Fantasy And Reality In New Biafra’s Agitation – By Jerry Uhuo

The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) recently aired a documentary focusing on some of our compatriots in Diaspora living in refugee camps abroad. The NTA documentary brought home the harrowing experience some of these unfortunate Nigerians face to survive in foreign nations. As a frequent traveler, I have had course to meet and interact with many Nigerians over the years that apparently appear stranded in North America and Europe, in some Asia countries and even in South Africa. It is easier to see that those who left Nigeria to school abroad and stayed back after graduations often excelled in their professional callings such as Doctors, Nurses, and Engineers among others as they are usually gainfully employed. More so, those that left the country as specialists or experts in one field or other have no problem in gaining employment in their country of residence working mostly in international organizations doing their country very proud. Successive Nigerian governments do invite such category of Diaspora Nigerians to serve in different capacities. Some of the recent examples include Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Prof Barth Nnaji, Akinwumi Adeshina, Olusegun Aganga, etc.
However, there are many other Nigerians scattered across the globe who are unfortunate. They travelled abroad with little or no means of survival. They have no educational qualifications, no proficiency in any vocational areas or handiwork in order to avail themselves with the opportunities. They could also possess no papers or hiding with expired papers. More often than not, some of these categories of Nigerians deal in drugs or engage in other illegitimate jobs mostly at night to earn a living. Whenever they are caught in such illegal deals like drugs, they will be sent to prison. Such people have nothing good to say about Nigeria. They believe that if Nigeria was good, they would not have any reason to travel out of the country. It becomes worse when Nigeria Embassies in such countries would not even be of any help in the situation of the citizens, as they quickly facilitate the deportation of such citizens when approached by the host country’s law enforcement agents. With new laws that prohibit illegal immigrant coming in force in some of these countries, they go into hiding or declare refugee status.
As I listened to their ordeals and narratives, I couldn’t help but wonder why these mostly young men and women should put themselves into such squalid existence in the name of traveling out? According to one of them, “no one would help him out if he was to come back home”, when asked “why would he not return to Nigeria instead of remaining in the refugee camp abroad?” That he preferred being a servant even to people who should be his grand children instead of coming back to Nigeria bears eloquent testimonies to enormous amount of works that we need to do back home to make Nigeria livable for its citizenry. Undoubtedly, lack of gainful employment is factored as excuses for most of our compatriots languishing in refugee camps in Europe and other parts of the world.
To be clear, the level of unemployment in Nigeria is unacceptable given her abundant human and material resources. Yet successive governments at both national and sub-national levels of governance in the country have no realistic plans to address the alarming challenge in the country. Unfortunately, the kind of training in Nigerian universities is such that turned only job seekers in which everyone looks for white collar jobs rather than be job creators themselves. Even, the few with inbuilt entrepreneurship traits lack the needed capital to put in use the natural talent. Our banking system hardly provides needed financial support to nurture upcoming entrepreneurs. Majority of these graduates ended up doing meaner jobs such as Okada riders, hawkers, street vendors, in order to survive after searching for unavailable jobs for many years. It becomes more worrisome when successive government appears helpless in the face of the challenges.
The new APC led government had promised during campaign to ensure that the youths who are not employed will get monthly stipend of about N5, 000 which could serve as social security to prevent them from engaging in criminal activities. But the recent statement from the Minister of Labour and Productivity whose office is charged with the implementation of the policy is already indicating that beneficiaries of such pets must be involved in farming. Though not a bad idea, but the essence of social security policy is to give citizens sense of belonging and to take their attention away from social misdemeanor. That is how it is done in civilized societies. In United Kingdom, for example, government fund school fees of their citizens in the tertiary institutions and when the students graduate, they are provided with some form of employment while government make deductions from their income to offset the cost of their fees in the tertiary institutions in other to sustain the policy.
However, the truth is that all those groups of Nigerians both outside and in Nigeria who think they have no future in the country are frustrated and there is no other way of demonstrating or ventilating such frustration than to engage in things that will attract government attention. It is a fact that many Nigerians abroad would like to return home but they believe returning home is a problem to them because there is no policy that could accommodate them when they get to Nigeria. Already the condition of most Nigerians in Nigeria is so terrible that it poses a discouragement to those watching from outside the country. Unfortunately, Nigerians in Diaspora only read bad news about Nigeria and not the good stories. So, how do you blame them when they embrace calls for Biafra or insurgency even if that gives them only a false sense of libration and deadly indoctrination?
The combination of these factors always ignites in a slightest opportunity, crisis in different parts of the country either by way of agitation for Biafra, Niger Delta Militancy, or other forms of militancy in the country. And of course, those who when they were in power stole national resources and felt threatened by the renewed anti-corruption war by the new government will find opportunity for mischief and would not hesitate to put their resources to such collective agitation to distract government and perhaps make it impossible for them to be brought to justice. Sense of collective frustration however genuine could be exploited for nefarious activities. This is the more reason the government should construct better opportunities for people to believe in the country. It is clear that the agitations in Nigeria today are expressions of frustrations by the young people whose future have been truncated by their leaders. The number of young people in the south East who have nothing doing even after graduating from the Universities and despite that Igbos are known for their entrepreneurship is frightening. The fact that many of them take to low income earning jobs of OKADA riding and they are not able to meet their obligations to their families is a big frustration. Unfortunately, some of the political leaders from Eastern part of Nigeria representing the people in national politics have been, for lack of vocabulary, selfish and wicked. Again, a feeling of alienation and marginalization in appointments in the present administration also heightens the tension.
In the case of the Niger Delta militancy, of course, the fact that these people come to Abuja and other parts of the country and see the massive development in terms of infrastructure with resources believed to come from their region whereas they live in squalor is a course for worry. It doesn’t mean that government has not been doing a lot for them especially with the Amnesty Programme and the fact that the last President of Nigeria came from the Niger Delta, but it must be stated that the people feel that they deserve more attention than it is presently witnessed. They naturally have right to seek attention. No thanks to the leaders from the Zone who also take advantage of the people to enrich themselves and turn around to sponsor protests and agitations among the people.
The agitations for Biafra self determination is a dream of a people who feel alienated and isolated by their leaders. There is nothing to suggest that if Biafra is to be granted independence that there will be no problems because it is not those on the streets that will hold the power. It is mere fantasy to expect el-dorado from the leadership of Biafra if it were to be granted freedom of self determination. It is a pity that Nigerian government gave prominence to the Biafra agitations by arresting Nnamdi Kalu who would have been allowed to express his freedom of opinion as others in a free and democratic society which Nigeria professes.
Those who are on the streets in support of Biafra, need empowerment, education and any other forms of legitimate income and source of good living. That is what government should do and stop promoting its own distraction by going after them. As Professor Chinua had stated many years ago, “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which is the hallmark of true leadership (and democracy)”.
A veteran journalist, Uche Ezechukwu, had once noted; that “…the escalation of this Biafra protests is being fuelled by the general frustration of the South East people over the way President Buhari has stubbornly decided to exclude the South East people from the scheme of things as well as his economic policies which they believe is targeted against them. Even those of us who had lampooned the Biafran agitators no longer have excuses to offer them. Nnamdi Kanu and his odious Radio Biafra messages might not be the best way (after all most of us have never listened to them), but it provides a sort of hope -no matter how tenuous- to a frustrated people…”
The issue of Biafra is a dream of a people on a journey of self rediscovery. The solution lies neither in chasing the protesters around nor killing them. The solution lies in addressing the root cause of the problems which has to do with a feeling of alienation, isolation, abandonment and marginalization. Igbo leaders have capacity to restore peace in the zone. They should wake up to their responsibilities and stop playing politics with the future of Igbo race