₦airaland Forum

I can see that this thread had degenerated to the old "Igbo coup" Yoruba propaganda that has hundreds of threads about it in Nairaland.
It's getting boring debating on same thing over and over again.

Lol! No, Never!

Elnino4ladies:
just a week ago and Arsenal were all over the place complaining about Alonso's goal, saying it's a foul. Today the table turns in their favor and they've got a goal, a pure handball. and they're finding all ways to justify it

And where were you when Arsenal fans were complaining that Alonso goal was foul? Why didn't show up to justify their stance?
But here you are hypocritically vomiting trash now that the table had turned.
If you were not there to affirm that Alonso goal was foul, you have no justification being here to write on Sanchez supposedly handball goal.

OreMI22:
Ghana is a nation, Nigeria is not.

Ghana is at peace with itself, Nigeria is at war with itself.

Ghana will naturally progress while Nigeria will naturally retrogress from trying to kill development in hated subregions of itself.

What you have observed between Nigeria and Ghana will only continue indefinitely, until Nigeria restructures and becomes one nation in truth.

Best comment so far.

Eledan:
When were you born?
You want anyone here to take a faceless kid words over the words of Pa Phillips Asiodu?

Who is Philip Asiodu? He is a nobody and is only entitled to one vote in Igboland. A degenerate who for the sake of his insatiable greed support the cold murder of his kind by mouthing off a propaganda that had long been debunked.


Achuzia is a hardened Igbo statesman who commands more respect in Igboland.
His allegiance to Igbo wellbeing had been proved and written with blood in Biafra, and even now, he is still an active member of Ohanaeze Ndiigbo.
His words and opinions as an actor in Igbo history bears more weight than those of Unknown turncoats like Asiodu driven by his greed and need to curry favour from his Igbophobic Nigerian cronies.

escapefromusa:
I always grow confused with any issue regarding the political relevance of the Ibo people in Nigeria.

Once a comment is made, no matter how scholarly, it gets refuted in an emotional way.

I am yet to find, an individual who supports the Ibo cessation ... make an argument or counter argument without emotional undertones or without trying to point out the original posters ethnic configuration.

Why is there is shortage of intellectuals in this struggle ?

You see what you want to see.

All falsehoods present in that article had been countered many times on NL, even on this thread. At a point it just gets boring countering them.


Nothing is emotional about the Igbo commoners resolve to ensure complete severance of shared colonial identity with Arewa-Oduanistans. It's rather the Igbophobic Arewa-Oduanistanis that get emotional about this Igbo resolve and grow dark in heart anytime Ndiigbo profess our love for Biafra our motherland, and exhibit this by throwing childish Igbophobic tantrums in every Igbo/ Biafra related thread.
You people need to grow up. You can't force love or union with people who would have nothing to do with you.

[b]Why we forced Ojukwu to declare Biafra

All of a sudden, we were given a date that on such and such a day the federal government is going to carve up Eastern Region. Ojukwu then called a Consultative Assembly of the people, among which were the Ika Igbos, also given a pride of place as part of the Igbo nation. Our traditional rulers from the Midwest, the Igbo speaking areas attended that conference.

I was privy. I was there. And around 1pm a news flash came. What we were hearing as rumour became a reality: Eastern Region was carved. They carved out Rivers State and South East State. So we went into the afternoon recess and by the time we came out of recess and went into afternoon session, a decision was quickly reached that we can’t sit back and see ourselves divided, so the best thing to do was that we must ask Ojukwu to declare the State of Biafra.

Before that there has been a lot of argument, here and there, over the issue of what name do we go by. So many different names and configurations were bandied about but finally we asked the group of lawyers assembled to prepare a communiqué declaring the state of Biafra.

Even that meeting, Ojukwu wasn’t there, he was still in Government House. This meeting was being held within Hotel Presidential. So by the time the decision was reached, this was carried to him, we were surprised that he said no. He will not do it. He said that he will not declare. We thought either they didn’t teach the military what is meant when somebody is trying to cut you to bits. If he didn’t understand, we did. So message was sent back to him and an ultimatum was given him that if by 8:00 O’clock that night he didn’t declare the state of Biafra, not only will we remove him, we will declare and decide who leads us.

Later in the evening he finally announced the state of Biafra. So we all rejoiced that now, at least, if Nigeria continued attacking us, we now knew how we were going to fight. The Eastern Region was one whole entity notwithstanding the earlier announcement by federal government creating three states out of Eastern Region.
Ojukwu as a magician

First to keep the morale of the people going, Ojukwu performed like a magician. People say, ah Okokon Ndem, Uche Chukwumerije, so many of them within the propaganda machinery, it was somebody that gave them the inspiration. Without Ojukwu, they wouldn’t have risen to the occasion. The army quickly changed by creating a situation where civilians were quickly mobilised into what was called Civil Defence.[/b]
http://asaba.com/ojukwu-biafra-and-i-col-achuzia/

So they all trooped out and headed for Enugu. We were also around to assist in receiving them. In fact, that was when Ika Igbo Association was formed, just as today you are hearing Anioma, Anioma; Anioma wasn’t in our lexicon then. What we had was Ika Igbo. And our interaction with Ojukwu and his government was concretised at that time.

From then, even though the army in the Midwestern Command, the high echelon, was more of Midwestern Igbos, the civil service cadre that should have lent weight to them and support were no more available. Most of them had headed across the Niger. And it must also be borne in mind that the Nigerian boundaries vis a vis East and West were not as they are today, where you have as Ogbaru and those places used to be Midwest, Midwestern Region, the Niger wasn’t a natural boundary, it was the effect of the war that brought about the Niger, at the end of the war being regarded as a natural boundary and the configuration that took place since then still makes it difficult for the Igbos to settle down properly.
The Ojukwu I knew

As I was saying, you are talking about Ojukwu. Here was a man because of his vision, somehow prepared by God or providence, whatever it is, prepared him and placed him at this point in time in history at a place where he was to act as Moses for his people. This was the reason why all his pronouncements had always been that efforts must be made to make sure that the Igbos still remain recognised within the set up and arrangement called Nigeria.

He made a lot of pronouncements and also, at the same time made a lot of requests from the Igbo people. I remember that there was a meeting he called of Leaders of Thoughts. During that meeting, he said what we are asking for is not separation but what we are entitled to by being partners in the arrangement called Nigeria. He said we were being pushed with intention of pushing us out of Nigeria, and this we will resist.

For the first time he was the one who clarified what we mean in my mind and conditioned my attitude during the period of warfare, in the battle field. He said they can push us, we will take our stand in our own soil with our back against the wall but we will not give up what we have already created in Nigeria.

He said, in terms of civilised norms implanted into Nigeria, it is the Igboman alone that feels he must build a decent house, not only to accommodate his family, but to accommodate those in whose land, in whose territory he acquired wealth and built these things. He said the Igbo man by education, self help, both within the commercial business group, the civil service, the entrepreneurship are the Igbos that we can’t abandon. We must resist the push.

From then on my interest became more firm and solid, in terms of support, which I made up my mind to give to him. He came to Enugu, we met, discussed briefly, then I left back to Britain. It was while I was back in Britain that 1p.m news, in the afternoon, in London, it was announced that, Chief Obafemi Awolowo said that if the East goes, the West will go. So I realised that the whole of this thing was heading towards a shooting match; and I felt that with the loss of so many experienced, trained officers from the East that they, Eastern Region, would need every hand available on deck.

That made me to board a plane coming back to Nigeria then to meet another coup, the July 1966 coup, which brought Gowon on board. I spent two days at Airport Hotel in Ikeja. When Murtala Mohammed was a Major, I knew him. George Miller, a friend of mine married to a German that I was going to stay in his house knew him (Murtala) but the instruction at the airport when we came out of the plane was that nobody goes out anywhere.

So we were taken to the Airport Hotel. George Miller, being friendly with Murtala, brought him and we met. We discussed and he assured that I should wait for a day or so and there would be flight to Benin. He kept to his words. Two days later, the route to Benin was opened again. And myself, my wife and child were taken to the plane which we boarded to Benin.

From there we headed to the East. By this time the situation was getting critical that second coup that we met was so devastating that it wasn’t only the army but everybody of Igbo origin or that came from the Eastern Region, including those Igbos from the Midwest became involved in the selective killings that were taking place.

And the vision which Ojukwu saw, when he protested now crystallized itself because the Midwesterners, Western Igbos, that were returning from the North and from the West, heading home, on reaching Benin, were not welcomed. Reliefs that were being distributed were not given them. Placements in the civil service departments where they were working, to enable them obtain salary or whatever would be given for succour were not allowed. They were told to go and meet their people in Enugu.

Nigeria’s war time Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, at the end of the Nigerian civil war in1970 announced ‘’No victor, no vanquished’’, a slogan, many thought, was meant to give those on the side of the defunct Biafra a kind of psychological relief and ‘sense of belonging’ in the affairs of the country. However, one of the top Biafran war commanders and a very close, trusted associate of Ojukwu the Biafran leader, Col Joseph Achuzia a.k.a “Air Raid’’, “Hannibal’’ or “Achucriminal’’ was thrown into jail for seven years after the war on the orders of the Federal Government under Gowon.

A British trained Aeronautic engineer and one-time Secretary General of the apex Igbo sociocultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Achuzia spoke inside his sitting room at his Asaba residence. Excerpts:

Could you comment on the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu you knew ?

Dim Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu has always been known to me right from my secondary school days, when we were in Kings College together. Then later we met in Britain. And by the time Nigeria became independent, in October 1960, and I came home, we met again. By then he had already become entrenched within his position in the Nigerian Army.

We did not interact before the first coup took place; and immediately after the coup I left back to Britain. And I was following events because he was a key player in the scenario that was unfolding. Then the next landmark in my relationship with him took place when he was appointed the Governor of Eastern Region and Ejoor (General David Ejoor, rtd) was also appointed a governor.

Ejoor was sent to Enugu and Ojukwu protested, which made the then Head of State, General Johnson Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi to change the postings and sent him to Enugu while Ejoor was posted to Benin.

When we got to Enugu the situation was such that a townsman of mine was also the Secretary to the Eastern Regional Government in the person of C. C. Mordi, from Asaba here. A lot of things were going on: the killings in the North, pogrom; so many Igbos from the North were rushing down home; and what was taking place made me to have a closer look into the sort of programme the then governor of Eastern Region, in the person of Odumegwu Ojukwu held for the Igbo people because the trauma being created by the extensive killing was such that it required somebody with a proper insight in dealing with human tragedy to handle. Soldiers, civilians, civil servants were affected.

In fact, what took place affected the core inner group that held Igbo citizenship together, something that made the Igbo Union, which one regarded as all supreme in everything, of which Ohanaeze today, the Igbozuruome of today, were modeled after. Igbo Union had to retreat to the East. And in doing so, every Igbo person, male, female, child everything, for survival, was heading eastward.
Why did Ojukwu protested Ejoor’s posting to Enugu

It seemed that Ojukwu, who probably foresaw tomorrow, knew what would happen in the future. Perhaps that was the reason he protested against Ejoor being sent to Enugu because I am quite certain, in my mind now, not on hindsight but from what I saw around that time that the posting wasn’t correct and that Ojukwu was right to protest.

Just to be clear.
Ojukwu started no war.

Ndiigbo collectively had examined the history of Biafran war, and found Ojukwu to be a hero, and not a villain.
I believe that no ethnic nationality in Nigeria are more intellectually endowed than Ndiigbo as to tell us who our heroes are or aren't.
No amount of Lagos-Ibadan falsehoods or articles by naive Igbos driven by false sense of understanding of events of Biafra , selfish agenda or by need to curry favour from Ndiigbo detractors in Nigeria will change the very fact and truth that Ikemba remains a Biafran and by extension, Igbo hero.

Isn't Nigeria currently ranked above Egypt? If by 2030 Egypt is now ranked above Nigeria, how is that improvement?

dragonking2:
I hear you but where was the unity when a whole ojukwu the hero of the igbos contested the presidential election twice and failed because his own people didn't come out in unity to support him.. it was so bad that ojukwu just manage to get 155,947 votes in 2007 election... This show that the unity amongst igbos is just a fabrication of mere imagination. The reality will always come out to speak.

Lol! Ojukwu is but a man, he is not equivalent to Ndiigbo. Moreover, the Nigerian electoral system in those days Of OBJ do or die PDP politics were highly rigged and flawed, you can't take some of those figures those days serious.

Ojukwu is highly loved by Ndiigbo and we continued to shower him with love till he died.

Igbo unity and ways will always be too hard for a non Igbo to grasp, let alone understand, I don't expect you to.

Ondo people marry Edos and Igbos alot. And some of them even look like they were originally Edo, but became Yorubanized in a distant past, especially Akoko and Ose parts of Ondo.


Most Yorubas can't understand Ondo dialects too.

dragonking2:
Keep chino out of it.. The truth are on numerous threads were several igbos have confirmed such division.. I have witnessed it several times with my igbos friends.. I even had one anioma friend who complained bitterly one day to me. He said that whenever he meets his igbos people they shake themselves thrice but shake him twice instead of thrice.. When he complained they jest at him that he is delta igbo and not true igbo..

See another thread of a lady complaining bitterly too..This isn't chino.

Igbo unity is unshakable. Even in England, the Southern English consider themselves more "Posh" than the Northerners, those petty sentiments exist in all ethnic nations, even in Israel( Ashkenazi and Sephardim) yet the unity of Israel or England in matters that matter is unshakable.
If Ndiigbo consider Anioma less Igbo, Uwaechue( Anioma man from Ogwashiuku) wouldn't have been elected to head the apex Igbo organization for two tenures, Asagba of Asaba wouldn't hold so much influence in Ohanaeze Ndiigbo as he does today, like wise Achuzia and the likes of Emma Okocha.

cheruv:
Akarigori...dika okowa okwu si kwuo bu ikpo mmo ojoo nile e nwere...nke onye ishi ha bu esu.
Esu bu aha nkenke ekwensu...dika Kanu shi di maka Kamalu...
Esu bu mmo nāhu maka ilu agha, igho aghuo na ikwe onu. O dika o bu ihnye mere ozigbo ndi Uka biara, ha ewere stampu Satan bie ya

Nsogbu adiro.

It will not be correct to make a comparison of the Biafran struggle to events in Scotland. Catalonia and a few other places. What is more profound is that the rabble rousing by way of propaganda has eaten so deep into the psyche that those affected, to this day, have not been able to see the duplicity of Ojukwu. The victim mentality so engrained remains to the extent that offspring that were born Years after the civil war are still fed this fare.They are just regurgitating the same wartime themes and heating up the polity.

Why would it not be correct to make a comparison of the Biafran struggle to events in Catalonia or Scotland?

Regardless of what you think the history of Biafra is or is not, the result is the same, the commoners in Igboland would not favour continued association with Yorubas and Arewa, and would like to put that to a test by means of referendum.
In both cases of Scotland and Catalonia, it's a story of people challenging co existence with strange Bed fellows.
Same is applicable in Nigeria and Biafra.

I personally believe that no sensible Igbo should want to have anything to do with Isokos/Urhobo/Ijaws/Itsekiris/Edos, in respect to nation forming.
We are better off without those people as a union with those people can only become Nigeria 2.0. An Igbo( Igbo in this context meaning all Igbo speaking people in SE and SS ) only nation will be the most ideal situation, but a favourable union with groups in Akwa-Cross area, especially those in Northern Cross River will be welcomed.

dragonking2:
Did you see only those two?

Asha90 and the Rest are Chino's monikers.

Igbo society is highly competitive one. There is competition in family amongst brothers, there is competition between families in a kindred, there is competition between villages that make up a town, there are competition between towns in same LGA. This is what outsiders mis inteprete as disunity.
This is up to inter state level.

Yet the East is the peaceful part of Nigeria and Eastern region was the most stable and violence less prone part of Nigeria, because beyond all those competitions, we still respect human lives, boundaries, limits and we still recognize bonds of brotherhood.
Yes there have been minor case of clashes like Ezza-Ezillo one, but it is an exception rather than the rule.
The Igbo as shown by IPOB and Ohanaeze is a United entity.

dragonking2:
I have given you an answer and we all know that you are trying all means to evade my own question of the high level of disunity amongst igbos despite speaking the same language.

What do you mean by disunity amongst Igbos?
You mean disunity between Chino and Abagworo, both of whom are online characters?
You are not serious.

cheruv:
Biko akarigori o bu aha a nākpo "Satan"??

Ole ihe akarigori putara?

Odika. Adirom sure.

Obu ife nnam ukwu na ekwu kali ma iwe wee ya!
Amarom ife oputalu, mana oyichalu " Ekwensu".

cheruv:
Utter BS!!
So Gowon and Ojukwu went to Aburi...negotiated a settlement of their own freewill only for Gowon to come back and say that certain parts of an agreement he negotiated himself won't hold anymore... I mean who does that
I think Nigerians are tired of being one country.... Just look at that kinda BS these chaps are feeding us with, as if our brains are filled with sewage

For Igbos... Its time to upp the momentum and forge a new country. Nigeria is dead!

Imagine someone changing the scoreline of football match after match had ended, and expecting it to stand by saying that he removed only few goals from the scoreline and left the important ones.
The kind of idiocy emanating from these Igbo sellouts these days eh, I'm beginning to imagine what Ojukwu went through, suffering betrayal after betrayal from these debased Igbos with no guilty conscience or sense Of communal well being, but Instead only driven by selfish agenda.
Igbo tolu ato!

[b]After the killings in the January and July coups and that unsurpassed butchery of Igbo civilians in northern Nigeria, there was a desperate need for peace in the country. In search of peace, the regional governors, David Ejoor, Usman Katsina, Robert Adebayo and Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, and the Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, met at Aburi in Ghana, where they agreed on and signed the Aburi Accord. The most significant aspect of the accord was constitutional: the reduction of the powers of the federal government by devolution of additional powers to regional governments. Long ago, an Igbo professor of political science at Howard University in Washington, DC told me that Yakubu Gowon implemented the Aburi Accord. To me, his statement was not only unbelievable but sacrilegious. I lost my temper at what I thought was historical revisionism taken to a nauseating extreme. The elderly professor must have understood my problem. I was suffering from a hangover of the Biafran propaganda. I was under the stupefying hold of the lies we were fed in Biafra. For he stated, “don’t worry, with time, in the course of your reading and research, you will find out that Gowon implemented the Aburi Accord”.[/b]


Gowon did not implement the Aburi Accord.All part of the Accord was important and was discussed fully and deliberated on, an agreement is either passed or not passed, there is no half way measures, that stage can only take place during negotiations, when each side give and take.
This I had already shown with the long article I posted earlier.
Your Howard professor is obviously severly mentallyretarded, I wouldn't be surprised.

[b]
Some of my detractors argued that secession was a necessary response to the mass-murder of the Igbo in northern Nigeria. Undoubtedly, that orchestrated slaughter of the innocent for no offense of theirs but their ethnicity was unconscionable. However, it would be selective amnesia to forget that the July 29th 1966 coup and the attendant anti-Igbo riots in the North did not sprout out of a void. They were in reprisal for an earlier coup in January 1966 in which an Igbo dominated group of army officers murdered the most important Hausa/Fulani political and military leaders (Ahmadu Bello, Tafawa Belewa and Zakari Miamalari) without killing any Igbo leader. And following the coup, the Igbo in the North became too celebrative; dancing and singing to a Rex Lawson song and telling their Hausa neighbors that the bleating of a goat in the song was Ahmadu Bello (the most important Hausa/Fulani leader) howling like a goat as he was being killed by Major Nzeogwu. It was the discriminatory killings and gratuitous mockery of the memory of their most important leader, amongst other reasons, that set the stage for the July 1966 anti-Igbo coup and the attendant anti-Igbo riots. [/b]

If only the father of this writer used a 20 Naira condom, it would have saved me the agony of writing a rebuttal to the above rubbish.

This Aturu is repeating the same Yoruba propaganda of Igbos singing Songs to mock the North. Same propaganda that none of them have been able to prove, as no such song was sang.
This mentally unstable man for the sake of his hunger ravaged stomach, will use falsehood propaganda to justify the senseless murder of Ndiigbo by his fellow Nigerians, absolving the Nigerians of all blames and puting the blame on innocent massacred Igbo victims.

One of my milder critics accused me of demonstrated dislike for Biafra and its leadership. Yes, I detest the Biafra leadership because, in its recklessness, arrogance and despotism, it brought about the death of hundreds of thousands at the glory of their youth and the starvation to death of more than one million hapless and blameless men, women and children. It dismantled the Igbo power structure, painstakingly put together over decades by the likes of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, and Michael Okpara, and set the Igbo back by at least 100 years. Why would any Igbo not despise a leadership that brought so much, avoidable, suffering, pain and sorrow to the Igbo?

How exactly did Biafran leadership dismantle the Igbo political structures and caused death of Igbos?

Did Biafra leadership tell Nzeogwu to start. Coup? We're they the ones who massacred Ndiigbo all over the country and threatened to do worst if not put in check?
This writer is clearly profoundly mentally retarded.

Some people are just naturally stupid.
All these APC Igbos whose New stock in trade is to insult the Igbo and denigrate our history, just to curry favour from our detractors who happen to be their pay masters.
I spit on you all.
Afonjas are in PDP, how many times have we seen them trying to paint their people in bad light by writing senseless falsehood articles to appear in the good book of Igbos or Hausas?

As far as the regions were concerned, it was decided that all the powers vested by the Nigerian Constitution in the regions and which they exercised prior to January 15, 1966, should be restored to the regions. To this end, the Supreme Military Council decided that all decrees passed since the military take-over, and which tended to detract from the previous powers of the regions, should be repealed by January 21, after the Law Officers should have met on January 14 to list out all such decrees.”

The decisions at Aburi amounted to, in terms of political and military control of Nigeria, that the country should be governed as a confederation.

Suffice it to say that the vocal military officers like Lt. Col. Murtala Muhammed, Major Martin Adamu and Major Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma did not attend the Aburi meeting. Prince Akenzua along with top permanent secretaries including Alhaji Yusuf Gobir, Phillip Asiodu, Eme Ebong, B.N. Okagbue and Allison Ayida deconstructed in Lagos, all that was agreed in Aburi.

On arrival in Lagos, Prince Akenzua discussed with Gowon and raised objections to what was agreed in Aburi. Gowon asked him to raise a memo which he did. I am sure a copy of the memo is with Gowon today while a copy is in the archives in the Presidency. Civil servants are to be seen and not to be heard and that is why Akenzua never released a copy of the memo to the world.

The memo dated January 8, 1967 began with: “Your Excellency, in view of my discussion with you last night, I am raising this memo in the interest our fatherland, Nigeria”. Akenzua traced the long hard road that Nigeria had travelled and stressed on the need to keep a United Nigeria.

He said in the memo that Gowon had given too much away in Aburi and that it would lead to the destruction of the country. He further added that Gowon had “legalised” total regionalism which “will make the centre very weak.” Akenzua alluded in his memo that a weak centre would lead to confederation and total disintegration of the country. It was the memo that prompted Gowon to summon a meeting of the secretaries to the military governments and other officials which was held in Benin City between February 16 and 18, 1967. If you look at the minutes of the Benin meeting presided over by Mr. H. A. Ejueyitchie, Secretary to the Federal Military Government, you will discover that it was a total rejection of what was agreed upon in Aburi. The Benin meeting interpreted in its own way the agreement reached in Aburi.

The following was agreed upon: “That Army to be governed by the Supreme Military Council under a Chairman to be known as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and Head of the Federal Military Government; Establishment of a Military Headquarters comprising equal representation from the regions and headed by a Chief of Staff; Creation of Area commands corresponding to existing regions and under the charge of Area commanders, matters of policy, including appointments and promotion to top executive posts in the Armed Forces and the Police to be dealt with by the Supreme Military Council. During the period of the Military Government, military governors will have control over area commands for internal security; Creation of a Lagos Garrison including Ikeja Barracks. In connection with the re-organisation of the Army, the council discussed the distribution of military personnel with particular reference to the present recruitment drive. The view was held that general recruitment throughout the country in the present situation would cause great imbalance in the distribution of soldiers. After a lengthy discussion of the subjects, the council agreed to set up a military committee on which each region will be represented, to prepare statistics which will show: Present strength of Nigeria Army; Deficiency in each sector of each unit; the size appropriate for the country and each area command; additional requirement for the country and each area command.

The committee is to meet and report to council within two weeks from the date of receipt of instructions. The council agreed that pending completion of the exercise in connection with re-organisation of the army, further recruitment of soldiers should cease. The implementation of the agreement reached on August 9, 1966, it was agreed, after a lengthy discussion, that it was necessary for the agreement reached on August 9 by the delegates of the Regional Governments to be fully implemented. In particular, it was accepted in principle that army personnel of Northern origin should return to the North from the West. It was therefore felt that a crash programme of recruitment and training, the details of which would be further examined after the committee to look into the strength and distribution of army personnel had reported, would be necessary to constitute indigenous army personnel in the West to a majority there quickly.

When on March 15, the Secretary of the Benin Traditional Council, Mr. Frank Irabor, announced that “the leopard is ill in the Savannah bush”, we knew exactly what had happened to the Omo N’oba N’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo Erediauwa (CFR), the 38th Oba of Benin, who was born on June 22, 1923 and ascended the throne on March 23, 1979.

Well, to an average Benin man or woman, such an announcement is well-understood. The Benin people value tradition and culture. And they are proud of it. I am from Ufosu in the Idanre Local Government Area of Ondo State that shares border with Edo State, so I should know.

The Oba of Benin is the traditional ruler of the Edo people and head of the historic Eweka dynasty of the Benin Empire.

The services of Oba Erediauwa are well-valued and will not be forgotten. Before becoming an Oba, as Prince Samuel Aiseokhuoba Igbinoghodua Akenzua, he was an outstanding civil servant. He, in fact, rose to become the Federal Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health before he retired in 1973.

Along with others, he attended the Aburi meeting held at the Peduase Lodge where the conflict of Nigeria was discussed between January 4 and January 5, 1967. Aburi is a town in Ghana and a 45-minute drive from Accra, the capital of Ghana.

Those who attended the meeting were Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon, Col. Robert Adebayo, Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Lt. Col. David Ejoor, Lt. Col. David Hassan Katsina, Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Selem and Mr. J. Omo-Bare. Others were Prince S.I.A. Akenzua (Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office.), Mr. P.T. Odumosu (Secretary to the Military Government, West.), Mr. N.U. Akpan (Secretary to the Military Government, East.), Mr. D.P. Lawani (Under-Secretary, Military Governor’s Office, Mid-West) and Alhaji Ali Akilu (Secretary to the Military Government, North.) The Chairman of the Ghana National Liberation Council, Lt. Gen. J.A. Ankrah, declared the meeting open in his capacity as then the head of state of Ghana.

Who ever wrote this article needs a brain transplant surgery.

His stupidity is genetic.

Fineman87:
My brother. Me I tire for them. Their compulsion to oppose and confront the igbos betray their innate fears. May heaven help them.

Nnaa eh, Ike gwuru.