Thoughts On Ike Ekweremadu And His Biafran Traducers

By Raymond Nkannebe

I note that one of the ostensible justifications that have been advanced by the latter day ‘Apostles’ of Fugitive-Nnamdi Kanu’s Terrorist Brand of so called Igbo- emancipation, for the shameful attack on the person of Distinguished Senator Ike Ekweremadu-the Ikeoha of Ndigbo, is that, his sartorial preferences for the “Iri ji” occasion in far away Germany is rather offensive for having betrayed imprints of the National Symbol.

These bunch of bunches in their retarded and conditioned way of thinking wired by a fugitive running from pillar to post, are of the view that having not worn a typical Isi Agu attire to an event billed to celebrate and observe a no mean festival in Igbo pantheon, the distinguished senator was the architect of his own misfortune and was therefore liable for possible execution according to their whimsical codes of Criminal Justice.

These latter day pedagogues of Igbo norms and practices with a morbid “Biafra or Nothing else” ideology, forgot the imperatives of according due respect to an elder, how much more to one who has become an unassailable voice to the larger Igbo project, including only recently, a key negotiator in the release of the run-away emancipator of a supposedly oppressed people, and the avowed leader of the uncouth group.

One struggles to wrap their head around how a people who ought to build consensus among their own in search of an utopian Republic, should turn round to mark them for elimination on spurious and unfounded grounds of being a sabotage to their wishful thinking project.

Throughout the diverse phases of the Biafra struggle, I have never seen one so steeped in thuggery and bereft of intellectual and behavioural rigour; I have never seen one so packed with hate, hatred even for “their own” and lacking in restraint; I have never one whose modus operandi bore the trappings of a terrorist organisation-scaring away those it was meant to protect in the process.Little wonder, it has been the worst phase of the struggle on all known indixes of judgement. Through and through, the mad crowd have behaved like a bunch of Shakespearian fools whose tale and narratives are full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing.

Let us get this into the heads of some of these ragamuffins, especially the recent lot in Nuremberg-Germany, who continue to drag the name of the Igbo into the mud by their hairbrained struggle for a Republic that is supposed to be the toast of the modern world, that distinguished senator Ike Ekweremadu has achieved more, and continues to achieve more for the Igbo nation than their overrated leader who by the way is a coward running away from the full swing of the Law, will ever do. Mere fact that the lettered proud son of Ndi’igbo does not agree in the strategy adopted by the IPOB, should not, of itself enlist him for public opprobrium and ridicule.

In the height of Nnamdi Azikiwe’s dissent to Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu’s Biafra project, the latter did not unleash the crowd against him. He took it in his stride in the understanding that brothers will not always agree. It is the same level of thinking that is expected of our latter day Biafran protagonists. Acts, such as was seen the other day, is a whole new level of descent in the entire architecture of the “Biafra struggle” assuming such a thing exists, and is therefore condemnable.

The Igbo says that a mad man is usually not ashamed. Rather, it is members of his family or those who know him that take all of that. It is therefore not surprising that there is a party going on in the IPOB camp after yesterday’s ugly events whereas true Igbo sons who understand the concept of “Ifele” in Igbo cosmology are worried an embarrassed by the poor showing. When a man’s brother goes abroad to commit an ignoble act, the whole shame is shared equally at home. And that is the state of the Igbo nation at this time, nothanks to these dregs of humanity crying more than the bereaved.

Yes, the Isi Agu, might pass for a vintage totem of Igbo gathering, yet at a time when the Igbo man is in search of a place at the centre of Nigerian politics, he must force a stop to the narrow thinking of ethnic politics, whether at home or in the diaspora. Let us not forget that the attainment of an Igbo leadership at the centre, must be within an existing and subsisting Federal Republic. And a person who must rise to that exalted rank must be seen, even if perceptively, as a pan Nigerian in all ramifications. Adorning therefore an attire patterned along the Isi Agu as well as the national symbol, is a bold statement in that regard, and does not offend any known Igbo norms. Those who have therefore advanced that lame narrative to justify a wrong are therefore overruled.

I understand that the Man has since forgiven his traducers and attackers in the finest exemplification of “iwe nwanne adighi eru n’okpukpu” as a true Igbo son. That is the right thing to do. Yet, the ugly event was needless and the optics, bad for the Igbo nation.

–Nkannebe, a lawyer, wrote in from Lagos