Opinion
Opinion: The Need For Free, Credible And Violence-free Election In Edo
Published
3 years agoon
By
Editor
By Joseph Ebitibi Kanjo
As the governorship election in Edo State draws nearer, it is pertinent to once again re-echo the need for all political gladiators in the state and those who may have influence on the election from within and outside the state to play according to the rules of the game with a view to having a free, fair, credible and violence-free governorship election September 19, 2020.
Piece should not be new to us; it is like a Sunday sermon we listen and read here and there in preparation to every election in the country. It comes from the lower, middle and top cadre of the society including political actors whom many see as key players and perpetrators.
Governor of Sokoto State who doubles as chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Governors’ Forum, Aminu Tambuwal, in reemphasising the need for a peaceful election in the forthcoming governorship election in Edo State, called on political actors in the state to shun violence and embrace peace. His call was orchestrated by the violence that occurred at the entrance gate of the palace of Oba of Benin on the day the PDP was to flag-off their campaign.
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PDP governors and other chieftains led by their national chairman, Prince Uche Secondus had visited the Oba of Benin, Ewuare II to pay him homage and receive his royal blessing when the incident occurred. The sporadic gunshots which lasted for over 60 seconds shortly after the PDP campaign team left the scene saw over fifteen persons sustaining varying degrees of bullet injuries.
Speaking to newsmen shortly after the party’s stakeholders’ meeting held in Benin City, Tambuwal appealed to various political parties participating in the governorship election to continue to encourage their supporters to restrain from unleashing mayhem and violence on the electorate.
“This appeal has become necessary following a small crowd of a political party that came to the Benin Monarch’s palace to boo leaders and supporters of the PDP during the flag-off of our campaign. That is a sign that the political party is planning violence.
“I appeal to leaders of the various political parties with the interest of Edo State at heart, to speak with their followers and make sure the election is free and fair,” the governor said.
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There are extant laws on campaigns in Nigeria. Section 94 ( 1 ) of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended ) says , “ For the purpose of the proper and peaceful conduct of political rallies and processions, the Commissioner of Police in each state of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja , shall provide adequate security for processions at political rallies in the states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja . ”
In order to also forestall violence , the constitution says in Section 227 , “ No person or association shall retain , organise , train , or equip any person or group of persons for the purpose of enabling them to be employed for the use or display of physical force or coercion in promoting any political objective or interest or in such manner as to arouse reasonable apprehension that they are organised and trained or equipped for that purpose . ”
Section 95 of the Act prohibits certain conduct at political campaigns . Subsection ( 1 ) says : “ No political campaign or slogan shall be tainted with abusive language directly or indirectly likely to injure religious , ethnic , tribal or sectional feelings ”; ( 2 ) says , “ Abusive intemperate , slanderous or base language or insinuations or innuendoes , designed or likely to provoke violent reactions or emotions shall not be employed or used in political campaigns ”; ( 3 ) “ Places designated for religious worship , police station , and public offices shall not be used : ( a ) for political campaigns, rallies and processions; or ( b) to promote , propagate or attack political parties , candidates or their programmes or ideologies . ”
Section 95 ( 4 ) says , “ Masqueraders shall not be employed or used by any political party , candidate or person during political campaigns or for any other political purpose . ”
Subsection ( 5 ) says , “ No political party or member of a political party shall retain , organise , train or equip any person or group of persons for the purpose of enabling them to be employed for the use or display of physical force or coercion in promoting any political objective or interest or in such a manner as to arouse reasonable apprehension that they are organised , trained or equipped for that purpose . ”
Subsection ( 6 ) says , “ No political party , person or candidate shall keep or use private security organisation , vanguard or any other group or individual by whatever name called for the purpose of providing security assisting or aiding the political party or candidate in whatever manner during campaigns , rallies , processions or elections . ”
In addition, Section 96 ( 1 ) says : “ No candidate , person or group of persons shall directly or indirectly threaten any person with the use of force or violence during any political campaign in order to compel that person or any other person to support or refrain from supporting a political party or candidate . ”
As spelt out by the Constitution, political actors in the forthcoming governorship election in the state must once again adhere to the rules of the game; the electorates must be given opportunity to cast their votes for the candidate of their choice without intimidation, and they must let their votes count in the September 19 governorship election in the state.
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In order to get more assurance from all contestants that the election would be peaceful and credible, there is need for the state Commissioner of Police to call such contestants to sign peace accord. It is has been done at the Federal level, so, this is the right time for it to be adopted at state level if there is no such at the state level.
Nigerian political leaders are found of calling for a peaceful election, but making such call must go hand-in-hand with action; that is, our political leaders must work the talk and not just lip service.
They must borrow a leaf from former Nigeria President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan who said in the bid up to the 2015 presidential election that his political ambition does not worth the blood of any Nigerian and he stood by it by accepting defeat from the main opposition, and consequently handing over power to the opposition as the winner of the presidential election-the first African president to accept defeat while in power.
Consequently, the political ambition of any contender in the forthcoming governorship election in Edo State does not worth the blood of any resident. Political leaders particularly in the state must talk to their supporters to abide by the rules of the game. Rancour, violence and thuggery should be shun in the September 19, governorship election; the election must be free, fair, credible and violence-free, so after September 19, Edolites will be able to boast that their votes counted.
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This became necessary with the rumoured Federal might, state might and power incumbency. When all these forces are allowed to bear in the election, it means that was is imminent and not election which ultimately should be a peaceful exercise.
Joseph Ebitibi Kanjo is a journalist and affairs commentator
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By Suyi Ayodele
Those who used Oro to win elections on March 18 are already back in the churches and mosques for thanksgiving. The pastors and the imams did not chase them away. Their thanksgiving offering and sadaqah were well received and ‘blessed’. The Muslims among them will start the 30-day Ramadan fast later this week. Their Christian counterparts are observing Lent, already. I am also putting my pastorate on notice. Nobody should doubt my spirituality after this outing. Thankfully enough, I have another two weeks to do penitence before the next Holy Communion service in April. I would have been in the “State of Grace” to partake in the spiritual meal. God, forgive your son all his shortcomings (Amen). Let somebody shout Hallelujah! My people say a man lives according to the epoch he finds himself in. Let us do Oro today. First, my tribute to the owners of this world (iba awon to n’ile aye). Oro is not common. It is not a daylight affair. It is a deity that speaks to the deep of the night. The whirring sound by Oro sends fears into the spines of the non-initiates.
Eeeeeepaaaaaaaa!!!!!
Oyi rerere! – The whirlwind!
Ori firi – You see it in a flash!
Oku firi – You die in a flash!
There is a town called Ikole-Ekiti; it is the headquarters of Ikole Local Government, my local government area. Ikole salutes itself as one who knows not to do with children and sacrifices one to the gods (Ikole ri hun m’omo se, han modidi omo s’ebo). There is a short story behind the oriki (praise name). In those days when humans were humans, there reigned an Elekole, who had many wives and children. Among his numerous children was a particularly beautiful one, a girl, known as Eyinjuewa (the eyeball of beauty), his favourite. Being the king’s favourite, the princess became a spoilt brat, rude and arrogant. Ikole also has an Oro festival, Isemole (complete restriction), that is celebrated till date. During the festival, no woman is allowed to come out. We grew up to know that tradition.
One day, during the Isemole festival, Eyinjuewa got into an argument with one of the oloris. Being her brat self, the princess told the olori that she, being a wife to the king, had no right to talk down on a princess, especially the king’s favourite. The two women were in the kitchen, with Eyinjuewa stirring amala delicacy. Isemole was at its peak, with the Oro at its most whirring sound. Peeved by Eyinjuewa’s arrogance, the olori challenged her thus: “If indeed you are the daughter of Elekole, go out there and see Isemole like a true child of the oba”. Game! Eyinjuewa’s pride was challenged. She forgot tradition. In her madness to prove that she was full blue-blooded, she did the unthinkable. Eyinjuewa opened the kitchen door, holding the stirring stick in her hand and ventured out. Instantly, the legend states, she dried up on the spot! Oro did not spare her. It is axiomatic: that “bi obirin ba fi oju kan Oro, Oro a gbé” (when a woman sees Oro, Oro must swallow her)! After the incident, Ikole people composed a warning song to register Eyinjuwewa’s recalcitrance; a princess born into a cult but fails to observe the tenets of the group. That is the real Oro. It is a cult that women have no role in; they are forbidden to be initiated into the Oro cult.
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What is the place of Oro in Yoruba religion? Yoruba traditional system is controlled by three levellers of authority. Sitting on top of the hierarchy is the Oba and his council of chiefs. That is the only segment of the ladder that is open for all to see. The second layer is the Awos, which is made of cult members (Oro) and the ogbonis (the real Osugbo and not the modern day Reformed Ogboni Fraternity (ROF), that accommodates all Tom, Dick and Harry. The third, which incidentally is the most powerful, are the real owners of the night; our mothers, the “eye buruku abi’ga winiwini” (the bad bird with beautifully arranged feathers), the witches, and to an extent, wizards.
Oro plays important roles whenever a member of a Yoruba community is to be excommunicated. If for instance, a man commits an offence which punishment is banishment, the Oro cult is called in to escort the culprit out of the town. Such a man is never to return to the community. It is a deity that was used in the days before civilisation, to execute criminals. In 2019, Yoruba popular Fuji star, Wasiu Ayinde Marshall, KWAM 1, at the height of the Governor Akinwunmi Ambode must go campaign, hinted that Ambode would be chased away from the Alausa Government House with Oro. Ambode, we all can recall today, lost the APC governorship primaries to the incumbent Babajide Sanwo-Olu. That was four years ago. Why has Ambode not been able to return to the Tinubu political family ever since? That is what an Oro does when it is employed in the case of any adversary.
The All Progressive Congress, APC, in Lagos last Saturday called out Oro cultists during the gubernatorial and house of assembly elections. The ‘initiates’ came out in their numbers and were on the street, performing ‘rituals’. I saw some of the videos. I listen to the voices of the Oros. I laughed heartily. An acada man, who was watching the videos with me, wondered why I laughed. I told him what he saw on the streets of Lagos were comedians. He did not believe me. The acada pointed out the all-white dresses and the white tattoos on the bodies of the Oro devotees and I asked him not to pay attention to the costumes or the marks on their bodies. My argument was that if the real Oro comes out, those Babajide Sanwo-Olu arinjo dramatists would flee in different directions. I mean it. My mind raced back home. I remembered Orangun (my family deity), whose cognomen is: “umole ko pa aaro re hi ku finrin finrin ke si gbohun ebeora (the deity that ‘kills’ its chief priest completely for him to hear what the gods have to say). How will Orangun be out, and some mere mortals will video it? How will Ajale be at its elements and women will be by their window blinds, recording it? Who will dare do that? Truly, Eko gba ole, o gba ole (The thief and the lazy are accommodated in Lagos). What you saw on the streets of Lagos on Saturday are not Oros. The pots and the hyssop and the concoction are not the Yoruba traditional “sesere and agbo”. But they achieved the purpose for which they were deployed. The victims of the hyssop dipped into the pots are the Igbo non-native of Lagos and others who got scared and stayed off the polling centres, leaving MC Oluomo and his goons to have a field day. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the president-elect, was clear in the build up to the February 25 presidential election that it would not be business as usual. On more than three occasions, especially when he was in his Yoruba enclave, he called for Ayajo (invocations) on his enemies. I have a faint idea of the capabilities of Ayajo. I equally know that a man who openly asked for Ayajo has more than enough in his traditional kitty. It is therefore not a surprise that on Saturday, March 18, Tinubu’s APC called in the Oro Cult to save the lord of Lagos from a second humiliation.
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This is why I find the Oro cults the Tinubu political family employed last Saturday in its quest to secure for Sanwo-Olu, a much desired second term in office, despicable and condemnable in all ramifications. The act is a total desecration of the Yoruba tradition. Ironically, those who deployed that infamy said that they were preserving Yoruba from the domination of the Igbo. The whole exercise showed how desperate the political class are. Sanwo-Olu, I understand, is of the Christian faith. I have been searching the internet to see where and when he professed his faith by denouncing the activities of the various Oro cults called to scare away potential voters from the Saturday election, especially those whose ancestry are not Yoruba. An elder, who I tried to sound out on the matter, told me: “Iwakuwa laa wa òhun to ba so nu, lo difa fun eni ti obe re so nu to lo la Inu pepeye” (we search for whatever is lost in odd places is the diviner who consulted for a man who lost his knife and then opened the bowel of a duck to look for it). This is the level that Professor Yakubu Mamood’s INEC has taken our electoral system. Expectedly, winners and losers were declared at the end of the charade!
The implications of the Lagos Oros are grave for our democracy. As much as I do not by any iota of imagination believe that the various Oro cults that were on display in Lagos last Saturday had any potency, my Yoruba background tells me that whether a gun has a barrel or not, no one should allow anybody to point it at him. The non-Yoruba residents in Lagos who stayed off the polling centres because of the Oro are justified. So, for the non-Yoruba residents of Lagos, who got scared and stayed off the voting centres because of the Oro cults, one cannot really blame them. Who could have said categorically if those jokers in white apparels and the equally theatrical ones slaughtering one unfortunate black goat had the capacity to harm people! While the acts were being perpetrated, where were the security agents? A system that allowed the Lagos scaremongers to perpetrate their shenanigan without repercussions, has set the pace for future anarchy. Very soon, a simple dispute between an indigene and non-indigene will lead to deities walking our streets naked. And I envisage that a day will come in Lagos, when the real ‘Lagosians’ will call out their Oros and non-indigenes will follow with canes. The days are numbered when Oro will turn to humans. Then, whatever is left of the vestige of Yoruba culture will be lost.
It was the Oro cult in Lagos. We had something else in other parts of the country. In many of the voting centres in Benin City, for instance, Igbo voters were completely shut out. This is what one of the respondents told me at the Ologbosere Primary School, Upper Sokponba, where there were 61 polling units and one could count the number of non-Benin voters by the fingertips: “You no be Yoruba, no be your people say make Igbo no come vote for Lagos”? I could not ask him further questions. His argument was that if the Yoruba could chase away the Igbo from voting in Lagos, why should the case be different in Edo? Sad, but valid. That is one of the negative implications of Lagos Oro on election day. This democracy is 24 years old. Not even in the days of General Olusegun Obasanjo’s “do or die” did we witness this type of perfidy. In one of the centres in Lagos, voters had to engage the services of ferocious dogs to protect themselves from thugs, who were moving about freely on a day that there was supposed to be restriction of movement.
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My summation of the March 18 elections is that humanity is lost in us all. Before you contest this, ponder on what Bayo Onanuga, one of Tinubu’s media aides said, after the Lagos charade: “Let 2023 be the last time of Igbo interference in Lagos politics. Lagos is like Anambra, Imo, any Nigeria state. It is not a no man’s land, not Federal Capital Territory. It is Yoruba land. Mind your business”. If these words came from the Onanugas of this world, what else do we expect from the MC Oluomos! We are back in the woods of perfidy!
Suyi Ayodele is a senior journalist, South-South/South-East Editor, Nigerian Tribune and a columnist in the same newspaper.
Opinion
OPINION: Senator Kalu Cannot Be Among The Prophets
Published
3 days agoon
March 20, 2023By
Editor
Senator Orji Uzor Kalu happened on Abia politics during General Sani Abacha’s ignominious transition to civil rule on the platform of the United Nigeria Congress Party (UNCP). The party was among the rogue four that had all its roots and branches inside Abacha and gleefully adopted the dictator, who was transmuting into a politician as their consensus presidential candidate in a transition programme that was a sham and shambolic.
Of the defunct parties, scorned as five fingers of a diseased hand by the late erudite Bola Ige, the UNCP stuck out in every material sense as the thumb. Barring Abacha’s sudden passing, Kalu was primed to win its nomination for Abia Government House.
But obvious was that the politicians who endeavoured to deodorized the skunk that Abacha’s transition was, unfurled in no unclear terms to Nigerians as solipsistic dregs, who lived in the dictator’s rectum.
Whatever Abacha wanted, Kalu and others were present and available as tools to confer a semblance of legitimacy on it. Kalu and the few who volunteered as pawns in Abacha’s chessboard were in those heady days, the only politicians in the country who walked free, lived free and slept with both eyes shut.
All others were endangered. Among Nigerians who despised Kalu and the rest of the cheerleading rump in the Abacha’s political programme of annihilation was the President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Tinubu and NADECO members were the conscience of the Nigerian society, which Kalu and company on the other hand endeavoured to suppress. Tinubu and other pro-democracy figures offered the mass of the people hope against the Abacha moving train and its occupants. Outside the murderous train and its obnoxious occupants, every citizen who dissented risked life and limb; faced hell and high waters and all manners of every day existential threats. Scores were dispatched, trying to redeem our society from the cut-throat political space Abacha, Kalu and others transformed it to.
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Those who went down fighting did so for the enthronement of unfettered participatory democracy and decent clime. Nigerians craved for a breather as jail houses swarmed with opposition figures; as bullets flew at against them at every turn and hurried self-exile the only life line for opposition voices. While the evils raged, Kalu and others worked for the perpetuation of the repugnant system, which only benefitted them.
With the dawn of democracy in 1999, it was incongruous that Tinubu and Kalu who pursue diametrical ideals would sail in the same boat. The former found family in the progressive hue Alliance for Democracy (AD) while the latter nestled in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) whose successes had the fingerprints of the departing establishment.
One of the peculiar oddities of the Nigerian political space is its high turnover of itinerant politicians. In our country a politician can change his political leaning far much quicker and at a frequency more eerie than the famed British weather. Here, it fits perfectly for politician to be a progressive in the morning, a conservative in the evening and anything in-between the belts. This best explains why the likes of Tinubu would beat their chests as progressives and a Kalu we all know would materialise to claim the same badge.
Sharing the same party makes it even all the more dizzying to some observers. But not to many because our land is that of absurdities, perhaps the only place in the Universe where light and darkness cohabit in a perilous union against everything that enhances life and living for the citizens.
Kalu is the subject of this discourse simply because of his treachery against his party, the APC and its presidential candidate in the lead up to the February 25 presidential election in both his Abia State and the South-east region.
His public display of his ballot paper, thumprinted for APC in the presidential election scarcely obliterates the fact that he didn’t show up in any South-east, APC presidential campaign for Tinubu. Kalu was not seen any of the presidential campaigns held across the entire six regions of the country.
It will not obviate the fact that he neither sponsored a single Tinubu campaign poster in the whole of his Abia State, much less a billboard advertisement. Those who walked their talk for the party, particularly in Kalu’s Abia pinned him pants down in negotiating off the patronage of his Abia North voters to a rival political party for the presidential election and the opposite for the National Assembly election in which he contested.
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Few posers have become compelling: Why did Senator Kalu ensure that he shied away from APC presidential campaign rallies in all of the South-east? Was it for nothing that he did not identify with his party’s presidential flag bearer during the campaigns in his Igboland? Knowing the disadvantages the APC faced in his Abia, Abia North Senatorial District and the entire South-east was Senator Kalu incapable of financing the production of campaign materials as lowly flyers and hand bills for his party’s presidential candidate? Was it possible he wasn’t acting out a personal agenda against Tinubu? These are not hypothetical questions, they’re fact-based and demands reasonable explanations from the Senator.
While a few may have forgotten that all Kalu wanted was the APC presidential ticket for his former classmate, Senator Ahmad Lawan-the outgoing Senate president-not a few expected that he would work for the presidential candidate of his party with the primary won and lost.
There are no surprises that Kalu right now has his eyes fixed on the position of the Senate Presidency, which may be micro-zoned to his region but what circumstances would support for a man to reap where he did not sow? Kalu should be reminded that the same Bible he now quotes copiously disapproves that a man who did not work should not eat: 2 Thessalonians 3:10. This engagement is a fair challenge to Kalu to make known his efforts at working for the electoral success of the President-elect, Ahmed Bola Tinubu and the APC for all to hear and see besides his thumb print for the party and the public show he made out of it.
Voting for Tinubu after laying traps and preparing the terrain for his fall at the electoral field is a classic facade which takes the definition of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds to a whole new level.
Who and what exactly is Kalu fearful of when he took to his verified Facebook handle to nag at his percieved opponents for the Senate Presidency over character assassination and politics of calumny, when none of his targets has even had time to bother about him? Any wonder the Bible declares in Proverbs 28:1 that “the wicked flees when no man pursueth.” While it is his prerogative to dream to be Senate President, he needs not be reminded that it is only fair that those who worked or at least made attempt to work must be numbered first for reckoning.
Any system that rewards treachery and betrayal cannot guarantee peace and cohesion. And only beckons on unavoidable implosion. Kalu knows this because he has been a governor.
He also needs not be reminded that every ruling party has a sacred responsibility of ensuring that who ever is to emerge a Senate president must not be a saboteur to the president or even remotely seen to be one.
This engagement would be incomplete without also drawing the attention of APC leadership in Abia and the national secretariat to the fact that the bitter pills Senator Kalu served Tinubu in the February 25 presidential campaigns, he served Ikechi Emenike, the party’s governorship candidate in the state.
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As it was with Tinubu, Kalu shied away from issuing any kind words in favour of Emenike’s quest in the state and also did not show up in any of his campaign rallies. If these are not definitive of anti-party activities, pray, what else does, especially from a principal officer of the Upper Legislative Chamber, who ought to be a rallying point and leading light in APC’s electoral battles in unfriendly Abia and Igboland?
How would the party make in-roads in the South-east with the exaggerated sense of self-importance from a polarising figure like Kalu? It is counter-productive and injurious to the party for Kalu to just remain APC by words of mouth and for his egotistic interest of riding on its wings for his individual political survival.
Emeka Chidiebere writes from Aba
The above article is strictly of the writers’ opinion and does not in any way translate to that of INFO DAILY MEDIA

Tunde Odesola
Cleveland, a city in Ohio, USA, was long regarded as the sufferhead among American cities. Bearing on its big head the weight of an unfortunate nickname – The mistake on the lake – Cleveland shares a few similarities with Nigeria. How did Cleveland get its nickname? This is how.
As recently as the late 1960s and 1970s, Cleveland was described as a city where ducks flew upside down because there was nothing worth dumping on. An unforgettable incident happened in June 1969 that made the appellation of a rundown city stick to Cleveland like a mask.
Just as Nigeria has River Niger, Cleveland has Cuyahoga River, where the city’s factories dumped their waste with reckless abandon. The Cuyahoga River, by the way, empties into Lake Erie, which is the 11th largest lake in the world.
On a fateful ‘Ọjọ́ burúkú, èsù gbo’mi mu’ day when the devil was horribly thirsty for evil, a spark from a moving train on a bridge above the river ignited the toxic chemicals floating on the river, resulting in an inferno five storeys high. The fire was quickly put out and nobody died from the incident.
If such an inferno occurred in our beloved Nigeria, your guess is as good as mine; fake pastors would’ve had a field day, the opposition would’ve accused government of arson, government would have said the fire was God’s wish, and Bubu wouldn’t visit the scene; Garba or Adesina would’ve issued a statement silent on casualties, calling on Christians and Muslims to watch and pray. The hopeless country would’ve moved on.
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Commerce, industry and life folded up in Cleveland as the former 5th largest city population in the US shrunk to become the 54th largest. The river of tears rolling down the cheeks of the Nigerian masses bearing the brunt of misgovernance such as naira scarcity and poverty is bigger than the fast-shrinking Lake Chad, slowly drying up rivers Niger and Benue, and the polluted rivers in the Niger Delta.
But Cleveland has rebounded and is holding its own as America’s third largest iron and steel producing city, arts and cultural hub, topnotch healthcare destination, champion of environmental protection and progenitor of Rock and Roll.
If Cleveland was a ‘Mistake on the Lake’, Nigeria must be a ‘Disaster on the Niger’. Or a ‘Blight on the Benue’. Nigeria’s socio-political history paints the picture of domination, suspicion, hate and jealousy among her various tribes.
The seed of tribal domination, suspicion and hatred was sown with the nation’s first coup d’etat when Igbo soldiers, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu and Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, in the night of January 15, 1966, led other coup plotters, who were mainly of Igbo extraction, to carry out a pogrom on Nigeria’s political elite that included Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, and more than 20 top politicians, senior army officers including their wives, and junior soldiers on duty, even as another Igbo soldier, General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, seized the reins of power when the country was descending into anarchy.
Apart from Nzeogwu and Ifeajuna, other majors that were the masterminds of the first coup in Nigeria were Timothy Onwuatuegwu, Chris Anuforo, Dan Okafor, Adewale Ademoyega, and Humphrey Chukwuka.
A list of the casualties in the January 15, 1966 coup include Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Premier Ahmadu Bello, Premier Samuel Ladoke Akintola, Finance Minister Festus Okotie-Eboh, Ahmed Musa (Ahmadu Bello’s aide), Hafsatu Bello, Mrs Latifat Ademulegun, Zarumi Sardauna, Ahmed Pategi (Bello’s driver).
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Others include Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun, Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari, Colonel Ralph Shodehinde, Colonel Kur Mohammed, Lt Colonel Abogo Largema, Lt Colonel James Pam, Lt Colonel Arthur Unegbe, Sergeant Daramola Oyegoke, Police Constable Yohana Garkawa, Lance Corporal Musa Nimzo, Police Constable Akpan Anduka, Police Constable Hagai Lai, and Philip Lewande. Unegbe was the only Igbo killed during the coup.
Yoruba leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, luckily escaped being killed in the January 1966 coup plot because he had been sentenced to a 10-year jail term for alleged conspiracy to overthrow the Balewa government in 1963.
Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the President of the country, who was on a cruise to the Caribbean when the coup occurred, had transferred powers to the Senate President, Prince Nwafor Orizu.
Then came the counter-coup of July 1966 aka ‘July Rematch’ which was more senseless and sickening than the January coup as an undisclosed number of Igbo soldiers, including Ironsi, were murdered, setting Nigeria on the path of a civil war that started on July 6, 1967 and ended on January 15, 1970 – lasting exactly 2 years, 6 months, 1 week and 2 days.
It’s true to say that the spine of the fragile unity of Nigeria was broken by the January 1966 coup, it is truer to say that the Igbo have never recovered from the Biafra War. No tribe can ever recover from a war that killed an estimated three million people.
Aborigine Indians never recovered till date in the US, Tibetans, Taiwanese and Uyghurs never fully recovered in Chinese hands, natives never recovered in Canada – in wars wherein genocide, starvation and sterilization were potent weapons for forceful land takeover and imperialism.
War is always terrible and avoidable. It’s like the bullet, once shot, it hurries to wreak havoc. It’s sane to say that the January 1966 coup was a military action, whose consequence shouldn’t be visited on an entire tribe. But warmongers would say that everything is fair in war and that the Igbo got what they deserve. However, is it right to kill an ant with a sledgehammer? Is it right to kill a dog because it barks?
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The whole concept of Nigeria’s amalgamation is insane, unnatural and pretentious because after the Biafra War, ‘No victor, no vanquished’ became the new song on every lip, whereas suspicion, mistrust and contempt sit in the belly of each tribe.
With the 2023 general elections, the chickens have, again, come home to roost. The elections have, once again, widened the national fissures of ethnicity, religion and hypocrisy accentuated by the headless regime of retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari – a beneficiary of coups. Buhari divided Nigeria so much that when people are killed anywhere in the country nowadays, the first question that comes to mind is, “I hope my tribe isn’t involved’.
Sadly, ethnicity, religion and hypocrisy have been critical factors determining the swing of electoral victory in the 2023 elections, just like past elections. Sadly, this is what the political elite designed for the masses, and it’s bearing bountiful harvests.
If not hypocrisy, what would you call Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who, as the day of election reckoning nears, has gained rapid demotion from being Lagos State foreman to being Lagos State groundsman ready to hug the homeless, lick the vulcaniser arse and stand at church entrance like a stranded sexton.
If not for ethnicity and hypocrisy, why haven’t the Igbo ever been this concerted, assertive and vehement in condemning bad governance in Igbo land especially, and across Nigeria generally, as they’ve now been rooting in Lagos?
Inasmuch as I’m an advocate of giving the job to the best hands, notwithstanding religious consideration, I’ll be remiss and insincere if I claim that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s Muslim-Muslim was altruistic. That political act was in disregard of Christian religion, and could embolden an encore by the political class in future elections. Its unforeseen fallout is what’s making Sanwo-Olu’s heart beat 1,000 times per minute at the mention of Elluu Pee.
For one thousand and one reasons, the All Progressives Congress should’ve been punished at the polls but it exploited the nation’s faultlines, like other parties also did, to garner votes nationwide in confirmation of the weaponization of poverty.
No doubt, the memory of Biafra wracks the Igbo till date, the same way the loss of Ilorin, a Yoruba land, to the Fulani, rankles the Yoruba still. This is why ‘Lagos is no man’s land’ mantra provokes instant disgust in the Yoruba.
If the Labour Party loses Lagos governorship election on Saturday, the Igbo will come to great political pain, and return to the old song, “We want Biafra.” I join in the song; if the Igbo cannot aspire to be what they want in Nigeria, let them go.
Tunde Odesola is a senior journalist, columnist with The PUNCH newspaper and a guest writer in INFO DAILY.
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: @tunde odesola
Twitter: @tunde_odesola

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