By Elochukwu Nicholas Ohagi
For Family Writers Press International.
Let me tell you something. Many people don't actually know exactly what Nigeria did to us during and after the war. I have a document where a missionary narrated his experience in Calabar. How the Nigeria Federal Government invaded Calabar and massacred people.
He would have been a victim, if not for a Middle belt commander of the Nigeria military who is a Catholic. It was so terrible. Today, the atrocities of these Nigeria forces is blamed on the Igbos. Some even said Ndị Igbo carried it out themselves. Imagine Ndị Igbo using the limited weapons to fight their own people? By the way, is Igbo the only soldiers in Biafra?
Like I said, many things happened, forcing people to deny their identity.
Older Onitsha men and women till this very day still don't regard themselves as Igbo. They detest Igbo and always call you 'nwa Onye Igbo'(son of an Igbo man/woman). They push you out with this sad look that spits racism. 'Bịa nwa onye Igboa' always said in a derogatory manner. Those that lived in Onitsha after the war can bear witness to this.
Imagine if Onitsha were to be included in today's South South like the military government of IBB wanted to do. We will have many 'detribalized intellectuals' from there writing how they don't have any Igbo ancestry. Their non inclusion in South South tamed the futuristic madness that would have enveloped them.
So you can imagine what is going on in the mind of an average Asaba man or Anioma in general. I mean those of them with acute identity crisis. One told my brother he is not Igbo. And he said that using Igbo Language. The war and the policies Nigeria embarked on after the war was just to destroy Igbo people through divide and rule. They used lots of prominent Ndị Igbo from Anioma, Ikwere, Etche etc to perfect this. That is why today, a brother to Kaduna Nzeogwu will shamelessly come out to say he is not Igbo.
The creation of South South is a blunder, and the name Niger Delta is a slave name. I still don't understand how someone located in Imo state should be answering South East, while someone in the extreme East in Calabar will be answering South South. How can Rivers and Akwaibom be answering South South, while Imo and Abia lying next to them are called South East. These things are completely abnormal. But it is good for the agents of division, who for more than 50yrs profited in the division of Eastern people.
When people say 'Niger Delta people', I laugh and want to roll on the floor. What is Niger Delta People? Who are these people? People who live in the bank of the river or those that have oil? Is it the Efik or the Ijaw? The Edo or the Igbo? Is it in places we have people with oil deposit? Will Sokoto join if crude oil is discovered in the state? Do oil contribute to the identity of a people?
The issue is that people like Elechi Amadi who was contracted to deceive his people and sow the seeds of identity crisis among youths never got time to confess their dealings with the Nigeria Federal government, who took it upon themselves to dismember and destroy the Igbo heritage. Reading through the novel 'Concubine' will tell you that there is no difference between Elechi Amadi and an average Egbema man.
It pains me to see Igbo man deny his identity, but I have resolved that I will always work on my emotions when I encounter one. If Onitsha of all people can fall a victim of this identity crisis, who wouldn't?
When I see Igbo people who detest their brothers because of the state Nigeria carved them into, I pity them. Nigeria has done worse than any deadlier terrorists group out there can ever boast of. Nothing destroys a people more than stealing their identity from them. This is exactly what Nigeria did by removing history from our educational curriculum. Today, people in their 30s and 40s have lived based on lies the Nigeria government planted in them through their dubious media. The result is that we now have a people who embrace their killers and rapists that defiled their mothers during the genocidal war of 1967/70. Before the Biafra genocide, there was a pogrom that took the lives of more than 30,000 Easterners. Why didn't their fathers tell them that it was the Igbo in the present South East that killed their people in that pogrom? Or don't they know that Efik, Ijaw, Ikwere, Onitsha, and Anioma people were also massacred in that pogrom of 1966.
We that are aware of these lies have a lot of work to do. The educational system in Nigeria has destroyed lots of brains. Pushing these people away won't help, even though they appear very much ignorant and annoying.
That some of them claim they were forced to be Igbo is the very height of it. But we must continue and not relent.
That the five South East states can make a nation is very undoubtable, but that is not whom we are. We are a people even before they started dividing us.
We are all Biafrans; and that we shall remain.
Elochukwu Ohagi, Philosopher, Teacher and Activist.
Edited By Paul Ihechi Alagba
For Family Writers Press International.
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