What I Foresee -By J. Ezike

In the late hours of the evening, North American time, I got an international phone call from far away Biafraland, Orlu to be precise. Then came the chills of grim anxiety committing curiosity to the crucifix. And all I could think in a region of my mind was the dreadful. That morbid sensation pierced through my consciousness to unchain a legion of visions in the subsequent minutes that followed in wake. Like a mental gridlock of instinctual messages piling up by itself without control. It was symbolic of everything tragic bringing to the surface of the spiritual mind the queer significance of the autumn – a season of the dying nature, as a mystical reminder of the “end’s beginning.” For indeed, what dies must return by the oyster of reincarnation. And so I worry, O, I worry for what is about to spring up in the cusp inaugurating the season of Spring.

Although the deeper-self admits its relativity to the ethereal, however, I usually do not fancy the language of the mystic or the seer to avoid the façade of a spiritist or the reputation of a grandmaster. But in my few years on earth, crossing borders, meeting alien terrains, abiding with the committee of gurus, absorbing life-changing experiences through this sojourn of self-discovery, I have come to know with an unbeatable solemn credence that “All Men Are Not Equal.” And I am not the type to spread visions without a clear conviction pulled up from the depth of the spirit – the Being inside. I have reiterated countless times before that the struggle for Biafra transcends the political – it is spiritual and “men of logic” who are prone to the seduction of objectivism, in order words – facts, are the greatest prey in this jungle we call a world, in this evil-breeding machine we call Nigeria. Sometimes, and in fact, all times, in order to be ahead, one needs to summon the divine wisdom of the Supreme Being.

Today was a sobering experience, a delving into the world within. There I was, in the blanketing cold of autumn amidst phantom revelries, halving my attention away from its mystical alley towards the call of distress from home. A friend on the phone had voiced disbelief when he learnt that Peter Obi had reflected back at the Caliphate’s flirtations. At the jump, the object of resentment shifted from the “Caliphate vessel of appeasement” and poised at the hunched depiction of the Igbo in this charade. Yet again, serving as an ominous reminder of the simpletons that becomes of us as a tribe.

If at this moment, in this age, with all the soul-gripping ordeals we’ve accrued as a people, as a tribe, as a nation in the course of our serfdom and shattering woes, we still lack “common wisdom” to see through the familiar pall of lies and the sly innuendoes of the sugar-coated narratives, if at this age of matured adversity we still cling to the awareness of a superstitious child who hearkens to the false belief of a possibility for a celestial dish – a Crescent Moon for Dinner. Then, down in the deep of agony’s pit awaits us.

O, I hate to write like this, to pour my spirit into words, and betray the cry within.

For those who sing in “choristerical celebration” for the dawning of a New Spring, those Igbo-Intellectuals whose mouths drizzle with the gibberish of an obscurantist. Those whose visions are blurred to the caved-scenes of the New Spring. And so they write ignorance. They spread foolishness. Wait! That which your mouths profess shall be eaten back as spittle of regret.

The unforeseen eyes in the background expects that our mental control would prompt this great suffering we bore as a livid scar to take and to own the novel approach of persistent revolutionary refusal to bend to colonial might and all its fairy promises of a glorious New Spring.

If we agree to the intoxication, to the sting of this cup of sorrow gulped down to the roots of our existence, then what justice do we make of this self-betrayal of our sobriety and awareness to the plots of the Iron Ruler? Why do we continue to romance this Monstrosity we call Nigeria?

O, I hate to write like this, to pour my spirit into words, and betray the cry within.

Yes, Biafra shall rise again.

But, those who herd themselves in active solidarity with the oppressor, especially the Igbo, in the name of restructuring, are only stretching the length of this march of misery, of this corporate slave mechanism. They, like the clay potter are carving a grave idol of worship. These chants of another cup of sorrow from the Igbo will by the universal law, and in agreement with their spirits shall install, as they say, the ‘good evil’ Atiku Abubakar as the winner of the presidential election on the 16th of February 2019.

For the Igbo who bestrides on the stallion of illusion, of a restructured Nigeria (where every region develops at their own pace and controls their political destinies and all that constitutes their ancestral habitations) through Atiku Abubakar, do not blame the Most High for what your lips proclaimed and what your hands made in this autumn season of 2018.