IGBOS OF (BIAFRA) NIGERIA, WHERE ARE YOU?

Nigeria's President Umaru Yar'Adua has said that his Nigerian government will provide special security to seven of the country’s "major" cities. The president's special adviser on communication Olusegun Adeniyi listed these "major" Nigerian cities as Abuja, Ibadan, Kaduna, Kano, Lagos, Maiduguri and Port Harcourt! Icheoku screams blue-murder as to the paradigm or basis of selecting these "major" cities and asks, whether it is the volume of business being generated in those cities or their population or ingenuity that qualified them as such "major" Nigerian cities?

Who shall it be told that no Igbo city was pencilled down for this "major" city status, qualified for President Umaru Yar'Adua's Nigerian Federal government's national security blanket? Not Onitsha, not Nnewi, not Enugu, not Aba just to mention but a few! All of them were excluded from this so called "major" city status and you ask yourself why are they not "major" cities within their calculations? Tell that to the marines; let the truth be told - the rest of Nigeria is still fighting the long gone 1967-70 civil war against Biafra, which they see in their warped and jaundiced eyes as the Igbos. But these hedgehogs forgot that the present day Rivers State, Bayelsa State, Akwa-Ibom State and Cross River State were all part of the then self-preserving Biafra? Phillip Effiong who finally surrendered to the Nigeria Federal government was not an Igbo but an Efik from present day Cross River State. So why is the Igbo still, solely being persecuted for their role in Biafra, which hostility was trust upon them by the rest of Nigerians who wanted and desired to totally annihilate them in one of the world's worst genocide? Icheoku asks Nigeria, when did self-preservation become an unforgiveable sin?

At the inception of the Nigerian experiment in 1960, there were four regions - northern region with its capital at Kaduna, western region with headquarter in Ibadan, mid-western region with Benin and eastern region with Enugu as the headquarter. Today all the other regional capitals are being treated like an integral part of Nigeria city with the exception of Enugu. Since the end of fire-arm hostilities between Biafra and Nigeria, each successive Nigerian government has continued with this vanquished-mentality treatment of the Igbo people; which pattern was most felt during the tragedy of Olusegun Obasanjo eight years of ignoble rule in Nigeria; when he tried but failed to totally emasculate the Igbo people of Nigeria. Several of Igbo proprietary businesses were closed including Savannah Bank, Societe General Bank, Slok airlines, Ibeto cement etc just to mention but a few. Now President Umaru Yar'Adua has shooed-in to complete the decimation of the Igbo people of Nigeria - the sick man from Katsina has taken "project kill-off Igbo people" to the next level and it is becoming really very septic.

Now every political zone and region in Nigeria has a city and/or cities designated by President Umaru Yar'Adua as a top priority "major" city for his planned security condone except for Enugu and all the other key Igbo cities of Onitsha, Aba and Nnewi? What is going on, Nigeria? If you guys do not want the Igbo people any longer in Nigeria, let them go their way instead of the ever present very discriminatory treatment you continuously mete out to them?

Look at the bridge over River Niger at Onitsha, you refused to rebuild it or even build a new one because it will impact the Igbos of Nigeria positively? Look at Federal appointments, every Igbo was excluded from all plum positions in cabinets and even for the office of the Inspector General of Police which an Igbo man was next in line, the Igbo man, Ogbonnanya Onovo was sidelined for Mike Okilo. Look at the rate of seizure of containers/goods at the ports by the customs and you see that the Igbo importers fare worst, with their seized goods under-sold and bought by other Nigerians to the chagrin of their rightful Igbo owners. Needless to say that the custom and excise is also under the control of the northerners. MASSOB is a non-violent peaceful agitation of Igbo people yet they are being killed and dispatched to the world beyond at a rate higher than the other armed groups in Nigeria including the Ganiyu Adams led Odua' boys. Igbos of Nigeria are being continuously murdered every place in Nigeria for no reason whatsoever except that they are Igbos. Even at the recent Jos pogrom, where a domestic local politics triggered the conflagration, Igbos numbering 149 were murdered in cold blood just because they are the sacrificial guinea-pigs of Nigeria that can be butchered at the whims of the other Nigerians living in the north? If a people cannot feel safe to thrive in their so-called country, what then is the use remaining in that country?

When will the Igbo people of Nigeria say enough is enough and demand for their full integration in Nigeria or asked to be allowed to opt out? Yes, there are so many Igbo people in positions of "authority" as well as other supposed Igbo "leaders" whose relevance as such, in view of their stand in the face of the continued pressure-cooker marginalization of the Igbos in Nigeria, has since become somewhat questionable. Oha n'eze Ndi-Igbo, this is a wake-up call for you to take a stand and demand from President Umaru Yar'Adua the basis of his current rating of some cities in Nigeria as "major" cities while leaving behind every city in Igboland therefrom. Or is the menace of armed robberies/kidnappings in Onitsha, Aba, Enugu and Nnewi not enough to warrant the same security arrangement as are being planned for Ibadan, Lagos, Abuja, Port-Harcourt, Kano, Kaduna and Maiduguri? Enough should be enough! It is time to say it and mean it! Now is time for the Igbos of Nigeria to take a firm stand or forever cower at the feet of these other Nigerians who are gradually enslaving them. Icheoku says, the Igbos should say to these Nigerians' slave-masters, either you give us freedom or you give us death but the present state of slavery-limbo is unacceptable!