stardragon:

i want to knw hw u hav been able to associate with the opposite sex, bcus up till nw i dont hav bae at this my old age! Bcus of my core introveted nature.

i do associate with the opposite sex. i hv good female friend but i hv had only one galfriend sha

.

hmm

.

chiefkpokp:
don't worry dear, the cbn has taking over my small case, i have been receiving different message both from cbn, and firstbank, They should investigate the matter, my own is just to send my complaint to cbn, thats the best way to go..... going to the bank to make complain you are waisting your time.....

Please drop the email for the CBN customer complaints First bank just debited me N100 and vat of N5 for "MONTHLY FEE"

Pls, where do i get the registration link to start registration?

DTOBS:

Oga mi sire, my school do collect the ID card back when giving out the certificate. Some have collected their certificate and they had their ID card collected!

#TeamOAU peeps speak up please

True talk

very funny

Read on Facebook too

It’s time to play by a different (ethical) set of rules (Part 9) Nigeria 3

__ Beware the company you keep

The state government of Akwa Ibom held 15% of the equity in Econet Wireless Nigeria. This state was not one of the original investors but joined us later.

After five years, the governor of the state of Akwa Ibom decided to sell its stake. It had more than doubled in value in dollar terms, which meant it had been a good investment.

The state governor, an elderly gentleman called Victor Attah, sent a message through a friend that he wanted to see me in London to find out if I was interested in exercising Econet’s right to buy its shares. I agreed to meet him in London.

"I want to sell the shares to build an airport before I leave office," the governor explained.

The governor was accompanied to the meeting by a British lawyer who sat quietly taking notes. His name was Bhadresh Gohil.

With a wave of his hand, the governor said, "Mr Gohil is our legal advisor here in London. I have instructed him to handle all our negotiations with you."

The meeting did not last more than 30 minutes, as the governor was on his way to catch a flight to the U.S.

We agreed with Mr Gohil that we would meet with my own advisors a few days later to start the process.

A few days later, I went to his office with a professional banker who advised me on such transactions. We met in the lawyer's plush London offices. He was confident and smooth-spoken as he explained how much we were expected to pay. Then he explained that our money was to go to a "Special Purpose Vehicle" (SPV) before it was transferred to Nigeria. It was a sophisticated structure and he showed me a drawing of how it would work. I wrote it all down very carefully into my notebook.

___Such corporate entities as SPVs can definitely have legitimate purposes, but this one did not!

As I quizzed him about why such an unusual structure was necessary, Mr Gohil changed tact and tried to entice me with an offer I could not refuse (or so he hoped): "I'm also the advisor to the governor of Delta State, Mr James Ibori, and if you agree to pay for these shares using this structure, we will offer you shares belonging to all the state governments. In total, you can have more than 30% additional shares. It will be enough to take control of the company. My clients just want out, and they are willing to give you what you have always wanted."

I listened to him, quietly taking notes in my small notebook. I did not give away anything, but inside I was very angry. From the design of the structure, I knew immediately that it was meant to siphon off money before it reached the state governments. It was clear there was a conspiracy to steal a lot of money.

___Having already pocketed $13.5m, now the government officials could easily pocket probably another $100m through the sale process that they had developed with the help of Mr Gohil and other clever advisors in London!

When I left the meeting I immediately contacted the mutual friend who'd set up the governor's meeting. The friend was so embarrassed as I explained the corrupt structure clearly designed to steal money from the state governments. He promised to raise the issue with Governor Victor Attah. A few days later he came back and said Governor Attah had claimed ignorance about the proposal put to me by Mr Gohil. He said he would speak to Mr Gohil and tell him it had to be done properly without the structures.

We never heard from them again. Mr Gohil simply vanished. A few months later we were told that the shares had been offered to a company from the Middle East who subsequently bought them. I was not privy to how they did it except that they had violated my right to buy the shares... That is another chapter in the saga, but not for now.

Fast-forward three years, long after the sale. Our lawyers in London called me one day and asked if I could come urgently to a meeting with the Proceeds of Corruption Unit of the London Metropolitan Police: "You are not in any trouble, but I think you will find what they have to say very interesting!"

This special unit was launched by the British to investigate corruption by foreign government officials who try to launder stolen money to the U.S. and the UK.

The officers asked me to explain everything I knew about the sale of V-Mobile shares to Celtel (later Zain).

I explained the history of the entire transaction and the shareholders disputes that had led to our departure. After awhile, they asked me to focus on specific events, and, in particular, my meetings in London with the governor of Akwa Ibom, and also the meetings with Mr Gohil. It became clear to me that they had a lot of information!

"What can you tell us about this structure, using a Special Purpose Vehicle?"

I explained my understanding of it. Later on, I gave them my diary in which I had recorded the details of my meeting that day with Mr Gohil.

Below my drawing of the structure, I had written in bold letters:

"This is corrupt!!!"

Not long after my meeting with the Proceeds of Corruption Unit, Mr Gohil was arrested together with one of his partners and several others. I later learned that when the Middle Eastern company bought the shares, some of the proceeds had been diverted using the Gohil structure. Some of the money was sent to a bank in London. This large amount of money was enough to alert the British authorities that money was being laundered through their banking system.

Their investigations led them to Gohil and his associates. They raided his offices and found stashes of documents, including details of the structures. Now they were looking for witnesses to help prosecute them for corruption and money laundering.

The British authorities tried without success to get other parties, including the governor of Akwa Ibom, to come out and clear their names but they refused. Officials of President Umaru Musa Yar'Aduah's government successfully thwarted all extradition requests.

I was asked to be a witness in the trial of those who had been arrested in London. I willingly accepted. Next I will tell you about my role as a 'Witness to the Crown" on behalf of the people of Nigeria whose money had been stolen. It would be the first time that someone big went to jail (in a foreign country) for stealing money from Africans.
source : https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=919460661461763&id=496453373762496&substory_index=0

It’s time to play by a different (ethical) set of rules (Part Nigeria 2

___As citizens, we have a duty to speak out to stop the rot

Nigeria has an agency known as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). After we had to leave the country, a few noble people at the company tipped off not only me but the EFCC about the payment of the bribes, which had by this time risen from $9m to $13,5m.

I had never actually heard about this agency myself until I got a call from the Nigerian Embassy in South Africa to say they wanted to come and see me to interview me as a witness.

A team of very senior EFCC officers came to see us in South Africa. They were solid and professional in their enquiry. It was clear they wanted to do something about it.

However, when these officers returned home to Nigeria, they got into very serious trouble. Their investigations into the irregular payments had been brought to the attention of James Ibori (Governor of Delta State)…

Soon thereafter, the most senior officer leading the investigation was demoted and sent to a remote part of the country as an ordinary policeman!

Agencies like EFCC in Nigeria sometimes have brave and gallant law enforcement officers. Unfortunately, as I observed, they’re often let down by their political bosses, and sometimes even by the courts. This can change if activism from the citizenry emerges to support their work.

___We should not only support official efforts to stop corruption but also help these agencies and organisations in their investigations. If you have relevant information about illegal activities, passing it on could make all the difference between impunity and imprisonment.

In my letter to the US Justice Department, I detailed the full history of the demands for a bribe. I had dates, times, records. I then reminded them that since the big international operator had a listing on the New York Stock Exchange, they were duty-bound to launch an enquiry. Why did I go to them?

The United States government has a law called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The United Kingdom has a similar one called the British Anti-Bribery Act. Whatever you do, make sure you never fall foul of those laws because, if they ever use them to come after you, you’re a "gonner" my friends.

A few weeks later, US officials wrote back advising me that an enquiry had been launched. They contacted the big international company seeking answers to my allegations. My contacts at the company called to tell me, "All hell has broken loose at the company."

The parent company of the South African-based multinational sent external auditors and lawyers from London to Nigeria. They immediately dismissed all the senior executives sent to Nigeria to run the company, and they left in a hurry!

Although they fled the scene of the crime and returned to their country -- after admitting even to both the US Justice Department and the EFCC that the money had been paid out – the stolen funds were never returned to the Nigerian people, even to this day.

Meanwhile, the departure of the other mobile operator did not mean we could return to Nigeria. The shareholders found another operator, this time from the Middle East.

They sold this new operator the control of the company even though Econet Wireless Nigeria had the "right of first refusal" over any sale. They simply ignored that provision in our agreement. This was illegal, both according to our shareholders agreement and Nigerian Company Law. It was left for us to take up the fight in another forum, the Nigerian courts.

It’s time to play by a different (ethical) set of rules (Part 7) Nigeria 1

___Sometimes the price can be very high in the fight against corruption.

I had the privilege of making Nigeria’s first GSM phone call back in 2001 when I called the regulator to say, “We’re live!” Who would’ve believed then that Nigeria today would have more than 167 million mobile phones?!

It all started out as a very exciting new chapter for enterprise in Africa. Shortly after President Obasanjo was elected, the new government announced an incredibly transparent international auction process for three national mobile phone licenses.

To participate in the bid, you not only had to raise money, but there had to be a member of the bidding consortium who was an experienced GSM operator. Econet Wireless met the requirements because of its experience in Zimbabwe and Botswana. Our Nigerian partners, which included state governments, local banks and high net worth individuals, were financial investors. The largest shareholder had only 10%. That was the written agreement.

I managed to assemble a consortium of 22 investors to put up the money needed to bid. Our shareholders were all Nigerian, mostly institutional investors including leading banks and two state governments, Lagos State and Delta State. The license cost us $285m and was the most expensive license ever issued in Africa at the time. This was 2001.

We considered the investment not only about putting together a network, but also about building a nation. We knew it had the potential to transform Nigeria’s entire business and social architecture.

Most of our investors had between 1-10% shareholding. Econet Wireless Nigeria had only 5% of the shares, but that was fine because it was 5% ownership of a very big pie.

As the "technical partner and operator," Econet was the company with the expertise to build and operate such a business. Our financial investors recognised this, and also allowed us to receive 3% of the turnover as our fees. This was standard practice in the industry.

We were one of the winning bidders and they gave us just six months to set up business and get our network operating. We were under a lot of pressure but our network was live two days before the others! Customers were pouring in. We were number one in the market with an estimated 57% market share.

___Then came the fateful day when I was told that our company must pay a total of $9m in bribes to senior politicians (in state government) who had facilitated the raising of the money to pay for the license.

I refused to authorise the illegal payments. Meeting after meeting was held to try to get me to agree, but I would not. The money would not be paid as long as Econet was the operator and I had signing authority.

James Ibori, the Governor of Delta State, was demanding $4,5m be paid to him in his personal capacity. He was one of the most powerful men in the country and had a reputation for violence. When he heard that I was refusing to approve payment he issued an ultimatum:

___"Pay or I will chase you and your people out of the country."

I refused.

The shareholders met and voted Econet Wireless Nigeria out of management. They cancelled our management contract. James Ibori and his colleagues personally attended the meeting to remove us. After the meeting one of them (a prominent local businessman even today) came up to me and said: "Unfortunately for you, God does not have a vote."

I had to withdraw all my staff and their families: 200 people in all. We left Nigeria.

Most of our people had to be retrenched. The loss of the contract almost drove us to bankruptcy as a group.

They invited a big international operator to replace us as technical partner and operator. They changed the name of the company from Econet to V-Mobile.

Within days of their arrival, the managers of the new operator signed off the payments demanded as bribes.

Then what happened?

A few noble Nigerians had both the integrity and courage to carefully collect all the documentation on the movement of the money, and pass it all on to me.

___There’s a saying worth remembering in uncovering the trail of destruction that is corruption: “Follow the money”…

I bided my time... then I wrote a letter to the United States Department of Justice!

It was 2003.

To be continued…

Interesting

Oga ku
http:///1KyqgGu

chisombenedicta:
it ain't cbt

it is not cbt. tell dem o. this is very interesting five yrs ago i did my i saw it after 48hrs and yrs after yrs it kept reducing

wonderful

Following are excerpts from a NY times article written in 2007:
Three years ago, Aisha Buhari, a middle-aged Nigerian woman, stood at a perfume counter inside a Washington pharmacy and, according to an African immigrant named Joshua Assiba who said he was also there, bought thousands of dollars of merchandise.

Mr. Ribadu said he is uncertain if her name is Aisha Buhari, but he added that she is not a daughter of General Buhari.

“I don’t have any relationship with that Aisha Buhari,” Mr. Buhari said. “I don’t have any daughter called Aisha Buhari living outside this country. She is not my daughter.”

As the pair struck up a conversation and subsequently became friends, Mr. Assiba, then a security guard, said she told him that her father was the former military ruler of Nigeria, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, and that her American friends included politicians like Mr. Jefferson of Louisiana.

Mr. Ribadu’s agency has asked American authorities to arrest Ms. Buhari. [/b]That has not happened, but the Justice Department has an interest in her. Last summer, she testified before a grand jury investigating Mr. Jefferson, the congressman, who is suspected of soliciting bribes from American companies seeking business in Nigeria.

From the above any reasonable fellow is able to deduct the following:
[b]1. That the Aisha Buhari mentioned claims to be PMB's daughter not wife as some like to claim.
2. PMB' s daughter named Aisha couldn't have been middle aged at the time of the case.
3. PMB denied having any daughter named Aisha living outside the country during the period.
4.she is a fraudster using PMB's integrity to defraud unsuspecting members of the public.
5. Therefore Aisha Buhari mentioned in Haliburton Case is not PMB's wife
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/business/yourmoney/29lobby.html?pagewanted=all
cc lasticala

You guys don't have a functioning brain is there only aisha buhari in the world.
She is identified as ms buhari
www.cbsnews.com/news/william-jefferson-and-nigeria/
https://www.nairaland.com/2507937/putting-rest-aisha-buhari-fraud

4bobo:

I AM EXPECTING PEOPLE LIKE YOU TO ATTACK ME NOW. SEBI IT IS A FREE WORLD ? CONTINUE. WABA ERU RE NI BODE

omo ode

4bobo:
AMERICA HAS LOST ITS GLORY OF GOD, ITS A MATTER OF TIME....NO THANKS TO OBAMA AND HIS WOLF IN SHEEP CLOTHING, ANTICHIRST MENTALITY

shut d f up

pleiades45:
she hopes to build a bank ? God save us from the future okonjo iweala

vheMa:
She dey mad
Build bank
So because u knw maths now,na ur formulae u wan use abi Mtcheww
All of u above me sef

thinking of foolish low esteemed people.

keep your dreams flying high girl

www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150610-the-dark-side-of-nursery-rhymes
Plague, medieval taxes, religious persecution, prostitution: these are not exactly the topics that you expect to be immersed in as a new parent. But probably right at this moment, mothers of small children around the world are mindlessly singing along to seemingly innocuous nursery rhymes that, if you dig a little deeper, reveal shockingly sinister backstories. Babies falling from trees? Heads being chopped off in central London? Animals being cooked alive? Since when were these topics deemed appropriate to peddle to toddlers?
Since the 14th Century, actually. That’s when the earliest nursery rhymes seem to date from, although the ‘golden age’ came later, in the 18th Century, when the canon of classics that we still hear today emerged and flourished. The first nursery rhyme collection to be printed was Tommy Thumb's Song Book, around 1744 ; a century later Edward Rimbault published a nursery rhymes collection, which was the first one printed to include notated music –although a minor-key version of Three Blind Mice can be found in Thomas Ravenscroft's folk-song compilation Deuteromelia, dating from 1609.
The roots probably go back even further. There is no human culture that has not invented some form of rhyming ditties for its children. The distinctive sing-song metre, tonality and rhythm that characterises ‘motherese’ has a proven evolutionary value and is reflected in the very nature of nursery rhymes. According to child development experts Sue Palmer and Ros Bayley, nursery rhymes with music significantly aid a child's mental development and spatial reasoning. Seth Lerer, dean of arts and humanities at the University California – San Diego, has also emphasised the ability of nursery rhymes to foster emotional connections and cultivate language. “It is a way of completing the world through rhyme,” he said in an interview on the website of NBC’s Today show last year. “When we sing [them], we're participating in something that bonds parent and child.”
So when modern parents expose their kids to vintage nursery rhymes they’re engaging with a centuries-old tradition that, on the surface at least, is not only harmless, but potentially beneficial. But what about those twisted lyrics and dark back stories? To unpick the meanings behind the rhymes is to be thrust into a world not of sweet princesses and cute animals but of messy clerical politics, religious violence, sex, illness, murder, spies, traitors and the supernatural. A random sample of 10 popular nursery rhymes shows this.
The stuff of nightmares
Baa Baa Black Sheep is about the medieval wool tax, imposed in the 13th Century by King Edward I. Under the new rules, a third of the cost of a sack of wool went to him, another went to the church and the last to the farmer. (In the original version, nothing was therefore left for the little shepherd boy who lives down the lane). Black sheep were also considered bad luck because their fleeces, unable to be dyed, were less lucrative for the farmer.
Ring a Ring o Roses, or Ring Around the Rosie, may be about the 1665 Great Plague of London: the “rosie” being the malodorous rash that developed on the skin of bubonic plague sufferers, the stench of which then needed concealing with a “pocket full of posies”. The bubonic plague killed 15% of Britain’s population, hence “atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down (dead).”
Rock-a-bye Baby refers to events preceding the Glorious Revolution. The baby in question is supposed to be the son of King James II of England, but was widely believed to be another man’s child, smuggled into the birthing room to ensure a Roman Catholic heir. The rhyme is laced with connotation: the “wind” may be the Protestant forces blowing in from the Netherlands; the doomed “cradle” the royal House of Stuart. The earliest recorded version of the words in print contained the ominous footnote: “This may serve as a warning to the Proud and Ambitious, who climb so high that they generally fall at last”.
Mary, Mary Quite Contrary may be about Bloody Mary, daughter of King Henry VIII and concerns the torture and murder of Protestants. Queen Mary was a staunch Catholic and her “garden” here is an allusion to the graveyards which were filling with Protestant martyrs. The “silver bells” were thumbscrews; while “cockleshells” are believed to be instruments of torture which were attached to male genitals.
Goosey Goosey Gander is another tale of religious persecution but from the other side: it reflects a time when Catholic priests would have to say their forbidden Latin-based prayers in secret – even in the privacy of their own home.
Ladybird, Ladybird is also about 16th Century Catholics in Protestant England and the priests who were burned at the stake for their beliefs.
Lucy Locket is about a famous spat between two legendary 18th Century prostitutes.
Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush originated, according to historian RS Duncan, at Wakefield Prison in England, where female inmates had to exercise around a mulberry tree in the prison yard.
Oranges and Lemons follows a condemned man en route to his execution – “Here comes a chopper / To chop off your head!” – past a slew of famous London churches: St Clemens, St Martins, Old Bailey, Bow, Stepney, and Shoreditch.
Pop Goes The Weasel is an apparently nonsensical rhyme that, upon subsequent inspection, reveals itself to in fact be about poverty, pawnbroking, the minimum wage – and hitting the Eagle Tavern on London’s City Road.
Not safe for children?
In our own sanitised times, the idea of presenting these gritty themes specifically to an infant audience seems bizarre. It outraged the Victorians, too, who founded the British Society for Nursery Rhyme Reform and took great pains to clean up the canon. According to Random House’s Max Minckler , as late as 1941 the Society was condemning 100 of the most common nursery rhymes, including Humpty Dumpty and Three Blind Mice, for “harbouring unsavoury elements”. The long list of sins, he notes, included “referencing poverty, scorning prayer, and ridiculing the blind… It also included: 21 cases of death (notably choking, decapitation, hanging, devouring, shrivelling and squeezing); 12 cases of torment to animals; and 1 case each of consuming human flesh, body snatching, and ‘the desire to have one’s own limb severed’.”
“A lot of children's literature has a very dark origin,” explained Lerer to Today.com. “Nursery rhymes are part of long-standing traditions of parody and a popular political resistance to high culture and royalty.” Indeed, in a time when to caricature royalty or politicians was punishable by death, nursery rhymes proved a potent way to smuggle in coded or thinly veiled messages in the guise of children's entertainment. In largely illiterate societies, the catchy sing-song melodies helped people remember the stories and, crucially, pass them on to the next generation. Whatever else they may be, nursery rhymes are a triumph of the power of oral history. And the children merrily singing them to this day remain oblivious to the meanings contained within.
“The innocent tunes do draw attention away from what's going on in the rhyme; for example the drowned cat in Ding dong bell, or the grisly end of the frog and mouse in A frog he would a-wooing go”, music historian Jeremy Barlow, a
specialist in early English popular music, tells me. “Some of the shorter rhymes, particularly those with nonsense or repetitive words, attract small children even without the tunes. They like the sound and rhythm of the words; of course the tune enhances that attraction, so that the words and the tune then become inseparable.” He adds, “The result can be more than the sum of the parts.”
This story is a part of BBC Britain – a new series focused on exploring this extraordinary island, one story at a time. Readers outside of the UK can see every BBC Britain story by heading to the Britain homepage; you also can see our latest stories by following us on Facebook and Twitter.

medamillion:
I don't have time to argue with SundaySchool children

Omo ode. Who is Sunday school children?
This isn't about religion dis is about twisting facts to suit your purpose. This about you being subjective instead of objective.
FYI last Sunday was fourth i attended church dis year

medamillion:
desist from spewing thrash about Islam, STOP it!
Say nothing about what you lack knowledge on.
Bokoharam is not in anyway practising the ideology of Islam.

Many people (terrorists) have also committed a lot of attrocities in the past all in the name of CHRISTIANITY, this doesn't make the religion an evil one as some brainwashed fellows are painting Islam.

These are Christian Terrorist organisations that have come up in the past.
1)National Liberation Front of Tripura
2)Antibalaka
3)The Aryan Nations
4)The Christian Identity Movement
5)The Orange Volunteers
6)Catholic Reaction Force/Protestant Action Force etc

READ ABOUT THEM.

Christian Terrorists:
1) Joseph Kony:
#The founder of the Aryan Nations:
Wesley Swift
#The founder Antibalaka Group
Levy Yakete

I have formerly addressed these issue on this thread but THEY won't stop their religion blackmail of Islam.
https://www.nairaland.com/2196623/terrorism-blame-extremists-not-religion

Becareful what you say, so that you won't blame yourself in the hereafter.

Guy get some brain. Dis group are response to something and none claim Christianity as d reason for what they did.

This is white people sh*t. What d hell did they expect? Shioo

MeAndYou:


No be Mulikat Akande them zone am give? But Tinubu and co sold it to Tambu. Imagine

Story for d gods

MeAndYou:

Speakership nko?

Na person from dey dere [/quote]

Imagine southwest getting 3 of 50 key appointments, and they wonder why we voted him out.

www.saharareporters.com/2012/10/21/forgotten-documents-nigerian-civil-war-odia-ofeimun

T he most comprehensive and almost cover-all organization of the documents of the Nigerian Civil War remains AHM Kirk-Greene's CRISIS AND CONFLICT IN NIGERIA, A Documentary Sourcebook 1966-1970 Volume 1, and Volume 2, published by Oxford University Press London, New York and Ibadan in 1971. Volume One, according to the blurb, “describes the prelude to the war and the succession of coups from that of 15 January1966 which initially brought a military regime to power in Nigeria”.
The volume takes the story up to July 1967 when the war began. Volume Two covers July 1967 to January 1970, that is, between the beginning of hostilities, and when, as testified by the last entry in the volume, General Yakubu Gowon made a Victory broadcast, The Dawn of National Reconciliation, on January 15, 1970. No other collection of civil war documents, to my knowledge, exists that compares with these two volumes. And none, as far as I know, has attempted to update or complement the publications so as to include or make public, other documents that are absent from Kirk-Greene's yeoman's job. Yet, as my title pointedly insists, there have been some truly 'forgotten' documents of the Nigerian Civil War which ought to be added and without which much of the history being narrated will continue to suffer gaps that empower enormous misinterpretations, if not falsehoods.
In my view, the most forgotten documents of the Nigerian civil war, which deserved to be, but were not included in the original compilation by Kirk-Greene - are two. The first is the much talked-about, but never seen, Ifeajuna Manuscript. It was written by Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, the leader of the January 15 1966 Coup that opened the floodgates to other untoward events leading to the civil war. The author poured it all down in the “white hot heat” of the first few weeks after the failed adventure that ushered in the era of military regimes in Nigeria's history. Not, as many would have wished, the story of how the five majors carried out the coup. It is more of an apologia, a statement of why they carried out the coup, and what they meant to achieve by it. It is still unpublished so many decades after it was written. The Manuscript had begun to circulate, very early, in what may now be seen as samizdat editions. They passed from hand to hand in photocopies, in an underground career that seemed fated to last forever until 1985 when retired General Olusegun Obasanjo, after his first coming as Head of State, quoted generously from it in his biography of his friend, Major Chukuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, the man who, although not the leader of the coup, became its historical avatar and spokesperson. Indeed, Nzeogwu's media interviews in the first 48 hours after the coup have remained the benchmark for praising or damning it. Ifeajuna's testimony fell into the hands of the military authorities quite early and has been in limbo. Few Nigerians know about its existence. So many who know about it have been wondering why the manuscript has not seen the light of day.
The other document, the second most forgotten of the Nigerian Civil War, has had more luck than the Ifeajuna Manuscript. It happens to be the transcript of the famous meeting of May 6th and 7th 1967, held at Enugu, between Lt. Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Military Governor of Eastern Region, and Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Leader of the Yoruba and an old political opponent of the leaders of the Eastern Region. Awolowo attended the meeting at the head of a delegation of peace hunters in a bid to avert a shooting war after the pogrom against Easterners which presaged the counter-coup of July 29, 1966. The transcripts of the meeting, never publicly known to have existed, entered public discourse formally when a speech by Chief Obafemi Awolowo delivered on the first day of the meeting was published in a book, Path to Nigerian Greatness, edited by MCK Ajuluchuku, the Director for Research and Publicity of the Unity Party of Nigeria, in 1980. The speech seemed too much of a teaser. So it remained, until it was followed by Awo on the Nigerian Civil War, edited by Bari Adedeji Salau in 1981, with a Foreword by the same MCK Ajuluchuku. The book went beyond the bit and snippet allowed in the earlier publication by accommodating the full transcripts of the two-day meeting. Not much was made of it by the media until it went out of print. Partly for this reason and because of the limited number in circulation, the transcripts never entered recurrent discussions of the Nigerian civil war. The good thing is that, if only for the benefit of those who missed it before, the book has been reprinted. It was among twelve other books by Obafemi Awolowo re-launched by the African Press Ltd of Ibadan at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, in March 2007. Important to note is that among other speeches made by Awolowo, before during and after, on the Nigerian Civil War, the transcripts are intact.
They reveal who said what between Chief Obafemi Awolowo, his Excellency Lt. Col. Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Sir Francis Ibiam, Chiefs Jereton Mariere, C.C. Mojekwu, JIG Onyia, Professors Eni Njoku, Samuel Aluko and Dr. Anezi Okoro, who attended the meeting. Unlike the Ifeajuna Manuscript, still in limbo, the transcripts are in respectable print and may be treated as public property or at least addressed as a feature of the public space.
I regard both documents as the most forgotten documents of the civil war because they have hardly been mentioned in public discourses in ways that recognize the gravity of their actual contents. Or better to say, they have been mentioned, only in passing, in articles written for major Nigerian newspapers and magazines since the 70s, or parried on television, but only in figurative understatements by people who, for being able to do so, have appeared highly privileged. The privilege, grounded in the fact that they remained unpublished, may have been partially debunked by the publications I have mentioned, but their impact on the discussions have not gone beyond the hyped references to them, and the innuendos and insinuations arising from secessionist propaganda during the civil war. The core of the propaganda, which reverberated at the Christopher Okigbo International Conference at Harvard University in September, 2007, is that Awolowo promised that if the Igbos were allowed, by acts of commission or omission, to secede, he would take the Western Region out of Nigeria. In a sort of Goebellian stunt, many ex-Biafrans including high flying academics, intellectuals and publicists who should know better, write about it as if they do not know that the shooting war ended in 1970. What Awolowo is supposed to have discussed with Ojukwu before the shooting war has been turned into an issue for post-war propaganda even more unrestrained than in the days of the shooting war. The propaganda of the war has been dutifully regurgitated by a Minister of the Federal Republic, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, twice on loan to the Federal Government of Nigerian from the World Bank, in the book, Achebe: Teacher of Light(Africa World Press, Inc,2003) co-authored with Tijan M. Sallah. They write: “The Igbos had made the secessionist move with the promise from Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the Southwest that the Yoruba would follow suit. The plan was if the southeast and southwest broke away from the Nigerian federal union, the federal government would not be able to fight a war on two fronts. Awolowo, however, failed to honour his pledge, and the secession proved a nightmare for the Igbos. Awolowo in fact became the Minister of finance of the federal government during the civil war.” (p.90).
Forty years after the civil war, you would expect that some formal, academic decorum would be brought into play to sift mere folklore and propaganda from genuine history. But not so for those who do not care about the consequences of the falsehoods that they trade. They continue to pump myths that treat their own people as cannon fodder in their elite search for visibility, meal tickets and upward mobility in the Nigerian spoils system. Rather than lower the frenzy of war-time 'huge lies' that were crafted for the purpose of shoring up combat morale, they increase the tempo. I mean: postwar reconstruction should normally forge the necessity for returnees from the war to accede to normal life rather than lose their everyday good sense in contemplation of events that never happened or pursuing enemies who were never there. Better, it ought to be expected, for those who must apportion blame and exact responsibility, to work at a dogged sifting of fact from fiction, relieving the innocent of life-threatening charges, in the manner of the Jews who, after the Second World War sought to establish who were responsible for the pogroms before they pressed implacable charges. Unfortunately, 40 years does not seem to have been enough in the Nigerian case. Those who organized the pogrom are lionized as patriots by champions of the Biafran cause. Those who sought lasting answers away from blind rampage are demonized as villains. The rest of us are all left mired in the ghastly incomprehension that led to the war. Those for whom the civil war was not a lived, but a narrated experience, are made to re-experience it as nightmare, showing how much of an effort of mind needs to be made to strip the past of sheer mush. As it happens, every such effort continues to be waylaid by the sheerness of war propaganda that has been turned into post-war authoritative history. It is often offered by participants in the war who, like Dim Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu himself, will not give up civil war reflexes that ruined millions.
In an interview in Boston on July 9th 2001, Ojukwu told a questioner: “We've said this over and over again, so many times, and people don't understand: they don't want to actually. If you remember, I released Awolowo from jail. Even that, some people are beginning to contest as well. Awo was in jail in Calabar. Gowon knows and the whole of the federal establishment knows that at no point was Gowon in charge of the East. The East took orders from me. Now, how could Gowon have released Awolowo who was in Calabar?
Because the fact that I released him, it created quite a lot of rapport between Awo and myself, and I know that before he went back to Ikenne, I set up a hotline between Ikenne and my bedroom in Enugu. He tried, like an elder statesman to find a solution. Awolowo is a funny one. Don't forget that the political purpose of the coup, the Ifeajuna coup that began all this, was to hand power over to Awo. We young men respect him a great deal. He was a hero. I thought he was a hero and certainly I received him when I was governor. We talked and he was very vehement when he saw our complaints and he said that if the Igbos were forced out by Nigeria that he would take the Yorubas out also. I don't know what anybody makes of that statement but it is simple. Whether he did or didn't , it is too late. There is nothing you can do about it. So, he said this and I must have made some appropriate responses too. But it didn't quite work out the way that we both thought. Awolowo, evidently, had a constant review of the Yoruba situation and took different path.
That's it. I don't blame him for it. I have never done”. This was quoted in Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo's article, reporting the Okigbo International Conference, on page 102 of The GUARDIAN, Monday, October 1, 2007. Quite an interesting one for anyone who wishes to appreciate the folkloric dimensions that mis-led many who listened to Radio Biafra or have followed the post-war attempts to win the war in retrospect instead of preparing the survivors, on both sides of the war, to confront the reality that mauled them and could maul them again unless they shape up.
Against Ojukwu's self-expiatory remarks, it is of interest to read Hilary Njoku, the head of the Biafran army at the start of the war. In his war memoirs, A tragedy without heroes, he declares that the meeting between Obafemi Awolowo and Ojukwu had nothing to do with the decision to announce secession. Njoku writes that: “…most progressive Nigerians, even before him, saw 'Biafra' as a movement, an egalitarian philosophy to put Nigeria in order, a Nigeria where no tribe is considered superior to the others forever…….It was the same Biafran spirit which led Chief Awolowo to declare publicly that if the Eastern Region was pushed out of Nigeria, then the Western Region would follow suit. When Ojukwu moved too fast recklessly in his ostrich strategy, the same Chief Awolowo led a delegation of Western and some Midwestern leaders to Enugu on 6th May, 1967 and pleaded with Ojukwu not to secede, reminding him that the Western Region was not militarily ready to follow suit in view of the weaknesses of the Western Command of the Nigerian Army and the dominant position of the Northern troops in the West. Ojukwu turned a deaf ear to this advice maybe because of his wrong concept”.(p.

philaw:
protect? how?

Can't find the name of any confraternity in the post? Are you a member?