Abuja—Dark memories of the Nigerian civil war echoed at the Justice Chukwudifu Oputa panel yesterday as Ohanaeze Ndigbo and the Arewa Consultative Forum engaged each other in a fierce dispute over the cause of the 1967-70 war.
Ohanaeze's presentation, which was articulated by Uche Chukwumerije, a former information minister, was hinged on a thesis that the North, working in concert with some other parts of the country, embarked on a deliberate programme to marginalise and exterminate the Igbo.
Ohanaeze said the 1966 coup was an expression of the anti-Igbo sentiment, explaining that the Igbo drew the ire of their persecutors because of their enterprise in all spheres human endeavour which led them to all areas of Nigeria.
But, Secretary to Arewa Forum, Col. Hammeed Ali disagreed when he
hinted that the war was spurred by the 1966 coup which he said was an
Igbo coup.
He also tried to exonerate the North, saying
Buhari's coup of December, 1983 was not a Northern coup.
Earlier, the Ohanaeze listed its major grouse as marginalisation.
According to the group, To help us understand our case on
marginalisation and disempowerment, the petition defines this key
concept. Marginalisation is purposeful denial of rights of some
members of a given unit by some other members of the group who control
the power of allocation of resources. Marginalisation must be
understood as fundamentally different from marginality, which means
loss of rights through self-inflicted under-development.
In all the realms of public endeavour, Ndi Ibgo have the requisite
manpower and natural resources. But their rights to a fair share of
Nigeria's resources have been consistently denied them by Federal
authorities.
Continuing, the group stated that: It is necessary to emphasise the
fundamental difference between Ndi Igbo's case of disempowerment
and the new noisy national orchestra of marginalisation slogans most
of which are raised to mock and trivialise our case. The distinctive
difference is deliberate exclusion: ours is a case of deliberate
exclusion of Ndi Igbo from common resources by a combination of ethnic
groups which control the centre.
Indeed, the observed consistent pattern of discriminary and
exclusionary responses of the Nigerian system to Ndi Igbo in the
commanding heights of the polity suggests that our exclusion is not
only deliberate but also malicious.
Ohaneze described marginalisation of the Igbo to mean the denial of right to life, right to means of livelihood, right to human dignity, right to freedom of movement, right to freedom from discrimination, right to acquire and own immovable property anywhere in Nigeria and other rights enshrined in the Constitution.
Tracing the alleged injustices against the Igbo before the civil war,
he said
The anti-Igbo mood, he further alleged, found a ready platform for
According to Chukwumerije, the brewing
He added:
Ohanaeze continued:
On the atrocities during civil war (1967-1970), the Pan-Igbo group
said:
Listed in the petition as methods through which the violations took
place are:
the genocidal content of Nigeria's war slogans;
the use of starvation as an instrument of war;
the massacre of civilians in conquered areas;
the target of air attacks on concentrated civilian habitations;
rape, torture and dehumanization of Igbo women;
destruction of properties; animals and everything as in a scorched
earth policy, and
torture and murder of war prisoners and civilians who
surrendered. Over one million people, the petition added, died during
the war through these atrocities.
On the atrocities and disempowerment immediately after the war
(1970-1975), the apex Igbo group stated thus:
Nigeria's proclamation of a peace formula of three Rs
(Reconciliation, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction) turned out in
practice to be a smokescreen behind which she continued the war
against Ndi Igbo by other means. Besides the continuation of killings
in the first three months after the end of the war, the new method was
the strategy of disempowerment and strangulation in all areas of
public endeavour.
The policy of economic disempowerment of the Igbo, alleged the group
were:
federal government's vindictive enactment of the abandoned
property law, and the consequent dispossession of Igbo property owners
of their houses and plots in Rivers State as
the impoverishment of all Ndi Igbo through payment of a flat paltry
sum of £20 irrespective of individual savings at the end of the
war,
the intentional timing of the enactment of the
the denial of the reconstruction of utilities, structures and
infrastructure damaged during the war;
excision of oil petroleum-rich areas of Igbo land, and exclusion of
other mineral deposits found in Igbo land from the benefits of
operations of umbrella organisations like OMPADEC or its successor,
NDDC;
mass dismissal of Igbo public servants;
continuation of starvation policy and rejection of aids from foreign
aid/donors;
treatment of Igbos as social pariahs in all the states of Nigeria;
the exclusion of Ndi Igbo from the higher echelons of policy-making;
manipulation of census figures to reduce Igbo ethnic group to a
minority status; and
Igbophobia as the basis of creating states. Categorising what it
called atrocities and disempowerment between 1975 to date, Ohanaeze
stated:
Commending President Obasanjo, the group said
Commenting on their prayers the group stated that it asked the panel
to order payment
Ohanaeze said
Making suggestions on how to move the nation forward, the group
asserted:
Besides, the group advised that Nigeria should settle for a system
that encourages production, in place of consumption through a flat
rule-of-the thumb approach that shares all sharable federal resources
equally among the six zones only.
Ohanaeze dismissed insinuations that their petition was basically
complaining of marginalisation saying:
Earlier, Oputa had summoned a former Comptroller of Prisons in River
State, E.E Nkang to appear on September 23 to tell the commission
where the remains of the Ogoni nine executed alongside Ken-Saro-Wiwa
on November 10, 1995 were kept. This summons was at the instance of
Femi Falana who represented MOSOP.
The panel will today continue hearing the Ohanaeze petition.
A journalist with Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Yusuf Jibo was
summoned by the panel to explain why he produced and showed a
programme considered unsavoury by Ohanaeze.
A spectacular scenario that was created yesterday was the physical
presence of an array of the nation's choicest dignitaries like
Prof. Ben Nwabueze (SAN), Alhaji Gambo Jimeta, Gen. Haruna, Alhaji
Isah Funtua, Dr. Joe Nwaorgu, even as a galaxy of Senior Advocates
like Chief Tony Mogbo (SAN); Joe Gadzama (SAN) and Chief O. J. J
Okocha (SAN) was present.
Diverse groups that were colourfully decked also created a carnival -
like atmosphere, during and after the emotionally charged session
during which Colonel Ali was jeered and booed at.
Col. Ali, also a former military administrator of Kaduna State during
the Abacha regime and a member of the Ogoni Special Military Tribunal
which tried and convicted the Ogoni nine led by Dr. Ken Saro-Wiwa
faulted the response he filed in to the commission challenging the
position of the Ohanaeze because, in his words,
Amid jeering, Ali stated that the military men plotted coups in the
past with loyal officers from the same background.
But when the Ohanaeze legal representative, Chief Tony Mogbo (SAN)
sought to know his opinion on the 1966, 1990, and 1983 coups, Ali
said:
A major dramatic scenario was played up when Col. Ali (rtd) admitted
that;
Some other lawyers who appeared in the session were Mr. R. F. Godwin
for the River State government summoned as a witness in the Ohanaeze
petition even as Mr. Yahaya Mohammed and Prof. Auwalu Yadudu appeared
for Arewa Consultative Forum whose chairman M. D. Yusuf was present at
yesterday's session.
Other lawyers included Mr. Sebastine Hon for the Joint Action
Committee on the Middle Belt, Nuhu Ribadu, for the Commissioner of
Police Kano State and Yisa A. N for General Wushishi and General
I. B. Babangida.
Chukwumerije and Col. Ben Gbulie, two witnesses for Ohanaeze will also
finish their cross examination session to be conducted by lawyers
representing the respondents in the matter today. Chukwumerije was
partly cross examined by counsel to Arewa yesterday.
Meanwhile, barring unforeseen impediments, the seemingly intractable
feud between Shell Petroleum Development Company and the Ogoni would
be resolved on September 12 at a tripartite meeting between the
feuding parties, Federal and River State government.
This reconciliatory tone was struck at a peace parley initiated
yesterday in Abuja by the Oputa panel.
The republican spirit of Ndi Igbo and their individual
drive, expressing itself in a flair for fair competition in all
spheres, encouraged them to exercise their citizenship rights all over
Nigeria. The endeavours of Ndi Igbo, like those of other Nigerian
citizens, were taking place in an atmosphere (so we thought) of
brotherly debates and differences in our fledgling multi-ethnic
democracy.
But Ndi Igbo soon began to notice sinister stains in the responses
of some national leaders to their differences with Ndi Igbo. Public
statements of leaders of ruling political groups in Northern and
Western Nigeria began to betray a disposition to extermination or
total expulsion of Ndi Igbo as their acceptable solution of what they
now saw as Igbo problem. Speeches of Northern Nigeria Ministers, as
recorded in Hansard of March, 1964, and the anti-Igbo incitements in a
booklet, UPGAISM, published by Western Government (1965) portrayed the
new mood.
explosion and used as a rallying cry to mobilise Northern Nigeria
and some parts of the rest of the Federation to advance genocidal plot
against Ndi Igbo. The fiction and falsehood of Igbo coup has long been
admitted by some of the major actors in that episodes (example,
Lt. Gen. T.Y Danjuma in Nigerian Civil War 1967-1970 edited by
Major-General H.B. Momoh P.373).
genocidal mood
served
and in response to anti-Igbo incitements, Igbo
citizens in Northern Nigeria were massacred in three waves of pogrom
in most sadistic and inhuman methods that made Jewish holocaust appear
like mercy killings. 50,000 Igbos were slaughtered. Some of the
inhuman methods of slaughter were recorded in affidavits of eye
witness.
The massacres which evidently were well planned and
co-ordinated by ruling authorities had the character of genocidal
attacks on Ndi Igbo. The acquiescence of other ethnic groups in the
rest of Nigeria emphasised the isolation and helplessness of Ndi
Igbo. The insensitivity of the Federal Government and its failure to
implement a peace agreement (the Aburi Accord) compounded the sense in
security of Ndi Igbo. When the Federal Government proceeded with an
economic blockage and ill-motivated balkanisation of Eastern Region,
Ndi Igbo were left in no doubt that the genocidal plot had
thickened. Eastern Nigeria was forced to declare the Republic of
Biafra on May 29, 1967.
The petition offers a little, just little,
glimpse into the enormity of the holocaust that forced us out of
Nigeria - the masacre of Igbo women and children who were deceived
into flocking to railway stations in search of passenger trains to
take them home, forcible collection of Igbo female students from
schools and herding of them into leper colonies, to be defiled by
lepers; the slaughtering in the transit zone of Middle-Belt of Igbo
refugees who managed to escape the wrath of far North; the refusal
virtually all Nigerians to give protection to any Easterner; the
active involvement of law-enforcement agencies in the pogroms; and the
exodus of 2 million people in flight from a country that has rejected
them and that has offered them nothing but a mass grave. Indeed the
future of no future confronting Ndi Igbo at this time was symbolised
by the fate of Igbo babies in the Kano railway holocaust.
A 30-month civil war ensued as a result of Nigeria's attempt to
quell what she described as a civil war. The civil war..gave Nigeria a
perfect excuse to cast Ndi Igbo in the role of treasonable felons and
wreckers of the nation.
Nigeria's prosecution of the war violated all aspects of the
Geneva Convention and all code of civilized behaviour. Indeed, the
violations were carried out with so much glee and abandon that it was
clear that the war was an earnest pursuit of the programme of ethnic
cleansing begun in 1966.
The committee of International Jurists, foreign press and other
Independent observers have also testified to this fact. Indeed, the
international Committee on The Investigation of Crimes of Genocide
whose investigation included interview of 1,082 people representing
the two sides of the conflict concluded thus through its investigator
(Dr. Mensah of Ghana); 'Finally, I am of the opinion that tin many
of the cases cited to me hatred of the Biafrans (mainly Igbos) and a
wish to exterminate them was a foremost motivational factor.'
abandoned
property,
in a ploy to incite the Easterners against one another.
indigenisation
decree
at the height of total destruction of the purchasing power
of Ndi Igbo;
What would have been dismissed as unfortunate excesses of
revengeful excitement in the flush of victory soon settled into a
policy of marginalisation and disempowerment of Ndi Igbo. Successive
governments maintained a disturbing continuity of a policy of
strangulation of Ndi Igbo in spite of all rhetorics to the
contrary. Public policy and practice since the mid-seventies to date
have followed the same pattern.
In the political arena, observed pattern of appointments suggest
that the Federal Government is decided that no Igbo man should be
trusted with a key sensitive command position for a long while. In the
public service, our share of federal employments is far below the
constitutional stipulations of the constitution and the quota chart of
the Federal Character Commission.
The history of the creation of states clearly suggests a policy of
containment and siege, a policy designed to reduce the demographic
leverage and financial strength of Ndi Igbo. Lastly, a new height in
political disempowerment has been reached in the most blatant
marginalisation by the present regime of President Obasanjo of
South-East zone which gave it the second largest electoral support in
the presidential democratic election of 1999.
In the social realm, the racial discrimination against Ndi Igbo
continues to rage, unabated. The blood-chilling consistency in which
Igbo citizens have always been scape goats of all bloody riots in
Nigeria confirms that they enjoy less protection of the law than any
other ethnic nationality in the republic.
there have been some
positive developments since then, May 29, 1999.
of reparations and appropriate restitution as a
healing balm not just to Ndi Igbo but to the nation.
the remedies sought include financial compensations
for bereaved and humiliated families in respect of the murdered, the
maimed, the raped and the dehumanised; financial compensation for
wrong dismissals; financial compensations for the havoc of scorched
earth policy; reversals of economic marginalisation policy, and
restitutions where possible.
But financial and economic redresses can never adequately
compensate psychological wounds. The deepest wound of Ndi Igbo is a
haunting spectre of insecurity, hanging like a dark cloud over a
persistent ugly objective reality that continues to feed on
traditional prejudice. Periodic anti-Igbo riots continue to warn Ndi
Igbo that Nigeria has learnt nothing and has forgotten nothing.
Our prayer therefore emphasises two requests as the key
reliefs. One is a national apology. The other is an assurance of
Ozoemena! - a national vow that violations of our human rights will
never occur again. Indeed, the essence of all our prayers is summed in
our relief.
Our Constitution must address more explicitly and
unequivocally than it has done hitherto the foundation question of the
character of our Federal union. Should Nigeria be a mosaic of
self-reinforcing ethnic mini-sovereignties barely interacting
horizontally but intensively engaged vertically in a cockpit fight for
the largest loot from the centre? Or, a dynamic multi-ethnic community
purposefully evolving towards the end state of healthy national
integration? It is surprising that our utterances and actions have
shown that this basic choice has not been made after 40 years of
togetherness.
If our choice is a multi-ethnic nation, as forward-looking patriots
should prefer, then the constitution should be supported with
necessary institutional arrangements which should invest more energy
and resources on three areas:
We conclude our Petition by
emphasising once again the point that our case is fundamental to the
growth of political democracy and civil society in Nigeria. It is
deeper than 'marginalisation' as currently misused. We tender
this Petition with faith and trepidation.
I did not read most
of the authorities cited in the written submission of the Arewa
Forum.
my lord the 1966 coup was an Igbo coup, that of 1990 led by
Orkah was a Delta coup while that of 11983 was basically a Buhari coup
and not a northern coup.
my lord, in making our submission, we cited some quotations
from some authors, but we only took what we wanted from them and
considered the rest of the same quotation factitious.
![[Documents menu]](../bin/bk.gif)