by Jonathan Ekene Ifeanyi
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| Ojukwu |
Introduction
Some days ago, prominent
Nigerian newspapers carried the photo of a young female soldier with headlines such as: “Boko Haram Beheads a
Female Soldier”. I went to get a newspaper at one of the newsstands on that
day. Surprisingly, there was an argument going on there but not on the issue of Boko Haram—in fact,
not one person there did I hear discussing the killing. Rather, some were
arguing about football, others about politics. As I listened to them, however, my
attention was drawn to the said argument on politics. There were over 20 people
present and most of them were Yorubas—only about 4 or so were Ibos. A young
man, Yoruba, was arguing that the major problem of Nigeria is bad economy. When
I asked how he meant, arguing rather that Nigeria’s major problem is false religion and not bad
economy, he responded: “No, our major
problem is bad economy, not religion. By the way why do we go to the churches
every Sunday? Of course it’s because we all have problems...now when the
economy is properly fixed and let’s say an average Nigerian is able to afford a
car and a beautiful house, what do you think will happen to the churches? Of
course they will all die a natural death...”
I couldn’t just laugh at
his “argument”—which I was able to disgrace instantly—because he was simply
speaking the minds of over 90% of Nigerian “Christians”—both Catholics and
heretics and both the rich (who merely go to church to ask for more riches) and
the poor—who have commercialised Christianity and don’t really believe in the
concept of heaven or hell or purgatory (and in fact, in reality), or God!—thus
vindicating Lenin’s fallacious statement that “religion is the opium of the masses”. His view of church-going as
well as his materialistic view of life of course served as a perfect proof of
how Nigerians have absorbed all of the West’s (and particularly America’s)
anti-God doctrines even while still hypocritically pretending to be
God-believing people.
After explaining to all present what
religion really means, with an emphasis on true
religion, which is the Christian Faith, I quickly moved on to analyse Islam
as simply a religion of death (all
the Muslims there looking at me, speechless), and then argued that because
Islam is a religion of death, it is
simply suicidal for Christians and Muslims to live together in the same
country, hence the Ibos’ agitation for Biafra which I strongly support. I
argued—even as Northern Muslims had first stated about five decades ago—that
the British made a very serious mistake when they amalgamated the Eastern
region (dominated by the Ibo Catholics) with the other two tribes dominated by
the Yorubas and the Hausa-Fulanis—not
because the Yorubas and the Hausa-Fulanis are naturally bad people, but because
Islam, the religion they practise, is simply evil which has infested their very
thinking—particularly the northerners. “Therefore”,
I argued, “false
religion—particularly Islam which since the very day Nigeria was founded had
wasted and still continues to waste millions of lives of innocent Ibos and
non-Ibo Christians—is simply the major problem of Nigeria, and because it is a
major problem of Nigeria, we Ibos who are always the very target of the
infidels want to secede—we are agitating for Biafra. We are not agitating for
Biafra merely because there is corruption in Nigeria (corruption exists all
over the world!), rather, we are agitating for Biafra because—first and
foremost—we want security, which happens to be the number one obligation of
every government and which we can’t find in Nigeria, and secondly because we
want justice, having been cheated over the years in other numerous areas. When
Donald Trump, during his Presidential campaign, stated that if voted into power
he would expel all the Muslims from the United States, it was the same security
he had in mind. Similarly, when French Mayor Robert Chardon called for
governmental legislation that will ban Islam from France some weeks ago, it was
because of the same security and not “hatred” of individual Muslims. When the
Muslims are separated from the Christians, then there will be peace, at least
to some extent, and then also will Nigerians and Biafrans be serious with their
worship of God since then we shall have (at least something similar to) a
Christian country and a Muslim country, unlike now when Nigeria is seen as a “no
man’s land”, a “secular country” (though in reality a Muslim one) where anyone
can mess up religion—particularly Christianity—as he or she wants”.
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| Uwazuruike |
I hold that as far as
Nigerian politics is concerned—and I mean national politics—the only
marginalisation that truly exists is that of non-Muslims. What many Nigerian
“Christians” have failed to understand over the years—failed to understand
partly because it is never publicly pronounced and partly because they are
false Christians—is that the true Muslims don’t just tolerate having a Christian
as their leader, as a leader of the country. But not only do Nigerian “Christians”
tolerate Muslim leaders, they promote the idea of it in the name of not being “biased about religion” partly because
some don’t really know that Islam is an evil religion and partly because many
know but don’t just care about the consequence of that because they have been
brainwashed by the West’s anti-religious, secularised and atheistic democratic
principles which preach openly that religious issues must remain a private
matter and that it doesn’t matter whatever faith anyone professes—in fact, that
citizens have the “right” to worship even the Devil, as we can, for instance,
see many already doing in the United States. Nigerian secular politicians now
adopt this attitude: it is forbidden to discuss critical religious issues
between Christians and Muslims publicly, but political issues that equally cause
the deaths of many almost on daily basis are never forbidden. These attitudes are,
of course, sings of atheism in the country. Today, as part of the strategies of
launching their massive campaigns against God, secularists and atheists around
the world often accuse religion of being the only cause of conflicts and wars in the world and therefore forbid
any public religious debate or argument between people of different faiths, and,
while the Muslims resist them, almost all “Christians” all over the world now
agree with them on this. The tragic result is that true evangelism now becomes
a thing of the past, and, consequently, hardly do we witness true conversions
any longer. Put simply, today it is suicidal to go to the Protestant/Pentecostal
“churches”, and better not to attend many Novus Ordo Catholic
churches because what we have in these churches is just poisonous Americanism in disguise.
The religion of Islam which since the very
day Nigeria was founded is well known to have wasted and continues to waste the
lives of innocent Nigerian Christians every year, is the primary reason why the
Ibos’ agitation for Biafra is simply a sine
qua non. (See: No, Balarabe Musa, Jonathan Not to Blame for Boko Haram Menace!, my article that briefly demonstrates how Islam wastes lives
of Christians every year). Unfortunately, many “Christians” here don’t just care about these killings
partly because their own loved ones have not been killed and partly because
they have been brainwashed by the West’s anti-Christian democratic principles
which I have mentioned and hence have simply lost their identity as Christians
even without knowing it.
The Ibos are among these secularised “Christians”.
Although many of them who are advocates of Biafra are strongly opposed to
Islam, they are nevertheless saturated by western secularism, and I can argue
that they promote Americanism in Nigeria more than all the other tribes in the
country. How then, can these Ibo “Christians”—with their secular mentality—really
win this “war” against the Muslims who stand to promote their anti-Christ false
religion and are really well committed in the struggle? Which God can really help
today’s Ibos to actualise the Biafran dream? Or does the actualisation of
Biafra not also require the help of God?
Vatican II and the loss of the Christian Faith in Nigeria and in Biafran land
The Encyclopaedia
Britannica says the following about the current state of religion in Nigeria:
“At the beginning of the 21st century, more than
two-fifths of the (Nigerian) population was Muslim, slightly less than that was
Christian, and about one-tenth claimed to follow traditional religions.
However, many of those professing to be Muslims and Christians also openly
performed certain rites or rituals of traditional religions that were no longer
condemned as they had been during the colonial period. While a supreme god
(called Olorun Olodumare in Yoruba, Chukwu in Igbo, Osalobua in Edo, and Abasi
Ibom in Ibibio) is central to many of the traditional religions, the deity is worshipped
through a number of intermediaries or lesser gods.
“Religious freedom is guaranteed by the
constitution, and Muslims and Christians live and work together, although there
is continuing conflict between the two groups and between them and adherents of
traditional religions. The greatest concentration of Muslims is in the (Hausa-Fulani-dominated)
northern states; there, three-fourths of the people profess the religion of
Islam, which also is the dominant faith in a few of the (Yoruba-dominated) southern
states. Christians make up more than three-fourths of the population in the (Ibo-dominated)
eastern states.”
Now our interest
here is not in the above estimation—if you ask me to estimate I won’t waste
time to state that a larger
percentage of the entire Ibos have been Catholic until just recently when a
few, partly because of money and partly because of the anti-Christian “religious
freedom” preached by democrats, joined the Yoruba “Christians” in embracing
Pentecostalism. (In fact, one old Yoruba Catholic priest once stated that when
the European missionaries came to Nigeria initially almost all Ibos embraced
the Catholic Faith and vehemently rejected Protestantism). The Yorubas, on the
contrary, are largely Muslims—though mere
infidels since they don’t believe in killing, unlike the Hausa-Fulanis. In
my own offhand estimation about 60% of the Yorubas are Muslims, Protestants
should be about 35%, while the remaining 5% should be shared by the traditionalists
and Catholics. The Hausas-Fulanis—the largest population in the country—are of
course predominantly Muslims as well—in my offhand estimation over 90% of them!
Our interest in the above quote is rather
on the statement that “many of those professing to be Muslims and
Christians also openly performed certain rites or rituals of traditional
religions that were no longer condemned as they had been during the colonial
period. While a supreme god (called Olorun Olodumare in Yoruba, Chukwu in Igbo,
Osalobua in Edo, and Abasi Ibom in Ibibio) is central to many of the
traditional religions, the deity is worshipped through a number of
intermediaries or lesser gods”. Carefully notice in the quote that all the
major tribes are mentioned as those who are now “free” to worship false gods
except the Hausa-Fulanis. This is because, unlike the Yoruba Muslims who
tolerate other faiths as well as the Ibos and other “Christian” tribes who are
ever ready to betray the Christian faith at any time, the Hausa-Fulanis are predominantly
Sunnis well committed to the faith of
Islam.
We learn from the
quote, then, that during the colonial era—when the foreign missionaries were
still present in the country—Christians were forbidden to worship idols and
false gods but years after their departure, things changed and Christians were
then free to worship any other god they chose to worship. That is perfectly
true! So why?
The answer, without
wasting time, is simply Americanism and
Vatican II which, as His Excellency Bishop Richard Williamson observes in ‘The Heresy of Americanism and Vatican II’,
both have a common goal! In my 2015 article
‘African bishops’ denouncing of the West’s anti-family agenda as a ‘new
slavery’…reservations’ I pointed
out that the very first “magisterial” document to make mention of the religious
traditions of African peoples, and in a positive light for that matter, is Africae Terrarum of Paul VI, issued on October 29, 1967. In this document
Paul VI, Father of the anti-Catholic Novus Ordo Mass, made the following
unprecedented statement:
“Many customs and rites, once considered to be strange, are
seen today, in the light of ethnological science, as integral parts of various
social systems, worthy of study and commanding respect. In this regard, we
think it profitable to dwell on some general ideas which typify ancient African
religious cultures because we think their moral and religious values deserving
of attentive consideration.” And he is here
referring to pure African paganism!
Now his Vatican II:
“Religious institutes, working to plant the
Church, thoroughly imbued with mystic treasures with which the Church's
religious tradition is adorned, should strive to give expression to them and to
hand them on, according to the nature and the genius of each nation. Let them
reflect attentively on how Christian religious life might be able to assimilate
the ascetic and contemplative traditions, whose seeds were sometimes planted by
God in ancient cultures already prior to the preaching of the Gospel.” (AG §18).
One would like to know
what these “ascetic and contemplative traditions” “whose seeds were sometimes
planted by God in ancient [pagan] cultures” are! This is the same error
contained in Lumen
Gentium §8,
which speaks of “elements of salvation” outside the Catholic Church, not only
those within the “separated brethren” but also in the pagan religions. Nigerian
Catholics were not at alert when Vatican II revolution started—while many then
were not even educated, the very few educated ones who were catechized by
the foreign missionaries believed faithfully that the Church’s leaders were
completely infallible, hence they embraced V2’s “gospels” to the letter! And
the result? Today many Nigerian Catholics—particularly the “intellectuals”—are
simply worse than pagans.
For instance, in his book Comparative Religion Joseph Omoregbe,
Professor of philosophy and one of Nigeria’s eminent philosophers and
theologians, writes:
“The story is told of a European Christian missionary in
China who on “All Souls Day”, went to the cemetery to place a bouquet of
flowers on the grave of a deceased relation. As he was doing that, he saw a
Chinese nearby, placing rice on the grave of a deceased relation. The European
missionary ridiculed the Chinese and asked, “Do you think your dead relation
will wake up and eat your rice?” And the Chinese replied, “When your own
relation wakes up to smell your flower and enjoy its fragrance, mine will also
wake up to eat my rice”. Now what is the difference between what the European
Christian missionary was doing at the cemetery and what the Chinese was doing?
There is essentially no difference. The only difference is in the cultural
expressions of basically the same thing. The Europeans value flowers while the
Chinese value rice. The European Christian missionary placed on the grave of a
deceased relation what is valued in his culture while the Chinese also placed
on the grave of a deceased relation what is valued in his culture. They were
both doing essentially the same thing. If the action of the Chinese is
superstitious, that of the European Christian missionary is no less
superstitious. If the action of the Chinese is unreasonable that of the
European Christian missionary is equally unreasonable. If the former is pagan,
the latter is no less pagan. It is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
The fact that the former was done by a European does not place it on a category
different from that of the latter which was performed by a Chinese”. (Comparative Religion, Lagos:
Joja Press Limited, 1999, p. x).
Omoregbe, a Catholic and
authentic product of Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, Lateran University,
Rome, and Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, continues:
“A Catholic European missionary kneels down before the statue
of St. Jude, believed to be “the wonder worker”, and prays fervently, asking
for a favour. He sees and African Indigenous Religionist kneeling down before
the statue of Songo (a deity in African Indigenous Religion), praying fervently
for a favour. The Catholic calls the African Indigenous Religionist “pagan” and
denounces his action as “paganism”, “idolatry”, “heathenism”, etc. Now, what is
the difference between what the European Catholic missionary is doing and what
that African Indigenous Religionist is doing? There is essentially no
difference. They are both doing essentially the same thing. Each of them is
praying to a being believed to be living in the supernatural world, but
symbolically represented here on earth with a statue. None of them is naive
enough to believe that a statue in itself is a living thing or that it can hear
prayers or grant any petition. None of them is actually praying to the statue
in front of which he is kneeling, but to the supernatural being symbolically
represented by the statue. Each believes the supernatural being he is praying
to is real. But none of them can prove that such a being actually exists. Each
of them is acting on his belief. Therefore if what one of them is doing is
“pagan”, what the other is doing is no less “pagan”. If what one of them is
doing is idolatry, what the other is doing is equally idolatry. The fact that
one is performed by a European while the other is performed by an African does
not place the two actions in different categories, since they are essentially
the same. If the belief of one is superstitious, that of the other is no less
superstitious.” (Ibid., pp x-xi).
I was present as an
observer when, during a certain lecture entitled “Christianity in Dialogue with other Religions”, held at Regina
Mundi Catholic Church, Mushin, Lagos some years back (it was the first day I
saw a “Catholic priest” who was also a Muslim Imam dressed in a Muslim attire!),
Prof. Omoregbe was personally invited by His Eminence Cardinal Okogie to be the
very chairman of the occasion and the book I’ve just quoted—which also attacks
the divinity of Christ ferociously and in which Omoregbe appeals to Vatican II
to justify some of his views—was strongly recommended to all the participants. Today
Lagos Island, where Cardinal Okogie was a bishop for almost 40 years, is over
70% Muslim, the rest are Protestants and pagans—Catholics here cannot be up to
4% and even these few, in reality, hardly know anything about the authentic
Catholic Faith, having been brainwashed by the cardinal and his bad priests for
years.
Now make no mistake about it—Omoregbe’s belief is just currently the belief of the majority of Novus
Ordo priests, bishops and cardinals in Nigeria and of course, in Biafran land
as well. I pointed out in my 2015 article mentioned above that Nigerian
intellectuals including Catholic priests, bishops and cardinals now categorise
both the colonialists and the good European Christian missionaries as mere
selfish imperialists. (Just like Omoregbe, they make mockery of them and
anything that has to do with authentic Catholicism).
Secularism as championed by Americanism and Vatican II has
been embraced by the Ibos
Now on Americanism, which
Vatican II also champions but in a very subtle manner. In his book Understanding Globalisation and Opposing Its
Evils Prince P.C.P Odor writes:
“Any
opening of the boundaries of Arab nations to the American government,
businessmen and dissolute women will open the boundaries to the corruption that
is very rampant and pervasive in the Christendom now. The Christian communities
opened their boundaries and left their sacred places ajar to the Americans and
that is why Christendom is fragmented and lacks cohesion or one faith, hope,
charity and gospel. All Christian countries have also lost their moral
absolutism and morality is now, for them, relative. Asceticism, moderation and
spirituality have been lost also. Materialism, profligate and secularism are
practised by most Christians nowadays. These will be the misfortune of the Arab
(Muslim) countries when their governments open their boundaries to the USA
government, businessmen, their dissolute women and the dissolute culture of
America and western Europe. ...Lastly their standard of living will be
determined by the standard of living of the Americans and Western Europeans
that are based on their corrupt notion of the essence and purpose of human
existence. Ultimately their standard of living will be determined on the basis
of how much of only American foods they eat and the American ways of life they
live.” (Understanding
Globalisation and Opposing Its Evils, Lagos: Gal Publishers, 2002, p. 113).
A perfect example of living “the American
way of life” is the issue of trousers (or pants-wearing) by women. On this, one
Catholic writer, Bill Wyler, has the following to say:
"A pair of baggy trousers
gathered at the ankles and worn with a short belted tunic was sported by Amelia
Jenks Bloomer of Homer, New York, in 1851. She had copied the pants costume
from a friend, Elizabeth Smith Miller. But it was Mrs. Bloomer, an early FEMINIST
and staunch supporter of reformer Susan B. Anthony, who became so strongly
associated with the MASCULINE-TYPE outfit that it acquired her name. Pants
(i.e. trousers), then MEN'S wear, appealed to Amelia Bloomer...Amelia Bloomer
REFUSED to wear the popular fashion. Starting in 1851, she began to appear in
public in baggy pants and a short tunic. And as more women joined the campaign
for the right to vote, Mrs. Bloomer turned the trousers into a UNIFORM OF
REBELLION...CHALLENGING the long TRADITION of who in the family wore the
PANTS." (Article on
the origin of bloomers/women wearing pants, taken from "Panati's
Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things" by Charles Panati).
“So what can we gather from all
this? That a feminist miscreant desired to wear the other sex's clothes to
express a demand for "women's rights" and to spark a rebellion
against the traditional mores in decency. Feminists challenged the tradition of
the man being the head of the family by wearing his clothes. Later on in the
1930's, the Communists would finalize this revolution in women's clothing.
Using gnostic "theology", the communists deemed women nothing more
than imperfect men, who in order to be as perfect as men, had to express
masculinity and repress their feminine attributes. They made it the ideal
fashion, in their propaganda, that women, in order to express true equality
with men in all things, would also have to wear the masculine
clothing for men only, called Pants (trousers). So we can see that this custom
of women wearing pants is nothing more than a feminist tradition. It
certainly does not come from the long held decency code passed down from
Catholic woman to Catholic woman throughout the 19 centuries of the Church's
influence on society.”
Please
note: our position here is not that
all Americans are evil—quite the contrary—but that the Masons and communists
did infiltrate their culture, corrupted it and are corrupting the rest of the
world through it. Women wearing of trousers, for instance, is not American culture but a rebellion sparked
off by feminists, the Communists and the Masons, and today, starting from
America it has spread to the rest of the world, including Nigeria, including
Ibo land.
Similarly, Carol Byrne writes in her
article, ‘What’s wrong with women
wearing trousers?’:
“The Archbishop of Dublin and
Primate of Ireland, John Charles McQuaid C.S.Sp., was well known for his
tirades against women wearing trousers. He continually denounced women’s
participation in athletics for reason of dress in mixed company. For example,
in a sermon to a congregation in his native Cavan, he voiced his opposition to
young women rowers being dressed in men’s scanty athletic attire. There is no
doubt that throughout his lengthy career (he reigned for more than three
decades from 1940 to 1972 before resigning in 1972 in disgust at the reforms of
Vatican II and dying, they say, broken-hearted the following year), the
legendary Archbishop McQuaid exerted an enormous influence on every aspect of
Catholic Ireland. It was common knowledge that Dr McQuaid had a direct
influence on University College Dublin, and this has been confirmed with the
recent opening of the Archbishop’s archives. I have a vivid recollection of an
incident that occurred during my university days in Dublin when a foreign
female student wearing trousers was approached by a woman official and asked to
leave the premises because she had infringed the dress code. What would McQuaid
have said about today’s trousered women? He would have used up all his
vocabulary, and have had nothing left but tears.”
Carefully
notice that Dr Byrne is here talking about women who wore trousers to the
universities—then the idea of women wearing trousers to the Church was just
unthinkable. Today, on the contrary, Novus Ordo priests, bishops, cardinals and
popes have perfectly encouraged and institutionalised all this.
Apart from imposing its anti-God dressing
on societies all over the world, Americanism has other impositions as well. Prince
Ordo writes:
“...One
form of market—privatised, deregulated and public good insensitive market with
its chief office, the World Trade Centre, in the USA. The government of the USA
preserves for itself the control over the dominant organisations for
determining and regulating finance and all markets, namely, the International
Monetary Fund, (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organisation
(WTO), as the strategy for achieving the economic evils of globalisation that I
have been revealing. The rest of the monisms are: One way of life, American way
of life or American lifestyle; one educational model, standard, language of
teaching and evaluation; one purpose or aim of education, but not necessarily
one curriculum; one human and national identity, the American Identity, and one
set of moral principles or laws—that which the US government dictates according
to its strategic interests, American sense of ethics and freedom (liberty), and
the Rooseveltian human rights.
“...the
government of the USA is employing a strategy which no government or
institution that has ruled the world employed, by establishing some vital and
strategic international organisations, putting Americans and only foreign
people who are loyal to the government of the USA and ready to do anything that
the government wants in the strategic and effective positions in the
organisations, giving enormous financing to them and, founded on this, using
them to achieve its purposes and aims under globalisation. These organisations
have powers and authorities that are greater than the powers and authorities of
sovereign, independent and free governments and nations. Consequently, they
interfere into the internal affairs, sovereign rights and liberty of target
governments and nations, make policies for these governments, enforce them,
determine what the governments do, sit in judgement over the governments,
condemn them and punish the leaders of the governments. In all these, there is
an established rule that the government of the USA, Americans and American
interests are the only world sacred cows and must not be violated. The
organisations are the United Nations Organisations (UNO), the United Nations
Security Council (UNSC), the World Court at the Hague (WCH), and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).” (Ibid., pp. Viii-ix).
“Another
evil of globalisation is its use, by the government of the USA and its agents
for the purpose of changing the beliefs, traditions, customs, religions,
standards, meaning of life, purpose of existence and values of other people.
This is called “cultural globalisation” or “globalisation of culture”. The
government of the USA is using it to make foreign nations live and behave like
the Americans, or as it deems useful to it, and to hold beliefs consistent with
its atheistic, nihilistic and secular beliefs. It intends this strategy for the
purpose of legitimising, universalising and institutionalising atheism,
nihilism and secularism ultimately. This is why the European Union defined
globalisation as the “Americanisation of our culture”. The “Americanisation of
our culture”, as an evil aspect of globalisation, is the cause of increasing
loss of traditional spirituality, morality, norms and values; and,
consequently, the increasing moral decadence, violence, increasing sexual
profligacy, the lack of order in the homes and in the societies, and the loss
of positive values in the world...” (Ibid.).
Again, globalisation, “...is evil because it is being used for the
purposes of promoting atheism (anti-God attitudes and behaviours), nihilism (a
rejection and opposing of religious and traditional morality, spirituality and
values), and secularism (anti-God, anti-the authority of God on earth, anti-religion
and anti-religious institutions, morality, values and standards). These are the
consequences of “the separation of church and state...” (Ibid., p. Vi).
Americanism—the so-called “adaptation of
the church to modern civilization” that was reprobated by Pope Leo XIII in his
apostolic letter Testem Benevolentiae of Jan. 22, 1899—is all about the
rejection of spirituality and the promotion of only materialism, secularism and atheism. As we read in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Pope Leo XIII “had
difficulty comprehending the burgeoning republic of the United States, American
pluralism, and American Catholic praise for religious liberty. The controversy
over Americanism arose from a French translation of a biography of Isaac Thomas Hecker, founder of the American congregation of
priests, the Paulists. Hecker had sought to reach out to Protestant Americans
by stressing certain points of Catholic teaching, but Leo understood this
effort as a watering down of Catholic doctrine. Hecker also had used terms such
as “natural virtue,” which to the pope suggested the Pelagian heresy. Because
members of the Paulists took promises but not the vows of religious orders,
many concluded that Hecker denied the need for external authority. Progressive
Catholics in America advocated greater Catholic involvement in American
culture, which some understood to mean that Roman Catholics should adapt its
teachings to modern civilization. In Longinqua oceani (1895; “Wide Expanse of
the Ocean”), Leo warned American church leaders—such as the only cardinal in
the American church, James Gibbons, archbishop of Baltimore—not to export their unique system of
separation of church and state, and in his pastoral letter Testem benevolentiae
(1899; “Witness to Our Benevolence”) he condemned other forms of Americanism.
Gibbons denied that American Catholics held any of the condemned views, and
Leo's pronouncement ended the Americanist movement and curtailed the activities
of American progressive Catholics.”
That was in late nineteenth century. Today,
on the contrary, Americanism is being championed by the Satanic Vatican II
popes, Cardinals, bishops and priests all over the world. Because so many of
these Novus Ordo priests and bishops no longer believe in God but only in
materialism, hence instead of responding to the numerous problems confronting
the Church at this time we rather see many clamouring for more Satanic and radical
changes—some want to marry (and there are already married “priests” under Vatican II Satanic popes and especially under Francis the apostate, this for instance: http://www.fathervince.com/mpfacts.htm and this: http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/659/0/pope-says-married-men-could-be-ordained-priests-if-world-s-bishops-agree-on-it-) others want women ordination, others want
adulterers and homosexuals to have access to Holy Communion, etc. “The shifting demographics of contemporary
Roman Catholicism have presented the church with a number of challenges”,
writes Lawrence Cunningham in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. “How should it respond to declining church
attendance, declining numbers of religious, and the increasing secularism in
the West and in the traditionally Catholic countries of Europe in particular?
Would the ordination of women and married men check these trends? How should
the church respond to the growing numbers of Muslims in some of these
countries? How should it adapt its message and its practice in non-Western
regions of the world, especially Africa? ...What pastoral strategies should be
used to combat the aggressive evangelization by fundamentalist groups in Latin
America?...”
In Nigeria Americanism manifests in
virtually all areas of life: the old Catholic schools have all been secularised,
the “churches” talk about only the material well-being of man here on earth—always
how to accumulate wealth and nothing spiritual, while in the hospitals
patients are being treated like mere animals that have no souls, etc. Prince
Odor, who visited Nigerian hospitals—both the government-owned and later the
private ones—during his research, with respect to how much value is put on
human life and how this value is effected through empathy, sympathy, attention,
and love that are given to sick people, writes:
“...I first went to the CMUL-LUTH. There, I investigated how
medical doctors, matrons and nurses in the in-patients, the out-patients and
the Accident and Emergency (A&E) wards of the hospital attended to the sick
people whom the children and relatives of the sick people had entrusted to
them, having faith in their learning and ability to cure their sick people, and
believing that they would discharge their learning religiously...I discovered
that Nigerian traditional virtues and moral values had deteriorated...I found
out that money came first in all the services at the private hospitals and
clinics and at the CMUL-LUTH, and not saving of human life...Clearly, greater
advantage was taken of the people who were desperate to save the lives of their
loved ones by the management of the hospitals and clinics, by charging such
exorbitant, insensitive, unsympathetic and criminal amounts”. (Ibid., pp. 2 & 6).
Again, “People who practise medicine under what is
generally called “traditional”, because the art was learnt here oblige
themselves to the values, ethics and morality of their profession absolutely,
while the people who learnt medicine in western countries give no relative or
loyalty to their ethics, values and morality”. (Ibid).
Indeed, as in the hospitals
so also in all other sectors, especially in the Satanic churches—it’s all about materialism. As one
Protestant, Prof. Kunle Macaulay put it recently—lamenting over the attitudes
of fellow heretics: “Our observation
confirms that religiously the world is in confusion, while Nigerians are
craving more and more for the material advantages, Satan is introducing
paganism into Christianity” (The
Monotheism of Christianity, National Mirror, April 10, 2016, p.30).
Nigeria changed its
constitution from the British Parliamentary system to the American democratic
one shortly after General Olusegun Obasanjo became the Head of State in 1967
and since then blindly embraced globalisation and its evils as championed by
the United States, chief among which is the (gradual!) murdering of the Christian
Faith in the country—a Faith brought to us by the good European missionaries. And
of course, everything America has to offer is perfectly approved by Vatican II
modernist churchmen.
His Excellency Bishop Richard
Williamson writes, in ‘The Heresy of
Americanism and Vatican II’:
“The fundamental argument of the conference should
be familiar to followers in recent years of the Society of St. Pius X in the
United States: the central idea behind the founding of the United States and
the central idea behind Vatican II have much in common. Extrinsically, this is
because both ideas originate in Freemasonry. Intrinsically, this enables much
light to be thrown on each by the other. In Italy, the idea of American served
to illustrate Vatican II. Here perhaps let Vatican II illustrate the idea of
American....Nevertheless, the Masonic idea is especially strong in the USA, and
it has over the last two centuries succeeded in corrupting generations of
authentically Catholic immigrants. The Masonic idea is all around us, day by
day it threatens to corrupt our own Catholic Faith, and if it is allowed to
have its way, it will utterly destroy Catholic Tradition. With Vatican II it
penetrated into the Catholic churchmen with the result that great parts of the
church have disintegrated before our eyes. So we may and we must love the
country of our birth as God meant us to do, but that will not stop us from
examining the godless idea which will, left to itself, destroy our nation, our
Church, our souls....Two kingdoms clash: on the one side, the kingdom of
Christ, Christian civilization; on the other side, the kingdom of Satan,
anti-Christian, or rather anti-civilization, the new Judeo-Masonic order, the
so-called New World Order....In this clash, the Second Vatican Council played a
decisive part. At the Council the two kingdoms clashed with one another, and
poor Paul VI was under the illusion that they had come to an agreement. In no
way. What happened was that the principles of anti-civilization, or rather its
anti-principles, were welcomed within the Church of civilization with the
results we now know - the ruination of that Church.”
Again, on dressing like
the Americans, “Ten years ago, an Ecône professor
told me, the young Swiss in Valais used to dress like young Swiss, but today
they are all dressed like Americans”, said
Bishop Williamson. This has also become the reality in Nigeria, especially
among the Yorubas and the Ibos, including Catholics of course. The Yorubas—both
their Protestants and their Muslims who don’t take their faiths seriously—copied
American way of dressing to the letter and have simply polluted their land with
immodest clothing, other tribes copying them blindly. The desecration of God’s
temple with immodesty witnessed all over the Catholic world seems to have also
started in Nigeria from the Yoruba land, the birthplace of Protestant/Pentecostal
“Christianity” which also came from the United States. Women wearing of
trousers (or pants) or any other type of male clothes—a sin which the bible
puts in the same category as homosexuality, i.e., man or woman trying to change his or her nature—and women going to
Church with no hair-covering, etc., are simply normal in the Catholic churches
in Yoruba land and the Ibos here have copied everything they see to the letter
and are rapidly bringing them down to Ibo land. Apart from coping the Yorubas
in immodesty and nudism, the Ibos, out of their own freewill, have also embraced
Americanism and advanced it from another angle more than the Yorubas. It was
the Ibos, for instance, that pioneered what is now known as the Nigerian “home
video” which has spread sexual immorality all over the Nigerian landscape like
wildfire, and which day by day is also championing African paganism with
diabolical haste. The Nigerian Nollywood—dominated by the Ibos—is just the
American Masonic Hollywood in Nigeria.
Quoting
the Islamists, who unfortunately have become almost the only people that still talk about religion and morality
in today’s Nigeria, Prince Odor writes, on what has also become a reality in
Nigeria and in Ibo land:
“While the Ahmadiyat hold that
“the political philosophy of Islam has no root for false or deceptive
diplomacy. It believes in absolute morality and enjoins justice and fairness to
friends and foe alike in every sphere of human interest” (AL-NASR, Sept. 1991),
morality has degenerated among Christians, very seriously and shamefully,
because American sexually loose or indiscreet, wanton, and profligate sexual
culture has been allowed into the church. It began by trivialising and excusing
of moral failures, and the approval, promotion, liberalisation, rationalising
and relativising of moral wrong” (Ibid,. p. 301).
Note:
the Muslims in today’s Nigeria have become almost
the only people that promote morality not
because they are Muslims but because they are human beings created by God and as
such have moral consciousness. This moral consciousness is what almost all Ibo
Christians—and indeed almost all of today’s Christians—have lost even by merely
going to the “churches” to hear the “pastors” or priests talk. In other words,
if you have such a moral consciousness, these Satanic people will ensure that
it is completely killed in you.
Again,
the question here is a very simple one: How really then, can a people who have
lost the Catholic Faith by embracing secularism and consequently gone too deep
in corruption and immorality see themselves—at the same time—as “the African
Israelites” specially chosen by God and destined to actualise, by God’s help,
the Biafran dream?
Ojukwu and the Biafran Struggle
The Biafran struggle is
indeed a good struggle. But the problem it faces currently lies on the fact
that those leading the struggle—in fact almost all of them—are the Ibo secularists,
though many of them certainly don’t understand what western secularism really
stands for. Some of them—like almost all Nigerian intellectuals of course—are mere
puppets who, having been brainwashed by western secularism, go about preaching
Americanisms—that is, preaching, albeit somehow unconsciously, anti-religious
doctrines. Others—such as the so-called Zionists—are just confused about
religion and still go about spreading the old illusion that the Ibos are
Israelites—and even parading themselves as such! Nevertheless, true and sincere
Ibos are to be found only among these advocates of Biafra and not among the hypocrites who oppose it,
I mean the idiots who wish to remain in Egypt just because of what they’re gaining
there currently.
Biafra is the name of a
secessionist western African state—led by Ojukwu—that unilaterally declared its
independence from Nigeria in May
1967. It constituted the former Eastern Region of Nigeria and was inhabited
principally by the Ibo people and a few other non-Ibo
speaking tribes.
Chukwuemeka Odimegwu
Ojukwu, Biafran War Lord, was the son of a successful Ibo businessman. Ojukwu was born on
November 4, 1933, at Zungeru, in northern Nigeria. Like most Ibos, his religion
was Catholicism. Having personally heard him speak briefly on Church issues, I
may rightly describe him as ‘a lover of
the Church who though was an authentic product of western democratic culture in
which he found himself’. He died a
Catholic in 2012 and was buried as such.
Ojukwu read history at the
University of Oxford, graduating in 1955. He then returned to Nigeria to serve
as an administrative officer. After two years, however, he joined the army and
was rapidly promoted thereafter. In the mid-1960s economic and political
instability and ethnic/religious friction characterized Nigerian public life. The
country was segmented into three large geographic regions, each of which was
essentially controlled by an ethnic group: the west by the Yoruba, the east by
the Ibo, and the north by the Hausa-Fulani. Conflicts were endemic, as regional
leaders protected their privileges; the south complained of northern
domination, and the north feared that the southern elite was bent on capturing
power. In the west the government had fallen apart in 1962, and in 1963 Chief Obafemi
Awolowo, former premier of western region, was convicted of conspiracy to
overthrow Tafawa Balewa’s government and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. A
boycott of the federal election of December 1964 brought the country to the
brink of breakdown. The point of no return was reached in January 1966, when,
after the collapse of order in the west following the fraudulent election of
October 1965, a group of army officers attempted to overthrow the federal
government, and Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and two of the regional premiers
were murdered.
Before we proceed it is
good to point out that today, when successive Nigerian Hausa-Fulani/Yoruba-led federal
governments have messed up Nigerian history—Nigerian government has banned the
teaching of accurate history in Nigerian schools—we are often told
that these army officers who overthrew the government were largely Ibo junior
army officers and therefore that the coup was an “Ibo coup”. Of course there
are some elements of truth in the allegation—but not as often magnified—as nine out of the twenty officers involved were
Ibos. The major army officers involved in the coup were the following:
1.
Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu (Delta Ibo)
3.Maj. Timothy
Onwuatuegwu (Ibo)
4.
Capt. G. Adeleke (Yoruba)
5. Maj. Ifeajuna (Ibo)
6.Maj. Chris
Anuforo (Ibo)
7.Maj. Don
Okafor (Ibo)
8.Maj. Humphrey
Chukwuka (Ibo)
9.Capt. Emmanuel
Nwobosi (Ibo)
10.Capt. Ben
Gbulie (Ibo)
11.Capt. Ogbo
Oji (Ibo)
12. Lt. Fola
Oyewole (Yoruba)
13. Lt. R.
Egbiko (Esean)
14. Lt. Tijani
Katsina (Hausa/Fulani)
15. Lt. O.
Olafemiyan (Yoruba)
16. Capt.
Gibson Jalo (Bali)
10. Capt.
Swanton (Middle Belt)
17. Lt. Hope
Harris Eghagha (Urhobo)
18. Lt.
Dag Warribor (Ijaw)
19. 2nd Lt.
Saleh Dambo (Hausa)
20. 2nd Lt.
John Atom Kpera
Of course the allegation was brought forth
because of those who were killed in that unfortunate coup, who were mostly the
Hausas-Fulanis, and because of who later emerged as the new Head of State, who
was Ibo.
Part of the story of the
coup, as reported by Wikipedia, reads:
“Late in the morning of January 15, 1966, at a meeting with
some local journalists in Kaduna seeking to find out what was going on, it was
brought to Major Nzeogwu's attention that the only information about the events
then was what was being broadcast by the BBC. Nzeogwu was surprised
because he had expected a radio broadcast of the rebels from Lagos. He is said to have
"gone wild" when he learnt that Emmanuel Ifeajuna in Lagos had not made any
plans whatsoever to neutralize Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi who was the Commander of
the Army...”
The coup failed, and
Nzeogwu was later arrested in Lagos on January 18, 1966. Major
General Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Ibo, seized
power in the ensuing chaos, and became the Head of State. All of the coup leaders, except for Maj. Ifeajuna who
had fled to Ghana, were placed
under arrest. Maj. Nzeogwu handed over control of the Northern Region to
Ironsi's appointed designee, Maj. Hassan Katsina, before being escorted by Lt
Col. Conrad Nwawo to Lagos where he surrendered to Maj Gen. Ironsi. General
Ironsi used the coup as a pretext to suspend the Federal Government and bring
an end to Nigeria's first republic. Ironsi appointed Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu
Gowon, a Northerner as his chief of staff. Lieutenant Colonel Ojukwu was
appointed military governor of the mostly Ibo Eastern region. Ironsi’s plan to abolish the regions and impose a unitary government met with
anti-Ibo riots in the north. Now just because an Ibo, Aguiyi-Ironsi was the
Head of State and Government, even for the first time, Hausa-Fulani and some Yoruba army officers from the Northern
and Western regions feared a government dominated by the Ibos. Thus the
military intervention worsened the political situation, as the army itself
split along ethnic lines, its officers clashed over power, and the instigators
and leaders of the January coup were accused of favouring Ibo domination. In
July 1966 northern officers staged a countercoup, in which Aguiyi-Ironsi, after
spending just six months in office, was assassinated together with Colonel
Fajuyi the military governor of the Western region and some three hundred
Eastern officers. Lieut. Col. (later Gen.) Yakubu Gowon,
Ironsi’s Northern chief of staff, emerged as the compromise head of the new
government.
Ojukwu retained his
command of the Eastern region under Gowon's rule, and, in September 1966, some
10,000 to 30,000 Ibo people were massacred by northern soldiers and civilians
in the Northern Region, and perhaps 1,000,000 fled as refugees to the Ibo-dominated
east. Here is the Time Magazine eyewitness account of what happened in Kano in
the days preceding the declaration of the nation of Biafra by Ojukwu:
“The massacre began at the airport near the Fifth
Battalion’s home city of Kano. A Lagos-bound jet arrived
from London, and as the Kano passengers were escorted into
the customs shed, a wild-eyed soldier stormed in brandishing a rifle
and demanding “Ina Nyamiri” –the Hausa for, “where are the damned Ibos?”
“There were Ibos among the customs officers, and
they dropped their chalk and fled, only to be shot down at the terminal by
other soldiers. Screaming the blood curses of a Moslem holy war, the Hausa
troops turned the airport into a shambles, bayoneting Ibo workers in the bar,
gunning them down in the corridors, and hauling Ibo passengers off the plane
to be lined up and shot. From the airport, the troops
fanned out through downtown Kano hunting down Ibos in bars, hotels and on the
streets.
“One contingent drove their
Land Rovers to the railroad station where more than 100 Ibo were
waiting for a train and cut them down with automatic weapon fire. The soldiers
did not have to do the entire killing. They were soon
joined by thousands of Hausa civilians who rampaged through the city,
armed with stones, cutlasses, machetes, and home-made weapons of metal and
broken glass. Crying Heathen! Moreover, Allah! The mobs and
troops invaded the Sabon Gari (strangers quarters), ransacking, looting, and
burning Ibo homes and stores and murdering their owners.
“All night long and into the morning the massacre
went on. Then tired but fulfilled, the Hausa drifted back to their homes and
barracks to get some breakfast and sleep. Municipal garbage trucks were sent
out to collect the dead and dump them into mass graves outside the city. The
death toll will never be known, but it was at least 1,000. Somehow several Ibos
survived the orgy and all had the same thought: to get out of the North.”
Another
journalist, Walter Parrington of the British Daily Express, had this to say:
“I do not know if there are any Ibos left in
Northern Region … for if they are not dead, they must be hiding in
the bush of this land that is as big as Britain and
France. I saw vultures and dogs tearing at Ibo corpses and women and
children wielding machetes and clubs and guns. I talked in Kaduna
with the charter airline pilot who flew hundreds of Ibos to safety
last week. He said ‘The death toll must be far more than 3,000’ … One
young Englishwoman said, ‘The Hausas are carting hundreds of wounded Ibos to
the hospital to kill them there.' I talked to three
families who fled from the bush town of Nguru, 176 miles north. They
escaped in three Land Rovers from the town where about fifty
Ibos were murdered by mobs drunk on beer in some European shops.
“Another Englishman, who fled the town
told of two Catholic priests running for it, the mob after them ‘I do
not know if they escaped: I didn’t wait to see. ….
. A lot of the massacred Ibos are buried in mass graves outside
the Moslem walls”.
“In Jos Charter pilots who have been airlifting
Ibos to Eastern safety talked of at least 800 dead. In Zaria, 45
miles from Kaduna, I talked with a
saffron-robed Hausa, who told me: We killed about 250 here.
Perhaps Allah willed it. One European saw a woman and her child
slaughtered in his front garden after he had been forced to turn them away”.
And what did the Head of State do to protect innocent lives?
And what did the Head of State do to protect innocent lives?
‘The most important constitutional duty of a head
of state all over the world is the protection of life and property of the
citizenry under all circumstances’, so they say. And what did the then Head of State, General Yakubu
Gowon do to protect all the innocent lives? Lawrence Chinedu Nwobu writes, in his 2013 article ‘How Yakubu Gowon Caused The Nigeria-Biafra War’:
“Yakubu Gowon abdicated his most
fundamental constitutional responsibility to protect lives and property when he
did absolutely nothing while officers and men of the Nigerian army and police
who were supposed to protect life and property crossed over from their coup to
attack and massacre thousands of Eastern civilians including women and children
in the premeditated genocide in the North.
“As the mass killings of innocent
civilians went on by cowardly Soldiers who crossed over from a political coup
to target and kill defenceless civilians, Yakubu Gowon did nothing. He didn’t
send in troops or the police to try to calm the situation, he neither imposed a
state of emergency nor a dusk to dawn curfew, he also never set-up any
investigative panel to probe the killings. To make matters worse, even though
the officers and men who were carrying out such heinous crimes against humanity
were well known, Yakubu Gowon never reprimanded, arrested, court marshalled or
punished any of them, rather the officers were all promoted. It became obvious
by his inaction and promotion of the implicated officers that Yakubu Gowon was
complicit in both the coup and genocide.
“There is no circumstance that can
justify the mass murder of innocent civilians while Yakubu Gowon who has a duty
to protect life and property under all circumstances refused to act. It is
unthinkable to imagine that at the height of the provocation of the 9/11
terrorist attacks that killed more than 3000 Americans by Islamic terrorists;
President George Bush would allow the massacre of innocent Muslims in the US.
An estimated 50,000 innocent civilians were brutally murdered while Yakubu
Gowon as Head of State did nothing and indeed tacitly supported the mass
killings. It is exactly for those types of crimes that the international
criminal court in the Hague and Geneva Convention were established to bring to
justice those who commit acts of genocide and other human rights violations.
The killings only stopped when there was no one left to kill. Yakubu Gowon
failed in his most fundamental duty to protect life and property and this
failing created the self preservation scenario that necessitated self determination
and consequently Biafra by the East. Since Yakubu Gowon as Head of State could
do nothing while thousands of innocent civilians were being hacked to death by
Soldiers and Police officers who were supposed to protect life and property,
the very idea of Nigeria died from that point and the East like any group had
no choice but to undertake the natural right of self preservation and thus self
determination.”
Thus
Gowon, the Head of State, proved himself to be among those harbouring anti-Ibo
sentiments.
Ojukwu’s reaction following the killings
As a result of these massive killings,
non-Ibos—particularly Hausa-Fulani Muslims—were then expelled from Ibo land,
the Eastern Region. The Eastern region felt
increasingly isolated and alienated from the federal military government under
Gowon. Ojukwu's main proposal to end the ethnic strife was the creation in
Nigeria of a weak federation-type government, which would allow the largest
ethnic groups to have substantial political autonomy. Thus a last-ditch effort
to save the country was made in January 1967, when the Eastern delegation, led
by Ojukwu, agreed to meet the others—the North and the West—on neutral ground
at Aburi, Ghana. There at Aburi, Ghana, an agreement was reached between the
regions, but the situation deteriorated after Gowon abandoned the accord when
he came back to Nigeria. Gowon didn’t stop there—his federal military
government later promulgated a decree dividing the four regions into 12 states,
including 6 in the north and 3 in the east, in an attempt to break the power of
the regions. As a result, 3 days later, in May 1967, the Eastern region's
consultative assembly authorised Ojukwu to declare the Eastern Region an
independent state as the Republic of Biafra. Even Prominent Nigerian patriots
such as Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe were also forced to support Biafra by this time.
Gowon, the leader of the federal government, refused to recognise Biafra's
secession. His federal troops soon afterward invaded Biafra, and fighting broke out in July 1967.
Within weeks the fighting had escalated
into a full-scale civil war. In August Biafran troops crossed the Niger, seized
Benin city, and were well on their way to Lagos before they were checked at
Ore, a small town in Western state (now Ondo state). Shortly thereafter,
federal troops entered Enugu, the provisional capital of Biafra, and penetrated
the Ibo heartland. The next two years were marked by stiff resistance in the
shrinking Biafran enclave and by heavy casualties among civilians as well as in
both armies, all set within what threatened to be a military stalemate.
Meanwhile, the Yoruba Chief Obafemi Awolowo
threw his support behind Gowon-led federal government against the Ibos—he was even later responsible for the government’s “starvation
policy” that caused the deaths of over 2 million Ibos who were mostly women and
children. (See this: http://usafricaonline.com/2012/10/10/awolowos-starvation-policy-against-biafrans-and-the-igbo-requires-apology-not-attacks-on-achebe-by-francis-adewale/).
Below is the controversial
excerpt from Chinua Achebe’s There was a
Country on the issue:
 |
| Obafemi Awolowo |
“The wartime cabinet of General Gowon, the military ruler, it
should also be remembered, was full of intellectuals like Chief Obafemi Awolowo
among others who came up with a boatload of infamous and regrettable policies.
A statement credited to Awolowo and echoed by his cohorts is the most callous
and unfortunate: all is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of
war. I don’t see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight
harder.
“It is my impression that Awolowo was driven by an overriding
ambition for power, for himself and for his Yoruba people. There is, on the
surface at least, nothing wrong with those aspirations.
“However, Awolowo saw the dominant Igbo at the time as the
obstacles to that goal, and when the opportunity arose – the Nigeria-Biafra War
– his ambition drove him into a frenzy to go to every length to achieve his
dreams.
“In the Biafran case, it meant hatching up a diabolical
policy to reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation –
eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future generations.”
Listen to Ojukwu’s
historic speech here:
Nwobu
writes, on the atrocities committed by Gowon and his troops during the war:
“In prosecuting the war Yakubu
Gowon proved his complicity in the genocide by fielding the likes of Murtala
Muhammed, Shehu Yar’Adua, Theophilus Danjuma, Mohammed Shuwa and others who
ironically are the same cowardly officers who perpetrated the genocide against
civilians that created the crisis in the first place. These officers were not
just mass murderers they were also rapists who serially committed crimes
against humanity in the course of the conflict.
“To decipher the true motive for
the conflict, certain fundamental questions must be asked; If Yakubu Gowon was
genuine about Nigerian unity as the true reason for his war why the North was
originally intent on secession until the British authorities advised them not
to because of economic interests / crude oil? Why did Gowon as head of state
abdicate his constitutional responsibility and stood by when thousands of
innocent Eastern civilians were being massacred? Why was Gowon so unwilling to
make any sacrifices for the interest of peace and why did he renege on an
accord he agreed in Aburi? Why did it take him so long from January to May to
issue a decree on the diluted version of Aburi accord? Why was the Nigerian
army so invested in massacres, rape and arson as they did in Benin, Asaba, the
apostolic church Onitsha and practically all theatres of the war? Why were
officers and men of the Nigerian army like Benjamin Adekunle and others making
inflammatory statements of their intent on genocide in a supposed war of unity?
Why was the notorious radio Kaduna making atrocious statements that urged rape
and genocide in a supposed war of unity? Why did balkanisation of Igboland,
abandoned property, divide and rule and the seeds of division instead of
reconciliation become the policy of Yakubu Gowon’s government before and after
the war? Why did Apartheid policies of marginalisation/exclusion become federal
government policy after the war if it was genuinely a war of unity as Yakubu Gowon
repeatedly lied?
“In nations that went through a
civil war, driven by a genuine patriotic desire for unity, the end of such
conflicts is not followed by policies of balkanisation, abandoned properties,
exclusion and marginalisation as has been the case in Nigeria but swift and
total reconciliation, reconstruction and re-integration. Vietnam, Angola and
post-genocide Rwanda are just some examples of nations that achieved total
reconciliation and re-integration in the aftermath of conflict because of a genuine
desire for unity.”
The Organization of African Unity, the
Catholic Church, and others tried to reconcile the combatants. Most countries
continued to recognise Gowon's regime as the government of all Nigeria, and the
United Kingdom and the Soviet Union supplied it with arms. On the other hand,
international sympathy for the plight of starving Biafran children brought
airlifts of food and medicine from many countries. Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon,
Tanzania, and Zambia recognised Biafra as an independent state, and France sent
weapons to the Biafrans.
The war lasted for three years, then the
numerical strength of the Nigerian forces—particularly the series of
engagements in late December 1969 and early January 1970, launched at a time
when Biafra was short on ammunition, its people were desperate for food due to the
economic blockade and deliberate destruction of agricultural land by the
Nigerian government, and its leaders controlled only one-sixth of the territory
that had formed the Biafran republic in 1967–eventually forced the Biafrans to
consider surrendering to the Nigerian federal government. Ojukwu fled to Côte
d'Ivoire, and the remaining Biafran officers led by Captain Philip Effiong, a
non-Ibo and the first Vice President and later President of Biafra Republic, surrendered
to the Nigerian federal government on Jan. 15, 1970. (Ibo secularist late Prof.
Chinua Achebe’s ‘There was a Country’
quoted above is a good history of Nigeria/Biafra war).
 |
| Nnamdi Kanu |
Since then, however, as the anti-Ibo
actions have, more than ever, increased in the country, Biafra has equally
continued to exist massively in the minds of the Ibos even till this very day.
The current agitation for Biafra started in 2000, during Ojukwu’s lifetime,
when Chief Ralph Uwazeruike, an Indian-trained lawyer, then 41, founded the
Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, and
was supported by Ojukwu. The current leader of the Ibos in the struggle, Comrade
Nnamdi Kanu (now in prison), is the founder of Radio Biafra and leader of the
(more powerful and international) Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB. Today the
leader of MASSOB is Mr. Uchenna Madu and both MASSOB and IPOB, as well as the
so-called Biafra Zionist Movement led by Barrister Benjamin Onwuka (now in
prison), work together as they have a common goal—actualisation of Biafra.
The very idea of One Nigeria was actually initiated by the
Ibos, while the idea of secession was initiated by the Hausa-Fulanis...the
propaganda that “Yakubu Gowon fought to keep the Nigerian unity” is a big lie.
Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe
(1904-1996), Nigeria’s first President, was the first most advocate of the very
idea of One Nigeria. Zik, as he was fondly called, was born in Zungeru,
Northern Nigeria. He attended various grammar and high schools in Onitsha,
Calabar, and Lagos. He spent almost 10 years (1925–34) studying in the United
States, where he attended several schools, including Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, Howard University in Washington, D.C., and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1934 he went to the Gold Coast
(now Ghana), where he founded a newspaper and was a mentor to Kwame Nkrumah (first president of Ghana) before returning
to Nigeria in 1937. There he founded and edited newspapers and also became
directly involved in politics, first with the Nigerian Youth Movement and later
(1944) as a founder of the National Council of Nigeria
and the Cameroons (NCNC), which became increasingly identified with the Ibo people after 1951. In 1948, with the backing of the
NCNC, Azikiwe was elected to the Nigerian Legislative Council, and he later
served as premier of the Eastern region (1954–59).
 |
| Nnamdi Azikiwe |
Azikiwe, a typical
American product, was a great intellectual well committed to the propagation of
Americanism in Nigeria, though of course, like a typical Ibo man as well, he
was just sincere in his ignorance as far as true
Americanism was concerned. Zik, one of the very few African philosophers, was a
political philosopher who, as demonstrated in his book, ‘Ideology for Nigeria: Capitalism, Socialism or Welfarism?’ preferred
the via media, that is, the way of compromise. His preference for the via media
led him to embrace eclecticism in his political philosophy. The dialectics of
eclecticism, he believed, lead to the harmony of opposites. Having critically
examined each of the major political systems—capitalism, socialism and
welfarism—Zik found each of them wanting but nevertheless believed that none of
them is totally bad without “some good elements.” This manner of thinking also
affected his religious belief which was simply terrible. Hence, in his
autobiography “My Odyssey” he tells
us how he had enjoyed being a Methodist, an Anglican, a Catholic, etc.
Nevertheless, he sincerely cherished his “Christian faith” and could even boast
of it publicly, unlike today’s secularists who make mockery of it—Zik could,
for instance, proudly boast of being “a
student of scripture”.
The southern protectorate
was divided into two provinces in 1939—Western and Eastern—and in 1954 they,
along with the northern protectorate, were renamed the Western, Eastern, and
Northern regions as part of Nigeria's reconstruction into a federal state.
Internal self-government was granted to the Western and Eastern regions in
1957. The Eastern region was dominated by Azikiwe and the Western one by Chief
Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba lawyer who in 1950 founded the Action Group. Demanding
immediate self-government, Awolowo’s Action Group was opposed by the Northern
People's Congress (NPC), which was composed largely of northerners and headed
by several leaders, including Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. In fact, at its own
request the Northern region was not given internal self-government until 1959,
partly because northerners, as Muslims, regarded the rest of Nigerians as mere
infidels who shouldn’t be mingled with and partly because they also feared that
their region might lose its claim to an equal share in the operation and
opportunities of the federal government if it was not given time to catch up
with the educationally advanced south.
 |
| Tafawa Balewa |
Nwobu
aptly demonstrates in his piece how historically, the North and her leadership
were the greatest opponents of the very idea of Nigeria and Nigerian unity.
Northern leaders such as Ahmadu Bello, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa amongst
others never hid their disdain for Nigeria. The rejection of Nigerian unity at
a point became the political ideology of Northern leaders which they variously
expressed in public declarations and in the exclusionist policies formulated in
the Northern region. And why this disdain? Of course it was because—as already stated—as
Muslims the Northerners have always regarded the rest of non-Muslim Nigerians
as mere infidels who shouldn’t be associated with—the very same reason why Boko Haram is still fighting till date.
For instance, in 1948, while addressing the legislative council, Abubakar
Tafawa Balewa declared that “Since 1914 the British Government has been trying
to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are
historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs and do not show themselves
any sign of willingness to unite. Nigerian unity is only a British intention
for the country.” Undisguised disdain and rejection of the very idea of
Nigerian unity is aptly demonstrated by this speech as presented by Tafawa Balewa.
Nwobu
also shows how the foremost Northern leader, Sir Ahmadu Bello was even more
resentful of Nigeria. In his book and autobiography “My Life” published a year after independence in 1961, he famously
castigated the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria as “the mistake of
1914.” Being the premier of the Northern region Ahmadu Bello further
demonstrated his opposition to Nigeria by using his administrative powers to
create an “Apartheid Northernization policy” which decreed that all available jobs
in the North must go to a Northerner and in the event that there is no
qualified Northerner should go to the Europeans/ Arab Muslims rather than
Nigerians from the South. Nothing better demonstrates Ahmadu Bello’s hatred and
rejection of Nigeria than his Apartheid Northenization policy that preferred
the Europeans, Arabs and other foreigners to fellow Nigerians from the South.
Segregation of southerners into areas known as “Sabon gari” was also a
segregationist policy of Ahmadu Bello designed to keep Northerners separate
from Southerners that endures to this day. The whole strata of the North and
her leadership was thus never historically interested or invested in the idea
of a United Nigeria from the dawn of colonial Nigeria.
The
hostility and rejection of Nigeria by the North, Nwobu continues, is also noted
in the first riots directed at southerners in Jos in 1945 and subsequently in
1953 in Kano when an anti-independence riot was sponsored by the Northern
leadership against Southerners living in Kano. Both of these riots resulted in
the deaths of hundreds of Southerners and set the precedent for future riots
that later became routine. Most importantly, the riots underscore the
historical context of the hostility of the North to the very idea of Nigeria.
The
British of course loved the northerners more than all the other tribes in the
country—the Northerners, unlike the Ibos and the Yorubas, never resisted the
British imperialists. When, for instance, the British introduced the policy of
Indirect Rule, it was a total failure in the south—especially in Ibo land—but
worked perfectly well in the North. In a nutshell, the Northerners had no
problem with the British colonialists, who never interfered with their customs
and religious beliefs and practices but indeed respected them. In fact they
cherished the very presence of the British in Nigeria because—unlike the
stubborn southerners—they benefited a lot from the colonial government, hence
they never really wanted the colonialists to leave Nigeria. And for their
loyalty, the British of course compensated them by handing over power to them
after their departure, hence the same nonentity who opposed Nigerian unity and
Nigerian independence, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, ended up becoming Nigeria’s First
Prime Minister in 1957, even before independence, while the Great Nnamdi
Azikiwe, Zik of Africa, Father of Nigerian Nationalism, who almost
single-handedly fought for and really achieved Nigerian independence, was
sidelined. Note:
When later, on Oct. 1, 1963, Nigeria became a republic and Azikiwe became
president of the country, Balewa was still the Prime Minister and as such, more
powerful.
As
Nwobu aptly documents:
“When in 1957 the British colonial
authorities offered independence individually to the regions provided two out
of the three regions accepted the offer, the Northern region declared they were
not ready for that level of political and economic independence, the Western
region declared their readiness for independence, the East became the tie to
make or break Nigeria; Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe in a historic move, rejected the offer
by declaring that “although the Eastern region was ready to assume the
responsibilities of regional independence, its attainment without the North
would lead to the balkanization of the Nigerian nation and conceivably a
break-up of the country. The Eastern region would rather suppress its appetite
for independence and the obvious gains it would entail until the Northern
region was ready.” By this momentous and in my own opinion mistaken decision,
Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe prevented the break-up of Nigeria as offered by the then
colonial authorities in 1957. He also stridently opposed the Northern proposal
for a right of self determination in the constitution in subsequent
constitutional conferences.
“These feats alongside the emergence
of a Northerner “Mallam Umaru Altine” as the first mayor of Enugu in 1956,
amongst so many other sacrifices made by Dr Azikiwe and other Eastern leaders
in the course of the evolution of the nation to accommodate the historically
“secessionist” North underscores the role the East played in being the biggest
champions of a united Nigeria. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe was not only an advocate of
Nigerian unity; he was also highly invested in Pan-Africanism and the campaign
for a United States of Africa. It is also noteworthy that in spite of the fact
that crude oil was discovered in the then Eastern region in 1956 which gave
overwhelming advantages to the East, not a single Eastern leader ever mentioned
crude oil in any of their political narratives or sought to take undue advantage
of it. Indeed Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and even the short-lived military
administration of General Aguiyi Ironsi demonstrated a diehard commitment to a
united Nigeria for which the later ironically paid with his life; killed by the
same Northern hypocrites who after accusing him of introducing the unitary
system (which he did in his genuine desire to unify the country) ended up
consolidating, sustaining and defending to date, the same unitary system for
which they killed General Aguiyi Ironsi.”
Again,
“perhaps because the duo of Tafawa
Balewa and Ahmadu Bello harboured so much disdain for Nigeria, they had no
incentive to invest in nation building or to make the necessary sacrifices to
consolidate the fledgling republic in her most critical foundational years.
They demonstrably advanced only narrow regional and sectional interests at the
expense of the rule of law and good governance, thus by 1962 there was already
a crisis of rigged census results and infighting in the West that led to the declaration
of a state of emergency in the Western region. By 1963, Chief Obafemi Awolowo
was arrested and convicted for alleged coup plotting. By 1964, a coalition
between Ladoke Akintola the premier of the Western region and Tafawa Balewa
resulted in massively rigged elections in the Western region which sparked off
violent riots and disturbances (wetie).
“In the Tiv Division riots had
also been violently put down by Tafawa Balewa’s government using the military,
however in the Western region the violence continued unabated until 1966 when
the military reacting to the corruption, election rigging, thuggery, tribalism
and the sustained violence in the Western region unfortunately struck at dawn
in January 1966.”
And
Ladies and Gentle Men, that became the “Ibo coup” we earlier spoke about!
Now the later propaganda
that “Yakubu Gowon fought to keep the Nigerian unity” is also
patently
false for the simple reason that the Northern counter-coup christened “Araba”
which means separation in Hausa language was a secessionist coup originally
intended to finally break the North from Nigeria. Indeed the flag of the new
republic had already been hoisted preparatory to the announcement of secession
by the North. Yakubu Gowon informed the then British high commissioner Sir
Cumming Bruce of the intention of the North to secede and it was the British in
line with their imperialist interests that advised against Northern secession
and made strident efforts to dissuade the North from seceding.
In his book The Biafran War, quoted by Nwobu,
Micheal Gould stated: “Cumming Bruce was able to persuade the Emirs that
secession would be an economic disaster”. (The
Biafran War, p.43).
As the British high
commissioner Sir Cumming Bruce himself testified:
“...it wasn’t on the face of it easy to get them (the North)
to change, but I managed to do it overnight. I drafted letters to the British
Prime Minister, to send to Gowon as Nigerian Head of State, and for my
Secretary of State (Micheal Stewart) to send letters to each of the Emirs. I
wrote an accompanying letter to each of them because I knew them personally. I
drafted all these and they all came back to me duly authorised to push at once.
The whole thing was done overnight and it did the trick of stopping them (the
North) from dividing Nigeria up.”
Nwobu writes:
“From the testimony of the then British high commissioner Sir
Cumming Bruce in regards to the effort he made to persuade the North not to
secede, the deceit, propaganda and opportunism of Yakubu Gowon and his crowd as
they lied through their teeth in their false claim of fighting for Nigerian
unity when in reality they had originally intended to secede and only changed
their mind on the prompting of the British government becomes self evident.
“For all the false propaganda spewed to prosecute the
needless war and the consequent tragic bloodletting, the British high
commissioner’s testimony proves that Yakubu Gowon and the North were never
genuine or interested in Nigerian unity. They were only opportunists who turned
around to claim one Nigeria because of economic interests linked to crude oil
which remains the reality of their presence in Nigeria to date. Had Yakubu
Gowon and the North spared us the lie and kept their original plan to secede,
the nation would have been better for it as more manageable homogenous units
would have emerged and the nation would have been spared the needless conflict
that was fought on the great lie of Nigerian unity.”
Since the murder of Ironsi, the only Ibo Christian to have ruled the country for just six months, in
June 1966, the Muslim infidels have been ruling the country till date and they
are ready to continue doing so indefinitely.
Ironsi was replaced by a Northerner in the person of Yakubu Gowon, a character
who now parades himself as a “Christian” even while “Yakubu” remains his name.
Yakubu was overthrown by Murtala Mohammed, another Northern Muslim. After
Murtala’s murder by unsuccessful coup plotters, his Deputy, Olusegun Obasanso,
a Yoruba Protestant became the Head of State (1976–79). Shagari, another Northern
Muslim, succeeded him as a civilian president in 1979. Shagari was removed by General
Mohammadu Buhari, another Muslim who took over government in 1983. Buhari was
overthrown by General Ibrahim Babangida, another Muslim who became President
and ruled Nigeria for 8 years (1985-1993). Under Babangida Nigeria became a member of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) even while "Christian critics" like Archbishop Okogie were advocating for a "secular country". And Nigeria remains a member of OIC till date. When he got tired of ruling,
Babangida, in August 1993, being heavily criticised for cancelling the June 12 1993
election won by a Yoruba Muslim, Chief M.K.O. Abiola of the Social Democratic
Party, SDP, against the Hausa Muslim Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National
Republican Party, NRP, instituted an Interim National Government (ING), led by
a Yoruba (Protestant) businessman Ernest Shonekan. Shonekan spent just 3 months
in office and was quickly removed—in November—by General Sani Abacha, another
Northern Muslim who had been the defence minister under Babangida. Providence
intervened and Abacha died mysteriously in office and Northerners were confused.
To pacify the Yorubas, who by this time protested massively for the cancelation
of the June 12 election won by Chief MKO Abiola, their brother, General Olusegun
Obasanjo, who had been put in prison by the late Sani Abacha, was brought out
by the powers that be and made a president in 1999. Obasanjo completed his
eight-year rule in 2007 and handed over power back to Northerner Muslims. Hence
Musa Yar’Adua, another Northern Muslim, became President in 2007. Before this
time the Niger Delta militants (in whose land the oil is located) had been
causing a lot of upheavals in the land and to pacify them, Goodluck Jonathan,
their brother, was brought and recommended by Obasanjo to the powers that be to
be the Vice President under Musa Yar’Adua. Hence Jonathan became Vice President
under President Musa Yar’Adua. Again, in 2010 providence intervened and Musa
Yar’Adua died in office and the mantle of leadership fell on Jonathan, as Vice
President. Now all that Northern Muslims did to prevent the Protestant Jonathan
(who they viewed as an Ibo Christian simply because he came from the South even
though he isn’t an Ibo but an Ijaw) from becoming president, as well as all
they did to frustrate him after he was sworn in as President, are simply beyond
the scope of the present study. (I wrote briefly on that in the following
article: http://pointblanknews.com/pbn/exclusive/jonathan-northern-muslims-boko-haram-saga/.
It is also beyond the scope of the present study to show how the successive governments
have completely neglected and have been neglecting—and indeed purposely
impoverished and have been impoverishing—Ibo land till date).
Jonathan became the only
President who was not allowed to rule for eight years, as all the Muslims in
the country—both the Hausa-Fulanis and the Yorubas as well as some “Christians”
they were able to deceive and instigate—using various propagandas such as
corruption and even Boko Haram which they accused him of being the founder, connived
and massively voted him out, ushering in Buhari, another Northern Muslim who is
currently ruling the country.
Perhaps the result of that
unfortunate exercise—called election—can better illustrate how divisive the country
is at present—divisive along ethnic and religious lines: Overwhelming
majority of Muslims voted for Buhari, while about 60% of the “Christians”—only 60%
because they are “not biased about
religion”!—voted for Jonathan! (See this: http://www.nairaland.com/2154213/nigerians-voting-based-ethnic-religious).
Conclusion
I have often heard non-Ibos saying something like this, “Well, you Ibos just have to either forget about Biafra or get ready for another war…Nothing in this world comes easily. You are deceiving yourselves if you think you can actualise Biafra by dialogue or negotiation”. Of course statements of this nature—laughable indeed—often come from the same people that caused that war. A mere mention of the word “Biafra” gives them sleepless night! Well if they are not blinded by jealousy and diabolical hatred of the Ibos, they should have at least reasoned that we now live in a (so-called) “globalised” world where “everything is possible”—they even run counter to the so-called UN charter and other international bodies that guarantee the right of self-determination for any group. If Nigeria could gain independence from “mighty” Britain through dialogue and negotiation, what then must stop Biafra from gaining the same independence from Nigeria? As Nwobu rightly puts it:
“Nigeria as a nation never existed
until the British colonialists patched up the contraption of disparate ethnic
and religious groups into an unworkable nation to service her imperial
interests. From the onset it was obvious Nigeria would be inhibited by her
contradictions and consequently doomed to failure. Thus when the
pogrom/genocide of 1966-67 demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubts the
impossibility of Nigeria, the legal route under international law as enshrined
in the United Nations charter was to hold a plebiscite or referendum to
determine by democratic means the choice of the majority as it concerns self
determination for Biafra. …Every ethnic group within the Nigerian geographical
expression ordinarily retains the same right for which we struggled for
independence from the British colonial government. It is thus a usurpation of
the right to self determination and independence for any group or groups within
Nigeria to wage war or forcefully coerce another into the nation against their
will. To that extent the war against Biafra must be understood for what it
really was; a war of aggression and colonialism.”
And
I add, today the war against Biafra, currently championed by the Buhari-led
federal government, must be understood for what it really is—a war of
aggression and neocolonialism.
Today, the injustices that led Ojukwu to
declare the Republic of Biafra have simply doubled. The Ibos are still massively
hated in Nigeria, and will continue to be so hated. Unfortunately, a major
factor responsible for this hatred is what most Nigerians don’t even want to
talk about because of the pluralist nature of the country. That major factor,
of course, is religion. The Ibos are not hated simply because they are Ibos, or
because, as a recent US report stated, they are “the most brilliant black African race” (see this: http://newtelegraphonline.com/igbos-brilliant-black-africa-race/),
or because they are prosperous (as some idiotically think as if the Yorubas,
for instance, are not also prosperous as well). The Ibos are hated chiefly
because they are Christians, because they are Catholics—and this is what many Ibo
advocates of Biafra are still very far from understanding.
Every adult Nigerian—educated or illiterate—knows
that true Muslims don’t just like the Christians, yet, no one is ready to come
out publicly to ask why this is so. And why? Because evil, greedy and selfish
Nigerian politicians forbid such a question, which they fear “can tear the nation apart” and hence
render them irrelevant, poor and useless. Then the problem of Western secularism
which has infested the politicians—which simply forbids any public discussion
on “sensitive” religious issues between Christians and Muslims. And the result?
The nation continues to wallow in a great sea of deception—living on a powder
keg even while pretending to be living in peace—while the hatred and killings by
the Muslims continue to increase every day. If religion is the major factor
that renders the fictitious notion of “One Nigeria” quite impossible, if some
members of one religion existing in the country believe that they can only make
heaven easily by killing members of another religion existing in the same
country, what efforts, then, have successive Nigerian governments made to curb
this?
Nothing indeed! Nothing of
course because the history of Nigerian leaders—as we have briefly demonstrated—has
been a history of the same Northern Hausa-Fulani Muslim people. Let the Ibos
never forget that the sense of “unity” that exists among these people is only
possible because of their unwavering commitment to their religious faith, to
the faith of Islam.
To be successful in this
struggle for self-determination and independence, the only thing Ibos need to
do at this time is to first of all seek the face of God. When they do this, the
rest of the things needed to be done in the struggle will be taken care of by
God because the struggle is really a genuine one. In this regard, I advocate that all those currently
championing the Biafran cause should first of all go for spiritual cleansing, that is, convert to the authentic Christian
Faith—a Faith which long ago had been lost in Ibo land following
Americanism/Vatican II revolution that spread atheism all over the world like
wildfire. In fact, we have been very unfortunate from day one since this
revolution—particularly that of Vatican II—started exactly at the same period
that Nigeria/Biafra war started. Nevertheless, it can serve as a challenge for
us to study the Faith deeply and become mature Christians. Do not be deceived, no nation or civilisation has ever
existed—and can truly exist—without religion, and no lasting peace on earth
will ever be possible without the historic, one true, divinely revealed religion,
now located in the Catholic Faith.
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