Reality of Today in Southeast
When kidnappings and malicious k!llings resurged in the Southeast and were happening regularly from Ekwegbe Nsukka- Nike road to 4 corner in Udi to Ishiagu in Ebonyi; from Isu in Ebonyi to Uturu in Abia; from Ihiala in Anambra to Orsu in Imo; from Okigwe in Imo to Oba in Anambra; from Eke, Udi to Olo, Ezeagu all in Enugu to Orlu in Imo; from Arondizuogu in Imo to Ukpor in Anambra and so on, it had been war of attrition against ourselves. I remember posting that the involvement of Fulani herders in all of the crimes was minimal, but most of our people on social media dismissed it, calling me a saboteur. What they didn’t call me was *nwadi ani Fulani* meaning Fulani grand son.
Today, it’s obvious that I didn’t lie after all. Fulani was participating, but the ratio was little over the involvement of our people in the crime. And most of those Fulani herders were merely working for their Igbo masters who used them as labourers in the criminal endeavours. Our people are very emotional and that’s why we’ve found ourselves and land in this condition of anomy, today. Always self vindictive; I can’t remember seeing Fulani herders topping the list of arrested criminals so far in recent time in Southeast.
Just like in Anambra where majority thought and said that those destroying the state were from Ebonyi and Abakaliki in specificity. I dismissed it, saying that no criminal from somewhere thrived in a community without having natives of such a community in alliance. So far so good the arrests made in Anambra reveal that the natives are topping the list. Yes, some Ebonyi people partook in crimes in Anambra, but the ratio was hyped. I remember saying that all criminals arrested and confirmed as criminals should be treated the way criminals are treated, and not involving where they’re coming from as every society has the good, bad and the ugly, but I was dismissed by some people from there, saying that I was simply defending my people.
Emotions have dealt with us. We resort to emotion over reason. Since we started sitting at home for years now, k!lling our people who dared to come out on Mondays in pursuit of what their stomachs could eat, has our Nnamdi Kanu for whom those irridentists put Igbo nation into dark ends been released? Our brother in far away Finland was also captured and kept in detention till date and all the villainous efforts he had championed have all yielded no positive result, but loss of lives and property of our people with a good number of our youths in prisons over this till date as many of them were committed to mother earth unripe. Emotion over reason! What in the positive have we achieved so far ever since this onslaught against ourselves started?
Under this post, you’ll still see some emotionally blind persons seeing this essay as an attack on freedom fighting and all of that. Freedom fight that has led our society to ruination? One that has taken lives of over 20K people in the past four years and one that has kept over 10K of our youths in prison with no hope of gaining release? What manner of freedom fighting is this for crying out loud? In seeking freedom, we’ve led ourselves in deeper cage. Economic activities have been crippled in the Southeast for four years now. Investment prospects have been crushed. Thousands have been rendered homeless with thousands of our innocent people hustling outside and within the zone kidnapped, k!lled even after paying ransom. This misguided struggle opened a vista for criminals that had been chased out of the zone or defeated to come back to their criminal enterprises, all exacerbating our woes since 1967. Asaba has become what it’s today as a result of this. The development that ought to be in the Southeast has been drifted to Asaba as bushes are opened up for development by our people who could not access their communities in the Southeast for fear of the rifles in the wrong hands. In all of these, it’s only we that are the victims, not any other tribe in Nigeria.
There’s no doubt that Nigeria has treated us as if we’re aliens in a country we own equally, but there’s still another format to use and vent our disenchantment other than declaring war on ourselves, plucking out of existence the young lives of our people and turning our land into ocean of blood. When one dares to differ, one is labelled a saboteur and haunted like a common criminal. The top politicians are all safe, not losing anything, while the ordinary people are pushed into awaiting vans of death. Well, I still believe that there are many ways of taking us out of these dark ends. **Ta bu gboo! We still have time to forgive ourselves and accept that we misled ourselves into war against oneself. But if we’re still holding ourselves tight in the fangs of emotion over reason, then we’re in for more years of war against ourselves.
•Sir Chika Nwoba, KSC.
