Thursday, June 15, 2017. 22:02GMT
Biafra: Historical Facts Misrepresented
A LEADING newspaper, which is easily one of the leading media houses in Nigeria positions itself as a newspaper of record. It is a newspaper you can count on for facts. It avoids fancy conjectures and states only those things she is sure of. Even for its op-ed, it checks for correctness of facts and assertions.
This situation comes with advantages. One of those is that one can literally go to the bank with the words or assertions he takes from the newspaper. But in a recent editorial (05 June 2017), it made an assertion that is not correct and that need not be propagated anymore. It wrote:
''Nigeria fought a war, the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War, from 1967 to 1970 to keep the nation together, after its sovereignty was threatened by the Biafran secession. Other stakeholders joined the Federal Military Government led by General Yakubu Gowon to defend the unity of the country. Today, however, it is doubtful if a Federal Government of Nigeria would get the type of support it garnered in 1967 if history were to repeat itself.''
Historically, built on facts, ascertainable facts, the assertion ''after its sovereignty was threatened by the Biafran secession,'' is false, is a lie, possibly from hell, but all too probably propagandised by General Yakubu Gowon, his goons and lickspittles.
Now, one thing is clear. It is that what Gowon did or did not do, and the thread of events and activities are all matters of material or mechanical records. There are pictures, tape records, transcriptions and all that. Thus no amount of propagandising can wipe away established reality or records.
Before now Nigerian historians have written as if Thucydides never wrote. They have neither disciplined their minds nor their pen to report the events as dispassionately as they can. And unlike Thucydides, Nigerian historians are not able to give a sense of direction to events. They write history as if it was a heap of facts and fables, not flow and direction of events.
We can, however, report that we have corrected that lapse. In our book, ''Why and How the Yoruba Fought and Lost the Nigerian Biafra Civil War,'' we borrowed a world from Thucydides. And we can now report the following summary.
What happened is as follows. The Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu group inaugurated barbarism into Nigeria. It took up arms to resolve issues that belong to the Roundtable, that is, to civilisation. And it also so happened that the counter-coup, the pogrom, genocide all happened. And all these things constitute barbarisms in the like of Nzeogwu's act.
However, the actor-barbarians and associated parties as it were, all decided to quit barbarisms and go for the roundtable, and go for civilisation. That is, they came to a Cartesian zero so to speak. And from Cartesian zero they actually, please repeat the word, actually made a go for civilisation. They went to Aburi. And freely the various factions jointly arrived at a common charter, the Aburi Accord. That is, they decided to be civilised, to pursue and remain a civilised people after a frenzy of barbarisms.
At that point, Gowon made a notorious U-turn and singlehandedly rejected or annulled the common charter. Now, the matter gets exciting. According to Gowon and his advisers, the agreement they signed would lead to a secession or breakaway of a part of the country. So, Gowon in his own election decided solely and exclusively to rewrite a jointly reached charter.
Now, there are these points to it. The first is that any man that abrogates a common charter, has abrogated the roundtable and civilisation. On the basis of this alone, the same man is a barbarian, no matter the height of his high office. We speak in strictly historical terms. That is Gowon by that singular act of annulling a common charter took Nigeria back to barbarism.
Secondly, any man who unilaterally abrogates, in part or in whole, a common charter has abrogated the privilege he had to be trusted. That is, it would have been suicidal for the Igbo to come back to Gowon, an ''abrogator'' of common and decided charters. The import is that like the bully he is, Gowon will keep abrogating the abrogated, till he enslaves you or kills you off. That is the whole logic to gowonims.
Thirdly, as we showed in our book, there are no records that what keeps countries together are the looseness or tightness of the interstices between its component parts. To give examples, as federations go, America and Switzerland are polar opposites. America is a unitary Switzerland and Switzerland can be taken as a confederation-loose America. The two countries have been as strong as hell and as United individually, as Israel. However, tightly strung states like the Soviet Union, old India/Pakistan, Sudan/South Sudan, etc. broke up, despite being hermetically or otherwise sealed. So, historical experience, which logic cannot abrogate or annul, is that states endure or are united not because of their inter-unit looseness or spaces. Rather states endure because of their inner logic and creative balances. But details of that should not bother us here. The important point is that Gowon's assertion that he wanted to tighten Nigeria into one indivisibility is bunkum.
That is, Gowon has no logical or historical reasons to have abrogated or annulled Aburi and plunged Nigeria into a heedless, needless civil war. And to worsen matters, the same Gowon ordered and exacted a genocide on the Igbo. And in the end, Gowon has on his hands the blood of 3.5 million Igbo. That is, pound for pound, murder for murder, General Yakubu Gowon is worse than Field Marshall Idi Amin Dada.
So, what happened is that Gowon went to war to enforce his annulment and abrogation of his inked signatures. It is not that the Igbo wanted to secede or even could have with Aburi. The fact is that Gowon gathered a coalition to prosecute his genocidal unction upon lies, false and forged promises. These are matters of record. An example is his reneging to handover by 1975, as he promised.
To help understand the man, Gowon, here is his ''official mug'' literarily. As we evidenced in our book, Gowon exacted genocide on the Igbo on the forged and false assumption that he was fighting for unity. Now, it is also on record that this same national unity Gowon made absolutely sure that only his Anga fellow tribesmen, peopled and headed his brigade of guards, exclusively. That is, when it comes to killing others, Gowon does that in millions, preaching unity. But when it comes to preserving his skin, Gowon becomes completely tribal, atavistic and atomistic. It is also on record that Gowon had a special budget and dedicated storm-troupe for spying on Chief Obafemi Awolowo, allegedly his second-in-command. These are facts. And our sources as evidenced in our book are from northerners and Yoruba people, including an acknowledgement by Awolowo himself of knowledge of that spying.
Our modest advice is that as a source of records, this newspaper should help by stating only assertions that are true, that latest historical researches affirm.
Of course, many people will be claiming that Aburi was inconclusive, etc. That is idiotic. Please, pardon our choice of words. That is why we first asserted that all Gowon did or didn't do are matters of mechanical records. They are one and all available at British Museum, CIA archives etc. So, there is no hiding place in a modern era.
And we also have heard of some Igbo, one Nwokedi particularly, going around canvassing barbarism for Nigeria. Their point is that General Chukwuemeka Ojukwu should have accepted the new Aburi report, solely authored by Gowon since there was nothing substantially different. Well, that is not the way of the civilised. Our advice is that the Nwokedi man and company may help us by declaring themselves barbarians and quit civilisation. For Ojukwu to have accepted Gowonic fait accompli would have made him and the Igbo enslaved to a bully, to a Gowon, without a resistance. First, Gowon's logic is in having the bigger guns. So, how can you be sure that if he further increased his armoury he won't come for your very life? Once a man has failed to keep his honour, nothing in him, of him, is honourable again, no matter the height of his high office.
In summary, it is now clear that Ojukwu was a visionary to have rejected Gowon's barbaric rejection of common agreements. Today, it has become clear that Gowon's purpose is the annexation of the rest of Nigeria, as a tributary province of the North. Technically, the idea that there is any difference between Gowon and Buhari may amount to no more than an eye disease. No, the point is that Buhari is in a long line of heirs, perfecting what Gowonism inaugurated. The difference is a matter of evolutionary stages, not separate species.
That is the point. Gowon built Nigeria as a northern empire and christened it a Nigerian state. Abdulsalami with a coterie of fellow northern Muslims, exclusively forged a unitary constitution and christened it a federal constitution, claiming deceitfully it is written by the Nigerian peoples. And the present regime claims it is for national unity and yet runs a 90% plus North-only security network. So, with headlines like this: ''Afenifere Chieftain Ayo Adebanjo calls for restructuring, says the present arrangement only benefits the North'', it is time to wake up and smell the deceit.
And, of course, one thanks to the courage of the brilliant editor of this newspaper, as he writes: "As of today, Nigeria has no stakeholders because nothing is at stake for anybody. Now, that Nigerianism has failed." 11-06-2017.
To conclude, the news medium may want to reach for copies of How and Why the Yoruba Fought and Lost the Civil War at Patabah bookshop, Shoprite, Surulere, or if it won't offend, ask for complimentary copies from us.
Jimanze Ego-Alowes
Biafra: Historical Facts Misrepresented
A LEADING newspaper, which is easily one of the leading media houses in Nigeria positions itself as a newspaper of record. It is a newspaper you can count on for facts. It avoids fancy conjectures and states only those things she is sure of. Even for its op-ed, it checks for correctness of facts and assertions.
This situation comes with advantages. One of those is that one can literally go to the bank with the words or assertions he takes from the newspaper. But in a recent editorial (05 June 2017), it made an assertion that is not correct and that need not be propagated anymore. It wrote:
''Nigeria fought a war, the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War, from 1967 to 1970 to keep the nation together, after its sovereignty was threatened by the Biafran secession. Other stakeholders joined the Federal Military Government led by General Yakubu Gowon to defend the unity of the country. Today, however, it is doubtful if a Federal Government of Nigeria would get the type of support it garnered in 1967 if history were to repeat itself.''
Historically, built on facts, ascertainable facts, the assertion ''after its sovereignty was threatened by the Biafran secession,'' is false, is a lie, possibly from hell, but all too probably propagandised by General Yakubu Gowon, his goons and lickspittles.
Now, one thing is clear. It is that what Gowon did or did not do, and the thread of events and activities are all matters of material or mechanical records. There are pictures, tape records, transcriptions and all that. Thus no amount of propagandising can wipe away established reality or records.
Before now Nigerian historians have written as if Thucydides never wrote. They have neither disciplined their minds nor their pen to report the events as dispassionately as they can. And unlike Thucydides, Nigerian historians are not able to give a sense of direction to events. They write history as if it was a heap of facts and fables, not flow and direction of events.
We can, however, report that we have corrected that lapse. In our book, ''Why and How the Yoruba Fought and Lost the Nigerian Biafra Civil War,'' we borrowed a world from Thucydides. And we can now report the following summary.
What happened is as follows. The Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu group inaugurated barbarism into Nigeria. It took up arms to resolve issues that belong to the Roundtable, that is, to civilisation. And it also so happened that the counter-coup, the pogrom, genocide all happened. And all these things constitute barbarisms in the like of Nzeogwu's act.
However, the actor-barbarians and associated parties as it were, all decided to quit barbarisms and go for the roundtable, and go for civilisation. That is, they came to a Cartesian zero so to speak. And from Cartesian zero they actually, please repeat the word, actually made a go for civilisation. They went to Aburi. And freely the various factions jointly arrived at a common charter, the Aburi Accord. That is, they decided to be civilised, to pursue and remain a civilised people after a frenzy of barbarisms.
At that point, Gowon made a notorious U-turn and singlehandedly rejected or annulled the common charter. Now, the matter gets exciting. According to Gowon and his advisers, the agreement they signed would lead to a secession or breakaway of a part of the country. So, Gowon in his own election decided solely and exclusively to rewrite a jointly reached charter.
Now, there are these points to it. The first is that any man that abrogates a common charter, has abrogated the roundtable and civilisation. On the basis of this alone, the same man is a barbarian, no matter the height of his high office. We speak in strictly historical terms. That is Gowon by that singular act of annulling a common charter took Nigeria back to barbarism.
Secondly, any man who unilaterally abrogates, in part or in whole, a common charter has abrogated the privilege he had to be trusted. That is, it would have been suicidal for the Igbo to come back to Gowon, an ''abrogator'' of common and decided charters. The import is that like the bully he is, Gowon will keep abrogating the abrogated, till he enslaves you or kills you off. That is the whole logic to gowonims.
Thirdly, as we showed in our book, there are no records that what keeps countries together are the looseness or tightness of the interstices between its component parts. To give examples, as federations go, America and Switzerland are polar opposites. America is a unitary Switzerland and Switzerland can be taken as a confederation-loose America. The two countries have been as strong as hell and as United individually, as Israel. However, tightly strung states like the Soviet Union, old India/Pakistan, Sudan/South Sudan, etc. broke up, despite being hermetically or otherwise sealed. So, historical experience, which logic cannot abrogate or annul, is that states endure or are united not because of their inter-unit looseness or spaces. Rather states endure because of their inner logic and creative balances. But details of that should not bother us here. The important point is that Gowon's assertion that he wanted to tighten Nigeria into one indivisibility is bunkum.
That is, Gowon has no logical or historical reasons to have abrogated or annulled Aburi and plunged Nigeria into a heedless, needless civil war. And to worsen matters, the same Gowon ordered and exacted a genocide on the Igbo. And in the end, Gowon has on his hands the blood of 3.5 million Igbo. That is, pound for pound, murder for murder, General Yakubu Gowon is worse than Field Marshall Idi Amin Dada.
So, what happened is that Gowon went to war to enforce his annulment and abrogation of his inked signatures. It is not that the Igbo wanted to secede or even could have with Aburi. The fact is that Gowon gathered a coalition to prosecute his genocidal unction upon lies, false and forged promises. These are matters of record. An example is his reneging to handover by 1975, as he promised.
To help understand the man, Gowon, here is his ''official mug'' literarily. As we evidenced in our book, Gowon exacted genocide on the Igbo on the forged and false assumption that he was fighting for unity. Now, it is also on record that this same national unity Gowon made absolutely sure that only his Anga fellow tribesmen, peopled and headed his brigade of guards, exclusively. That is, when it comes to killing others, Gowon does that in millions, preaching unity. But when it comes to preserving his skin, Gowon becomes completely tribal, atavistic and atomistic. It is also on record that Gowon had a special budget and dedicated storm-troupe for spying on Chief Obafemi Awolowo, allegedly his second-in-command. These are facts. And our sources as evidenced in our book are from northerners and Yoruba people, including an acknowledgement by Awolowo himself of knowledge of that spying.
Our modest advice is that as a source of records, this newspaper should help by stating only assertions that are true, that latest historical researches affirm.
Of course, many people will be claiming that Aburi was inconclusive, etc. That is idiotic. Please, pardon our choice of words. That is why we first asserted that all Gowon did or didn't do are matters of mechanical records. They are one and all available at British Museum, CIA archives etc. So, there is no hiding place in a modern era.
And we also have heard of some Igbo, one Nwokedi particularly, going around canvassing barbarism for Nigeria. Their point is that General Chukwuemeka Ojukwu should have accepted the new Aburi report, solely authored by Gowon since there was nothing substantially different. Well, that is not the way of the civilised. Our advice is that the Nwokedi man and company may help us by declaring themselves barbarians and quit civilisation. For Ojukwu to have accepted Gowonic fait accompli would have made him and the Igbo enslaved to a bully, to a Gowon, without a resistance. First, Gowon's logic is in having the bigger guns. So, how can you be sure that if he further increased his armoury he won't come for your very life? Once a man has failed to keep his honour, nothing in him, of him, is honourable again, no matter the height of his high office.
In summary, it is now clear that Ojukwu was a visionary to have rejected Gowon's barbaric rejection of common agreements. Today, it has become clear that Gowon's purpose is the annexation of the rest of Nigeria, as a tributary province of the North. Technically, the idea that there is any difference between Gowon and Buhari may amount to no more than an eye disease. No, the point is that Buhari is in a long line of heirs, perfecting what Gowonism inaugurated. The difference is a matter of evolutionary stages, not separate species.
That is the point. Gowon built Nigeria as a northern empire and christened it a Nigerian state. Abdulsalami with a coterie of fellow northern Muslims, exclusively forged a unitary constitution and christened it a federal constitution, claiming deceitfully it is written by the Nigerian peoples. And the present regime claims it is for national unity and yet runs a 90% plus North-only security network. So, with headlines like this: ''Afenifere Chieftain Ayo Adebanjo calls for restructuring, says the present arrangement only benefits the North'', it is time to wake up and smell the deceit.
And, of course, one thanks to the courage of the brilliant editor of this newspaper, as he writes: "As of today, Nigeria has no stakeholders because nothing is at stake for anybody. Now, that Nigerianism has failed." 11-06-2017.
To conclude, the news medium may want to reach for copies of How and Why the Yoruba Fought and Lost the Civil War at Patabah bookshop, Shoprite, Surulere, or if it won't offend, ask for complimentary copies from us.
Jimanze Ego-Alowes
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