First and foremost, I spent my childhood days with the Igbos in Lagos. We cooked together, we ate together, we went to parties together. We wined and dined together, in fact, we were inseparable!
Former Biafran Warlord, Odumegwu Ojukwu went to 30-months-old war with the Federal Government with so many casualties from both sides including innocent Igbo children.
I was a kid in primary school with other Igbo children. I can remember Tata, Bright and Blessing who are my classmates. All I can remember under the heat of the war was that I couldn’t find Tata, Bright and Blessing in School again.
I could not confirm if they were among the casualties of the civil war but I missed them greatly!
At that time, our parents are warned not to use lantern in the night again. As a kid, I didn’t know the gravity of what was wrong, all my Igbo friends and their parents have escaped into the bush but our parents are still helping to shield some of them away from Federal troops who are looking for their hiding places to severe their heads for a rank in the military.
The war and bloodshed ended in January 30, 1970 with a slogan of “no winner no vanquished” to accommodate the Igbos into the Federal Government of Nigeria.
If there was anything Ojukwu regretted, it was the civil war.
Unfortunately, the elders who survived the war failed to relate the agonies of the war to their children who are now troubling them.
Neither Nnamdi Kanu nor Simon Ekpa were born at the time. They do not know the implications and the gravity of waging war against the Federal might. We should vent our anger against the British who colonized us and Lord Lugard for his selfish amalgamation NOT against ourselves.
Coming to the present reality, there is no region that has not been marginalized. All the conglomerates of Oodua Investments including the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service (Radio and Television), Ile-Ife University and others were taken over by the Federal Government after the war.
Every region suffered one neglect or the other.
It is impossible to cut off the head because one is suffering from any form of headache.
In my secondary school days we read Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart and No Longer At Ease” literature books.
These are the books that portrayed the rich cultures and self esteem of the Igbos.
Recently, I watched two viral videos where a Lady exposed herself on the Social Media, her parents caught her unawares, she was given the beatings of her life that she will never ever forget in her lifetime.
People were cursing the parents who meted the corporal punishment on her until they saw the video where she was twerking naked. It showed that she came from a good home where discipline is a guiding principle.
The other incident was when a young man was seen beat his mother to stupor despite pleadings by the villagers that it is a taboo to beat ones own mother. The elders in the village did not take him to the Police Station, they dealt with him in a way that he will live to remember for the rest of his life. His legs and hands were tied to the tree, he was flogged severely with no one to rescue him. That was the African way of discipline.
We have a way of disciplining wayward children. Even the Holy Bible supported it, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”
It is the inalienable rights for some people to fight for their rights in any way they feel they have been cheated but the rights has a limitation when you are using yours to deprive others of their freedom.
The sit-at-home order by a faction of the Independence Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) has degenerated to that level when one begin to ask if there are no elders in Igboland.
When you are agitating for a Biafran Republic and start killing the same people you are supposed to protect, if eventually that agitation succeed, who are you going to use to bring good governance to the people?
Does it really make sense to destroy the economy of the same people you are agitating on their behalf?
What has federal government got to lose when the agitation is against your own people?
When Sunday Igboho was agitating for Oduduwa Republic, no single Yoruba man was attacked or killed. What Igboho did was to influence and campaign for support in every nook and cranny of the Southwest. He was called to order anytime he verbally attacked any Yoruba leaders.
But can one say same thing to Simon Ekpa and his militant group? They are bent in destroying the entire Southeast because of Kanu.
Kanu is facing the same trial Chief Obafemi Awolowo faced in his time, he was sentenced to three years imprisonment.
And the Obi of Onitsha is alive seeing the carnages on the roads daily, even the Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi who scored nothing less than 90% in all the Southeast states is looking the other way.
Where are the High Chiefs, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and other notable Igbo men and women?
I love the Igbos, they have become part of me, it is time the elders rise up to call their children to order. Hard stance with the Federal Government cannot release Kanu from detention but diplomacy and political solution can. The calls by some governors and leaders that Tinubu should release Kanu cannot bring lasting peace as there are factions already feasting from foreign backers at the expense of the ordinary man in the region.
The Yorubas did not wage war against itself when Awolowo was jailed for three years yet he became second in command from the prison under General Yakubu Gowon military administration.
The Yorubas did not ground its economy when MKO Abiola was arrested and eventually died in the custody of the Federal Government despite the fact that they knew he won the June 12, 1993 Presidential election yet Nigeria were forced to replace Abiola with another Yoruba man, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as the President for eight years.
It would have been a double tragedy if the Yorubas had taken up arms against the Federal Government in a battle they knew they cannot win.
The economy of the Southwest would have been in shambles by now and we would have lost our brightest minds like how IPOB wasted Professor Akunyili along with that lady Army Officer, Lieutenant who was captured on her way home after passing out from the Army Academy, she was butchered like animals.
Is this the way to go, Igbo Kwenu?
Don’t shy away to borrow wisdom from others who had passed through such experience in the past. The children the elders and parents refused to train have now become terrorists troubling, collapsing the entire economy of the entire region.
It is senseless to declare sit-at-home for those who are still struggling, going through harsh economic hardships over the removal of fuel subsidy. It is callous of Simon Ekpa and his men to unleash terror on their own people.
We are making the Western nations richer at our own expense when we used our meagre resources in exchange for their arms and ammunition.
The time to stop the madness going on in the Southeast is now! Those men brandishing guns are men that you know, they are your children, call them to order now before it is too late.
I cannot afford to lose any of my Igbo friends again!
©Adesoji Omosebi is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of SOJ WORLDWIDE ONLINE NEWS and TerryANews.