Sedated from Within: A catalogue of Nigeria’s litany of woes
By Osa Mbonu-Amadi, Arts Editor
If you are engaged in a search for a catalogue, a history, or a compendium of Nigeria’s woes, search no further. James Ifeanyichukwu Odife’s book, Sedated from Within is where to find it all.
The book documents the litany of woes of Nigeria – everything negative about comatose Nigeria can be found therein – political, economic, social; military rule, corruption, migration – the list appears endless.
The treatment begins from the colonial era in chapter one in which the author profiles the first generation of Nigerian politicians as “some set of committed crusaders who were focused, courageous, brave, articulate, and dogged” in their engagement and confrontation with the British imperialists. It catalogues the roles and activities of NCNC, Action Group (AG) and NPC – political parties of those days – and their leaders – Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (Zik of Africa), Chief Obafemi Awolowo (who, by some stroke of ethnically-entrenched political maneuver, earned for himself the stigma of a tribal leader), Ahmadu Bello (direct descendant of jihadist Shehu Uthman Dan Fodio, who had preferred to restrict himself to the North, and allowed his minion, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, to go to the centre to become Prime Minister) and of course, Herbert Macaulay (the true warlord of Nigeria’s battle for independence from whom Zik took over and spread out to become a continental champion of Africa’s freedom from imperialism).
The author also documents the rupturing of the first republic by soldiers of the Nigerian Army and the long period of military interregnum that followed. From this chapter we learn that the established culture of Southern Nigeria pandering to the whims and caprices of the North, even as it still exists till this day, started long time ago:
“As President of Nigeria, in 1964, when the Federal Elections ended in a stalemate, Zik skillfully navigated the country out of a crisis that would most probably have ended in the disintegration of Nigeria. This he did by inviting Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of the Northern Peoples Congress to form the government; to the chagrin of those who felt he had betrayed the NCNC/Action Group Alliance”(p.27).
With the long period of military rule came disunity, distrust, suspicion, inequity in resource allocation, fraudulent census in favour of the north which translated to the expropriation of the natural wealth of Southern Nigeria to feather the nest of the north, inequitable and ill-motivated state creation and institutionalisation of the culture of bribery and corruption. These caches of woes are cross-tabulated on page 37-40 of the book for easy reference by the reader.
Abami Eda resurrects at Arogundade’s book launch
From there, the author reviews the emergence of Chief M.K.O Abiola, of whom some people had touted to be Nigeria’s messiah and later as the father of Nigeria’s democracy. But there are valid arguments that counter that ascription of messianic title to Abiola. First, the author quotes Chief, (now Dr.) Olusegun Obasanjo’s assertion to an East African audience that M.K.O was not the messiah Nigerians were expecting. Perhaps, the retired Army General, former Head of military government and former civilian President, by the virtue of his all-encompassing knowledge of everything that goes on in the secret inner recesses of power in Nigeria, knew certain things the naïve apostles of M.K.O Abiola did not know. After all, Abiola had hobnobbed with the military, Obasanjo’s primary constituency, for so long in a business and political relationship before he contested the annulled June 12, 1993 Presidential Election. M.K.O was also accused to have been instrumental in the scuttling of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s inordinate ambition (Achebe, 2012, p.233) to be president of Nigeria.
The author’s searchlight also beams on the late former President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua’s brief stint in Aso Rock. Summarily, Yar’Adua was a good man. Elsewhere in the book, the author had furnished Igbo support of politicians of northern extraction like Yar’Adua, Shehu Shagari, (and now, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar) as facts negating the view that Igbos hate northerners and will never support them. The chapter (four) closes with a profound insight from the author:
“Military rule cannot be an excuse. 12 years in democracy is more than enough to have fixed electricity, for a country as rich as this, a country so infinitely blessed with resources. We should desist from begging for (alms) aid from G8 or G20 or whatever. The truth is that civilised people who begrudge their own leaders little frivolities are likely to condone “gifts” directed at corrupt nations whose leaders are known to fritter resources. Nigeria is not one of those poor nations and our leaders will only put us to mockery and disdain if they continue to beg.” (p.62).
From chapter seven, the book touches on the sore issue of the Hausa-Fulani agenda to Islamize Nigeria, profiling throes of violent crises that have wrecked the country, from the bloody Islamic proselytization of a large part of Nigeria, to the 1966 military coup, the Zagon Kataf crises, to the more recent insurgent Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen. The author frowns at the prevailing deceit in minimising herdsmen’s killings of Nigerians by explaining it away as Farmers-Herders clash, instead of recognising it as what it really is: an ambitious Fulani-Islamic territorial expansion, which is also an integral part of the Islamisation agenda.
The deadly activities of the Boko Haram sect also come into focus in this chapter. It recounts the confessed involvement of some northern politicians, especially a former governor of Borno State, in the formation of Boko Haram for the purpose of attacking Igbos, killing of Christians, burning of churches and abolition of Western Education:
“Now when the boys (Boko Haram) achieved international status by affiliating with other Islamic groups from the Arab world, we are using our Armed Forces (and national resources) to fight them. We fight them now because there are not many Igbo targets left; and they are bombing and attacking local and soft targets including mosques. Now, Nigeria is officially at war with Boko Haram.” (p.91).
Eventually, the catalogue zeroes in on the Igbo Question which happens to be Nigeria’s greatest tale of woes: how the country spares no effort in series of attempts to exterminate its most gifted and ingenious part. Yet, in stunning resemblance of the Jews, the more Igbos are threatened and killed, the more and stronger they bounce back with sharper wits and survival strategy:
“In Abuja, without being original beneficiaries of land allotments, the Igbos are now understood to be owners of up to 60 per cent of hotels in and around the metropolis. They also own properties in Kaduna, Benin, Akure, Ibadan, Ilorin, etc.” (p.108-109).
Coincidentally, the author throws up a 2015 political incident currently repeating itself now in 2019: “In the build up to the 2015 general elections,” the author writes, “the Igbos were severely threatened and warned against voting for certain candidates, even in cosmopolitan Lagos…The Igbos are major land-owning group in Lagos, millions of them live in their own houses. So, given the freedom they deserve as free citizens of this country, is it not already obvious that the Igbos regard themselves as stakeholders in the Nigerian protect?” (p.110).
The author, however, subscribes to the popular notion that Igbos are the most politically naïve in Nigeria’s political environment, but he also recognises that this naivety derives from the Igbo’s republican DNA and total aversion for servitude.
The author broaches this one question that nags the world, “what do Igbos want?” and goes ahead to provide a swift, short answer: “They (Igbos) want to be allowed to exist; live anywhere and carry on their business and enterprise freely within the ambit of the law. They want to be given their fair share in the scheme of things. They want (their) long years of marginalization corrected. They want everyone to be enabled to carry on at their own pace, in a peaceful, development-friendly environment. It simply coincides with the ideas of many ordinary Nigerians.”
This is Sedated from Within: A catalogue of Nigeria’s litany of woes. In his entire writing career, this reviewer has unreservedly advanced his conviction that Nigeria’s intractable problem has a spiritual dimension, and that the only chance of receiving healing is by complete repentance and restitution. He has no doubt that Nigeria, through her military, politicians who used the soldiers and citizens who applauded them, incurred a deadly curse after the massacre it carried out at Ogbeosewa, Asaba, in October 6 and 7, 1967.
Consider how events are unfolding now in the country. The expectation was that those managing the affairs of the country now would build upon the democratic gains of the 2015 elections and the legacy of “my ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian” left behind by former President Goodluck Jonathan. Instead, the country has relapsed several decades to the era of bloodshed, vote stealing and unmitigated brigandary, and yet, there is no sight of any light at the end of the tunnel.
Look at it from another way: If Nigeria had not been trudging along its life journey burdened by this spiritual curse, it would have surely tapped and harnessed the technological savvy of the Igbo and used it to trigger a technological breakthrough for the entire country. Although this is something many Nigerians already know, anyone who reads General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu’s last speech as Biafran Head of State before he left for Côte d’Ivoire in January 1970 will not fail to garner renewed insight into what Nigeria has lost by its continuous hounding of Igbos and suppression of their ingenuity. Let me therefore end this review with that brief, but transcendental speech by Ojukwu:
“In the three years of the war, necessity gave birth to invention. During those three years of heroic bound, we leapt across the great chasm that separates knowledge from know-how. We built rockets, and we designed and built our own delivery systems. We guided our rockets. We guided them far, we guided them accurately.
“For three years, blockaded without hope of import, we maintained all our vehicles. The state extracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol in their back gardens. We built and maintained our airports, maintained them under heavy bombardment.
“Despite the heavy bombardment, we recovered so quickly after each raid that we were able to maintain the record for the busiest airport in the continent of Africa. We spoke to the world through telecommunication system engineered by local ingenuity; the world heard us and spoke back to us! We built armored car tanks. We modified aircraft from trainer to fighters, from passenger aircraft to bombers. In the three years of freedom, we had broken the technological barrier.
“In three years we became the most civilized, the most technologically advanced black people on earth.”
The brains, the DNAs and the gumption that performed all those feats are still within Nigeria’s soil, unfortunately facing persecution everywhere. If the country is not accursed, sedated from within, then, what is the problem?
Source:https://samueljackson12.blogspot.com/2019/03/sedated-from-within-catalogue-of.html
If you are engaged in a search for a catalogue, a history, or a compendium of Nigeria’s woes, search no further. James Ifeanyichukwu Odife’s book, Sedated from Within is where to find it all.
The book documents the litany of woes of Nigeria – everything negative about comatose Nigeria can be found therein – political, economic, social; military rule, corruption, migration – the list appears endless.
The treatment begins from the colonial era in chapter one in which the author profiles the first generation of Nigerian politicians as “some set of committed crusaders who were focused, courageous, brave, articulate, and dogged” in their engagement and confrontation with the British imperialists. It catalogues the roles and activities of NCNC, Action Group (AG) and NPC – political parties of those days – and their leaders – Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe (Zik of Africa), Chief Obafemi Awolowo (who, by some stroke of ethnically-entrenched political maneuver, earned for himself the stigma of a tribal leader), Ahmadu Bello (direct descendant of jihadist Shehu Uthman Dan Fodio, who had preferred to restrict himself to the North, and allowed his minion, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, to go to the centre to become Prime Minister) and of course, Herbert Macaulay (the true warlord of Nigeria’s battle for independence from whom Zik took over and spread out to become a continental champion of Africa’s freedom from imperialism).
The author also documents the rupturing of the first republic by soldiers of the Nigerian Army and the long period of military interregnum that followed. From this chapter we learn that the established culture of Southern Nigeria pandering to the whims and caprices of the North, even as it still exists till this day, started long time ago:
“As President of Nigeria, in 1964, when the Federal Elections ended in a stalemate, Zik skillfully navigated the country out of a crisis that would most probably have ended in the disintegration of Nigeria. This he did by inviting Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of the Northern Peoples Congress to form the government; to the chagrin of those who felt he had betrayed the NCNC/Action Group Alliance”(p.27).
With the long period of military rule came disunity, distrust, suspicion, inequity in resource allocation, fraudulent census in favour of the north which translated to the expropriation of the natural wealth of Southern Nigeria to feather the nest of the north, inequitable and ill-motivated state creation and institutionalisation of the culture of bribery and corruption. These caches of woes are cross-tabulated on page 37-40 of the book for easy reference by the reader.
Abami Eda resurrects at Arogundade’s book launch
From there, the author reviews the emergence of Chief M.K.O Abiola, of whom some people had touted to be Nigeria’s messiah and later as the father of Nigeria’s democracy. But there are valid arguments that counter that ascription of messianic title to Abiola. First, the author quotes Chief, (now Dr.) Olusegun Obasanjo’s assertion to an East African audience that M.K.O was not the messiah Nigerians were expecting. Perhaps, the retired Army General, former Head of military government and former civilian President, by the virtue of his all-encompassing knowledge of everything that goes on in the secret inner recesses of power in Nigeria, knew certain things the naïve apostles of M.K.O Abiola did not know. After all, Abiola had hobnobbed with the military, Obasanjo’s primary constituency, for so long in a business and political relationship before he contested the annulled June 12, 1993 Presidential Election. M.K.O was also accused to have been instrumental in the scuttling of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s inordinate ambition (Achebe, 2012, p.233) to be president of Nigeria.
The author’s searchlight also beams on the late former President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua’s brief stint in Aso Rock. Summarily, Yar’Adua was a good man. Elsewhere in the book, the author had furnished Igbo support of politicians of northern extraction like Yar’Adua, Shehu Shagari, (and now, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar) as facts negating the view that Igbos hate northerners and will never support them. The chapter (four) closes with a profound insight from the author:
“Military rule cannot be an excuse. 12 years in democracy is more than enough to have fixed electricity, for a country as rich as this, a country so infinitely blessed with resources. We should desist from begging for (alms) aid from G8 or G20 or whatever. The truth is that civilised people who begrudge their own leaders little frivolities are likely to condone “gifts” directed at corrupt nations whose leaders are known to fritter resources. Nigeria is not one of those poor nations and our leaders will only put us to mockery and disdain if they continue to beg.” (p.62).
From chapter seven, the book touches on the sore issue of the Hausa-Fulani agenda to Islamize Nigeria, profiling throes of violent crises that have wrecked the country, from the bloody Islamic proselytization of a large part of Nigeria, to the 1966 military coup, the Zagon Kataf crises, to the more recent insurgent Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen. The author frowns at the prevailing deceit in minimising herdsmen’s killings of Nigerians by explaining it away as Farmers-Herders clash, instead of recognising it as what it really is: an ambitious Fulani-Islamic territorial expansion, which is also an integral part of the Islamisation agenda.
The deadly activities of the Boko Haram sect also come into focus in this chapter. It recounts the confessed involvement of some northern politicians, especially a former governor of Borno State, in the formation of Boko Haram for the purpose of attacking Igbos, killing of Christians, burning of churches and abolition of Western Education:
“Now when the boys (Boko Haram) achieved international status by affiliating with other Islamic groups from the Arab world, we are using our Armed Forces (and national resources) to fight them. We fight them now because there are not many Igbo targets left; and they are bombing and attacking local and soft targets including mosques. Now, Nigeria is officially at war with Boko Haram.” (p.91).
Eventually, the catalogue zeroes in on the Igbo Question which happens to be Nigeria’s greatest tale of woes: how the country spares no effort in series of attempts to exterminate its most gifted and ingenious part. Yet, in stunning resemblance of the Jews, the more Igbos are threatened and killed, the more and stronger they bounce back with sharper wits and survival strategy:
“In Abuja, without being original beneficiaries of land allotments, the Igbos are now understood to be owners of up to 60 per cent of hotels in and around the metropolis. They also own properties in Kaduna, Benin, Akure, Ibadan, Ilorin, etc.” (p.108-109).
Coincidentally, the author throws up a 2015 political incident currently repeating itself now in 2019: “In the build up to the 2015 general elections,” the author writes, “the Igbos were severely threatened and warned against voting for certain candidates, even in cosmopolitan Lagos…The Igbos are major land-owning group in Lagos, millions of them live in their own houses. So, given the freedom they deserve as free citizens of this country, is it not already obvious that the Igbos regard themselves as stakeholders in the Nigerian protect?” (p.110).
The author, however, subscribes to the popular notion that Igbos are the most politically naïve in Nigeria’s political environment, but he also recognises that this naivety derives from the Igbo’s republican DNA and total aversion for servitude.
The author broaches this one question that nags the world, “what do Igbos want?” and goes ahead to provide a swift, short answer: “They (Igbos) want to be allowed to exist; live anywhere and carry on their business and enterprise freely within the ambit of the law. They want to be given their fair share in the scheme of things. They want (their) long years of marginalization corrected. They want everyone to be enabled to carry on at their own pace, in a peaceful, development-friendly environment. It simply coincides with the ideas of many ordinary Nigerians.”
This is Sedated from Within: A catalogue of Nigeria’s litany of woes. In his entire writing career, this reviewer has unreservedly advanced his conviction that Nigeria’s intractable problem has a spiritual dimension, and that the only chance of receiving healing is by complete repentance and restitution. He has no doubt that Nigeria, through her military, politicians who used the soldiers and citizens who applauded them, incurred a deadly curse after the massacre it carried out at Ogbeosewa, Asaba, in October 6 and 7, 1967.
Consider how events are unfolding now in the country. The expectation was that those managing the affairs of the country now would build upon the democratic gains of the 2015 elections and the legacy of “my ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian” left behind by former President Goodluck Jonathan. Instead, the country has relapsed several decades to the era of bloodshed, vote stealing and unmitigated brigandary, and yet, there is no sight of any light at the end of the tunnel.
Look at it from another way: If Nigeria had not been trudging along its life journey burdened by this spiritual curse, it would have surely tapped and harnessed the technological savvy of the Igbo and used it to trigger a technological breakthrough for the entire country. Although this is something many Nigerians already know, anyone who reads General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu’s last speech as Biafran Head of State before he left for Côte d’Ivoire in January 1970 will not fail to garner renewed insight into what Nigeria has lost by its continuous hounding of Igbos and suppression of their ingenuity. Let me therefore end this review with that brief, but transcendental speech by Ojukwu:
“In the three years of the war, necessity gave birth to invention. During those three years of heroic bound, we leapt across the great chasm that separates knowledge from know-how. We built rockets, and we designed and built our own delivery systems. We guided our rockets. We guided them far, we guided them accurately.
“For three years, blockaded without hope of import, we maintained all our vehicles. The state extracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol in their back gardens. We built and maintained our airports, maintained them under heavy bombardment.
“Despite the heavy bombardment, we recovered so quickly after each raid that we were able to maintain the record for the busiest airport in the continent of Africa. We spoke to the world through telecommunication system engineered by local ingenuity; the world heard us and spoke back to us! We built armored car tanks. We modified aircraft from trainer to fighters, from passenger aircraft to bombers. In the three years of freedom, we had broken the technological barrier.
“In three years we became the most civilized, the most technologically advanced black people on earth.”
The brains, the DNAs and the gumption that performed all those feats are still within Nigeria’s soil, unfortunately facing persecution everywhere. If the country is not accursed, sedated from within, then, what is the problem?
Source:https://samueljackson12.blogspot.com/2019/03/sedated-from-within-catalogue-of.html
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