Elliot Ugochukwu-Uko
Once upon a time in a land not faraway from our continent, lived a great people. A nation of very enterprising people, republican in outlook, communal in their culture, tolerant of other cultures and religious in their way of life.
They weren’t interested in empire building or in dominating their neighbours. They had no history in invading, conquering or fighting wars with their neighbours. Rather, as farmers and great traders, they were quite satisfied trading with their neighbours and other far off nations.
Archeological findings confirm they have settled in their land for more than one thousand, eight hundred years. Lived in close knit kindreds, hamlets and small towns. Shared mutual aspirations, enjoyed intra village visitation and wrestling ceremonies during new yam festivals. Lived in relative peace with their neighbours, before the invasion by the white man.
The white man came to colonise the land, forge disparate nations into one country, grant them “independence” and wish them well, or so it seemed.
The white man resented this particular South Eastern people’s guts. Their women rose up in protest against taxation, chased away the warrant Chief, and succeeded in nullifying the taxation of women.
The people’s traditional government of townhall debates, modelled after the ancient Greek parliament, administered the communities for centuries. Titled men, elders and kindred representatives, sat in the front, at the village square.
Every adult Male, without a history of mental health issues or criminal record, had the right to raise his hand and air his views, making contribution to the affairs of the land and how the village was administered. Decisions were taken by popular votes, and everyone abides by the decision of the majority.
The colonial master didn’t like that one bit, he tried imposing warrant Chiefs on them, that didn’t work. He also disliked their self confidence, vivacious and gregarious energies. He noted that they were quick learners and very capable workers.
They also led the struggle for independence, and spread like soldier ants all over the new big country being forged by the colonial master.
Their ubiquitous presence and their dominance of trade and commerce, stood them out. Not necessarily engendering admiration, but rather inspiring envy and jealousy, which they as a people failed to manage well.
These envy and suspicion, plus deep cultural and religious differences, inspired the demand and insistence by regional leaders for power devolution, resource control, regional autonomy and true federalism to guide the framing of the earliest constitutions, even before independence.
This envy and suspicion led to ethnic riots severally, even before independence. This envy graduated into hate, when the people from the East were accused of leading the first coup detat, that eliminated leaders from other regions.
Carefully orchestrated pogroms and a counter coup, that led to more pogroms, aggravated the suspicions and distrust that enveloped the land.
A peace agreement in a neighbouring country, failed to heal the distrust and fears, the very bloody pogroms created.
Seccesion and a brutal war to reunite the country, redefined the future of the country.
Military intervention that inspired a quasi-unitary structure, inspired by a military inspired constitution that has since proven inadequate and retrogresive, ensured social and political crises of all sorts.
These structural deficiencies in time, created economic challenges, that seem intractable.
These particular Eastern republican ethnic nation, that fought and lost the civil war, slowly began to experience seismic convulsions as a result of the disatisfaction of her younger generation, who idealistically assumed the only solution to the mistreatment and humiliation they experience, since losing the war.
The younger generation scared of handing their own children over, the same degrading humiliation of being treated as second class citizens, began to agitate first for a restructured country and later for a new nation.
The authorities didn’t understand the anger and pain in their hearts. Nobody took them seriously. Rather, efforts were made to ignore and discredit them.
They were tagged miscreants.
The situation was clearly misdiagnosed.
The certain kind of leadership that emerged in the region, since the end of the war, didn’t seem to carry along the restive youths, nor at least, enjoy the confidence of the agitating youths.
Nobody cared to listen to the grievances of the agitators for 22 years.
The rest of the country, blinded by their resentment of the economic prowess of the Eastern region, especially, in trade and commerce, couldn’t appreciate the frustrations of the grossly marginalised folks of region.
Their talent as gifted traders seemed to justify the urge to oppress them and deny them their rights and dues.
The older generation of the Eastern folks managed situation, but the younger generation insisted on justice and equity.
The decision by the authorities to ignore and shun them, infuriated them over time, and they concluded the government looked down on people of the region and their complaints.
They saw disdain and contempt in the government’s refusal to engage them, whereas same government engaged folks from other regions. This deepened their anger and bitterness.
In time, the agitation grew from a storm in a tea cup, to a huge tornado.
Meanwhile, efforts by certain activists and others, who clearly saw where the agitation was headed, to convince the authorities to engage the agitators in time and assuage their grievances, was regrettably ignored.
Rather, regional leaders who resented the activist for his constant criticism over the years, chose to blackmail him instead of working with the advice he provided.
Even the peace efforts he initiated, was destroyed, in preference for other strategies.
The authorities, mistakenly assumed that military action would solve the problem. They shunned and ignored entreaties to invite and engage the separatist agitators, insisting they would crush the agitation their way.
They had no idea, that military action would not only deepen the crisis, but that it would grant the agitators, sympathy and support of the masses of the region. Critical backing the agitators didn’t enjoy earlier on. Other humiliating developments, like brazen attacks on rural farmers, by armed herdsmen, only added impetus to the agitation.
The brazen impunity of nomad herdsmen in inflicting carnage on rural farming communities, the inability of the authorities to bring them to book, and the isolation and total exclusion of the same region in critical appointments, especially, in headship of military, paramilitary and security agencies, benefitted the agitators, as the masses of the region concluded that they were so despised and resented in the country.
The rhetoric of the leader, describing people of the region as five percenters and dot in a circle, greatly enriched the agitation and seemed to validate the agitation.
The decision of the agitators, to establish what they called a defence militia, increased tension and threw up an impasse that has heated up the polity, negatively affecting the economy as can be seen in the currency exchange rate and high cost of food.
Arrest, trial and sit-at-home shutdowns has redefined the social and political template of the country, even as political leaders stick to their guns, that the suffocating unitary structure isn’t part of the problem.
They find the truth UNPALATABLE. They refuse to accept that the unitary structure of government, threw up the economic and political template that encouraged and enabled corruption, ineptitude, nepotism, mediocrity, emergence of cabals etc, which in turn, gave birth to the challenges of bad governance, dichotomy, mismanagement, insensitivity, insecurity and weak institutions.
The refusal to address this structural problems, in spite of the fact that several national conferences had suggested urgent restructuring of the overbearing unitary system, resulted to disinterest in the system by oppressed regions, which in time, led to total loss of faith in the system, fueling agitations.
Surprisingly, the region that rejected unitary structure before the very bloody civil war and demonstrated against it in major cities, protests which inspired a counter coup and pogroms that led to a war, have suddenly fallen in love with same unitary arrangement today, and vehemently opposing a return to true federalism and devolution of power, they insisted as prerequisite to belonging to one country with others, during the pre independence constitutional conference.
The false narrative that the agitation had nothing to do with the suffocating unitary structure and the refusal in admitting that the sickening nepotism coupled with the stubborn rejection of pleas to listen to the grievances of the agitators, all brought the country to this avoidable impasse.
Sticking unto false narrative that won’t solve the problem, just because you have erroneously held unto it for years, won’t heal the land.
If only men in power, will accept their previous error in judgement and correct past mistakes, this great country, not far away, could be healed and rejuvenated with a new people’s constitution, to take her rightful place amongst the comity of nations.
The truth some people find unpalatable, may remain the only route to peace, resolution and closure.
To be CONTINUED.
