It’s time to Give Peace a Chance in the South East
Last weekend, Governors and other leaders from the South East zone met in in Enugu where they discussed the security situation in the zone. In the communique read out at the end of the meeting, the Governors reiterated their position, disowning any self-determination groups that claimed to be representing the people of the South East. They also emphatically stated the commitment of the zone to a united Nigeria.
Other decisions include condemnation in totality of the violent secessionist agitations in the south east; setting up of various committees to engage such youths to stop and allow the elders to address their fears, articulate and address all burning issues to present before the presidential team; and requesting indigenes from Northern parts of the country and other regions that are living in the South East to come out openly to assure their people and Nigerians that they are very safe and well protected while living in the South East. The leaders also noted the threats by some groups in other parts of the country against the people of the South East and pleaded with the leaders to note the threats and protect the people; condemned the killing of security agents, burning of security infrastructure and killing of civilians in the South East and other regions. They also requested the security agents to discharge their duties within the rules of engagement under the rule of law.
It will be recalled that the 2017 proscription of IPOB, by the Governors, had coincided with the declaration of the organisation as a terrorist group, by the Federal Government. Sadly, rather than stop the IPOB, the Governors action and the Federal Government’s declaration drove the agitators underground. Many people had thought that rather than the strong arm tactics, both the Federal Government and the South East Governments ought to have explored ways of dialoguing with the separatists. The approach of Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Umaru Musa Yar’Ardua readily came to mind as, through dexterous diplomacy, they were able to resolve the no less threatening conundrum posed by the Niger Delta militants, Odu’a Peoples’ Congress (OPC) and proponents of Sharia. Sadly, the case of the South East separatists has taken a completely different turn.
Instead, what followed was a vile propaganda war coupled with unremitting violence and now chilling blood-letting. These have all combined to throw the South East into a security cauldron where it is difficult to discern who, between both non state actors and state actors, are the most bestial violators of the people’s human rights. The wanton killing of security personnel and innocent citizens who have been caught in the cross-fire between the military and those unknown, gunmen has become the order of the day.
In the face of this unacceptable security situation, it is understandable that, four years on, the Governors have taken steps to avert a doomsday scenario and restore order in the South East. Nobody can say with any certainty how far the action of the Governors and the ongoing military operations will go in restoring normalcy to the South East. This is especially against the background of the suspicion that, the violence in the area is being perpetrated, largely, by people from outside the zone in order to create an alibi for a full scale military expedition which ultimate outcome would be to permanently silence the ‘unrepentant’ Igbo.
By their disavowal of all self-determination groups, as not being representative of the entire people of the South East, the Governors have successfully repudiated claims by people from outside the region that, Igbo leaders had all along tacitly endorsed the activities of IPOB. Besides, the Governors have placed the lie on the claim, that every Igbo man is in support of secession.
However, while it is true that not every Igbo person belongs to or even supports IPOB’s secessionist posture, what is not equally in doubt is that most people of Igbo extraction share the IPOB position that, the South East has been unfairly treated in recent years. Not to admit that, is to play to the gallery. Paradoxically, despite contrary claims, the Federal Government has not taken concrete steps to either allay the fears of the people or placate the desperate and restive youth whose faith in the country has been badly shaken by the hopelessness of their conditions characterised by joblessness and the discriminatory application of the Federal Character principle, against them.
Like any group suffering the same fate, the people of the South East cannot understand how, in today’ Nigeria, they are told, rather disdainfully, that the ethnic group lacks people who, in learning, discipline, patriotism and character, possess the wherewithal to occupy any of the several topmost positions in the country’s security architecture. Yet, this is the same country where, in a symbolic gesture of inclusion, in the past, people have been promoted above their peers in the military, just to reassure their kinsmen and women that they are still part of the country.
That is not all. Here is a country where, in the name of quota system; on a yearly basis, some bright pupils from the South East, are denied admission so that their less-performing counterparts from some zones of the country, can have access to Government secondary and tertiary institutions. And the people wonder what manner of unequal justice this is. It is against the background of the above that the appeal of IPOB can be understood, and why, despite the futility of war, many people of South East extraction appear to have sympathy for the organisation’s secessionist posture.
By expressly repudiating secession and endorsing a united Nigeria, the Governors and leaders of the South East have played the ball into the courts of other stakeholders, in the Nigerian project, to begin to honestly address the fundamental roots of Nigeria’s problems of political instability and national disunity. To think that these problems can be swept under the carpet or resolved through systematic exclusion of some groups from the commanding heights of national economic control, bureaucratic structure, security architecture etc is to engage in self-deception.
To also think that all of Nigeria’s multi-faceted problems can be solved by simply whipping the ‘irritant’ Igbo into line, smacks of self-delusion: like many other groups, the Igbo are victims of a skewed and unjust political economy that denies critical segments of the society access to a level playing field. Nothing validates this position more unambiguously than the clamour for restructuring by other groups outside the South East.
But no matter any group’s sense of indignation, never must we lose sight of our inter-connectedness; over the past several years, people from different zones of the country have lived peacefully with their hosts, outside of their geo-political zones. Thus, rather than killing one another, we must strive to be our brothers’ keepers. Rather than destroying our common patrimony, we must leverage the inestimable advantages conferred by our diversity, to create profitable complementarity in economic, social and political life. Rather than stifle initiative through outdated profiling, we must embrace a world of global citizenship that aims at exploring the rich natural resource endowments of the world, to benefit majority of the people and not just a few as the widening gap, between the rich and the poor show; rather than choke-holding the grieving, we must create an avenue for the aggrieved to vent; and rather than repress the agitator, we must create the enabling environment for peaceful dialogue and consensus building even with separatist groups such as IPOB and the Sunday Igboho self-determination movement in the South West. We must never forget, as the former US President, John F. Kennedy so poignantly reminded us, that those who make peaceful change impossible also make violent change inevitable.
On balance, our position at True Vision is that, in the interest of our beleaguered military, for the sake of the suffering Nigerians including those in IDP camps, for the sake of the yet unborn Nigerian child whose future is being mortally imperilled, we appeal to all the gladiators to sheath their swords, take some steps backward, and give peace a chance.
