Where he didn’t mix up factual historical facts, he told plain, blatant lies just to drag Igbo in the mud. All this to the point that the age-long schism between these two great Nigerian tribes seems to have been brewed in the crucible of Oluwajuyitan’s belly.
Let’s draw some examples from the article:
1. He says Igbo campaigned for a unitary system for Nigeria. This is a historical fallacy. Gen. Aguiyi Ironsi after that January 1966 coup promulgated Decree 34 of May 24, 1966, a seeming special purpose document to hold the country together under a crisis situation. But he never disbanded the federal structures of governance.
But three months later, Gen. Yakubu Gowon took over and repealed Dec.34 in August 1966 and you would think he would restore the ‘great’ federal system. He never did. Instead Gowon dug deeper into power; made Dec. 14 of 1967 which killed the federal system and created 12 states with appointed military governors.
This aberrant system created by Gen. Gowon with the help of Awolowo and the northern hegemony remains till today to the benefit of Yoruba and the north. Yet a supposedly enlightened mind like Dr Oluwajuyitan twists history in broad daylight. If Igbo campaigned for an evil unitary system in 1966, why is the system still in use today?
2. Dr. Oluwajuyitan says the rivals (Igbo and Fulani) ganged up to jail Awolowo! I thought a Ph.D confers a measure of integrity if not intellect and learning on someone?
So what about the roles of Ladoke Akintola and Moses Majekodunmi in the upstaging of Chief Awolowo and the Action Group in the Western region.
Who formed a rival faction party to Awo’s AG and aligned with the Northern People’s Congress, NPC to bring on the violent crisis in the Western house which culminated in the framing, trial and jailing of Awo on trumped up treason charges? Dr Oluwajuyitan heaps it all on Igbo.
But he conveniently forgot to mention that Igbo was instrumental to the release of Chief Awolowo from Calabar Prison after the Biafra war broke out.
3. Dr. Oluwajuyitan was blank on the roles of the Yoruba during the civil war; how the western region which had been put under emergency rule and had it’s leaders jailed, shamed and disgraced by the Hausa-Fulani could not muster the balls to declare independence when the Igbo declared. Instead they went into an amorous embrace with the Hausa Fulani and the British with the sole aim of annihilating the Igbo race.
4. It’s on record that Awo as prime minister to Gen. Gowon recommended economic blockade and hunger as the ultimate weapon of war against Ndigbo. That’s how yours truly grew a distended tummy and almost died of kwashiokor during the war. That’s how about one million Igbo children children died of hunger!
This is a historical fact!
5. Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani are currently teamed up pillaging and raping Nigeria with their contraption call apc… yet Dr. Oluwajuyitan denies the Hausa-Fulani and blames Ndigbo for every ill in Nigeria.
7. Dr. Oluwajuyitan denies that President Obasanjo is a Yoruba man, libellously calling him “their own son.” This, of course, is a dubious discounting of the 8-year presidency of Nigeria by the Yoruba.
8. He says Igbo and Fulani shared national assets in the name of privatisation and monetization. But he doesn’t know that we know that the Jimoh Ibrahims, the Otedolas, the Afolabis, the Dangotes, and the Rabius were the chief beneficiaries of the aforementioned schemes.
Of course my Oga suffered amnesia in the small matter £20 flat for every Igbo man even if he had a million pounds balance in the bank aftwr the war, followed by the subterfuge of indigenisation Decree of the early 70s which handed all the multinational corporations in Nigeria and indeed the entire economy to the Yoruba!!!
How many injuries have we Igbo suffered in this land? How many can we ever count?
That’s why when we see elders and supposed intellectuals heaping coal on the Igbo in Nigeria that are roiling under a wicked state policy of IGBO MARGINALISATION, we worry not just about the person’s state of mind but the very survival of this country.
My Oga Jide, this article is far below par… in context and construction. Do elders write like this? What end do you seek with this article? Methinks you only succeeded in pouring fuel in the polity; driving a wedge between Igbo and yoruba; opening old wounds and playing injurious mind games better left for the denizens of the street.
This article diminishes your essence and equally diminished you in my esteem, I must not fail to say.
• Osuji is a newspaper columnist and member of NGE.