The Giant Prison of Africa -By J. Ezike

It was a blood-filled season in 2019. Amidst the background scenes of ritual jihads in the defunct establishment that flaunts itself as Nigeria, the world sat, as usual, with bowls of popcorn and bottles of champagne watching and reveling in dark lust. And I wondered again at the hypocrisy of the United Nations and its acclaimed charter that represents the universal expression of freedom and swears to uphold an integrated humanity. For many months, the indignation welled up in me and I tried to process my anger into words of literature and poetic bullets aimed at the conspiracy to keep the black continent in perpetual backwardness. Whenever I am forced within to arm my right hand with a pen and shoot polemics, those who are navigating the slave ship in Africa from Europe and North America are quick to tag me as racist. But then I wondered; what can be more racist than a white man enslaving millions of black men through proxy and keeps them bound in the chains of poverty and hopelessness? What can be more racist than a white man who denies Africans the fundamental human rights he accords to Europeans by ensuring that those elected as “presidential slaves” exact the will of the feudal lords? It is almost as if there is a fetish dream in the consciousness of Europe to forestall the progress of Africa and deny Africans their rightful place. I am just trying to think loud and wide. I am trying to study this racial behavior that predates my conception in April 19/20, 1987. I am trying to make sense of this white man’s psyche that gives him the mental license to think of the black man as an inferior being. If this is not racism, if this is not hate personified then, we must begin to find an explanation to this phenomenon.

There is nothing uniquely unjust in the Nigerian tyranny that has its roots buried deep in earth’s canal. The Fulani actors in Asorock who are only enforcing the colonial impulse of Britain, and exercising the continual dehumanization of the tribal constituents are not intelligent to know that in their desperate attempt to strangle the Igbo man, the Yoruba man and the rest of the 250 ethnic nationalities, he inadvertently brings the knell to his own funeral. The mentality of “Born-to-rule and One-Nigeria,” aspires to the feudalistic sermons of Britain that promotes the destruction of black minds. And when the mind is shackled the body becomes a prisoner. And this is why 200 million “Nigerians” can conveniently allow themselves to be bundled in a messy pile and bolted into false identities and citizenship. This is why they relax themselves with the fate installed upon them by the jailer who acquired the slavehouse from unilever for 865,000 British pounds in 1899 and lumped hundreds of ethnic nationalities into this giant prison of Africa. This is why a “proud slave” will confidently pronounce himself or herself as a “Nigerian” on world stage, unabashed. This is why the ignorance of self and the slavery of mind are visceral. This is why the inhabitants of this giant prison are still grappling with the myth of independence and punished for their “inability to reason” and have allowed their minds to be captured and kept confined by the jailer in Europe. And their crime is attributed to their faulty thought process, their grave mindset that makes their brains handicap.

I am angry. I am so angry not at the jailer who is simply exercising the aim of survival. Rather, I am angry at the people, I mean the so-called Nigerians who have made themselves the generational stepping stone for European bliss. And have lost the stimulus to respond to their woes through the dictates of their sixth sense. It is this sixth sense that opens their eyes to see beyond the smiling façade of the British feudal barons who would rather prefer that their prisoners shove coal in hell and die away like mosquitoes struck by the hammer of self-genocide than to let go of their investment of 1899. And I have asked this question so many times. Why is it that “Nigerians” have chosen to implore this fate upon themselves? There is a conspicuous absence of resistance, especially by the Yoruba, against the Fulani actors and their primitive politics. Why is it hard to understand that when Northern Nigeria and its caliphate is strangled out of power, the Middle-belt, the South-West and the South-East will extricate themselves from the British prison and chart a new course and realign their sense of Nationhood with the preordained boundaries, cultures and identities prior to colonial pestilence. I think back to the years of 1899-1914 through the eye of history and begin to wonder that if none of the ethnic nationalities gave their unanimous consent to the jailers in Europe then how did we become “Nigerians”? If nations are built on the basis of common language, identical value systems and through the political endorsement of a community of people, then, who on earth gave Britain the audacity to lump us in a prison and purchase our lands for 865,000 pounds and call us by the derogatory name “NiggerAreans” and usurp our economic and political autonomy? Who, I say?

In Nigeria, all we have known is blood and violence. Suffering and Smiling is the lyrics of our national anthem. I look at Nigerians in this mire, in this circus of death and wonder what happened to their sense of anger. I have seen youths in Ohaneze who sing praises to Asorock in order to break bread with thieves. I know ladies in Benin who spread their pillars apart and auction their universal center for peanuts that will fetch them sanitary pads. I know boys in Warri who turned their hard fate into adventures of the grave-hearted and found new love for the thirst of urine to beat the ever-brutish sun of the Sahara. I know families in Onitsha who risked their lineage on the Mediterranean Sea to witness the light of Europe and re-baptize themselves as slaves of the jailers. I have seen masses in Bayelsa and Rivers who know nothing about the signatures of a progressive society and lack experiential knowledge of how the welfare of citizens in sensible worlds are made a priority but can only imagine it through Hollywood pictures. I have felt the palpable agonies of the common man and woman who have fried their tears in the sun of Lagos to feed their starving children. I have seen Enugu and Ebonyi victims victimized again and again by uniformed hounds and killed for sport. I have seen desperate Yorubas who chant “One-Nigeria” but yet in the deepest place of their hearts are secretly nursing the ambition of escaping the brutal hardship and find sanity in a sane society. And all of these people seem to share one thing in common: they all have been naked before the elements of tyranny but do not want to admit the source of their woes and the way out.

In Canada, where I am temporarily domiciled, I have met Yorubas especially in Quebec who admitted that to be a Nigerian is to be a prisoner in one’s own country. These people were once the die-hard promoters of the caliphate-imposed ideology of “One-Nigeria” but suddenly underwent a revival after marveling at the New World’s sense of progressive politics. These people were once chartered accountants, doctors, engineers, pastors etcetera… but are now bent on menial jobs in a desperate attempt to achieve the far-fetched experience of being treated first as humans. They are part of the millions of human talents drained away from their ancestral lands and are forced by economic and political circumstances to nest their dreams in an alien refuge.

It must be said that this giant prison will consume us all if the Yoruba leadership do not subscribe to the “prison break” currently being championed by conscious groups and opinion leaders of IPOB, LNC, OPC, MASSOB. Before we can escape, before we can break away, those of us on the receiving end of the Fulani brutality must push aside sentiments and emotions and wield the sword of survival. I use the word – “sword” deliberately because whether we’ve realized it or not, the Fulani North and its caliphate is on a southward sweep and curse be upon the Yoruba land if a second civil war is born in 2020 as a result of their greed  that seats on logic and the urgency of self-preservation. And I have always said that if Tinubu decides to repeat the grave mistake of Awolowo, his descendants will disown his name. This piece will bear me witness in the many years to come.

None of us will escape unscathed when the rain starts to fall because the Fulani knows nothing but divide and conquer. As the call for regional referendum for Biafra, Oduduwa and Middle-Belt is being strategically delayed by Britain – the jailer in Europe, the Christians who are the prisoners in Nigeria continue to fall to the swords of the Fulani whose only import and verifiable talent is terrorism. And whose trade name floats as Miyetti Allah, Fulani Herdsmen, Boko Haram, Maitatsine, Yatatsine and ISWAP. And it is pertinent to state here that in the course of this Dan Fodio-inspired conquest, the Middle-Belt region will be the First Prison House to burn and become the Forgotten Memory. General Theophilus Danjuma will do himself and his people a great favor to break his silence and tell the world what he knows about Asorock. His long-lived political correctness isn’t helping anybody. Those who want to speak should speak or forever remain cowards!

We do not want ceremonial speakers or over-fed billionaires to contaminate our consciousness with their servile diplomacy and loyalty to the Butchers of Men. We mean business. This is a case of life and death. And posterity is at stake. 2019 brought our knees lower to the ground before the North. It gave us reasons to mourn and reasons to question the union on the basis of fact and existence. And the fact is that Nigeria is defunct and the existential truth is that we are prisoners of Britain and the Fulani North. We spurn the ministry of freedom marketed by others at our own detriment. We reject our liberty to the utmost pleasure of the jailer in Europe. We stand to the national anthem for the renewal of our death sentence. And the meek shall become the sheep on the altar of Fulani slaughter.

“Enough is enough” should be our anthem as we walk into 2020. We were battered and stomped out of our farmlands. Our women were raped in the greens of the forests. Bodies beheaded as tribute to the Sokoto Caliphate. Our lands inked with the bloods of our people. Enough is indeed enough. If we do not break away from this prison, this prison will consume thousands of us in 2020. The South and the Middle-Belt have the power to banish the Fulani into memory, to reduce them to a tiny colony. We have all it takes to humble these blood-suckers and commit their pride to the grave. We have what it takes to dispossess them of the steering wheel and navigate the ship of slavery to the House of Referendum. This is not the chess of oil and power. And I want to believe we have outgrown that argument. For when it comes to oil, Biafra is committed towards the arrangement that will see it fit that the oil in our land is funneled to the South-West, the Middle-Belt and the Caliphate North. Those who decide to reject this peaceful option and insist on the continuity of this prison will ultimately unleash a Pandora box of regional conflagration.

May the New Year 2020, bring common sense and strategic unity in the Southern Protectorate as we pursue the good intention of releasing all the ethnic nationalities out of the Giant Prison of Africa.