To be held captive for all of 59 years is not a joke.
Just yesterday, Nigeria celebrated her 59th birthday, and not many blokes in the land are laughing – or even smiling.
One of Nigeria’s great patriots, Prof Pat Utomi, has made bold to stress that most Nigerians are in captivity and are mightily struggling to escape!
As I was contemplating doing this piece, the news broke that my friend and brother, Chido Onumah had been arrested by the Department of State Security (DSS) at Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja upon his return from Spain where he had gone to earn a PhD.
The DSS would later deny that the body ever arrested Chido; that he was only interacted with to save him from a mob attack for wearing a T-shirt that bore the legend: “We Are All Biafrans”
Chido had published a book entitled We Are All Biafrans many moons before, back in 2016 actually, and no mob had ever attacked him.
Poor Chido, I’m sure he would have been offered a grand entrée if his T-Shirt bore this inscription: “We Are All Buharists!”
That the arrangement called Nigeria has become a butt of jokes all over the world can be located in the antics of over-patriotism by the likes of the DSS.
As Samuel Johnson said as far back as the evening of April 7, 1775, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”
Going back in time, everything about this nation is shrouded in mystery. Nobody can tell for a fact the accurate population of the country. Literally all elections in the country are rigged. The very idea of democracy in Nigeria is akin to abracadabra.
The heart of the matter is that Nigeria is an eternal captive made for exploitation from the very beginning.
It did not just start with the flag Independence of 1960.
What greater Advance Fee Fraud could have been arranged on God’s earth than the so-called Amalgamation of Nigeria in 1914 by Lord Lugard from which our colonial masters continue to reap bounteously to this day?
It was a classic scam that the British inaugurated when they merged three unequal regions to stand on a so-called tripod of three unequal legs.
In 2014, Nigeria rolled out the drums in celebration of 100 years of the Amalgamation.
Forget that the American CIA had earlier reported that Nigeria would disintegrate as a nation in 2015!
Four years after the 2015 doomsday report of the CIA, Nigeria is still standing gidigba!
A beer for all captive Nigerians!
The enshrined captivity has been revealed through the recently declassified archival materials in London that the 1959 Independence elections were rigged in the interests of the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) by colonial Britain.
The NCNC-NEPU alliance scored 2,594,577 votes against the Action Group’s 1,992,364 and the NPC’s 1,992,179.
The colonial powers had adroitly carved out more constituencies for their minions, a scam that has been sustained to this day in which the last always comes first!
Further on, after the massive rigging of the 1964 elections, then President Nnamdi Azikiwe refused to announce the fictional results and in what would amount to a coup the British held Zik captive – some would swear at gunpoint – to announce the results just the same!
When Nigeria was embroiled in crisis in the 1960s, especially in the Western region, Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa deigned to organise a conference to settle the quarrel of faraway Rhodesia while his own house was burning.
While engrossed in the conference the army struck.
The British crept in quickly by labelling the putsch as “Igbo coup” and helped the Northerners who were asking for “araba” (secession) to stage a bloody revenge coup.
The “maiguard” whom the country’s leader then, General JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi, took to Ibadan to guard him ended up turning his gun on his master!
This infamy of murdering one’s master has been rewarded over the years with billions of blood money, not unlike the P&ID currency.
The Nigeria-Biafra war ended up with the fiction of the Reconstruction-Rehabilitation-Reintegration chicanery of General Yakubu Gowon.
The “No Victor, No Vanquished” slogan became just that – a mere slogan.
Gowon’s promise of returning power to the civilians turned into a ruse until he was overthrown by General Murtala Mohammed in 1975.
Murtala Mohammed was himself shot to death in Col Buka Musa Dimka’s drunken “dawn to dusk” coup of 1976.
General Olusegun Obasanjo who took over foisted on the country a caper in the Richard Akinjide-manufactured “Twelve Two-Third Democratic Arithmetic” in 1979.
The President Shehu Shagari civilian government initiated in such a dubious manner came to a tacky end in 1983 when the military struck on the last day of the year after a disputed “moonslide” re-election gambit.
When SG Ikoku learnt of the dramatis personae of the coup he told his wife: “There is no coup. Let’s go back to sleep. Only the military wing of the ruling NPN has taken over.”
Enough of the history now that Nigeria has turned full circle with General Muhammadu Buhari back in the saddle.
Let’s raise 59 toasts to 59 years in captivity!
Last Word: Let’s replace all T-Shirts bearing “We Are All Biafrans” with the more jingoistic “We Are All Buharists!”
Akika!