From the inception of this ill-fated abomination of an amalgam called Nigeria, the Northern elite have not hidden their hatred for true federalism in Nigeria. According to them – not just the old stock but even the contemporary political and religious leaders of the Northern stock-: “Nigeria must remain an extension of our great-grandfather’s estate.” Every Nigerian, including the politically and posterity-wise blind politicians we have today from the South –especially, the South-East, ought to know that they and their generations will be adequately punished if this evil scheme of preponderance by the entire North against others becomes unabated in these days of global awareness. And Nigerians as a whole stand to lose what may be taken home after the inevitable break-up if this spirit of callousness and injustice remains a law in the country just as the killing of Igbo and the destruction of their property have gained supportive reasons even amongst Igbo leaders in the Nigerian government, and as the terrorist Boko Haram has equally gained apologists and even admirers amongst leaders and citizens from the Northern protectorate alike. Why I write is not solely so that an irrefutable argument can be presented; I write to warn – knowing fully well the power of words and the place of visionary leadership in the rudder of man’s continued existence. I write to quash the ignorance of those who call themselves “wise” and would continue to wish – to their own shame and eventual damnation – that those bound under the yoke of Nigeria are not awake. If anything, the burdens of the decades gone have taught us that silence is death while choosing to speak and act has an outcome of either a continued death-state, or life. It is the ground that carries all by the compelling strength of the seas; therefore, if we do not rise up again injustice and dehumanization, the ground will revolt until we fall in-between the downward sloppy cleavages.

For the benefit of those who find it difficult to correlate the importance of history to the lives they live, well, without history, there would be no you. Every politically-alive person in the entire world today, even without being truthful, knows that Northern Nigeria is of the Saharan sphere; this can be attested to by the number of desert dunes often experienced in the North. Having said that, every geographically and politically alive person in the earth today equally knows that, according to established routes for cattle-rearing, livestock are often many times larger in number than people living in any of such places. Having said that, everyone should be reminded that the early census carried out in Nigeria, with the treacherous overseeing of Her Majesty’s representatives, was blatantly and challengingly counted in favor of the North. The Northern part of Nigeria was allowed to allocate themselves almost 2/3^rd of the Nigerian benefits. Today, the North has a total of 409 L.G.As. while the entire Southern protectorate (comprising of South-East, South-South, and South-West) is left with just 387 L.G.As. This has been the very formula which has kept Nigeria corrupt, unjust, unequal, and far from being a federation for over fifty (50) years. It will be recalled that, apart from other unjust and compelled agreements reached between the North and the South under Britain – seeing that our leaders were eager to stand Nigeria as an independent state at the time– the population falsification of the Northern states was carried out to pacify them for nothing and to lure them into joining an independent Nigeria. Naturally, that numerical inflation which saw to the dominance of Nigerian politics by Northern politicians was designed to give them the upper hands and doubled benefits in everything. And as a result of this faulty foundation, the North has always, like an ungrateful child, demanded, over and over again, everything that belongs to the other even after having collected theirs.

The implication of this faulty foundation, callous and compelled unity, hit directly on the Southerners. And while the Igbo of the South-East were committedly demanding for equal rights and freedom for all, the North was busy playing politics of “divide-and-rule” against the Igbo – tearing them apart from their South-South brothers in the hope of perfecting – to an extent – what Gowon, Nigerian government and Nigerians intended would be the annihilation of the Igbo race. And as is the clear outcome, the Yoruba took the opportunity and had a field day of what makes Nigeria. As the North intensified, by every means, their cold war against their non-enemy Igbo, the Yoruba strategically captured the financial pillars of Nigeria…and, like wood eaters, chopped it down the drain. While most presidents and top leaders of Nigeria had always come from the North, and while most of them ruled dangerously – embezzling the state’s fund – they did little or nothing for their people. Today, more than ever, other Nigerians claim that Igboland is already filled with humans, yet Igbo are second to the largest numbers of Nigerians in every other state of the federation. This, therefore, can only, clearly and truthfully imply that Igbo are the largest in population in Nigeria yet, we are one state lesser than the Yoruba tribe, and two lesser than the Hausa/Fulani of the North among the three (3) major tribes in what is still referred to as Nigeria. Every Nigerian who has lived long in the North knows where population concentration of the Hausa/Fulani of Nigeria lies. But even as this injustice has become an evidence before all and sundry, governments have come and gone without daring to approach this imbalance which has become a wedge to the country’s growth.

As it is today, with the leadership of Nigeria under a South-Southern man in the name of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the leadership of the North has welcome and integrated terrorism as part of their “fight for survival.” Just as the leadership of Boko Haram maintains that some Northern governors have been sponsoring their killing of Igbo and Christians, police and the army, the Northern leaders have been coming, one after the other, to declare their support for the terrorist activities of Boko Haram against other Nigerians. From their religious to political levels, many of the Northern leaders have become Boko Haram apologists, while some even in government offices are short of declaring their proud membership and support. Today, what the Northern leaders are shamelessly claiming is that the amnesty granted the Niger Delta youths was the cause of the rise of terror from the North. But it will be correct to remind them that terror against other Nigerians have always risen from the North: their has never been, in the history of Nigeria, a time when Hausa/Fulani people in Igboland were suddenly pursued, rounded up and killed for something that has to do with the federal government and Igbo people; if anything, the governors of the South-East have always gone extra miles to protect them even to the detriment of the people who elected them for their service, first and foremost. While the Igbo and other Nigerians have been continuously and unprovokedly killed in the North by BH with the full political, arms, and financial support of most Northern leaders, the army, which has become another terror to unarmed people of Igboland, ceaselessly and unashamedly raid the peaceful MASSOB. Nigeria is accursed and I will not waste a prayer on her deliverance until every single blood-stained stone on it is torn down.

Before the discovery and advent of petroleum and its value in Nigeria, Enugu coal had been a major source of pride and income to the Nigerian government. At that time, no Igbo person canvassed for their privileges and resource-control rights because the British authority killed our women in Aba, and wiped-out our men in Enugu when they protested against poor pay and treatment. But the people of the Niger Delta, after decades of injustice and forceful silencing of the their youths by the government of Nigeria, took it upon themselves to fight for their rights or die for it  – not being unconscious of the democracy of the world today and the roles of human rights organizations throughout the world today. As a result, many of them have started finding any reason to feel human even in their own land which the government has forcefully and unjustly declared a national mineral base. Although Igboland is among the Niger Delta group, refineries and several other federal government projects have been seen by the government of Nigeria as best suited in every other place apart from Igboland. And I do not want to restate other mountain of injustices against Igbo by the government of Nigeria in its quest for a foundational support for an already-decayed root. My questions to the Northern leaders who set free killers but condemn innocents; who support and sponsor terrorism but condemn the rights of the Niger Delta and the inevitable manifestation of an internationally recognized sovereign state of Biafra are these:

1. For the decades that the country was, with strong hand and in autocratic ways, ruled by Northern politicians who packed whatever they laid their hands on of the country’s wealth to the North, whose duty was it to develop the North and establish the Northerners – the ever-marginalized Igbo or the unjustly treated South-South, or perhaps the Yoruba looking for gains from every fights…and therefore being ever-ready to sponsor a fight for the sole purpose of gaining?

2. There are mineral resources all over the North which are steadily being mined – one of which is gold; where does the money accruing from the entire goldmines going to and what part of Nigeria’s budget have been mapped-out for sponsorship with the minerals of the North?

3. The Northern soil is rich for agricultural developments; why has the government not taken over the land as a national agricultural zone and award agricultural contracts to foreign and domestic firms for the purpose of sourcing money for national funding out from there?

4. The clear injustice of Nigeria against the East led to the secession of Biafra – who did that without going about killing others to prove a point. The Nigerian government descended heavily on a people who thought that justice is found in Nigeria and Britain and that Nigeria would not dare to invade Igboland and start committing genocide at will against an already-oppressed people without the intervention of the world community; of this Ibrahim Babangida has sworn to put on his military uniform to repeat should Igbo or any other cry out from the overbearing burden of the North and of Nigeria in One-Nigeria, but he would not as much as say a world concerning Boko Haram in his house whose clear and stated aim is to have a strictly Islamic nation. My question is: for how long do you humans really think that injustice will prevail? And what makes you actually believe and instill in your children that yours alone is to rule, while others are to slave for you?

The hammer of justice is swaying. Every religion speaks of God and His place amongst men, and every heart beats only to the dictates of the divine; no one has the power of life and death except God. And anyone who snuffs life out of his neighbor – by way of induced-hunger, injustice, denials, marginalization, false-witness, or outright murder – is already judged and condemned. This is why the leaders of the entire Northern Nigeria should wake up or, at least, be sober in mind enough as to allow a friend wake them up from their self-induced slumber on the realities of the times we have found induced on ourselves. This is a time of justice and it is swaying by no human hand. The Northern leaders are putting their generation to shame – both by their silence and their utterances and reactions regarding the injustices in Nigeria. Rather than blame the government or Niger Delta for the terrorism by the North against others, they should, first of all, level all the blame squarely on their past and present leaders. The fact that they are not ashamed to declare that the poverty in the North is driving the youths to excesses, without explaining to the youths what they have achieved for them and the country the 98% of the entire Nigerian existence that they have ruled, unmasks either their ignorance or their unrepentance to wickedness and injustice. If the Northern youths must revolt out of poverty, their complete attention should be directed on their leaders who have robbed and milked them dry all the years they have ruled – not on Igbo, Christians, or Jonathan. If the youths of the North are killing Igbo, Christians, and the forces of Nigeria solely to show their hunger-angered reactions, and if a man like Sanusi stands to create a legal backing for the terrorist reasons of their children, what would the youths of the South-East who have been marginalized, tortured, and shamed continually do? A learned and highly-placed man like Sanusi of the CBN who makes case for Boko Haram and their need to kill and drive out Igbo and Christians out of the North to prove a point displays an excellent example of decay among the bests in Nigeria’s leadership. A country where blood-spilling, ever-increasing hatred, animosity and unforgettableness are fueled by the actions and inactions of impertinent and unrepentant leaders is already doomed. What the government of the day, as others gone, is doing is just to gather what they could before the dooms day. But they only forget that, on that day, the one in the house will run outside, the one on the roof cannot run in, and some will seek for cover under the rocks. Wicked people often forget that wickedness and every act directed against the peace of a peaceful man is like a cankerworm that eats down a wood-mansion; in the end, the wicked will stand naked, ashamed, worthless, helpless, dying and judged…before all eyes. It does not matter if the division comes today, the sword of justice must cut its pound of flesh from the guilt – even if he/she hides in the underground or moon fortresses of the “new world order.” Justice, divine justice which is commensurate with Nigeria’s hardness on God’s creation, is what Nigeria is dully getting; and this justice will be fully poured – no matter whom you think you are or what you think you have securely hidden beyond man’s reach. Let every evil thought from Nigeria and from every part of the world against Zion become an everlasting chain of fire against those who plan in vain. Amen.

By Ikechukwu Enyiagu, [email protected]

By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor

Friday, January 27, 2012

Over the past few days, opponents of the NDC grouped under the banner of the NPP seem to have rediscovered themselves and are doing what they know best—intensifying their condemnation of President Mills for mere political capital. They seem to believe that the more noise they make against him, the better chances are that they will be marketing their party and improving the chances of its Presidential Candidate (Akufo-Addo) for Election 2012. I pity them.

This opinion piece is no blind defence of President Mills. After all, I am one of those who have not hesitated to berate him for obvious failures in his government’s handling of affairs at many levels. Mine is a pointed condemnation of the irresponsible behaviour of those opponents who are continuously fouling the air with their maggot-infested political rhetoric.

Of all their anti-Mills machinations, nothing more betrays their desperation than what has come from Boakye Agyarko, the campaign manager of the NPP, and the camp of the NPP-affiliated pressure group, the Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG).

Let’s begin with the first issue, which reflects the asinine politics of that camp and borders on inanity. Boakye Agyarko stated at a church service over the weekend that functionaries of the NPP see their party’s defeat in the 2008 general elections as a blessing in disguise. Accordingly, that defeat and the poor performance of the NDC have given Ghanaians the real opportunity to assess the two parties and to know which of them can best serve the interest of the country. To him, then, the NPP’s defeat was destined by God.

Activists of the AFAG have taken to the streets again, topping up their demonstration against the NDC government with a call for the resignation of President Mills because of what they described as his failure to handle corruption issues properly.

Let me tear into these two separate pronouncements, which are significant to me only as the NPP’s strategy for undercutting the Mills-led government. They are self-serving and have nothing good for the country. Their kind of scare-mongering politics won’t wash with anybody but those with whom they’ve descended into the gutter.

To cut a long story short, Boakye Agyarko’s utterances qualify as nothing but a clear display of insanity and should be dismissed as such. If they of the NPP knew that their defeat in the 2008 elections was God-ordained, why did they go about wailing and gnashing their teeth? Why did they go after Arthur Kennedy for telling them straight to their faces the truth about that defeat?

Seeking consolation in God and using it to explain the NPP’s plight sums up the stupidity that rules the affairs of those in that party who deceive themselves that they are those predestined to rule the country and will move heaven and earth to paint others black just because they want them out of the way.

Boakye Agyarko and like-minded NPP functionaries may feel vindicated by self-constituted observations and porous arguments but they can’t claim to be any better than those they are now shooting their venom at. I will return to this issue in due course.

For all that it is, AFAG is nothing but a collection of idle hands who think that the more they wage this kind of needless open attack on President Mills, the more likely it will be for them to dent his image and render him valueless at Election 2012. Of course, no one expects such a group to be up on the streets praising a government that its financiers and backers are murderously against.

By its very nature in terms of composition, agenda, and strategies for prosecuting that agenda, the AFAG is incredibly misguided and doesn’t command any respect from those of us who know what it was set up to do. Its activities may attract publicity but I wonder if they are the right means to solve the country’s problems.

Will the mere resignation of President Mills eradicate the corruption that they have cited as the raison d’etre for their call on him to resign? Or will an NDC government minus Atta Mills suddenly find the elusive magic wand to wave to solve the country’s problems?

Where were these AFAG elements when Kufuor was in office? They should give us a break.

If President Mills must resign because of corruption issues, then, former President Kufuor deserves nothing but a public lashing for all that he did to make corruption flourish under his watch. So also will we suggest that all those in his administration who indulged in corrupt practices but are now presenting themselves as SAINTS to criticize the NDC administration be subjected to stiff punishment.

Even then, the Woyome case has assumed this wide dimension mainly because of the fact that the beneficiary of the judgement debt fracas is an NDC financier. The circumstances under which he was paid the judgement debt may raise serious questions about the Kufuor government itself because had it not abrogated the contract, Woyome wouldn’t have gone to court to seek redress; nor would the court have awarded him that colossal monetary compensation.

On the flip side, though, if Woyome had no contract with the government (as Martin Amidu would have us believe), then, the conundrum thickens. The blame will then lie squarely on the lap of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice at the time (Betty Mould-Iddrissu) to explain why Woyome ended up winning the case, especially if the government’s legal team declared the case against the government as “bad” (according to Barton-Oduro, Deputy Minister of Justice and Attorney-General) and failed to fight it. Something nasty did go on, which we can all trace to the canker of corruption even though the so-called due process was followed. The rot began under Kufuor and festered only under this government.

When it comes to corruption, let no one tarnish President Mills’ image. He is poles ahead of his self-acquisitive accusers. But for the payment of the judgement debt to Woyome, any talk of corruption under President Mills pales before what happened under Kufuor.

We place it on record that under Kufuor’s watch, corruption was pervasive. So deplorable was it that Harona Esseku, the former national chairman of the NPP, couldn’t help but implicate Kufuor himself in it with his accusation that Kufuor was hijacking the kickbacks meant for party work. Where were the kickbacks coming from? How did the Kufuor government and the entire NPP machinery react to Esseku’s brazen disclosure? By ostracizing and preventing him from seeking re-election.

The huge difference between the spate of corruption under Kufuor and what the NPP activists are pointing fingers to in the case of the Mills-led government is clear. No matter what the situation is, President Mills is not known to be grabbing wealth left and right as Kufuor and his cronies did while in power and will still do if given the chance.

Did we not hear that some Ghanaian diplomatic passports vanished from the vault of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when Akufo-Addo was in charge of that Ministry? Or many allegations of immorality? If these weren’t instances of corruption, then, what else is? Yet, that’s the man the NPP and its AFAG are parading as a SAINT to redeem Ghana! Corruption is no respecter of persons in our Ghanaian context.

Against this background, it is despicable for these NPP elements to mount rooftops and condemn President Mills just because they think that this campaign of vilification is their only means to curry favour from the electorate.

Putting everything together, though, we can say that the problems on which these NPP functionaries have pegged their condemnation of President Mills are part of the systemic inadequacies that have continued to hold down our country’s progress. Are these NPP functionaries saying that they have an antidote to these problems? If they do, they should provide it and stop this kind of scare-mongering politics.

Whether President Mills loses Election 2012 or not won’t matter to those of us who think that nation-building goes beyond what these opponents are howling over all across the political landscape. Enough of their stinking self-righteousness!!

• E-mail: [email protected]
• Join me on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/mjkbokor

Get a copy of my novel, The Last Laugh (PublishAmerica.com, April 2009)