By Chris Nwedo
May 26, 2016
It is not wrong but an obligation of an enormous import for people feeling deprived, marginalized and\or oppressed to work actively to redress the ill-treatment. It is positive to wake-up, determined, against potent threat to ones comfort, and indeed continual existence. It is a duty to save oneself from dangers of repression or subjugation of any kind. And a strong-minded ‘fight’ to surmount the jeopardy of dehumanization is endlessly positive. Nature permits every existent to go every length in defense of her gift of life. The imperatives for the forceful determination to live is consistent with the law of survival. This proposition is incontestable. Incontestable because the truthfulness of the fact is decisively founded in nature. God has given to existent the inviolable independent force to remain existing and greater capacities to confront whatever threatens this vitality.
This is why on societal level, a collective struggles for emancipation is objectively rationalized and supported beyond every frontier, often, with compassionate propaganda. This human emotion or sentiment is beyond frontiers because it is cross-cultural. However, one unique thing that puts this human solidarity into preventable peril is always the methodology for struggle. Methodology here refers instruments for struggle. For instance, as much as the world is firmly united in the support for the State Israel and discountenances frequent rocket attacks from Palestinian militants that kill or harm the Jews, the same world communities denounce vociferously as disproportionate and over reactive the actions of the Jewish army.
Jewish army kills hundreds of the Palestinians, destroys properties of inestimable value and destitute tens of thousands for a death of an Israeli. The army scatters the Palestinians in fearful dismay and terrify the people with potent threats of extinction in attempts to execute ambiguous commands of the government to stop the attacks. On the other hand, the uncoordinated propaganda and inarticulate violence by the Palestinian militants towards Israel were heavier burden to Palestine because the methods bound Peace Processes and prospects of quick resolutions of the crisis in heavy chains. The illusions of magic effects of the distractions by the militants flawed the compassions of the majority working to end perennial catastrophe.
It is recognized that when the tools for reacting to cruelty are appropriate and manifestly objective, the struggle against the malice is bound to remain focused and efficient, the struggle is enforced to become revalidated by increasingly sprouting momentous supports. On the contrary, if the instruments of the struggle become denigrated by the caprices of the front-line protagonists the inevitable cracks to be generated by this ill disposition naturally extinguishes the popular supports. The weakening of the flames from the support foundations can widen the fault-lines and expands the cracks for opportunities for infiltrators to destroy the project realistically. However, once distraction is permitted, in this brand of struggle, by lack of caution in the structures of the movement, concentration on the original premises of the struggle becomes impossible being locked in prison without bars.
In the steam of this push, confounding noise of battle and intense stampede in the ranks of Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, my concern is the methodology for accessing the objectives so that the ‘legitimate’ struggle can be saved from preventable crumple under weight of bad method. Definitely, the crumbling of the dream is bound to cause the ruin of many. The untimely death of so many during the Biafran Day, May 30 2016 revalidates my emphasis on this decisive issue of methodology. I am baffled by the assumption that the life of an Igbo man has become so little and degraded that he is compelled to walkout senselessly to be slaughtered. The Igbo man is resilient, perceptive, articulate among gifts, therefore, cannot submit to easily to eccentric and imprecise visions of magic garden immured from pain and sorrow. It is strange to think that the Igbo man has suddenly become impulsive when it is not in his nature. I am convinced that when he is balanced he will never be led by head by dictates of contextually inauspicious propaganda crammed movement.
Besides, there were enough of these brands of movement across the continents that ended disastrously solely on account imprudent rascality of the point-men. For the fact that life is an inviolable gift, it censorious for anyone to discard his or her own imprudently for a project whose value is hard to interpret or understand. The right to liberty even when it is inalienable, has is heavier obligation. This obligation includes ones safety and the interest of the other. Nevertheless, for the sake of definitional challenges, I want to view the methodology in question from the perspectives below:
• The physical tools in the struggle,
• The intellectual tools in the struggle
• Definite goals of the top characters in the struggle.
The only objective of this reflection is to successfully task the consciousness of the organisers and supporters of the IPOB specifically on the tools. It is incontrovertible that without prudent tools it will be impossible for folks to be constructive vehicles for the ‘new earth’. Indisputably, many of these folks are susceptible and scarcely conversant with the narratives and the way they are galloping in the night with an insufficient shaft of light. The command to disobey, demonstrate and challenge legitimately armed and hasty Nigerian security for a magical paradise is confusing. Nigerian democracy is profoundly imperfect, the only way to improve the quality is by active participation, intelligent negotiation, construction of positive alliances and insisting on justice and fairness. The ways of violence and division are antithetical and take one to harm’s way defenceless. By insisting on positive processes in the struggle to avoid injury and abortion of the energies and supports, I am not intending to preach fear but solid effort for better access to the goal. Fear is out of the way. For I know fear as “failure of help offered by reason”.
Physical tools in the struggle: this should not be seen in the context of force of weaponry. Infusing arms as components of the agitation is an unsolicited invitation of both ‘legitimate and illegitimate arms bearers. ‘Legitimate arms bearers’ is interpreted in the context of intervention by legitimate civil authorities whose primary responsibility it is to quell dissension with the full wrath of arms as mandated by the law. For the fact that the challenge is against the state, the state authorities cannot be trusted to be fair and proportionate in the dealing with the ‘enemies’. Obviously, the state will be prejudiced both in principle and practice in dealing insensitively with groups it considers agents of social disorder. Recall that the continued ravages by the Boko Haram was blamed on the inability of the government for prompt action. In my opinion, it will be unwise for the government to fail in any particular strategy for the dealing with dissenters. Provoking the vehement aggression of a potent force is ridiculous.
The Federal government is said to have vowed to crush the movement. The president reiterated that there will be no Biafra under him and he will use all the resources under his disposal to crush any agitation for the division of Nigeria. The government determines what the state security means and the president is under vow to protect the nation from both internal and\or external subversions. The vow is binding that is why he takes responsibility for insecurity. The president has a cover for his actions however horrific on the pretext of state security which is indefinable. Nigeria not a sane liberal society because of the reign of impunity and hypocrisy. Recklessness on the part of security establishments is known. The establishments are implicated in distortions and falsifications of facts to justify oppressive denial of citizens’ rights and privileges. Nigerian police men have murdered many for the fun of it. The conflicts within the security establishments have been catastrophic and the reasons for the show of shame have been constant what more when they are armed to fight indeterminate ‘enemies’ in the clouds of fear and suspicion.
On the other hand, the illegitimate arms carriers are delinquent elements within the confines of the IPOB. These treacherous folks have the competence to turn the struggle upside down in favour of illicit interests. The weapons in their possession are powers for horror, terrorization and extortion. These disreputable elements who formally have no courage to appear armed now can brandish weapons disloyally courtesy of IPOB. As it is now, many of these defaulters are steaming and waiting for spark of any violence in the name of IPOB to hit the ground running. The pertinent question is, if for the sake of these malefactors weapons cannot be incorporated in the agitation what other options are available in this sphere? There are options of peaceful demonstrations, strike actions, hunger strikes, non violent civil disobedience etc. Fortunately, the coordinators are talking about civil disobedience or ‘direct action’. More so, the demonstrations or the civil disobedience so far have been intolerable collective punishment to the South east.
Peaceful demonstration: disruptive tendencies characterize most demonstrations in Nigeria. There is no exception to this. Practically, non violent manifestation of any kind has not started to exist in parts of Nigeria. This because the levels of enlightenment among the people have not provided the disposition for such consciousness. Earlier, IPOB demonstrators grounded Onitsha and startled the whole State, during the 1 Million man March, to call for the immediate release of Nnamdi Kanu. For most proponents of the radical action, the demonstration was successful. It was successful at least they state was rattled by her own citizens. I expect, the slaughtering of tens of Ndi Igbo on May 30, 2016 to be called a triumphant outing for the IPOB organisers.
It is daunting to conceptualize the methodology of this regular upset devoid of discomfort, massive bloodshed and grievous injuries to economic concerns of the Southeast. Earlier a peaceful demonstration attributed to organizers of IPOB ended in fiasco with endless chronicles of death, pains of bodily injuries and material destruction. Groups of renegades among the agitators conspired and rushed to Niger bridge to ambush and pitilessly robbed the folks coming in. During the protest, the only entrance to the zone from the North was locked for days by the protesters while many Igbo people remained helplessly trapped on the way. The anguish of this insensitivity on the victims was intolerable. Till today many of the victims of the blockade may still be suffering or dead as a direct result of barbarity. Besides, the locking out of the Igbos by the so called defenders of the course, shops were looted, vehicles burnt, etc. In the end the outing was comparatively catastrophic. In the reality of today, IPOB is an extraordinary idea. The struggle has needlessly consumed over 1,000 Igbos since August 2015. This is added to over 2.5 million innocent victims for the same in 1967. For me it is flabbergasting.
It is an embarrassing slow death for Ndi Igbo to have repeated experiences of these sorts. It is clear that the presumable good ‘intentions’ of the IPOB point-men were not potent enough to prevent the tragic subversion. If they had what it takes to contain the rebellious members surely, they would not have ‘consented’ to the ruin that was brought upon the integrity of the movement. To the betrayers of the movement I say this blunders should not have been committed to avoid to avoid discrediting the movement.
Moreover, some unprincipled campaigners have turned themselves into Lords in their various small communities and using their prominence in the movement to tyrannize and humiliate the folks. They extort the people with impunity even as they give impressions that they are benevolent protectors of the various communities. This exploitations or abuses definitely denigrates the universal goal of the IPOB. However, the abuse is necessary part of it as long as we have among us crude opportunist ready to take laws into their hands rebelliously. For the organisers, the agony of Ndi Igbo can neither tolerate nor sustain this movement in this hard and terrifying times.
The intellectual components in the struggle, this can be considered by means of the interrogatives below:
• Do the IPOB lead-campaigners have clear and definite vision of efficient instruments for accessing the ultimate goals of the movement,
• What are the hopes for accessing the tools not immediately available particularly on the international levels,
• What are the real goals of the movement,
• Are these goals feasible in the context of today,
• What does realisation of the goals mean in the context of collective interest of Ndi Igbo,
• How prepared are they to manage the success if the goals become achieved?
It is incontrovertible that having a clear understanding of definite tools for accessing the objectives of IPOB gets the project speedily accomplished. An erroneous start discharges negative signals. A negative signal multiplies skeptics, skeptics put spanners on the work and bait cynics to ruin the movement. To be noted is the fact that nothing is as bad and dangerous as handing the complicated movement over to people of skillful diatribes. For their arrogance and reckless utterances provide irresistible enticement to spirited detractors. Proficient invectives as flag-bearers turn the light off on the way. The haughty has the potential to destabilize both the movement and folks at the same time.
By the methods of the arrogant, abundant blames are given to the folks to play with. And even when the blame games fail to turn to fight they implant strong distastes that discourages enthusiasm for the movement. Daily so much time are wasted, shops felt unattended to as folks gather to contest and wrangle over some new controversial statements from the structures of IPOB. Some of these statements are divisive and illusive. Some are nonsensical attacks on folks differing in approach but of the same commitment. The continued reliance on disparagement, callous statements and verbal abuse or name-calling demonstrated that the front liners in the IPOB may not have had access to approved methodology characteristic to that brand of struggle.
