It is now a great opportunity for the People of Igbo Nation to
approach the goal post in the just entered Buhari’s last era and
hit the net in his post era ‘Nigeria’, the Int’l
Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law,
Intersociety, advised Ndigbo and their Nation today
in a statement, signed by the trio of Chinwe Umeche, Esq., Head of
Democracy Program; Chidinma Udegbunam, Esq., Head of Publicity; and
Emeka Umeagbalasi, Chair of the Board.
It is also height of sanctimoniousness or pietism for a
Government that runs clearly disastrous policy of segregation and
exclusion particularly against the Igbo Nation and its People to
turn around, claiming to be “celebrating” “Democracy Day”;
mechanically christened “June 12”; a corruption of a hallowed and
sacred era dedicated for the fight for the abolition of the same
heinous social crimes and maladies being repeatedly perpetrated
today by the partners of those that perpetrated them 26 years
ago. We cosmically beg the spirits of those that
died for the real June 12 to find a place in their heart to forgive
the present dramatis personae in the country’s present political
dispensation
The Igbo People, therefore, must peacefully and intellectually
congregate and adopt the three defensive survival
approaches: general defensive survival, political defensive
survival and intellectual defensive survival-so as to survive
the just entered last era of the Buhari Administration in
Nigeria; expected to terminate by 29th May 2023;
except if ousted judicially by the Electoral Supreme Court of
Nigeria. Intersociety was
reacting to the just
held in-parliament election in
the Nigeria’s Upper Chamber (Senate) and Chamber of Deputies (House
of Reps) during which the Igbo’s Southeast Region was segregated
against by the federal ruling political party known as “APC” and
denied plum legislative leadership positions.
For purpose of the Igbo People scoring or
hitting the net in the post Buhari’s
‘Nigeria’, it requires the collapsing of
the three defensive survival approaches into
benevolent and cross harmless political power game
approaches, Intersociety added. That
is to say that the Igbo People, known for ages, for their nobility
and respect for sanctity of political life and worship are better
not be part of the ongoing rot at Nigeria’s central political
leadership. They must never stand to be counted in the dark history
that will surely follow the end of the Buhari’s era, unless there
is a miraculous turn around for the Administration, forcing same to
wake up and govern well.
We also make bold to say that the electoral decision of the
majority of the Igbo People and their Nation in the last general
elections remain sacrosanct and irrevocable.
By truly elected representatives of
the Igbo
People, they do not include those with
fundamental minuses in their characters and credibility such as
those who ran under platforms rejected by the Igbo People for their
heinous crimes against them but deployed personal or state violence
to snatch their present electoral positions.
These branded black sheep of the Igbo
Family include those whose gubernatorial or
legislative or ministerial performances while in office are nothing
to write home about; who brought miseries instead of relief to
their people, squandered their States’ resources and got them
riotously impoverished and serially indebted; all resulting in them
either having corruption cases from right, left or center; or
condemned roundly in the court of public opinion. Afraid of their
dark past in public offices, they are presently hanging on
dubiously secured senatorial seats and politically prostituting
hiding under the false cover of “Igbo political leaders”.
In the public knowledge, too, are those that sold the Region out
so as to retain their second term seats that will surely fizzle out
in no distant time. It got so bad, as independently reported, that
they conspired to mutilate or mangle or suppress millions of
original votes cast by own people; or deployed thugs, state and
computer violence to stop their own people from voting the
candidates of their choice and having their votes counted and
demographically validated.
Our silence on the National Assembly leadership question is
therefore not an omission but deliberate. By that we are
reinforcing the principle of nobility and excellence in public
office. It matters more when the processes that brought people into
elective and appointive public offices are unblemished than
otherwise. In the world over, input electoral
legitimacy begets output leadership
legitimacy-whereas input electoral
illegitimacy begets output leadership
illegitimacy. It further follows that he or she
that assumes leadership position through the backdoor will surely
end disastrously in leadership. History has never been kind to
them.
Intersociety does not also regard or
attach an iota of importance to the notion of
the leadership position in Nigeria is a thieving
enclave where as an Igbo man or woman you must steal to a pulp
because an Hausa-Fulani or Yoruba or Ijaw or Tiv or Bini Man or
Woman, etc, had stolen and stolen and gone
scot-free. It is our insistence that politics
and leadership belong to the people of nobility and must be seen
so. This is more so when in the old Igbo Society,
decency and uprightness functioned as part of its original
foundation; to the extent that they were systematized and
formalized in the form of Igbo Codes of Taboos and
Decency; until the British colonialists forced
the Eze Nri Obalike to abrogate
them as recently as August 1911. Yet despite such British dastardly
act, the ethical codes live on in Igbo Land till date.
Intersociety as a nimble thinkable,
truthful, research and investigative
organization is known widely
for seeing dangers ahead particularly in matters
of dangerous public or government policies and conducts directed or
targeted at the government itself or the people of the country or
Government’s political opponents and dissenting voices; or a hated
ethnic nationality, religious grouping or persons. We had severally
warned Nigerians and the present central Government on such
dangers, specifically, as far back late 2015 and early 2016. All
the consequences of our warnings have come to pass. Nigerians can
confirm these by accessing our late 2015 and early
2016 advocacy bulletins on: www.intersociety-ng.org[1]
It is therefore a truism that the Buhari’s civilian era had cost
Nigeria an irreparable damage, if not destruction; such that
Nigeria after him and his Administration is most likely going to be
“Nigeria” or “former Nigeria”. “Nigeria” here
connotes Nigeria in pieces while “former
Nigeria” represents Nigeria in
fragmentation. This is more so when the ethno-religious
divisions in the country and under the Government’s watch have
reached an irreconcilable point. The Constitution and it subject
laws have also been brutally debased, desolated and decimated.
Moral decency and uprightness are no more. Patriotism and national
unity and cohesion have become past tense; with liberties
chronically in chain. As a matter of fact, the
Buhari Administration divides, fragments and balkanizes Nigeria far
more than IPOB, LNC, MASSOB and other autonomy/self governance
seeking groups are said to be doing.
A clear case in point presently is the Administration’s
grossly lopsided federal political establishments. Critics have
linked their gross lopsidedness with the Government’s widely
suspected policy of Islamization, Fulanization and
Hausanization (IFH). The widely
perceived IFH policy has
specifically sectionalized and disfigured the following important
federal establishments and the Constitution and other laws that
created them and defined their duties and positions; all structured
in line with the country’s multiplicity of religions and
tribes:
(a)Military (army, air force and navy), (b) SSS/NIA,
(c) Police, (d) Service Chiefs, (e) Paramilitaries (prisons,
customs, immigration, federal road safety, federal fire service,
Nigerian security & civil defense corps, etc), (f) Federal
Executive Bodies (INEC, CCB, FCC,FJSC, NDC, NEC, NJC, NPC,
NSC,NPC,PSC and RMAFC), (g) Federal Ministries (Agric, Water,
Housing, Defense, Interior, Education, Finance, Justice, Works,
Power, Petroleum, etc), (h) Federal Agencies and their positions
(NIMASA, CBN, NRC, NPA, FEMA, Vice Chancellors, Rectors and
Provosts of Federal Universities and other tertiary institutions,
Federal Airport Authority, Ambassadors and High Commissioners/UN
Permanent Reps, etc) and (i) Judiciary (Federal High Court Judges
and Appeal and Supreme Courts’ Justices including their oversight
heads: CJN, PCA and CJ-FHCs).
By flooding most of these federal establishments with persons of
Northern Muslim background including those with stipulated tenures
of office-and by excluding some important parts of Nigeria
particularly the Southeast and South-south Regions from location of
Government’s strategic projects such as railway, seaports,
international airports and road networks, etc; no incoming central
Government through rotational presidency will allow such dangerous
and landmine policy to continue.
Such Government, being mindful of “risked being flushed out or
being in office but not on seat” may likely opt to toe the
precedent of its predecessor-which will likely lead to crisis of
unimaginable proportion. It may likely be correctly sealed and
delivered to say that sectional or ethno-religious
politics and leadership, the Buhari
Administration’s modus operandi, have come to stay in Nigeria.
Under Buhari, the “no state religion status”, provided in Section
10 of the 1999 Constitution is brutally undermined and breached
with reckless abandon; with States allowed to indiscriminately and
dangerously passing inferior and unconstitutional laws to undermine
the freedom of worship and secularism contained in the Constitution
and the Nigeria’s treaty laws.
Therefore, the People of Igbo Nation must stop being misled by
the uninformed or agents of some failed leaders into crawling round
the cycles and irrelevancies but become a pseudo Nostradamus to
“see beyond the time being”. The Igbo People should also worry less
about the 2023 Presidency and ignore those ranting over it or
claiming to be born to rule or solely share the country’s
presidency with another tribe. This is because Nigeria of today is
an egg in the hands of Buhari and his Administration, with its
survival as Nigeria or otherwise;
squarely laying bare in their hands.
The meaning of pushing the Igbo Nation out of the Nigerian
political equation is that it has made them a must
married bride and a saint as the dark side of
history being speedily created by the present dispensation will
never record them as part of the rot to be left. The history of
debt relief, for instance, can never be told in Nigeria without the
Igbo Nation; likewise the history of consolidation and sanitization
of the Banking system. But by 2023, an administration will be
leaving Nigeria with a catastrophic debt burden of over $80b, from
its present rate of over $40b incurred since June 2015, out of over
$80b or N24.4trillion cumulatively incurred presently in the
country as a whole from 29th May 2007 till
date.
Intersociety already foresees Nigeria
going back to the status of the highly indebted
poor country, as it is already approaching its final
destination as “the world capital of poverty”. We also foresee a
shambolic Nigeria as a political, religious, military, defense,
security, economic, cultural, scientific or social legacy of the
present political dispensation when it rounds off by
29th May 2023. Except “miraculous turn around”
takes place under Buhari, otherwise there is likely going to be
“post Buhari era ‘Nigeria’ or Nigeria in pieces. The widely
suspected Fulanization and Islamization policy with its legalistic,
military, securitization, economic, political and cultural embryos
rearing their ugly heads are likely to quicken Nigeria’s shambolic
state and further push it the Somali way.
In all these, the Igbo People and their Nation must not
rigmarole or be found unprepared. While continuing to accommodate
members of other ethnic nationalities, they must be extremely
conscious of their own personal and collective security using the
channels of self defense provided by Section 33 of the Constitution
and Sections 258 of the Criminal Code applicable in Southern
Nigeria and 60(a) of the Penal Code applicable in Northern
Nigeria.
The citizens’ right to self defense is generally defined as
“justifiable when the actor believes that such force is immediately
necessary for the purpose of protecting himself against the use of
unlawful force by such other person on the present
occasion.” Under Section 60 (a) of the Nigerian
Penal Code, “every person has
a right to defend his
own body, and the body of any other person against any offence
affecting the human body”
The Igbo Nation and their People must therefore apply the above
referenced three defensive survival
approaches and others they may deem fit;
provided they are lawful and peaceful. These must be done,
borrowing a cue from the immortal words of the late Chinese Leader,
Deng Xiaoping (leader of China from 1978-1992), who once said and
advised that: it does not matter whether a
cat is short, tall or tin or fat; black or white so long as it
catches a rat. That is to say that all Igbo social
and democratic forces must be congregated and aggregated, so as to
heal, bind and build; using the Late Chinese Leader’s multi
nonviolent approaches’ advice aimed at grandly achieving one goal,
plated in Plan A or Plan B.
Subscribe ToNairalaw News!
References
- ^
www.intersociety-ng.org
(www.intersociety-ng.org)