“Enyemaka anyi sina owuwa anyanwu…Nzoputa anyi sina owuwa anyanwu”
“Mmiri zobe zobe…anwu chaba chaba…Agaghi m aba n’ ulo onye kporo m asi”
The song would blare on my father’s transistor radio every morning. The same song but more complete than this snippet of a rendition. This morning was no different. The song was part of the war songs employed by the valiant soldiers of Biafra who fought the valiant soldiers of Nigeria in a three year battle that accentuated the different strengths of the various ethnicities of Nigeria if not their gaping faultlines. The song was over forty years old but has been getting consistent airplay recently on the Radio Biafra broadcast on 88.2fm. My father is an avid listener of the Radio Biafra and identifies strongly with the marginalized sentiments of the Igbo people. He has more reasons than most to feel caustic about the war. When he was just a teenager, he lost two of his siblings in the war, his twin, a boy and an older sister. It could be then understood that he may have reasons to feel aggrieved about the Hausa soldier who he said stumbled into our community, a town close to Abagana in Anambra state and murdered a whole family in the dead of night. It was during that ruckus that families fled and two of his siblings disappeared. Until this day, none of them was seen or heard from again.
My father had told me during one of our sessions before his transistor radio listening to his favorite radio station on 88.2fm that he sometimes feels that his twin was alive somewhere, maybe doing well as a doctor or a politician and frantically seeking ways to reconnect with the loved ones he lost during the most unfortunate war. When he talks about his twin, I can see the wistful smile on his face and the fondness in his glazed eyes that knew better than to cry in front of his son. Thus I can understand that my father identifies with the sentiments of the Director on Radio Biafra. He was enthralled by his garrulousness and an anger which seemed at least to him fuelled by a genuine rage and a desire to right the wrongs done to the Igbo people during the war roundly referred all over the world as a genocide.
“Nwoke a guru akwukwo o” He would tell me, nodding his head in agreement while holding the road closely into his ears and bending into it probably to milk every ounce of information from the lips of the anchor called “The Director”. The radio signal is not always clear in our part of Nigeria and definitely does not have the wide coverage the voluble Director claims.
I on the other hand was not impressed by The Director. I disagreed with him on most issues. I wanted to tell my Father that I can speak better and at least be more articulate than the wind-up merchant who palpably lacks the dynamism and the requisite ideological foundation to lead such an enormous struggle for ethnic identity and self-determination or even in his own idea, secession. I wanted to remind my Father that it takes more than words to raise an army and that my own definition of bravery does not include hiding in some unidentified location and employing hate-fuelled propaganda to achieve cheap popularity and attract nostalgic and aggrieved listeners. I wanted to tell my father that like Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in Crime and Punishment “to act sensibly, intelligence is not enough.”
I began to open my mouth but The Director as usual beat me to it.
“We follow the directives of Chukwu Abiama. Not Jesus Christ the Israelite who claims to be The Son of God” he delved into some parts of the scriptures to extract and quote verses which supports his notion. That is the funny thing about the Bible, to prove anything, one can easily get a quote from the bible. For instance, according to the bible, it is a sin to drink alcohol but one may drink it as a panacea to stomach upset. The protestant Christians are also convinced that on the wedding of Cannan, Jesus turned water into a soft alcoholic wine and drank same at last supper. The Catholics would cite biblical exegesis and claim that the sort of wine The Priests use for the communion on the altar was precisely tailored and traced to the exact recipe used by Jesus Christ himself at The Last Supper. That was partly why I never took The Director of The Radio Biafra seriously, anyone that resorts to the Bible to prove why anyone should do anything should never be taken seriously. Simply put, some of us are not Christians and are quite comfortable with what we believe in. It may not be immediately clear to the myopic Director but some of his Biafra people are Christians and some are Muslims and most of them do not hear the same voice or voices he hears in the temple. He has to actually come down from his sesquipedalian pedestal to explain to our unwashed selves why he thinks we should rally around him or why anyone should listen to him. I looked away from the radio and towards my Father
I watched his face frown. He is a Christian, a Catholic and A Charismatic. Those three Cs do not mix well with anyone who does not respect Jesus Christ or at least do not respect his audience’s faith enough to avoid speaking ill of him. My father after a long “nod-less” silence dropped the Radio on our dining table with a clatter but the transistor survived the impact.
“Can’t he concentrate on the Political issues? Does he even know that some of the people that died in the war were Christians? Will he be a priest and a politician” He turned and left the sitting room, leaving his beloved radio abandoned on the table, alone for the first time since I had known him.
“Emechaa igbanyuoru m radio ahu” I heard him call from the corridor that led to the bathroom “Obere nwa di ka ya, kedu ihe oma maka Jesus Christ…Gini ka omakwanu maka Biafra?”
Right before me, Radio Biafra had lost another fan. Although my father was never among the radical and or angry people calling ceaselessly and volunteering to take up arms against an enemy they could not quite identify, his moral support to the Biafra cause swayed me enough, as learned as I feel I am to tune in on the radio and listen to someone who could use a lot of help with articulation of ideas and tact or diplomacy, lecture me and sometimes insult me about issues which he could read a lot about or at least question his elders more about. I have read Alexander Madiebo’s “Revolution and the Biafran war”, Ojukwu’s “Because I am Involved” and Achebe’s valedictory’s “There was a Country”. I have spoken to some of the soldiers that fought in the war. One of my Facebook friends had a father who was part of the ultimately futile but daring mission to capture Lagos for Biafra during the war. Yet the collage I arrived at was not enough to convince me that I now know enough to educate or insult people on air.
In fact, I freely admit that I do not know much about the war apart from the accounts I read which may be prejudiced and stories I was told which the teller may have told through the tints of circumstance and results. Thus The Directors style of dismissing and abruptly ending calls on anyone who dares to challenge his knowledge of pre-war, war and post-war issues or even attempt to offer other possible means to negotiating secession without resorting to the barbaric and counter-productive 1967 template, is most unhealthy and he may not know this, is a very bad PR move.
His autocracy on the radio also gives an unsettling hint to his own vision or version of Biafra. He may want a Biafra of despotism, of exclusion and of ceaseless confrontation. This is a precursor towards anarchy and is certainly not the kind of Biafra many Igbos want. The Igbos want a settled and predictable polity that will support their enterprise and drive economic growth. I am not sure The Director of Radio Biafra knows this. Little wonder then that the radio station is still bedeviled with crippling poverty and could easily go off air for two days straight. At least The Director knows enough to be forthright about these financial impediments.
Another of his problem is that his own version of Biafra lacks a map. The first step towards meaningful secession brokering is the identification of the parts that wants to secede. It is difficult to determine the parts of the country which falls under the ‘Biafran Territory” and which one does not. Ojukwu’s own version of Biafra faced this similar problem with some parts of Niger-Delta refusing to identify as Biafra. The problem is a recurring one. Most parts of the purported “Biafra land” do not fully identify themselves with the Biafran struggle and no one should blame them. The idea of Biafra received better marketing from The Late Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu than from this calamitous marketing it is getting from The Director.
In secession, there is the need to build consensus. The whole parts must be pulling together in one direction. However, we are not guaranteed this in The Radio Biafra’s version. Abakiliki and its people are often derided on the Radio, Rochas Okorocha, The governor of Imo State is a running caricature and Ralph Uwazuruike was given so many names ranging from “Ekperima” (Thief) to “Akalioghelli” (Fool). It may be true that some of these men may have done enough to deserve these names and that the names may be funny at times, it is above all imperative to lobby every influential Igbo man to buy into the idea of Biafra and clearly specify what they may stand to gain. Alienating them is a sepukku. Whether The Director appreciate it or not, wars are not won with guns and the army volunteers lack the resources to engage any part of Nigeria in an armed conflict even if it was guerilla conflict. Boko Haram, as macabre as their effects have being knew this from the get-go and sought the requisite support from the local and international parties who stood to gain from a burning Nigeria.
He has also failed to or at least neglected to recognize the fact that the enemy of Biafra begs a redefinition. Does it include Igbo muslims? Since he hates muslims and believes in only Chukwu Abiama. The proposition to build mosques in some parts of Abakiliki and Imo received his hate-filled tirade and was a topic for a whole day. Does the enemy include our Igbo daughters who got married to Hausa families. I ask this because my Uncle married a Hausa girl who after meeting her, I had to admit that she was indeed a blessing to not just my Uncle but to the whole family. Do the enemies include the Yorubas? The Tiv? The Gwagi and other ethnic minorities who are bedeviled with similar fears of the domination by the majority? Do the enemies include the teeming number of skeptical and well-informed Igbo men who remain unconvinced by his propaganda? Like I have implied throughout this piece, articulation is the key; the prelude to a consensus.
However, I must submit that some of his tirades were not entirely unprovoked. There may be a method to his madness. The genocide of 1967-1970 did take place. The “Igbophobia” seems to be a real thing. The mistrust and the consistent attack of the Igbo identity from some parts of the country is nothing short of pitiable. I am not going to point fingers or name names but during the recent election, a certain Traditional ruler probably residing in or around Lagos did threaten to drown Igbo people in the Lagoon. This singular statement which may or may not have fallen off this royal mouth after an affair with a bottle is ill-timed, unguided and more incendiary than a group of people making empty threats on the radio. Yet, somehow, this ruinous statement quickly disappeared from public discussion and on twitter, #RadioBiafra may well be trending. Some politicians have been known to goad the Igbos at the aftermath of the recent election stating that they have been schemed out of the political equation in Nigeria.
Some have even called on the Department of State Security to move quickly and nip the “Radio Biafra” problem in the bud. This is reactionary and stems from an unhealthy fear of the Igbo people. This is because Nigeria’s ongoing battle with Boko Haram is far from over with the terrorist group embarking on an unchecked killing spree in the North east since the start of the new administration. Nigeria and The DSS has far more issues on their plate than rewarding the Radio Biafra with any sort of attention. This attention is precisely what The Director wants. If he is arrested, his supporters and I daresay many other Igbo men will galvanize around his martyr image and this would build not just his reputation but also his reach.
In summary, I daresay that I am a firm believer in The One Nigeria Project. However, the fears of the Ndigbo need to be addressed by the central government not just by words but through actions and policies. Any well-meaning Nigerian will ultimately see in this Radio Biafra the exact thing I saw and that is, The cry of a people in need of recognition and in search of a place in a nation that they helped to build and a nation that stifle and sometimes threaten them.
However, the Igbos do not cave under the weight of “igbophobia”. They adapt to it. I just wish that there could be a more constructive forum for Ndigbo to air their misgivings and fears. This Radio Biafra is simply not convincing and frankly boggles the mind of most productive Igbo people. If I were the Nigerian Security Services, I will not reward this Radio Biafra with any sort of attention. I will simply face Boko Haram squarely and put on my alarm clock to such time when they will be serious enough to form strong ideological base and a financial spine.
And judging from his tottering steps, The Director may not be imbued with the presence of mind to admit the needful and accommodate other opinions that may not just be about blood and war.
0 comments:
Post a Comment