Re: Pro-Biafra agitators are only looking for another source of money – Obasanjo

A few days ago one of my co-conspirators writing on Facebook posed the question, "Must they talk?" He was referring to a comment by a prominent public figure which seemed to be out of place at the event at hand. We had a very lively debate on the matter and the jury is still out as to which opinion prevailed. 

Now former president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is at it again. He has been quoted to have said that "pro-Biafra agitators are only looking for another source of money." I want to lay emphasis on the word ANOTHER. 

It is a matter of public record that Chief Barr Ralph Uwazurike of MASSOB fame started his agitation/movement long before OBJ's second coming as an elected civilian president. We all know that Uwazurike and MASSOB outlived the Obasanjo presidency. Will the former president kindly inform us about what monies that were obviously paid to those pro-Biafra agitators who were already in the "business" at a time Daniel Kanu was perhaps still in diapers?

Meanwhile I recommend to the former president and others a very interesting treatise on MASSOB written by the first civilian governor of Anambra State ten years ago. This was immediately after the movement, without any coercion, successfully shut down all markets, shops and other businesses across the federation. Obasanjo was in office then. I wonder if anyone learnt any lesson from it. 

Re:Biafra agitation could scuttle Igbo presidency. Interesting!

The South East chapter of the All Progressives Congress has reportedly warned against further agitation for Biafra Republic, indicating the agitation could scuttle the quest for a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction in 2023. It is strange that every big man would like to posture, claiming to know of decisions that have yet to be made. So the APC is working towards installing an Igbo president come 2023? Most interesting. That is if the PDP will allow it! The PDP understandably has its own game plan. I don't know what it is.

We now have a very serious assignment on hand, namely surviving the current Buhari presidency which we all, including this writer, wished for ourselves by our own votes. Not only that, we must make a lot of tangible progress in all indices if we have to claw our way out of the cesspit of despair that we currently inhabit. IPOB has absolutely nothing to do with it. Hence it is most unhelpful letting ourselves be distracted from doing the needful and wasting valuable time engaging in the permutation of who will be the next president. Haba! President Buhari does not appear to be in any hurry to vacate the stage. He is also fit. Isn't he?

APC spokesperson, Osita Okechukwu and his group should find more credible propaganda to counter IPOB and MASSOB. Despite the conclusion of many writers including former governor of Anambra State Dr Chukwuemeka Ezeife to the effect that MASSOB and its co-travellers have no interest whatsoever in the Nigerian Presidency, many others do not seem to get it. Try setting a trap for a lion using a tuber of yam. It is as silly as that. 

Who will tell Rivers State Elders that I too am not Biafran; & my family also!

We suddenly have a new industry in town. I am referring to the stampede to disown the still non-violent agitation of probably misguided but clearly disillusioned forty-something year old Igbo youths for the rebirth of Biafra. Apparently nobody wants to be left out. At least not this writer. I hereby stand up to be counted.

I condemn and oppose (not violently) the renewed agitation for the moribund republic which for three years was sustained by the blood, sweat and tears of my age mates. Those of us favoured to still be alive are now between 64 and 73 years of age, proud grandparents. We are grateful to God, but not necessarily to Nigeria in which we have had varied and traumatic experiences these past 45years. We are not complaining. We have mellowed, with reduced expectations.

But the youth are complaining, seriously. They never saw what we saw, the hide and seek in Lagos, the gauntlet at the  Makurdi bridge, the surge of arrivals at the Enugu Railway Station (one without a head, need I remind anyone), and at the various motor parks at Onitsha, Aba, Owerri, Port Harcourt. Since that generation is rightly or wrongly accused of being far less cerebral than its predessessor, it will be safe to assume that it's teeming members most likely never dug into the vast postwar writings of Igbo intellectuals in the mould Fourth Dimension publications. I can boldly ascribe to the Emir of Kano the clear articulation of the realisation that these young scions of Ndigbo learnt the sad aspects of walking the streets of Nigeria "while Igbo", where else, in the streets of Lagos, Kano, Abuja and Port Harcourt.

When the Rivers Elders and Leaders Council (RELEC) distanced itself from the struggle for the realisation of Republic of Biafra, they are not saying anything new. Most governments and citizens of the Southeast geopolitical have said as much. I hereby publicly ask them to count me in. However that does not in anyway indicate my agreement on the proper response from the government's and the security agencies. I have earlier written and actually commended the Rivers State Police command on this. They should keep up their restraint. Those who think otherwise are the real warmongers, looking for blood when none is called for.

Chief Albert Horsfall and his chiefs have faulted organisers of the pro-Biafra protest, IPOB described it as uncalled for, adding that Rivers people were not Biafrans. That's correct. Neither indeed am I.

As for the yet to be proven allegations over the transport of Igbo youths in trailers and buses from the five states in the Southeast zone, to protest in Port Harcourt, I wonder when millions of Igbo youths resident in Rivers State got discounted. One cannot be counted absent in one's presence. Which reminds me, what on earth are the Chibok women and their supporters doing in the heart of Abuja? Don't they know where Chibok is? Or Gwarzo for that matter? I recall that Ogoni activists boarded aircrafts and descended on Shell  and UN offices in The Hague, London and New York. We hailed them for their brave, unrelenting and forthright social and political activism. The Dutch, British and Americans tolerated them or at worst ignored them. But in the case of IPOB or MASSOB we conveniently forget long established and accepted norms. This unwavering knee-jerk reaction to matters Igbo will never get Nigeria anywhere.

Re: Police clash with pro-Biafra protesters in P’Harcourt - Good ending.

Apccording to the report in The Punch,

"The policemen later stopped firing teargas at the protesters and decided to watch the protest march by over 3,000 youths."

This is the smartest move ever made by any police command in the face of public protest by an aggrieved segment of the populace. I presume that the protesters did not proceed to destroy property. Otherwise it would have been gleefully reported. What after all are a few Nigerian flags worth? Let nobody lecture me about patriotism, respect for national symbols etc. None of the serial coup plotters who currently command our undeserved respect seem to have bothered about that.Neither do the thieves among us.

We can always sew new flags when we retrieve the vast amount of loot in the possession of the political class. The peace that followed after the protest would seem to be worth the apparent permissiveness displayed by the police. When the protesters got tired, they obviously went home. Not so?

For goodness sake, do I have to repeat what other commentators wrote about Scotland, Catalonia and Quebec? I guess not.

Then again one asks, does this government have any advisers? It seems to have borrowed extensively from the unrevised playbook of the past four administrations on this MASSOB matter. How effective was the result so far? For a government that has its hands full with the war against self-declared terrorists, the Boko Haram, to willfully open another front, is most baffling indeed.

First the presidency scandalized the nation by announcing that indeed the occupants of Aso Rock instead of spending their time (paid for by WE THE PEOPLE) in handling the business of governance, listen to Radio Biafra. What a waste! Whereas Chief Ralph Uwazurike has been in and out of detention over twenty times, the government does not seem to know what to do with him. What then is the point in adding another martyr to the growing list of non-violent refuseniks? I wonder. Love for Nigeria cannot be achieved by force or intimidation.

Should the US Military Come Home?

A few weeks ago I watched former US ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker on tv weighing in with the long list of politicians and senior ex-military officers who have publicly expressed their opposition to what is often regarded as the "sudden" or "precipitous" withdrawal of US troops earlier from Iraq and now Afghanistan. Everyone now claims to have known clearly in advance that things would turn out exactly as they recently have - aka "I told you so!" 

Was the collapse of Iraq and now Afghanistan inevitable? If that is the case, how much more resources in men and material will the US taxpayers of both political parties be prepared to invest in these foreign lands? For how much longer? Five more years, or perhaps fifty? The answers are far from obvious even for those who claim to be far more knowledgeable than the average man. 

In short, are there any prospects of US troops ever coming home even if, as has now happened, President Barack Obama has succumbed to sustained pressure and suspended indefinitely the complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The US at the same time is beefing up its involvement in the fight against ISIL in the large swathe of territory spanning northern Iraq and Syria. 

IRAQ

In the case of Iraq, opponents of President Obama's policy direction have yet to explain what they mean when they complain that the US administration "should have" bargained "much harder" to be allowed to retain a sizable fighting force in Iraq. Almost nobody points an accusing finger at the now discredited former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, who resolutely refused to grant the terms that the US rightly or wrongly demanded for such a force. Based on American concept of exceptionalism, all known hosts of US forces overseas have in the past granted such terms covering legal and other issues. The same critics would be the same to cry foul and "surrender" if indeed the US bent over backwards and accepted less liberal terms whilst continuing to expend billions of dollars, and the blood of its youth to protect an ungrateful Iraqi nation. It was clearly a no-win situation. 

Everyone who had the interest of the long-suffering Iraqi at heart was hoping that the corrupt political class, having stolen enough, would get their act together, bridge the wide Sunni-Shia divide, and save their own nation. Al-Maliki and company adamantly refused to do that. Instead of leaving them to their own devices, diplomats from all over rallied to save a situation that is essentially beyond redemption and railroaded the restive and much maligned Kurds in the north into an unsustainable arrangement that is unravelling by the day. If the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, Sudan and Czechoslovakia could partition thereby presenting a better promise for good neighbourliness, then the same privileges should be extended to the Iraqi factions. These budding nation states are more likely to cherish their freedom dearly and hence show more patriotic keenness to fight in its defence. That is exactly what the Kurds are doing. On the other hand, the Sunni of the west of Iraq will not be found dead fighting to defend the Shia of Basra and Karbala. And vice versa. In the unlikely event that the Shia of Iraq want to submit to Iranian rule, they should be free to do so if that will bring that region peace.  

AFGHANISTAN - BOMBING OF MSF HOSPITAL

And now the attention has shifted even if briefly to Afghanistan, especially with the shameful fall of Kunduz to the Taliban. Fareed Zakaria on his CNN programme Global Public Square (GPS) and also in his recent article in The Washington Post has pointed accusing fingers at nuclear armed Pakistan, known to hobnob routinely with the Taliban. The truth of the matter is that the security agencies of both Pakistan and Afghanistan have been gravely compromised. This much I shared over a year ago with pundits in Foreign Affairs Journal who had imagined that the current situation would arise not now but sometime in the remote future. I am very surprised that no one has come public with the simple notion that the targeting co-ordinates that led to the bombing of the hospital of Medecins Sans Frontieres in Kunduz must have been deliberately fed the US Air Force by rogue Taliban elements embedded within the Afghan military. I came to that conclusion the very day that I learnt of the event. Yes, in the fog of war, the US forces accepted the co-ordinates in good faith, without cross checking them. You are supposed to trust your allies. Right? Wrong! Not in Pakistan, Iraq or Afghanistan. 

With the announced indefinite suspension of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, with an implied potential for a new build-up, the hawks have clearly won the argument this time around. Meanwhile the military contractors are smiling all the way to the bank.