Igbos’ Perpetual Quest For Freedom: Who Is Next After Nnamdi Kanu? -By Oliver C. Orji

The federal government of Nigeria has re-arrested Mr Nnamdi Kanu, the self-appointed leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) who has led a renewed agitation for the restoration of the defunct Biafra. Kanu is the second prominent Igbo to resurrect the Biafran struggle after Raph Uwazurike, whose Movement for the Emancipation of Biafra (MASSOB) has gone into limbo and swallowed up by Kanu’s IPOB, which in turn appears to be petering away into obscurity with its founder held in detention yet again.

The Igbo have over several centuries assumed the roles of liberators or freedom fighters, whether it be the anti-slavery struggles, the fight for Nigeria’s independence or a quest for a separate country. The Igbo have also historically fought against servitude and colonization, as typified by anti-colonial wars, such as the Ekumeku war, where they fought to death to resist European colonialists, and the infamous Igbo Landing of 1803, where 75 enslaved Igbo people hijacked their slave ship and landed in St Simon’s Island in Georgia, then subsequently marched into the Dunbar Creek and drowned in an act of suicide in lieu of slavery. The defiance has been called the first freedom march in the history of America.

Nnamdi Kanu

Notable Igbo names have featured in freedom struggles, prominent among them being Olaudah Equianoh (1745-1795), Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904-1996), Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (1933-2011) and Nnamdi Kanu (born 25 September 1967).
Recently, I began reading the original text of Olaudah Equianoh’s memoir entitled “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equianoh or Gustavus Vassa” published in March 1789. He tells the story of his kidnap from southern Nigeria, among the people called ‘Eboe’ or Igbo at the age of 11 by local slave holders who later sold him to a Royal naval officer. He was subsequently transferred to the Caribbean and then to the Colony of Virginia where he worked in plantations.

Equianoh showed the true Igbo nature of dogged aspiration, to create personal prosperity and comfort for themselves even in adverse circumstances, when he fought hard to buy his own freedom in 1766. He not only bought his freedom but was hugely admired by his Master, Robert King, who remarkably later partnered with him (a former slave!) in business.

Equiano eventually relocated to the UK and joined the Sons of Africa, a movement formed for the abolition of slavery. He petitioned the King of England on freedom for African slaves and later published his autobiography through which he forcefully argued the humanity of Africans, persuading the British government to bring an end to slave trade.

Raph Uwazurike

In a similar manner, at the time Europeans had found a new way to exploit Africans through colonial rule, an Igbo young man who had been in the US as a student returned to Nigeria to pursue liberty for his people. Nnamdi Azikiwe was a foremost social crusader and writer who roused a pan-African spirit which was diametrically opposed to colonial rule. He first used his position as a journalist with the African Morning Post (based in Accra) in 1935 to reel out African nationalistic appeals which irked the British colonial government. Azikiwe later founded the West African Pilot, his own newspaper, with which he sold the idea of an independent nation. He later founded five more newspapers across Nigeria which published anti-colonial contents and rattled the colonial government. His journalistic “militancy” earned him several run-ins with the colonial administration and once an arrest and a charge for sedition.

To become a more involved participant, Azikiwe joined politics in 1941 as a member of the Nigerian Youth Council. He later founded a political party, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) with Herbert Macaulay in 1944. Through his political participation and intellectual engagement Zik argued the case for Nigeria’s independence with other nationalists like Obafemi Awolowo and was an outstanding voice during several constitutional conferences. His persistence paid off when the British made way in October 1960, with Zik emerging as the first president of independent Nigeria.

Following the macabre anti-Igbo pogroms of 1966, another Igbo man, Emeka Ojukwu, found himself leading a breakaway republic which was not prepared for the war that followed and led to a further degradation of the Igbo. Ojukwu has been hailed for standing up for his people who needed defending in the face a widespread aggression, but in retrospect, questions will be asked about what brought about the aggression, whether the Igbo were ready to fight a war and whether the war achieved a redemption or further retrogression for the Igbo.

Biafran flag e1447265165698

If there are lessons learned from the war, it is that having a just cause is not enough, but careful planning and preparation in the face of a more powerful opponent is wisdom.

These traits were seen in Equiano who stooped to conquer while not being a free man, as against his latter comrades who preferred to drown in suicidal braggadocio even after hijacking a ship and drowning the captain. Did we see that suicidal braggadocio during Ojukwu’s Biafra? Do we see it in the recent agitations? Is that the prevailing other side of the Igbo besides hard work, confidence and ability to break through difficulties?

The Igbo seemed to recover remarkably after the civil war, economically, but perhaps, most remarkably, politically, when Alex Ekwueme emerged Nigeria’s Vice-president in 1979 barely 9 years after the war through arduous intellectual engagement and astute political participation. The end of the second republic in 1983, however, ushered in 16 years of military rule, obliterating any political gains the Igbo might have made since the war. By the time democracy returned in 1999, the politicians who took over the reins of government were no longer in the mould of Alex Ekwueme, Sam Mbakwe of the old Imo state or Michael Okpara. The long dispensation of dictatorship had created a military hang-over and a culture of impunity, cult worship of politicians who acted like military administrators and a docile electorate who were too afraid to question their elected leaders.

It was this situation that engendered a lack of confidence in the political elite, throwing up individuals like Raph Uwazurike and Nnamdi Kanu who presented a new Biafra as the elixir to all the Igbo problem.
However, the ultimate question is, “Do the Igbo genuinely want Biafra?” Or are they frustrated by lack of fulfilment in Nigeria and itching for the old nostalgia of a Biafra that never came to light? Would efficient leadership which alleviates the daily grind of an over-demanding ethnic group assuage the yearning for Biafra?
If they genuinely wanted Biafra who could lead the agitation? Looking at Igbo leaders who had succeeded with liberation struggles, should the likes of Nnamdi Kanu be taken seriously?

Whereas Equiano and Azikiwe used intellectual and political arguments to bring freedom for their people, Kanu operates from the outside and seems to feed on sensationalism and demagoguery, betraying the fact that he might not genuinely be agitating for Biafra. Recently, he converted to violent agitation, employing techniques which failed to work during the Biafran war such as false and sensational propaganda not backed by any real military readiness. He has created a siege mentality of Fulani invasion and severely damaged the minds of several Igbo with his purulent vituperations on radio which have radicalized several Igbo youth hitherto known to love lives.

The sight of able-bodied Igbo men baring their chests and confronting armoured tanks in Afaraukwu in 2017 with empty hands chilled the nerve. His Eastern security network started bearing arms and have been accused of burning down police stations and executing members of the Nigerian armed forces and dissenting voices in Igboland. These activities seem to have justified the terrorist tag slapped on IPOB by the federal government.

On social media, an army of radicalized IPOB members besiege dissenting voices, threatening them with violence and calling them saboteur, the tag which the Biafran propaganda placed on dissenting voices and dishonestly blamed for the fall of the new republic under Ojukwu.

But again, Nnamdi Kanu has been given relevance and a voice by the failure of political leadership in Igboland and the government of Mohammadu Buhari, making him famous and expanding his network among the Igbo home and abroad. The president’s unpretentious nepotism and half-hearted tackling of security threats mostly perpetrated by members of his ethnic group have emboldened the likes of Kanu and almost legitimised his agitation in the eyes of those who are fed up with the preferential treatment. Buhari’s obsession with Kanu and his Biafra agitation also betrays a suspicion that he is still fighting the Biafran war, in which he had fought as a soldier. Kanu, who was born in September 1967 shortly after the start of the war also exhibits the symptoms of a man haunted by ugly experiences as a toddler. This has manifested in form of a persistent paranoia and fixation on Buhari who reminds him of those grisly events and who may in turn be viewing him as the reincarnated Odumegwu Ojukwu.

Whatever be the motivation, Nnamdi Kanu does not help solve the Igbo problem, and if anything, he has only compounded matters with the way the ethnic group’s national political aspirations have been tarnished owing to a prevalent suspicion that the Igbo are still stuck with the Biafran nostalgia. It appears that Biafra has become a weak point for the Igbo, and this has been capitalized on by opportunists to curry martyrdom, heroism and wealth from many gullible people.

The Igbo seeming impressionability with the illusory hopefulness created with Biafra only goes to show that they deserve a closure for Biafra considering that the injustices of those days and the continuing exclusion of the ethnic group in national politics as epitomised by the Buhari administration, have remained.

They will hope that Nnamdi Kanu’s rabble-rousing and the grave damage it has done the Igbo are being nipped in the bud with his recent arrest, but whether another Igbo freedom fighter will arise is not in doubt, especially if the conditions that throw such people up persist. However, they will hope such freedom fighters will be of the calibre of Olaudah Equiano and Azikiwe who would follow conventional routes and have the patience to intellectually argue and sell their case, and not rabble-rousers who fail to learn from history.

Oliver C. Orji, a Nigerian academic, writes from London.