THE BITTER TRUTH ABOUT THE IGBO

"In the last 80 years, the Igbo have been shown more generosity, accommodation, warmth and kindness and given more opportunities and leverage by the Yoruba than they have been offered by ANY other ethnic group in Nigeria. This is a historical fact.

"The Yoruba do not have any resentment for the Igbo and we have allowed them to do in our land and our territory what they have never allowed us to do in theirs. This has been so for 80 long years and it is something that we are very proud of.

"The reason why many of our people take strong exception to the apparent outrage of the Igbo over this ”deportation” issue and the provocative comments of my friend and brother Chief Orji Uzor Kalu when he described Lagos as being a ”no man’s land” is because the Igbo have not only taken us for granted but they have also taken liberty for licence.

"We cannot be expected to tolerate or accept that sort of irreverent and unintelligent rubbish simply because we still happen to believe in ”one Nigeria” and we will not sacrifice our rights or prostitute our principles on the alter of that 'one Nigeria'.

Whether Nigeria is one or not, what is ours is ours and no one should test our resolve or make any mistake about that.

"It is that same attitude of 'we own everything', 'we must have everything' and 'we must control everything' that the Igbo settlers manifested in the northern region in the late 50’s and early and mid-60’s that got them into so much trouble up there with the Hausa-Fulani and that eventually led to the terrible pogroms where almost one hundred thousand of them were killed in just a few days.

"As a matter of fact, they were the ones that FIRST introduced tribalism into southern politics in 1945 with the unsavoury comments of Mr. Charles Dadi Onyeama who was a member of the Central Legislative Council representing Enugu and who said at the Igbo State Union address that ”the domination of Nigeria and Africa by the Igbo is only a matter of time”.

"That single comment, made in that explosive and historic speech, did more damage to southern Nigerian unity than any other in the entire history of our country and everything changed from that moment on.

"To make matters worse, in July 1948, Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe made his own openly tribal and incendiary speech, again at the Igbo State Union, in which he spoke about the 'god of the Igbo' eventually giving them the leadership of Nigeria and Africa.

"These careless and provocative words cost him dearly and put a nail in the coffin of the NCNC in the Western Region from that moment on. This was despite the fact that that same NCNC, which was easily the largest and most powerful political party in Nigeria at the time, had been founded and established by a great and illustrious son of the Yoruba by the name of Herbert Macauley.

"Macauley, like most of the Yoruba in his day, saw no tribe and he happily handed the leadership of the party over to Azikiwe, an Igbo man, in 1945 when he was on his dying bed.

"Can there be any greater evidence of our total lack of racial prejudice and tribal sentiments than that? If the NCNC had been founded and established by an Igbo man, would he have handed the whole thing over to a Yoruba on his death bed? I doubt it very much.

"Again when northern military officers mutinied, effected their 'revenge coup' and went to kill the Igbo military Head of State, General Aguiyi-Ironsi on July 29th, 1966 in the old Western Region, his host, the Yoruba Col. Fajuyi (who was military Governor of the Western Region at the time), insisted that they would have to kill him first before taking Aguiyi-Ironsi’s life and the northern officers (led by Major T.Y. Danjuma as he then was) promptly obliged him by slaughtering him before killing Aguiyi-Ironsi.

"How many Igbo know about that and how many times in our history have they made such sacrifices for the Yoruba? Would Aguiyi-Ironsi, or any other Igbo officer, have stood for Fajuyi, or any other Yoruba officer, and sacrificed his life for him in the same way that Fajuyi did had the roles been reversed? I doubt it very much.

"Yet instead of being grateful the Igbo continuously run us down, blame us for all their woes, envy our educational advantages and resent us deeply for our ability to excel in the professions and commerce.

"Unlike them, we were never traders but we were (and still are) industrialists and when it comes to the professions we were producing lawyers, doctors, accountants, and university graduates at least three generations before they ever did. That is the bitter truth and they have been trying to catch up with us ever since.

"Now, let us look at a few historical facts and one or two more Igbo 'firsts’ that many may not be familiar with to buttress the point.

"The Igbo people were the FIRST to carry out a failed coup on the night of Jan 15th, 1966...in which they drew FIRST blood and openly slaughtered and butchered leading politicians and army officers from EVERY single zone in the country except their own.

"I should also mention that even though this was clearly an Igbo coup there was one Yoruba officer who was amongst the ringleaders by the name of Major Adewale Ademoyega.

"It was a very bloody night indeed. They did not just kill these revered and respected leaders but in some cases, they mocked, tortured and maimed them before doing so, took pictures of their dead and mutilated bodies and killed their wives and children as well.

"For weeks after these horrific acts were carried out, the Igbo people rejoiced and celebrated them in the streets and markets of the north, openly displaying pictures and posters of the Saurdana’s mutilated body with Nzeogwu’s boot on his neck, loudly playing a famous and deeply offensive anti-northern song in which northerners were compared to goats and listening to it on their radios, jubilating that they had brought an end to what they described as 'northern rule and Islamic domination' and openly boasting that they themselves would now 'rule Nigeria forever'. Though the first coup failed the matter did not end there.

"The very next day after the Jan.15th mutiny and butchery had failed and did not result in Ifejuana taking power in Lagos, the Igbo people set their ”plan B” in motion and they were the FIRST to carry out a successful coup in Nigeria just one day later on Jan. 17th 1966.

"This was when the Igbo Major-General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi (who was Supreme Commander of the Nigerian Army and who had inexplicably and suspiciously not been murdered by the young Igbo officers in their violent mutiny and killing spree the night before) in collusion with the Igbo Acting President Nwafor Orizu and the entire Igbo political leadership of that day, invited the remnants of Sir Tafawa Balewa’s cabinet to a closed-door meeting, threatened their lives and took power from them at the point of a gun.

"Aguiyi-Ironsi did not just ask them to give him power but he took it from them by force by telling them that he could not guarantee their safety if they refused to do so.

"Meanwhile Orizu point blank refused to do his duty as Acting President and swear in Zana Bukar Dipcharimma as the Acting Prime MinIster when the members of the cabinet and the British Ambassador (who was also at the meeting) implored him to do so since by that time there was a power vacuum because the Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa, had gone missing and had probably been murdered.

"It was in these very suspicious circumstances and as a consequence of this murky and deep-seated Igbo conspiracy that General Aguiyi-Ironsi came to power. Amongst those that were present at that famous ”meeting” that are still alive today are Alhaji Maitama Sule, Chief Richard Akinjide and President Shehu Shagari who were all Ministers in Balewa’s cabinet. Those that doubt the veracity of my account of this meeting would do well to ask any of them exactly what transpired during that encounter.

"Yet the seeming success of the conspiracy was short-lived. Only six months later, on July 29th, 1966, General Aguiyi-Ironsi and no less than 300 Igbo army officers reaped the consequences of their actions and plot when they were all slaughtered in just one night during the northern officers revenge coup.

"Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon was put in power by this group after that and a few weeks later between September 29th 1966 and the middle of October of that same year approximately 50,000 Igbo civilians were attacked and slaughtered in a series of horrendous pogroms in the north by violent northern mobs as a reprisal for the killing of the northern leaders, including Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Saurdana of Sokoto, by Major Nzeogwu, Major Ifejuna and other junior Igbo officers on the night of Jan. 15th 1966.

"The Igbo understandably left the north in droves after those terrible pogroms and fled back to the east from whence they came. And perhaps that would have been the end of the story but for the fact that they also declared secession and sought to dismember Nigeria.

"They then made their biggest mistake of all by provoking a full-scale military conflict with Nigeria when they launched a vicious and unprovoked attack against the rest of the south attacking and conscripting the eastern minorities, storming the Mid-West and attempting to enter Yorubaland through Ore to capture it.

"Thankfully they were stopped in their tracks by the gallant efforts and courageous fighting skills of the Third Marine Commando (which was primarily a Yoruba force and which was under the command of the great Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, ‘the Black Scorpion’), prevented from entering the west, driven out of the Mid-West, pushed back into the East, defeated in battle after battle and were eventually brought down to their knees and forced to surrender to the Federal forces in Enugu.

"The Igbo and their Biafra fought Nigeria and killed Nigerians for three hard years in that brutal civil war in which over one million courageous, loyal and faithful sons and daughters of the Federal Republic lost their lives at the war front trying to stop Biafra from seceding from the federation, from taking our land and from taking the minority groups of the Mid-Western Region and Eastern Region and our newly-discovered oil with them.

"Yet despite our massive casualties and the monumental loss of life that the Federal side suffered (a total of 2 million died on both sides) the Igbo people were welcomed back into Nigeria after the war with open arms.

"Yet it was only in Yorubaland and especially in Lagos that they were given all their 'abandoned property' back and welcomed back as brothers and sisters without any reservations or suspicions whatsoever.

"Everywhere else in the country for many years they were denied, deprived, shunned, attacked, killed, discriminated against and humiliated but never in the southwest or Lagos.

"It is the Igbo people more than any other that have complained about marginalisation in Nigeria, forgetting that there is no other country in the world in which there was a major civil war and yet only 10 years after that war ended the losing side produced the Vice President for the whole country in a democratic election in 1979 in the distinguished person of Vice President Alex Ekwueme.

"Some have described my submissions in this debate as being 'inflammatory' and have claimed that I am 'not a true progressive' for making them.

"I reject these labels and I wonder whether those people that conjured them up described the comments of my dear friend and brother Chief Orji Kalu as 'inflammatory' and whether they labelled him as 'not being a true progressive' when he erroneously claimed that the Igbo generated 55 percent of the revenue and owned 55 percent of businesses in Lagos and that they are effectively the owners of the state.

"Unlike most of those that are attempting to label me and brand me as a tribalist I know the history of Lagos and the Yoruba very well.

"We will not let anyone poison the minds of our Yoruba youth or dispossess them of their heritage by keeping silent when we witness the irresponsible and dishonest propagation of the most desperate and despicable form of historical revisionism that some Igbo leaders are suddenly churning out.

"If anyone thinks that they can intimidate us into keeping quiet when their leaders say such things then they will have the biggest shocker of their lives.

"We shall not be silenced and they shall not pass. Lagos and the Yoruba generally have much stronger historical, cultural and trading ties with the Bini, the Itsekiri, the Urhobo, the Isoko, the Hausa-Fulani, the Tapas, the Nupes and the Ijaws than they do with the Igbo.

"The input of those other major ethnic groups to the development of Lagos and their stake in her is far greater than that of the Igbo.

"Whether anyone wishes to accept it or not that is the bitter truth. We will not let anyone distort history and we will not keep silent when we hear the irresponsible and disrespectful effusions of those that seek to substitute truth with falsehood.

"When it comes to Lagos it is time that everyone respected themselves and knew their place. The Igbo particularly should display a much higher degree of respect and gratitude to those who were gracious enough to accept them in their land as equals when things were very difficult for them and who treated them with love, respect, and kindness after the civil war when hardly anyone else was prepared to do so.

"We the Yoruba have accommodated others in Lagos and throughout the South-west and we have let them live in peace for the last 100 years.

As a matter of fact, we have been glad to do so because as far as we are concerned that is one of the hallmarks of civilisation - the ability to accommodate other faiths, other cultures, other races, and other nationalities.

"The fact that we have allowed others to thrive and settle in our land and share it with us does not mean that we have stopped owning that land.

"The suggestion that Lagos is a 'no-man’s land’ and that the Igbo or any other nationality outside the Yoruba generate up to 55 percent of its revenue or business is absolutely absurd and frankly it has no basis in reality or rationality.

"It is not only a dirty lie but it is also very insulting. Guests, no matter how welcome, esteemed, cherished and valued they are, cannot become the owners of the house no matter how comfortable they are made to feel within it.

"Those guests will always be guests. Lagos belongs to the Yoruba and to the Yoruba alone. ALL others that reside there are guests, though some guests are far closer to us than others.

"The Igbo are the least close, the most distant and the least familiar with our customs and our ways. They ought to be the last to be claiming our heritage and coveting our land and neither can they claim to have made any real input to our glaring success. For them to think otherwise is nothing but delusion."- Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, former Nigerian Minister of Aviation, August 8, 2013. #HistoryVille