BAZETU12:
[s]It is most insulting. And I must say that it is wrong and unfair for anyone to lay the blame for the perennial suspicion and underlying tensions that lie between the two nationalities on the Yoruba because that is far from the truth. We are not the problem, they are.
Pray tell me, in the whole of Nigeria who treated the Igbo better than the Yoruba after the civil war and who gave them somewhere to run to where they could regain all their ”abandoned property” and feel at home again? Who encouraged them to return to Lagos and the west and who saved the jobs that they held before the civil war for them to come back to when the war ended? No other tribe or nationality did all that for them in the country- only the Yoruba did so. And the people of the old Mid-West and the Eastern minorities (who make up the zone that is collectively known as the ”south-south’ today) have always viewed them with suspicion, have always feared them and have always resented them deeply.
From the foregoing any objective observer can tell that we the Yoruba have always played our part when it comes to accommodating others. This is particularly so when it comes to the Igbo who we have always had a soft spot for and who we have always regarded as brothers and sisters. It is time that those ”others” also play their part by acquiring a little more humility, by knowing and accepting their place in the scheme of things and by desisting from giving the impression that they own our territory or that they made us what we are.
Now let us look at a few historical facts and one or two more Igbo ”firsts’ that many may not be familiar with to butress the point. The Igbo people were the FIRST to carry out a failed coup on the night of Jan 15th, 1966 under the leadership of Major Emmanuel Ifejuna, Major Chukuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Major Christian Anuforo, Capt. Ben Gbulie, Major Timothy Onwatuegwu, Major Donatus Okafor, Capt. Ude, Capt. Emmanuel Nwobosi, Captain Udeaja, Lt. Okafor, Lt. Okocha, Lt. Anyafulu, Lt. Okaka, Lt. EzedIgbo, Lt. Amunchenwa, Lt. Nwokedi, 2nd Lt. J.C. Ojukwu, 2nd Lt. Ngwuluka, 2nd Lt. Ejiofor, 2nd Lt. Egbikor, 2nd Lt. Igweze, 2nd Lt. Onyefuru, 2nd Lt. Nwokocha, 2nd Lt. Azubuogu and 2nd Lt. Nweke in which they drew FIRST blood and openly slaughtered and butchered leadiing politicians and army officers from EVERY single zone in the country except their own.
I should also mention that even though this was clearly an Igbo coup there was one Yoruba officer who was amongst the ringleaders by the name of Major Adewale Ademoyega. It was a very bloody night indeed.
Amongst those killed were the Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa, the Premier of the Western Region, Chief S.L. Akintola, the Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Federal Minister of Finance, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, Brigadier Zakari Maimalari, Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun, Colonel Ralph Shodeinde, Lt . Colonel James Yakubu Pam, Lt. Colonel Abogo Largema and numerous others.
They did not just kill these reverred and respected leaders but in some cases they mocked, tortured and maimed them before doing so, took pictures of their dead and mutilated bodies and killed their wives and children as well.
For weeks after these horrific acts were carried out the Igbo people rejoiced and celebrated them in the streets and markets of the north, openly displaying pictures and posters of the Sardana’s mutilated body with Nzeogwu’s boot on his neck, loudly playing a famous and deeply offensive anti-northern song in which northerners were compared to goats and listening to it on their radios, jubilating that they had brought an end to what they described as ”northern rule and islamic domination” and openly boasting that they themselves would now ”rule Nigeria forever”. Though the first coup failed the matter did not end there.
The very next day after the Jan.15th mutiny and butchery had failed and did not result in Ifeajuna taking power in Lagos, the Igbo people set their ”plan B” in motion and they were the FIRST to carry out a successful coup in Nigeria just one day later on Jan. 17th 1966. This was when the Igbo Major-General J.T,U. Aguiyi-Ironsi (who was Supreme Commander of the Nigerian Army and who had inexplicably and suspiciously not been murdered by the young Igbo officers in their violent mutiny and killing spree the night before) in collusion with the Igbo Acting President Nwafor Orizu and the entire Igbo political leadership of that day, invited the remnants of Sir Tafawa Balewa’s cabinet to a closed door meeting, threatened their lives and took power from them at the point of a gun.
Aguiyi-Ironsi did not just ask them to give him power but he took it from them by force by telling them that he could not guarantee their safety if they refused to do so. Meanwhile Orizu point blank refused to do his duty as Acting President and swear in Zana Bukar Dipcharima as the Acting Prime Minister when the members of the cabinet and the British Ambassador (who was also at the meeting) implored him to do so since by that time there was a power vacuum because the Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa, had gone missing and had probably been murdered. It was in these very suspicious circumstances and as a consequence of this murky and deep-seated Igbo conspiracy that General Aguiyi-Ironsi came to power.
Amongst those that were present at that famous ”meeting” that are still alive today are Alhaji Maitama Sule, Chief Richard Akinjide and President Shehu Shagari who were all Ministers in Balewa’s cabinet . Those that doubt the veracity of my account of this meeting would do well to ask any of them exactly what transpired during that encounter. Yet the seeming success of the conspiracy was short-lived.
Only six months later, on July 29th 1966, General Aguiyi-Ironsi and no less than 300 Igbo army officers reaped the consequences of their actions and plot when they were all slaughtered in just one night during the northern officers revenge coup which was led by Lt. Colonel Murtala Mohammed, Major Abba Kyari, Captain Martins Adamu, Major T.Y. Danjuma, Major Musa Usman, Captain Joseph Garba, Captain Shittu Alao, Captain Baba Usman, Captain Gibson S.Jalo and Captain Shehu Musa Yar’adua as they then were. Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon was put in power by this group after that and a few weeks later between September 29th 1966 and the middle of October of that same year approximately 50,000 Igbo civilians were attacked and slaughtered in a series of horrendous pogroms in the north by violent northern mobs as a reprisal for the killing of the northern leaders, including Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, by Major Nzeogwu, Major Ifejuna and other junior Igbo officers on the night of Jan. 15th 1966.
Please note that despite the fact that a number of Yoruba leaders were killed on that night as well no Igbo civilians were massacred anywhere in the west by mobs in reprisal killings throughout that period.
The Igbos understandably left the north in droves after those terrible pogroms and fled back to the east from whence they came. And perhaps that would have been the end of ithe story but for the fact that they also declared secession and sought to dismember Nigeria.
They then made their biggest mistake of all by provoking a full scale military conflict with Nigeria when they launched a vicious and unprovoked attack against the rest of the south attacking and conscripting the eastern minorities , storming the Mid-West and attempting to enter Yorubaland through Ore to capture it. Thankfully they were stopped in their tracks by the gallant efforts and courageous fighting skills of the Third Marine Commando (which was primarily a Yoruba force and which was under the command of the great Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, ‘the Black Scorpion’), prevented from entering the west, driven out of the Mid-West, pushed back into the East, defeated in battle after battle and were eventually brought down to their knees and forced to surrender to the Federal forces in Enugu.
The Igbo and their Biafra fought Nigeria and killed Nigerians for 3 hard years in that brutal civil war in which over one million courageous, loyal and faithful sons and daughters of the Federal Republic lost their lives at the war front trying to stop Biafra from seceding from the federation, from taking our land and from taking the minority groups of the Mid-Western Region and Eastern Region and our newly-discovered oil with them.
Yet despite our massive casualties and the monumental loss of life that the Federal side suffered (a total of 2 million died on both sides) the Igbo people were welcomed back into Nigeria after the war with open arms. Yet it was only in Yorubaland and especially in Lagos that they were given all their ”abandoned property” back and welcomed back as brothers and sisters without any reservations or suspicions whatsoeve[/s]r

The Yoruba do not have any resentment for the Igbo and we have allowed them to do in our land and our territory what they have never allowed us to do in theirs. This has been so for 80 long years and it is something that we are very proud of. As I said elsewhere recently, to be accommodating and generous is a mark of civilisation and it comes easily to people that once had empires. The reason why many of our people take strong exception to the apparent outrage of the Igbo over this ”deportation” issue and the provocative comments of my friend and brother Chief Orji Uzor Kalu when he described Lagos as being a ”no man’s land” is because the Igbo have not only taken us for granted but they have also taken liberty for licence.

Guests, no matter how welcome, esteemed, cherished and valued they are, cannot become the owners of the house no matter how comfortable they are made to feel within it. Those guests will always be guests. Lagos belongs to the Yoruba and to the Yoruba alone. ALL others that reside there are guests, though some guests are far closer to us than others. The Igbos are the least close, the most distant and the least familiar with our customs and our ways. They ought to be the last to be claiming our heritage and coveting our land and neither can they claim to have made any real input to our glaring success. For them to think otherwise is nothing but delusion...

Femi Fani Kayode

What really have my fellow Yorubas contributed to Lagos State? What have they contributed to Lagos State that they have not been able to contribute to Ibadan, Osogbo, Ekiti and Akure? Apart from being Academicians and brilliant administrators, I dare say that the Yorubas have not contributed anything of note ECONOMICALLY to Lagos State.

Through the course of my stay on this earth, albeit short, and my interaction with people both good and bad, I have learnt one very important lesson: IGNORE IGNORANT PEOPLE.



However, in as much as one might be tempted to ignore the ignorant, it is imperative to call them to order for some reasons. Firstly, ignorance could be contagious. Once an ignorant person basks in the euphoria of his ignorance and is proud of it, others are tempted to emulate him; thus, ignorance spreads. Again, I know I will be accountable to God on judgment day and if I fail in my duties to call an ignorant person to order and stop the spread of ignorance, I will have committed an infamita (heinous crime in Sicilian language).

I read Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode’s article titled “Lagos, the Igbos and the Servants of Truth” with mixed feelings. At the same time I was sad at the way he derided the Igbos, angry at his proud display of ignorance, irritated by the arrogant tone which swept through the write-up and then a strong urge to ‘educate’ him a bit.

I felt worse with the feeling that Mr. Fani-Kayode would have given himself imaginary pats on the back for that poorly written write-up which is devoid of logic but instead laced with half-truths and vexatious fallacies.

Before going further, I should state here that I am Yoruba like Mr. Fani-Kayode and I have no Igbo roots whatsoever. I however have a strong aversion for distortion of facts and injustice. To me, his piece is just a subtle continuation of the injustice, ill treatment and maltreatment the Igbos have been made to undergo in Nigeria right from Independence till now.

Perusing through his article, I have only been able to decipher one message which is that ; THE IGBOS DID NOT DEVELOP LAGOS.

Before I distill my issues for determinations and go into the nitty-gritty of my argument, I have to inform my dear readers of the background facts that led to his infamous write-up.

Sometime last week, it was reported that 76 Igbos were ‘deported’ from Lagos to Onitsha, Anambra State. The Lagos State Government felt that as destitutes, they should go back ‘home’ but the 76 ‘deportees’ still claim that they do not qualified to be called destitutes.

While arguments have gone back and forth on this subject, I refrained from joining issues with anybody in as much as I am so disgusted that one can now be ‘intra-deported’. It means Governor Ajimobi of my state can now deport Hausas back to their states? I find the idea utterly classless.

I expected Fani-Kayode as a lawyer to state his case as regards the deportation issue, only for him to start go on about ‘How Igbos did not develop Lagos’. To me, that is akin to acute ethnocentrism.

These following issues formed the basis of his write-up and I would attempt to showcase why his arguments and postulations should be dismissed with a mere wave of the hand.



Are the Igbos not the most industrious people in Nigeria?
What really have the Yoruba contributed to the growth of Lagos State?
Was Lagos developed by Yoruba money?
Should the Igbos consider it a ‘favour’ from the Yorubas that they were allowed to claim back their properties after the civil war?
Is Lagos a no-man’s land?


ISSUE 1

Are the Igbos the most illustrious and industrious tribe in Nigeria? Without thinking twice or mincing words, I will say YES!

I believe that only a deliberately mischievous person will question the illustriousness of the Igbos. The Igbos are so illustrious that they are capable of turning nothing into something. While they have their vices (like every tribe), the spread like ants wherever one of them settles and they bring nothing but economic development to the place.

Perhaps, no greater example of Igbo illustriousness abounds than the Civil war story. After the Civil war, Obafemi Awolowo who was a Minister in charge of the Economy under Gowon formulated a rather wicked, inhuman and obnoxious policy which was that Igbos, no matter how much they were worth before the civil war will only be given 20 POUNDS to start life with.

Still, the Igbos survived and within a short time, with the paltry 20 pounds aided with some uncommon common sense, the Igbos shot up back to the top of the Economic ladder and controlled major sector of the Nation’s economy of which Lagos forms the fulcrum.



ISSUE 2

What really have my fellow Yorubas contributed to Lagos State? What have they contributed to Lagos State that they have not been able to contribute to Ibadan, Osogbo, Ekiti and Akure? Apart from being Academicians and brilliant administrators, I dare say that the Yorubas have not contributed anything of note economically to Lagos State.

From the Big Banks in Victoria Island, to the Computer Village in Ikeja, to Ladipo Spare Sparts Market, to Alaba International Market, the Igbos hold the reins of the major economic activity in Lagos State. My Yoruba brothers are more of ‘subsistence business men’.

ISSUE 3

Was Lagos developed by the Yoruba money? No! Let us not forget that Lagos has always been the major city in Nigeria right from when the Europeans found their way into West Africa. Lagos has always gulped majority of Nigeria’s budget which has been used to make the State a major one.

Let us not also forget that Lagos State was built was oil money. As Capital city of the country, special attention was paid to the aesthetical growth and infrastructural development of the state.

The Igbos with their uncountable and numerous investments in the State have also made the State’s economy particularly buoyant. If I may refresh our memories, Nigeria’s first Millionaire, Late Sir Louis Ojukwu had majority of his investments in Lagos (many of which are still in Apapa) ,while the Yorubas were still doing small-scale business.

Till now, Lagos gets the bulk of Federal allocations and is also home to many Multi-Nationals, many of whom have Igbos as core investors. Mr Fani-Kayode’s claim that Lagos was built “through our (Yorubas) hard work and money” is both spurious and outrightly laughable.



ISSUE 4

In the 3rd paragraph of his article, he said “Meanwhile the Yoruba of the old Western Region and Lagos were very gracious to them and not only allowed them to return after the civil war to claim their properties….” I find this particular assertion appalling.

What is the gracious act in allowing me take back what is mine? What was the favour the Yoruba people did to the Igbos by allowing take back their properties in Lagos after the civil war? So if the Yoruba people were not going to be ‘gracious’, what would they have done? Seize the properties? Claim ownership of property that they did not work for?

Again, Mr Fani-Kayode while trying to appear as overly smart has only succeeded in putting in Italics a question mark over his claim to be a ‘Nationalist’. Nationalists don’t come up with the above quotation as it negate everything a Nationalist and non-biased Nigerian should be.



ISSUE 5

Is Lagos a no man’s land? Yes… and No!

I said No because Historically, Lagos State is a Yoruba state and a Yoruba State it shall remain. No matter how long visitors stay in Lagos, they will at the end of the day go back home while the real indigenes will stay behind.

However, I am saying Yes because due to the influx of Nigerians from all tribes into Lagos and also due to the massive investment they have made in Lagos, it will only be fair to say that Lagos cannot be called a Yoruba State per se. I believe Lagos is Nigeria’s center where the bulk of money is made and expended on. You cannot keep calling Lagos a ‘Yoruba’ state when it was built to its current enviable state through the efforts of ALL Nigerians and also with the generous input of Oil money; Money made from the improvished Niger-Delta.



WAY FORWARD.

I make it bold to say that Mr.Fani-Kayode with his write-up has only cemented the wide notion that he is an unrepentant ethnocentric and eccentric, who believes his race to be superior to all others. While a little ‘patriotism’ is not bad, one should not close his eyes to the truth and cold hard facts.

I also believe that as a one-time Federal Minister, he should know better than to insult the sensitivity of a particular ethnic group. In as much as Mr Fani-Kayode is short of people who see him as role models, it will still be a gross disservice to the very little who see him as role models because all they will be gaining from their role model is pure, crude, unrefined and undiluted ignorance.

On a last note, I affirm the theme of my write-up which is ; The Igbos do not deserve what was meted on them in the past, what is being meted on them now by the Lagos State Government and Mr. Fani-Kayode. I believe Nigeria owes a lot of its economic development to the Igbos and they should be honoured, not dishonoured.

From Chinedu who left Abakaliki to sell spare parts in Lagos, to Nnamdi who has decided to be the majority shareholder in a multinational which has its headquarters in Lagos and which pays tax to the Lagos State Government, to Eloka who left Anambra to become a film Producer in Lagos, to all countless Igbos who are toiling hard to make it in Lagos, while contributing to making Lagos what it is today, they deserve our utmost commendation and not condemnation.

————————-

Ayokunle Odekunle tweets from @0ddy4real

Now let us look at a few historical facts and one or two more Igbo ”firsts’ that many may not be familiar with to butress the point. The Igbo people were the FIRST to carry out a failed coup on the night of Jan 15th, 1966 under the leadership of Major Emmanuel Ifejuna, Major Chukuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Major Christian Anuforo, Capt. Ben Gbulie, Major Timothy Onwatuegwu, Major Donatus Okafor, Capt. Ude, Capt. Emmanuel Nwobosi, Captain Udeaja, Lt. Okafor, Lt. Okocha, Lt. Anyafulu, Lt. Okaka, Lt. EzedIgbo, Lt. Amunchenwa, Lt. Nwokedi, 2nd Lt. J.C. Ojukwu, 2nd Lt. Ngwuluka, 2nd Lt. Ejiofor, 2nd Lt. Egbikor, 2nd Lt. Igweze, 2nd Lt. Onyefuru, 2nd Lt. Nwokocha, 2nd Lt. Azubuogu and 2nd Lt. Nweke in which they drew FIRST blood and openly slaughtered and butchered leadiing politicians and army officers from EVERY single zone in the country except their own.
I should also mention that even though this was clearly an Igbo coup there was one Yoruba officer who was amongst the ringleaders by the name of Major Adewale Ademoyega

They did not just kill these reverred and respected leaders but in some cases they mocked, tortured and maimed them before doing so, took pictures of their dead and mutilated bodies and killed their wives and children as well.
For weeks after these horrific acts were carried out the Igbo people rejoiced and celebrated them in the streets and markets of the north, openly displaying pictures and posters of the Sardana’s mutilated body with Nzeogwu’s boot on his neck, loudly playing a famous and deeply offensive anti-northern song in which northerners were compared to goats and listening to it on their radios, jubilating that they had brought an end to what they described as ”northern rule and islamic domination” and openly boasting that they themselves would now ”rule Nigeria forever”. Though the first coup failed the matter did not end there.

Pray tell me, in the whole of Nigeria who treated the Igbo better than the Yoruba after the civil war and who gave them somewhere to run to where they could regain all their ”abandoned property” and feel at home again? Who encouraged them to return to Lagos and the west and who saved the jobs that they held before the civil war for them to come back to when the war ended? No other tribe or nationality did all that for them in the country- only the Yoruba did so. And the people of the old Mid-West and the Eastern minorities (who make up the zone that is collectively known as the ”south-south’ today) have always viewed them with suspicion, have always feared them and have always resented them deeply.

An Igbo scholar, Dr. Samuel Okafor, has made one-time Aviation Minister, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, look so small and uneducated by using facts and figures to demolish the claims he made in the controversial August 8 article, “The Bitter Truth About The Igbo”, which set off a storm that almost threatened Igbo-Yoruba relations.

In the first part of an article entitled “The Lies of Femi Fani-Kayode”, Okafor, who has a First Class in History from the University of Nigeria Nsukka and then did a Ph.D in Nsukka on scholarship, dismissed Fani-Kayode as a “half-baked intellectual.” He then proceeded, point by point, to address what he termed “the most reckless amongst the tangle of reckless comments spewed by Femi, a character who with each punch of his keypad stresses his severely unwell conditions of logorrhoea, delusions of enlightenment, history and sociology – amongst others.”

Below are Okafor’s words:

FEMI AND HIS SEVERELY IGNORANT LIES:

•Femi Lies About the Yorubas Being Nigeria’s Earliest Graduates:

From his myopic bubble Femi FaniKayode claims the Yoruba were the first to acquire Western education; the first ever known record of a literate Nigerian in the English Language is the narrative of an Ibo slave who regained his freedom and documented his life history as a slave from the time he was 11 years old in present day Ibo land till the time when he gained his freedom in the middle of the 18 th century. He later married an English woman and had 3 children. He died in 1795.

Femi, a basic Google-research will do you good here; check out the name, Equanoh OLAODAH. Further Femi claims that the Yoruba were the first lawyers and doctors in Nigeria. This is again a big falsehood. The first Nigeria doctor was an Effik man Silas G. Dove who obtained a medical degree from France and returned to practise medicine in 1840 in Calabar. This fact can also be verified from historical medical records in Paris.

I would also ask that you google the name BLYDEN – Edward Wilmot BLYDEN – an educated son of free Ibo slaves who by the mid-19th century had acquired sound theological education. He was born in Saint Thomas in 1832. He is one of the founding missionaries that established the Archbishop Vining church in Ikeja. Before the next time you succumb to your long-running battle with logorrhoea, Femi please do some research.

What about the third president of a free Liberia – President J JRoyle – again, a man of Ibo descent. Please take some time to do some research so that we can discuss constructively. It is wrong to peddle lies to your people. It is academic fraud to knowingly misrepresent facts just to score cheap points with people who do not have the discipline to do research and accept anything you pour out simply because they say you are well educated. To again quote the great Nobel Prize Winner in Economics Joseph Stiglitz; Femi fits into the category of third rate students from first rate universities with an inflated sense of self-importance. Let’s go on!

Who was the first Nigerian Professor of Mathematics – an Ibo man – Professor Chike Obi – the man who solved Fermat’s Last Theorem. He was followed by another Ibo man, Professor James Ezeilo, Professor of Differentail Calculus and the founder of the Ezeilo Constant. Please do some research on this great Ibo man. He later became the Vice Chancellor of the University of Nigeria Nsukka and one of the founders of the Nigerian Mathematical Centre. Who was Nigeria’s first Professor of Histroy – Professor Kenneth Dike who published the first account of trade in Nigeria in pre-colonial times. He was also the first African Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan. Who was the first Professor of Microbiology – Professor Eni Njoku; he was also the first African Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos. Anatomy and Physiology – Professor Chike Edozien is an Asaba man and current Obi of Asaba. Who was the first Professor of Anatomy at the University College Ibadan? Who was the first Professor of Physics? Professor Okoye, who became a Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1960. He was followed by the likes of Professor Alexander Anumalu who has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Physics three times for his research in Intermediate Quantum Physics. He was also a founding member of the Nigerian Mathematical Centre. Nuclear Physics and Chemistry – again another Ibo man – Professor Frank Ndili who gained a Ph.D in his early ’20s at Cambridge Univesity in Nuclear Physics and Chemistry in the early ’60s. This young Asaba man had made a First Class in Physics and Mathematics at the then University College Ibadan in the early ’50s. First Professor of Statistics – Professor Adichie who’s research on Non-Parametric Statistics led to new areas in statistical research. What about the first Nigerian Professor of Medicine – Professor Kodilinye – he was appointed a Professor of Medicine at the University of London in 1952. He later became the Vice Chancellor of the University of Nigeria Nsukka after the war. What about Astronomy – again another Ibo man was the first Professor of Astronomy – please, look up Professor Ntukoju – he was the first to earn a double Ph.D in Astronomy and Mathematics.

Let’s go to the Social Sciences – Demography and statistical research into population studies – again another Ibo man – Professor Okonjo who set up the first Centre for Population Research in Ibadan in the early ’60s. A double Ph.D in Mathematics and Economics. Philosophy – Professor G D Okafor, who became a Professor of Philosophy at the Amherst College USA in 1953. Economics – Dr. Pius Okigbo who became a visiting scholar and Professor of Economics at the University of London in 1954. He is also the first Nigerian Ph.D in Economics. Theology and theological research – Professor Njoku who became the first Nigerian to earn a Ph.D in Theology from Queens University Belfast in Ireland. He was appointed a Professor of Theology at the University College Zambia in 1952.

I am still conducting research in areas such as Geography where it seems a Yoruba man, Professor Mabogunje, was the first Professor. I also am conducting research into who was the first Nigerian Professor of English, Theatre Arts, Languages, Business and Education, Law and Engineering, Computer Technology, etc. Nigerians need to be told the truth and not let the lies that Femi Fani-Kayode has been selling to some ignorant Yoruba who feel that to be the first to see the white man and interact with him means that you are way ahead of other groups. The Ibo as The great Achebe said had within a span of 40 years bridged the gap and even surpassed the Yoruba in education by the ’60s. Many a Yoruba people perpetually indulge in self-deceit: that they were the first to go to school; to be exposed to Western education; that they are academically ahead of other Nigerian cultures of peoples. Another ignorant lie.

As far back as 1495 the Benin Empire maintained a diplomatic presence in Portugal. This strategic relationship did not just stop at a mere mission but extended to areas such as education. Scores of young Benin men were sent out to Portugal to study and lots of them came back with advanced degrees in Medicine, Law and Portuguese Language, to name a few.

Indeed, some went with their Yoruba and Ibo slaves who served the sons of the Benin nobility while they studied in Portugal. These are facts that can be verified by the logs kept by ship owners in Portugal from 1494 to 1830. It is kept at the Portuguese Museum of Geographic History in Lisbon.

Why then would several Yoruba people peddle all these falsehoods to show that they are ahead educationally in Nigeria? The true facts from the Federal Office of Statistics on education tell otherwise, showing that 3 Ibo states for the past 12 years have constantly had the largest number of graduates in the country, producing more graduates than Ondo, Osun, Ekiti and Oyo states. These eastern states are Imo, Anambra and Abia. Yet he calls Ibos traders. Indeed, the Igbos dominate because excellence dominates mediocrity – truth.

Let me enlighten this falsehood’s mouthpiece even further: before the civil war Ibos controlled and dominated all institutions in the formal sector in Nigeria from the universities to the police to the military to politics:

•The first Black Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan was an Ibo man

•The first Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos was an Ibo man

•The first Nigerian Rector of the then Yaba College of Technology was also an Ibo man

•The police was run by an Ibo IG

•The military as a professional institution was also run by elite-ilk Ibos.

Facts can never be hidden. To be first does not mean you would win the race; let us open up all our institutions and may the best man win. Let us not depend on handouts or privileges but on heard work. Let us compete and give the best positions to our brightest – be it Ibo, Yourba or Fulani, and then we shall see who is the most successful Nigerian.

I find it difficult not to respond to some of these long-held lies that are constantly being peddled by Yorubas. One is that the Yoruba have the largest number of professors in the country. I would again ask that we stick to facts and statistical records. The Nigerian Universities Commission has a record of the state with the largest number of professors on their records and as at 2010 that state is Imo State followed by Ondo State and then Anambra State; the next state is Ekiti and then Delta before Kwara State. I am sure you Yorubas are surprised. When you sit in the South-West do not think others are sleeping but I wish to address another historical fact and that is who were the first Nigerians to receive Western education. It is important that these issues be examined in their historical context and evidence through research be presented for all to examine.

I have continued my research for as the great sociologist and father of modern sociology – Emile Durkheim – put it, the definition of a situation is real in its consequence . What this simply means is that one must never allow a perceived falsehood to become one’s reality and by extension individuals who accept a defined position act as though the situation is real and apply themselves in that narrowly defined perspective.

Why is this important to state it is because for long the Yoruba have peddled lies that have almost become accepted as the truth by other Nigerians but it is important that we lay down the facts for others to examine and come to their own conclusion for facts are facts. Let’s go back to education. Historically, Western education resulted as a product of indigenous ethnic groups interacting with the whites through trade. The dominant groups sold slaves, ivory gold and a host of other products to their European counterparts in exchange for finished goods – wine, tobacco, mirrors, etc.

The Bini who were the dominant military force from the 15th to the 19th century raided and sold other ethnicities to the Europeans. Top on the list of those they sold were the Yoruba, Ibo and Igala. Various other ethnicities suffered as a result of the Bini military expansion. And the Benin Kingdom stretched from present-day Benin up to what is now geographically referred to as Republic of Togo. Indeed, the influence of the Benin Empire extended to the banks of the river Niger to present-day Onistha. There are huge Yoruba settlements in the Anioma part of Delta State who fled Yoruba land as a result of these attacks and constant raids. Yes, there are Yoruba people who are currently living with Ibos in the Ibo-speaking part of Delta and they are full citizens of the place no one refers to them as strangers and there is no talk about the Ibos being the host community like we hear from the Governor of Lagos State. But let me return to research. Slaves were moved from the hinterland to the coast and many were sold through Eko to the New World. These slaves were the first to encounter the Europeans and by extension their way of life – this included education in a Western sense. The Bini King had taken pains to establish a diplomatic presence in Portugal and the relationship developed into areas that extended beyond trade in the late 15th century and lasted well into the early 19th century. Scores of young Bpni youth were sent to Portugal and studied there, coming back with advanced degrees in various disciplines. The next set of people to receive Western education were the slaves themselves. Some of them managed to buy their freedom and develop themselves further.

For the Ibo it does not matter who your father is; the question is: Who are you? Who was Obasanjo’s father? Was he the most educated Nigerian? I am sure the answer is no. Yet this Great Nigeria led this nation two times as a military Head of State and as a civilian President. What about GEJ? Who was his own father? Was he the first Nigerian to go to London? The answer is no. In fact, he had no shoes, yet he is fully in charge. So it does not matter if your father was the first Lawyer or first Doctor in Nigeria but rather what matters is what an individual does with the talents the Almighty has given to him. Let us open up Nigeria for competition. That is the solution to our problems. Those who want privileges keep reminding us that their fathers were the first to go to school in London. Every generation produces its own leaders and champions. Like Dangote who is the biggest employer of labour in Nigeria today and the richest man in Africa. Was his father the first to go to study in London? Yet he is the master of people whose parents gave them the best. My brothers, the answer to the Nigerian problem is that we should establish a merit-driven society. “I get am before” no be property.

•Photo shows Femi Fani-Kayode.

Source News Express

Posted 17/08/2013 10:10:34 AM

Before Femi-Fani Kayode dies of Igbophobia

I had the ugly experience of reading the infantile postulations of a former minister of aviation, Mr. Femi Fani –Kayode, headlined, ‘The bitter truth about the Igbo’. I wept for Nigeria as I remembered that such a character was once a member of the Federal Executive Council under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s presidency.


Fani – Kayode’s diatribe could be summarised in the following statements, some of which are quoted verbatim. (1(a) “I am not in this debate for fun or for political gain” (b) Fani- Kayode wrote as if he was a spoke person for the Yoruba race. (2) The outrage and condemnation that greeted the deportation of Igbo from Lagos is asinine and uninformed because Lagos belongs exclusively to the Yoruba.

(3) The Yoruba has for long been accommodating and generous to the Igbo by allowing them to come back to Lagos after the civil war and allowing them to do in Yoruba land what Yoruba have not been allowed to do in Igbo land. (4) Igbo have a domineering tendency and are not accommodating because they never had any history, monarchs or structured societies.

(5) The Igbo introduced tribalism into southern politics because one Mr. Charles Dadi Onyeama, a federal legislator in 1945, said to his fellow Igbo that the domination of Nigeria and Africa by the Igbo was only a matter of time. (6) Herbert Macaulay a Yoruba man found



ed the NCNC and handed same over to ZIK an Igbo. The Igbo man will not form a party and hand it over to a Yoruba man. (7) “Unlike them we are not mere traders but…. major industrialists…. And… we were producing university graduates at least three generations before they did.”

Fani-Kayode

( The Igbo have recorded a string of negative “FIRSTS” some of which include, the first military coup in Nigeria in which the author dubbed an Igbo coup …..,and drawing the first blood in the unfortunate events of 1966-1970. (9) The Igbo are responsible for the civil war “…….by provoking a full scale military conflict…… when they launched a vicious and unprovoked attack against the rest of the South……… the Igbo and their Biafra killed Nigerians for three years in which courageous sons and daughters of the Federal Republic lost their lives…….. trying to stop the Biafrans from taking over our land”.

The natural thing for me would have been to ignore the provocative postulations of this failed and drowning politician who, in his infantile fantasy, has assumed the position of the spokesperson for our dear Yoruba brethren. Initially I felt it would be unnecessary to dignify the attention – hungry former minister who has been “enjoying” the company of our anti- corruption agencies of late by authoring a rejoinder to his diatribe.

I have however decided to do a rejoinder for the sake of posterity and the deep mutually beneficial economic, professional, religious and even matrimonial relationships that have existed between the Yoruba and Igbo even before the birth of Mr. Femi Fani – Kayode. I have tried to summarise the Fani – Kayode’s venom and hate – laden “bitter lies about the Igbo” into nine numbered statements which I shall comment on and traverse seriatim viz: “I am not in this debate for……… political gain.” Pretension to being the spokesman for the Yoruba race.

Nothing could be further from the truth than the preceding quote. Since the end of the former minister’s lack luster tenure as federal minister of aviation and the exit of his lord and master Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo from power, Fani-Kayode appears to be sinking deeper, by the day, into political oblivion. To make matters worse, his political party (PDP) in his native Osun State and Lagos which he now claims as state of origin appears not to be doing well in the two states which the PDP lost to the ACN. Even within the PDP he has little or no relevance.

The latest rumor is that he has joined the ACN or APC as it is now called. He urgently needs to earn the trust of Sen. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Mr. Fashola and other leaders of the party. How can he be shut out of the corridors of power at the federal and state levels? How would he be able to maintain his “big man pikin” lifestyle?

Even if he has gained from one form of rehabilitation or the other, he knows that rehabilitating a failed politician from irrelevance to relevance may not be easy. A drowning man will naturally attempt to claw at anything and everything whether real or imaginary to save himself from extinction. He is indeed in this so called debate for purely selfish reasons, having failed as a federal minister.

He did not only fail Nigerians, but also the Yoruba. I knew the state of Murtala Muhammed Airport Lagos, Benin Airport, Enugu Airport, Port-Harcourt Airport and others during his tenure and I know the state of these airports under the present minister. Fani – Kayode misused a God given opportunity to prove himself a hardworking and honest person but blew it. Save for the payment of salaries, he cannot point out any tangible or significant achievement as minister.

If indeed Fani – Kayode is a Lagosian as he claims, he should explain to all how and why he suddenly went politically deaf and dumb when Obasanjo unjustly withheld the allocation to Lagos State for months. If he cares to know, Lagos State at that point was being sustained by the taxes paid by companies and individuals resident in Lagos of which at least forty percent is Igbo. What makes him more Lagosian than these Lagosians?

In line with his character, he couldn’t even wait to be fully forgiven, accepted and given a position among his new found friends before he began to speak for them. I must add at this point that if Sen. Tinubu (Asiwaju) does not disassociate himself from Fani – Kayode’s present diatribe and megalomaniac outburst, the Igbo would be right to assume the he spoke on behalf of APC and the Lagos State government.

I have associated closely enough with the Yoruba for over twenty years to doubt if the very respectable sons of Yoruba land like Sen. Adeseye Ogunlewe (a former minister of works), Prof. Wole Soyinka, Prof. Yomi Osibanjo, Mr. Ayo Opadokun, Prof Taiwo Osipitan and many others would agree to be associated with the infamous and ignominious submissions and falsehood of Fani – Kayode.

The APC must know that no selfish, designer- tribalist can ever be a political asset to any party.
Fani – Kayode is already doing an irreversible damage to the electoral fortunes of APC in Lagos and in the East especially, and I am in a position to know. How sad.

The outrage that greeted the deportation of Igbo from Lagos is asinine and uninformed because Lagos belongs exclusively to the Yoruba.

The deportation of any person from one state in Nigeria to another is a fundamental breach of the person’s constitutional right to reside in any part of Nigeria. The exercise is, in itself, an iron fisted affirmation or naked and brutal use of power. It is an admission of the irresponsible failure of the Lagos State government to care for the less privileged within its area of jurisdiction.

If indeed the idea behind the deportation was to link the destitute with their kith and kin, in their home states, the Lagos government should tell the world the names of the relations to which they handed over these so called destitute by 2 a.m. at Upper Iweka Road motor park. The Lagos government has a sworn duty to do good to all citizens in Lagos. I believe that ownership of any modern cosmopolitan city like New York, Lagos, etc could be categorised into three.

The first type of ownership could arise by indigeneship which could arise from being born in a place or being the child of any parent who came from a particular
place. There is also the second type of ownership which arises on account of acquisition of pieces of real estate and other economic investments, and there is also the third type of ownership which could arise by settlement and legal residential status over time in a particular area. None of these categories of ownership excludes the other, rather they should be in constant positive interaction while complementing and improving each other. None is superior to the other. None can exclude the other.

It therefore follows that Lagos is “someone’s land” and that someone could be Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Kanuri, Ijaw, etc as long as he falls into any of the categories. It was on account of this that a man from Ife could claim to be a Lagosian. It was also on account of this that a man from Kwara State and another from Osun could become governors of Lagos State at various times. It is also on account of this that Obama is the President of America.

The mutually beneficial and long standing relationship that have always existed between the Igbo and their Yoruba brothers/ sisters would not be impaired by the narrow -minded postulations of a man in dire need of rehabilitation.

Sincerely, Fani- Kayode’s article under reference is the most childish, pitiful, rickety, wobbly and watery article I have ever read. He is indeed everything a graduate of Cambridge University should not be – a weak, weltering and ineffectual man. As minister of aviation, he could be likened to a man who mounted scaffolding, pulleys and tackles, gathered all the tools in the neighborhood with so much noise, demonstration and precept and then set no brick. Such a man cannot be a political asset but an onerous liability.

Did it ever occur to him that the former Intercontinental Bank became the giant that it was on account of Igbo/Yoruba synergy? Does he know how much revenue the bank generated for the Federal and Lagos governments? The number of people it employed? A “big man pikin” like him is in no position to appreciate these.

The Yoruba have been accommodating……. allowing Igbo do in Lagos what the Yoruba have not been able to in Igbo land.

The Yoruba did not need to allow the Igbo before they could come back to Lagos after the civil war. The Igbo traveled to various parts of the country immediately after the civil war and began to set up their businesses. In the same manner, people from other regions who had things to do in the East also traveled to the East immediately after the civil war.

How would the spoilt silver spoon kid know that Igbo and Yoruba were involved in formal and informal business and professional relationships prior to the civil war. Business profits and indeed our currency notes do not have any tribal marks.

Fani – Kayode failed to tell us what Igbo have been allowed to do in Lagos that the Yoruba have not been allowed to do in Enugu, Onitsha or Port-Harcourt. Is it in the area of education? There are Yoruba students in the higher institutions in the East. There are Yoruba traders in the East. There are Yoruba workers in the East.

As a Students Union President, I was always invited for Yoruba cultural day celebrations and I participated actively in such celebrations during my university days in the East. Yoruba students also participated fully and actively in the general cultural day celebrations during my university days and we had fun. It is doubtful if any Yoruba man would be denied an opportunity to pay for a property that is up for sale on account of his tribe. If any Igbo man decides to sell his property, he like his Yoruba brothers would be interested in collecting a fair price for the property.

The problem here seems to be that the Yoruba are not as migrant and adventurous as the Igbo. In every state of the federation today, you would discover that after the indigenes of the states, the Igbo are the next in population – thus confirming their belief in the principle of one Nigeria. If the Igbo are more visible in Lagos and other cities located in the South-west, it would be because it is in their culture to settle down and ply their trade anywhere they consider safe and profitable.

Statistics have shown that the voting population of Lagos State is more than forty percent Igbo. Most of these voters are tax payers whose taxes end up in the coffers of the state government. Would it be fair for a law abiding club member who pays his annual subscription to be qualified to vote for other club members while being disqualified from standing for election on account of his surname? If Fani – Kayode’s problem is the increasing number of Igbo in Lagos and their demand for greater representation in government, why would that up-set any true democrat? Could it be that the deportation policy is aimed at reducing the number of Igbo in Lagos? Mr. Fashola and his party should please clarify this.
The point I am trying to make here is that the few Yoruba who have agreed to settle in the East have been allowed to do what their Igbo brothers have been allowed to do in Lagos. Sen. Tinubu is a title holder in my home town in the East just like some Igbo are traditional title holders in Lagos, Ibadan, etc. As a matter of fact, Asiwaju’s title entitles him to sit nearer to Igwe Iaz Ekwueme’s throne than myself on certain occasions.
Igbo are domineering and unaccommodating because they never had any history, monarchs, structured societies.

An Igbo adage has it that the spoilt child who does not leave his mother’s hut to join others for moonlight activities would end up believing that the moon only shines on his mother’s hut. Fani – kayode should tell the world how many (if any) Igbo friend he has. The party under which he became a minister was PDP. The party started as G18 then G34 and later fused with other groups to become PDP under the guidance and chairmanship of the revered Dr. Alex Ekwueme. How can a beneficiary of Igbo accommodation say that the Igbo are not accommodating?

Unknown to many Nigerians, we are enjoying democracy today because of the maturity, accommodating, and selfless spirit of Ekwueme, an Igbo man. When the retired multi-millionaire generals hi-jacked the PDP and imposed Obasanjo as presidential candidate, the permutation was for Ekwueme to revolt and cause problems enough to derail the transition programme. Being the super intelligent man that he is, Ekwueme congratulated Obasanjo and toured the whole of the East campaigning for him. Many Igbo companies today have on their staff list, hardworking Yoruba men and women.

It is Fani – Kayode who is unaccommodating. He is the one without a history as he does not seem to be sure of his state of origin. Does his Lagosian status start with his father, grandfather, great grandfather or more?
The rabble-rouser is in no position to understand that while some segments of the ancient Igbo society e.g (Onitsha, Arochukwu, Nri etc) had monarchs, others ran republican democratic structures that maintained peace and order and encouraged enterprise. I recommend Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” to Fani – Kayode. That may help secure his deliverance from the disease of combative ignorance. The ancient Hebrew society had no monarchs but that does not mean that they had no history and neither does it mean that they were unaccommodating. Ditto the Igbo.

Only a man suffering from terminal Igbophobia could spew something so hollow, so shallow and pedantic like Fani –Kayode’s “bitter lies about the Igbo.”
The Igbo introduced tribalism into southern politics because one Mr. Dadi Onyeama in 1945 told an Igbo gathering that the domination of Nigeria and Africa by the Igbo was only a matter of time.

In his hatred of the Igbo, Fani –Kayode conveniently forgot to mention that the various ethnic nationalities were all engaged in some form of healthy competition to be better than the others. Who was Dadi Onyeama? A federal legislator who was never at any time a spokesman for the Igbo. The statement was not credited to Dr. Azikiwe, Dr. Nwafor Orizu or any leading Igbo figure of that time.
The Igbo man would not form a party and hand it over to a Yoruba man like Herbert Macaulay did for Azikiwe

Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I have already mentioned the role of Ekwueme as the founder of the PDP. We must not forget that Ekuweme opened the doors of his newly formed party for all including the Hausa, Yoruba, Ijaw and all other ethnic groups.

This was the same party that went ahead to de-register it’s founder while Fani-Kayode was in the corridors or even bedroom of power.

”Unlike them we are not mere traders but major industrialists………producing university graduates at least three generations before they did.” There is nothing wrong in being a trader.
There is dignity in labour.
Of what use is the unintelligent comparison? What does it add to the progress and unity of Nigeria? There are traders and industrialists among the Igbo and among the Yorubabut since he is interested in the Igbo, he should be reminded that CHISCO, ABC Motors, Innoson Group of Companies, Emzor, Coscharis Group of Companies, Chicason Group of Companies etc are not mere traders. These are Igbo companies employing Nigerians including Yoruba.

Even if the Igbo started producing university graduates three generations after the Yoruba, have the Igbo not excelled in every profession or trade? The first successful separation of Siamese twins on African soil was by Prof. Festus Nwako and his team at UNTH Enugu. Anambra is one of the states with the highest number of indigenous Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN). In engineering, Prof. Barth Nnaji, the late Prof. Gordian Ezekwe and many others are from Igboland. Would anybody mention architecture in Nigeria without mentioning Ekwueme?

Do you talk about mathematics without Prof Chike Obi?

The Igbo have a string of negative firsts including the first military coup in Nigeria and drawing the first blood in the events of 1966-1970……they launched a vicious and unprovoked attack on the rest of the South. “Sons and daughters of the Federal Republic lost their lives…trying to stop the Biafrans from taking our Land”

Every ethnic group in Nigeria has its positive firsts and negative firsts. Before Aba and Benin produced “Osisi Kankwu”, and “Anini the law” respectively, Lagos had produced “Oyenusi”.

The same Igbo Fani-Kayode hates with so much venom and is trying to denigrate recorded many positive firsts in Nigeria.

The first Nigerian PhD holder in mathematics was Prof. Chike Obi, an Igbo. The first professor of mathematics in Nigeria was Prof. James Ezeilo, an old boy of D.M.G.S Onitsha, an Igbo man.
The first Nigerian professor of music is Prof. (Igwe) Laz Ekwueme, an Igbo man. The first open-heart surgery on African soil was by Prof. Aghaji and Prof. David Nwafor and their team at the UNTH Enugu. Prof. Kenneth Dike was the first African vice chancellor of any university on African soil. Prof. Eni Njoku, another Igbo, was the second. The first President of Nigeria was Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. These are remarkable positive firsts recorded by the Igbo who, according to Fani-Kayode, were not producing university graduates until when the Yorubs had produced their third generation of graduates.
Prior to the first military coup, which many Igbo haters dubbed an Igbo coup, the Igbo were already in the commanding heights of business, politics, academics, bureaucracy, etc. The Igbo would not need to stage any coup against their tribal interest if that was their calculation. They were already at the top and so did not need to stage a coup to remain there. If anything, the Nzeogwu coup was an anti-Igbo coup as it was targeted at a government headed by an Igbo man. The young army officers, who carried out the said coup, were not sent by the Igbo State Union (the equivalent of Ohaneze Ndigbo in those days).

Fani-Kayode went further to celebrate the massacre of Igbo in the North and also said that no Igbo was killed in the West. I know some Igbo who escaped by the whiskers from AN Barracks Yaba where many Igbo were slaughtered. If the “big man pikin” would understand Prof. Wole Soyinka’s ‘The Man Died’, he would see that Igbo were killed everywhere including Lagos.

It was Soyinka’s condemnation of the genocide and his attempt to end it that landed him in Gen. Gowon’s jail. Even if Prof. The Igbo had every reason to go their separate way and take their destiny into their hands hence the secession attempt which was not really the first in Nigeria. Isaac Adaka Boro had attempted to excise the present Rivers and Bayelsa states from Nigeria long before the declaration of Biafra. The Igbos did not declare war on Nigeria. All they did was to declare their homeland area, their safe haven where they can protect themselves from their fellow Nigerians who did not want them anymore. It was a legitimate attempt at self -preservation. It was Nigeria that declared war on itself and by extension the Igbo.

The civil war has come and gone and we are all Nigerians now.Pursuant to the provisions of Chapter II of the 1999 Constitution, every Nigerian should work hard to achieve national integration. We must love, respect, encourage and assist each other in line with the provisions of our Constitution which provides in S.15 (2) as follow:“…….national integration shall be actively encouraged, whilst discrimination on the grounds of place of origin, sex, religion, status, ethnic or linguistic association or
ties shall be prohibited”.

* Ako Okoli is the National Legal Adviser of the Eastern Professionals Forum.

Throwback:
I wonder what explanation of this article FFK will give to his intertribal sons about his opinion of their mother's greedy kindred?

How many Igbos know about that and how many times in our history have they made such sacrifices for the Yoruba? Would Aguiyi-Ironsi, or any other Igbo officer, have stood for Fajuyi, or any other Yoruba officer, and sacrificed his life for him in the same way that Fajuyi did had the roles been reversed? I doubt it very much. Yet instead of being grateful the Igbo continuously run us down, blame us for all their woes, envy our educational advantages and resent us deeply for our ability to excel in the professions and commerce.
Unlike them we were never traders but we were (and still are) industrialists and when it comes to the professions we were producing lawyers, doctors, accountants and university graduates at least three generations before they ever did. That is the bitter truth and they have been trying to catch up with us ever since. For example the first Yoruba lawyer Christopher Alexander Sapara Williams was called to the English Bar in 1879 whilst the first Igbo lawyer, Sir Louis Mbanefo, was called to the English bar in 1937. Again the first Yoruba medical practitioner, Dr. Nathaniel King, graduated in 1875 from the University of Edinburgh whilst the first Igbo medical practitioner, Dr. Akannu Ibiam, graduated from another Scottish University in 1935.

Only six months later, on July 29th 1966, General Aguiyi-Ironsi and no less than 300 Igbo army officers reaped the consequences of their actions and plot when they were all slaughtered in just one night during the northern officers revenge coup which was led by Lt. Colonel Murtala Mohammed, Major Abba Kyari, Captain Martins Adamu, Major T.Y. Danjuma, Major Musa Usman, Captain Joseph Garba, Captain Shittu Alao, Captain Baba Usman, Captain Gibson S.Jalo and Captain Shehu Musa Yar’adua as they then were. Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon was put in power by this group after that and a few weeks later between September 29th 1966 and the middle of October of that same year approximately 50,000 Igbo civilians were attacked and slaughtered in a series of horrendous pogroms in the north by violent northern mobs as a reprisal for the killing of the northern leaders, including Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, by Major Nzeogwu, Major Ifejuna and other junior Igbo officers on the night of Jan. 15th 1966.
Please note that despite the fact that a number of Yoruba leaders were killed on that night as well no Igbo civilians were massacred anywhere in the west by mobs in reprisal killings throughout that period.
The Igbos understandably left the north in droves after those terrible pogroms and fled back to the east from whence they came. And perhaps that would have been the end of ithe story but for the fact that they also declared secession and sought to dismember Nigeria.
They then made their biggest mistake of all by provoking a full scale military conflict with Nigeria when they launched a vicious and unprovoked attack against the rest of the south attacking and conscripting the eastern minorities , storming the Mid-West and attempting to enter Yorubaland through Ore to capture it. Thankfully they were stopped in their tracks by the gallant efforts and courageous fighting skills of the Third Marine Commando (which was primarily a Yoruba force and which was under the command of the great Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, ‘the Black Scorpion’), prevented from entering the west, driven out of the Mid-West, pushed back into the East, defeated in battle after battle and were eventually brought down to their knees and forced to surrender to the Federal forces in Enugu.
The Igbo and their Biafra fought Nigeria and killed Nigerians for 3 hard years in that brutal civil war in which over one million courageous, loyal and faithful sons and daughters of the Federal Republic lost their lives at the war front trying to stop Biafra from seceding from the federation, from taking our land and from taking the minority groups of the Mid-Western Region and Eastern Region and our newly-discovered oil with them.
Yet despite our massive casualties and the monumental loss of life that the Federal side suffered (a total of 2 million died on both sides) the Igbo people were welcomed back into Nigeria after the war with open arms. Yet it was only in Yorubaland and especially in Lagos that they were given all their ”abandoned property” back and welcomed back as brothers and sisters without any reservations or suspicions whatsoever