Biafra, IPOB, and Ekweremadu at the crossroads -By Tayo Oke

The video footage of the immediate past Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, being manhandled by some angry protesters outside the conference centre he was scheduled to address last week, in Nuremberg, Germany, was splashed across the media outlets worldwide. He was seen being dragged out of a vehicle, then, he did a chicken run into the conference centre, before being marched out of the building a few minutes later, with his garment being visibly torn out of his body, as he was hurriedly bundled into a waiting car and driven off. Some of the protesters were seen holding clubs and sticks as they were shouting obscenity at the senator. A well-aimed blow to his neck from one of them could have resulted in a serious tragedy for all concerned. It was good fortune, therefore, that the “Distinguished Senator” escaped more or less intact, and safely back on Nigerian soil. He could have been nursing more than a bruised ego had things gone completely out of hand over there.

The response to the attack on Ekweremadu has been largely sympathetic across the political divide. It is hard not to sympathise with the hapless senator, at least, on a human level.  The people responsible for the attack, the leadership of the separatists (now banned) movement, the Indigenous People of Biafra, have claimed responsibility, and have promised to mete out a similar treatment to other political figures on the conference circuits around the world henceforth.

All said and done, what we saw play out in Germany went beyond a mere brute show of thuggery by some wayward political malcontents meting out punishment to an errant politician on foreign soil; it was a miniature display of the ongoing struggle to keep Nigeria one. It will stay messy and protracted, with no guarantees of the endgame one way or the other.

IPOB’s rise to prominence of late amongst the Igbo is not a coincidence; it reveals the fragility of the Nigerian federal state as it stands; a colonial/military contraption. The unsettled nationality question remains a troubling menace to its unity and survival as an entity. The failure of the political elite to confront the issue once and for all represents the real betrayal of the aspiration of the entire populace, for it goes beyond ethnicity and factional rancour. Biafra was meant to be the shiny city on the hill for the Igbo if Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu and the Nigerian secessionist battalion under his command between 1966 and 1969 had had their way. They fought a gallant battle to maintain a breakaway region from Nigeria, but lost out and indeed surrendered to the mightier federal force. That humiliation still endures; it has since been passed on through the generations. The loss of Biafra lingers in the deepest recesses of the heart and soul of every true blooded Igbo in this country, whether they admit it openly or not. Nigeria, on its part, won the war, but lost the battle to establish faith in “One Nigeria”.  It has since been making effort to sow the seeds of the much vaunted faith in “One Nigeria” across the ethnic divides, but thus far to no avail. That precisely is the vacuum an organisation such as IPOB has easily stepped into with such an alarming presence that it had to be proscribed. But, that also leaves the Igbo political leaders in a quandary.

Let us be frank, IPOB speaks for a chunk of the Igbo electorate that the political elite in the region would like to ride on in their own quest for power. The dilemma for Ekweremadu and his ilk is that since IPOB has adopted extra-constitutional means to propagate their quest for an autonomous status for the region, it becomes impossible for mainstream politicians to embrace them even if they believe and subscribe to their cause. Looking at it from another angle, the Igbo are, without doubt, the most entrepreneurial and industrious citizens Nigeria, indeed, Africa can be proud of. They have toiled day and night to re-build the Nigerian economy in no small measure since the end of the civil war in 1970.  This is not to play down the assiduousness of other ethnic groups in the enterprise, but only to highlight the point, and the vested interest it has now generated for the Igbo elite to maintain the status quo. By that very fact, IPOB now constitutes as much a direct threat to them as it does to the Nigerian state.

Can you be a true Igbo and a true Nigerian at the same time? IPOB members would answer the question in the negative, for sure. But, what about the political elite? Can they fight to “keep Nigeria one”, disavow IPOB, while embracing its cause at the same time? This is the stormy ocean Senator Ekweremadu is trying to navigate, and has been trying to navigate for the last 10 years at least. He went on a lecture tour of Europe with an eye on a presidential run in 2023.  He strolled into the lion’s den as it were, fully cladded in a local fabric dotted with the Nigerian coat of arms all over it, trying to be Mr. Nigeria (as he had to) to an extremely sceptical audience, a large proportion of which remains virulently opposed to the idea of “One Nigeria” at any cost. There could not have been a clearer case of an own goal in that scenario.

It is my view that banning IPOB, hunting down its leadership, and sending them into exile are a colossal mistake because it only serves to mystify and romanticise its ideology even more. The idea of decoupling or balkanising Nigeria into little ethnic enclaves is one most right-thinking people would find abhorrent, but it is an argument that needs to be aired, debated and ultimately defeated by a superior argument for inclusion, togetherness, commonality and equity. “One Nigeria” is neither desirable nor feasible without this difficult dialogue. ‘Biafra’ is an ideal that had a meaning easily understood in the 1960s, but not in the 2000s. For IPOB, the goalpost has not changed from the civil war days, but they would be surprised to see how little agreement there is amongst the Igbo about the geographical boundary or ethnic composition of Biafra in today’s Nigeria.

There is a significant segment of the Igbo population who passionately detest IPOB and everything it stands for, as much as there is another segment of the same population who embrace or tacitly endorse its cause. Who belongs to Nigeria and in what shape is a lively debate that the battle-weary, civil war generation still running this country would not allow to take place for their visceral but ultimately irrational fear of “breaking up the country”? The mob who assaulted Ekweremadu in Germany was wrong and hot-headed. They should have engaged him in a debate, and used him to send a positive message about their cause back to the people in Nigeria.

IPOB should be unbanned if it eschews violence and thuggery as a political tactic. They want an independent ‘Biafra’, ok, let us hear the argument in all its facets. It is the only way to avoid an Ekweremadu copycat. Remember Voltaire’s enduring aphorism: “I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it”.