₦airaland Forum

^^Metalgoong

Considering the high concentration of tertiary institutions in Enugu with its large population of beautiful gals, Enugu big boys may be filing for bankruptcy soon

It will be dishonest to declare that all was well with Nigeria before the military putsch of 1966 as many hacks try to portray events of the misty ’60s. The country had broken up as a veritable political entity before the army struck because the centre could no longer hold.



Tyrants were holding sway in virtually all the four regions of the federation even as they were in fierce contest with formidable oppositions. The opposition Dynamic Party of Chike Obi and the Action Group of Sam Ikoku and Eyo O. Eyo could not easily be suppressed or contained in Eastern Nigeria, although the NCNC enjoyed some comfortable majority. Yet the major cities of Onitsha, Enugu, Aba, Calabar, Uyo and Port Harcourt were in the hands of the opposition. Dr. Michael Okpara, with all his fabled power, could not underrate the opposition even as, in many cases, he tried coercive measures to get their endorsement.



The West was the most balanced in terms of representation, one of about 55 per cent government to 45 per cent opposition. The appearance of Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola there in 1959 introduced some bitterness into the politics of the West as he sought to consolidate power in the hands of those he called Yorubas, excluding Ondos, Ekitis, Ijebus, Lagosians and Midwesterners.



Many very senior civil servants, who became giants in the federal civil service, transferred their services to the centre during those uneasy times. There were political riots in what became the Midwest, led by Prince Shaka Momodu, to resist the oppression by the Action Group in the West led by Akintola. The local police slapped trumped-up charges on opponents of the ruling party, which was also soon to land in its own crisis that ultimately invited the military to the political arena. The party had split and a splinter group under Akintola became the UPP and later NNDP. That party wielded absolute power without the backing of Westeners. It was an iron monster with clay feet. It crashed and got broken to smithereens, taking the rest of Nigeria with it to destruction and military intervention.



We cannot easily forget the treasonable felony trial of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chief Tony Enahoro and others, which swung Igbos then into Awo’s ardent supporters. The Igbos thought he represented resistance to oppression and that became sweet comfort for embattled Okpara who before then was losing hold. He was all the time pro-Awo in his NCNC party against the views of most of his Western colleagues in the fold. The North was not the monolithic paradise some commentators seek to convey to young Nigerians nowadays. The Northern Elements’ Progressive Union, NEPU, was in stiff competition with the intolerant Northern People’s Congress, NPC, of Alhaji Ahmadu Bello. NEPU was an older party formed by young elements in the North to question the emirate system and the Direct Native Authority, DNA, which practically granted emirs the power of life and death. Those young educated elements challenged the system. Apart from the nationalist emir of Zaria, Alhaji J’afaru, and his tolerant counterpart in Kano, Sanusi, the vast Northern provinces were governed by feudal masters to whose train the NPC hitched its wagon when it hurriedly became the ruling party in that region. The late Alhaja Gambo Sawaba Amarttey would tell in many interviews the crude physical assaults on opponents of the NPC in the North by uniformed thugs of the party called Dan Dukas. NEPU stalwarts were regular inmates in Northern prisons.



The Tiv riots of 1961 produced the first treason charges in post-independence Nigeria. Joseph Tarka and others were tried. The riots ravaged the people of Benue and the neighbouring Plateau province that was demanding a region of their own. That sore did not heal until the war broke out in 1967. Ibrahim Imam, the charismatic Kanuri, who had been an official of the NPC, also pulled out of the party and formed the powerful Borno State Movement which gained grounds over most of present-day Borno, Yobe, Bauchi and Gombe states. Ibrahim Dimis, a NEPU chieftain, was the nemesis of Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s premier, in Bauchi.



All parts of Nigeria were engulfed in one crisis or the other, perhaps signposting the labour pains for the birth of a true Nigeria, which the leaders of early post-independence era incompetently midwifed. Mutual suspicion, instead of trust, reigned unabated. Soon after Awo’s treason trial, there was the one of Sidi Khayam and Dr Allen, the Oxford University lecturer, who was consorting with some leftist trade unionists in 1964. Khayam, a friend, was the general secretary of dockworkers. He was a 24-carat socialist that the conservative elements in the central government, taking orders from the British government, could not tolerate. The 1964 general elections were expected to bring the necessary change in Nigeria but the events in the West had soured all efforts towards co-operation and had slammed two powerful unyielding factors on the political arena, namely the Nigerian National Alliance, NNA, and the United Progressive Grand Alliance, UPGA.



Dr Samuel O. Ogbemudia, a major in the army then who was close to Chukwuma K. Nzeogwu, said politicians were shopping in the barracks for allies in the bid for one alliance or the other to undo one another. He said he and Nzeogwu resisted those politicians but was surprised that his friend later staged a coup.



After the 1964 elections to the central government, which occasioned a 14-day strike by workers and the refusal of President Nnamdi Azikiwe to call Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa to form a government because the polls were scandalised with massive fraud and irregularities, any amateur political watcher would have been right to speculate a military intervention. But whichever side struck, the sacrificial lamb was to be Balewa who appeared to be an enigma to all.



It was in this mêlée that some middle-rank officers staged a coup, perhaps, to avert another one which Mr Stanley Olabode Wey, then secretary to the federation, said was being planned by the NNA. It was that January 1966 coup that was trivialised by a BBC correspondent, Sola Odunfa, as an Igbo putsch while commenting on Emeka Ojukwu’s death.



With the tonnes of literature released in the last 35 years on the Nigerian civil war, Odunfa ought to have avoided such stereotypical categorisation suggesting the coup was by Igbo officers. In the next breath, he called on one Fola Oyewole to comment on Chukwuemeka Ojukwu’s death. Oyewole, a captain then in the Nigerian Army, was one of the coup plotters. He is a Yoruba man. He has never denied nor regretted his part in the January 1966 coup. Oyewole did not speak on the coup but gave credit to Ojukwu’s organising ability for the war which, he thought, should have been delayed for a little later. That was not good for the image of BBC Network Africa which for some years lately, has lost its spice because of poor and ungrammatical presenters and ill-informed reporters. Odunfa’s letter or comment bore a hole in the credibility of the BBC in reporting Nigeria.



Nigeria lost millions of people but it was not the secession but the civil war that caused those lives on both sides. Officially, it was Lagos that declared war to bring the secessionists back to the fold. There had been two secessions before Biafra. Adaka Boro, whom Nigeria proclaimed later to be a hero, had declared the Niger Delta as a sovereign country, backing it up with arms by seizing security outfits in the parts he occupied. He was overpowered, tried and gaoled.



The leaders of the July 29, 1966 coup challenged the territorial integrity of Nigeria by declaring they were excising the former Northern Nigeria from the federation. It took Abdulazeez Attah and Mohammed D. Yusufu to force them to change their minds temporarily. They were over-ruling Yakubu Gowon until the latter mustered a greater force to his side. At a point when Allison Ayida, a young permanent secretary from the Midwest, was persuading them to reconsider their stand, Murtala Rufai (Ramat) Muhammed, a leader of the coup, told him “to shut up.”



The North took that stand to the conference called by Gowon. The intent to, mens rea, is guilt and so those coup plotters were secessionists. Shettima Kashim, the former governor of Northern Nigeria, told the conference that the North would leave except Nigeria became a confederation.



The Western delegation led by Awo asked for a loose federation with a secession clause to be inserted in the constitution. The Eastern delegation, led by Professor Eni Njoku, asked whether the region was still wanted in Nigeria. The East followed with a request for an arrangement that would grant regions such autonomy to allow them to protect themselves because of the broken social contract with the centre.



It was the Midwest delegation, led by Enahoro, which departed from the mandate it was given by the people and harkened to some Ibadan University eggheads who had influence on Lieutenant-Colonel David Ejoor, the military governor, that sang another tune different from outright confederation. Enahoro, in a discussion with me in later years, regretted the role he played.



What then is this fetish about secession and Emeka Ojukwu as if he was the first person ever to challenge the unity Nigeria? Ojukwu, from the age of 11, had shown enough courage to sacrifice himself for the freedom of the black man while a first-year pupil at King’s College, Lagos, in 1944.



He was tried for treason by His Majesty the King of the United Kingdom when he slapped a superintendent of police during the King’s College students’ strike. Two of my relations, Layinka Akpata and Valetine Edobor-Osula, were conscripted into the West African Frontier’s Force to fight in World War II because of that strike. Both regarded Emeka, their gay, as a courageous and upright man when they were alive. Really, Ojukwu was a forthright man of vision and amazing capability. He shunned wealth to fight for the right of the common man.



Perhaps, Gowon’s comment, when he stopped a BBC reporter, who referred to Ojukwu “as your enemy,” in his track and corrected that cheap impression the British use to divide and rule is relevant here. Gowon said: “He was not my enemy. Whenever we met, I called him rebel and he called me some other names. We reconciled, ate and drank together. We visited each other and in April last year, I visited him at Kampala Hotel.” Only last year, Ojukwu described Yakubu as “a good man.”



Really, Igbo coup? Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi and Lieutenant-Colonel Victor Banjo were fully abreast of the January 1966 coup plan. Fajuyi was to bring his troops to overrun Lagos were he not on an annual vacation leave. Read Why We Struck by Major Ademoyega, a chief coup plotter and a Yoruba. The Northern troops were not deceived by the events of January 1966 because they penned down Fajuyi as Number One to be liquidated in July 1966. Dump all that cheap talk of his sacrificing himself for Major-General Johnson Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi. The Northerners were expecting a coup by Banjo and not Emmanuel Ifeajuna, said Muffet, a writer on the Nigerian crisis. Phillip Effiong, who surrendered Biafra to Nigeria, said the January 1966 coup was an Igbo-Yoruba plot. The world and well-meaning Nigerians knew Emeka Ojukwu stood for the liberation of mankind from any type of servitude.



Today, only two documents could be rightly considered as having addressed Nigeria’s development course – the Ahiara Declaration by Ojukwu and the Jaji Declaration by Yakubu Gowon. Nigerians stopped to think after those two approaches to lift Nigerians out of poverty. Well, now, Ojukwu has joined his activist uncles, Christopher C. Mojekwu and Melio C. K. Ajuluchukwu, in the land beyond.

http://tellng.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=871:ojukwu-and-the-red-herring-of-an-igbo-coup

Evil Brain:
Thanks for the polite reply.

I already addressed your first point in post #35 above.

I have addressed your reply above

As for number 2 I'd like to point out that the rights of all the groups of people you mentioned are guaranteed by the constitution and cannot be revoked.

Even armed robbers, pröstitutes and drug dealers have freedom of speech. They have the right to petition their senators, they have the right to protest, to assemble and associate with whatever groups they want. If charged with a crime, they have the right to fair hearing. Even their freedom of movement cannot be restricted without a full trial a the right to appeal.

Why should gäys be stripped of rights that even convicted urderers still have?

If you agree that all these group of people you mentioned has all the rights you quoted, then there is no problem here. Because just like the rights of the armed robbers are denied by the law any time they commit robbery. G.ay's rights are denied anytime they engage in gayism.

Besides, as a g.ay activist, if you feel very strong about the futility of this anti-g.ay bill which is yet to be a law, you can do the honorable thing by going to court to contest it.

Point 3: I'm not demonizing the west for polygamy (bigamy is a crime, and violates the marriage contract) because I believe that all people have the right follow their own religion and culture.

Explain to us why you believed bigamy should be a crime and gayism shouldn't

I'm not demonizing Nigerian christians and Muslims for opposing hömösèxual practices, I'm demonizing them for trying to impose their sharia-like religious rules on the rest of us. I'm neither a christian nor a muslim so why should I have to obey a bunch of religious edicts that I don't believe in? Soon you people will be telling me that I can't drink beer or sleep through sunday morning because it is a sin.

I hope that answers your questions.

I didn't know what you are on about in this last quote

Evil Brain:
Clearly, you don't understand what a democracy is.

FYI, while democracy involves majority rule, ir also requires that the majority deos not exercise its power in a[b] tyrannical manner over minorities[/b]. That means that whites in America cannot turn the black people into slaves, muslims in Zamfara cannot force christians to convert to Islam, and the PDP cannot abolish other political parties even thought they have the power to do so.

Respect for minority rights is central to the concept of democracy. Nigerian gäys are a minority and we caanot strip them of their constitutional rights. End of story. The rest of you post is just unscientific suppositions and religious stuff so pardon me for ignoring it.

Here's a link to more infromation on minority rights. Please read it and educate yourself.

democracyweb.org/majority/principles.php

If you can calm down a little bit, you will realize that your emotions are getting in the way of your critical reasoning.

Now to the bolded and the rest of your post. Unless you provide evidence of tyranny in the process of passing the bill in the Senate, I will not continue this discussion with you.  

From all the record available, the anti-gay bill was a private bill. It passed through the first and second reading on the floor of the senate. there was even a public hearing on the bill, representations were made from all interested parties including the gay community in Nigeria. I am not aware that any group of people were shut out from making representation during the public hearing before the bill was passed.

If you or your group was hindered from making representation during the debate please let us know.

@Evil Brain

From your postulations, I can see you are true believer in Democracy.

Things like freedom of association, speech and so on mean a lot to you.

My questions:

1. As a true believer in democracy, don't you know that democracy guarantees that the majority will have their way, while minority their say.

2. Why are you not canvassing for the rights of other minority groups who also have rights to associate and speech. Such groups like armed robbers, p.rostitutes, drug dealers, smugglers, kidnappers, ritualists etc?

3. Why did you fail to demonize the Western democracies who criminalize free practices like bigamy? Don't you think that Bigamy is a cultural thingy?

Hmmm, ndi Igbo birikwa nu!

Oku da ibube odi ka onyuru anyu
When the fire is still smothering it appears to be out

^^
Life is not fair.

If MASSOB really want to be respected and treated with kid gloves, they should take up arms against the State and stop carrying useless placards

A good portion of nyanya market is already made up of motor park
What alternative is the minister bringing to the table?

The move is silly like someone said earlier.

What the minister needs to do is to re-model the market like El-Rufai did at Wuse Market, removing all the "attachments,shanties" and resurfacing the landscape.
He also needs to provide other needed facilities like water, toilets and banking halls

Arsenal is pathetic!

How old is Arshavin?

^Iseeeeee!

deadie:
Nwanne, O bu na izu okwe (Draft) ka m si muta ya. O bu ihe nwannam na ekwu ma m rie ya okwe, so idikwa right

Asikwa m! Adighi m surprise, maka na anyi mara ilu ndi gara uka 10 am

^^Ify birikwa oo

^^

iti na ebu uzo aga akwukwo

Ilu gi a dika ilu ndi na agba pool

[quote author=Negro_Ntns link=topic=721616.msg8801006#msg8801006 date=1311778332]Nymph,

The concept and the rollout is not new, it has been here since, I think, 2003.

The christians are criticizing it but forget that Igbos (99.99% christians) already owned a chunk of Jaiz bank's shares. Anambra state is also said to be a beneficiary. So Nigerians, except Yorubas I guess, have been participating in the investment.[/quote]All cross-check your facts before posting conjectures and rumours

Abuja — Anambra State government has denied any relationship with an Islamic bank as claimed by governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Mr Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, while defending the proposed Islamic bank financial policy before members of the House of Representatives last Thursday.

Mrs. Uche Ekwunife, representing Awka/ Dunukofia in Anambra State, yesterday, presented a letter by Anambra State government denying ever transacting any business with an Islamic bank.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201107270977.html

Aside the brief interlude of the civil war (1967 - 1970). The period of 1950 - 1980 was golden.

[list]
[li]Most of the foundations and structures that Nigeria still survives on today were built then.
Social high life was at its peak. Cases of armed robbery were rare
Rate of unemployment was low
Currency was strong
Economy was strong and diverse
There was dignity of labour
Quality of health and education were better
Many of the musics of this era are evergreen
Fashion was crazy, but not indecent[/li]
[/list]

Ndi Igbo ekene!

Biko onye mara oge afo ohuru ndi Igbo ji amalite?

rubi nwanne m nwanyi anyi na adoga

Ify kedu maka Tosh nwa mama?

^Yes, PointBlankNews!

*Waves back* @ Ify
Nwata rie awo o ju anu
If a child tastes frog, he will refuse to taste any meat again

@Nayah
Your views as it regards credible democracy is very disappointing, especially coming from an educated person.
The worst democracy is still better than the best dictatorship.

@Nayah
You are a very funny lady. I like the humour though.
I can't understand what could be a more insulting and disturbing news than a man has ruled a country for more than 150 years.
Really, this is a big slap on the face of all Cameroonians

^Nne the rate iji enwega guests na azu ulo gi dikwa behuge.
Nsogbu adighi, ka m nwere tally number chere my turn.

Ndi Igbo siri na:
Agu were nchekwube adighi egbu egbu
When there is hope, there is life