₦airaland Forum

In January 1975, Gowon revamped the membership of the Federal Executive Council, increasing the number of military ministers. He depended more and more on a small group of advisers and became increasingly inaccessible to his military colleagues. Without broad consultation, he backed off from the 1976 date set for a return to civilian rule, explaining that to adhere rigidly to it would "amount to a betrayal of a trust" and "certainly throw the nation back into confusion." Public employees staged protest strikes in May and June that brought essential services to a standstill. The government responded by granting retroactive wage increases that averaged 30 percent, which fed inflation and led to industrial strikes as union members demanded parallel raises.

The political atmosphere deteriorated to the point that Gowon was deposed in a bloodless coup d'état July 29, 1975--the ninth anniversary of the revolt that had brought him to power. At the time, Gowon was at an OAU summit meeting in Kampala, Uganda. The perpetrators of the coup included many of the officers who had participated in the July 1966 coup. Even the officers responsible for Gowon's security were involved. Gowon pledged his full loyalty to the new regime and left for exile in Britain, where he received a pension from the Nigerian government.

The Gowon regime came under fire because of widespread and obvious corruption at every level of national life. Graft, bribery, and nepotism were an integral part of a complex system of patronage and "gift" giving through which influence and authority were asserted. Although the military had pledged to rid the government of corruption, the public became increasingly aware of abuses, primarily because of daily exposés in the press. In 1973 the federal government established a special anticorruption police force--the "X-Squad"--whose subsequent investigations revealed ingenious forms of extortion and fraud-- not only in government and public corporations but in private business and in the professions as well.

A major scandal that had international implications and reached the highest levels of government and the business community took place in the mid-1970s; it involved the purchase abroad of construction materials by state agents at prices well above market values. Rake-offs were pocketed by public officials and private contractors. Other scandals in hospitals and orphanages shocked the populace, while corruption in importing medical drugs whose effective dates long since had expired revealed that even the health of Nigerians was at risk.

Inefficiencies compounded the impact of corruption. In mid1975 , 400 cargo ships--250 of them carrying 1.5 million tons of cement--clogged the harbor of Lagos, which had been paralyzed for fifteen months with vessels waiting to be unloaded. To compound the error, spoiled and inferior-grade cement was concealed by mixing it with acceptable material for use in public building projects. Later, buildings collapsed or had to be dismantled because of the inferior product. New roads washed away because of bad construction and inadequate controls. In these scandals, as in others, the culprits were a combination of Nigerian businessmen, government officials, and foreign companies. Few people and few projects seemed exempt from the scourge.

Crime posed a threat to internal security and had a seriously negative impact on efforts to bring about economic development. Armed gangs, often composed of former soldiers, roamed the countryside engaging in robbery, extortion, and kidnapping. The gangs sometimes operated with the connivance of the police or included moonlighting soldiers. Pirates raided cargo ships awaiting entry to ports or unloaded them at the piers ahead of the stevedores. Drug trafficking and smuggling were prevalent. Punishment was meted out to large batches of convicted and suspected criminals, who were dispatched by firing squads in public executions meant to impress spectators with the seriousness of the offenses and with the government's concern to curb crime. These measures had no noticeable effect on the crime rate, however, but seemed rather to provoke a callous public attitude toward violence.

gidgiddy:
And then you people had to beg for 13% of your resources as opposed to the 50% you enjoyed in the old Eastern Region while the rest was carted up North to build Abuja. Yeah, you guys have a lot to be thankful to the war criminal called Gowon.

That Guy is from Delta state, not even Rivers.

Interesting development.

sanpipita:
We all know the truth, the so called raid was targeted at Judges who refuse to bow to APC wishes.

Even the blind could see this from the very beginning.
This is not about the judge being corrupt or not, this is about the Judge not dancing to their tunes.

gidgiddy:
Dont decieve your self with this write-up. Only a very ignorant person doesnt know that Nigeria is no where near democratically advanced enough to allow any part of it to seceed through a political process. What would be the point of MASSOB/IPOB getting involved politics? Is it so they can get their members elected into office then go to a National Assembly where any bill on secession will be voted out by Yorubas and Hausas? Pointless venture. You dont need politics to unite people, you only need to unite people around an ideology, which is self determination. The job of IPOB/MASSOB is not to get involved in the dark word of Nigerian politics. Their job is to sensitise the people to their right to be free and act as a pressure group to get the Government to consider a referendum in SS/SE area. The deal here is that since Nigeria is the illegal creation of the white man, only the indigenous ethnic nationalities have the right to decide if they want to part of it or not. UN and AU charters on self determination support referendum on any country that was illegally created or annexed such as Nigeria.

This is the problem.

You lots are living in a fantasy world. You have refused to face reality.

What you think about Nigeria means nothing. What matters is that UN and all the world power out there accepts Nigeria as as legal entity with full sovereignty that comes with that.
This is a reality you cannot wish away by shouting Zoo zoo all over the place or cursing Luggard. This is a reality you must work around to achieve your agenda.

Nobody is talking about secession for now, we are talking about political control. Politics is what unites and divides people, control the politics and you decide the union or division. You can't unite people without politics.

If IPOB/MASSOB job is about sensitization and not to control political, social and economic events in Igboland, then why are they issuing threats to elected political office holders and their traditional lackeys who are saddled with the duty of political, social and economic control.

What exactly does MASSOB want to achieve by stopping ofalas and Iri iji festivals? Where exactly did they derive the powers to do such? Who gave them such power? Where is their legitimacy?

What do they want to achieve with such actions? To cause anarchy in Igboland? Or do they not know that the traditional and political leaders will not take orders from them and that such will lead to face off and break of law and orde in Igboland, or don't they think of the consequences of their actions?

gidgiddy:
That may be your vision, but that is not the vision of IPOB or MASSOB. They have no interest in the politics of Nigeria. What they want is to unite the SE/SS zone to demand a referendum that area

This is the cowardice and shying away from shouldering responsibility I speak of.

In what land do you get to unite people without control of political processes? Are you lots naive or just plain con artists playing with the lives of our youths?

If IPOB/MASSOB has no interest in politics, then they are clueless jellyfishes and should stop trying to influence political processes in the East via the illegitimate back door. They should in plain language be disbanded.

When I first visited Owerri was in 2007, I was so astonished and taken by the beauty of Owerri. There were green and lively flowers all over the town, everywhere was neat, Owerri was the neatest town in the entire country, it even won an award, only Calabar could match Owerri in neatness those days.

Ohakim was not the best, but that man kept Owerri neat and clean, he was a full Igbo blood.

How exactly did we end up with a man whose half DNA is Hausa. A man not fully Igbo presiding over Imo stage. If he were performing well, we could ignore his alien genes, but Okorocha is not performing well. He has plunged Imo state into the abyss of infrastructural development.

.

jamesversion:
I have an Idea for MASSOB and IPOB. They should become very active in local politics. All IPOB and MASSOB members should be card carrying members of APGA and use that platform to elect Igbo-loving members into various elective/political positions across Igboland.

They should use that medium to ensure that they deliver good governance and quality representation of Igbos within the local, state and federal levels. That enables the people to see that they truly stand for the developent of Ighyoland and also to ensure unlimited funding for their activism. With time they become an intense political force to even determine which Igboman becomes president of Nigeria wen the time of Igbos arrives.


Pazienza, Igboid, ariani, abagworo, hopeathand, afam4eva, billyonaire

Which APGA? The same one Obi rode on to over see the massacre and dumping of many Igbo youths inside Ezu river, the same one Obiano currently rides and looked the other way while hundreds of Igbo youths were massacred in cold blood in Onitsha and environment.

The same APGA that Okorocha rode on to power only to decamp to APC.

APGA is part of the problem and not the solution.

GworoChewinMaga:
What does Lagos actually contribute to the National economy?

The FG and corporate environment are lamenting over recession induced not from a slump in business activities in Lagos but because of a fall in oil pricing at the intl market?

If Lagos was so economically relevant, why hasn't Lagos found a way to rescue our economy?

The answer to this is simply that Lagos is a mere beneficiary and not in any way a driving force of the nigerian economy.

There are now more functional operating companies in Ogun State and along Ibadan Expressway than there are in Lagos. That thus rules Lagos out as a leading industrial hub.

The only skewed advantage Lagos has over any state is the domicialation of corporate and financial headquarters (a throw back to the time Lagos was the political capital of Nigeria) and also the monopoly Lagos ports enjoy ( due to an intentional anti developmental policy towards the SS/SE by the FG after the civil war).

Even the VAT claimed is not only from yoruba Lagos but from Nigerians from every nook and cranny residing and working in Lagos.

So why should Lagos get more than it has unduly gotten from over the years?

This should have ended this thread. Well thought and put. Simple and concise.

Trash talk from Ekwueme.

Ndiigbo is not important to any Nigerian anymore than we are important to the rest of the World.

Before Lugard 1914 abomination, we didn't know of the existence of Yorubas and their Fulani-Hausa neighbors, and they were just perfectly fine without us.

They will still be perfectly fine when Lugard abomination becomes rectified back to the default settings before 1914.

So now MASSOB realizes the trick? You don't go to fight external aggressors without first putting your house in order.

Rather than go about issuing silly illegal threats on Igbo political jobbers masquerading as leaders and their traditional lackeys, they can take control of the political destiny of Igboland, by floating a powerful political party, and Chase those political jobbers and their traditional lackeys away from positions of authority fair and square using the power of the polls.
If they put half of the strength they put on RB on marketing this their new political party and exposing the failure of political and traditional leadership in Igboland, and then spend 1/4 of the effort they spend on the street protests in monitoring the votes and making sure these political jobbers can't use Nigerian security personnels to rig the elections, they will ascend the throne of political leadership in Igboland and will then have the opportunity to usher in the economic and social control they currently desire in the region.

But the Irony is that the same MASSOB/IPOB youths are same people that during election days will be hired by political jobbers in Igboland for their rallies, campaign train and elections monitoring/ rigging.
You begin to wonder if they suffer from a form of cognitive dissonance.

MASSOB/IPOB can continue playing their hide and seek game, but it doesn't take a genius to see their cowardice in running away from a responsibility they must shoulder if they want to take their agenda to the next level.

Why exactly are Yorubas carrying Igbo matter on head like Gala. Have they finished mourning Tinubu betrayal by their Afonjas?

Henrydone:
Lagos and Enugu ranks among the most resilient city in the world please check what it means by resilient even a village can be resilient yes Lagos is livable but as for Enugu.

It had long been explained that only eastern cities were taken cognizance of in that air pollution stat, and they were copied directly from the research work done by an Easterner in Eastern towns and cities.

And what they talked of was air pollution. Not lack of infrastructure or dirty environment.

Resilient city means everything good. That's why cities like Barcelona , Washington,Sydney are there and Ibadan or Ogbomosho aren't.


This is a thread on the so called Onitsha and Aba pollution. Follow Sonnie10 well put posts there from
Page 5-8.
https://www.nairaland.com/3102772/onitsha-ranked-most-polluted-city/5

Okeycima:
cool I have seen them,but is there any chance of getting them on hard copy?

Those are colonial documents. Getting hard copies will be hard.

You can always make them hard copies yourself by printing them out and binding them.

Abagworo:
Why don't you sound this way when other Igbo States are attacked? Hypocrite.

I defend all Igbo speaking people with exception of Ikwerre. You can go through my post and see. As of yesterday, I was defending Abia state from bad image publicity assigned to her by a Yoruba NYSC member that served there. I would have done same if it were Imo, Ebonyi, Anambra, Enugu.

I don't support Chino image battery of Imo state, just as I don't support you opening threads like this, which you fully know will attract Chino's attention.

You should stop this madness. When brothers fight, strangers rejoice and steal them to stupidity.

All these images you and Chino are posting here, will be used against Ndiigbo by Igbophobic elements tomorrow, and guess what? They wouldn't care about what part of Igboland those pics were taken from, it will be a case of " an injury to one, is an ailment to all".

Unu malukwanu ife.

Chai! Abagworo bu okenye na agwo ofe, tufia!

That Ikwerre half of you is seriously affecting you. It's in you, no need asking you to change.

Chino, you know that the Guy is not stable mentally, why you keep indulging him is what I don't get. When a sane man fights with a mad man in the market place, it becomes very hard to separate the sane from the insane.

OP is Igbo, from Ijebu-Igbo to be precise.

The default configuration of the afonja people is to worship buhari. Anything else is an anomaly.

Say no more. Game! Set!! And match!!!

Caseless:
you ethnocentric dude, what's the end product of a mere wish? Can you wish death for yourself if it's a just a "wish"?. You're saying this cos kelechi is ibo.

This is friday o! Better go loosen up.

Caseless:
argentines did not pray for anyone to fall before he got there. PHD syndrome typical of black people.

Nawa for you o! How did he pull Aguero down? Can't someone have his wishes again?

Deeypeey:
Awwwwwww......a very touching story.
U can always guess its our sisters from the east....when u love money more than yourself,this is a typical outcum.Na u wan marry "oyinbo" naw,u bliv he shud be loaded....sorry ehn. "Lover" indeed...

Afonja. Yes, your sisters from EAST Ogbomosho.

morscino:
lol...I understand ur bias and pain to see the truth,Mr man! no be say dem tell me,I lived there,ate n even learnt ur language.
I didnt post dis to start an arguement,this is one of d reasons why d SE is still in d state it is...Hatred from ppl like u,I met alot of really hospitable ppl but majority are just like u.
It's a pity!...most educated indeed,in a place where answers to exams(even common entrance) are written on d board yet ppl still fail,a place where they rely on corp members to teach relevant subjects,etc.
80% of d ppl running after vehicles in lagos hold up are ur kinsmen,how many south westerners do u see doing such in ur region and yet ur standard of living is better.SMH!
Me and my then roomie(an edo boy)did d best we could even tho some of d ppl there said we were trying to use our kindness to steal their girls(just like a dunce u)
I have smart kids over there whom by God's grace I wish to sponsor on a scholarship to the university level and stupid comments like urs won't stop me.

Glad that I have drawn you out of your treacherous veneer of objectivity to expose the afonjaic tribalist in you.
If you watch closely, you will see that I have no problem with the outright Yoruba tribalists here spitting venom about Ndiigbo, their hate is needed to remind Ndiigbo of what we face. But I have real issues with core tribalists like you, that cover your self up with veneer of objectivity while you go about oozing of Igbophobia.

We are getting there. Now to the matter.

Abia state is better than whatever part of afonjaland you crawled out from. The state has been toping WAEC and NECO stats for years now.
She also has an impressive list of influential and quality human resources.

My cousin served in Ogbomosho, he told me of the level of illiteracy and poverty ravaging afonjaland, I thought he was joking until I paid him a visit.
Most of his afonja Students were damn too mentally retarded, most can't even understand English, yet they were in senior secondary.
The girls in Ogbomosho were damn average looking and ugly, my cousin felt he was the unluckiest guy on earth.
The youths were mainly touts and useless, non of them wanted to do any hard job, I couldn't believe there are parts of Nigeria still that backward.

SE is the most densely populated region in Nigeria, the competition here is high, Ndiigbo can hardly survive it, let alone your lazy Yorubas, be that as it may, we still have a number of Yorubas here.

Next time, learn to keep your solutions for your poverty ravaged, juju ritual, educationlly backward Yorubaland,leave Ndiigbo out of your masturbation, we don't need any advise from any afonja, especially when our problems are less complex than those of Yorubas.

Thank you.

morscino:
It's quite unfortunate that the ethnic/religious bigotry amongst Nigerian youths has eaten so deep that,most are not addressing the issues raised by this post.
I can't imagine that some people's major concern is the source(Vanguard).

I was once a youth corp member in Abia state,so I can definately relate to this post.
There was this girl in our area then,her name was Chidinma,she was less than 20yrs and she had already sold 4 children.
She never saw it as a big deal as a matter of fact most girls over there don't see it as a big deal.Then I began to wonder what could have gone wrong?I was able to identify few reasons.

1.Poverty: The standard of living of some ppl in that part of Nigeria would marvel you and this is not to ridicule anybody.It's very easy for someone who stays in lagos to think,the whole of Nig is d same.20k might not be anything to you but to some ppl it's everything.

2.Education:The govt in these areas are not doing enough in terms of education,while serving I taught in a sec sch.

3.Moral decadence:There is need for massive re-orientation of the youths in that part to prevent a disaster waiting to happen.

There is an urgent need to develop south east Nigeria,the govs,senators,rep members,etc from this region have been useless over the years(as far as I am concerned) but unfortunately they have been able to convince d ppl dat their under-development is from abuja.

#DevelopSouthEastNigeriaFast!.

Another Afonja with his lies.

The standard of living in SE is better than that in your neck of wood.

SE leads the entire Nigeria in education, and we have stats to back this up. Go and upgrade the obviously poor education standards of your people before you think about that of a people better than you.

Take your moral sanctimonious platitudes to your juju ritual people.

#Developyourown place fast.

Pretentious tribalists like you,claiming objectivity disgusts me. I rather deal with the real tribalists.

EazyMoh:
You believe that and you still want to secede. Have you ever wondered about the unfavorable tax conditions that might be imposed on the Igbos and their businesses? hell some government would outrightly confiscate their belongings while at the same time making their business unfavorable.
Imagine all the Igbos earning a living in different nook and cranny of Nigeria forced to fold up and move to the east, how do you think they are gonna fare. I know you'd say you are ready for that, we'll don't bother, good luck with that.

They will just be fine. There are millions of Igbos spread all over the world. From North America to Europe, to Asia and to West,,East, and south African countries. Those countries needn't be part of Nigeria for those Igbos there to survive and thrive.

When Igboland stops being part of Nigeria, those Igbos Still in Nigeria will learn to survive and thrive like Ndiigbo spread all over other pparts of the World not sharing same country with Ndiigbo.

Your scaremongering is totally unfounded.

EazyMoh:
Oga park well! You can continue to twist facts and history to feed your tribalistic agenda, bit everyone knows that the regional system of government of the first republic died the moment Ironsi declared the decrees dissolving the regional houses of Parliament and any other law establishing regional governments thereby concentrating the power in the center. Isn't that what you are all angry about?
That the center is too strong especially after realizing you can't keep the north away from it? All those decrees by Gowon and OBJ were possible because Ironsi's decrees have cemented the way for that. If Tafawa Balewa were still to be prime minister none of those decrees would have been passed.

Lol!

You are not making any sense.
Ironsi was murdered before he could entrench his unitary system fully. He never dissolved the regions, and he wasn't responsible for regional governments dissolution.

The two events that set Nigeria to its present path of destruction were;

1. Gowon who seized power, dissolved the regional governments, created dysfunctional non viable entities called states, there by increasing the cost of governance in the process, all in attempt to increase the number Of non viable dysfunctional entities up North called states, to drain the New discovered oil wealth down south.

2. Obasanjo, who put the last nail on the coffin of fiscal federalism, when he dispossessed indigenous people of their lands and resources thereof and handed them all to himself and Northern elites via the land use decree.

Try all you want, this is history as Ndiigbo know it. And it remains sacrosanct.
It wasn't Ironsi who caused any of those two events, he was actually murdered for even trying to carry out measures no way near those two measures in severity by same people who went on to carry out those measures and shamelessly in some warped logic still turn around to blame Ironsi for their own actions. How much more pathetic can you lots be.

Olu317:
Igboid or whatever your ID, do make me wonder on the method you adopted in this analysis of the Yoruba region's population in 1931 which was limited to South West only outside Lagos protectorate . Do you not know that Yoruba were the agitators against colonial administration?, you really sounded unlettered with your purported pseudo information which is baseless. Are you saying the offa, Igbomina, Kabba, oro, Ekiti , Ilorin, Isanlu,etc to mention few towns are not Yoruba people? yet our language is spoken in all these places , if for instance the OLUKUMI people were counted as Yoruba, or the Yoruba people/ extraction in Bini Kingdom, can you really stand the test of time?, go and do more research in the higher institution abroad, perhaps you will have more knowledge on how to identify people of the same Race. Take it or leave it Yoruba Race is larger and more blessed than your IGBO tribe ,QED. Your so called Hero, Nnamdi Azikwe was even trained politically by a Yoruba man.

It's on record that the region that rebelled most against the British rule in Nigeria was the Igbos both Western and Eastern Igbos.

The Western Igbos fought the British for years in a warfare now historically known in Igbo as "Aya ekumeku" translated as the "unspoken war " due to the secrecy of the plotters.

The Aro fought the British in what is known as Anglo- Aro war, the British had to battle hard to subjugate each and every Igbo town and clan.
And even when they had succeeded in pacifying the region, colonial rule was still resented, with Aba women riots being the notable, the indirect rule of the British using Warrant chiefs also was resisted for long in many Igbo communities.

In contrast to Yorubaland that was already exhausted after the Yoruba civil war known as Kiriji war and eagerly welcomed the British rule, if it only can bring them Peace,the British experienced more resistance in Igboland.

Olukumi is nolonger Yorubas, just as Igbide( now in Isoko, even though of Igbo ancestry) can't be Igbos anylonger. They had both assimilated into the culture and language of their present geographical locations, Western Igboland for Olukumi and Isokoland for Igbide.

Opobo speak Igbo and we know it was founded by Igbos with Ijaws, yet its not Igbo today.



The Yorubas in the Northern provinces were accounted for in the 1931 census, this very much is true and I had elaborated on it in the earlier pages of this thread.

As for the last part of your post, well, you are well entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

EazyMoh:
Well isn't it ironic the federalism system of the first republic was the condition giving by the north if it were to ever join Nigeria.
Later Ironsi cancelled it and single handedly created the today's system.
Anyway Nigeria can be restructured or dissolved, but only on the terms and conditions of the North. So stay tuned.

Never knew that Ironsi was Gowon, the man that dissolved the regions and created non viable states in their stead.
Never knew Ironsi was Obasanjo that enacted the land use decree, that took the lands of oil producing communities from their hands, and placed into the hands of oil stealing Northern elites that owe oil wells throughout the oil producing region and allowed states like Bornu to partake in the crude oil wealth of Delta and Rivers states fully backed by the law.

The kind of falsehoods I get to hear everyday in NL eh, I just keep thanking God for this ICT age.