THE IGBO GENOCIDE NEVER REALLY ENDED WITH THE WAR -

Jimanze Ego-Alowes. Again I have missed the release of this new book by Ego-Alowes. Hear him in this, interview by Sun News, at his unapologetic best. Others may choose to dub him controversial. He seems to wear it well.
Enjoy!

THE SUN NEWS
Jimanze Ego-Alowes is the author of the new book, Nigeria: The Unreported Genocide Against the Igbo, a book detailing the unreported post-civil war genocide against the Igbo by past Nigerian rulers. The book also traces the paterfamilias of the Igbo as Eshi. In this interview with The Sun Literary Review, the author advances evidences to justify his claim that the military leaders committed further genocide against the Igbo after the civil war ended, especially with the introduction of local government reforms and autonomous communities in Igboland. He, therefore, calls for the abolition of kinship in Igboland for being opposed to the republican nature of the people.

You are a prolific writer, producing at least one book a year. What’s the secret of your fecundity?

I consider myself a lay historian. The job of the historian is to bring out that which is hidden into the open and which is already in the open into perspective. And I believe that history is one of the primary sciences. The primary sciences are those sciences that characterise who man and, therefore, the society is. And if you get this right, you are on the part of personal, group and national development. It’s a place I think I have comparative advantage.

Your latest book is entitled The Unreported Genocide against the Igbo. Why is it coming at this point in time?

Any truth, especially new truth, comes in its own season. Truth is never out of season. Immediately there is a new truth, that truth is its own season. If you say it in the morning or night, it is on season; truth is never offseason. So, the duty of a scholar is to see to it that the truth is being neglected and bring it into the open. The only justification is that truth determines the season, and not the season determining the truth. There is no season for the truth.

What informed this book?

The first is that I feel the fact of it has not been attended either by cowardice or Nigerian experience or development for reasons that are not clear to us. So, part of our duty, as I said, is to bring that which has been glossed over into the open for a very long time, from the time the generals [Murtala Mohammed and Olusegun Obasanjo] came to power to the present. Nobody has spoken about it or given attention to it. I feel it is the proper time, because it is new season.

How pained were you when you were researching on the atrocities committed against the Igbo, because I could see your tone is livid with rage?

As a historian, I have no personal pain. If I have a pain at all, it is with the scholars, not with the perpetrators of the genocide –the silence of the scholars up till now. I don’t feel any pain at all. For me, the two generals have done what they have done. What I quarrel with is the silence of the historians and scholars over such earth-quaking event in the life of a major ethnic group in Nigeria: the Igbo. If I have annoyance at all, it is with my tribe of scholars, both from Igbo and non-Igbo. Why the silence? If you go to Imo State, for instance, you have up to a million autonomous communities if we are to exaggerate. Enugu State had to bring a formal edict stopping the creation of autonomous communities. It is a distraction of the society, and people should speak out.

You faulted the introduction of the Chieftaincy Edict in Igboland. At a time when more communities are still clamouring for more autonomous communities, what problem do you have with this?

It is like an addiction. That’s why a lot of the books go to borrow from biology –evolutionary sciences. It is like an addiction. When you have a craving for cigarette or crack, and the doctor tells you to stop, you are still going to crave for it. There is nothing to recommend. The GMOs set us on the path of self-destruction. That’s why we have to halt it. Some of those doing it want to take benefit over the grave of the many people. So, they want to emerge kings of autonomous communities over the grave and destruction of Igboland.

Don’t you think there are some benefits to derive from the creation of these autonomous communities, or does everything point to a disservice?

That’s what we are saying. It is all part of the larger things we have always said. In the introduction to this book, it is noted that there are so many things that can afflict a society or a human that will be asymptomatic. People are not aware of what damage they are causing to themselves and to their larger society, but it is the duty of the scholar or the physician, who uses diagnostic instrument to see and know that you are not as healthy as you look, that it is better for you to have bed rest and not to have jugging in the morning, because, if you do, you will collapse.

Don’t you think the Igbo also contributed to the genocide themselves?

I don’t think we are primed for it, because the two GMOs didn’t seek for the opinion of the Igbo when they injected that edict. They did not seek our opinion. They sat in their all-conquering military council and decided that there was going to be autonomous communities all over the country whether you were republican or not. The implication of these autonomous communities is that it is an embedded logic in what they did: the sociological destruction of a people.

Don’t you think the generals were trying to bring government closer to the people?

First, they don’t have the wisdom; they only have the gun. And that you have guns is not the equivalent of having wisdom. You can’t because, you possess guns, impose your own idea of development on other people who perhaps do not have the guns. There was no basis for their thinking that they wanted to bring government closer to Igboland without consulting the Igbo people themselves. So, it is absolutely wrong.

So, is that a deliberate ploy to pull down existing socio-cultural infrastructure In Igboland, or you think it was a trial and error kind of thing when they set that edict in motion?

It is no longer a trial and error thing. It was a deliberate policy. There are two edicts imposed in Igboland. The first is that they took away Igbo lands that they thought had oil and gifted to Rivers State and Akwa Ibom State and brought this chieftaincy disaster about the same time. And, if you remember that Murtala Mohammed government does not last a year before he died –you know it was a preplanned thing –so, the idea has been vitiated that they introduced two things, one that was definitely able, which was taking away our oil producing lands and gifting to other people in Rivers and Akwa Ibom. So, it couldn’t have been trial and error. It was a deliberate official policy. Additionally, as Obasanjo confirmed in a recent interview, they were aware of the United Nation’s edicts and protocols on running post-victory government, and it was clearly stated that you don’t oppose an alien culture on the people; you must allow their native structures to run. But they went against these stated laws, which Obasanjo confirmed in the aforesaid interview, they knew of when they were fighting.

In the book, you revisited the concept of Igbo enwe eze (the Igbo don’t have kings). Using the Arrow of God as an example, where Nwaka berated Ezeulu for trying to arrogate to himself the position of chief priest and non-existing ezeship stool, on one hand; and the era of having traditional rulersin Igboland, how tenable is Igbo enwe eze?

First, a lot of saying that Igbo enwe eze today is a mild interpretation of that saying. Igbo enwe eze is actually a proud assertion that the Igbo are free and republican people. So, what this book calls for, and it is proper to state so, is that chieftaincy order should be abolished in Igboland, because we are free and republican people. We don’t want it. We are not saying that the Ogboni system of government or Arewa system of government is bad, but let them keep their goodness to themselves; let them not infest us with their goodness. We want to return to the structures our father left for us: republicanism. We want to free, proud and independent people. The Igwes and Ezes have to go, because Igboland has to develop.

In what way are they contributing to the underdevelopment of the Igboland?

First, there is a guy called Peter Drucker, the father of management. He says culture is its strategy for breakfast. Any time any strategy is against the culture of a people, it won’t work. So, the mere presence of Ndi Eze, which is antithetical to Igbo republicanism, to our sense of human freedom, will vitiate any strategy you bring to Igboland, and that is why the Igbo are crying they are not united. How can you unite under chiefs or structures that are not amenable to such? It is against our own people’s sociology, and the earlier we erase it, the better for us. The Igwes, the Ndi Ezes have to go. We don’t need them and they don’t need themselves as well.

Don’t you think that times have changed and the modern society presents a different reality, and needs this kind of leadership roles at the local level?

As I stated in the book, where you have monarchies in Europe, which a wrong ignorant examples people give here, it is a vestigial. So, the idea of having tiers in government is why economists explain the rise of Germany and the fall of Britain after the 2nd World War. Germany emerged without too many centres of government like kings, barons and dukes, which we didn’t have until the two GMOs imposed kingship on the Igbo, and that came with transaction cost on Igboland. So, to develop as Igbo, we pay more cost than we should; we pay more cost than the Arewa-driven northern attitude or the Ogboni-driven Yoruba attitude or the Egbesu-driven Ijaw attitude. Their systems are different from ours. In place of having monarchies in Igboland, the presidents of town unions should handle the affairs of towns. Monarchies don’t preserve cultures. This idea of monarchies and cultures is a scam. Culture comes from several places. By writing this book, I am contributing to culture. Culture is not celebrating New Yam festival, which they use to deceive the people. These Ezes send their children to America, and they don’t eat new yam in America.

Related to your call for the abolishing of kingship in Igboland is your denunciation of having Eze Ndigbos all over the countries in the book….

I don’t disagree with any man crowning himself Eze Ndigbo as a joke or maybe he is doing 419. Good luck to him, but let it not be that he is representing Igbo through a monarchical system. It is antithetical to the sociology of which we have. Any fool, doctor, professor or businessman can declare himself Eze Ndigbo of Hell or Eze Ndigbo of Heaven. But let it not be a point of aggregating the Igbo. No! We must remain free, republican, independent people, because our republicanism is superior to monarchism.

A vital logic you pursued vigorously is attempting to establish the origin the paterfamilias of the Igbo…

Yes, this book established the progenitor of the Igbo logically as Eshi. So, it will take life from here. Before there was no such life. But, now, there is life upon the fact that we now know the father of the Igbo.

How do you support this?

The Igbo society is structured basically according to Heartland Igbo (Mbaise and Mbano) and Outer Igbo (Umuleri and Aguleri). Oguta is also in that group, though they are in Imo State, because they are riverine people. I purposely chose Aguleri, Umuleri, Oraeri (in Anambra) and I also chose Oguta, Nkwerre and Umueshi (in Imo State). In addition, I also chose Mbaise and Mbano, also in Imo, because they call it (Eshi) Ehi. It is the same thing, but dialectically different. It is like Okoro and Okolo, which means the same thing in Igboland. While Anambra and Enugu have Okolo. Imo and Abia call it Okoro. If you look at the spread from Agulurei and Umuleri to Nkwerrre, Ehime Mbano to Mbaise, which is the largest sub clan in Igboland with the exception of Ngwa; and you have Oguta people who are Igbo mmiri (riverine Igbo), and you have a significant momentum of Igbo population in these areas; it then means that they came from one person or a significant population of these people came from one paterfamilias.

So, where does this leave the Nri narrative about the origin of the Igbo people?

Anybody can circulate any myth and legend –good for them! People have asked me whether the Igbo were related to the Jew, and I told them I wasn’t aware. I only conclude on things my logic and facts can carry. What Nri people are saying about the origin of the Igbo is myth. They have not been able to match it with logic. Somebody from Nkweshi in Imo State told me that the name of the community was originally Nkwo-Eshi. So, you can see that the Eshi origin is broad and tenable.

So, you want us to believe that Eshi is actually the father of the Igbo?

It has to be. That is what the logic and language available says. What we are saying is that Eshi has been metaphorised as Time, that’s why in Igboland, we hear “ka mgbe eshi” (right from the beginning) and “eri (ehi) mgbe n’ile” (from time immemorial). So, the Igbo equivalent of “Before Abraham I was” is “ka mgbe eshi”.

In the book, too, the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Emmanuel Udom, is lionised….

Yes, I have two add-up articles in the book. One is on the BRACE Factor and another on Emmanuel Udom. Part of the book is to bring that which is new. Udom is a banker who has done great, who has brought entrepreneurial sense into the running of the state. Together with Udo, this gives a fresh handle on the kind of advice Confucius gave that a scholar has to report from the reality. We should not be citing Singapore when we have an equivalent of that in Nigeria. It is our duty to point the specific and which is new. That’s what Udom represents. These [Brace Factor and Udom] are new lights in our present shadows, and we have to celebrate them.