Reflections on assertions by our so called Elder statesmen lately have left me perturbed and got my intellect very itchy. I have been stuck with reconciling these comments by our so called gray-haired Leaders with the truths that lie therein and the reality of the Nigerian present political situation.

The present political unrest geared by youth restiveness from the few Arewa Youth groups who issued quit notice to Igbos living in the north on the one hand and genuine agitations over political imbalance and real systemic injustice against sections of the country championed by the Nnamdi Kanu led IPOB, Oduduwa group and other fronts on the other hand, has given everyone, and I mean every well-meaning Nigerian, some sense of concern. Voices have soared from many divides of the country and seemingly incontrovertible is the consensus that Nigeria has gradually arrived at the fork in her destiny where she can’t move any further except Nigerians discuss and decide the best way she must progress along, and that we call, RESTURCTURING.

My mind has been more agitated by the choice of words, the tone or perhaps, the style of language our elders have used in expressing their concerns, thoughts and lending their “elderly advice” in the art of proffering solutions to these problems that hitherto, sought of crippled the wheels of our nation’s movement. On the surface, one sees the negative attribution and allusion to a collective historic avoidable mistake of the 1967-1970 Nigeria-Biafra (civil) war which some term pogrom, that in essence, because it has not been properly addressed and because for some self or sectional serving interests, it has been unsuccessfully excused from our collective history memory as a nation, has in “Ghost mode” dug the progress and unity of Nigeria ever since. In this wise, one hears our Elders dish out some clichés like “people agitating for separation were not born during the war and did not experience and or participate in it.”

More threatening are some of these assertions by our so called “Elder statesmen” like “these children beating the drums of war cannot stand it when the war comes,” and the very attacking one from the Acting President himself, “foolish people learn from experience and the wise learn from history,” which with due respect to his person and intelligence is logically incoherent and a contradiction of itself which cancels the proverb on experience, “what a child cannot see while on the tree, the elder sees sitting down.” No doubt, I respect our elders. I adore their experience although the Acting President said it is foolish to learn from experience. I believe to have gained experience from a brutal three-year old war, which claimed over three million lives, many of whom were civilians, they deserve the respect and honour we ascribe to them.

Nevertheless, may I endulge our Elder statesmen to point out clearly that Age is no monopoly of knowledge, neither are the instrumentalities of learning history owned only to and by our Elderstatesmen. Since our older generation has obscured the truth, concealed our historical realities and closed the chapter of essential epochs, they have left the younger generation with no other choice than to learn from our collective history from wherever necessary. It bemoans a true meaning Nigerian who wants to learn history that to get a comprehensive historical knowledge of Nigeria’s past, especially the most sensitive and indispensable experience, the civil war, one needs to travel to the United States and other Western countries. How more absurd could that be? Movies are to be shut to recount Nigeria’s history, and the documentaries and footages cannot be found anywhere in Nigerian but outside Nigeria, particularly the United States. If you doubt, ask Ramsey Noah where he got the footages of his new movie, ‘76

Like one scholar said, when the elders refuse to teach the (younger ones) history, the younger ones will definitely cause history to repeat itself in the cruelest way. The truth in this saying lies in the reality of what we experience in Nigeria today. Just like every other thing in Nigeria, Our so called Leaders and Elder statesmen are FAILURE to the younger generation in preserving our historical experiences and values. The likes of Olusegun Obasanjo, Yakubu Gowon, T.Y. Danjuma, Muhammadu Buhari, Babangida, Ango Abdullahi, Shehu Shaghari, Alex Ekwueme etc who had the ample opportunities to preserve these values, murdered such opportunity trust by eliminating history from our learning systems, probably with the thought that it would ultimately annihilate its memory. Now it has backfired, Biafra agitation is up again, Niger Delta’s demand to control oil resources is heating more smoke, the Oduduwa however gradual their process is, is taking off, the Middle Belt front is formed already and all the monstrous consequences of lost historical experience, teachings and values are on the loose to dismember “OUR DEAR ONE NIGERIA” which our leaders say is INDIVISIBLE and whose UNITY, they say, is NON-NEGOTIABLE.

Complete Reading: http://igbobia.com/?q=how-obasanjo-other-elder-statesmen-deepen-nigerias-problem-with-their-comments.html

L

Let us discuss this Nigerians