by John Okiyi Kalu
It appears this country has continued its civil war propaganda against Ndigbo and are actively recruiting the next generation to join the “demonize Igbo” campaign. The effectiveness of this campaign against Ndigbo produced results during and after the war and led to the massacre of Igbo in Benin, abandoned properties and recently Igbo “target hunting” in Northern Nigeria. Demonize igbo campaign in the south west will soon lead to a major Igbo versus Yoruba conflict in Lagos. The seeds have already been sowed and if the online exchange am reading between Igbo and Yoruba youths is anything to go by, it will only be a matter of time before the thinly masked mutual resentment explode into an orgy of violence. God forbid!
Since the police paraded two undergraduates, Okwuoma Echezona Nwabufo and Ezekiel Odera Ilechukwu Olisa, both maternal cousins, over the senseless murder of Cynthia Osokogu in Lagos, social media commentators have converted the unfortunate incident into a referendum on the character of the Igbo man. Demonize Igbo campaigners are making a meal of their satan given job with active conniving and/or support from those who have any axe to grind with any Igbo man. What should ordinarily be treated as criminality is now being trumpeted as stereotypical of a tribe.
I thought crimes and criminality have no state of origin, tribe or tongue?
All well and good, let’s play the same game and see if there is any tribe that can be excused.
Permit me not to go into the Oyenusi era (the first armed robber executed in Nigeria) as most of my audience might not readily associate with events of those days. Let’s focus on the immediate past and see if crime has state of origin or tribe.
1. On Thursday, July 26, 2012 the police arrested two brothers, Omotola Ajayi and Toyin Ajayi, at their Third Avenue, B Close House 6, Festac Town, Lagos house. Guess their crime? They killed their own brother and used/sold his body parts for money making rituals. Yes, please check with the police at Festac or read the link below, they are NOT IGBO. Yet we gleefully associate Igbo with money rituals and love of money. Please!!!
What is the difference between the crime of these two brothers and the facebook killers? Apart from the suspects tribe of origin, I can’t see any difference except that one set of criminals are Yoruba while the other are Igbo. Can anyone explain why the Ajayi case didn’t attract much attention or abuse towards the Yoruba whereas the Osokogu case is now a referendum on Ndigbo?
K’anyi gaba n’iru.
2. Early this year, 23-year-old Hellen Okpara, a member of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) was allegedly raped by a traditional ruler in Osun State, Oba Adebukola Alli, the Alowa of Ilowa in Obokun local government area of the state and her private part bruised.
Ordinarily, this rape case is the type the media and civil society activists feast on. Here is a young girl on national service hundreds of miles away from home and her reward is to be violated by the one man society expects responsibility from. “When I told him that I was leaving, he said I wasn’t going back that night and that he has been using many ways to get at me but I always turn down his advances and he said he was going to harm me that night. “That was how he raped me while I kept shouting but the Oba told me that nobody will hear me and later I noticed that something was dropping from my private part”. (I hope the “Obagoat” used condom). Guess how the Oba’s counsel, Mr Taofeek Tewogbade, responded to this testimony? He asked the girl to strip in court so he can see bruises in her vagina. (Even after a medical examination and report was submitted in court). Does that make a case of endemic tendency towards abuse of women in Osun? Well our reverred monarch said “she demanded money from me after the whole thing.” I leave you to answer for yourself if animalism has a tribe or tongue. But suffice it to say that this matter has not gotten enough outrage from a media that vilified Abians for a purported rape that happened at ABSU.
3. Sometime in 2009, one Miss Grace Ushang, a National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) participant was raped to death in Maiduguri, Borno State, by suspected religious fundamentalists who said they were incited by her wearing a pair of regulation khaki trousers. To date, nobody was punished and no tribe or religion was stagmatized. Imagine a religious indoctrination that enjoins a fathful to rape someone for not dressing “properly”. Only in Nigeria will such religion be practiced. Yet, no convictions to date. Not even decapitation of the dangerous “weapon” used to commit this horrendous crime.
4. Do you remember one animal called Abba Garba in Kano? He led a 3 man gang that brutally raped a youth corper in Kano last year. To help your recollection, I will play back his own words to you. In Hausa language, he stated: “On that day, it was raining heavily when she came to the school and said she had been posted to the school and was looking for the office of the school principal. She was speaking a language I did not understand but I told her in Hausa that I could help her.
“She was so beautiful that I found her irresistible. When she agreed to follow me, I couldn’t imagine my luck on that day. I led her to an empty room within the school. There was nobody in the school that day because the teachers were on strike. When I led her to the room, I brought out my knife and threatened to stab her if she refused to cooperate. That was how I used her. Thereafter, two of my friends – Nezifi Malam and Ali Wara took their turns.
“The only person that was not lucky was Abubakar Suleiman, who was waiting to take his turn before we were arrested.”
Please don’t ask me if Garba and his gang have been punished for this dastardly act. The last we read on it was their arrest and it won’t surprise me if they were released to join the “jihad” led by Boko Haram. Ask me if this means Kano people are rapists and I will answer you that it doesn’t. Just like the facebook murderers don’t represent any tribe or state.
I have highlighted these cases to show that crime and criminality in Nigeria have no state or tribe of origin. Criminals are beasts of no nation.
But if the “demonize Igbo” campaign continues, we will play the game too.
We will reel out figures to show who kept Nigeria in this pitiable state. We will show the world who we are talking about when we say Nigerian leaders have failed and are failures. We will dig up the names of all those convicted for corruption in Nigeria and abroad with how much they stole, their tribe of origin and/or state of origin. We will revisit EFCC records and show you who really love money, especially ill gotten money. We will even show you video of an “honorable” stuffing bribe dollar bills into his cap. We will show you who controls Nigerian oil blocks and making billions of dollars whereas poverty is expanding around them with attendant violent behavior. We know who the subsidy fraudsters are and we know their state/tribe of origin. We also know how many have disappeared and/or kidnapped in Nigeria and used for rituals or for ransom. It will shock Nigerians to learn where the kidnap/ritual capital of Nigeria is, even though the media prefers to blow incidents involving Ndigbo out of proportion.
Nobody is interested in making excuses for miscreants of Igbo origin who must have learned well from their fellow countrymen. But the truth remains that there is nothing in Igbo cultural and traditional practice that predisposed Igbo children to crimes of the type we are reading. To the contrary, fully aculturized Igbo youths will find it difficult to engage in Nigerian crimes. What those facebook murderers did is ARU (taboo) in Igboland and if sent home to their place of origins they will never return to Lagos alive. Our culture and tradition totally abhor such crimes and the punishment is DEATH.
In all likelihood, those murderous children were raised as “ala wu otu” children. Their parents have probably not taken them down to their hometown before but have indoctrinated them into believing they are Lagosians. Hence they have learned to commit Lagos crimes as done by the Ajayi children of same Festac, Lagos.
Unfortunately nobody is seeing them as Lagosians but rather they are now Igbo.
Nigerian criminals practice one Nigeria and when they strike, their exploits should be attributed to one Nigeria. Stop demonizing Igbo or else we will play the game. One Nigeria is not only when we are sharing oil money but also when we are discussing the crimes of one Nigeria.
JOK 25/8/12
1. http://odili.net/news/source/2012/aug/5/825.html
2. http://allafrica.com/stories/201203200801.html
3. http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/forum/main-square/37378-youth-corper-raped-death.html
4.http://9janewss.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/56-year-old-man-rapes-school-pupil.html?m=1
